“We don’t need you to take up arms for us,” Dagan explained. “We’d simply like to stay here, out of sight. As I stated before, you’d be rewarded with food and riches beyond compare. I’m the wealthiest farmer in Alu, and my brothers have been producing grain for the lugal. I can get you as much as you’d need.”

Easy with the promises. I shot Dagan a worried look, but he stood with the confidence of ten men, powerful arms crossed over his chest as if he’d negotiated deals like this hundreds of times. In a way, I supposed he had. He was always the one to bring his family’s produce to the Libbu for trade, and since we’d been in Manzazu, he’d been doing his own bartering there, too. This was simply another transaction to him. A deep, resonating pride filled me.

“I’d need something now to tide me over until these riches made themselves available.”

Dagan patted a satchel at his waist. “Step closer and I’ll show you what we have to offer.”

A man at the fire stood, and Yashub shoved him down, stumbling a bit as he did so. “Ach, this young man isn’t going to harm me. He needs me.” Scratching his head again, he peered into Dagan’s satchel and raised his eyebrows in appreciation. “That’s a good start, my boy. But not nearly enough.”

“My healing services are yours if I could have usage of a tent, and supplies. It looks to me like you’ve a rash or lice in your clothing and hair, and I could heal you.” I held my hands out to the men. “I could help all of you.”

Yashub caught himself scratching behind his ear and brightened. “You a healer? I do itch something awful and wouldn’t mind a powder to fix it, but we are not well stocked in medicines. You’d need to head to the Libbu for those.”

My heart sank and Dagan frowned. Half of the reason we were here was for medicinal tinctures. Now we’d not only have to sneak into the Palace to deliver the poison, but we’d have to sneak into the Libbu to buy the herbs to make one!

A man around the fire spoke. “And we got gobs of lepers who followed us up from Nur, and ol’ Yashub couldn’t turn them away even though one of them stinks halfway to the gates of the Netherworld. All that ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ business don’t keep ’em far enough away. The kids still run over there. They need healing or to get out, if you ask me.”

“Nobody asked you,” Yashub wheezed.

Behind me, Iltani cackled loudly, and I resisted the urge to whack her with something hard and squarish. “Indeed, sir. I am an A-zu and can help. I’ve been trained by the best healer in Alu, Shalim, Healer’s Son. And in the north, I was trained by Mudi, who is—was—skilled in the ancient arts, too. A guardsman friend of ours said you might have heard of me—I’m the healer who saved the warrior maidens in Manzazu.”