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“I wish—” Dilada started, but she didn’t finish. Blye made the first cuts, and although Dilada’s arm was numb, she was still cognizant of what was happening.

Blye worked quickly. Marrow jumped in to help, siphoning off the blood even as it splattered over the floor, soaking into the sawdust. I clenched my teeth, past the point of being able to do anything but provide a link between Dilada and the rat. I felt her pain in waves, washing through me and into the dirty gray body writhing inside the crucible.

From inside the golden vase, the rat screeched sharp and high, then was suddenly silent. Its body couldn’t take any more.

“Marrow,” I grunted through gritted teeth. With nowhere else to go, Dilada’s pain whirled inside me. I could feel myself growing dizzy with it, my grip loosening.

Marrow didn’t hesitate to reach inside the cage and dump another rat into the crucible. The connection was remade almost instantaneously, and Dilada only whimpered once as Blye picked up the bone saw. I breathed in relief, letting the pain flood through me into the rat.

After Blye was done, after the hand and part of the arm had fallen with a wet thud against the floor, after Dilada had slipped into a poppy oil–induced sleep and Blye had sewed up her skin to cover the shorn bone—after all that, Blye stood and moved to the next patient,a young boy who was losing his entire left leg. Blye didn’t talk; he let me distract this patient, too.

It must be easier that way. To see only the dead limbs that must be sawn away, not the people attached to them. To have never held the hand before it was severed.

TWENTY-FIVE

Nedra

By the fourthpatient, my body ached, my flesh burned, my bones shattered. No one could see it. Even though I transferred as much of the pain as I could into the rats, there was always a little that lingered inside me. I stumbled, my body forgetting that my feet were still attached to my legs. My fingers bent slowly, as if I had to remind the tendons in my arms and hands that they’d not been severed, too.

When we got to the last rat—and the last amputation—I forced some of my own feelings into the creature before it died. It was easier to do this job wide awake and a little numb. It was easier to get through the day that way, too.

“Are you okay?” Marrow asked, wide-eyed, as I fumbled with the crucible, dumping the last furry, stinking body onto the metal tray piled with the rodent victims.

I shrugged.

Marrow shoved the cart of dead rats and severed limbs at Blye. He wheeled them away without a word. When Marrow saw my face, she added, “There’s a crematorium on his way back to the butcher’s.”

I was glad the amputees were all sleeping, and I was glad I’d be gone before they woke. I didn’t want to be here when Dilada opened her eyes. I didn’t want to watch her look at the place where her hand had been.

I stepped outside to catch my breath, to not think about death and blood. Weaving in and out of my thoughts were the events ofyesterday morning: the still body of the baby, the way Ronan’s father had blamed me. I slid down the rough brick wall, landing on the bare cobblestones and letting my head rest on my knees. Blackdocks was coming alive, loud and bustling. I wondered if Dilada had ever been able to sell her boat.

The clocks started chiming. The one in the bay, at the top of the quarantine hospital, was a second behind its twin at Yugen. The day would be starting there soon. Students waking up, eating breakfast, going to lectures.

The thought of it exhausted me.

Master Ostrum appeared at the door. “Nedra,” he said.

I looked up, too tired to stand.

“One of your patients needs you.”

“I’m...” I heaved a sigh. “Can’t someone else...?”

But I knew. It was my responsibility.

I pushed against the wall and stood, following him back inside. The black curtains on the windows that marked this place as plague-ridden made the light dim and bleak. The surgical patients were still sleeping from the poppy oil, so at first I didn’t understand why Master Ostrum had led me to Dilada’s bedside. But then I noticed the way her breathing had slowed, faint and stuttering.

I lifted her wrist, feeling for a pulse. It was barely there.

Master Ostrum watched me as I peeled up Dilada’s eyelid and saw the thin film of green covering her rich brown irises.

I cursed.

“We could remove the eyes,” Master Ostrum said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Professor Pushnil has a theory that it would be about as effective as amputating diseased limbs.”

“Professor Pushnil is an idiot,” I snapped. “The green film indicates that the plague is in the brain, not the eyes.”

Master Ostrum nodded once, agreeing with me.