AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Interesting. The Dial Chamber was the room in which the Charter Families had met for generations to discuss trade, diplomacy, and the current state of affairs in Castellane, with the King or Queen always present to direct the course of the discussion, for the final word on any decision was House Aurelian’s. For the past years Lilibet, with Mayesh Bensimon at her side, had represented the King at the meetings—always with a look of dispassionate boredom on her face.
Now she wanted Conor to take her place, and from her expression, it did not look as if arguing the point would do any good.
“If Father could—” Conor began.
Lilibet shook her head, the ornate loops of her glossy, still-black hair trembling. Kel sensed that she was looking at him out of the corner of her eye—for all her pretense that he didn’t exist, she waswary of what she said in front of him. “You know that’s not possible.”
“If I lead the meeting alone, there will be gossip as to why,” Conor said.
“Darling,” said Lilibet, though there was little warmth in it, “the way to fight gossip among the nobles is to show them you have a firm grasp on power. That is what you must do tomorrow. Seize control; do not let it fly out of your hands. Once you’ve shown that you can do that, we can discuss a journey to Marakand. Perhaps you could go on your honeymoon.”
With that, she swept away, the hem of her green skirt leaving a path in the dust like the dragging tail of a peacock. Her Court ladies hurried after her as Conor sat back in his chair, his expression set.
“The Dial Chamber meeting will be fine,” Kel said. “You’ve been to a hundred of them. It’s nothing you can’t do.”
Conor nodded vaguely. It occurred to Kel that this might mean he’d be left on his own tomorrow afternoon, perhaps into the evening. It depended on how long the meeting went, but all he needed was to get to Merren Asper, threaten the truth out of him, and return. Merren was clearly an academic, not a fighter; it couldn’t take that long.
“You’ll come with me,” Conor said. It wasn’t a request, and Kel wondered if Conor truly noticed the difference between asking Kel to do things and telling him. But then, did it matter? It was not as if Kel could say no, in either circumstance. And resentment was pointless. It was more than pointless. Resentment was poison.
“Of course,” Kel said, with an inward sigh. He’d just have to try to get away at another time. Perhaps tonight. As far as he knew, Conor had nothing planned.
Conor did not seem to hear him. He was gazing into the distance, unseeing, his palms flat on the table before him. It was only then that Kel realized that though Lilibet must surely have noticed the raw red wounds on Conor’s right hand, she had said not one word about them.
—
“Zofia, darling,” Lin said, “do take the pills, won’t you? There’s a good girl.”
The good girl in question—a ninety-one-year-old ball of wild white hair, fragile bones, and mulish temper—glared at Lin out of her one good eye. The other was covered with an eye patch; she had lost it, she claimed, during a sea battle off the coast of Malgasi. The battle had been with the royal fleet. Zofia Kovati had been a pirate, as feared and dreaded in her day as any man. She still possessed an appearance of great fierceness, with her nest of pure white hair sticking out in all directions, a mouthful of false teeth, and a collection of brass-buttoned military coats she wore over full-skirted dresses in the style of decades past.
Lin switched tack. “You know what will happen if you don’t take them. I’ll have to send a Castellani doctor to look at you, since you don’t trust me.”
Zofia looked gloomy. “He’ll put the pills up my bum.”
Lin hid a smile. This was likely; doctors of themalbushimwere obsessed with suppositories for reasons she could only guess at. Partly, she supposed, because they had not mastered injections into the blood, as the Ashkar had, but she could not explain the rest of it, not when swallowing pills was a perfectly good way of getting medicine into the system.
“Oh, yes,” Lin said. “He will.”
She grinned as Zofia snatched the pills out of her hand and swallowed them down with only a slight grimace. The foxglove would treat, though not cure, Zofia’s failing heart and the swelling in her legs. Lin left her with a bottle of more pills and strict instructions regarding when and how to take them—instructions she had given before, but Zofia seemed to enjoy the ritual, and Lin did not mind. She would have stayed for tea today, as she often did, had she not been late for her next appointment.
The day was warm and bright, perfect for traversing the city.When she had first started seeing patients in Castellane, Lin had worried about criminals, cutpurses, and Crawlers. The Ashkar regarded the city outside the Sault walls as a dangerous and lawless place. She was sure she would be set upon and robbed, but she had gone mostly unhindered through the streets, rarely troubled by more than curious looks.
Once, in the Warren, after delivering a baby, she had made her way home late at night, under a green-tinted spring moon. A skinny young man, a knife flashing in his hand, had slipped from the shadows between two buildings and demanded her physician’s satchel; she had clutched it away from him, instinctively—the items inside were precious and expensive—when a dark shadow had dropped from a balcony above them. A Crawler.
To her great surprise, the Crawler proceeded to disarm the young man and send him on his way with a sharp warning and a sharper kick to the ankle. The would-be thief had scuttled away while Lin blinked in surprise.
The Crawler, whose hooded jacket hid his face, had grinned, and Lin had caught a flash of metal as he turned his head. A mask? “Compliments of the Ragpicker King,” he said, offering her a half-mocking bow. “He is an admirer of physicians.”
Before Lin could respond, the Crawler had vanished, scrambling up the nearest wall with the quick spidery movements that had earned the Crawlers their name. Lin felt safer after that—quixotic, she knew, to feel safer because of a criminal, but the Ragpicker King was a fixture in Castellane. Even the Ashkar knew he controlled the streets. And much to her own surprise, Lin’s rounds of patient appointments had turned out to be her favorite part of being a physician.
After Lin had passed her last medical examination, she had expected to begin seeing patients immediately. But other than Mariam, no one in the Sault seemed interested in availing themselves of her services. They avoided her, seeking out instead the male physicians who had scored lower than she had on the exams.
So Lin had expanded her reach into the city. Chana Dorin sold talismans in the city market every Sunsday, and spread the word that there was a young Ashkari physician willing to treat ailments for very little money. Josit, then one of the Shomrim—the guardians of the Sault gates—had told everymalbeshwho came seeking a physician of his sister: her skills, her wisdom, her extremely reasonable rates.
Slowly Lin built a stable of patients outside the Sault, from the rich daughters of merchants seeking someone to remove wens from their noses, to the courtesans of the Temple District whose jobs required them to be regularly examined by physicians. Once she had built her reputation, more began to seek her out: from anxious pregnant mothers to the gnarled old men whose bodies had been broken by years of toiling at shipbuilding in the Arsenale.
Illness was a great leveler, she realized.Malbushimwere just like the Ashkar when it came down to their health: fretting over their own wellness, vulnerable where it came to sickness in their family, frantic or silent in the face of death. Often, as Lin stood quietly while a family prayed over the body of a lost loved one, she would hear their words—may he pass through the gray door unhindered, Lords—and she would add some of her own, silently, not just for the dead, but for those left behind.Be not alone. Be comforted among the mourners of Aram.
Why not?she always thought. They did not have to believe in the Goddess for her to touch their hearts in their greatest time of need.
