The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [90]
On the seventh day she woke to afternoon sunlight and the feeling that she’d been beaten with truncheons and dragged behind a carriage. Her eyes were crusted with grit, and the taste in her mouth didn’t bear contemplating. Despite a head stuffed with snot and dirty rags, she knew someone else was in the apartment. She croaked a question that even she didn’t understand.
A rattle of dishes answered from the other room, followed by soft footsteps. The smell of something full of salt and garlic cut through the clinging reek of sweat and sickness, and Isyllt flopped back on her clammy pillows with a sigh.
“For a powerful sorceress, you whine a lot when you’re sick.”
She started, sticky eyes opening again. The voice, and the shadow that fell across the bed, belonged not to the landlady’s daughter but to Dahlia.
“What are you doing here?”
“The girl downstairs let me in. I told her I worked with you, but mostly I think she was tired of listening to you moan.”
Isyllt snorted and propped herself up on the pillows. The bedding stank, and her nose had cleared enough to remind her of it. Her scalp and back and breasts itched with dried sweat. Only sweat. Though from the ache tightening beneath her navel, her courses would begin soon. “You can make yourself useful, then. Is that lunch?”
Dahlia handed her a tray of bread and soup; the garlic and ginger in the broth were enough to sting her sinuses.
“You’re lucky,” the girl said. “People are dying of the influenza.”
“They always do. The young and the old, the weak and the starving.”
“It’s worse this year—the fever is worse. I heard a man in Harrowgate died vomiting blood two days ago.”
That made Isyllt flinch. Her spoon shook, spilling broth back into the bowl. She sopped bread instead and forced herself to chew and swallow. It burned the back of her throat, but she felt more alive after a few mouthfuls.
“So you work with me now?” she asked, trying to put aside thoughts of plague.
Dahlia shrugged, perching on the edge of a chair. Her eyes flickered around the room; Isyllt hoped she wasn’t casing it. “I convinced Meka to help you. And you might need more help, looking for Forsythia’s killer.” She lowered her voice at the words, and Isyllt didn’t blame her. The memory of Forsythia’s sobs was enough to steal warmth from the room.
“I might,” she mumbled around a mouthful of bread. Isyllt didn’t insult the girl by mentioning the danger. She’d come back after witnessing an unpleasant summoning, and risked a sickbed; that didn’t speak of cowardice or squeamishness. She swallowed and studied Dahlia more closely. “You want more than a few weeks employment, don’t you?”
The girl’s jaw tightened. “I’m not asking for anything besides what my time is worth. Forsythia was kind to me—I want to see her avenged.”
But Isyllt had seen the desire in her at the Arcanost. And she had come back now, when any fool knew that necromancers weren’t safe or pleasant company. “Shiver or spark?” she asked.
Blue eyes flickered and met hers. “Shiver.” Her chin rose with the word.
Sparks, as those with the talent for projective magic were often called, were accepted at the Arcanost no matter how poor or connectionless, if only because an untrained pyromancer was a threat to everyone around them. Shivers—those who could sense magic or hear spirits—were eight for an obol, and without something else to recommend them would go untrained, or find work as hedge magicians or ghost-whisperers. Or go mad from voices they couldn’t stop.
Isyllt shrugged, setting the tray and empty bowl aside. “That doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do more. A well-trained sorcerer can do a little of almost anything.”
“Can you?”
She snorted again and shoved back the covers. “I’m too well-trained. Overspecialized. I’m so steeped in death and decay that my magic isn’t good for much else. But I can teach you theory. If you want to learn.”
Dahlia watched her, eyes narrow and wary. Isyllt remembered that chariness. Was her need to learn worth the possibility of hurt and betrayal? She