“Yanna Pain-Taker defend us,” said Lark, calling on the goddess of medicine and healers. All of them made the gods-circle on their chests.
Shortly after dawn on Briar’s second day of quarantine, a pair of homeless men were brought into the room by masked soldiers of the Duke’s Guard. Once the sick men had been washed, dressed in the nightshirts, and put to bed—they were both too feverish to object to the soldiers’ handling—the guards joined their fellows in the room next door.
With the addition of the newcomers, Briar soon found that quarantine for anyone involved in healing meant work. Now there were three patients to be cared for in what seemed to be an endless round of washing, balm rubs, chamber pots, and cups of every liquid under the sun. The sharp scent of willowbark tea felt burned into his nostrils. The older of the two men, Yuvosh, was hardly any trouble and did whatever he was told. His friend, Orji, was not so cooperative. He was too hot, too cold, headachy or hungry for real food, not broth or juice. His skin itched; his bones ached; he couldn’t sleep for so much as five minutes at a time. He was convinced that every new thing they made him drink was poison. Given the taste of some of the brews Rosethorn created, Briar couldn’t exactly blame him.
Flick weakened. What frightened Briar the most was that each time he helped her to sit up for more tea or juice, she felt thinner. The fever that came with the pox was eating the little fat she had. Yuvosh also worried him, but in a less personal way; he was too weak and too obedient. A respectable street rat, even a grown one, should put up more of a fuss, or so it seemed to Briar.
Then there was Rosethorn. Briar worked on her as hard as he did their patients, trying to get her to eat and sleep so that she would stay well. At least she was extra-careful to protect Briar and herself from contagion. She continued to insist they wear masks and gloves unless they ate or cleaned themselves. Tableware and the cloths they used to tend their sick were washed, then immersed in boiling water. She and Briar scrubbed all over once a day, in very hot water, using soaps made to strip the skin of infection. The smell of the soap lingered around them both like an invisible cloud.
Rosethorn would dictate notes or lists of supplies to Briar as she worked on their patients or on the medicines she made from oils and herbs. The supplies of those items passed to them through the big flap on the inner door were never right. When she argued with the people who brought them, they summoned the man who ran Urda’s House, Jokubas Atwater. Talking through the speaking-window, Atwater told Rosethorn impatiently that the house was not made of money and she would have to make do, as they did.
The notes Briar wrote for Rosethorn went to Winding Circle, sealed in the metal boxes of samples that were taken every day from all five of them. Notes and samples alike were needed by the healers if they were to see how the disease worked, and Rosethorn’s notes were thorough. Her experience of other epidemics meant she knew what to look for in this one. She taught some of her knowledge to Briar, to explain things and as a break from the dull chores of the sickroom.
They had been in quarantine for three days when guards sheathed from head to toe in oilcloth carried in five more patients, all covered with blue spots. Two were younger than Flick; two were old; and the fifth man, who looked to be Orji’s age, coughed deep in his chest. With them came a dedicate in the blue Water Temple habit, a plump, wide-hipped woman with dark brown hair and eyes, and skin the color of newly minted bronze. She carried a large basket of supplies on her back.
“Henna,” Rosethorn greeted the new arrival. “It’s about time.”
“I would have come sooner, but they locked me in with that lunatic Crane, until he decided he couldn’t stand me. I don’t know how you work with him,” replied Dedicate Henna, unslinging the basket and its supporting frame. “I decided quarantine is better.”
Rosethorn laughed for the first time in days. “You know, I was wondering what I missed about times like this,” she commented, throwing back the sailcloth cover on Henna’s basket. “It was Crane, hovering and telling me I wouldn’t get anywhere with whatever I was doing. You’re right—quarantine is preferable.”
All three of them—Henna, Rosethorn, and Briar—settled the new patients in, cleaning them up and sending their old clothes down the washroom chute that led straight to a furnace. While they brewed fresh willowbark tea from Henna’s supplies, they also took samples from the new patients, sending them out with their own samples for the day. Tea came next; everyone got some. The old people were nearly too weak to sip, which Briar could tell worried the women. Next came balm rubs to soothe their patients’ itchy skins.
At last everyone had been tended. Briar and Rosethorn sat at the table as Henna poured cups of a more ordinary rosehip orange tea for them. “I don’t know about you, but I have a headache,” the Water dedicate informed Rosethorn. “You must be tired.”
Rosethorn smiled crookedly and drank her tea down.
Briar looked at Henna beseechingly. To say anything in front of Rosethorn was to invite a flailing with the rough edge of her tongue. He could only pray that Henna would see the message in his eyes.
She did. “I’ll take over for now,” she told Rosethorn briskly. “I want you to drink this broth Dedicate Gorse sent with me, then go to bed. I’ll wake you at dusk.” Henna rested a hand on Rosethorn’s shoulder. “Shame on you for not taking better care of yourself! You’re worn to the bone, and your boy here isn’t much better off. Same orders for you, my lad,” she told Briar sternly. “Broth and bed.”