The man looks up from stroking his daughter’s hair, eyebrows raised in question.
“It might dull the symptoms,” I say. “It’s supposed to dull the pain, at least until you reach Revnik.”
“Iron,” the man repeats, brighter than before. “Are you an apprentice as well?”
The idea thrills down my back. After ensuring the road is empty in both directions, I jump down, touching the little girl’s forehead with the back of my hand. “What’s your name?” I ask.
She mouths it more than speaks. Sava.
“Sava,” I repeat. “Where does it hurt the most?”
Sava stares up at her father, who gives a slight nod of encouragement, before she touches her arm, above the elbow.
“May I?” I reach for her sleeve.
“Miss, I wouldn’t—”
Mother of a sainted virgin.
The scratch is deceptively shallow, no deeper than those I’d incurred on my own as a child, running through the thickets along the edge of the shallows. But the skin around the wound is festering, necrotic layers of blue and gray that have started to peel away to the raw pink tissue underneath. The infection is eating through her body, searching for her heart. She’ll turn hellborne if we don’t stop it.
Or she’ll die.
Tobek returns with the address, leaning over the horse and avoiding the man’s eyes. “Here.”
“Wait,” I say, fingers tightening in Sava’s hair.
Tobek shakes his head. “Faris—”
“North could help her,” I say, low and urgent. Begging. “The way he helped you.”
“Faris,” he repeats. This is none of my business, he seems to say; shut up before your broken heart breaks everything. “Go to Revnik,” he tells the man. “That’s the only chance you have.”
“Bring her inside,” I say.
The man doesn’t hesitate. He practically throws Sava into the wagon and climbs in after her. Bryn groans from where she lays across her bed, covering her face with a pillow, but I clear the table and direct Sava to sit on top, her feet dangling above the floor. My pulse races ahead of me as I rummage through drawers of herbs and stones and birch twigs bundled with thread. Dried yarrow hangs above our heads and I pull it down, dampening it with water from the samovar. Simple, basic steps, executed with far more conviction than I feel because I don’t know what I’m doing and Tobek is too busy panicking behind me to offer any help.
“How old are you, Sava?” I ask, pressing dampened yarrow leaves against her arm as she hugs her father’s waist for comfort. Reaching for a roll of bandages, I begin wrapping the herbs in place.
“Ten,” she says.
“What are you doing?”
I straighten. North fills the doorway, a bag slung over one shoulder. Dust from the road dulls the blue of his ruined coat to the color of winter skies. His eyes are nothing but summer thunderstorms, however, as they flick through the wagon, glancing off me before they settle on Tobek, demanding an answer.
“Sir,” Tobek says, but North shakes his head against any apology, dropping his bag.
“You never wrap an infection like this,” he says, tugging the bandages loose, undoing my clumsy work. “It’ll breed faster beneath pressure. Tobek, you should know this.”
Tobek gapes at him. “It wasn’t my idea!”
“You should have stopped her! And you should not be handling an infected arm,” North says, directing his venom at me, scowling at the discolored bruises up my forearm where the blood has broken and pooled beneath the skin—where any infected magic could slide into my blood more easily. “If you’re going to read my books, Miss Locke, learn something useful from them!” To the man: “When did you first notice the poison?”
“Ten days ago,” he says. “She was scratched two weeks before, but it didn’t go sour till then.”
“A fortnight for incubation.” North draws back, shrugging out of his coat, tossing it across a chair. I swallow hard and step back, feeling stupid, in the way. North begins rolling his sleeves, casting a dismissive look over his shoulder at the rest of us. “Wait outside.”
I move for the door but North calls me back. “No, Miss Locke. If you insist on educating yourself, you need to start somewhere. Give me water and stones. Clean ones. Second drawer.”
Fresh from the river, I think. Flat to hold magic more evenly.
Tobek hangs in the doorway, wounded that I’m needed and not him. “Sir—” he starts.
North straightens, eyes flashing. “Get out!”
Tobek scurries outside, Bryn on his heels without a single complaint. I don’t blame her—North infuriated is terrifying.
“Lie down,” North says to Sava. “You”—he looks to the man—“step back.”
Sava protests as her father pulls away. North’s mouth flattens and I jump forward, clutching Sava’s hand in my own. “My sister’s name is Cadence,” I say, “and whenever she gets scared or has nightmares, we sit on the roof and count the stars.”
North scowls. “I can’t help her if she doesn’t hold still!”
“Her name is Sava,” I cut back pointedly. “And she’s ten years old.”
He draws back, nostrils flaring.
“But we’re inside,” Sava whispers.
“Look,” I say, tilting my head to point to the ceiling and the painted stars nestled between the wooden beams. “Lie down and see how many you can count.”
Sava complies, stretching out along the length of the table, a finger tagging the stars as her lips silently mouth the numbers. North pulls back the sleeve of her dress before his eyes drop to the rocks I’ve arranged in a neat line along the edge of the table. Rolling one between his fingers, he presses it to her arm, at the bottom of her scratch.
“Will it hurt?” Sava asks.
“If it does, just squeeze my hand tight as you can and I’ll swallow up all that pain for you.”
“You can’t do that,” North says.
I frown, ready to protest his lack of imagination, but he interrupts me. “Skin is the perfect conductor, Miss Locke. Through it you can transfer heat, cold, pleasure, pain. And magic.” Black eyes briefly meet mine. “If I start to extract the poison, I won’t be able to tell where her infection ends and where your skin begins. If I try to take more than what’s there, if I try to draw something from you through her body, it could collapse her veins.”
I release Sava’s hand, burning with the embarrassment of my inexperience. “Then why are you using stones? They’re conductors too.”
“It’s a buffer,” he says, “to keep the infection from going through me.” North exhales softly and dips his chin. “The gloves,” he says. “In my coat. Leather doesn’t conduct magic. You could wear those and still hold her hand.”
I hurry to pull them on as North presses the stone back into position. Closing his eyes, he begins to coax the poison loose. Sweat beads his temple and shadows dance across the planes of his face, like clouds chased across the sun. He bares his teeth, white against the olive of his skin.