Nour frowned, fingers gently clasping the front edge of her scarf in what looked like a habitual pose, assumed when she was deep in thought. “Where have you been living?” she asked.
“In the Segulist Quarter, with a Bayitist family,” I said.
“And where have you been taking your meals?”
“Largely at the House of Dragons—it is an estate not far outside the city walls. I eat a little something when I wake, but lunch is always out there, and often supper as well.”
She considered this for a moment, then gave a little nod, as if an interior conversation had concluded. Turning, she called out to Mahira, who had been sitting on the far side of the room to give us some privacy. When Mahira joined us, Nour asked, “Would it be possible to keep Umm Yaqub here for a day or two?”
“What?” I exclaimed, sitting up on the sopha. “I am not that ill!”
Nour regarded me soberly. “I do not think you are ill,” she said. “I think you have been poisoned.”
I could not have been more shocked had someone thrown a bucket of ice water over me. “That—is not possible.”
“How do you obtain your food?”
“From the market,” I said slowly. “They send a man to fetch something in. Maazir, I think his name is.”
Nour looked grim. “I would not like to accuse this man without proof. But if you stay here, and your condition improves…”
Despite the warm, close room, I was cold to the bone. “Tom eats the same meals I do. He has not felt unwell—or only a little so.” But Tom had the constitution of an ox. He had been bitten by a wyvern in Bulskevo and shrugged it off. “God in heaven.”
“He must not eat the food, either,” Nour said.
If it were true—if someone was indeed poisoning our meals, with Maazir’s knowledge or without—then they had gone to some lengths to be subtle about it. There were any number of things they could have put into it that would have seen us both dead within the hour, however resilient Tom might be. Instead they preferred to weaken us, in a fashion that could be mistaken for illness. In time we would die; or perhaps it would be enough simply to disrupt our work. Either way, we had an opportunity to catch the culprit… but only if we did not scare him off.
“I will warn Tom,” I said. “If I take food to him, secretly, he can eat that in place of what Maazir brings from the market. What time is it?”
The room’s piercework shutters made it difficult for me to gauge the hour. And although the call to prayer sounded throughout Qurrat at regular intervals, I had not incorporated that into my mental clock, as the Amaneen do. “The sunset prayer will begin soon,” Mahira said.
“Then I must hurry.” Tom would want to finish the necropsy before the light went, which meant he would not have taken supper yet. His hardiness might allow him to go another day without serious ill effects—but I could not knowingly allow him to eat poison, not if there was any risk that Nour was correct.
The physician put her hands on my shoulders when I tried to rise. “You will go nowhere. Someone else can take the message, and the food.”
“I felt well enough to come here,” I said, pushing against this restraint. It did not take so very much pressure for her to keep me in my seat, though, and I knew she could tell that as well as I.
Nour said, “What if someone overhears the warning, and decides to take more direct action?”
“All the more reason for me to be there with Tom. Or do you suggest I should abandon him, when he is in peril?”
Mahira intervened before our argument could grow any more heated. “Umm Yaqub, I will have our cook prepare a basket for him. If it is a gift from the sheikh’s household, no one will think it odd that he declines supper from the market. He can be warned once he is safely away.”
The mulish part of me wanted to insist on my original plan… but I had to admit that Mahira’s suggestion was more sensible. “I should prefer to sleep in my own bed, though,” I said.
Nour required me to stay on the sopha a while longer, so she could be sure my condition was not worsening. When I departed at last, shortly after sunset, I had both an escort and a basket of my own, with food enough for not only my supper but also my breakfast and lunch the next day, and strict orders to stay home from Dar al-Tannaneen.
The difficult part would be finding a reason for both Tom and myself to be absent. (Well, one of the difficult parts. I was not very good at sitting still when trouble reared its head.) Pondering this over my supper, which I was taking alone in my room, I found myself laughing wryly. “I suppose,” I said to my ground chick peas, “that I might just say we are ill. Then the poisoner will think he is succeeding in his aim.” Always supposing he did not take that as his cue to bring the drama to a sudden and unpleasant close.
Aviva knocked at my door before I had finished. Putting her head into the room, she said, “Your brother is downstairs.”
“Oh dear,” I said involuntarily, getting to my feet. “Yes, he would be. I’ll come.”
Andrew was pacing restlessly, and wheeled about when I entered the courtyard. “Are you all right?” he asked. Then, before I had a chance to answer: “No, of course you aren’t. I heard you collapsed at the sheikh’s house. For God’s sake, sit down.”
“‘Collapse’ rather overstates the matter,” I said. “I got dizzy, is all. I am perfectly capable of standing, and walking, too.”
“Well, sit down for my peace of mind, won’t you?” This I obliged him in, if only so we could converse about something other than my stability or lack thereof. “It isn’t malaria, is it?”
He had suffered from that disease in Coyahuac, and knew its signs well. “No, it isn’t. In fact—” I hesitated. Would it be better or worse to tell Andrew about Nour’s suspicion? He would certainly find it even more alarming than rumours of my collapse. On the other hand, if it was poison, then we needed to inform Pensyth as soon as possible, so the culprit might be apprehended. Could Maazir be behind this? Or was he working for someone else? Was he a knowing accomplice, or an unwitting tool?
These thoughts had paralyzed my brain all through supper, and I was no closer to finding answers now. I wished Tom had arrived before Andrew, so I could put them to him before involving my brother. My silence, however, had alarmed Andrew. He crouched at my feet, peering up at my face. “What is it? Something worse than malaria?”
“In a manner of speaking.” I scrubbed my hands over my face, which did little to clear my thoughts. “Nour—the physician—she thinks, ah. That my illness may not be… an accident. That someone may be arranging it deliberately.”
He worked through the implications of this one blink at a time. “You mean—” He sat back on his heels, staring. “That’s absurd. Who did you say suggested this? The physician who saw you is a woman?”
“Don’t say it,” I warned him. “She knows her business very well. I intend to test her theory, by abstaining from the food brought to the House of Dragons—the timing of my bad spells makes her think the problem is there. If she is wrong, then very welclass="underline" I will seek a second opinion.”
“But who would poison you?” Andrew said. “No Scirling man would do that. And we’re allied with the Akhians. Why would they sabotage you?”
“Politics?” I suggested, my tone heavy with irony. “Someone paid the Banu Safr to kidnap us; it is hardly a stretch to think they might try other methods. Or it could be a single madman who believes we’re subverting the natural order with our efforts. There’s no way of knowing—not yet. But first we need to know if it is poison. Until then, everything else is speculation.”