Chapter 24: The Shed

The plague shed stood on a hill above a river, and from the road it did not look like a shed at all.

It had a new slate roof and whitewashed walls, and a carved sign over the double doors.

HEALERS' HALL, the sign said.

I pulled my horse up at the foot of the hill and sat there with my hands tight on the reins.

"You said it was gone," I said.

"I said it was changed," Maud answered, from the horse beside me.

"I bought the land the year I became the royal physician. I didn't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because you'd have been afraid to look at it." She glanced at me.

"I thought that if I made it into something, you might not be."

Lysander rode on my other side, in a plain coat, with no guard and no banner.

He had not said a word since dawn.

He reached over and laid his hand on my arm, over the iron band.

"I'll wait at the gate," he said. "Or I'll come in. Your word."

"Come in," I said. "I want you to see it."

We rode up the hill.

The yard was full of people.

There were sick people on benches in the sun, wrapped in blankets, and healers in gray aprons carrying basins between them.

Almost every person on the benches had a pale band of skin on one wrist.

Some of them had fresh scars where iron had come off the week before, and some had numbers.

A gray-haired man looked up as I dismounted, and I knew him at once.

He was the first man I had cut free in the courtyard.

He grinned at me and held up his bare wrist.

"They set it for free," he said. "Your Maud did."

"She's not mine," I said, and my voice was not steady. "I'm hers."

Maud made a small sound and looked away.

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