The Fifth Healer

75.

Behind the Icarus door is a narrow spiral staircase winding through a cylindrical opening inside the wall. The circular space is no more than six feet across. Natural light spills in through cracks in the stairs above, and as we climb, it becomes clear that the top of the stairwell opens to the natural air on the roof. We stop, however, at the door on the tenth floor. Sliding it open, we find ourselves in the hidden doorway leading into the Chrono Council Chamber.

"Nice tats you got there," says Ainsley, indicating toward the diagram of the Kastro under my shirt. "You're like a human treasure map."

I sit on the throne at the top of the circular table opposite the locked main door. Not bad. There's a certain sense of, I don't know, I guess, power or prestige or something that comes from sitting in a high-backed, gold-encrusted chair. Papas lounges in the chair with such ease. I feel like it would take some getting used to.

I pull open the built-in drawer in the table, which turns out to be surprisingly wide, longer than my arm span, with a curved from that matches the edge of the council table. Inside the drawer are several objects I recognize, each with its own perfectly sized container carved into the wood. Matches. An extensive collection of sortie chips and dice. And the diptych. I open it and then pull out a match, preparing to strike it on the table, loosen the wax, and remove the existing samples.

"Wait!" says Ainsley. "Is this the right thing to do?"

"It's the right way for you to be cured of cancer. How is that not the right thing to do?"

"What about all those luminaries?"

I pause and sigh.

She continues, "Are we just going to replace all those samples? How is that fair to those amazing, well-deserving people?"

"Fine. What if we only replaced maybe...ten of them? Statistically speaking, if ten out of 144 were secretly yours, you'd be healed within about a week."

"But what if those ten all die because they never got healed? Wouldn't that make us, like, serial killers?"

I frown. "Not all the injuries are life-threatening."

"But still."

I spot a solitary vial inlaid in a carving in the drawer. I pick it up. Brass rims its circular mouth.

"Ah, look at this, there's already a hair in it," I say.

"You know whose?" she says.

"It must be Lora Fay's. The girl who's already been voted to be healed tomorrow. Remember, Papas melted her sample off the diptych during the council meet?"

She gives me a look that says she doesn't understand the significance of this.

"Think about it," I say. "We just swap in your hair with hers in this vial. Then you get healed, and only one luminary misses their healing."

She looks away, considering.

"Ainsley, you can be better in less than twenty-four hours. Think about that."

"What was wrong with Lora Fay, again?"

"Broken ribs," I say. I have a vague memory of there being some internal bleeding involved, too, but I don't want to burden Ainsley with guilt.

"Well, I guess that's not so bad," she says.

"It's only fair," I say. "Your cancer is terminal. Why should she be the one to get healed of something her body can eventually recover from on its own?"

"Yeah. All right."

I shut the drawer and reach out an open palm to Ainsley with mock formality. "A hair sample, please, madam?"

She bites her lower lip.

"What?" I say.

"Niko..."

I give her an I don't understand look.

"Niko, I'm bald."

My breath catches. God, I can't believe I forgot about that. "Oh no, I'm so sorry, Ainsley. What a careless thing to say."

Bowing her head, she draws her hands up to her face.

"Maybe a flake of skin?" I suggest gently. "A fingernail sliver?"

Her body pulses with one brief sob.

I tentatively reach out, unsure how to comfort her. My hands feel clunky and useless, like poorly made prosthetics.

"It's fine, it's fine," she says, waving me off. "I have a few eyebrow hairs left."

The way she says a few makes me feel bad for needing to take one.

She reaches up to her forehead, plucks, and then hands it to me.

I notice a second drawer underneath the first. I open it and find a vast collection of small glass vials inlaid in the wood in neat rows and columns, each containing some kind of biological sample. Doing some quick multiplication, I see it contains 147 samples. Odd. Everything else around here seems to come in groups of 144. A third drawer contains yet another collection of vials, this one the usual number 144.

"You really think that's it?" asks Ainsley. "We just put my eyebrow in the brass vial and wait for Papas to take it to the tower tomorrow at noon?"

"He said chronopathy is performed by combining the sun and time, right?" I say. "The tower combines the noon sun from the sundial with the time loss from the Fourths' sleep."

"And there's not, like, other steps to the healing?"

"Today in the tower, during the instatement thing, Papas had a sample from today's luminary in this vial, right?"

I shake the vial we both recognize from earlier. She nods.

I say, "Papas inserted this vial in the sundial. You, Niles, me and then Papas each turned it three hours. After that, he specifically said Marwin Kázmér had been healed. So yes, that's apparently the whole process."

She motions for me to continue. I pick up an ornate vial and drop in Ainsley's hair. Looking at her, I notice tears.

"You okay?"

She looks up with watery green eyes.

"Yeah. I'm happy, actually. I'm just overwhelmed. After all this time, you know? I'm...I'm going to be cured tomorrow. Think how many years I'll have now. Think how many experiences I'll be able to check off my list!"

"We'll check them off together," I say.

"Oh, Niko," she says, throwing her arms around me and squeezing me to the point of slight discomfort. Or it would be slight discomfort if I wasn't so happy.

"Thank you," she says. "Thank you, times a million."

"Eleven hours early, too!" I say, smiling.

"Let's get out of Athens. What do you say?" she asks.

"Wait. What about floor two?" I say.

"What about it?"

"It was the other floor marked in my tattoo."

She shrugs. "Yes. And?"

I squint at her. "Don't you...wanna know why?"

"What I want is to get out of this place."

"There must be an important reason only two floors were highlighted. Remember, it's-"

"Where we saw the raisin man, I know," she says. "But you can't get to it from the escaladder, remember? It's blocked off."

"What do you wanna bet," I say, pointing toward the hidden spiral staircase, "this dumps us right in the middle of the secrets on floor two?"

She folds my arms and sighs.

"Fine. If that staircase has a way onto floor two, I'll check it out with you. If not, we leave."