Page 49

“Dilada.” My voice was a strained whisper, a plea, begging for this not to be real.

She held up her left arm, exposing withered black fingers, the shadows creeping like ink through her veins, all the way past her elbow.

“Carso would laugh,” Dilada said as Blye pulled his cart closer and took a seat above her shoulder. “He always said we had the worst luck of anyone on the island.”

“I thought—” I shook my head, my words dissipating on my tongue. Dilada wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be on her farm, with her parents and brother, safe and sound. But her parents had died, and so had Carso, and the job in the forest—the oneclearing land for graves—had ended, and she’d come here. And caught the plague.

“I’m so scared,” Dilada confessed, her voice almost silent.

I crouched closer to her. “It’ll be okay,” I said. “I’ve been working with my master since I started here. People live, when we catch it early enough.”Sometimes,I thought to myself.

She shook her head. “No, I mean—I felt ill two days ago. But I came to work anyway. If I missed a day, they would have fired me...”

“Oh,” I breathed. She was scared that the illness spreading through Berrywine’s was her fault. That she had brought the death here. Maybe she had; we had no way of knowing.

Blye moved his cart, rattling his instruments, his eyes on me. He was waiting.

Dilada swallowed. “I know what has to be done, Nedra,” she said.

Of course she did. She’d seen the millworkers who survived the plague but couldn’t go back to work. She’d seen the beggars on the streets.

“Will it hurt?” she asked, her voice wavering.

“I can make it hurt less,” I promised. “At least for a while.”

I set my crucible on the table. It was tall and narrow, about six inches in diameter. Although it was made of solid gold, it was scratched and dull. I ran my fingers along the runes. Master Ostrum had given me the chunk of gold, but I had been the one to pour the molten metal into its mold, and it had been my fingers that scored the runes onto the surface.

I turned to the tray Marrow had given me. The rats inside were not clean like the ones we used at Yugen. These rats had been caught on the street, and they stank of garbage and piss. I did not flinch as the nearest one snapped at me when I opened its cage. I grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and dropped it into the golden crucible. It snarledin protest, clawing against the smooth metal interior, but it couldn’t escape.

“Do you know how alchemy works?” I asked Dilada, attempting to distract her as Blye marked her arm with a butcher’s pen.

Dilada lifted her eyes from her deadened fingers and shook her head at me.

“It’s science,” I said.

“My father always said it was magic.”

“So did mine,” I said.

“And mine.” Blye’s deep voice startled Dilada. She’d almost forgotten he was there, but now her gaze drank in the shining scalpel to slice away her skin, the pins to hold the flesh back, the rags to mop up blood. The bone saw.

I shifted, drawing Dilada’s eyes back to me and not the tray of tools.

“But it’s not—not really, anyway. Alchemy exists on the principles of balance.” I was careful to keep my tone even and light. I put one hand on the crucible and quickly muttered the awakening incantation. The runes glowed white on the golden surface.

Dilada gasped.

“Ready,” Blye said in his gruff voice.

I squeezed Dilada’s shoulder, then touched the crucible on the table. The rat inside screamed in protest as the feeling from Dilada’s arm left me and entered its much smaller body. Just existing caused the rat pain now, but when Blye sliced into Dilada’s skin and flesh, she would feel nothing at all. When Blye sawed through Dilada’s humerus, she would only be aware of the motion, the tugging and pulling, but not the pain.

The rat carried her pain for her.

“Thank you,” Dilada whispered.

“Don’t look,” I advised, and Blye turned his scalpel to her skin. All the fear she’d kept tamped down burst through her eyes for just a moment, then she squeezed them shut and turned her face away.

Dilada’s pulse thrummed violently in her throat. I could make her body numb, but I could do nothing for the agonizing anticipation. My grip on her arm tightened. I had to maintain the connection between her and the rat.