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I did not trust my face to hold, so I looked at the lamp instead.

"Would it give me enough strength to kill him?"

I knew he knew who I was referencing without my saying it.

King Orsin. My mother's butcher.

"That is a different matter."

"Why?"

"Because placing it and waking it are not the same thing." He set his cup down. "Placing it makes you whole. Waking it makes you something else. One is medicine. The other is a decision."

"And you are not going to explain the difference."

"I will. Not tonight." He said it without apology. "Tonight you are foggy on a Western tonic and you would agree to anything."

"That is probably true,” I said without apology.

He stared just briefly, then burst into laughter. A low, rumbling laugh that made something in me go warm.

"So wait, you have it here, in Morrath?" I said.

"Aye."

"How?"

"I spent the past year making sure I had it."

He said it so casually that I knew that obtaining it was likely not a casual feat at all.

I sat with that. "How did you know I would need it?"

"I did not." He shrugged. "I knew only that your mother believed it would one day save your life, and that we owed her that. That was enough."

I studied him. "Simple as that?"

"Simple as that."

I pushed myself upright against the back of the chair. The room came with me and I immediately sank back down.

“It can make you foggy the first few treatments, apparently, but at this dose it shouldn’t last more than an hour or so, the healer told me,” Eravic said.

At this dose. That meant there were higher doses of this foul-tasting medicine. The thought made me shudder.

"Do you have any ale?"

He laughed again, this time loud enough that it filled the small space. "On the ship. I can bring you some next time."

"There will be a next time?"

"Yes. The more treatments, the better, is what I have been told.”

“And…the Arrolyn, once placed, will let me cross the wards?”

“Yes. But likely not far.” He leaned back. "Even with it, you are not strong enough to go all the way home. If you tried to walk out of Morrath tonight I would put money on ten paces."

I frowned. "Ten?"