A deafening crash made the heavy oak door tremble.
Yusha walked to the entrance, his face hardening, assuming the mask of the doctor he once was. He opened it and found a man soaked by the freezing rain, dressed in the muddy uniform of a royal messenger. Behind him, a black carriage shuddered, its lanterns flickering like dying stars.
“I’m looking for the man who rebuilds what others discard,” gasped the messenger, his gaze fixed on the cozy interior of the cabin. “They say in the city that a ghost lives here. A ghost with godlike hands.”
Yusha’s blood ran cold. “You’re looking for a beggar. I’m a simple man.”
“A simple man doesn’t perform a craniotomy on a woodcutter’s son and save his life,” replied the messenger, stepping forward. “My master is in the carriage. He is dying. If you take your last breath at the door of this house, this residence will be reduced to ashes before dawn.” Zainab approached Yusha, her hand resting on his arm. He felt his quickened pulse. “Who is the master?” he asked in a firm, cold voice.
“The governor’s son,” whispered the messenger. “The brother of the girl who died in the Great Fire.”
The irony was a physical burden. The same family that had hunted Yusha to death, that had reduced his life to ashes, was now sitting in a carriage outside his door, begging for the life of their heir.
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Family Games
Doors
Door
“Don’t do it,” whispered Zainab as the messenger withdrew to find the patient. “They will recognize you. You will be taken to the gallows as soon as you stabilize.”
“If I don’t do it,” replied Yusha in a hoarse, choked voice, “they will kill us.” And more than that, Zainab… I am a doctor. I cannot let a man bleed to death in the rain while I have a needle in my hand.
They brought the young man inside, a boy of only nineteen, with a pale face and a wound from a hunting accident that festered in his thigh. The smell of gangrene permeated the clean, herb-scented room, a putrid intruder from a dying world.
Yusha worked in a feverish trance. He didn’t use the rudimentary tools of a village healer. He reached a hidden compartment under the floorboards and retrieved a velvet roll containing silver instruments: scalpels that reflected the firelight with a deadly gleam.
Zainab acted like his shadow. He didn’t need to see the blood to know where to place the basin; the sound of the dripping liquid and the heat of the infection were enough. She moved with silent, expressive precision, handing him silk threads and boiled water before he even asked.
“Bring the lamp closer,” Yusha ordered, then corrected herself with a touch of guilt. “Zainab, I need you to press his pressure point. Here.”
He guided his hand to the boy’s groin, where the femoral artery pulsed like a caged bird. Pressing deeper, the boy’s eyes suddenly snapped open. He looked up, not at the doctor, but at Zainab.
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“An angel,” the boy whispered, his voice delirious. “Am I… in the garden?”
“You are in the hands of fate,” Zainab replied softly.
As the first grey light of dawn filtered through the blinds, the boy’s fever subsided. The wound had been cleaned, the artery sutured with the delicacy of a lacemaker. Yusha sat in a chair near the fireplace, his hands trembling, covered with the blood of his enemy’s son.
The messenger, who had been watching from a corner, stepped forward. He examined the silver instruments on the table and then Yusha’s face, now fully illuminated by the morning light.
“I remember you,” said the messenger. “You were a child when the governor’s daughter died. I saw your portrait in the marketplace. There was a bounty on your head that lasted five years.”
Yushá did not raise his gaze. “Then finish this. Call the guards.”
The messenger stared at the sleeping child, heiress to a province, saved by the condemned man. He looked at Zainab, who stood like a sentinel, her blind eyes fixed on the messenger, as if she could see the decay in his soul.
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