“Good thing you came when you did,” Emsu says. “They’re ready to load the bodies. Where is your contact?”
“She’ll be with Lord Agalar. Is that the main entrance?” I point to a portico and gate halfway down the building, lit by oil lamps. A carriage is pulled up out front, grooms and driver tending the horses, and I recognize the servants with a stab of fear. “Oh no,” I whisper.
“What’s wrong?” He catches my arm in his to restrain me. He’s very strong.
“Those are Lord Gargaron’s people.” For a blinding, horrible moment I wonder if somehow Bettany has turned traitor on me, but then I remember. “Lord Agalar invited him to observe a surgery this afternoon. They must be here still. What if he takes a tour of the facility?”
I’m shaking, and Emsu’s fingers tighten on my arm as he touches the hilt of the knife tucked in his belt.
“It isn’t a trap,” I say, for only bald honesty will work now. Desperation makes my voice hoarse. “I swear on the gods of my father’s people, and by the Mother of All. I just want revenge on Lord Gargaron for what he did to my family. If I can free our household servants then that is a small victory. Please believe me, Honored Sir.”
He takes in a breath and lets it out, then releases my arm. “Come this way.”
We go in a side entrance to a staging area. To my left a ramp slopes down into an underground chamber I can’t see, while to my right doors open to a large room lit by many lamps. Agalar’s penetrating voice echoes through the entry hall.
“Amputation is the usual treatment in such cases. But I have been experimenting with a means of salvaging the limb. If you’ll look here, you’ll see how I have stitched together the blood vessels and packed the injury with natron as a healing barrier.”
I take several steps until I can peek in. The surgery room is furnished with tables rigged with straps for tying people down and benches lining the walls for spectators, as if it’s common for a doctor like Agalar to perform in front of an audience. A shroud covers a body on one table. Bettany appears with a basket, which she sets down by the door so casually that it takes me a moment to realize the basket contains a severed foot all crushed and bloody and a mangled arm cut off just above the elbow. Sweat breaks down my back as my skin goes hot and then clammy cold. She looks up and our gazes meet.
She gestures me closer and points to the basket.
I choke but make myself move toward her.
Agalar is droning on about clamps and arteries and gangrene. With slumped shoulders and bent head to hide my height, I cross the open area and slide in at a crouch on the other side of the basket. A stench of sickly sweet rot wafts up, making me heave. Bettany reaches over the basket and squeezes my arm as my eyes water and I slap a hand over my nose and mouth.
“They are in the underground chamber. I told them you would be coming and not to go with anyone unless you were there to say it is safe,” she whispers. “Have you found someone to help?”
“Yes,” I whisper into my hand, indicating Emsu with a lift of my chin.
“Everything I have seen here has impressed me,” says Gargaron, his voice suddenly much closer than before.
He and Agalar have moved around the room and now stand in plain sight of me. He hasn’t seen me only because his back is turned to the door as he studies the unconscious patient lying on a table. Agalar, standing opposite, notes Bettany, and me in her shadow.
“That is because it is impressive work, as you’ll see if you look here,” Agalar says in his usual arrogant way, drawing Gargaron’s attention to him. Trying not to throw up, I grab the basket and hurry across the entryway to where Emsu waits by the ramp. “Any other doctor would simply have cut off this limb, but I have saved it. This man will work productively again.”
“If you have ever considered traveling with an army and testing your skills on battlefield medicine, I hope you may consider an offer to travel with me. My general is a competent and well-organized man. I would be happy to pay you handsomely to spend as many months as you desire studying the peculiarities of wounds received in battle and teaching our field doctors your innovative techniques.”
“I’ve worked with soldiers but not during an actual war. I’m intrigued by the prospect of seeing so many varieties of wounds, and in such numbers. Beauty!”
I thrust the basket into Emsu’s hands. If I hold it any longer I might heave up all over the horrible remains jostling inside. Bettany pauses in the door and, with a glance in my direction, touches fingers to her chest, heart to heart. I tap my chest in answer.
“Beauty! I need you to sew up this patient’s flesh at once.”
She scurries into the room.
Gargaron says, “You trust such delicate work to a Commoner and a woman?”
“Women have a precise and steady touch that makes them skilled seamstresses and surgeons. I also find women more amenable to instruction, less likely to argue, and more adept at learning. Now, if you’ll come over here, I will show how I successfully amputated a foot and an arm, and then I will give you a tour of the rest of the hospital.”
Emsu has already started down the ramp, carrying the basket with the tenacity of a man who has seen worse mutilation in battle. I follow, hand over my mouth as I take in shallow breaths and slowly swallow the urge to vomit.
We descend into a long, low chamber dug into the earth and supported by such a dense grove of brick pillars that it feels as if I am in a gloomy orchard. Only a few lamps burn, a row of shrouded bodies lost in shadow. It’s so much cooler down here that I shiver. Two men roll a body onto a stretcher, keeping the shroud in place, and carry it past us.
“Greetings, Emsu, what brings you here?” asks one. They glance at me but, when I say nothing to them, don’t acknowledge me.
“Where’s Tefu? I need to speak to him.”
The fellow whistles, the sound echoing strangely through the crypt, and he and the other continue up the ramp with the disciplined steps of former soldiers used to marching in unison. An Efean man limps out of the darkness with a smaller figure creeping behind his back like a shadow.
Emsu makes a sign with his hand. “This is Spider. I vouch for her. She’s asked for our help securing that one group of corpses from the mine.”
“I wondered what we were going to do with them,” says Tefu. His age allows him to address me before I speak to him. “Greetings of the night, Honored Niece.”
“Greetings, Honored Sir. My thanks for your help. I know what you risk.”
“Doma Jessamy!” The small figure bounces out from behind Tefu.
The old man startles and exclaims, “Rascal! Did you follow me?”
With his head shaved and his face and body so thin, it takes me a moment to recognize Montu-en. For his age and height he might be the twin of Prince Temnos except that Temnos is a Patron lord and Montu-en a Commoner boy. “Are you here to rescue us, like Doma Bettany promised?” he says eagerly.
“Yes.” I pat him on the shoulder before addressing Tefu. “I see you have an old injury, Honored Sir. Are many of you soldiers who served with General Inarsis? Akheres Oasis seems so far from Saryenia.”
“Our net is widely spread. When we left the army we returned to our homes across Efea bringing the lessons we learned.”
“What lessons were those?”
“That the Saroese who rule us will always give with one hand and take away with the other. But now we know how to fight, and we have a general to lead us. Efea will rise.”
If lightning had struck I could not be more jolted. What does General Inarsis have to do with Ro’s poetic phrase and the whispered discontents of Commoners? Doesn’t he serve Princess Berenise? Isn’t he friends with Lord Thynos?
“Are you saying that—?”
“Shhh!” warns Emsu.
From above we hear Lord Agalar. “We store corpses in the basement because it is cooler. Even so they must be moved immediately to the tombs south of town because of how quickly they rot in the heat. Ah, I see the many casualties fr
om the recent collapse are already being loaded into the death wagons.”
Footsteps approach down the ramp as Emsu glances back in alarm.
“Honored Sir,” I say to Tefu, “let the boy and me lie down with the others.”
“I don’t like lying under the shroud, Doma. It makes me feel like I’m dead.”
I grasp his hands, remembering what Temnos found appealing. “Think of it as a daring adventure.”
He brightens.
“I know where to go,” he whispers excitedly.
Hand in mine, he leads me into the back of the crypt, where the light barely reaches, and the bodies lie as shadowy lumps under cloth. I lie down on the hard stone floor and pull a shroud over me just as lamplight lances through the pillars, cutting shadows into angles. Montu-en rolls in beside me, his body tucked against mine. I put an arm around his shoulders. By the tiny shifts of his body I can tell he is trying not to squirm. I squeeze his shoulder and he quiets.
“The collapse was bad enough,” says Agalar, his voice so close that my heart seems to knock out of my chest with fear. “But the real reason so many people died is that the fall released a pocket of noxious air that strangled all who breathed it. I often wonder if this poisonous air remains in their lungs and can contaminate others, which is why I ordered these victims to be placed in the back. Do you wish to investigate more closely?”
“No, I’ve seen enough.”
I want to laugh at how easily Agalar has manipulated Gargaron, but of course beneath the coarse linen shroud that is all that separates me from disaster, I don’t.
“I am leaving Akheres tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” exclaims Agalar, for the first time sounding surprised. “So soon?”
“Yes, if you wish to travel with me, you will have to decide quickly. Perhaps your household cannot be ready.”
“I’m accustomed to packing up in haste. Which route do you intend to take, Lord Gargaron?”
“South. I always stop on the way out at the tomb of my uncle, Lord Menos, to make the appropriate offerings. Then the eight- to ten-day desert crossing to the sea.”
“I can meet you at the tombs, if that’s agreeable to you.”
Their voices fade as they leave the crypt.
I get up and twitch the shrouds back to see the blessedly familiar faces of women I grew up with: our two laundresses and three cleaning women, Cook’s assistant and the water and scullery girls, all rescued by Mother from abusive circumstances. The two other boys who, like Montu-en, she saved from the streets. Those she could not help to make new lives elsewhere remained with us for as long as they needed to. However much Bettany stayed with them for Mother’s sake, she’ll never acknowledge that these people were able to live in our household because Father allowed it, either because he agreed that they deserved shelter or because he knew if he tried to forbid it Mother would leave him. There’s so much about my parents I never thought of until now, and may never understand.
“Doma Jessamy,” they whisper, touching me to convince themselves I am real.
“You can go with these men. It’s safe. It will be a long journey but in the end you will return to Doma Kiya. I have to go now before I’m found missing, but I wanted to reassure you.”
They kiss me in the Efean way, on the cheek, a gesture they never would have dared make when we lived under Father’s roof, and it makes my chest grow tight with longing for what we have lost and what we never had.
16
We leave before dawn, while it’s still cool, in an impressive column of twenty-four cargo wagons carrying dates, natron, and gold, eight supply wagons for our own needs, four carriages, and the troop of Garon soldiers under the command of Captain Neartos. Where the road climbs steeply out of the oasis our pace slows to such a crawl that I swing down to walk alongside, then stop to look back the way we came. Moonlight bathes Akheres Lake in a sheen like pearls ground into gauze and cast over its waters. All lies eerily still except for pinpricks of lamps on the town walls.
I can almost hear the land breathe as a brush of wind stirs dust on the road like a mirror of my own restlessness. Am I both Patron and Commoner, or am I neither? I no longer know. Maybe a mule is a creature with no home, only a long road ahead and a doubled burden to haul.
“Jes?” Mis trots toward me out of the shadows. The lantern hanging from the back of the last wagon in the line sways, its light receding up toward the high desert plateau above us. “Are you coming? Ugh, I drank too much.”
She bends over, hands on knees, and coughs up bile. I try not to laugh but I do anyway as I slap her on the butt.
“Don’t you know better by now?”
She moans, spitting one last time, then falls in beside me as we stride after the wagons. “Where did you go last night, anyway? You have the most peculiar habit of running off and then not coming back for the longest time.”
An awkward silence between us grinds as harshly as the wheels on the road. I have an answer prepared but I’m so tired of lying to the people I should trust. Yet I can’t endanger her by telling her the truth, just as I can’t risk that she might accidentally blurt out the truth at the wrong time. “It turns out that the adversary Henta has an uncle who had met my father years ago when he was stationed in the desert. It was a chance for me to hear a few stories.”
I wait, wondering if she’ll bite. Her silence drags on so long I don’t dare glance at her.
“Do you miss him?” she asks, one of the perceptive questions I’ve come to expect from her.
“Yes.”
“I hope you don’t mind my saying so, Jes. Please don’t take offense. But it’s just so odd, knowing a Patron man like him acknowledged you and raised you.”
“He did the best he knew how,” I say, remembering Mother’s words. “And I’m not offended.”
As our feet crunch on the surface of the road and dust spits into our faces, I feel a peculiar sort of peace. For all that I struggle with who I am and where I belong, my parents did their best to make a space for us girls in the world. They wanted me, and my sisters, and maybe it is only now that I can recognize how much that means.
We reach the top of the incline. The corpse wagons, empty and headed back to Akheres Town, are waiting to the side of the road until Gargaron’s cavalcade is all up so they can start down. White-haired Tefu sits on the driver’s bench of the first wagon. Seeing me, he holds out a hand, five fingers spread, and although I don’t exactly know what the gesture means, I can guess what it signifies: victory.
I bask in a thrill of triumph, knowing I’ve bested Gargaron again. It doesn’t matter that he’ll never know. It matters that we’ve won.
All that’s left is to get Bettany free of Lord Agalar. To manage that I’ll need Amaya’s help.
Mis and I run forward, passing the slow-moving wagons. Toward the front of the line, Denya has the shutters of her carriage open. Captain Neartos rides alongside, and Amaya leans out to speak to him as she raps him flirtatiously on the arm with her closed fan.
“I wish Dusty would give up on wanting what he can’t have when what he can have is right in front of him,” murmurs Mis.
“He’s an idiot.”
She sighs. “She is really pretty. And she doesn’t sneer at us like the other servants do.”
Amaya catches sight of me, and I take the opportunity to tap my chest twice with a fist, guessing she’ll know it means the household is safe. She snaps her fan shut and touches it to her right ear with a smile for Neartos as if she’s inviting his conversation, but I know the signal is meant for me. She’ll make a way for us to meet at the tombs. I drop back, and Mis and I swing up into our own carriage.
Soon after dawn we turn aside from the main road to follow a gully. Barren cliffs hem us in like fortress walls. The gully opens into an almost perfectly circular depression, a hidden oasis ringed by cliffs pitted with numerous cave openings. Date palms and sycamores grow everywhere amid mounds of flowers. At the center, a jumble of long-abandoned buildings sur
rounds a large circular pond. Water lilies bloom like stars around a monumental statue rising at the center of the pool, whose curves and pose reveal this as an image of Lady Hayiyin, Mistress of the Sea.
The tombs for the dead are built into the cliff walls, taking advantage of the caves. Lord Menos’s tomb is easy to spot on the far side because a stone ramp leads to a ledge decorated with marble pillars and a gleaming marble wall built across a cave mouth. Behind that wall an oracle lived out her life in darkness, breathing stale air and never again seeing the sun.
Our procession approaches a gleaming temple dedicated to Lord Judge Inkos, whose priests live here year-round as caretakers. Of course we Commoners are not allowed to enter the temple area. For us an awning has been strung up in the ruins of an old building well away from the holy grounds. Mis is still feeling hungover, and Dusty has a cough from all the dust we’ve eaten by traveling at the end of the line, so they stretch out on our cots and promptly go to sleep because we won’t be leaving again until dusk. We’ve been warned to sleep during the day in preparation for moving at night under the waxing moon.
Tana keeps daily notes in a bound book. As she writes I sit next to her, wondering how long it will take Amaya to get away so we can discuss our next move. I sip water and think about how filthy I’ll be by the time we reach Port Selene, since on the harsh desert crossing we can’t carry enough water to wash.
“Why are we stopping at Lord Menos’s tomb?” I ask.
She keeps writing, not looking up. “Lord Gargaron always makes an offering on the way south, for good fortune. For years he would also ask a question of the holy oracle, while she lived, poor creature.” Belatedly she glances at me in alarm. “Meaning no disrespect,” she adds in a placating tone I hate to hear from a woman I respect so much.
No Commoner—no Efean—can be heard to criticize Patron ways. That will earn us a whipping. But does she think I would be the one to report her?
“To become an oracle seems a frightful fate to me too,” I say, to reassure her. “How long ago did Lord Menos die? Why is he buried out here?”