I dug through my satchel, tears streaming down my cheeks, while they talked loudly of battle plans outside.

My hands quivered as I tended to Rish’s swollen arm, sniffling. I soaped it and bathed it in sikaru, and stuffed him full of as many tinctures as I had, giving him poppy to sleep before pouring vinegar and melaleuca over his oozing sutures. Eyes wide, Kasha squatted next to me, intent on helping in some way, fumbling around, picking up bottles and laying them back down until I barked at him to go back outside while I worked. Then I cried all over again for being so gruff. I removed Rish’s stitches, drained as much of the infection as I could, and scrubbed the new threads with so much myrrh oil, nothing would ever cause an infection again.

With each stitch, I berated myself. This child could lose his arm. Because I’d done more harm than good. Needle into the skin and pull through. Iltani would lose her freedom. Because I’d allowed us to take a foolish risk by going into the Palace. Needle into the skin and pull through. Warad and Shiptu could lose their lives because I didn’t want to wage war. Needle into the skin and pull through. I knotted the end and poured more melaleuca over his arm for good measure.

I needed to fix all of this, but I didn’t know how. A coldness descended upon my shoulders as I looked at little Rish, his black lashes fluttering on his plump cheeks, whimpering as he slept. Something brushed against my cheek. Startled, I jerked around, but nothing—no one—was there.

And yet—something was. A damp sensation washed over me, bringing with it the scent of rotted rivergrass. A creak of a boat moored at a dock. I blinked and the tent’s walls seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.

No. Not now. I need a level head, not this.

Blinking, gasping for a breath that wasn’t filled with the stench of rot, I stood, but when I did, something dark, something dank, wavered in front of my vision. A man. No! Not a man. A—figure. As I stifled a scream, my feet twisted on Rish’s blanket, and I fell to my knees as my vision went dark.

All at once, I was kneeling in the prow of a rickety wooden boat, looking at the shoreline as I bobbed and weaved in a current of blue water lapping at the sides. The stench of decay filled my nostrils, but my limbs felt light as a cool breeze wafted over me. On the shore, his cloak blowing in a stiff wind, the skeletal Boatman stood, shifting in and out of my vision in a spectral haze. On his hip, he wore a small bag, similar to my healing satchel. He flipped up the flap and pulled something from its depths.

A small cask or bottle.

He raised it into the sky and opened his mouth in a war shriek, as the hood of his cloak slipped off his head. For the briefest moment, the image of a black-haired warrior with sharp cheekbones and a tortured gaze flickered in the Boatman’s stead. He wore a leather chestplate and greaves on his legs. Behind him, hundreds of warriors stood shoulder to shoulder, holding the same little cask over their heads, ferocity ripping from their throats. The Boatman’s eyes bored into mine as he held the bottle toward me, but after a moment, the warriors behind him disappeared, and he was replaced with the shadowy, skeletal figure once more.