Nala woke to find a greasy pillow propping up her head.

‘Ah, it appears you have navigated your way back to the shores of the living.’ Her saviour’s face flickered back into focus, stern and taut like a hangman’s rope. ‘I was beginning to worry you had been a waste of good healing herbs.’

‘Are you a black alchemist?’ Nala muttered drowsily.

‘If you mean have I had formal training in any collegium, then no. There weren’t any when I was growing up. King Rama established the first one long after.’

Nala frowned. Well, it was not that she was spoilt for choice. While black alchemists could work on you without questions being asked in the underworld, one had to take a chance with their credentials and skill. While some were trained healers fallen on hard times, others had been banished for crimes such as experimenting on the living.

‘King Rama? Of Ayodhya?’ murmured Nala.

‘Who else, child? I expected a Meruvian to get it,’ the Namin grumbled. Ungently, he pushed Nala’s head firmly down on the pillow. ‘Do not rise. You shattered your thigh bone, and your shin was fractured beyond repair. I had to spare a lot of screws you know. It will make your one leg shorter than the other. Your lungs,’ he shook his head, sighing, ‘…a lot of work. Someone really went at you. Had to make the necessary incisions but I’ve done my best to keep the scars to a minimum. Granted, my healing hand is not what it used to be. I’m good at killing people, not sewing them up. But I seem to have done a passable job.’

Nala’s breath hissed through crushed teeth as she tried to move her fingers. They barely moved but her hand burned as if she held hot coals.

‘Careful now. The tendons of your thumb were severed. And small bones take longer to heal. So do me a favour and not undo my work.’

How did he know I’m from Meru? Nala looked at the healer, confused, and then recognised him as the Namin who had been sitting beside her during the charity meal at the Kaurava Mansion.

‘Why did you work so hard to save me?’

‘Well, I owed you, you know, for saving me from that falling beam. Not that it would have hurt me, but I give credit where it is due. You killed my donkey in your fall however, so I reckon that made us even. But I thought it a shame to leave you to die like that. So, I hauled you back to my hut, and well, once I got started, it didn’t make sense to leave things half-finished.’

‘How long was I out?’

‘A few hours.’

‘Before that?’

‘Through the winter, into the summer.’

Nala stared at him in horror. She thought of her family, their killers; then she thought of Meru. Varcin and Upavi. Would they think her a deserter? Had she lost everything? And was she really thinking of Meru when her family had been burned alive? Her face crushed into a hopeless grimace. She realised her hair had grown out of its shishya crop and now hung over her neck.