“Stay here. I’m going to see if anyone needs help.”
Asha headed back down the alley and stepped out into the shadowed devastation. She heard the soft crackling of falling rocks, the grunts and cries of frightened animals, and the coughing of weary and battered people. One old mule was hawing and grunting, but all of the human voices were calm, though frightened and weary.
No one is screaming. Perhaps I waited long enough after all.
“Is anyone hurt?” she called out. “I’m an herbalist. Is anyone hurt?” She stood still for a moment, listening, trying to peer through the last traces of the dust. She wondered if her accent was making her Eranian difficult for the Aegyptians to understand her. “Anyone?”
Someone cried out. A woman, young and weak. She was speaking, but Asha couldn’t understand the language at all. She hurried over the rubble, nearly twisting her ankle twice, and found the young woman lying on the ground, half-covered in small bits of wood and stone, and lots of dust. But through the debris, Asha could see the young woman’s black dress and red hair.
Oh gods, what have I done?
Asha swept the boards and rocks away as fast as she could, and eased the pale girl onto her back. She leaned over her mouth and listened to her breathing, which was slow and dry. Then Asha gently pried the girl’s eyelids open, and discovered that she had golden eyes that contracted slightly in the fading light.
Asha sighed.
She’s alive. She’s going to be fine.
Asha’s gaze traveled up the girl’s freckled face to her curling red hair and the black scarf that had blown loose on the girl’s head. Asha gasped.
Standing high on the girl’s head, pushing up through her hair, were two tall triangular ears covered in red and white fur.
Fox ears? Who is this girl? What sort of city is this?
Chapter 2
Asha cradled the girl’s head in her lap and stared at the two furry ears. Then she grabbed the black scarf and pulled it over the girl’s head again to hide them. She called over her shoulder, “Priya! I found someone who… needs help. I’m coming back to you now.”
She slipped her arms under the girl’s shoulders and knees, and picked her up. Asha needed no hint of the dragon’s strength for this, the girl was so slender and light. She turned and started back toward the alley, moving slowly and carefully over the unsteady rubble. But she had only taken a few steps when she heard the rocks shifting and tumbling softly behind her, and she looked back.
A dusty hand emerged from the rubble pushing aside the broken stones and bits of wood one by one until the entire arm was free, and then the man was able to shove a large beam aside and pull his head out into the clear air. He coughed violently and rubbed his eyes, and Asha recognized him as the Aegyptian man who had led the girl up to the temple doors.
If he was taking her in there, then he’s no friend of hers.
Asha continued toward the alley where she could see Priya waiting with her staff in one hand and Asha’s medicine bag in the other. Out of the corner of her eye she saw people approaching the ruined temple from the far end of the street. They were men in red shirts and steel breastplates, and they carried strange spears in their hands.
Soldiers. Good. They can help the other injured people.
“Wait!” the man in the rubble called out. “Please! Is she all right?”
Asha paused and glanced over her shoulder. The man had both arms free now and he finished hauling his legs out from under a piece of the fortress wall.
His legs must have been shattered.
The man got to his feet and proceeded to sweep the dust from his long blue coat.
Or not.
He started toward her. “How is she? Is she all right?”
Asha noted the expression of genuine concern on his face.
But is he really worried about her for her own sake, or because he doesn’t want to lose his little servant?
“She’s alive,” Asha said. “I need to look at her. I’m an herbalist.”
“You’re from India,” the man said, with a curious look of surprise. He had thick, wavy black hair with a few faint streaks of gray, and a salt and pepper stubble along his jaw and thin cheeks.
“Yes.” She frowned.
“How wonderful. I myself studied with several Indian physicians when I was younger. You’re of the Ayurveda school, perhaps?”
“Yes.” She frowned a little less, and began walking again toward the alley with the man following beside her. “Where did you study?”
“Kolkata, mostly,” he said. He leaned over the pale girl’s face and gently swept her red hair back from her eyes and touched her cheek.
“Really?” Asha stepped into the alley beside the nun in red. “Priya, let’s move back from the road a little way.”
“Priya?” The man nodded earnestly. “A pleasure to meet you. Omar Bakhoum, at your service. I see you are of the Buddhist persuasion. Excellent. And I particularly like those lotuses in your hair. Very nice, very pretty.”
Priya smiled as she walked with them. “Thank you very much, Mister Bakhoum.”
“Omar, please.”
Asha laid the unconscious girl on the ground and took her bag of supplies from Priya. From inside it she produced a wooden tube of waking salts, which she waved under the girl’s nose. A moment later the girl winced and blinked her eyes open.
“Shh, everything’s all right, Wren,” Omar said, taking her hand. “You’re going to be fine. Does anything hurt?”
The girl called Wren groaned and tried to sit up.
“Please, lie still,” Asha said.
“She may not understand you. She’s still learning Eranian,” Omar said. “Her first language is Rus.”
“Yslander, not Rus,” the girl muttered. “And I speak Eranian good enough.”
“ Well enough, dear,” Omar corrected her.
Wren sat up and coughed. She looked at Asha, and her tall furry ears twitched and turned from side to side, just like a nervous fox.
Asha stared at the ears. “They’re real? I thought they might be some sort of… They’re real?”
“Yes,” Omar said as he gently lifted the girl’s black scarf over her head again. “They are.”
Wren leaned forward as though she was about to stand up and Asha put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Sit still a moment, please. I want to be certain that you aren’t injured.”
Asha swept her hair back from her right ear, the golden scaled ear, the place where the dragon had bitten her as a child, and now the one part of her body that was forever clothed in dragon skin. She leaned close to the girl, listening.
Asha heard a riot of sounds tinkling and booming and thrumming from the city all around her. The souls of men and women, the half-souls of beasts large and small, even the fragile soul-stuff that lived inside the distant trees and gardens all crowded into her golden ear, but she tuned them all out to focus on the girl. Asha listened to the healthy, vital rhythms of the girl’s body, her heart, her lungs, and bones. But then she heard something else.
No, two somethings.
The first noise was the stranger of the two, a wild and hungry growling deep inside the girl’s body.
A second soul. An animal soul, just like the one inside me. But it’s not complete, not nearly. It’s only a tiny shred of the fox’s soul, just as I once had only a tiny shred of the dragon’s soul.
Asha held her breath, trying to focus a bit more, trying to hear through the wholesome song of the girl’s soul and past the agitated noise of the fox soul. And she found a steady hum.
There. It’s… another soul? A third soul? I’ve never seen this before. But it’s just another shred, a shred of a what? Gods, it’s human. It’s the soul of…
Asha leaned back and looked at the man called Omar. “What did you do to her? Why can I hear your soul in her body?”
Priya gasped. “Remarkable!”
“You can hear it?” Wren asked.
Omar’s eyes widened. “You are a healer of extraordinary talents. But it’s really nothing to concern yourself with. If you can hear my soul in her, then you must be able to hear the fox as well.”