“Thanks,” Zeyar mumbled, inhaling deeply.
Hasan didn’t say anything back.
Zeyar exhaled, blowing a thin stream of smoke into the air. With his eyes closed, he said, “I should have insisted that he make naumya before he left. If he’d been at full strength, he wouldn’t have been captured.”
Hasan’s stomach twisted around something sharp. He knew Zeyar had been affected?—how could he not be??—but he hadn’t imagined that his brother was shouldering blame alone.
“Neither of us knew,” he said. “How could we?”
“Well, I should have guessed,” Zeyar said, acid in his voice. “After all, I haven’t yet bribed all the police in the city. Just another weak spot I left open.”
“Zeyar?—”
“Don’t, Hasan. Just don’t.”
“Fine.” Hasan extended a hand. “At least give me a cigarette, then.”
That earned him a raised brow. “You hate smoking,” Zeyar said, but he gave Hasan a cigarette anyway.
That much was true. Hasan grimaced around the foul taste of tar. But he’d lost one elder brother, and all he wanted was to be with the other?—even if they didn’t know how to speak to each other without drawing blood. Cigarettes were safer than words. So, for the length of one cigarette, he sat with his brother, chest aching with grief, and inhaled smoke as the seconds turned to ash.
• • •
Two days later, the telephone rang again. Hasan picked it up on the second ring. On the other end of the line was Azha, a vasudhakt woman who served as one of the gang’s healers.
“I’ve got the twelfth crewmate,” she said. “Come quickly.”
Hasan and Zeyar wasted no time. Zeyar drove them toward the industrial sector of the city, where a plethora of makeshift healers’ dens had cropped up in response to the countless daily factory accidents. The air grew impossibly thicker, the stench of factory smoke clogging their lungs. Eventually, the backstreets grew too narrow, forcing them to get out and walk. Coal dust clung to the soles of Hasan’s shoes. Ahead of him, Zeyar meticulously avoided the oil-slick puddles, mouth twisted in distaste.
When they got to the healer’s, a dark-skinned woman in her thirties greeted them, her hair tied back into two tight braids.
“Azha,” Hasan greeted her. “Where is he?”
“With Madam,” Azha said. “The wound was infected. I needed her expertise.”
Zeyar and Hasan exchanged an uneasy glance. There was only one womanMadamcould be, and it was the last person they wanted involved right now: their mother. They’d both agreed not to tell her about the arrest until they’d settled on a plan of action, hoping to spare her?—and themselves?—for as long as possible. If she knew they had no plan, she would be merciless. Given that she had trained most of the healers affiliated with their gang, they should have known that there would be no excluding her for long.
Azha led the brothers into a den, the makeshift beds separated by an old curtain. Hasan yanked it aside, the curtain rings screeching against the bar.
Sure enough, Hasan’s mother sat tending to her patient, strands of her black-and-silver bun coming loose as she bent over him. Rohini Devar was a woman of middling height and a soft build, though none who knew her would ever describe her as such. She’d once been a fearsome fighter in the gang, her intuition sharper than her blades, but as Hasan and his brothers had taken over, she had retired to the countryside, where she’d repurposed her intimate knowledge of human anatomy to teach other women the basics of healing.
His ma straightened to see who had arrived, leaving the patient’s face clear: Paranjay’s first mate, Sunil. Surprise winded Hasan?—not because he was particularly shocked to see Sunil, but because he hadn’t realized he was harboring hope like a dagger in his boot, and that misguided optimism had just stabbed him in the foot. He’d known it was impossible for Paranjay to be anywhere but in the clutches of the police, but there had still been opportunity for a miracle.
Not anymore, not with Sunil lying in front of him. An ugly gash on the side of his head wept pus, the stench so putrid that Hasan gagged involuntarily. Sunil whipped his head up at the sound, catching sight of Hasan. A medley of emotions played across his face: shock, guilt, fear, and anger.
“You told them I was here?” he demanded. “What happened to patient confidentiality?”
“Unfortunately, you only get that in a real hospital,” Zeyar sneered, falling in line beside Hasan. “Why so nervous, Sunil? We aren’t the police.”
Sunil pressed his mouth into a flat line. “If you’re here to blame me for what happened, then don’t bother.”
“No one’s here to assign blame,” Zeyar said. “We want to know what happened.”
Sunil crossed his arms over his chest. “Swear you aren’t here to punish me.”
“We’d only punish you if you did something wrong.” Hasan narrowed his eyes. Sunil’s caginess reeked worse than his infected wound. “Got something to hide?”
Zeyar held up his hand. “You have my word. We won’t harm you. Now, tell us what happened.”
