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“There you are, Uncle!” The physician from last night comes rushing toward us, wiry gray hairs springing loose from her braid. “I’ve been begging him to bring you here all day,” she says to me. “Your friend has been fading since this morning.”
I round on Gregor. “She’sdying?”
He shrugs. “If I truly thought you could help, I would’ve fetched you long ago.”
The physician snorts. “I am the expert in such matters.” She takes my arm and pulls me in the direction she came from. “This way, Cousin.”
“Cousin?” Her address confirms my theory that Gregor is somehow related to me, but it’s still a shock. “Is he also my uncle?” I ask her.
“Yes.” She throws a harsh glance at Gregor as he falls into step behind us. “Apparently, he didn’t bother to explain anything.”
“Did you know me… before?”
“As much as one can know an infant.” She smiles a little. “As a matter of fact, you were the first baby I delivered on my own. I was barely your age.”
That means she can tell me about my parents, or at least my mother. “What’s your name?”
“Athene.” Her eyes gleam as they meet mine. “And you are Katarene.”
“Catrin.”
“If you wish.”
Her flat tone makes me wonder if my insistence is an insult, but I can’t help holding on to the person Mother Agnes and Magister Thomas raised me to be. “You can call me Cat.”
Athene’s cheek tightens in a half smile. “Very well, Cat.”
We stop at a green door with a white circle painted at eye level. A thick vertical line through the middle of the circle has a snake wrapped around it. “The mark of a physician,” Athene explains. “The family trade.”
“Does that mean you’re a physician, too?” I ask Gregor.
He chuckles deeply in his chest. “No, my brother had the skill for that, but I got the good looks.”
I assume he’s making a joke about his appearance. “Your brother?”
“My twin brother, actually.”
My father?
Athene opens the door and gestures for us to follow her inside. Stairs go up to the left, but she walks down the passage leading to the back of the house. At the end, a door on the right opens to a kitchen, with dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. Opposite is a sickroom, unlike any I’ve ever seen.
Though there are no windows, the air is fresh, almost with a breeze. Soft light comes from apple-size spheres of polished stone sitting on what in Gallian homes would be candlesticks. Their glow provides just the right amount of brightness—easy on the eyes, but enough to see a pale, motionless form on the bed.
“Marguerite!” I rush to her side to kneel and take her cold hand in mine. Her head is wrapped in clean bandages, but the misshapenness is still evident. “Can she hear me?” I ask.
“She hears almost everything.” Athene moves a stool next to me, which I gratefully sit on. “If you wish to hear her, you must do more.”
“I have to touch her blood, right?” For once, I’m eager to do it.
Gregor’s eyes narrow. “How did you know that?”
“Because I’ve done it,” I say. “Not intentionally, though.”
Athene smiles smugly at Gregor. “I told you.”
He shakes his head. “Not possible. It’s rare even in Selenae. Diluted blood should be even weaker.”
“I have a theory about that, but we have work to do first.” Athene turns Marguerite’s hand over and places a metallic stone in the center of her palm. “Contact with blood isn’t necessary if you use this,” she tells me. “Take her hand again.”
