Finally, Dineas turns back to me. “I’m a soldier, first and foremost. There are comrades of mine that I don’t care for, those that I’d give a good beating on the training grounds, given the chance. But on the battlefield, if an enemy comes at us, I’ll give my life for that man I despise.” He looks at me. “They say you’re one of the village’s best healers, that you worked harder than any of the other apprentices. If you’re really that good, then I think you’d act the same as a soldier in battle. You might despise me, but you won’t let me come to harm under your care. If you don’t do it out of concern for me, you’ll do it out of pride.”
I don’t know what response I’d expected from him, but I’m surprised at the truth in his words. “You’re sure, then?”
A spasm flashes across his face. “Just do your job.”
Neither of us speak as I pour the potion into a small leather bag and carry it to the cot. Sewn into one end of the bag is the tooth of a serpent, strengthened with resin and kept sharp and hollow. To Dineas’s credit, he doesn’t draw his arm away as I reach for it, though his hands have gone cold, and a film of sweat coats his skin. He breathes slowly and deliberately through his nose and looks away.
At the last moment, it is I who falter. My healer’s vows run through my head, and I wonder if I’m making a grave mistake. It takes him a while to realize that I’ve frozen.
“Do this, please,” he says. There’s a quiet desperation in his voice. “Even if I lose my mind, it’s a small price to pay for the chance to take them down.”
What did the Amparans do to him in prison? I want to ask, but instead I plunge the tooth into his arm. He grits his teeth and stares beyond me at the wall as I slowly push the potion out of the bag. When I squeeze too hard, he stiffens but doesn’t make a sound. Finally, I pull the snake tooth away and wipe away the blood welling up through the puncture.
He stares at the blood, as if he’d expected more. “Is that it?”
“You’ll feel the effects in a few moments.” My eyes are on the wound, where an angry red welt is already spreading. I take his chin, turn his head to the light, and look at his pupils. They’re easy to see against the hazel of his eyes, and slowly expanding.
“I feel light-headed.” Dineas’s voice takes on a distracted quality. I watch his chest and count his breaths, making sure they don’t slow to the point of danger. His eyelids grow heavy. He opens his mouth to say something, but then his eyes roll to the back of his head. I catch him as he goes limp. He’s heavier than I expected, and it’s all I can do to keep him from slamming into the cot.
I sit with my fingers on his wrist, counting his pulse and his breaths, and sighing in relief when both are steady. As to what state his mind will be in, I can only wait and see. Little by little, the water clock in the corner slowly empties.
Finally, Dineas stirs in his sleep. I haven’t had a prayer answered in a long time, but I breathe a quick petition to the Goddess that all will go well. It’s strange how natural it feels to have a patient under my roof again. The breeze blows lightly in through my door and window, and I can hear leaves rustling outside. I’m glad for this good weather. It will ease the shock of his awakening.
His eyelids flutter and crack open. I sit up straight, my heart in my throat, every sense tuned in on him. He rolls his head from side to side, then looks straight at me. His expression is one of placid confusion.
“You’ve slept a long time,” I say, hoping my anxiety doesn’t show. “You’ll be groggy for a while.”
He looks from me to the rest of the cottage. “Where am I?”
“You’re safe,” I say. “What is your name?”
“I don’t remember.” But it doesn’t seem to bother him.
His memory’s gone. That’s the first hurdle passed. “It will come with time,” I tell him. I pat the cot underneath him. “What is this?”
He looks at me, puzzled at the question. “A bed?”
He’s obedient. I point to the table and cage across the room. “And can you tell me what you see?”
“I see a table. And a cage.” He flinches. “There’s a snake inside.”
I allow myself one small sigh of relief. I haven’t given him so much venom as to completely take away his knowledge of the world. “And tell me about yourself. What is your name? Where do you come from?”
“I’m not from here. Actually, I’m not certain. I’m twelve years old. No, twenty.”
He’s eighteen, actually. He told me.
“And you still don’t remember your name?”
His forehead creases in concentration. “No.” As the reality of this sinks in, agitation starts to take hold. He grabs at the sides of his cot and starts to push himself up, and I realize, with a bolt of panic, that I won’t be able to restrain him if he becomes belligerent.
“Wait,” I say quickly. “Let me help you.”
He rolls his eyes like a panicked horse, and I fetch my potion before he has more time to doubt. “Drink this. It will help you remember.”
Dineas hesitates a split second, but then raises the bowl to his lips and drinks it down in one shot. It doesn’t hurt that soulstealer venom causes extreme thirst.
“Nothing’s happening,” he says. His eyes still dart from one corner of the room to another.
“Give it time.” I take the bowl back. Please let it work.
He puts a hand to his head and squeezes his eyes shut. I reach for him, worried he’ll collapse, but he shrinks away. Then his eyes snap open and he fixates on something I cannot see.
It’s a fascinating thing, seeing memories rush across someone’s face. He folds forward slightly, and his eyes go back and forth as if he’s tracking a herd of horses. He grabs the edge of the cot and grips it tight. Once in a while, he shudders.
Finally, he looks at me again. He opens his mouth to speak. No sound comes out at first, and he shakes his head and tries again. “That was…So was that it? I can’t…”
Near our village is a small waterfall that children like to run through. Dineas’s expression reminds me of how the children look coming out—disoriented by the onslaught of water, and blinking in the sunlight.
I take his hands. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”
He answers seriously. “My name is Dineas. I come from a tribe of Shidadi under Warlord Gatha.” He says those things quickly, as if to reassure himself that he still knows who he is. “You just took away my memory.” The tone of his voice is half accusation and half amazement.
“It worked, then.” A giddiness runs through me. “How much do you remember of what happened?”
He shakes his head again, trying to clear it. “I remember everything. Falling asleep, waking up. I remember not remembering anything.”
“That’s good.” I lean toward him. “Now listen carefully. The potion I gave you just now was not the antidote. It’s just a temporary restoration. From now on, you must take this potion twice a day, or you’ll forget yourself again. When it comes time for us to put the plan into place, you’ll stop taking the potion, and your memories will fade away.”
His eyes widen. “I’ll have to do this for the rest of my life?”
“No. There’s also a permanent antidote.” I look around for a better way to explain. Finally, I grab a basin and a handful of smooth, flat stones from outside. “Think of it this way. This basin is your mind, and”—I drop a layer of pebbles into the bottom—“these pebbles are your memories.”
I take a pitcher and pour water so it barely covers the stones. “This first potion I gave you, it buries everything up to this point. Any new memories formed after that are laid above the water level.” I drop a few rocks on top of the first layer of pebbles to symbolize new experiences. “After the first potion, you can remember everything above water—that is, everything that’s happened since you drank it.”
He furrows his brow but doesn’t say anything.
“The second potion I gave you was the temporary restoration. It sweeps the water to the si
de so you can see everything—both your old memories and your new ones. But eventually, the potion will wear off. The water flows back, and once again you can only see what’s not buried.”
Dineas stares at the basin, taking in my words. “And what about the things that happen while the water’s temporarily swept aside? Are those like new memories or old?”
“Good question. Those memories are somewhere in between. You might remember vague impressions after the rest of the old memories fade, but I don’t think you’ll be able to make sense of them.”
He frowns. “And you do have something that will dry up this ‘water’ for good?”
“Yes. That’s the permanent antidote. We’ll take it with us to the capital, and it will cure you when our mission is done. But I’d rather not erase your memory more times than I must. The first potion is the dangerous part. It might not turn out so well next time.”
He takes in my words, and sets his jaw. “Well then, let’s go to the capital.”
Now I understand why they call that snake the soulstealer.
As I mend my clothes and sharpen my blades for our journey, I’m haunted by those short moments when Zivah took away my past, the blankness where my life should have been. I can’t shake the feeling that with her potion, Zivah’s taken something core to who I am. Before we parted that day, Zivah gave me several days’ worth of the draft to keep my memories from fading, and I take them more religiously than most priests take their prayers. I’ve agreed to this mission, and I won’t back down now. All the same, I’ll hold on to my soul for as long as I can.
Five days later, I journey back down to Zivah’s cottage under cover of darkness. Gatha’s the only one who comes to see me off. It’s a brisk night, with only a sliver of a moon. Through the healer’s shutters, the faint glow of lamplight tells me Zivah’s up and about. I send Preener off to fetch her.
Next to me, Gatha clears her throat. “When you’re in the palace, Dineas, play it cautiously. Stay alive; lie low. Earn the empire’s trust. Find out their plans against us and how to stop them. Anything you give us will be helpful. Their codes, their strategies, the movements and habits of their leaders…”
Gatha never fails to stir my courage. “I won’t remember anything once the healer’s done with me,” I remind her.
“True, you’ll be wiped blank,” says Gatha. “But I suspect part of you will still remember my orders, even if you don’t know it.”
The light in Zivah’s cottage flickers out. A few moments later, she steps through the door. She carries a small pack over her shoulders, and I’m relieved to see that she’s traded her dress for a man’s tunic and trousers. It’s too dark to see her face.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
Her nod is so slight I could well have imagined it.
We leave without fanfare—we simply start walking, and I lead the way south. The trails are too crooked for quick going, even though we’ve packed light. All I have is one change of clothes and my weapons. My crows fly along behind me, since Gatha thought it better for them to come to the capital with us.
Zivah travels with a snake curled around her upper arm and several tiny cages of insects hanging from her pack. Despite the venomous pets, the healer’s not as bad a traveling companion as I’d feared. She doesn’t talk much at all, and she matches my pace without complaining. Soon after sunrise, the bamboo groves start thinning, the ground begins to slope downward, and the air takes on a heavier feel. A short while later, I smell the sea breeze, and the dark waters of the Monyar Strait come into view. The water looks calm, which is a good thing, because no ferry captain who gets a good look at Zivah will have anything to do with us.
“I’ll see about a boat,” I tell Zivah.
The pier is a short distance downhill, along with the ferryman’s hut, an Amparan messenger’s stable, and a smattering of vendor stalls. The smell of freshly fried fish makes my mouth water, but I go past that stall to the boatmonger, who’s got several vessels sunning on the sand. An older rowboat catches my eye. The wood is aged, but sturdy and heavy enough to cut through the waves.
“How much for this?”
“Seventy telans.”
Fair price. I must not look rich enough to cheat. Still, it’s more money than I’ve spent in a long time. I dig out some coins from the stash Tal gave me, then drag the boat down to the beach. When Zivah joins me, I see she’s put on a wide-brimmed hat to shield her face from onlookers.
“You been on the water before?” I ask her.
Her mouth presses into a straight line as she peers across to the Amparan shore. “A few times.”
She flinches away when I offer her a hand in. It’s not the first time she’s been jumpy around me.
I roll my eyes. “I may be a barbarian, but I promise I won’t kill you. It’d be hard for me to complete my mission if I did.”
She’s puzzled for a moment, and then she shakes her head. “It’s not that,” she says. “I just keep forgetting you’re immune.”
Her answer seems obvious now that she’s said it. I wonder how long it’s been since she’s been allowed to touch someone. But now, Zivah takes my hand, tightening her grip when the boat rocks under her weight.
“Sit here,” I say, pointing to the stern. As soon as she’s settled, I bend down and brace my weight against the hull. The water’s ice-cold around my feet, and then my shins as I push the boat deeper. I jump into the boat before my toes go numb, and take the oars.
The boat is well-balanced and responsive. The current carries us west and I’m fighting the wind, but we move along at a decent clip. For a while, it’s just the sound of my paddles hitting the water, and the waves against our boat. Zivah stares off the side, looking toward the opposite shore, and I concentrate on the rowing. There’s something about the rhythm that kneads the tension out of my muscles.
“How well do you know Central Ampara?” she asks.
It takes me a while to realize she’s spoken. “I grew up on that side of the strait. I was twelve when we fled across to Monyar.”
“Have you been back since then?”
“A few times.” I attack the water with my oars. The boat lurches. If Zivah thinks removing my memories gives her permission to go digging through my past, she’ll be sorely disappointed.
She returns her gaze to the waters. She looks dignified, sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, like a queen or a priestess. I catch myself staring at her profile, and she turns toward me before I can look away.
“You know what they do to traitors in Ampara, don’t you?” I blurt out.
It’s her turn to be surprised. But then a hint of a smile touches her lips. “You need me on this mission, Dineas. Educating me on Amparan torture strategies might not be in your best interest.”
“Everyone should know what they’re facing.”
Zivah pulls a splinter off the side of the boat and tosses it into the water. “What can they take away from me?” she asks quietly. “My life? That’s already gone. This way, at least I can help my people. At least I can heal again.”
There are fates worse than death, but I don’t say it. “Is healing that important to you?”
She casts her eyes toward the twin swords resting at my feet, carefully wrapped in oilcloth to avoid attracting attention. “How would you feel if you could no longer wield those? If every blade you touched turned on you instead?”
I follow her gaze to my blades. Even though I’ve only owned them a few months, they already feel like extensions of my arms. I know their reach and their weight, and it makes me nervous to have them on the floor of the boat instead of on my back. “Your fellow villagers spoke highly of your skill,” I say. “They say you were touched by the gods.”
“We only have one Goddess. She holds healers in her hand because they guard the door to her domain.” She stops abruptly. Then comes that faint smile again, but there’s no mirth in it. “The Goddess might have taken an interest in me once, but she’s long forgotten me by now.”
As we come near to the opposite shore, I pull the oars in and jump out. The beach on this side is rockier than the other, and pebbles scatter under my feet as I pull the boat to land. I’d purposely steered us to a more remote part of the border, out of view of checkpoints, docks, or any other Amparan trappings. Still, as I wade onto dry ground, a weight presses on my chest, clamping the breath out of my lungs more surely than if a horse had fallen on top of me. Images crowd into my mind—chains, heat, the moans of dying men. I close my eyes, willing the sensations to go away. I’m no warrior if I let myself be beaten down by ghosts.
“Dineas…”
Scars, I’d forgotten Zivah. She steps out of the boat, uncertain. I turn away from her, take a deep breath, hold it in, and let it out. Focus on the mission. Remember what’s at stake. I’m still a little shaky by the time she reaches me. “Welcome to the Central Empire.”
She looks at me as if trying to decide whether to acknowledge the hostility in my voice.
“You hate them, don’t you?” she asks.
I think back to the battles I’ve endured, the children who lack fathers and mothers. “Don’t you? That garrison of soldiers with rose plague might as well have run a sword through you.”
Her expression freezes, and she scans the jagged rocks of the beach. “Sometimes I blame those soldiers,” she says, eyes still focused ahead of her. “Sometimes I’m angry at the Goddess. Sometimes I blame myself.”
For a moment we’re both silent. Then she pushes ahead of me. “What now?”
“It’s nearing sundown, so we’ll make camp. Tomorrow, we’ll start south to Sehmar.”
We find a secluded cove nearby. When I come back from gathering firewood, Zivah is plucking the feathers off a seagull.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask.
She doesn’t look up from her work. “I may not be a walking armory, but I’m not completely helpless,” she says. That’s when I see the blowgun on the ground next to her.
“Are you a good shot?” I’m intrigued despite myself.
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