Page 29 of Give the Dark My Love

I held up my golden crucible. “I’m a volunteer.”

“You’re an alchemist?” The first potion maker looked me up and down, her eyes taking in my plain tunic and lack of sapphire-colored robes.

“Soon to be,” I said. “I’m in Master Ostrum’s class, at Yu—”

The potion maker breathed a huge sigh of relief, drowning out my voice. “One of Ostrum’s, thank goodness. If you said you were from Pushnil, I’d send you back. But Ostrum can actually teach. Any more of you volunteering?” Her eyes skimmed past me, looking down the hall crowded with patients.

“Just me,” I said.

•••

If it weren’t for Master Ostrum’s evening sessions and living at the dormitory every night, I wouldn’t have felt like a student at all. I’d long since given up lectures, and I’d stopped bothering with Salis’s study hall as well. In any other school, I would be at risk of losing my scholarship, but at Yugen, my fate rested in Master Ostrum’s hands. And even if he hadn’t approved of my work, it wouldn’t matter—sacrificing a chance at a second year of school was worth it if it meant I could spend this crucial time studying the Wasting Death.

I spent every morning, lunch, and afternoon at the quarantine hospital. I got to know every potion maker in the wing, and if Alchemist Frue was on shift, many of them came to me before they got him.

“Nedra?” Mrs. Rodham stood in the door of the potion room,where I’d been taking inventory. Alchemist Frue had a reputation for being stingy with potions, but we were so close to running out of tincture of blue ivy, I could almost forgive him.

Mrs. Rodham was a volunteer like me, but she was neither an alchemist nor a potion maker, just someone who wanted to help the patients. She had come to the quarantine hospital with her entire family, all suffering from the Wasting Death. Her husband and eldest daughter had already passed, but her younger son was still alive, although in the sleeplike state that heralded death. No one had the heart to tell Mrs. Rodham that there was no point in her staying at the hospital; her son was already gone even if he was still breathing. So while he slept, she helped, as best she could with her recently amputated leg, the only thing that had spared her from dying as well.

“Yes?” I asked her.

“There’s a family...” Mrs. Rodham’s voice trailed off.

“I’ll be right there.” I pocketed a small bottle of tincture of blue ivy; it was running low, but Frugal Frue wouldn’t notice one more gone, at least not before our next shipment came.

Mrs. Rodham led me to one of the rooms at the end of the hall, her steps uneven, the cane she now used clacking against the tiles.

“How is it?” I asked. She had adapted well to her amputation, better than many who were younger than her. I suspected all her grief—both over the deaths in her family and at the loss of her limb—were being held at bay by the little rises and falls of her young son’s chest, regardless of whether his eyes opened or not.

“I’m adjusting,” she said. “There are worse things to lose than a leg.”

Mrs. Rodham stopped outside of a door just as one of the potion makers exited a room. “You the alchemist?” the potion maker said.

“Nedra.” I held out my hand. “Student, but I can do alchemy.”

“Good.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m Fadow. They’re... they need someone. They had a rough trip.”

“Trip?”

“Came from one of the villages to the north. We’re getting more of them lately.”

“That’s why I thought to get you, dear,” Mrs. Rodham said. We’d talked often of our homes over lunch or quick breaks; most of the potion makers and alchemists were from the city, but we were both from the north.

I walked into the room, my stomach twisting in knots.

“See, someone’s here,” a man said. He had a low, soothing voice that was cracked through the middle with panic.

Two of the beds were occupied, one with a woman, one with a school-age boy. Along with the man was another boy, maybe a few years older than the first.

“Has Alchemist Frue been here?” I asked, scanning the patient.

The man rushed forward, his hat twisting in his hand. “No,” he said, and I could almost feel his frustration. “They shoved us in a room, and they’ve just given us water and told us to wait, and wait, andwait.” He spat the last word out. “Can you help us?”

“The hospital is overcrowded,” I said, “and we’re short on alchemists. But I can help.”

“Thank you,” the man said. “My name’s Dannix. My wife and son are sick.” He gestured to them, then moved to the wall with his other son, giving me room to work.

I checked the child first, at the mother’s insistence. Both legs were covered in blackness, his feet so twisted he could no longer keep shoes on them. The inky stain of the disease was well past his knees, and the analytical medical student in me knew that if he survived, it would be a miracle.

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