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 cogwork 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 fashion, 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 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 client’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 haircut 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, undoubtedly 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.

His home was smaller on the inside than it looked, the furniture 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 tinctures 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 whatnot … I want to know the scientific premise.”

She’d heard this disclaimer in some variation from all her clients. Nhika couldn’t blame them—coming from a technocratic city like Theumas, of course he had to renounce homeopathy for that shiny, modern medicine. But, with a contemptuous 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.

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 clients 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.

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.


Copyright © 2024 by Vanessa Le