Tomorrow Gajarajan would go and bring Malik’s brave daughter there, to the second great hall, as they had agreed. But there was something else to do first.
The moon was almost full, casting silver light down onto the sanctuary, every corner of it reachable without having to move his body from the altar. Gajarajan draped across the open roof, looking down into the second hall, where a small shape rested on a simple bed. He shifted forward and was inside then, against the floor, silent. The rhythmic, shallow sounds of slumber continued from under the blankets, undisturbed. The shadow rose up against the far wall, where a table sat. He studied the things on top. A change of fresh clothes, instructional objects he’d brought in: a leaf, a dried flower, a spoon—and the patient’s personal effects at the time of admission to the great hall. Some had many, in the earlier days. This one had brought hardly any at all. Just one thing, in fact. The thing from which he’d been able to take the first shadow that had ever fit back onto a shadowless.
THE NIGHT DR. AVANTHIKAR HAD DIED, THE SECOND GREAT hall was empty. It had been that way for weeks—because Gajarajan had failed so many times and was afraid to try again. To torture another shadowless with the hope of recovery, only to have it fail or drive them insane. Or kill them. It was what they’d been arguing about in the first place that drove her to such a risky move, to go outside the gate, into the dark with the deathkites.
Davidia’s guards brought both Dr. Avanthikar and her shadowless rescue in without dying themselves, somehow. The deathkites’ screeches faded as they slammed the doors shut behind them.
“We tried, we tried,” one of the guards was saying, over and over, terrorized by the sight of the doctor as she was—all the blood, the almost surgical openings in the flesh. Everyone loved her as much as Gajarajan did. “We tried,” he stammered.
“Why?” Gajarajan asked her softly as he slid from the side of the gate onto the grass beside where they had set her, so they were both lying down.
She turned her head to look at him. “That’s just always the way, in medicine, I’ve learned,” she said. “The one who discovers something great always did so only because some complete gandoo they worked with refused to let them give up on an idea that seemed useless.” A tremor of pain ran through her. “Look at me. My team and I tried everything, every idea, and Hemu just refused to shut up about that stupid elephant. And then you awakened.”
Gajarajan smiled at her. The outline where his form met the torchlight ached, in a great, sinking pain.
Dr. Avanthikar tried to swallow. He could see her eyes going glassy. “This is the first time you’ve believed less in your power than I have since we began trying to rejoin shadows. Maybe this patient is the one, and I’m the infuriating colleague who refuses to let you quit.”
Gajarajan didn’t tell her that the shadowless man had already succumbed to his wounds. The body flayed by the deathkites until it had unfurled layer by layer, like red rose petals blooming out from a center spine. Dr. Avanthikar wheezed, and he reached out and touched the shadow of her hand where it rested on the grass beneath her shredded palm. Far up on the hill, he felt his body double over and shudder in agony as the lines in her face suddenly softened, released.
“Keep trying,” she said. “Do it for me.”
“I will.”
Gajarajan let the faraway body writhe. It could bear the pain for her. The time it would have to was very short anyway.
THE MAN DR. AVANTHIKAR HAD WANTED TO SAVE HADN’T survived, but Gajarajan had vowed to listen to what she’d said anyway. After she died, everyone who followed the rumors to New Orleans was brought safely inside—no matter what. The first shadowless to come after they’d buried Dr. Avanthikar was the patient who now lay in the bed behind Gajarajan. This one he would not give up on, he’d promised the old doctor’s headstone.
Gajarajan would never know if it was because of Dr. Avanthikar, or if it was just pure dumb luck that this patient turned out to be the first and only one he figured out how to cure, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because he’d done it. It was possible.
The second great hall creaked softly as the roof settled overhead. Gajarajan shifted forward until he was draped across the table. It was slightly more difficult at night, with only the moonlight and no sun or torches to help with contrast, but he reached across the surface of the wood until he felt what he was looking for. The thing from which he’d taken the cured patient’s shadow.
A tape recorder.