Give the Dark My Love(26)

Grey stood, and I found that my breath had caught as I waited to see what would happen next.

He went to Master Ostrum’s desk and picked up a timetable.

I let out a sigh of relief before I crossed the room and did the same.

Grey was waiting for me outside the classroom. “If we hurry,” I said, “we can catch the first ferry.”

His eyes were on the paper. “I . . .” His voice trailed off. “I think I’ll go after midterms. I have to finish my essay.”

I couldn’t hide my disappointment.

“I will,” Grey insisted. “I promise.”

“Yeah.” I shouldered my bag and headed toward the gate. “Okay.”



* * *



? ? ?

When I arrived at the hospital, a potion maker gave me a quick tour of the different wings.

“You can start with elderly care,” he said, pausing in the corridor that led to the east wing.

“I’m only here for the Wasting Death,” I said. “I’m not volunteering for anything else.”

The potion maker looked down his nose at me.

“I was sent by Master Ostrum,” I added, “and I came prepared.” I showed the potion maker my golden crucible in my bag, the one I’d made myself, etching in the runes with my own hands under Master’s Ostrum’s guidance.

“Your funeral,” the potion maker said, dumping me in the west wing.

The alchemists and potion makers of the communicable disease wing were more harried than anywhere else. New patients arrived with every ferry, and already they were pulling beds from other parts of the hospital to double and triple occupy the rooms. There was talk of evacuating the mental illness ward to make room, and anyone who didn’t have the Wasting Death upon arrival was sent away to one of the other hospitals.

I approached the check-in desk. Two potion makers were talking with the receptionist, their heads bent over a news sheet.

“Hi,” I said.

“Be with you in a minute,” the receptionist replied, not taking his eyes off the paper.

“‘In an unprecedented move, the governor has declared a state of emergency,’” one of the potion makers read aloud. “‘The Emperor has made no comment, yet continues his residency in the palace.’”

“Bit odd, that,” the other potion maker said. “If I were him, I’d hightail it back to the mainland.”

“This is going to be trouble for us,” the first one said. “The more people hear about this sickness, the more they’ll come here when they have nothing but a cold.”

“I can help with that,” I said.

They finally looked at me.

I held up my golden crucible. “I’m a volunteer.”

“You’re an alchemist?” The first potion maker looked me up and down, her eyes taking in my plain tunic and lack of sapphire-colored robes.

“Soon to be,” I said. “I’m in Master Ostrum’s class, at Yū—”

The potion maker breathed a huge sigh of relief, drowning out my voice. “One of Ostrum’s, thank goodness. If you said you were from Pushnil, I’d send you back. But Ostrum can actually teach. Any more of you volunteering?” Her eyes skimmed past me, looking down the hall crowded with patients.

“Just me,” I said.



* * *



? ? ?

If it weren’t for Master Ostrum’s evening sessions and living at the dormitory every night, I wouldn’t have felt like a student at all. I’d long since given up lectures, and I’d stopped bothering with Salis’s study hall as well. In any other school, I would be at risk of losing my scholarship, but at Yūgen, my fate rested in Master Ostrum’s hands. And even if he hadn’t approved of my work, it wouldn’t matter—sacrificing a chance at a second year of school was worth it if it meant I could spend this crucial time studying the Wasting Death.

I spent every morning, lunch, and afternoon at the quarantine hospital. I got to know every potion maker in the wing, and if Alchemist Frue was on shift, many of them came to me before they got him.

“Nedra?” Mrs. Rodham stood in the door of the potion room, where I’d been taking inventory. Alchemist Frue had a reputation for being stingy with potions, but we were so close to running out of tincture of blue ivy, I could almost forgive him.

Mrs. Rodham was a volunteer like me, but she was neither an alchemist nor a potion maker, just someone who wanted to help the patients. She had come to the quarantine hospital with her entire family, all suffering from the Wasting Death. Her husband and eldest daughter had already passed, but her younger son was still alive, although in the sleeplike state that heralded death. No one had the heart to tell Mrs. Rodham that there was no point in her staying at the hospital; her son was already gone even if he was still breathing. So while he slept, she helped, as best she could with her recently amputated leg, the only thing that had spared her from dying as well.

“Yes?” I asked her.

“There’s a family . . .” Mrs. Rodham’s voice trailed off.

“I’ll be right there.” I pocketed a small bottle of tincture of blue ivy; it was running low, but Frugal Frue wouldn’t notice one more gone, at least not before our next shipment came.

Mrs. Rodham led me to one of the rooms at the end of the hall, her steps uneven, the cane she now used clacking against the tiles.