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Though she had been angry at first—most physicians did not have to also be their own apothecaries—Lin had discovered an advantage to her situation. It allowed her to experiment, to mix various ingredients together as she tried to create new medicines to treat Mariam. She often thought longingly of what it would be like to have her own laboratory, as the students at the Academie did—but that was impossible. The kitchen would need to do for now.
“I do,” Lin said. “I found a reference to an old Hindish compound for treating lung inflammation—”
Chana held up a hand. “No need to explain yourself.” She squinted against the sun. “The Goddess Festival is a month away.”
Lin raised her eyebrows. It was not like Chana to make idle observations. “Yes?”
“I hoped you would help me make the sachets for the girls.” The sachets were small bags of herbs, worn around the neck of those women young enough to be considered as potential vessels for the Goddess. The herbs were for love and luck. Silliness, in Lin’s opinion.
“Chana, I’msobusy already—”
Chana held up a hand. “Lin, you know perfectly well everyone in the Sault is meant to assist in preparing for the Tevath.”
“Not the physicians,” Lin said, though she knew many of them did, regardless. The Festival of the Goddess, called the Tevath, was the most important holiday of the year in the Sault. The Ashkar gathered in the Kathot, where the Maharam would recite the story of the Goddess, and of lost Aram. How Queen Adassa snatched life for her people from the jaws of defeat. How she saved for them the magic ofgematry,so they could make their amulets and talismans. How she had promised she would one day return in the form of an Ashkari girl.
When she was younger, Lin had loved the Festival, as had Mariam. It was a chance to dress up, to be seen as special for a day—as any girl, andonlya girl, might be the Goddess Returned. It was an opportunity to dance—the graceful dance taught to every Ashkari girl, performed only at the Festival. The Kathot would be alight with lanterns, magical as a forest from a Story-Spinner tale, and there would be laughter and wine, music andloukoum,honey cake and flirting.
Now, though, it was a reminder that the majority of the Sault looked at her as if she were peculiar. “Butwhywould you want to be a physician?” was the question she heard most often from dancing partners. And the question under the question: Was she still planning on having a family? How could she be a physician and also raise children? Of course she was odd, they would murmur when they thought she couldn’t hear them. Terrible what had happened to her parents, but there must have been some reason Mayesh Bensimon hadn’t wanted to take the children in. Something wrong with them, perhaps; the girl at least had turned out awfully peculiar.
Lin sighed. “Chana, I wasn’t planning on going.”
“Iknewit.” Chana pounced on this information like a pigeon on a breadcrumb. “Lin, that just won’t do. It’s the most important Festival of the year, and the last time you and Mariam will be eligible. The Sault is your home. You cannot withdraw from your people.”
They are the ones who have withdrawn from me.It was more than that, though. When Lin was young, she had always tensed during the part of the Festival when the Maharam spoke the words in the Old Language, words meant to call forth the Goddess.If you are among us, Adassa, show yourself.
She could not recall the moment when she realized that no one truly expected the Goddess to return. That the hush of expectation was only in her own heart. The Festival was in truth a marriage market, parading girls in their finest clothes past unmarried young men in the hope matches would be made.
“Besides,” Chana added, “Mariam has already started working on your dress.”
Lin felt a pang of guilt. She had forgotten to tell Mariam she wasn’t going—well, to be truthful, she’d been avoiding the issue. “I’m trying to get Mariam well,” she said, “which is more important.”
“I am not sure Mariam would agree with you,” Chana said. “She assumes you’re going. She’s even asked me if I think Josit might be back with the caravans by then.”
Josit.Mariam had come to see him off, months ago, when he’d departed with the Rhadanites for Hind. Lin recalled him leaning down from the waggon, tucking a curl of hair behind Mariam’s ear. Mariam smiling up at him. Telling him to bring her back fine cotton in every shade of blue. The way the smile had slipped from her face as the caravan disappeared through the gates. Lin had known what Mariam was thinking: Was this the last time she would ever see Josit?
“Don’t try to make me feel guilty about Mariam, Chana,” Lin said, wretched. “I’m working night and day trying to find a cure for her. That’s more important than a dress.”
Chana put her fists on her hips. “That’s the trouble with you, Lin. You’ve stopped seeing Mariam as your friend, your sister. You see her only as a patient. If there was one thing I learned from losing Irit, it is that our loved ones need more from us than doctoring. There are other physicians. Mariam needs her friend.”
The words cut, not least because Chana spoke of Irit so rarely. Lin had often wondered if Chana would seek love again, but she did not seem inclined to it. “Has she said that to you?”
“I know the Festival is important to her. I know she has been tirelessly working on dresses for a dozen girls, and a special one for you. All her energy and thought are going toward it. I know she worries this might be the last Festival she ever sees.”
“But don’t you see?” Lin cried. “Doesn’t that mean I should work even harder on a cure, a treatment?”
“I’m not saying you should stop trying to heal her.” Chana’s voice gentled. “But the mind and the spirit need care, as well as thebody. It is good for Mariam to have something she is looking forward to. But if you do not go—” Chana shook her head. “Be her friend, not her healer, for a night. She will be so much happier if you are there.”
And with that, Chana turned on her heel and strode from the garden, her bearing as regal as any noble’s. Lin sat, feeling miserable, in the shadow of the dwarf mulberry tree. She knew what she ought to do: She ought toaskMariam what she wanted.
Only she was frightened of the answer. What if Mariam wanted Lin to stop searching for a cure? What if she wanted to be left to die in her own time? Lin didn’t think she could bear that. Lin’s hand tightened at her side; she winced, and realized she was holding Petrov’s stone. She did not remember having taken it from her pocket, but there it was, cradled in her palm, the shape and feel of it peculiarly calming.
She turned it over. She could not help but be fascinated by it, by the swirl of darkness within it, like smoke rising from a single point and spreading outward to cover the sky. Each time she looked at it, the shapes inside seemed different, seemed to beckon her understanding.
Stop.She slid it back into her pocket with a hard flip of her wrist. That was enough, she told herself. The stone was still Petrov’s; she needed to bring it back to him as soon as she could. Before she got into the habit of using it to comfort herself. Before she no longer could bring herself to return it at all.
—
Kel found Conor some distance from the tower, in the Queen’s Garden. It had been a gift from Markus to Lilibet upon her arrival at Marivent, a quarter century ago. A long white path of crushed seashells led to a walled green space where the Queen had resettled plants and flowers from Marakand, combining them freely with the local flora: lavender flowers and aster mixed with hyacinth andbird-of-paradise; roses climbed the courtyard walls while tulips the color of pale gold glimmered in the sun.
