In the Labyrinth of Drakes (22 page)

I turned toward Mahira, intending to ask whether she would like a pair of honeyseekers as a permanent installation in her garden. The offspring of my two could not mate, of course, without risk of inbreeding—but I could request another set from Lutjarro, as a gesture of gratitude. When I turned, however, the world turned with me. I swayed to one side, catching myself against a tree, and then sat down very hard on the ground.

Mahira was there in an instant, robes billowing as she sank down next to me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, quite,” I said—in that inane way one does when one is not well at all. “Only I was dizzy for a moment.”

She helped me to my feet and then settled me on the bench, staying at my side lest I tip over. I could not bring myself to argue against her caution. “I have been feeling a bit indisposed for several days,” I admitted. “I thought it was just the heat—I have been trying to drink plenty of water—but this is rather worse than before. I fear I may be ill, after all.”

This last I said with annoyance. Disease is the near-inevitable companion of every traveller, and I had made its acquaintance far too often for my liking. Illness would take me away from my work, making me look weak in the eyes of the men I was trying to impress.

But I had also seen what happened when I attempted to work through illness. I did not want to drive myself to collapse.

Mahira said, “Would you like me to call my own physician to attend you?”

“Oh, no,” I said hastily. “That won't be necessary.”

“I assure you, it is no trouble. And she is very knowledgeable.”

The pronoun pulled me up short. “She? Your physician is a woman?”

Mahira looked scandalized. “Do you think I would allow a man to examine my body?”

When she put it that way, I could hardly say that I took it for granted. As some of my readers may know, the first university in Akhia was founded by a woman—the mother of one of the caliphs—and apparently she had been in favour of training women physicians, so as to uphold propriety while also caring for the patient's health. It took another two hundred years for that vision to become a reality, and even now women physicians are not so common; but the wealthy and the pious often call upon their services.

I had to admit the notion held some appeal. Over the years I have been poked and prodded in a variety of embarrassing ways by male doctors; it might be a relief to consult a woman instead. “I would be grateful for her assistance,” I said.

Little did I know what I was unleashing with those words. When at last the whirlwind settled, I had somehow been transported from the honeyseeker enclosure to the women's quarters of the house, where I was laid upon a sopha and plied with cooling drinks. A serving girl fanned me, and I was not permitted to rise until the physician arrived—which she did with great alacrity, likely because of Mahira's status as the sheikh's sister.

She introduced herself as Nour bint Ahmad, and asked after my symptoms. “I have been very tired of late,” I admitted, “and sometimes dizzy; I have also had frequent headaches. It may only be heat exhaustion.”

But this was not enough for her exacting standards. She began to question me in detail, asking when I felt the symptoms most acutely, in what precise way they affected me, how long they lasted, and more. She took my pulse, examined my eyes and my tongue, and various other matters I will omit for the sake of propriety. (I do not mind being frank when it serves a purpose; but in this case it would not.)

As this interrogation wore on, I found myself feeling ashamed. I was startled by Nour's apparent acumen—and then, following that thought back to its source, I realized I had assumed that she, being a woman physician, would not be as knowledgeable or skilled as a man. It was, in short,
precisely
the kind of patronizing attitude I had suffered throughout my own career; and here I was, inflicting it in turn on a woman who knew more about the human body and its workings than I could ever aspire to. For heaven's sake: she had a university degree in the subject, which was far more than I could say for myself in my own field. Undoubtedly there are incompetent women physicians out there; but so, too, are there men who do not know a broken bone from a fever in the head. Despite Mahira's recommendation, I had judged Nour unfairly.

I wanted to apologize to her, but she did not know what I had been thinking; and if I had shown it in my behaviour, I could make up for it best by placing my confidence in her now. “At least it cannot be yellow fever,” I said when her questioning was done. “I have had that already.” Also dengue in the Melatan region and malaria after I left Phetayong, but those can be contracted more than once. Although Pensyth had supplied us with gin and tonic water as a preventative for malaria, it is far from foolproof.

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 well: 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.”

Perhaps my condition had dulled my wits; perhaps I was too preoccupied with the task of persuading Andrew. I had not heard the sounds behind me, and did not realize someone else had joined us until Tom said, “Poison? Are we talking about wyverns?”

“No,” Andrew said, rising. “We're talking about somebody poisoning Isabella.”

“And you,” I said hastily—which, in retrospect, was not the best way to soften Andrew's declaration. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Tom listened, appalled, as I outlined Nour's theory. “So that's why I got a special supper,” he muttered when I was done. “I
thought
that was unusually generous of the sheikh.”

Andrew said, “If Maazir
is
poisoning you, the sheikh will be disgraced. I don't think he's Aritat himself—but the Aritat hired him.”

“One worry at a time,” I said. “I have felt no particular improvement in my condition yet—but I expect it will take more than one round of safe dining before change can occur. Can we come up with a reason not to go back there tomorrow?”

“Or just take food with you,” Andrew suggested. “The two of you closet yourselves away often enough; you can hide what Maazir brought in a basket or something, then feed it to the dragons when no one is looking.”

I stared at my brother in horror. “I most certainly shall not! We have no idea what such fare would do to a dragon—poisoned or not.” The thought of putting Lumpy at such risk, or any of the adult drakes, was appalling. If I were to experiment with their diets, I would do so in a controlled fashion, with full knowledge of the ingredients.