“What if I took her away from the Dead Wood? Somewhere far.”

He shakes his head. His hands are clasped behind his back. Although he wears an unassuming gray tunic and robes, his presence commands the room. “It’s no use. Once the disease has taken root, distance makes no difference.”

I want to rage and scream and cry. But Saengo sits quiet and pale, as if frozen with shock, so instead I ask, “Then what can a light stitcher do for her?”

A light stitcher is a lightwender who can summon light and heal wounds and illnesses. Some years ago, Saengo and I jokingly made a list of ailments we wondered if a stitcher could cure: warts, laziness, incontinence, and acute idiocy.

But even the greatest shaman healers have been unable to cure the rot. I pause beside the table. Our breakfast has been cleared away, leaving only a bowl filled with clusters of longan. At a festival last year, we’d bought a bucket of the small, round fruit and hidden ourselves on a rooftop overlooking a street choked with revelers. When Jonyah and his friends passed beneath our roof, we flung the seeds at his head and then laughed at his confusion.

My eyes squeeze shut against the stinging sensation behind my lids.

“The healer isn’t a light stitcher. She’s a shadowblessed. Hlau Theyen sent for his own personal healer. She’ll be here by tonight.”

I turn to frown at Ronin. “Tonight?”

The sooner, the better, of course, but how can a shadow-blessed travel from Kazahyn to Spinner’s End in half a day? That shouldn’t be possible unless she meant to arrive by wyvern. I’d read about how the Kazan rode wyverns into battle against the shamans in wars past. That the Kazan have found a way to coexist with such fearsome creatures, one of Thiy’s deadliest predators and the inspiration behind many a story, is truly a marvel.

“Yes,” Ronin says, without explanation.

“If I die,” Saengo says abruptly, “will Sirscha lose her magic forever?”

My fingers dig into my thighs. “You’re not dying.”

Her voice is soft but insistent. “But if I do—”

“But you won’t.”

“No,” Ronin says, interrupting us. “Shamans who lose their familiar need only bond with a new one. Don’t think on that now. Given how resilient you’ve been and the early stage of the disease, you should be in no immediate danger. Phaut will alert you when the healer arrives tonight.”

Phaut opens the door for him. She gives us both a troubled look and then follows him into the hall.

“I’d wondered about the rot,” Saengo says. “But it hadn’t felt real. Not until now.”

I press my fist to my stomach, against the knot there that makes me wish for my swords. It’s a stupid impulse. The rot isn’t something I can fight.