After a few moments, I recover enough to go in. I pace down the dirt aisle between the patients, looking about for clues to the physicians’ whereabouts. Near the uneven brick wall is a stand with a water basin and what looks to be clean rags. I soak one in the water, kneel next to a man with graying hair, and wipe down his forehead. He looks at me, uncomprehending, and I whisper for him to rest. I move on from him to a plump middle-aged woman who’s shivering violently. I tuck her threadbare blankets more closely around her, but it doesn’t seem to help.

“You might find more blankets in the back room,” says a voice behind me. “But we may have run out. We’re always short of supplies.”

I jump. Behind me is a lanky older man. Other than Arxa, he’s the first umbertouched individual I’ve seen all day.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m looking for—”

“You’re Zivah?”

I nod.

He regards me calmly. “You got to work right away. It’s a sign of a good healer. I’m Jesmin, physician of this compound.”

Even if he hadn’t told me, I would have known. The man wears no healer’s sash—I suppose the healers here have no such uniform—but he has that same quality Kaylah has, where his very presence seems to dampen the edges of suffering around him. It also doesn’t escape me that he’d said “physician,” not “one of the physicians.”

“You’re the only one?”

His mouth quirks. “Just me.”

I look around, taken aback. “But there must be at least a thousand people living in this community.”

“Indeed. A thousand living here, plus those abandoned outside our gates. Other healers come in from time to time, but they keep dying.” He says this plainly, but I don’t get the sense he’s making light of the plague, just that he’s long ago accepted the realities.

He looks me over, much as Arxa had earlier. “You’re rosemarked,” he says matter-of-factly. “Can you still function?”

It’s strange, talking about myself as if I were a patient. “Other than the obvious, I am in acceptable health. I made the journey here in good time.”

“You traveled a long way for this,” he says. “I imagine most patients would prefer to be near their families.”

Again, I hear the unspoken message. Most people, when dying, would want to be near their loved ones. My chest squeezes at the memory of Alia running off in tears. “I could have stayed, but I’d rather be where I can be of use.” I’m glad my mother does not hear these words.