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regions. “I should examine you. Women have taken septic and died before.”
    I let her, shifting to allow her access, gritting my teeth against the burn; Drucilla had not wiped the camphor liniment from her fingers. It felt... ah, Elua.
    “It could be worse. Most are.” Straightening, she did wipe her hands, as if she had touched somewhat foul. “Your ... willingness ... made it easier. You’re already beginning to heal.”
    “I heal quickly,” I murmured bitterly, leaning my head against the wall of my private chamber. It is true. It is the only gift Kushiel ever saw fit to give me.
    Drucilla gave a brusque nod. “You bathed thoroughly?”
    “Yes.” There were some merits to being the Mahrkagir’s favorite. Rushad had brought me a basin unbidden. I’d gotten him to boil the bedclothes, too; Hiu-Mei had died in them, infected by an unnamed pox.
    “Then that is all.” Gathering her things in a basket, Drucilla turned to go.
    I struggled into my gown, watching her, suddenly, desperately bereft. No one else had even spoken to me; not even Rushad would meet my eyes. I daresay Drucilla wouldn’t have either, if she were not clinging to her physician’s identity as her sanity.
    “Drucilla,” I said as she parted the hanging curtain of beads that served for a door. She halted, her back to me. “Drucilla, I am an anguissette . I was chosen by the gods to find pleasure in enduring pain.”
    She did turn around, then, still holding her basket, a frown creasing her brows. “Why would your gods do such a thing?”
    “To preserve balance.” I held her eyes, keeping my voice steady, trying not to betray the dreadful urgency I felt to make one friend, one ally. “So say the priests of Kushiel, the god who has marked me as his own. Because there are people born into this world-or made by it-who lack all compassion, whose pleasure is only to own, to possess, to destroy. To hurt.” I thought of the priest, Michel Nevers. “‘To endure suffering untold, with infinite compassion.’ That is the balance, so they say.”
    Drucilla swallowed; once, twice, and the blood drained from her face. “Who are you?” she whispered, staring at me as if seeing me anew. “And why have you come here?”
    “I had a friend, once,” I said slowly, praying I had not revealed too much. “When I was a captive ... another place, another time. He was a Hellene man, a slave, a physician’s grandson in Tiberium, freed by pirates. And now you, here ... a physician of Tiberium, captured into slavery in Hellas.” I looked at her, standing with her maimed hands clutching the handles of her basket. “If I had an answer to your question, Drucilla, it might be worth my life to speak it.”
    “First do no harm.” A measure of strength returned to her voice, her frowning face. She set down the basket. “Whatever or whoever you are, Phèdre nó Delaunay, know this. I am a physician. I have sworn the sacred oath of Hippocrates, of which that is the first tenet. The day I violate it is the day I die. I cannot promise you I won’t, in this place. Only that I will never do it of my own will.”
    I nodded. It was enough; it had to be. “I’ve come for the boy.”
    “ Imri ?” Drucilla’s voice rose in surprise; her knees gave way and she sat down abruptly on the bed, giving a startled laugh. “Are you mad?” she asked, eyeing me with uncertainty, feeling at my forehead. “It may be fever, or the violence done you… Phèdre, you would not be the first to escape into fantasy - ”
    “No.” I caught her hand. “Ask him, if you doubt; he will not speak to me. Ask him if it is not true that he was raised by priests in the Sanctuary of Elua, if he was not captured by Carthaginian slave-traders while herding goats.” I released my grip on her. “They took him to Amílcar, and sold him to a Menekhetan, Fadil Chouma. It was Chouma who sold him to a Skotophagotìs , to one of the Mahrkagir’s priests.”
    Drucilla’s hand slid over her mouth, eyes wide with shock. “How can you know this?”
    “I learn things.” I thought, for some reason, of my lord Delaunay. “It is what I am good at, along with enjoying pain.”
    For a time, she sat saying nothing, knotting the folds of her shawl. “You have a plan?”
    I shook my head slowly.
    “You are mad, then.” This time there was no uncertainty in her voice. “Who is he, anyway, that you would walk into the jaws of Death for him? He doesn’t even know you!”
    “I know.” I