Blissful calm came over her, unlike anything she’d felt since Davy’s death. The calm of certainty and purpose.

  Nick still on her hip, she followed the group to Vauntner’s bedroom. From the doorway, she watched Vauntner place the child on the bed and then step back to make room for Eli, who sat on the edge of the mattress. The two strangers bundled themselves into a corner, the older speaking softly to the younger in a language Mara had never heard. As she watched, he gestured to Eli, then toward the ceiling, then toward the bed, expression resolute if strained. When he went quiet, the younger closed his eyes and bowed his head, clasping his hands and pressing interlocked thumbs to his forehead, chest, and chin. A prayer to the three Sisters, unless Mara was mistaken.

  “Spider bite,” Vauntner said, his voice betraying the hint of a quaver. “Or snake. It’s difficult to tell. Their Provincial is rough and I don’t speak Trellish.”

  Eli set two fingers on the back of the child’s hand. After a breath, he shifted and rolled up the left pant leg to reveal swollen, reddened flesh. Only years of experience affecting calm preventing Mara from wincing at the sight, and the younger of the two men let out a ragged gasp and turned toward the other, who wrapped him in a hug, eyes flipping back and forth from Eli to the child, over and over, jaw so tense Mara was surprised she couldn’t hear teeth cracking.

  “Vauntner,” Mara said from the doorway. Everyone but Eli–and the unconscious child–startled and looked to her. “Do you have any more information you need to share with Eli about this situation?”

  Vauntner looked to Eli, whose focus was still on the child, then to her. “No.”

  “Then please take Nick and keep him entertained. I can help Eli.”

  Again, the younger man looked to Eli, who had finally turned his attention to the exchange, though his eyes were unfocused, and Mara knew he was only partially listening. But when Vauntner looked to him he nodded.

  Nick offered no protest when he was scooped from her arms, having spent hours the night before engaged in a lively game of fox and rabbit with Vauntner. Maybe someday she’d worry about how trusting her son was, but that was a problem for another time. For now, she was grateful for the freedom it offered her. Freedom that might very well mean the difference between life and the depths. This child needed more than a healer, even one as powerful as Eli. His magic required that the body have some natural defense. When none existed…

  “Not a physik in the making, I don’t think,” Eli said wryly as Vauntner fled with Nick and Mara joined him at the bed. The child appeared to be a girl, a bit older than Nick but not by much. Judging by her coloring–fair to the point that her bloodless skin resembled porcelain–she had no direct relationship to either of the two swarthy men in the corner. But they seemed to care for her as if she was their own. Mara’s mind tried to leave the straight path before her and run itself into the soft ground of empathy, wondering how she would feel if she was the one standing in the corner of a room while Nick lay sick and maybe dying.

  Forcefully, she pulled herself back to the problem at hand.

  “What can you tell?” she asked. Ordinarily, she’d be doing her own assessment. But with a healer on hand, she didn’t have to.

  “Can’t tell what bit her,” Eil said. “You speak Trellish?”

  Mara glanced over her shoulder at the two men. “No.”

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  “I’ll talk to them when I’m finished.”

  Understanding, Mara fell silent and let him focus. He had one hand on the child’s swollen leg, the other on her forehead. Mara took the time to remove the girl’s boots. By the time she finished, Eli was already sitting back.

  “It’s some kind of toxin. My guess is a spider. By the rate of tissue death, I’d say it’s about three days advanced. The toxin is in her blood and it’s starting to make its way into her organs. It’s damaged her liver and there’s something odd about the blood. It feels,” he frowned and shook his head, rubbing his fingers together as if trying to capture the sensation between them, “watery, I guess. Sort of thin, but also grainy? Like there’s clots, but I can’t tell where they’re coming from. I can fix the damage to her liver and I think I can do something about the issue with her blood. But if we don’t neutralize the toxin it’s just a bandage on a bigger problem. Not to mention the tissue death. Only so much I can do about that without taking her whole leg.”

  Mara pushed the child’s pant leg further up. The limb was swollen, from her toes to above her knee, the flesh dark red with streaks of purple. An area near her ankle clearly marked where she’d been bitten, but whatever telltale puncture marks there might have been had long since been replaced by ragged, rotting flesh, crusted with pus and clotted blood. The sweet smell of rot met Mara’s nose.

  “I don’t think taking the leg would help at this point.” Mara nodded toward the two men. “Talk to your friend. See what you can learn.”

  She hardly noticed him go, her mind already humming with possibilities.

  The most important question to answer was what had done this. She’d double check her Codex to be certain, but for this, at least, she didn’t need it. She knew most of the venomous creepy crawlies in the Provinces by heart–an obsession she’d formed when she was still studying at her mother’s knee.

  This far east, it wouldn’t be an Assassin Spider. North of the Ribbon, she could rule out all varieties of Striker snakes, and though there were a few species of Leafcrawler, none of their bites caused tissue death at the puncture site. With this kind of necrosis–and damage to her blood as Eli had said–that left two species of spider–Frostfoot and Glesh–and one type of snake–the Deadly Sleeper.

  The Sleeper had one telltale symptom that separated it from the others–bleeding of the mouth, eyelids, and genitals. Mara gently pulled back the child’s eyelids and saw nothing of concern, then pried open her mouth and peeled up her lips to inspect her gums and the inside of her mouth. The flesh there–normally a healthy red–was pale pink and dry, but didn’t appear to be bleeding.

  Not the Sleeper, then.

  Though their bites were indistinguishable by symptom, Frostfoot and Glesh spiders were wildly different in appearance and in the nature of their venom.

  Frostfoot spiders had bulbous brown bodies and white-tipped legs, thus the name. They were roughly the size of her thumbnail and built large, elaborate webs. Their venom could be countered with almost perfect efficacy with a combination of common herbs Mara knew she’d seen in the garden earlier.

  Glesh spiders were completely gray and, at their largest, roughly the size of a grain of rice. Fortunately, they were easy enough to avoid as their webs were thick, clumpy things that looked like a film of white slime. Their venom had no counter. Their only hope would be to keep the victim alive long enough to clear the venom, which didn’t seem likely in this case. It took five days at most, and if Eli’s estimate was right, and the bite was already three days old? This girl didn’t look like she had two more days of fight in her.

  Eli returned, the men following after him. In the shadow of the girl’s worried caretakers, Eli found her eyes.

  “Spider,” he said.

  “They see it? Notice anything about the web?”

  He nodded, and her heart thudded in her chest. Frostfoot. Please, Frostfoot. “Didn’t see the web, but they said the spider was about so big around,” he pinched his thumb and forefinger into a circle roughly the size of her thumbnail, and the breath went out of her in a woosh.

  “Anything else?” she asked around the upswell of cautious hope.

  “Big body, short legs. White feet.”

  She wanted to weep with relief, but didn’t dare in front of the poor men, who wouldn’t be able to tell relieved tears from distraught ones. So instead, she simply found the deep, steady calm of Eli’s gaze.

  “I know what to do.”