Something in Touraine’s voice made Aranen reach over and squeeze Touraine’s arm. “Does Jaghotai have somewhere for you to be?”
“No.”
“Good. Come help me.”
The priestess loaded a few more bowls of beans and bread onto a tray and shoved them into Touraine’s arms. Then she picked up a box of long matches and a box of incense cones with one hand and a candle with the other, and beckoned for Touraine to follow with her head.
Aranen led her down the hallway and a small stairwell. The room they walked into was familiar: it was where Touraine had woken up just a few weeks ago. When her life had turned upside down.
The infirmary was large, as big as the main hall of the temple above it. The ceiling matched the temple above, cold marble with dark veins and mosaic tiles, but the tiles here were dark—brown or black—and white. With the light of the table lanterns, it made the room feel cozy and comfortable instead of grand and expansive. Patients lay on pallets or sat on cushions, depending on their dispositions. Curtains separated certain sections, but enough were pulled back that Touraine saw there weren’t very many patients right now. They greeted Aranen and Touraine in Shālan as they entered. Some of them were older, nursing bandaged wounds. A child lay cradled against her mother while the woman sang a gentle song.
Aranen plucked a cone from her box, set it on a beaten metal tray on a small altar near the door, and lit it. The tray looked like it had once been a plate before meeting a spray of musket fire. The scent that wafted up was heavy and burned Touraine’s nose.
“Why do the Balladairans let this place stand?” she whispered to the priestess.
Anger laced Aranen’s chuckle. “They know they can’t get away with anything else.”
“Doesn’t it just stay here as a bastion for Shālans? It’s the biggest in the empire, right? Seems like the Balladairans would want to remove the temptation.”
“In the old empire, yes. People came to do pilgrimage here and to study at the university. That empire is broken and her people divided.” She gestured above, to the main hall. “They gutted the entire building—except the hidden rooms and the infirmary. Gold, holy artifacts—gone. We bring incense and cushions from home. We do our best.”
Touraine followed Aranen with the tray of food from patient to patient as Aranen changed bandages, threw the used ones into a reed basket, and offered reassurances in that mélange of Shālan and Balladairan that was common in the city. Sometimes, Aranen put a hand on them, closed her eyes, and prayed. Sometimes, the patient joined her.
The sheer religiosity of it made her nervous. The whip scars on her back tingled.
One patient, a young man lying flat on his back with a broken arm in a sling, passed out after Aranen whispered with him.
“What happened to him?” Touraine murmured.
“He fell in the quarry. The Balladairan overseer left him for dead.” The priestess gently adjusted his legs, tugging them slightly. “Broken back, broken legs. Healing so much damage takes a lot out of a patient. And the healer.” Aranen sighed wearily as she pushed herself to her feet and headed to the child and her mother.
Touraine stared grimly into the last two bowls of food. “A long time ago, you told me that Shāl was a just god. What’s just about this? Why would a god let all of this happen?” Touraine waved her free hand to encompass all of Qazāl.
Aranen’s dark eyebrows lowered over her deep brown eyes. “Shāl is balanced. Technically, that’s the Second Tenet.”
Balance sounded nice. Something out of reach but worth working toward.
Touraine reached to hand the bowl to the child with a smile, but all thoughts of balance vanished when she realized the kid was covered in patches of rash. She flinched and held back the bowl, afraid to seem afraid, but also afraid of disease. Touraine might not have been Balladairan, but she had grown up with the same healthy fear of the Withering, of any contagion, that every native Balladairan had.
Aranen raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Surely you’ve already had the laughing pox?”
“Uh,” Touraine stammered. The kid was staring at her, wide brown eyes watery and pitiful. “I don’t know?”
Aranen chuckled again and took the bowl from Touraine. “It’s okay. It’s very contagious but mostly harmless. We usually expose children to it on purpose so that they don’t get anything worse. Jaghotai will know if you had it or not.” The priestess shared a comment in Shālan with the kid’s mother, and they laughed together as Touraine’s face heated. The mother and child took their bowls with thanks.