• ONE •

SOMEONE LIKE NHIKA, WITH HER FIDGETY SMILE

and frayed satchel of snake oils, didn’t belong in these streets.
In the Dog Borough near the harbor, she never would’ve
stood out in this attire, with her cropped sleeves and bare hands.
There, residents traded silk for cotton and wool, and the cog-
work of their automatons crackled with rust and crusted sea
salt. Here in the Horse Borough, women wrapped themselves
in tight silk dresses and men in boxy robes, concealing every
inch of skin with long gloves and high collars. It was the fash-
ion, stemming from the fear of people like her.
The myth of them, anyway.
People watched as she slipped by, this little soot stain in a
city of silvers and blues. Eyes didn’t linger; they gave her as
much space as she wanted. Paper-vendor automatons raised
newspapers on segmented arms as she passed, so clean that her
warped reflection greeted her in bronze. Today’s headline was
about the death of Congmi Industries’ founder, all the buzz in
Theumas despite being week-old news. This tabloid had made
a grasp at relevance by adding a bite of scandal to the headline:
accident or assassination?
Nhika checked the slip of paper in her hand again, nervous
about getting lost. In a planned city-state like Theumas, she

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 shouldn’t have worried. Every road had been numbered, the
cross streets alphabetized, but she would look a sorry scrap of
rags and tinctures if she showed up at the wrong door.
In the Horse Borough, the city was flatter, spread out. Not
so layered—­no boxlike homes stacked atop one another. Every
building demanded its own space, tall and painted, the awnings
curved in the style of pagodas. It wasn’t hard to find her cli-
ent’s home: one of many town houses, so even and identical—­
differentiated only by the wrought iron number nailed above
the door. They were a simple kind of elegance, with a tiled
roof and multiple stories and a balcony at the very top. With a
breath, she approached the door and knocked.
There was no immediate response. Nhika looked both ways
up and down the street, feeling exposed on the doorstep. So, she
waited as folks around here did, crossing her arms and tapping
her foot and trying to look like, maybe, with a shower and a hair-
cut and a complete change of clothes, she might’ve belonged.
At last the door opened, just a crack, caught on chain locks.
Through it, half a man peered at her, eye narrowed. He knew
who she was from a glance and ushered her in hastily, undoubt-
edly wanting her off his doorstep just as much as she did.
“We have a back entrance,” he muttered. His voice dripped
with disdain. Nhika had a great many retorts to use against him,
but a sharp tongue had never made her any chem. No, she had
other talents for that.
“My apologies,” she said, brushing past him. If he noticed
her sarcasm, he didn’t acknowledge it. They didn’t exchange
names. Their interaction would not require them.

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 His home was smaller on the inside than it looked, the furni-
ture made of dark, lacquered wood and inlaid with nacre. She
caught sight of a wall-­mounted rotary dial, too. Few were rich
enough to afford their own home telephones. As she observed
the twin place settings, the double armchairs, the two pairs of
shoes by the door, she understood why the house was so small
despite the man’s obvious wealth. She understood why he was
desperate enough to hire someone like her.
It was a home meant only for two, and one must’ve been on
their deathbed.
“Where is the patient?” she asked, holding her bag of tinc-
tures close as though she were a home doctor.
“Upstairs,” the man said, squeezing the thin scraggle of hair
on his chin. “Follow me.”
Nhika trailed the man to the stairs, glass clinking in her bag.
“Now, I’ll have you know, I don’t believe in this homeopathic
nonsense,” he insisted as they climbed, each hardwood step
creaking underfoot. “Whatever you use, your salves and what-
not . . . ​I want to know the scientific premise.”
She’d heard this disclaimer in some variation from all her cli-
ents. Nhika couldn’t blame them—­coming from a technocratic
city like Theumas, of course he had to renounce homeopa-
thy for that shiny, modern medicine. But, with a contemptu-
ous smile, she understood that somewhere, deep inside, he did
believe. He wouldn’t have sought her out otherwise.
Or perhaps the physicians had already written off this patient
as a lost cause, and he was desperate enough to hope that ginger
and ginseng could do a damn thing against death.

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 But of course they couldn’t.
That was Nhika’s secret—­well, one of many. She didn’t
believe in this homeopathic nonsense, either.
They came to a bedroom on the uppermost level, its curtains
flung open to look out onto the balcony. A woman slept alone on
the wide bed, wrapped beneath the heavy comforter. She looked
almost like an automaton in the making, with a skeletal frame
and catheters hanging out of her. A large boxlike machine sat
at the opposite side of her bed, slowly eating its command roll as
its cogs worked, dripping fluids and medicine through her lines.
The heavy breathing of its bellows filled the room.
Nhika approached the bed and the man sucked in a breath
through his teeth, as though about to change his mind and usher
her out the door. Perhaps he just now noticed her Yarongese
features: her golden-­brown skin, dark irises, and hair the color
of coffee rather than ink. Growing up in Theumas had wrung
some of the island influence out of her, but that didn’t deter cli-
ents from their paranoia. Nhika glanced back at him, awaiting
a verdict, and he held open a palm to let her approach.
She took a spot at the bedside to inspect the woman. The
patient held a placid expression, her eyes closed, and Nhika
might’ve thought she was napping if not for the mottled look of
her skin. Even for a Theuman, she was unusually pale.
This position was eerily familiar—­a memory pulled from
years ago, her at the bedside while her mother lay beneath a
thin sheet. Only, there weren’t so many catheters and machines,
just Nhika’s hand in hers, and her mother had never looked so
sallow, not even in death.

4•

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 She blinked out of her thoughts. “What’s happened here?”
“It began as chest pain, and one day she collapsed. Since
then, she hasn’t been the same—­weak, in pain. She’s asleep
now from all her medicine, but the doctors say it’s only to make
her comfortable. Not cure her. They say there’s no more hope,
but . . .” His gaze swept over the woman, his expression forlorn.
“I don’t believe that. We had plans. It’s not over.”
Nhika inched closer to the woman. “And what do the doctors
think it is?”
“A disease of the blood, probably from her mother’s side. But
her mother was never like this.” The man straightened his robe,
clearing his throat with the air of a scholar. “If I had to guess, I
would say it’s those invisible micromes, some form of onslaught
on her heart. We’d just gotten back from a trip out of the city.
Perhaps she contracted something there.”
He said this haughtily, and Nhika realized he didn’t know a
true lick of microme theory. He was just repeating words he’d
seen in the papers, or perhaps from the physicians. She could
say whatever she wanted, and he’d probably believe her.
Nhika rolled her neck. This would be easy.
“I’ll be doing my own exam now,” she said.
“No gloves?” he asked, the curl of his lip betraying his
suspicion. He wouldn’t have asked that question if she were
Theuman, but a touch from a Yarongese like her had become a
dangerous thing among the superstitious.
“I can’t feel a pulse through leather and, as you might’ve noticed,
I’m hardly in a position to afford silk,” she said. Nhika bit back the
bitterness; he was not the first to question her bare hands.

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 With a hesitant nod, he permitted her to work, and she feigned
a brief physical exam. Then she extended a hand toward the
woman’s neck—­slowly, to show she meant no harm. With two
fingers in the cradle of the jawline, it looked like she was taking
a pulse. And she was, but it was so much more than that.
With the interface of skin against skin at her fingertips, the
limitlessness of her awareness exploded forth, racing first across
the woman’s vascular system—­every vein and venule, branch-
ing and collapsing in waterways across the woman’s body—­and
then her nervous system, snapping from synapse to synapse as
electrical impulses did. Nhika layered herself into the woman’s
skeleton, wove herself into the vibrant workings of bone and
marrow, and then the muscular system, her consciousness pick-
ing through corded tissue and wrapped sinew.
Nhika felt the ghost of the woman’s pain mirrored in her own
chest, bursting against the rib cage. The pain expanded with
her empathy and she quelled them both, but not before she
learned the source of the injury. There was a mass of damaged
tissue staining the woman’s heart, starved of blood.
Nhika gleaned all this in a matter of seconds, less than it
required to take a pulse. When she drew her hand away, she
knew every ailment this woman had, could see the history
of this woman’s body etched in the unfurled tapestry of her
anatomy.
But she didn’t reveal any of that, because then even an idiot
such as her client could put two and two together. Even an idiot
could realize what Nhika truly was, something far worse than
a sham healer.

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 Instead, she opened her pouch of tinctures—­all just a couple
drops of aromatic oil in water. Placebos.
“For the pain, I suggest some licorice extract, either taken in tea
or directly as drops. As for the micromes, I would suggest—­”
What did she have in excess at the moment? “—­eucalyptus, applied
topically on the chest for a week.”
He nodded, and then seemed to remember he was a more
discerning gentleman. “What does it all do?”
“The licorice has a certain structure of carbon rings that syn-
apse with pain receptors to alleviate them,” she said, waving
a hand as if the details bored her. Now she was talking out of
her ass, too, drawing from words she’d seen in stolen textbooks.
“And the eucalyptus, well . . . ​It has natural anti-­micromial
properties. With my titer, it’s stronger than fermicillin.”
“Stronger than fermicillin?” he repeated, and suspicion snuck
into his voice. Had she pushed his ignorance too far?
“Fermicillin is made from mold, you see, so there’s lots of
processing to make sure it’s safe for human consumption. It’s
diluted, so to speak. But eucalyptus oil is all-­natural, so no need
to dilute its anti-­micromial properties.” She gave him an innoc-
uous smile, ready with the lie. “It’s a secret the drug manufac-
turers would kill me for divulging.”
That seemed to satisfy the man, and he nodded again, as
though she had made any sense at all. “How much do I owe
you?”
She pinched her chin, trying to discern how much she could
swindle from him. While he seemed desperate, an exorbitant
price might only deepen his doubt. So, maybe something

• 7

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 middling, just to get her to her next rent. “I want to see your wife
make a full recovery, so I’m willing to lower the price for such a
critical case.” Nhika looked back over the woman, corpselike in
her bed. She could heal her, truly, if she wanted. For a moment,
she had almost considered it. But her stomach flipped with hun-
ger, and she remembered that she couldn’t spare the energy.
“Fifty chem for the eucalyptus regimen, and I’ll lower it
to twenty for the licorice,” she decided. Nhika watched his
expression, half expecting him to accuse her of conning him
for chem. But his eyes held only resolution as he traipsed to the
bedside, taking the woman’s hands into his.
“Honya, love, I’ve found something that might help. It’s not
over.”
His frostiness had left him, replaced only by tenderness, lips
in a half smile and eyes soft. Nhika almost expected his love
alone to melt the paleness from the woman’s lips, to return the
rosiness to her skin. She looked away, biting the inside of her
cheek. When her eyes landed on the nightside table, she found
the woman’s doctor’s note, a misdiagnosis of hematic disease
alongside a question: Would you like to donate the body of   your loved
one toward the Santo Research Initiative? The man had marked No.
As she watched the man and his wife, sympathy wheedled
its way into her chest, but she dug her nails into her palms to
silence it. Nhika, no. Don’t fall for that.
But the man clearly had no one else.
Neither do you, and you haven’t the energy for this.
He’d pay her enough for a big dinner.
And if you get caught?

8•

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 She’d healed blocked vessels elsewhere in the body before.
She knew she could do it.
You’re going to heal her, aren’t you? Curse your wretched little heart.
Nhika placed a hand on the bedside, calling the man’s atten-
tion. “If you would, there is just one final physical examination
I’d like to conduct, just to make sure I’m not missing anything.”
He blinked, the words slow to catch. When they did, he stam-
mered, “Of course.”
“For the patient’s modesty, may I have the room?”
“I’m her husband,” he tutted.
“Well, then, to preserve the secrets of my trade.” She flashed
him a tight-­lipped smile. He seemed to weigh it, but only for a
moment, before relenting.
She walked him out of the room, closed the door behind him,
and drew the curtains over the windows. Once concealed from
snooping eyes, she settled at the bedside, turning her gaze to the
woman. “I pity you, poor thing. Having to be wed to a fool who
loves you.”
Then, eyes closed, she took the woman’s hand.
They connected, and she was once again privy to all the lay-
ers of her anatomy. Wading through the nausea of the woman’s
medications, Nhika teased her influence toward the heart, where
she tasted the acridness of dying tissue. There, she found the
offending ailment: a narrowed vessel, obstructed by a clot.
This, she could work with. When she was young, her grand-
mother had taught her on fat deposits and scabs. Then, her
father had formed a blockage like this deep in his leg. Now,
Nhika stretched her control first to the vasculature, where she

• 9

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 wrapped her influence around the clot. All she had to do was
force the clot to degrade—­after her grandmother’s tutelage,
it was second nature. However, she didn’t burn the woman’s
energy stores; her patient would need those to recuperate.
Instead, Nhika burned her own, feeling the core of her abdo-
men heat. The fire carved a path up her chest and through her
arm, warming the place where skin touched skin. She felt a
surge of power as her energy, raw and healthy, flooded into the
patient’s bloodstream.
It took a moment to reach the site of the heart, but as it did,
her influence strengthened, a fist tightened around the clot.
Nhika leveraged that influence, willing the clot to shrink: cells
bursting, fats shriveling, proteins dissolving. It followed her
command as surely as a trained muscle, the blockage withering
to rot as her own energy burned.
Next, she flitted to the damaged tissue of the heart, finding
it warped compared to the rest of the anatomy. It stood out
like a wrong note in a smooth melody, discordant every time
her influence passed by. She didn’t salvage what had already
died, but the muscle clung to its livelihood, and she bolstered it:
scaffolding the structure of the heart chamber, reinvigorating it
with electricity.
At last, Nhika pulled away, not daring to expend any more of
her own energy. But she’d done enough for the woman to recover.
She drew a deep breath to regain her grounding in the world
around her, her senses slow to return as they trickled through
a wall of nausea. The silk sheets came first, crisp underneath
her, and then the firmness of her feet against the floor. Her chest

10 •

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 deflated with fatigue and she felt the knot of hunger in her stom-
ach expand, reaching her skull as a headache.
She smoothed the hair out of her face, her palm coming away
with a sheen of sweat from the effort. “Your husband owes me a
great deal,” she huffed, mostly to herself. Through her fatigue,
Nhika smiled; it had been a while since she’d healed another.
This was what her ability had been meant to do, after all. It was
not, however, meant to be used in secret, hidden away behind
placebo oils and false examinations.
She stood shakily, drawing out tinctures of licorice and euca-
lyptus and leaving them at the bedside table. As she turned
to leave, the woman gave her first indication of life, a noise
in the back of her throat as she flinched. Nhika felt a bite of
jealousy—­that this illness had been so simple to heal, where her
mother’s had not.
She went for the door, but when she turned the handle the
man was already there, opening it from the other side. They
blinked dumbly at each other for a moment, and Nhika nar-
rowed her eyes, wondering how much he’d witnessed. He only
stepped past her and into the room.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Seems like you were correct about the micromes. The
tinctures I left on the table should work. I’ll leave a card with
instructions for their use.”
“And how much do I owe?”
“Seventy chem,” she said. As she watched him draw out his
wallet, her eyes narrowed.
Gloves. He wore gloves. Did he have those on before?

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 No—­she’d seen him hold his wife’s hand without them. And
now that she scanned him over a second time, she noticed how
his collar had been tightened around his neck and how he’d put
shoes on, even though they were indoors.
He handed her the chem and she snatched it a little too
quickly. Nhika backed toward the door, but he held out a gloved
hand to pause her.
“Won’t you teach me how to use the tonics?” he asked. He
was stalling. Had he called the constabulary? Did he suspect
what she was?
No, of course not. For people like him, her kind didn’t exist
anymore. He would be calling the constabulary on a myth. But
then again, he had been superstitious enough to hire a yarb
doctor.
“You’ll find it intuitive,” she said, inching toward the door. He
stepped forward. Would he grab her?
When she reached for the handle, he drew a kitchen knife
from the folds of his robe. His arms shook, his grip poor. Nhika
scowled, her fingers flexed in anticipation beneath her sleeve.
“What’s this?” she asked, forcing disinterest. Underneath it,
she hid the quiver of her hand, knowing she might have to use
her gift in a way her grandmother had never approved of.
“What did you do?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” he demanded, the trem-
bling of his jaw betraying his fear. Ah yes, fear—­the form his
gratitude took after she’d saved his wife from a sure death. Nhika
remembered now why she’d stopped bothering with the others,

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 why she’d left them with only placebos and tea oil. Wretched
little heart, indeed.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” she seethed, drawing back-
ward. “Do you mean Yarongese? Yes, my family is from the
island. A sham? Certainly not, you’ll find my methods tried
and true. Before you hurt yourself, sir, I’d advise you to put
down the knife.” That last part was more for her sake; she
didn’t want to sour her act of healing with an act of violence,
though she wouldn’t hesitate to defend herself, if it came to
that.
“No,” he said, jabbing the knife through the air. “I know what
you are. Bloodcarver.”
“Bloodcarver?” She scowled at the word. “There’s no such
thing.” Nhika was giving him a final out. A smarter man
would’ve known that bloodcarvers didn’t exist anymore, that
they were a breed that fell with the island. But the man’s igno-
rance was wide enough to come full circle and he was somehow,
miraculously, correct.
“I saw it, what you did to her,” he insisted, jerking the knife.
Well then, no point in keeping up the charade now. She eyed
the knife testily, but his stance and grip were noncommittal.
He’d probably never wielded a weapon in his life.
“I’ve been called many things,” she said, stepping forward.
He stumbled backward. “Witch. Liver eater. Necromancer.”
His knife arm shook and he held the small hilt with both
hands, as if her look alone could fling it from his grasp.
She glared at him, anger rising as a scowl. “But that might
be the most accurate one. Bloodcarver.” Now, she relished in the

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 fear, because if he could not show his thanks, what else could
he offer her but fear?
Nhika feinted forward, scaring him with a shout, and he fell
backward. Taking the opportunity, she threw herself at him,
hand clawing for his neck.
When they touched, she inlaid herself within his anatomy,
his body secondary to her own. For a moment, she considered
killing him instantly, burning all his fuel stores or stopping the
impulse of his heart—­
maybe something poetic, sadistic, a
blockage in the vessel just like the one she’d taken from his wife.
“What did you do to her?” he asked, voice hollow, and she hes-
itated. In his last moments, her hand around his neck, he was still
thinking about her. His knife slacked in his hand, but not from
her control—­it must have been acceptance, then, that she would
kill him. Yet the deep sadness in his eyes was not for himself. She
could not source something as ephemeral as love with her gift,
but now it poured from him like blood from an open wound, tor-
rential and infectious. For a moment, she almost wondered what
that must feel like, a love that weathered the threat of death.
Through the redness of her rage, she saw his longing, and it
stopped her from carving death into him. With a visceral growl,
she ripped the knife from his hand, drawing blood as the blade
caught her palm.
“I healed her,” she spat. “You idiot.”
A muffled pounding on the door downstairs drew her atten-
tion, and she pushed herself off the man. Another second and
she heard the front door slam open, followed by the sounds of
footsteps and shoved furniture.

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 Nhika raced to the windows. With a grunt, she yanked down
the curtains, pulling the rod from the ceiling. It crashed into the
medical machine, denting the box’s iron shell, but the woman
wouldn’t need that anymore. She threw a glance over her shoul-
der, finding the man trembling at the door, fingers massaging
his neck. He didn’t come for her.
Nhika kicked the door open and dragged the curtains to
the balcony. They were heavier than she’d expected, heavier
still from the fatigue that tugged at her muscles, but she hefted
the weight over her shoulder as it trailed broken glass. With a
heave, she tossed the bulk of the curtains over the railing, then
tied the end to the baluster. Across the street, curtains parted
behind windows, and she caught glimpses of the curious eyes
that watched her behind locked shutters.
Nhika positioned herself onto the curtain just as the constab-
ulary burst through the door.
Only, it wasn’t the constabulary. No blue uniform, no silver
trim. No service cap, no badges. Just bolas, wooden catchpoles,
and gold-­toothed smiles.
Her client had called in the Butchers.

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