The barest flicker of hope lit up Dagan’s face. “Yes. It could work.” But then his smile faded. “But what of you and Iltani? You’ll be seated in chains watching the trial. If they go to Wussuru and find it empty, they’ll kill you both.”

Iltani snorted. “Do you think us incapable? Come, now. I can convince that ignorant husband of mine to help us.” She smiled, but there was no mirth in her eyes. “The foolish, foolish child.”

“That didn’t work before, and now that you’ve tried to give him that poison and eat his ear, he’ll never trust you again,” Nasu told her.

Iltani shrugged her freckled shoulder. “I didn’t try to eat it. I tried to remove it. But…he loves me in his own twisted way. I’ll use that to my advantage.”

Nasu raised his eyebrows in disbelief, but Iltani lifted her chin with the fierce determination I knew simmered under her flippant mannerisms. The sadness and anger that boiled together. “Kammani and I will survive, like we always do. And so will both of you if we trust one another.”

“Are we in agreement?” I asked.

Dagan and Iltani both agreed, and after a moment, Nasu’s quiet “yes” united us in our mission.

“Perfect. Give me your blades, then,” I told the boys.

After much sweating and cursing, Nasu and Dagan were able to wriggle their daggers out of their scabbards and fling them in my direction. Each clattered to a stop across the sandstone floor, and Nasu’s rested barely out of reach. I froze, waiting for the door to squeak open and a guardsman to enter, but nobody came. Stretching my foot forward, I swatted at the copper hilt, missed, and strained against the rope at my waist until I felt it would tear me in two, but finally, I managed to grab it between my toes and pull it to me.

Fumbling under my heavy cloak, I reached my healing satchel. Sweat dripped into my eyes, but I shifted so that a ray of light filtering in from the rushes overhead shone inside. There was the laurel and sage. The arnica. The small vial of poppy. The blue cohosh. Gently, I shook the bag so that I could see even more clearly, and saw the small sack of bitumen and the little red bottle of nerium.

After working them out of my satchel and up my cloak, I rolled each blade in the bitumen, then tapped more of the fine powder onto the sticky blades.

“Done.”

Sweating, I stuffed the nerium and bitumen back into my satchel and looked up to find all three of them watching me. Dagan, eyes swollen and bruised, smiled at me softly with blood-crusted lips. Nasu nodded, a show of faith. Iltani grinned wickedly and made an obscene gesture.

“They’re beautiful,” she said.

Swallowing hard, I considered the two blades lying next to one another: Dagan’s dagger with the emerald-encrusted hilt, and Nasu’s dagger with lapis lazuli threaded on his.