I was scarcely listening to him. My mind was racing through solutions to my problem. I could leave tonight and seek refuge with the Specks. That solution held little appeal to me. I’d be abandoning all my friends, and they’d believe what Sergeant Hoster told them about me. I also didn’t relish the prospect of Olikea flaunting that she had told me so. But a darker fear was that by giving into the magic, I’d be setting my feet on the same path that Buel Hitch had followed. I didn’t want to become what he was now, a decent man distorted and tormented by the foreign magic that had infected him. I’d rather face a hanging than be herded like a sheep. I would not flee directly into the jaws of what threatened me.

I could see two alternatives. One was to keep laboring at the cemetery and hope that in the tragedy and the confusion of the plague, poor Fala’s murder would be forgotten. Yet Sergeant Hoster had promised me he’d never let that happen.

The sole hope I had of remaining in Gettys and escaping the noose was the man now reclining in my bed, talking in a voice that sounded ever vaguer.

“The youngsters, they say they have to make it a war in the way Gernians understand war. Maybe they’re right. They say that Kinrove’s dancing has failed, that all it has done is consume the best and strongest of them. They’re the younger generation, and they’ve got new ideas of how to deal with us. They don’t want to give up what they get from us; they like the trade we bring. But they don’t want us living here, and they’re tired of waiting for us to go away, and they won’t tolerate us cutting their ancestor trees. Some of them think the best solution would be open warfare, bloodshed that we’d understand, and taking what they want from us. You were the last best hope for avoiding that, Nevare. If you don’t do whatever it is you’re supposed to do, they’ll bring war down on us. And there are two things you should know about that: there’s a lot more Specks than the other scouts think there is. And they’d all be willing to die, down to the last child, to protect one ancestor tree.”

His voice had become a hoarse whisper. His eyes were drooping shut.

“Hitch?”

He had stopped speaking. He turned his head slightly toward me but didn’t open his eyes.

“Hitch, I’m going for help for you. Just lie there and rest. I’ll be back. I promise.”

He took a breath and sighed it out as if it would be his last. But then he spoke. “Don’t fight it, Never. It all goes easier if you don’t fight it. I’m not going to fight it anymore.”

“Hitch. I’ll be back.”

A very faint smile curved his lips. “I know you will.”

I wanted to run. I knew that if I did, I’d collapse long before I reached town. So I set off at the brisk walk that I thought I could sustain. The night was clear and the moon had risen. There was no color in the light it gave me, but the longer I walked, the more my eyes adjusted. That bit of moonlight and the feel of the road under my boots were enough to guide me.

I was tired to the bone. I’d had two solid days of hard physical labor, with only a sleepless night full of strange dreams to rest me. My back ached from all the digging I’d done. It was fear that drove me more than the desire to save Hitch’s life. I wanted him to live, but only because I hoped I could persuade him to confess to what he had done. It was a thin thread of hope, but I still believed that I knew the heart of the man. He’d done terrible things, if I were to believe his words, but in his heart he was still a soldier son, born to duty. If Hoster did accuse me, I didn’t think Hitch would stand idly by and watch me hang for something I hadn’t done. Would he put his own head in the noose to save me? That was a question I didn’t want to consider. I focused on the problem at hand; I had to keep him alive.

More than once on that long walk I cursed the men who had stolen Clove and my wagon. My big horse would have made nothing of this journey. When the lights of Gettys came into sight, I had to resist the urge to break into a run. I knew I had to pace myself. It seemed to me that more lights than usual burned in the windows for such a late hour. When I finally reached the town itself, I followed the main thoroughfare right up to the gates of the fort without seeing a living soul on the street. I passed three blanket-draped bodies set out in front of homes.

The annual invasion of the plague had created its own traditions for the town. The dead were put out almost as soon as they had expired for the corpse wagons that would make a circuit of the town three times a day until the plague season ended. People, I thought to myself, learned to cope; there was nothing so strange, so heartbreaking, or so horrifying that people could not eventually become accustomed to it.

The wooden walls of Gettys stood tall and black against the night sky. There was a lone sentry on the gate. A torch burned low in a sconce beside him, making inky shadows at his feet. He drew himself up straighter as I approached and then commanded me to “Halt!” When I did, he announced, “This post is under quarantine. No one may enter who is sick with the plague.”

“That’s the most useless measure I’ve ever heard!” I exclaimed. “There’s plague both in and outside the walls. What is the use of a quarantine now?”

He looked tired. “Colonel Haren gave the order before he took ill. And now that he’s dead and Major Elwig is raving with fever, there’s no one to rescind it. I’m only doing my duty.”

“And I’m doing the same. I’ve come in from the cemetery. And I’m not bringing any sickness that isn’t already here. Scout Buel Hitch was sent out on a corpse wagon a bit prematurely. I think that if a doctor could come to his aid, he might recover.”

He laughed. There was no joy in it, or even bitterness. He laughed because I so casually suggested the impossible. “The town doctor is dead. Both the regiment doctors are overwhelmed with the sick already. Neither will leave the infirmary to go to treat a single victim, regardless of who he is.”

“I have to try,” I said, and with a skeptical nod, he passed me through.

I found my way through the darkened post to the infirmary where I had brought Hitch on my first day in Gettys. Lanterns burned on either side of the entry. Outside it, a double row of draped bodies awaited the corpse wagons. I walked carefully around them and entered the building. The same boyish soldier who had greeted me the first day was asleep at the desk in the anteroom, his head pillowed on his arms on top of a thick book. Even in his sleep, he looked pale and frightened.

I knocked gently on the desk to awaken him. He lifted his head immediately, his mouth hanging slack. It took a moment for his eyes to focus. “Sir?” he asked me vaguely.

“Not ‘sir,’ just ‘soldier.’ I need a doctor for Scout Buel Hitch.”

He looked sleepily confused. “Scout Hitch is dead. I logged him into the record myself.” He gestured at the ledger he’d been using for a pillow.

“He revived at the cemetery. I think that he’ll live if he can get a doctor’s care.”

His eyes widened slightly. He sat up straighter and looked more alert. “Lieutenant Hitch is a walker? Ah. Well, if anyone would be, it would be him. But I doubt he’ll live. Walkers hardly ever live. They only revive for an hour or so, and then die again. Dr. Dowder and Dr. Frye argue about it all the time when Dr. Dowder is sober. Dowder says they just go into a deep coma, rally briefly, and then die. Frye says they really die and then come back. He wrote a big report for the queen about how the Speck magic makes them wake up a final time after their first death before they die their final death. She sent him a present for writing it. The big green ring he wears on his left hand.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

He looked a bit ashamed. “I don’t eavesdrop. The walls here are thin and they often shout at one another. They shout a lot, about everything. Today Dowder wanted to bring the sick prisoners here so that they could treat everyone in one place. Frye was angry about that. He says that soldiers shouldn’t have to die alongside felons. Dowder said that three infirmaries for two doctors is ridiculous. And he said that a sick man is a sick man and deserves to be treated as well as they can manage. They fight about the prisoners a lot. Almost all the prisoners who get sick die. They lime-pit the bodies from the prisoner barracks. Dowder says they should be given a decent burial.”