Her face falls for the briefest moment before she summons another smile. “Yes. I’m afraid I fell ill slightly before my father. But I apparently did not have his fighting spirit.”

“Do not be unfair to yourself. The disease is unpredictable in the best of us.”

“Yes, so they say. You are kind to remind me.”

The air between us is sober for a moment. But then she claps her hands. “Father will be here shortly. You’re to live in this house with me. We’ve prepared a room for you upstairs.”

I’m ashamed at the lightness that floods through me at her words. I’d been steeling myself for the prospect of building my own hovel in an abandoned corner of the compound, though it feels wrong to rejoice when others have had to do that very thing.

Mehtap bids me to follow her on a quick tour of the house. She tells me it was constructed for a general’s lover a few years back. That man died, and other rosemarked aristocrats cycled in. Most recently, Mehtap lived here with a cousin of hers who fell ill in the same outbreak as Mehtap, but the cousin died last month.

“So soon?” I ask. Usually the disease grants us a few years before returning.

“I suppose she gave up,” Mehtap says. Again, she is silent for a moment before shaking off her gloom. “It will be nice to have company again.”

I follow quietly, unsure what to make of this talkative young woman, and unsure what she makes of me. She seems so glad for my company, and I wonder if she’s truly thought about our differences. Does she realize that her father and those like him control the fate of my village? I wonder how I am to carry out my mission with her so close.

Thankfully, Mehtap doesn’t seem to notice my silence. She points out the gardens, the storeroom and simple kitchen, the sitting room, and the living quarters upstairs. I breathe a sigh of relief when I see that my room does not directly neighbor hers. I also have a window, which will make it easier to manage the crows. Beyond that, it’s comfortable—more comfortable than what I was used to in Dara. The bed is piled with thick blankets. There is also a desk, a chair like the ones downstairs, and a small chest.

Mehtap has stopped speaking, and I realize she’s waiting for my reaction.

“Thank you,” I say. “It’s wonderful.”

At that moment, a voice echoes from downstairs. “Commander Arxa has arrived.”