As we went through the gate, the sentries exchanged a glance and then waved me through. Despite their freshly cleaned and pressed uniforms, they were not behaving like real guards. They were too busy craning their necks to see what was going on down the street. Up on the dais, someone was talking loudly, and his every pause was punctuated by applause. I glanced back over my shoulder. The Specks were separating, each going a different way. Did they see me look at them? Perhaps, for they all sprinted away like startled rabbits. If my suspicions needed any confirmation, that was enough. I gritted my teeth.

“Go left here,” Amzil said quietly. “We can get around the crowds that way. I want to get home as soon as possible.”

She guided me and we threaded our way through the back streets of the fort. I’d never really explored the area where the officers were housed; I’d never had reason to. The structures dated from the fort’s earlier days and were tidily built. Most of them seemed to have a fresh coat of paint, but that sprucing up could not completely disguise years of previous neglect. Wooden steps sagged, window shutters were missing slats, and the few gardens had the bare, brave look of fresh effort. The housing for the junior officers and their families was humbler and had not been as well built. “Pull in!” Amzil warned me, and at the corner of a street, I hauled Clove to a halt.

“I’ll get down here,” she said, “so Mistress Epiny does not see you dropping me off.” Before I could start to climb down to assist her, she gave a little jump and landed in the dust of the streets. Her skirts billowed out around her as she landed, and for a moment I had a glimpse of her stockinged ankles.

“Keep the children in,” I reminded her as I took up Clove’s reins.

“I will,” she promised and then, holding up a hand to bid me wait, she asked, “What are you going to do?”

I almost laughed. “I’m going back to the cemetery. I’ve got a lot of graves to dig. I may as well get started today.”

My words startled her. “You really do believe the Dust Dance will bring on the plague in the next few days.” Her brow furrowed. “Aren’t you going to warn Colonel Haren?”

“I saw him this morning. I had my say then, and he didn’t believe me. I doubt he’ll believe me now. He’d only be angry to find I’d defied his direct order and come back into town. I’m supposed to be hiding out in the cemetery so his visitors don’t see me. I’m an embarrassment to the regiment, you know.”

She squinted her eyes looking up at me. “Do you still care about things like that?”

“Of course I do.” I shook Clove’s reins. “I’m a soldier son.”

I guided Clove back through the streets the same way we had come. My mind seethed and my blood simmered with both unfocused anger and frustrated magic. My peoples were set on killing each other off. The moment I recognized that thought in my mind, I realized how much the magic had changed me. Not so long ago, I had belonged to only one people. At one time I would have shared Colonel Haren’s conviction that the road and trade would bring good to the Specks, and like him I would have rejected the idea that the trees could be anything more than trees. Yet the part of me that had been initially stolen and made Speck was now as integral to my self as the soldier son was. Every day, his memories surfaced more clearly in my mind. Removing those trees was the equivalent of burning all Gernian libraries. The Specks might go on without them, but they would lose their roots.

Yet at that moment I did not feel torn between my two peoples; my selves were united in how furious I was with both factions and how desperately I wished I could withdraw from them both entirely. We rattled through the near-empty back streets and toward the gate. The sentries annoyed me by stopping me.

“Where you headed, soldier?”

I was in no mood for their sudden vigilance. They’d let me in unchallenged, but would stop me on my way out? “Where do I always go? Back to the cemetery. It’s my post.”

They exchanged a glance and a nod. “Right. You may pass.”

I slapped the reins on Clove’s broad back, jolting him up to a trot. I left the fort behind and rattled my way out of town. Every time Clove tried to drop down to a walk, I nagged him on. I wanted the noise of the empty cart and the jostling and the dust. The violence of it suited my mood. As I left the town behind me, I urged him up to a canter. The cart jolted and bounded, bouncing in and out of potholes. I passed two struggling trees beside a failed farm. A flock of black-and-white croaker birds had found something dead by the trees. They rose, screaming their displeasure, as I careened past them.

I knew I invited disaster and didn’t care. The anger was building inside me and I longed to have an outlet for it. Everyone was acting in absolute certainty and righteousness. Was I the only one who could see how wrong both sides were? Destruction and death awaited everyone, and I saw no way to defuse any of it. The lack of a focus for my anger made it a churning, clawing dragon inside me.

Time after time, Tree Woman had insisted to me that the magic had chosen me because I was the one who could do something that would send my people away from these lands. Over and over, she had tried to wrangle from me what it was that I had done or was going to do. I’d always thought her eager for the destruction of my folk; now I wondered if she didn’t believe that driving the Gernian away was the only way to save us all. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps the only way to avoid the coming conflict was to make the Gernians retreat from the land of the People.

But I knew of nothing I could do to cause that. The coming month would bring me dozens of plague victims to bury, and would see the felling of the Specks’ ancestral trees. No one would triumph. The ancestor trees would fall and the Speck culture with them. The Gernians would fall to the disease the Speck had deliberately sown among them. Death, death, death for everyone. Magic thrummed in me, drumming through my veins with each beat of my heart, but I could not save a single soul from the misery ahead.

Clove tried to slow down again. Sweat streaked his back and flanks, and I felt shame for how hard I’d driven him for no good reason. The anger that had coursed through me suddenly subsided into hopelessness. I let him slow, and as the rattle of the cart decreased, my ears picked up the thunder of other hoofbeats. I glanced over my shoulder, and had a single, fleeting glimpse of mounted men coming up behind me, fast. I saw a muzzle flash.

Something was very wrong. I was breathing dust instead of air. A great crack had opened in my head, and light was pouring into my brain. It hurt. I tried to lift my hand to cover the crack, but my fingers only feebly twitched at dry dust. Every breath I sucked in pulled dust with it. I knew I should lift my head from the ground. It was too much trouble.

“Think he’s dead?” someone asked me. I couldn’t work my mouth. Someone answered for me.

“Good as dead. This could be big trouble. Damn it, Jace. Slowing him down is one thing. Killing him is another.”

“He was trying to get away. You seen how he run that horse. Hoster said he might try to get rid of it if we didn’t get it right away. I had to shoot.” Jace was angry, not repentant.

“Calm down. No one’s going to care if we prove he’s guilty.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill him. When he slowed, it spoiled my aim. His own damn fault for turning to look back at us.”

Someone else spoke. “I didn’t bargain for this. I’m sorry I got mixed up in this whole mess. I’m going back to town.”

“We all are,” the first voice decided. “Jace, you drive the cart.”