Yashub’s eyes grew round. “That’s you? But you’re nothing but a young girl!”

I shrugged. “Ahh, yes. I am young—and a girl—but somehow, I managed. And I would have continued to heal in Manzazu, but we have something more pressing to attend to at the moment.” I pointed at Alu. “And we need to stay here so we can…do that.”

He looked sidelong at me, using his tongue to get a bit of food from a back tooth, finally resorting to using his finger.

“Any friend of Manzazu is a friend of Laraak. And that lugal in there”—he jerked his chin toward Alu—“doesn’t deal squarely with my traders. If you’re a good healer, I can give you a tent, but you’ll have to get your own supplies. And if you fix me and mine here and our wives”—he gestured to the group around the fire and out to the tents—“you’d be welcome to stay as long as you’d need, although we have plans to pack up and move on soon. We’ve stayed here longer than we should’ve already, but my third wife is with child and doesn’t want to move until it comes.”

He squinted at me, and raised an appreciative eyebrow at Iltani and Nanaea. I’d told both of them to keep their lovely eyes on their feet, but Iltani had flat refused, and Nanaea’s beauty was hard to mask.

“Those your servants or other wives?” he asked Dagan.

Dagan blushed from his chest up to his hairline. “Ahh, no. My sisters. Ones I would be remiss to have harmed.” His eyes hardened as he looked around the fire at the men ogling both of them.

Yashub placed a meaty hand over his heart. “On my honor, the girls will remain as chaste as they are this night.” He wheezed a laugh, which rapidly turned into a cough, but Iltani met his eyes over the burning fire and, because she didn’t have one dram of sense in her head, winked.

After we were shown to our tents and purchased food and drink for us and our donkey, we slept through the night to the sounds of snores from the traders around us.

Early in the morning, Dagan trekked back to his farm with the cart to gather some produce and grain to distribute to the camp, while I tended to Yashub’s health. He was infested with lice, as were his wives and children. I saw to his immediate inner circle, too, but rapidly ran out of the melaleuca-and-vinegar mixture that could keep the vermin away. My tent in the center of the encampment was almost useless because it was empty save for what I’d carried with me in my healing satchel and a few extras in my healing chest.

If I were going to keep acting as a healer to keep our place in Laraak, I’d need fresh herbs for grinding into tinctures. Large swaths of linens for wrapping and bandaging the people in the leper colony on the edge of the encampment. Needles, sterilizing bowls, mortars and pestles, drying racks, knives, suctioning reeds, and more. The lack of supplies was worrying, though not as worrying as procuring a poison. We determined that this very day, we would sneak into the city in disguise to do just that.