Ali sat on the edge of the bed.

  How do I tell him? she wondered.

  SEVASTOPOL, CRIMEA

  1855

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  Ali had adopted the guise of a nurse's aide working in a hospital. The air was filled with the anguished screams and moans of the suffering and dying.

  She wandered the aisles carrying a lantern at night, offering a sympathetic ear to lonely, suffering soldiers. The aroma of rotting corpses hung heavy in the air.

  Death was nothing new to Ali. She had born witness to it for over a thousand years.