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“Someone is coming,” she said, her voice cutting through the crackle of the fire. She stood, her hand instinctively finding the hilt of the small silver knife she kept for cutting herbs—and for the shadows she still felt lurking at the edge of their lives.
A thunderous knock shook the heavy oak door.
Yusha moved to the entrance, his face hardening into the mask of the physician he once was. He opened it to find a man drenched in freezing rain, wearing the mud-splattered livery of a royal messenger. Behind him, a black carriage stood trembling, its lamps flickering like dying stars.
“I seek the man who mends what others throw away,” the messenger gasped, his eyes darting to the interior of the warm cottage. “They say in the city that a ghost lives here. A ghost with the hands of a god.”
Yusha’s blood turned to ice. “You seek a beggar. I am a simple man.”
“A simple man does not perform a cranial trepanation on a woodcutter’s son and save his life,” the messenger countered, stepping forward. “My master is in the carriage. He is dying. If he breathes his last on your doorstep, this house will be ashes before dawn.”
Zainab moved to Yusha’s side, her hand resting on his arm. She felt the frantic vibration of his pulse. “Who is the master?” she asked, her voice steady and cold.
“The Governor’s son,” the messenger whispered. “The brother of the girl who died in the Great Fire.”
The irony was a physical weight. The very family that had hunted Yusha into the dirt, that had burned his life to a cinder, was now huddled in a carriage at his door, begging for the life of their heir.
“Don’t do it,” Zainab whispered as the messenger retreated to fetch the patient. “They will recognize you. They will take you to the gallows the moment he is stable.”
“If I don’t,” Yusha replied, his voice a jagged rasp, “they will kill us both now. And more than that, Zainab… I am a doctor. I cannot let a man bleed out in the rain while I have the needle in my hand.”