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But then a large, warm hand slipped into hers, and she looked up and saw the love in Bao’s eyes—the love that had never left him, not even in his anger—and she couldn’t help feeling that it might all be worth it. It wasn’t just the right thing to do, because Bao’s life was at stake; she knew now that even without a spell, it was what shewantedto do.
16
“What’s that?” a little girl asked, wrinkling her nose at the bowl. “It doesn’t look good.”
“This tonic will help the lady sleep,” Bao explained patiently, continuing to mash the mixture of herbs, berries, and river water. “And it will help make sure nothing hurts.”
“How do you know what to put in it?” asked one of the twins.
“I’ve made this before. I worked for a physician,” he explained. “That’s a person who helps sick people. They teach others, like me, how to take care of anyone who isn’t feeling well.”
He had removed a table from one of the empty homes and pulled it in front of the sick woman’s cottage, where he could work without disturbing her. Huy had helped him gather herbs and roots and other medicinal plants, and Bao had spent the better part of an hour making a variety of different tonics. Slowly, children had grown accustomed to his presence and crept out of their cottages to watch, curiosity overcoming their fear. At first, it had been only oneor two of them, but now at least a dozen boys and girls surrounded him.
Bao surreptitiously studied them as he worked. They were thin and small, but relatively healthy and well cared for, probably thanks to Cam and Tao. One of the girls was coughing a bit—he would have to make a draft for her—and he noticed a shallow cut on one of the twins’ arms, probably from a tree branch. “May I see?” he asked the child, who offered his arm shyly and allowed Bao to use the last of the river water to clean the wound.
Another boy who was watching crept close to Bao’s side. He couldn’t have been more than four or five. He beckoned for Bao to bend down and whispered, “I have one, too,” offering a skinny brown arm with a much smaller cut. But Bao cleaned it nonetheless, smiling as all of the other children looked on with serious expressions. He felt like a physician surrounded by very small, businesslike apprentices. The boy whispered, “Thank you,” and Bao ruffled the child’s hair before peering into the cottage.
Cam was sitting by her daughter’s bed and Tao stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. The sick woman was awake, her lips cracked apart into a smile at something Cam had said. Bao drew back to give them privacy. He looked around at the houses that must have seen love and laughter once, and were now empty shells of former lives, and felt the deep, abiding loneliness he knew well. He caught sight of Lan sitting cross-legged in front of the cottage across the way. A little girl sat behind her, placidly weaving duck feathers into Lan’s braid, and Bao recognized her as the child who had hit the Imperial soldier with a pan.
“Did you enjoy teaching all of those tiny physicians?” Lan asked, smiling, when he came over to sit with her. The little girl eyed Bao suspiciously, then returned to working on Lan’s braid.
“I have to hold back some secrets; otherwise they would let it get to their heads.” It wasn’t even a good joke, but Bao felt oddly proud of himself. Speaking in complete sentences and not tripping over his feet in front of Lan would always feel like an accomplishment.
“I didn’t know you were so good with children,” she said. “And you were wonderful with Cam and Tao earlier. Do you think they’ll destroy the black spice?”
Bao leaned his weary bones against the cottage behind them. “I hope so. I felt breathless the whole time Huy was talking, but I knew it had nothing to do with the spell and everything to do with Mistress Vy. It’s unconscionable what her family has knowingly done to all of these innocent people. And I have their blood and their deeds flowing in my veins.”
“Their blood, perhaps,” Lan said firmly. “But not their deeds.”
“But mymotherdid this. My grandparents, my ancestors. They are all complicit. I don’t know how I came to be separated from them, but if I had stayed, I would have grown up in the Gray City. I would have learned their ways. Would I be working on the black spice formula now, too? Would I disregard human life in pursuit of their dream?”
“You are here now, and you recognize right from wrong.”
“Maybe they did hope to create a medicine that would help others,” Bao said. He was so tired. He felt exhaustion creep into his muscles, weighing him down with everything he had learned. “But they took so many lives in the process. I am a part of that family, and I am about to come home to them. There’s no defending that, Lan.”
“No,” she said fiercely, straightening. “Even if you had stayed in the Gray City, you would have chosen differently. You would have wanted totrulyhelp people, and you wouldn’t have hurt anyone to do so.”
Bao’s face glowed. “You think this highly of me? Even though I’m just a...”
“Don’t you dare saypeasant!” she cried, then rolled her eyes when he grinned. She picked up a duck feather and rolled it between her fingers. “You know what I keep thinking? What a shame it was that I knew so few men outside of my family. I thought so highly of Tam, once.”
He felt a pang of jealousy, seeing how it hurt her to say Tam’s name even now.
“But then I leave home,” Lan went on. “And I meet Commander Wei, who loves Lady Yen so, and I meet Huy, who is risking much to help these villagers. And I think back... and I can’t imagine Tam putting anyone else first. I spent years dreaming about a selfish boy who would never love me, and all that time, out in the world, there were men like Huy and the commander. Men who care about strangers, who put other people first, always.”
“It wasn’t ever about you, you know,” Bao said. “For Tam, I mean. It was theideaof you Tam didn’t want. He was tired of being controlled by his family, but he was too cowardly to tell his parents straight out. So he kept stringing you and your parents along. He was just scared.”
“That doesn’t free him from blame. Even without all that, he never looked at me when I spoke. He always took the most comfortable chair in the room, even when elders were present. He cared about himself most of all. I keep comparing him to all the other men I meet and finding more and more in their favor. Including you.” She hugged her knees and looked at him sidelong. “Especially you.”
“Me?” he said offhandedly, as though his heart wasn’t singing for joy. “An orphan of no account.”
“An orphan of very much account indeed, as I found out.”
Bao forced himself to meet her gaze, though his palms dampenedand his heart beat off-kilter. He was close enough to see every eyelash she had. He wondered if she was thinking of that moment earlier, too, when the spell had nearly choked him. The feel of her hands on his face had been imprinted into his skin. He had come so close to kissing her, and he had thought—looking into her starry eyes in that moment—that she might not have pulled away if he had.
“I’m glad you came with me,” he said.
“You’re not just saying that because the spell might kill you without me?”
