healers Nate had known worked out of battered trunks or—more often—satchels. Arkady’s counter space alone dazzled him.
It was a pleasure to work there, even at menial tasks. A month passed before Arkady permitted Nate to polish glass in the lab while Arkady himself mixed tonics and prepared salves; more weeks passed after that before Nate was allowed to actually watch. Nate kept quiet and tried to make himself indispensable. It wasn’t hard for him to anticipate a few steps ahead as Arkady worked, so that he could be standing silently by with the necessary tool or herb or oil the moment Arkady realized he wanted it. The first few times this happened, the old man grunted with a grudging surprise, but after a while it just became the way of things, and Arkady would reach out his hand wordlessly and expect Nate to fill it with whatever was needed.
Mostly Nate was ignored, except for the dullest, nastiest tasks and the most tedious errands. That was fine. He was used to pleasing difficult, thankless people and it was what he’d expected. Vertus was mercurial, treating Nate like a brother on some days and his worst enemy on others. A friend would have been nice, but wasn’t required; and Nate soon noticed that whenever Arkady left the house Vertus soon followed, on business of his own, and decided that it was better to keep his distance from the servingman. Eventually Arkady let him grind herbs and hang them to dry. Nate had forgotten more herblore than Arkady had ever known, but he did as he was told without complaint even when he knew there were better ways. So far, he hadn’t seen Arkady do anything that would kill anyone. He was grateful for that. Storing herbs badly was one thing; Nate wasn’t sure he could stand by while Arkady gave his patients poison.
Most of those patients were courtiers with petty, cosmetic complaints. Their water was clean, their manors weren’t flea-infested, and they ate and slept too well to develop any real sickness. On occasion a rider would come from the palace, ringing a hand bell as he rode to warn pedestrians to clear the way; soon after, a phaeton would arrive, and Arkady would climb into it and disappear behind the Wall. In a day or two he’d be back, wine-stained and happy, with his pockets full of coins. Vertus said that when Arkady was done treating his highborn patients, he made off for the parlors and retiring rooms, and lived like a courtier until the Seneschal suggested he leave.
Whenever the phaeton came, Nate found somewhere else to be. He was afraid his eagerness shone like a beacon out of his eyes. He wanted to be in that phaeton like he wanted his next breath. More. He wanted it so much that the wanting was like a tumor in his chest. It took up space; it grew; it lived. It was of him and not of him.
All in good time, he told himself. Meanwhile, he learned about the city, which he’d arrived in for the first time less than forty-eight hours before presenting himself on Arkady’s doorstep. Nate had grown up surrounded by quiet forests and verdant plains. He’d been in cities before, but he’d never spent so long in one. The gracious avenues of Porterfield, the desperation of Brakeside, all the gradations of grandeur and misery in between; Beggar’s Market, where literal scraps of food sold for pennies, and the Grand Bazaar, where luxurious patrons browsed luxurious goods. A few foreign traders moved among the locals, with rich warm skin and varied features that made Nate think of his people in the caravans, who came from everywhere, but with eyes that carried the natural wariness of those far from home. But the people he saw in the streets here had been born and raised here. Nate hadn’t, and he could not help but feel the unsteadiness and rot in Highfall’s streets. The city was like a spoiled egg, a thin shell of respectability barely containing the foulness inside. He didn’t like it, but it soon stopped feeling overwhelming and chaotic. (Except on feast days, when the gaiety quickly slipped into an almost deliberate danger, when brawls spilled out into the streets and you had to be careful where you stepped, or you’d be ankle-deep in blood.)
Arkady sent him on errands to the Grand Bazaar, because he wanted his apprentice to be seen buying goods there, but Nate found that most of