Lin felt a slight flutter beneath her breastbone. She quickly took a sip of her hot tea; it had a smoky taste, which Petrov claimed came from the campfires along the Gold Roads. It was also too sweet, but she didn’t mind. Petrov was lonely, she knew, and the tea was a chance to draw out their appointment, to chat and visit. Loneliness, Lin believed, was deadly; it killed people as surely as too much alcohol or poppy-juice. It was hard to be lonely in the Sault, but much too easy to disappear and be forgotten in the chaos of Castellane.
“I have to examine you first,” she said. She’d set her satchel down by her chair; she rummaged in it now, and drew out the auscultor—a long wooden cylinder, hollow and polished—and set one end to Petrov’s chest.
The old man sat patiently while she listened to his heart and lungs. Petrov was one of her more mysterious patients. His symptoms did not match anything in Lin’s studies or books. She often heard crackling noises when he breathed, which ought to have meant pneumonia, but they came and went without fever, leaving her at a loss. Strange rashes often appeared on his skin—today there were red spots on his forearms and legs, as if the vessels beneath the skin had burst for some reason.
Petrov claimed all of it—his breathing troubles, his fatigue, the rashes—were a disease he had picked up on his travels. He did not know the name of it, or who had given it to him. Lin had tried every treatment she knew: infusions, tinctures, changes in diet, powders mixed into his food. Nothing helped save the amulets and talismans she gave him to ease his pain and symptoms.
“Do be careful,” she said, drawing his sleeve down his thin arm. “The best way to avoid these painful red spots is to avoid bumps and bruises. Even as small a thing as moving a chair—”
“Enough,” he muttered. “What, am I supposed to ask Domna Albertine? She scares me worse than a bruise.”
Domna Albertine was his landlady. She had a vast bosom and a vaster temper. Lin had once seen her chase a stray goose across the courtyard with a broom, screaming that she would beat it to death and then track down and kill each of its children.
Lin crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you refusing my advice? Is it that you wish for a different physician?”
She let her voice quaver. She had long ago realized that the best way to get Petrov to cooperate was to make him feel guilty, and she used this knowledge ruthlessly.
“No, no.” He shook his head. “If I didn’t have you treating me, wouldn’t I be dead by now?”
“I am sure there are other physicians who could do what I do,” Lin said, rummaging in her satchel. “Even in Nyenschantz.”
“In Nyenschantz, the doctors would advise me to go out in the woods and punch a bear,” rumbled Petrov. “Either it would make me feel better, or the bear would kill me, in which case I would no longer be sick.”
Lin giggled. She took several talismans from her bag and set them on the table. Petrov, who had been grinning, looked at her thoughtfully. “Those papers you wanted,” he said. “Did you manage to get them?”
Lin sighed inwardly. She should not have told Petrov about her quest to get the Academie manuscript. It had been a moment of weakness; she had known she could tell no one in the Sault.
“No,” she said. “No bookshop will allow me even to look at it—not just because I am not a student, but because I am Ashkar. They hate us too much.”
“It is not that they hate you,” Petrov said, gently. “It is that they are jealous. Magic vanished from the world with the Sundering, and with it much danger, but also much that was beautiful and wondrous. Only your people still possess a fragment of that wonder. It is perhaps not surprising they seek to guard the bits of history they have. The memory of a time they were equal in power.”
“They are more than equal in power,” Lin said. “They have all the power, save in this one thing.” Lightly, she touched the necklace at her throat, the hollow circle with the old words etched onto it: How shall we sing our Lady’s songs in a strange land? The cry of a people who did not know how to be who they were without a home or a God. They had learned—over the many years they had learned—yet their belonging was still imperfect. Hollow in parts, like the circle itself.
She looked at Petrov closely. “You are not saying you agree with them, are you?”
“Not at all!” Petrov bellowed. “I have traveled the world, you know—”
“I do know,” said Lin, teasingly. “You tell me about it all the time.”
He glared. “And I have always said you can judge a country by how they treat their Ashkar. It was one of the reasons I left Nyenschantz. Stupidity, closed-mindedness, cruelty. Malgasi, too, is one of the worst.” He broke off, waving his hand as if to ward off the idea of evil. “Now,” he said. “Would you like to see the stone? As a reward for healing me, eh?”
I helped, but did not heal. Lin only wished she could do more for Petrov. She watched him worriedly as he rose to his feet and crossed the room to his new carpet. He rolled back a corner of it, revealing a square hole in the floorboards beneath. He reached in with a trembling hand and drew out an oval stone, pale gray as a swan’s egg.
He stood a moment, looking down at the stone, his fingertip resting lightly on it. Lin tried to recall the first time she’d seen it; he had brought it out to show to her when she’d told him her brother was traveling the Gold Roads. “He’ll see wonderful things, many marvels,” Petrov had said, and lifted one of his floorboards to bring out his small stash of treasures: a porcelain teapot, streaked with gold; the belt of a bandari dancer, its strands interwoven with dozens of coins; and the stone.
He brought it across to her now, placing it gently in her hand. It was perfectly smooth, lacking even the hint of a facet: It was clearly a highly polished stone, and not a gem. Something seemed to flicker in its depths, a play of light and shadow.
It felt warm in Lin’s hand, and inexplicably soothing. As she turned it in her palm, images seemed to arise from the smoky depths, coming tantalizingly to the stone’s surface, then vanishing just as she was about to recognize them.
“A lovely thing, isn’t it?” Petrov said, looking down at her. He sounded a bit wistful, which struck Lin as peculiar—after all, the stone was his; presumably he could look at it whenever he liked.
“You really won’t tell me where you got it?” She smiled up at him. She’d asked before, many times: He would only say that he’d acquired it on the Gold Roads. Once he told her he’d fought a pirate prince for it; another day, the tale had involved a Marakandi queen and a duel gone wrong.
“I ought just to give it to you,” he said gruffly. “You are a good girl and would do good with it.”
Lin looked at him in surprise. There was a peculiar look in his eyes, something at once both sharp and faraway. And what did he mean, she wondered, do good with it? What could anyone do with a bit of stone?
“No,” she said, handing the stone back to him. She had to admit she felt a slight twinge of regret as she spoke. It was such a pretty thing. “Keep it, Sieur Petrov—”
But he was frowning. “Listen,” he said. Lin did as he asked, and heard a faint step on the stairs outside. Well, there was nothing wrong with Petrov’s hearing, at least.