The slap of it closing behind her sounded like war.

“WHERE IS THE pain?” I probed along the woman’s swollen belly and she winced.

“Low, deep in my womb.”

“Lie down here for me, please.” Gesturing to a small pallet I’d put together that morning, a multicolored quilt fresh from the drying lines atop, I looked worriedly out the tent flap toward the trader encampment.

No Assata and still no Iltani. After Assata’s threat, I’d put the beard back on my face and we’d fled to Laraak. We’d bribed our way onto a cart laden with goods leaving Alu for the ports out the north gate, where no one had seen us enter or exit before.

And though I’d waited up half the night for Iltani, she’d never arrived.

Dagan had sneaked back into Alu late last night and dispatched Shep to look for her. He’d also met with Ensi Puzu to update him about what I’d done and to see if he had heard whether or not Uruku had sickened. He hadn’t heard and neither had Gala. Gala did mention that Assata had been through the gate and had asked him about us, but he’d remained loyal and had stayed silent.

Smart man.

Practicing in my healing tent while waiting for Assata to make good on her threat, Iltani to return, or to discover whether Uruku would die was the only thing keeping me from running into the streets and screaming in terror.

Was Iltani hiding out somewhere safe, biding her time to return to us? Or had she been captured by the guardsmen while she tried to run away? Did Assata find her? And if so, was she currently torturing her to learn Arwia’s whereabouts?

But I had to stay focused on this woman before me. It was all I could do right now until Dagan was ready to go back into the city. Ensi Puzu was going to meet us later with more council members so we could plead for their support.

I’d been leaving my tent to go find Dagan, when a line of ill patients demanded my attention. Yashub had ordered me to tend to those in need if I wanted to keep our safe haven in Laraak, so I’d done so, one after another. One had been a man from the leper colony, and I’d ushered him back to his tents and laid out fresh linens and a tincture of nut oil that my abum had once used to treat the disease.

This woman had been behind him, and she was the last.

She moaned.

“When did you last receive the blood of the moon?” I pressed a warm cloth I’d heated in a cooking pot and steeped with chamomile to her abdomen. Her face immediately calmed when the warmth hit her belly.

“Yesterday evening.”

“Ahh, so now I see maybe the issue. Is it always painful like this?” Squatting down, I scrubbed my hands with Aleppo soap in a basin, rinsed them in myrrh water, and felt along her cheeks and her forehead for fever and her throat, armpits, and groin for swollen glands that would tell me she was fighting off an infection.