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“He’ll appear dead for twelve hours.”

“And then?”

“He’ll wake up outside the royal city, in the dumping yard for dead aklos and aklas, read the letter I’ll send off with him, and run. Start his life anew.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll find him. We’ll live together.”

“You couldn’t live under your own name. Your soldad would be useless, you won’t be able to perform anything but simplex spells.”

“I don’t care about my soldad. I’d have saved my brother. The most important life to me.”

This man’s heart. He might have seemed snobbishly elegant, perfectly preened, strictly unsocial... but he’s also emotionally intelligent. The love for his brother is priceless.

As he raises his arm to set the jar back on the shelf, I throw my arms around his middle and hug tight. “You have too much talent to sacrifice it all.”

“You’re suffocating me.”

I loosen my hold and pull back. He looks ruffled, but at least this time he’s not running away.

I sigh. “We really need to think all this through. But probably not on an empty stomach.”

“What?”

I pat my belly. “How do you feel about roast chicken?”

* * *

There’s so much chicken left over that I have plenty to share with Mikros and Makarios the next day.

“Y-you want to talk about wards?” Makarios squeals.

I nod.

I pull off a chicken leg and tear into the meat. “My grandfather’s theory was, in preparation for a mass outbreak, we could pre-emptively infect people with weakened versions of pestilence to increase their wards against it.”

“Oh God, we’re going to die,” Makarios croaks under his breath.

Mikros clears his throat, patting his shoulder. “We’re rebels, aren’t we Makarios? We can delve into banned topics.”

“Rebels.” A gulp. “Right.”

“Your grandfather tried this?”

And died for it.“On pockets of villagers, in the last plague. His notes are extremely promising. He collected excretions from surviving animal intermediaries that were close to recovery. Pigs, goats, cows. Then he filtered it into people’s blood so they can create shields of defence against stronger variants.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s promising, even if it were proven successful and the whole idea wasn’t banned... You’ll never get people willing to infuse themselves with pig saliva.”

“Pus.”

“Forgive me, they’ll be lining up.”

I sigh and rip another bite from my chicken leg. Which, of course, is how Nicostratus finds me. He clears his throat and my head whips to him watching from the doorway, eyes sparkling.

I drop the chicken.

Mikros and Makarios become fascinated spectators, gazes pinging towards Nicostratus—elegant in plum sporting attire from leggings to shirt to the mask dangling around his neck—to me, wiping grease off my chin.