“I know five songs about the False Death.”
Daleina cracked one eye open and rolled onto her side to look at Hamon. “Tell me there’s one with a happy ending.” She watched him, mortar and pestle on his lap, as he mashed the petals of a glory vine. Its overly sweet scent hung in the air of her chambers, suffocating the fresh air from the open window.
“I thought there was one about a dying lover who drinks a miracle cure procured after completing seven quests. But then I realized that’s the ballad of Tyne, about the farm boy from Chell who was dying from the bite of a jewel snake—the antidote was so rare that only a single recluse had it, and she demanded that his lover, a sheepherder’s daughter—”
“Hamon?” she said his name gently. He didn’t babble often, but he hadn’t slept much in the past few days, or left her side. She’d had to encourage the rumor that they were lovers again, in order to explain why a healer was constantly in her chambers. If he’d ever stop working, she’d happily make it not just a rumor, erase his worries and any thoughts of this illness she had. In the sliver of moonlight, he looked sweetly handsome.
“Oh, sorry, what I meant to say is that all the songs about the False Death describe the same symptoms: shortness of breath, heart palpitations, organ failures . . . Obviously, they use more poetic language, the stilling of the heart, the slowing of the wind, but what strikes me is that you did not have any of the warning signs and still don’t. You began with the false deaths and have few other symptoms, aside from tiredness, which could be due to simple stress.”
She closed her eyes and then opened them again. Her lids felt heavy, and she wondered what time it was. Very late. Or very early. She didn’t want to think about her sickness—it felt unreal, as if it were happening to someone else. “Do you think that’s good or bad?”
He was silent.
“Bad,” she guessed.
“It means rapid onset, which is unusual.” He chose his words carefully. “I don’t know of any cases like this.”
“My father always said I was special.”
He carried his mixture over to her and held it up to her lips. She propped herself up on her elbow, took the bowl from him, and drank without help. She winced—the glory vine tasted like dirt and moldy berries, with an aftertaste of chalky salt. “All right?”
She licked her lips. “Delicious.”
He nearly smiled. “You are a bad liar.”
“Let’s hope I’m not.” She stayed propped up, watching him as he carried the bowl back and carefully washed it out. “If people guess I’m sick, there will be panic. I want at least a few candidates approved and in training before word gets out. It would be even better if I could have at least one actual heir in place.” She wondered why she could talk about it so calmly. It was as if the knowledge of what was happening had separated from how she felt—she felt fine, therefore she would always be fine. I suppose I’m an optimist, she thought. A pragmatic optimist.
“You’re going to need help, someone you trust. Early onset could mean you will worsen faster than we thought, and I can’t be with you all the time if I’m going to be researching a cure.”
“I trust Ven, but he’s searching for a candidate with Captain Alet.” She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about this. It was bad enough that she had the False Death, but early onset? A kind that Hamon didn’t even recognize? I don’t think this is precisely what Daddy meant when he said “special.” “Sing me one of the songs, about the False Death. I want to hear how someone made this pretty.”
He began to sing, his soothing voice rolling over her,
“Soon but soon, little dove, I’ll be here by your side,
to drink the wine, taste your tears,
don’t cry, little dove, I’ll be here by your side,
when darkness comes, I will not feel,
but when day returns, I’ll be here by your side,
by your side, little dove, for death is not goodbye.”
“Very pretty,” she murmured. Her limbs felt as if they were stuffed with wood. She wanted to ask, Is this normal? but she felt too tired to form the words. Tomorrow she’d cry again. Tomorrow it would feel real, and she would face whatever needed facing. But for now, her pillows were soft, and she felt her thoughts drift apart, disintegrating as she reached for them.
“Will you think about it? Someone you trust? Who do you trust?”
“My sister,” Daleina said, either out loud or only in her head. “I miss my sister.”
Hamon watched Daleina drift back to sleep and tried to convince himself it was normal sleepiness. He didn’t make a habit of lying to himself, though, not about medical matters. She’d had another blackout only this morning—not a complete “false death,” but she’d lost consciousness for seven seconds. The nearby spirits hadn’t reacted, which meant she hadn’t died either in a false or true sense, but her heart rate had slowed, and she had gasped for air when she woke. It wasn’t surprising it was wearing her down.
He knew precious little about cases of early onset. Ordinary cases were rare enough. It cropped up in families, but often skipped generations, and it tended to strike the elderly, whose bodies were already failing. His former teacher, Master Popol, had waxed on about it once—said it was a mistake in the brain, an interruption between mind and body, a failure of communication, and the fact of its existence had bothered the loquacious healer so much that he took it as a personal affront. Communication between body and mind shouldn’t fail, any more than communication between healer and patient, and then his teacher had moved on to discussing how best to cultivate trust between healer and patient. Calmness helped, and Hamon was trying his best to stay calm. Honesty was important, and he hadn’t lied to Daleina about her sickness, but equally important was knowledge. A healer, Popol was fond of saying, should be a fountain of facts, and Hamon wasn’t, at least not with regard to this illness.
I can fix that, he thought.
Seating himself by the window, he lit a firemoss lantern, squeezing the moss to wake its light and adjusting the shutters on the lantern so its light fell only on him, not on his sleeping queen. He then pulled a stack of blank paper from his pack and began to write. He’d say he was conducting research, in attempt to apply for admittance to the university. He’d claim he wanted to transition from healer to scientist, and his chosen topic was the False Death, but first he wanted to glean the accumulated wisdom of his illustrious future colleagues—yes, praise them, make them feel special, flatter their wisdom and knowledge. He could play the humble scholar. Seeking out more parchment, he decided he wouldn’t limit himself to the healers and scholars of Aratay. He’d reach out to those in Semo and Chell, even as far away as Belene and Elhim. Someone, somewhere, may have a scrap of information that would help Daleina. He addressed each letter just as carefully, sealed them with his own personal seal, and tied each with a ribbon of healer blue.
As the dawn bells rung, he summoned a caretaker to the queen’s door and handed the stack of letters to him with strict instructions to send them with utmost speed. While he waited for replies, he’d delve into the hospital’s library—there could be case studies that were relevant—and talk to everyone with any scrap of knowledge . . .
Everyone? he asked himself.
“You’re doing it again,” Daleina said. She’d gotten out of bed and was washing her face in a basin. She met his eyes in the mirror. She looked like her usual beautiful self, albeit with a bruiselike darkness under her eyes and a crease on her cheek from the folds of her pillow.
“Doing what?”
“Worrying so much that you’re nearly vibrating. It won’t matter how good a liar I am if anyone can read my condition off you without even knowing you.” She sounded so calm and reasonable. He didn’t know how she did it. Except that he used to be able to do it with every patient he ever had—detach himself, see the symptoms as separate from the person, project an air of soothing calmness. He’d worked hard to develop that air. It’s harder when the patient is Daleina, he thought.
“Did I ever tell you why I became a healer?” he asked.
“Your father died, and you couldn’t save him,” Daleina said immediately.
He blinked, surprised she remembered that story. He’d only told her once, and she’d never repeated it or asked any questions. It had been a highly edited version of the truth—he’d said his father had been ill, and he hadn’t been able to heal him. “Yes. And it was my mother who killed him.” That wasn’t a detail he mentioned often to anyone. Or ever.
He saw Daleina flinch—he’d shocked her. He’d known he would. Compassion welled up in her eyes, her beautiful eyes, and he looked away and forced himself to continue: “She slipped bloodwood into his dinners—he always had a roast pork sandwich, and she cured it with salt and bloodwood. Never let me have any and only ate a little herself, though in retrospect I think she must have regurgitated it afterward to avoid any symptoms. When I asked her about it, later, she said she was merely helping nature along. He’d been complaining of pains in his legs, she said. That’s it. Just pains, the ordinary stiffness that you’d develop from a life of high-altitude tree cutting, the kind that could be eased with a soak in hot water. She had no other reason, even claimed to love him, though I doubt she has the ability to love anyone.”
Daleina was quiet for a moment. “How old were you?”
“Eight.”
“And that’s when you left?”
He heard the sympathy in her voice and wished he could wrap it around him like a cloak, but he didn’t deserve it. “No, that’s when she accelerated my lessons, teaching me about plants and herbs and poisons. I left when I was twelve, after she used me to kill our neighbor, an elderly man whose snoring kept my mother awake at night.”
Glancing at Daleina, he expected to see sympathy mutate into revulsion in her eyes—he’d confessed to murdering a helpless old man—but instead there was only more pity, which wasn’t better. He looked away from her at the tapestries that filled her walls with rich greens, golds, and blues. “Hamon?” Her voice was gentle. “Why are you telling me this?”
“That’s how I knew about glory vines . . . and about nightend berries,” he said. Daleina flinched at the mention of the berries that had ended her predecessor’s life. “She knew—knows—about all sorts of obscure plants and their uses, mainly because she doesn’t feel bound by any ethics when it comes to experimentation. She may—and this is very much only a dim possibility—have some shred of knowledge that could help you.”
Suddenly, Daleina’s eyes widened, and he knew she had leaped to guess where his thoughts had taken him. “You want to ask her about the False Death.”
“I don’t. Because if I reach out to her, she will know where I am, and she will come to see me.” For years, he’d kept himself away from her, mostly by traveling, first with Healer Popol and then with Champion Ven, staying in the outer villages and away from cities, but if he contacted her, he’d have to tell her where he was, if only so her response could find him. He knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t merely send word. She’d come here, whether or not she could—or would—help. “But if I don’t . . .”
“You’re asking my permission to invite this . . . your mother here?” Her words were careful. She’d become more careful with her words and her tone since she’d been crowned. If he hadn’t known her, he would have thought she was measuring the decision of what to ask the cook to prepare for dinner.
“You misunderstand me. I am not asking. I am going to invite her. If there’s a chance there’s knowledge she has that could help you, then I must. I am telling you as a warning: if”—when—“she comes, she is as likely to want to kill you as to heal you. You must not trust her. Ever.”
“I have to say this sounds somewhat like a bad idea.”
He studied her, the warmth of the morning sun filtering through her hair, making it glow like a halo around her face. Her eyes were bright, awake, healthy, and beautiful. She had a way of looking at you that made you feel as if you mattered, that she would do anything she could to keep you safe, that she was devoted to you. He knew she looked at everyone that way, that she felt personally responsible for their safety, but it still warmed him and made him want to work that much harder to keep her alive and well. “You dying is a bad idea, and I’m not going to let it happen.” If that meant reaching out to the demons of his childhood, then he would. “I’d walk through fire for you.”
She looked on the verge of saying at least a half-dozen things, considering, then discarding them. At last, she only said, “I’ll keep a bucket of water handy.”
He loved her more in that moment than he ever had.