Page 112 of The Ragpicker King
But she cannot race after him, cannot call out for him and beg him to come back, to hear her out. He is only supposed to be the Ambassador from Hanse, after all.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When Lin left the Etse Kebeth the next morning, wearing a clean blue cotton dress borrowed from Mariam’s stores, she found the day incongruously balmy. She had expected—and perhaps hoped for—rain and thunderclouds to match her mood. Instead, the sun had risen bright and hot, drying the puddles she had sloshed through the night before. The physick garden gleamed green and white in the unshaded brightness. A few white brushstrokes of cloud painted the sky: The storm must have been blown back out to sea. It was probably halfway to Kutani by now.
Lin wished she could say the same about herself. She felt as if a stone had lodged itself in her belly. She had lain awake much of the night, remembering the rain, the folly. The way she had lost herself—lost all the control she had built up so carefully and delicately over so many years. She had wanted Conor too badly to stop herself, and now he knew that—knew her weakness—and would scorn her for it.
She could taste the bitterness of disappointment on her tongue, like the aftertaste of Chana’s herbal tea. She was not disappointed inConor; she would not have expected anything else from him. She was disappointed in herself.
She heard a voice call out to her. “Lin Caster. A moment.”
She was just at the gate of the Women’s House. She turned to see Aron in the middle of the street, his arms crossed. He was dressed as he had been the first time she’d seen him, in the clothes of a Rhadanite trader. His desert-colored hair and eyes were bright in the sunlight.
She looked at him wearily. If there was anything she did not have the energy for, it was an argument with Aron Benjudah, or another demand on his part that she try to puzzle him out.
“I do not have a moment,” she said. “I am about to begin my rounds, seeing to my patients in the city—”
“I know,” he said. Behind him, she could see a group of boys, the same age Josit had been when they lost their parents, at play in the gardens of the Dasu Kebeth. They kicked up dust in clouds as they chased one another, carelessly happy in the sun. “We had an arrangement, I believe. I translate your text for you, and in exchange you take me with you on rounds and let me watch you tend to your patients.”
She had nearly forgotten. “Today?”
He smiled coolly. “There may not be that many days left until the testing.”
What an infuriating man he was, Lin thought, as she raced home to get her physician’s satchel. But perhaps being infuriated would be a good thing. Perhaps it would take her mind off the Prince.
She rejoined Aron outside the walls of the Sault. He fell into step beside her as she headed up the Ruta Magna in the direction of her first appointment, near Castle Street. “So,” she said. “What am I meant to say to my patients when they ask who you are?”
“Tell them that I am learning to become a physician and you are instructing me. Or perhaps I am writing a book on medicine and studying their cases.”
“Wonderful,” Lin said. “My patients will enjoy having a large, glowering man stare at them while they’re treated.”
“You could tell them I am to be your husband and insist on following you wherever you go.”
“They know me too well to imagine I’d tolerate that,” said Lin sweetly, and Aron made a noise thatalmostsounded like a reluctant chuckle. Lin saw someone glance at him as they passed. They were most likely wondering exactly who, or what, he was, with his leather arm straps and Rhadanite tattoos. Or perhaps they just thought he was handsome. Hewashandsome—which was one of his many irritating qualities.
It also turned out that he was not as totally ignorant of medicine as she had imagined. They went first to visit a young mother on Lark Street to make sure she and her new baby were thriving. Aron observed quietly, and did not seem discomfited by a long discussion of getting the child to latch to the breast. After that, a sailor near Yulan Road who was recovering from the bite of a crocodile. While Lin checked his wound, Aron silently handed her instruments and listened as the sailor cheerfully told him that he had been drunk when he had fallen into the harbor, and had been hauled out half naked and bleeding by a boatload of pilgrims on their way to Tyndaris.
A seamstress in the Silver Streets who feared needles was comforted by Aron while Lin stitched up a cut on her hand. On Tower Street, he distracted a fussy baby while the child’s mother anxiously watched Lin tend to her older boy’s ear infection. Lastly, Lin visited Zofia in the Fountain Quarter, hiding a smile as Zofia flirted shamelessly with Aron.
“My,but you are big and handsome,” she announced, her eyes gleaming mischievously. “If Lin doesn’t plan to marry you, I’ll do it myself.”
Aron blushed, and Lin looked on in amazement as she set Zofia’s tincture of foxglove on her wooden nightstand. She had never imagined the Exilarch could blush. It suited him, she thought; madehim look more human, less like a carved statue gazing into the distance, intent on some noble destiny no one else could see.
“Let me feel your muscles,” Zofia commanded, and Aron blushed again but obeyed with good humor, letting Zofia squeeze his arm and exclaim that she hadn’t felt a biceps like this one since she’d been the lover of Ruthless Nestor, the most fearsome pirate ever to sail the seas until Laurent Aden.
As it turned out, Aron had heard of Nestor, and wanted to know if it was true that he’d left a treasure map behind after his mysterious disappearance off the coast of Taprobana. “Maybe, maybe,” Zofia said with a wink. “Now turn around. I want to have a feel of—”
“Zofia,no,” Lin said firmly. She kissed the old woman atop her messy bun of gray hair and said, “Be good, take your medicine, and I’ll see you next week.”
“Will you bringhimwith you?” Zofia inquired, pointing a long finger at Aron.
“If you’re good,” Lin assured her, escaping with a bemused Aron by her side. They walked in silence back toward the Sault. Aron seemed lost in thought, his hands loosely clasped behind his back as they passed the dried fountains that gave the quarter its name, and crossed Elemi’s Way, where flowering vines spilled from wrought-iron balconies and down the white-plastered walls of the neat row houses. The air was warm and dry and smelled of oranges and jasmine. It was the sort of day that made people fall in love with the city, though if Aron felt such a thing, he hid it well.
They crossed the Ruta Magna together, where shops were closing for the hour of afternoon rest. Lin couldn’t blame them. All she wanted was to return to her house, crawl into bed, and sleep—though just last night she’d thought she would never sleep again. She realized with a faint sense of surprise that for at least these past few hours, tending the sick with Aron, she had not thought about Conor.
Mez was at the gates and winked at Lin as she passed through with the Exilarch at her side. She made a face at him, though she didn’t really mind. At least Mez hadn’t changed how he behaved around her since the Tevath.
They had gone as far as the Kathot when Lin, wondering if Aron meant to walk her all the way to her door, paused and turned to him. “I hope,” she said, as he stopped as well, a faintly inquiring look on his face, “that you learned all you wish to know?”
