Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

“You’ve got a brother, don’t you?” said Mariam. In the shadows, the gold circle that hung on a chain around her neck gleamed darkly. The words of the Lady’s Prayer looked like scratches. “I have no one but me. I am the only Duhary in Castellane. Maybe the only one in the world.”

Lin noticed that Mariam did not mention Mayesh. She was glad. She realized in that moment how foolish she had been, demanding that Mayesh visit her. Mayesh waited on the pleasure of the King, not the whim of his grandchildren. He did not belong to Lin. He belonged to the Palace.

Mariam had drawn the shawl from around her thin shoulders and handed it to Lin. It was a pretty thing, of fine cambric and lace. “Take this,” she said. “It makes a very satisfying sound when you rip it. Whenever you feel everything is unfair and awful, tear a piece off.”

And she tore the shawl in half. For the first time in weeks, Lin smiled.

After that, the girls were inseparable. Mariam was sister and best friend all in one. They took lessons together, played together, and helped each other with tasks like cleaning the kitchen and planting the physick garden, where all the Sault’s herbs and medicinal flowers were grown. Lin thought of Mariam, with some envy, as graceful and delicate in her sensibilities; she never seemed to want to dig in the dirt, wrestle with the other children, or clamber up into the chestnut trees with Lin and Josit. Lin envied her decorum but knew perfectly well she could not change her own nature. She herself was always dirty and knee-skinned from playing; she loved to climb the Sault walls and stand at their very edge as the Shomrim did, her toes jutting over the side, the harbor and the crowded streets of the city swaying below.

When Lin turned thirteen, she realized Mariam was not simply uninterested in roughhousing as Lin previously thought. She began to see, with a more adult eye, that Mariam was not delicate, but rather fragile. Fragile and ill. Her pale skin bruised easily; a short walk would leave her short of breath. She had fevers that came and went, and often she’d be up all night coughing, while Chana Dorin sat with her, giving her ginger tea.

“There’s something wrong with her,” she’d observed to Chana Dorin one day, when the older woman was plucking leaves from a feverfew plant in the physick garden. “Mariam. She’s sick.”

“So now you notice,” was all Chana said.

“Isn’t there something you could give her?” Lin had demanded. “Some kind of medicine?”

Chana had sat back on her heels, her patched skirt spreading around her in the dirt. “Don’t you imagine I’ve tried everything?” she snapped. “If the physicians could help her, Lin, they would.”

Something about her tone made Lin realize that Chana was angry because she, too, felt impotent, powerless to help the girl in her care. Whatever had killed Mariam’s father, it seemed, was going to kill her, too, unless someone did something about it.

Lin decided that someone would have to be her. She had gone to Chana and told her that she wanted to study healing. The boys her age who planned to be physicians had already begun their training. She would need to catch up if she was to learn everything there was to know about medicine and cure Mariam.

“Please,” Mariam said now, snapping her out of her reverie. “You look half dead from tiredness. Go take a nap. I’ll be fine, Linnet.”

Hardly anyone ever called Lin by her full name. When Mariam did, though, it sounded like family in Lin’s ears. A mother’s sternness, a sister’s exasperation. She touched Mariam’s thin cheek. “I’m not tired.”

“Well, I am,” Mariam said. “But I can’t settle. Some hot milk and honey—”

“Of course. I’ll get it.” Lin set the old book down on the nightstand and headed to the kitchen. She was already thinking about what else she could put in the milk that would be covered by the flavor of honey. Her mind ticked through remedies for inflammation. Pine bark, frankincense, cat’s claw—

“How is she?” Chana’s voice brought Lin out of her reverie. The older woman was seated at Lin’s scrubbed pinewood table with a mug of karak. Her iron-gray hair hung long and straight about her shoulders; her dark eyes, set in a nest of fine, raying wrinkles, were sharp as needle tips.

Several pots were boiling away on the stove behind her. Like most houses in the Sault, Lin’s had a single main room that combined the functions of sitting room, dining room, and kitchen. All houses in the Sault were small—square, whitewashed boxes, a function of the limited space within the walls.

Inside, Lin had done what she could to make the space hers, using items Josit brought back from the Gold Roads on his infrequent visits. A painted mirror from Hanse, wooden toys from Detmarch, a chunk of striped marble from Sarthe, a celadon horse from Geumjoseon. The curtains were Hindish fabric, a fine linen with a multicolored woven border. Lin did not like to think of her brother out on the Roads, but the fever for traveling had been in his blood since he was born. She had learned to accept his absences, his wandering, the way you accepted things you had no choice about.

She turned back now to glance into his room. She was not surprised to see Mariam already asleep, her arm flung across her face. She closed the door quietly and came to sit with Chana at the table.

“She’s dying,” Lin said. The words tasted as bitter as failure. “Not quickly, but she’s dying.”

Chana got up from the table and went into the kitchen. Lin stared unseeingly ahead as Chana clanked about with the kettle.

“I’ve tried everything,” Lin said. “Every talisman, every tisane, every remedy in every book I could find. She was better for a while—a long while. But now nothing is working.”

Chana returned to the table with a dented mug of steaming tea. She pushed it across the scrubbed wood toward Lin before folding her hands—big, capable hands, strong looking, with knobbed knuckles. But Lin knew those hands were capable of incredibly delicate gematry work; Chana Dorin made the best talismans in the Sault.

“Do you remember?” Chana asked, watching as Lin took a sip of the hot liquid. It burned a pathway into her stomach that reminded her how long it had been since she’d eaten. “When I first brought you to the Maharam and told him he must allow you to study medicine?”

Lin nodded. It had been the first time she had been inside the Shulamat. Every Sault had its heart: the Kathot, its main square, and in the Kathot, the Shulamat. A combination of temple, library, and courthouse, the Shulamat was where the Maharam presided over religious ceremonies and heard small cases brought before him: a dispute between two neighbors, perhaps, or an argument among scholars over the interpretation of a passage in the Book of Makabi.