The rustle of her habit woke Rosethorn, who brushed Lark’s sleeve with her fingertips. “I’m all right,” she murmured, and coughed. The cough went on and on, thin and high; she had no chance to catch her breath. Lark picked a cup off the bedside table and held it to Rosethorn’s lips, steadying her.

Somehow Rosethorn drank what was in the cup. Her coughs faded, slowly. Finally she nodded, and Lark helped her to ease back.

“Pesky thing,” whispered Rosethorn. “The cough, I mean.” She began to hack.

“Rest,” Lark said when Rosethorn was at ease again. “Don’t talk.”

Rosethorn nodded and closed her eyes.

Tris pried Briar’s fingers from her arm. Unknowingly, he’d gripped her tightly enough to bruise.

Lark shooed them out and closed the door behind her. Briar took the cup from her hand, exploring its contents with his magic. He recognized Capchen chestnut and syrup of poppies.

“Poppy?” he whispered, horrified. “How’d she get so bad she needs poppy?” He turned to Daja, who cut designs in metal sheets at the table. “You told us she did fine!”

Daja’s eyes were bloodshot. “You asked yesterday morning. I said she still had that cough.”

“We didn’t know,” Lark told Briar, drawing him away from Rosethorn’s door. “Rosie started to complain she couldn’t breathe lying down, so we raised her and sent for a healer. Grapewell told us to make this up—he said it would ease the cough. And it does, for a while.”

“Didn’t he do anything? Didn’t he have magic? Didn’t you tell them it was for her?” demanded Briar. Something in Lark’s eyes scared him badly.

“The healers are at the last of their strength, I bet,” said Tris. “They’ve got to be careful with how they spend it. And maybe her body resists whatever they do. Osprey says that happens a lot, when people keep getting treated with magic.”

Lark nodded.

Briar stared at Tris. How could she be so cold? This was Rosethorn in trouble, not a street rat, not some pampered lady who thought she was dying when she sneezed.

Tris’s gray eyes met his, and Briar stepped back. There was something in them that made even him a little afraid. She had learned to grip her feelings: that didn’t mean she had no feelings at all.

“Sandry’s looking for a healer,” Lark told Briar. “Someone with more juice in him than Dedicate Grapewell.” She didn’t even smile at the almost-pun. “Rosie’s fever’s up again—that willowbark tea might as well be water.” Her fingers trembled. “She may have pneumonia. Grapewell listened to her chest, and I know he didn’t like the sound. I listened early this morning. It’s crackling, like bacon on the stove.”

“Where’s the willowbark?” asked Briar. “I’ll give it a boost.”

“On her windowsill,” Lark replied.

Briar went into Rosethorn’s room and found the teapot. He was so intent on pouring magic into its contents, raising the willow’s power as much as he could, that he didn’t hear Rosethorn at first. It was only when he poured the tea into a cup and turned around that he realized she’d been calling, her voice hardly more than a squeak.

“Sorry,” she apologized when he came to her. “If I talk louder, I cough.”

“So don’t talk,” he ordered sternly. “Drink this.” He helped her to sit up as Lark had done. The hard knobs of her spine pressed into his shoulder. She was too thin! What did she have to fight pneumonia with?

Rosethorn pushed the cup away. “Tired,” she squeaked. “But sleep doesn’t rest me much.” She pressed against his shoulder, letting him know she wanted to lean back. “Crane?” she asked when she was comfortable.

“Stupid me,” he muttered, taking her hand. This way we don’t have to risk you coughing, he began, and stopped, horrified. Her power, vastly greater than his, was down to embers, and fading.

Out, she said firmly, and tugged her hand from his. “You don’t want to be tangled with me, if … you just don’t,” she squeaked, her fever-bright eyes holding his. “Go. Let me rest.”

Briar ran from the room to find Sandry talking to Lark, hanging on her teacher’s arm as she panted. She’d been running. “—two to three healers each, and they won’t budge,” she said, gasping. “They’re brewing cures and watching whole wards and everyone else is in Summersea. Everyone! I told them how sick she is, but they said unless we bring her in they can’t see her. And Lark, it’s all second-raters here, I checked. They figure most of our people are mages to start with, so—” Daja pushed a cup of water at Sandry. The noble released Lark and grabbed it, gulping the contents.

“The strongest healer-mages have gone to Summersea,” Lark finished grimly. “Well, she’s too badly off—second-raters won’t do.”

“She’s dying,” Briar announced, his voice shaking. “I looked inside her. She needs the best they got, Lark.”

“But you have to be wrong—she was fine yesterday morning,” argued Daja.

“Except she never lost the cough. There’s people in the infirmaries who are all better—they’re going home,” Sandry reminded Daja.

Tris protested, “Briar’s not a healer, you could be wrong—”

“Almost all her magic is gone,” he said flatly. “Clean gone.”