By the fourth hour after noon, the late-summer heat in the lower apothecary ward smelled of dried mugwort, boiled vinegar, and the coal-fires of the glassblowers’ lane two streets east. In the small, limewashed back check room of the herbalist’s shop where Mina had rented table space for the week, the shutters were hooked half-closed to keep the flies off the salve jars.
When Seyun walked in through the rear courtyard door carrying the twenty-two-pound Balance tablet across his bandaged forearms with Custodian Halen’s oiled parchment resting on top, both women in the room stood up at once.
“Give me that rock before you split the granulation tissue across your wrists!” Mina scolded right away. She stepped forward to lift the heavy grey limestone slab off his arms and set it with a solid thump on the lower shelf of the oak medicine dresser.
Ilyra, standing beside the narrow check table with her white sling neatly pinned across her chest and her bronze White Heron token hooked at her belt, picked up the folded square of yellow oiled parchment before it could slide off the stone. She unfolded the sheet with her good left hand. She tilted it toward the shuttered window light and read the cramped, left-sloping lines from top to bottom.
