I can tell my answer pleases him. “Not all healers enter the trade for the same reasons. Some do it for respect, or for the money that it brings. Others do it because they must, because they cannot ignore the suffering of the ailing.” I wonder what category Jesmin falls in. He’s umbertouched, which means he could rejoin the rest of the world if he wanted, but he lives and works here.

“Come,” says Jesmin. “I’ll give you a quick tour of the place.” He gestures toward the patients around us. “As you may have surmised, this room is for the newly fevered.”

That was clear enough. “Is the rose plague not treated in the city?”

“It’s supposed to be. It is a crime, actually, to dump one’s sick outside the compound, but people do it regardless—families who cannot pay for a healer or who fear the sickness in their house.”

There are other rooms as well: some for ailments unrelated to the plague, and others for those whose fever has returned to claim them. As we walk through the dim rooms, I see rosemarked helpers tending the sicker patients. Jesmin tells me they’re hired helpers, untrained in the healing arts except for the simplest tasks.

We circle back to where we started, and he turns to face me. “So, Zivah, what are your impressions?”

What are my impressions? The gods have deserted this place. The hospital is overcrowded, and the conditions are appalling. There aren’t nearly enough caretakers to go around, even with the hired help. If the rosemarked compound is a waiting chamber for the dying, this hospital is its wounded, stuttering heart.

Jesmin is watching me. I’m sure my thoughts are plain on my face, and he knows the truth about his hospital as well as I do. But his question wasn’t really a question. It was a challenge. And I feel something within myself rise to meet it.

“There is work to be done,” I say.

For the first time today, he smiles. “Plenty of it. How would you like to start?”

The opportunity does not escape me. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to spend my time with the newly fevered. I have some herbs that might help them.”

“Wouldn’t all the patients benefit from your herbs?”

“They will,” I say. “And I don’t plan to neglect the rest. It’s just that…Forgive me. The newly ill may be wretched, but they’re closer to the land of the living than the rest of us. I’d like to be near that, to have a little bit of hope.” It’s a reason I concoct on the spot, but it’s not a lie.