Give the Dark My Love(39)

“It’s okay,” Ronan told me as I dropped a rat into the crucible. “It’s not too bad. You don’t have to help me; go to one of the others . . .”

I placed one hand on his residual limb and held the golden crucible with the other. I chanted the runes, focusing on them as they burned white. I took as much of the boy’s pain as I could, but I knew it wasn’t enough.

It was never enough.

Alchemist Addrina came in to relieve me of duty soon after. No doubt, from her worried gaze, someone had told her about the man who’d attacked me.

“Go home,” she told me in a low voice.

“I can do more,” I started.

She shook her head. “Go home,” she said again. “That’s an order.”

I swallowed. The inside of my cheek was still raw from where my teeth had smashed into it, but I’d siphoned some of my own pain into the rat while I’d worked on Ronan. I hoped my jaw wouldn’t bruise. All around me, people were coming to terms with amputated limbs, lost loved ones, or a doomed foretelling of their own death, and here I was worried about looking pretty for my party.

“I can—” I started, but Addrina whirled around on me.

“I’m not saying it again.”

I ducked my head and muttered my thanks to her. I trudged down the hall, trying to block the sounds of the patients—crying, bargaining to keep their dead limbs, praying for a salvation that wouldn’t come. I couldn’t bear to look at the silent patients, the ones who had already given up.

Before I left, I paused at the desk. I needed a friendly face.

“Where is Mrs. Rodham?” I asked the receptionist. She had been the one who’d brought me to Ronan and his family; she would understand.

The receptionist’s eyes watered with pity. “Oh, Nedra,” she said. “Didn’t anyone tell you? Last night. It—her eyes turned green, and—” A green film over the eyes meant the plague was in the brain. There was no cure. It was certain death.

I walked away, unwilling to hear anything else.





TWENTY


    Grey



“Greggori Astor,” Tomus called as soon as I pushed open the door and stepped onto the administration building’s flat roof. Tiny oil lamps decorated the rooftop, and someone had brought a gramophone to play music until enough musicians arrived to put together a band.

“Tomus,” I said, by way of greeting.

Tomus snorted. His breath stank of ale, and there was a pale brown stain of liquid on the front of his shirt. He’d started celebrating early, it seemed, but I knew him well enough to know when his drinking was for fun and when he used it to drown his anger.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I said. “Professor Pushnil is every bit as respected as Master Ostrum, and—”

“Easy for you to say,” Tomus growled, but then his face cleared. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I may be an ass, but I’m an honest ass. Your father is in politics. You’re moving up the ranks. I’m not going to toss you out.” He leaned in closer, his eyes struggling to focus on mine. “Truce. For you and the slummer. But just you remember this,” he said. “I’ve done you a favor.”

A favor? Him? I owed him nothing just because he decided I was too valuable to pick a fight with.

“And there she is!” Tomus shouted, tipping his mug as Nedra stepped onto the roof. I rushed to her, ignoring Tomus.

“Don’t let them see any fear,” I whispered, taking her elbow and steering her near the gramophone, where people wouldn’t be able to overhear us.

She shot me a look I couldn’t quite place. “I never do,” she said. Then she shook me off her arm and moved to the edge of the party. Her body was stiff, her face too schooled. Something was wrong—something more than Tomus being an ass.

“Wounded puppy, you are.” I hadn’t realized Tomus had approached me again; the gramophone was louder than I’d thought.

Soon, the band started up, and the real party began. It was a whirl of ale and noise and furious motion as we all spun atop the roof. The entire world was at our feet, or so it felt, and we were a storm about to be unleashed upon it.

Except Nedra. Nedra sat on the edge of the roof, her feet dangling over dangerously. The bright glow of Yūgen’s clock tower illuminated the rooftop dance floor, but Nedra’s eyes were on a different clock, one halfway across the bay.

“Come dance,” I said, holding out my hand to her.

She shook her head. “This isn’t the kind of dancing I’m used to,” she said.

“Not much dancing in your village?”

She smiled. “Not this kind, anyway.”

“What kind of dancing did you do?” I asked.

If she noticed my flirting, she ignored it, turning back to look out toward the bay, to the clock tower in the distance and the quarantine hospital beneath it.

“Dance with me?” I asked again, more urgency in my voice.

I could feel the others watching us. I was starting to get used to the way people looked at us, the way their eyes slid from me to Nedra, a question never spoken but always present about why we were together. But we weren’t together, not like that, not yet, even if . . .

Finally, after what felt like ages, Nedra stood. She placed her hand in mine. My whole body relaxed, and she laughed at me.