Oleander

XXI. Valerian (part three)

Smothering away her needling thoughts became overindulgence and then regret. After a night of fitful sleep, though she was certain her stomach held only bile and misery, her body fought to expel any drop of wine that lingered.

"They say that an evening touched by too many spirits borrows enjoyment from the next morning."

Lifting her head from the pot, Yalira glared at Rishi and the lilting cadence of her words. The queen perched at the edge of the bed, perfectly styled and at ease in Andar's chambers. Draped in colors of sea and silver, Rishi looked fresh as dawn. Yalira knew that she'd had just as much to drink at the party, and likely more in the privacy of her rooms, but where Rishi was flawlessly painted, Yalira was sour and sweating. She smeared a damp clump of straggling hair from her face. The injustice in their reactions filled her mouth with venom.

Or at least, more bile. The wit of her reply was lost in another bout of retching.

"And you're sure you want to go to the slums today?"

Yalira waited for the worst of the nausea to pass before nodding.

"I am meeting Theodis." Yalira rinsed her mouth with water and ginger. The latter of which had been given to one of her attendants by a sympathetic Edyt. Rishi had made a quiet quip that Edyt, of all the queens, would know all the best remedies for over imbibing. "He's not quite ready to see patients on his own, and I'd rather supervise him than have that odious man waving his knife around."

That odious man being the renown surgeon who'd attended Sasha's labor and left his eager student and protege, Theodis, to Yalira's deplorable teachings. It gave her petty pleasure each time Theodis wrote her with more questions, begged a moment of her time for another lesson.

Rishi was quick to drawl. "Escelpcius? I doubt he'd want anything to do with customers that cannot pay in gold."

In the forum, the surgeon had taken to countering each and every of her proposals with droning reference to tradition and citations to years of personal experience. He might have preferred patients who could afford his services, but Yalira knew the temptation of watching adversaries flounder was a reward of a unique value.

"Oh, he'd love an opportunity to bleed my patients half to death and pretend it was his knife and not my medicines that improved their symptoms." She attempted a sip of water against the roll and pitch of her insides.

Rishi groaned. "Healing talk. This is where I make my goodbyes, then." Her smile turned wicked as she stood. "Call on me this evening if you want more wine."

Yalira returned her head to the clay pot: the thought had soured her stomach.

Fortunately, her nausea passed with a few more pinches of ginger root and another small dose of time. Though her gut twisted as she and Theodis—and Gallus a horse-length behind—rode into the slums, Yalira's mind was clear. Fortunately, too, for Theodis had a list of questions he was determined to see answered. His mentor, it seemed, preferred to send him to seek his queries in the catalogs of ancient scrolls. A teacher willing to tolerate his endless curiosity sparked relentless enthusiasm.

"If the humors are to be in balance, should there not be internal vessels for each? We have found blood in the liver and yellow bile in the gallbladder, but I have yet to find an account for confirming the origin of black bile or phlegm."

"I'm afraid I do not know the answer," Yalira said after a moment. Her voice was soft. Apart from her own misgivings with the traditional view of bodily humors, Theodis's newest obsession revolved around topics in which she had no expertise. Vivisection. Though she was not unfamiliar with internal anatomy, and her healing knowledge had benefited from the practice, Yalira had no personal experience: Anatalis did not cut into the dying in search of answers. When life could not be saved, their emphasis centered on relieving suffering and easing that transition into Eheia's arms, the realm of the dead. The bloody insight gained at the edge of the blade left her stomach twisted and her nerves frayed. As the desecration of a corpse was punishable to the extremes of the law, post-mortem research was taboo, forbidden. But even with near-fatal doses of opium, she could not imagine the wisdom bought of torture was a just trade.