We hurried through the alley, stopping where it met the street. The fire had attracted a crowd. A bald giant of a man was trying to organize water buckets and blankets and pails of dirt, anything to keep the fire from spreading to the adjoining houses. “You can’t go in there,” he yelled at someone in the crowd.
Outlined against the flaming shop front was a man trying to escape the hold of two onlookers. “Let me through, damn you! There’s a woman inside.” The furious voice slowed my steps; it was Graeme Rowan.
“Might be several women in there if Kellea and her granny didn’t get out,” bellowed the bald man. “Blink your eye and none of ‘em will be alive. You will be neither if you go in.”
I scanned the crowd for the priests. The Zhid were nowhere to be seen, but I recognized another face—a face I didn’t expect to see and could never forget. My gorge rose. Maceron, the fish-eyed sheriff, was leaning against a fence-post, arms folded, unruffled, observing the frenzied mob as if the burning were a jongler’s play put on for his private amusement. Ducking my face, I backed away, only to bump into D’Natheil. “Quickly. Away,” I said.
“A moment. I’ll have to carry him,” D’Natheil said in a hoarse whisper. He hoisted Tennice onto his shoulders, and we edged our way between the mass of onlookers and the dark shopfronts.
Occupants of the nearby houses were dragging trunks, bedding, and children into the street. A wagon filled with water barrels rumbled through the narrow lane, forcing the crowd to squeeze into doorways and alleys and on top of each other to keep from getting trampled. Despite the creeping dread that had me checking behind us every few steps, no one paid us any attention as we made our way through the crowded streets toward the city gates. Traffic thinned as we hurried under the gate and turned into the jumbled, stinking district of stables and stock pens outside the walls. Baglos paid the hostler, while the Prince handed me the reins of Tennice’s horse and put Tennice up on his own mount. “Lead us,” he said, after he had gotten himself into the saddle behind Tennice.
Where to go? Tennice needed warmth and care and time for us to care for his injury. I dared not return to the charcoal burner’s hut, lest we’d been followed from it, yet I couldn’t feel safe so long as we were in Yurevan. After the disaster I had brought down on Ferrante, Celine, and Kellea, I couldn’t seek out another friend, even if I had one. But that consideration gave me sudden inspiration. I would seek out the friend to whom I had already brought disaster. “Back to Ferrante’s house,” I said. “They’ll never look for us there.”
Neither D’Natheil nor Baglos questioned my judgment, though I questioned myself often enough as we left Yurevan behind us and raced through the dark countryside. But luck rode with us, for we saw no sign of pursuit. The parkland and orchard were silent as we slipped into Ferrante’s stableyard, the cherry trees as still and somber as gravestones in the night. D’Natheil carried the insensible Tennice through the kitchen garden, back the way we had come only one long day before. The house was dark and deserted. Still no sign of Ferrante’s servants. I tried not to think about the professor, frozen in his death terror just up the stairs.
D’Natheil laid Tennice on the tidy white bed in the steward’s bedchamber, neatly tucked away next to the kitchen, while I collected candles, water, brandy, and clean towels. Baglos set about lighting the stove, promising to put water on to heat as soon as he had the fire going.
When I returned to the bedchamber, D’Natheil was sitting on the bed beside Tennice, studying him intently, brushing the graying hair from Tennice’s thin face. The wavering candlelight revealed the burdens of the day written on D’Natheil as clearly as the bloodstains drying on his shirt. “He’s fevered.” The young man’s voice was hoarse and soft.
Fever… so soon. “Let’s get his shirt off.” Using Celine’s little knife, crammed in my pocket and still bearing the blood of prince and healer, I cut away Tennice’s shirt. The wound in his side was a ragged, ugly gash, the skin around it red and fiercely hot, very like the injury D’Natheil had had when he first came to me. As I sponged the wound with brandy and water to loosen the last stiff fragments of linen, Tennice moaned pitifully. Worrisome to remember how ill the young, strong D’Natheil had been. Tennice must be past fifty and had never been robust. I covered the gash with a clean towel and ripped another in half to tie the first in place.
“I need to see if they have medicines here,” I said. “Stoneroot or woundwort, willowbark for his fever. Ferrante’s cook used herbs from Kellea’s shop. Maybe they have other things.”
Baglos hovered like a worried moth at his master’s side. “I would seek out these things for you,” he said, tapping his fingertips together rapidly, “but I have no knowledge of them today.”
D’Natheil touched the Dulcé‘s shoulder. “Detan detu, Dulcé. Find the medicines for the lady.”
Such a transformation came over Baglos in that instant that I could have been no more surprised if he had grown two heads taller. No longer hesitant, no longer unsure, the almond-eyed man bent his knee to D’Natheil and said with calm confidence, “Detan eto, Gire D’Arnath.”
“You’ve remembered,” I said, as Baglos left the room.
“Not precisely,” said D’Natheil, as he watched me wipe Tennice’s brow with a damp cloth. “I know the words to command the Dulcé, which I did not know this morning or yesterday, but I cannot say I remember. Nothing tells me that I ever knew how.”
“But Baglos will bring what I want?”
“If any such thing is to be found here.”
I spooned a few drops of brandy into Tennice’s mouth, then shot another glance at D’Natheil, who had stepped away from the bedside, his hands clasped behind his back, and was examining the furnishings of the room. “Do you know other things that you didn’t before?”
“No. Except for your language, as you see. Before tonight it was like the speech of animals—nothing recognizable. Only the words you taught me had meaning. Dassine’s message was like a key inserted into a lock, all the tumblers falling into place about it. But that is not ‘remembering.” “
“So you didn’t learn the rest of his message or what made Celine laugh before she died and say… the words she said?”
“I know no more than you.”
While I cleaned blood and soot from Tennice’s face and hands, D’Natheil leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching me. I urged him to have some of the brandy for himself, so he would not lose what little voice he had regained, but he shook his head, indulging in the surer remedy of silence.
Soon Baglos returned and genuflected to his master. “It is done, my lord.” Then he presented me with two paper packets. One held small heart-shaped leaves and was marked “for lacerations, scrapes, burns, festerings, mortifications.” The other held strips of rough, gray bark.
“They’re exactly what I wanted,” I said. “Thank you. Both of you.”
D’Natheil nodded. Baglos beamed, his delight dimmed only when Tennice moaned in his sleep.
“When your water is boiling, we need to soak the bark…” I instructed Baglos on how to prepare willowbark tea and what I would need to make a poultice of stone-root leaves for the wound. An hour later the bark was steeping, and I was tying a bandage over the dressed wound.
“Is there anything else to do for him?” Baglos asked, fussing about the sheets and pillows as Tennice’s breath came harsh and uneven.
“Someone needs to stay with him. Give him the willowbark tea, if he settles or wakes. Later, when he can take it, we’ll need broth or gruel to sustain him. It’s all I know to do.”
We agreed that I would take the first watch. The Dulcé said he would find ingredients for broth and start it simmering, and then get some rest until I called him to take my place.
I glanced around the bedchamber, orderly and spare as one would expect for the room of the steward of a well-run household. A clothes chest with a stack of clean, folded linen set on top of it, a wooden chair and footstool in the corner and a candle table beside—now littered with cups and spoons—a small desk holding a crisp ledger, pens, paper, and stoppered ink bottle, a washing stand set with comb, razor knife, and a stack of small leather boxes of the type to hold collars and belts, buckles and fasteners.