“She was better this morning,” Mam said, “but the fever’s coming back.” She said this matter-of-factly, as if she was too weary to react to his sudden appearance after a month away. Her hair had crept out of its plait, half of it hanging around her face. Her bodice was soiled and stained, hanging loose on her body as though she were using herself up.

Han crossed the room and knelt next to Mari’s bed. He laid his hand on her forehead. She was burning up. “How long has she been sick?”

Mam rubbed her forehead. “This is the tenth day.”

The tenth day. She should be recovering by now. If she was going to.

“Is she eating and drinking?” Willo said a high fever dried people out, so you had to keep getting them to drink. Plus, the fever gave you the runs.

Mam shook her head. “She don’t want to take anything when the fever is high.”

“Are you giving her willow bark?” This was the extent of his knowledge of healing—the botanicals he collected for Willo and others.

“I was.” Mam stared down at her hands. “We’re out now.” She looked up at him, hope kindling in her eyes. “Do you have any money?”

“A little. Why?”

“There’s a healer up in Catgut Alley. People say he can work wonders. But he costs money.”

Han took his eyes off Mari and focused on the room around them. It was more barren than usual. There were no baskets of laundry, no sign of food, nothing.

Mam put a hand on his arm. “Would you send your washing where they have the fever?” she asked, as if she could read his mind. “Besides, I haven’t been able to leave her on her own, to pick up and deliver.”

A bucket of water with a dipper sat next to Mari’s bed. “Where’d this water come from?” Han asked Mam.

“The well at the end of the street,” Mam said. “Like always.”

He grabbed up the bucket and poured the contents into their second-best cooking pot and set it over the flames. “Let this boil a while, and when it cools down you can use it for washing.”

“I know how to do laundry, Hanson Alister,” Mam said, with a little of her old spirit.

“I’m going to go fetch some water from another well,” he said. And he did that, walking blocks uptown to the pump at Potter’s Square and back. He spent his remaining money on a bit of willow bark and some barley soup for Mari, though he had to wake up the apothecary at the market for that. He got sworn at for his trouble, and paid a pretty price for it too.