Excerpt from The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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.

Excerpted from The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le. Copyright © 2024 by Vanessa Le. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.