“No, not at all,” Sidra replied. Her voice was hoarse from weeping, from a long night with little sleep. “How can I help you, Jack?”

“I wanted to see if you could make a tonic for me.”

She nodded, motioning him to step inside. She shut the door and returned to her table. He was gazing down at all of her herbs, as if she had caught a rainbow and laid it over the wood.

“I want to say how sorry I am,” he said, glancing at her. “About Maisie.”

Sidra nodded. Her throat was suddenly too narrow to speak.

“And I wanted to tell you that I’m doing everything that I can to help find her,” Jack said. It seemed like he wanted to say more but refrained. He flexed one of his hands; the motion caught Sidra’s attention.

“Your hands ail you?” she asked.

“Yes. They ache when I play certain songs.”

“Is that all of your symptoms?”

“No, there are others.”

She listened as he described them. Sidra had assisted with enough magic-imposed illnesses to know Jack was suffering from one. Most magic wielders suffered from headaches, chills, loss of appetite, and fevers. Others developed hacking coughs, insomnia, pain in their extremities, even nosebleeds. It seemed Jack was experiencing several symptoms, which meant he had cast a powerful magic. And while she didn’t have the details of its inspiration, she knew the magic had to come from his craft. From his music.

She wondered if he had come home just for the missing lasses or if he’d inadvertently become caught up in the mystery after he arrived. There seemed little that a bard could do to help find the clan’s girls, even as talented as Jack likely was, but Sidra knew there was unspoken power in music. She remembered being a young girl, sitting in the hall on full moon feast nights. She remembered inhaling Lorna Tamerlaine’s songs as if they were air.

An unexpected peace settled over Sidra as she worked to make Jack two different remedies: a salve to spread on his hands when they ached, and a tonic for him to drink to ease his headaches. There was nothing she could do for the nosebleeds, save instruct him on how to apply pressure to ease the bleeding when it happened.

“That’s fine, Sidra,” he said. “It’s my hands I’m most concerned about.”

He sat in a chair and watched her work. She was lost in her thoughts when he asked, “Have many of your patients died prematurely from wielding magic?”

Sidra paused, glancing across the table at him. “Yes. Although there are many factors at play.”

“Such as what?”