“He left out the back door and hasn’t returned.” Her lips pursed as she studied me. “You need some of this duck,” she declared, changing the subject with practiced ease. “You look thin.”
“It’d be my honor to treat you,” Dagan offered.
Iltani kicked me under the table before I could protest.
“Fine.” I sighed, my stomach aching with emptiness. Even if I wanted to refuse, I wasn’t sure my body would allow it. “My thanks.”
“Kammani,” Dagan said. “I know you are searching for a solution here, but you know as well as I that your abum can’t walk into the Palace and tell the lugal he can heal him.” He looked pointedly at Assata. “Don’t you agree?”
“Is that your plan, Kammani? Trying to heal the lugal? It’s a noble one, because Enlil knows he’s been better than my old ruler in Kemet.” Assata shifted her serving tray to her other hip.
“Yes, Assata. If I can get him to heal the lugal, then Nanaea will stay with me.” I swallowed roughly, fiddling with my cask of sikaru.
“Well, your abum is the best healer in the entire city. Everyone knows that, even if they’ve forgotten temporarily.”
“Everyone but the Palace,” Dagan said. “If they believed it, they would have sent for him already.” He shrugged an apology. “Besides, the Palace has their own healer. Wouldn’t he have tried everything by now?”
“He has a point.” Iltani slurped her sikaru noisily.
I nudged her elbow so it slipped off the table. Mead spilled down the front of her tunic, and she laughed, spewing more from her mouth.
“Their A-zu is probably worthless, considering the lugal is dying,” I muttered. “And my abum tries things that others do not! Even with the little malku.” I lowered my voice. “He was as good as dead the second he hit the ground, yet my abum did everything he could to heal him for three days. There was nothing else he could have done.”
“Sure, but people don’t believe that. They think he failed,” Dagan said, his tone apologizing for his words.
“Which is a lie!” I slammed my hand on the table, sloshing the sikaru from our cups and drawing curious glances from those around me.
Dagan reached across to touch me, thought better of it, and withdrew his hand into his lap. We sat, each of us lost in our own thoughts, sipping our sikarus, trying to work some way out of this mess. Assata left to tend to another table, then came back, lifting our tankards, wiping the spills from the heavy wood.
Dagan brightened and reached across the table. My hand disappeared inside his. “Kammani! Why don’t you go?”
Iltani, Assata, and I all looked each other.
“Me?”
“Yes! Who else? Aside from your abum, you’re the best healer in the entire city, and you haven’t been tainted with failure as he has, either.”
Oh. But I have. He just doesn’t know. “Although your faith in me is sweet—”
“—and warranted,” Dagan added, and pursed his lips. He knew what I was about to say.
“I’m not the best person for this job.” I swallowed thickly. “I couldn’t…risk it.”
Under the table, Iltani squeezed my hand.
He blew his breath out. He knew he wouldn’t win. We’d spent many turns of the sundial on his farm arguing over things, so he knew I was tenacious when my mind was set.
Then a thought occurred to me as Iltani waved to one of Assata’s tavern maids for a refill, and I sat up just a little bit straighter.
“Assata—can you call for a messenger?”
“I suppose, but why?”
“If my abum can’t walk into the Palace and tell them about all the people he has healed since the malku died, then a messenger could just spread the word in the Palace about his triumphs. How he, Shalim the great A-zu, may have made a costly mistake in the past, but he is incredibly skilled now. He’s healed all of these hundreds of people since. Then maybe Ensi Uruku and Nin Arwia would hear the gossip and they’d call him in to help.”
Iltani groaned. “This is an even worse plan than the one before. I love you, Kammani, but you are unmoored.”
Dagan rubbed his chin. “I disagree. We know he personally wouldn’t be believed, but if others were spreading the word about the people he’s healed in the last few years, then the Palace may come to their own conclusions and call him back.” Dagan nodded, sipping from his tankard. “It’s smart. It plays to their arrogance.”
Assata snapped her fingers just as Iltani opened her mouth to argue. “If that’s your decision, then it appears we have the right person for the job, Kammani girl.”
I turned as a boy with black curls, wearing a crisp white tunic and a self-sure grin, weaved around men twice his size.
“Kasha.” My chest swelled with love for this boy. Although he’d failed to warn me about Nanaea’s being chosen and had stayed away from our home of late, I couldn’t help but forgive him. He was my brother.
I enveloped him in a hug, and a heady scent of incense wafted from his clothing. Cloves, something smoky, and earth. I held him for just a little longer than he liked, and he wiggled out of my embrace.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with the town crier? Will you be punished?” I held him at arm’s length.
“No.” He shrugged. “He gave me some time to myself. I thought I might come in here to see Abum, but he already left.”
My heart squeezed as I took in his deep brown eyes and noble nose, the precise image of my abum stamped upon this little face.
“And what is this smell?” I demanded. “You’re scented like the perfumer’s stall.”
“Sit, sit!” Dagan patted the stool next to him.
A bit of arrogance crept into Kasha’s eyes as he lifted his chin and sat carefully next to Dagan. “I was bringing the Sacred Maidens their scents, Sister. They were given spices to wear before returning home to pack up their belongings. I had to run and fetch the bottles.” He blushed, his skin flaming red. “I spilled some.”
“Speaking of the Maidens,” I began, “why didn’t you stop by our hut to warn me that Nanaea would be chosen? Do you not find it terrible?”
“Because you’d have that scowl on your face, as you do now,” Kasha answered, squirming under my gaze. “I knew how you’d feel.”
I was certain he did. Nanaea was, after all, his sister, too. And he’d lost more than I. “It’s going to be okay, Brother. I have a solution.”