Chapter 1 (in the indigo woods)

                                    

                                          
"I'll tell you my name, if you tell me yours," the voice from the woods tickles my mind, whispered on the wings of yesterday's mist.
	"I'll tell you my name," echoes the whisper, through late night meals in the Empress' palace, cold leftovers from everyone's third meals, soup and water and buttered bread.
	"Tell me yours," it asks, following me skipping through the winding, high-arched hallways to the healers' wing.
	"I'll tell you my name" lurks with me around each patient's bedside, creaking in the seats I climb into, rustling in the gray sheets, rasping in the stitching of my skin-magic that mends cuts earned over the night.
	"If you tell me yours," the memory of the mist says, to the movement of Head Healer's cracked lips, explaining something crucial about the fighters who returned last night, none of which makes it into my ears.
	I nod to Head Healer, and she turns, her black gown sweeping the stone floors, gray fingers pulling a mask over her mouth. She disappears into her office, behind a crusty wood door at the end of the healers' wing.
	"I'll tell you my name" races up my heart and I run through my rounds in the healers' hall, checking all the patients in the rows of gray beds beneath moon-round windows, streaming sunbeams.
	My hands shake, "If you tell me yours." My skin magic pulls together gashes over elbows, backs of knees, bridges of noses--places where the joints of armor exposed thin mail or bare skin.
	The other night workers have already ended their shifts, having done most of the hard labor to fix up the sick and near dying soldiers.
	I get the late night/almost morning watches almost wholly to myself ever since a group of healers went out to the battlefront to learn field medicine practice. A part of me doesn't want them to return, it's nice being the only healer around, as opposed to the youngest.
	"I'll tell you my name, if you tell me yours," the woods behind the palace beckon me to come play, but after rounds of the main beds, I have to check on the long-term patients, down the stairs into the basement, sheltered from the windows.
	I pause beside Head Healer's door, ear against iron bars crossing vertical planks of wood, and her footsteps echo on the tile so she hasn't gone to bed yet.
	Slippers soft, I pad back across the length of the healers' hall, over mosaics of night beams striking down enemies, under the high arched ceilings glistening black. The healers' hall exits into the main hallway back to the kitchen, but tucked between two bookcases in the left corner on your way out, a stone arch takes you down to the basement. The spiral steps ooze damp; black moss grows; making the going treacherous. I ball my hands into fists, stepping between the sagging bookcases and squeezing my oversized smock against my sides.
	"I'll tell you my name, if you tell me yours." It makes my skin break out in goosebumps, gives my squishy steps sure footings.
	I'm supposed to check on the long term patients three times a shift, so I do, even if Head Healer's gone to bed early or I technically drag my shift late into the day, with no one supervising me. I do it three times a shift, but I can't ever see anything.
	I count the steps, hand tracing the outer wall. At fifteen I walk forward, and my knee strikes the edge of a cot. It vibrates. Quivering, I reach a hand down, touching cold skin. Hair. A pulse beats beneath me. I quest out with my skin magic, but can't determine anything about the occupant. But, they're alive. So I shuffle around the bed, onto the second one.
	We had four long-term patients last night. Tonight, there are three.
	"If you tell me yours," seems to whisper from the fourth bed, cold and empty. I don't know where the patient went; dead, healed--maybe that's what Head Healer told me.