Tamir knew a healer in the east reaches of town. She was another person with a mysterious debt to Tamir, and she agreed to provide treatment and lodging at no cost. She agreed to it, but it stretched the relationship she had with Tamir to its limit, and in exchange he had to promise not to call on her again. Sorcha tells me he stood there for a long time, minutes ticking by, his face tight and hard before he finally agreed to it. The healer brought the fever down and cleaned my wounds. It took three days for my mind to clear. I woke to the soft slap of a game of djah. Sorcha sat on one side of the narrow bed, and Shayat sat on the other. They threw cards down in the hollow behind my knees.

“Hey, Shayat,” Sorcha said. “Hey, he’s awake. Ariah, you awake?”

“I’m awake,” I said. I moved to sit up. Sorcha took my hand and my shoulder and guided me upright. Shayat moved a pillow behind me to support me. “Are we in Iyairo?”

“Yeah. How’re you feeling? Should we get the healer?”

“We should get the healer,” Shayat said.

“No, no, I feel all right.” My left shoulder felt tight, constricted, but when I moved it the pain was a dull half-forgotten thing.

Sorcha had not released my hand. He stared at me with this openness, a pure transparency of feeling: relief, hope, worry, happiness all right there on his face. It embarrassed me a little, not because Shayat was there but because I could not understand how I was the root of such strong emotions in someone else. It embarrassed me to see how much I mattered.

I squeezed his hand. “I’m all right.” I sat up a little more. “I’m hungry.”

Sorcha looked across the bed. “Shayat, would you…”

I heard the screech of a chair across the floorboards. “I’ll go get the healer,” she said.

Sorcha sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through my hair. “Gave us a scare, you did.”

“I don’t remember much.”

“You were a mess.”

“What happened?”

“Infection, I think.”

The healer fed me broth, then bread the next day. When I kept that down, she declared me fit for travel and kicked us out of her house. Shayat sold her camel and scraped together train fare for her, Sorcha, and myself. Tamir refused to part with his camel, refused to speak to me, and set off to make the last leg of the Lost River alone.

PART SIX:

RABATHA: A RETURN

Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

I left Shayat at the Rabathan train stage with a handshake. I couldn’t even bring myself to thank her. She told me to take care of myself, nodded at Sorcha, and disappeared into the crush of the crowd. “Quite a trip,” Sorcha said.