The outer town around the fort was a mixture of old shacks and hasty new construction, interspersed with collapsed remnants of earlier efforts at housing. The smells and sounds of dense human population surrounded us. Cart and foot traffic vied with one another at the intersections of the rutted, mucky roads. A bony woman in a faded dress and a tattered shawl gripped two small children by the hands as she hurried along the windy street. The children wore no shoes. One was bawling loudly. Hitch nodded his head at them. “Prisoner’s family. Free workers live in this part of town. Poorer than dirt, for the most part.”

At the next corner, I was shocked to see two Speck men sitting cross-legged. They wore wide brimmed hats of woven bark and castoff rags. The begging hands they reached out to passersby were disfigured with peeling blisters. “Tobacco addicts,” Hitch told me. “That’s about the only thing that makes a Speck leave the forest. They can’t take direct sunlight, you know. Used to be a lot more of them, but a lot of them caught a cough and died last winter. We’re not supposed to sell or trade tobacco to Specks, but everyone does. You can get just about any Speck-made thing you want for tobacco.”

“This place is even worse of a slum than Franner’s Bend,” I observed. “All of this will need to be razed if Gettys is ever to become a proper city.”

“Gettys will never be a city. None of this will last,” Hitch pronounced. “The Specks resist it with every bit of magic they can muster. That’s why it can’t prosper. The Specks dance to make it fail. For five years now, they have danced. No town can stand against that. It will wither and die and go back to the earth. Wait a day or two. You’ll start to feel it, too.”

His words were no stranger than many of the things he had told me over the last couple of days. I only wished I knew how many to give credence to. The tales and admonitions he offered me were sometimes so far-fetched, it seemed it must be the fever talking rather than a rational man. I now felt that he knew more of me than I’d ever shared with anyone, and that I knew far more of him than I was comfortable with. Even so, he remained a stranger to me, for I wondered who he would be if I removed the fever that both clouded and colored his thoughts.

We drew curious glances from the people in the streets. Their attention lingered on Hitch slouching in his saddle as much as they did the fat man on the big horse. I soon discovered one advantage to Clove and that was that people gave way to him. Even in the crowded marketplace, the gathered folk parted to let us pass. Renegade and his burden followed in our wake.

We came to the older, more prosperous section of Gettys. The main street was lined with stores and warehouses. Their proprietors had smelled a profit to be made off this ragtag town, and come east to take advantage of it. Their dwellings were neatly maintained and tightly roofed, with glass windows and rain gutters and sheltered porches. The side streets were straight, and I glimpsed well-built if poorly maintained houses. “The cavalla families live here,” Hitch told me. “This part of town was built a long time ago. Before the Specks turned against us.” Outside a tavern four men in cavalla uniforms sat on a bench, smoking and talking. They were all thin and hollow-eyed. I stared at them for a moment, and then grasped the reality of something I’d known for years. Plague regularly swept through this town. Most of the regiment would be plague survivors. We rode past a bake house, the clay ovens bulging from the side of the structure out into the street. For a few moments we were warmer as we passed. The aroma of fresh bread assailed me so strongly I nearly tumbled from Clove’s back. I imagined it so strongly that I could feel the chewy texture on my tongue, taste the golden butter that would melt as I troweled it onto the bread, even the rasp of the crust against my teeth. I gritted my teeth and rode on. Later, I promised my rumbling gut. Later.

We reached the wooden palisade. The skinned logs had been set vertically in the ground. Weathering had silvered them, and bits of moss and tiny plants had found purchase in the cracks. In a few places, ivylike vines were twining up the logs as if they were a trellis. The plants, I thought to myself, would devour those walls. Whoever had let them get started near the fort was a fool. The gates stood open, but the sentries on duty there possessed a military bearing that those at Franner’s Bend had lacked. I pulled in Clove, but Hitch lifted his head and rode around me. “Let us through,” he said gruffly. “I’m in a bad way and I need the doctor. And he’s with me.”

To my surprise, that was all that was needed. They did not salute the lieutenant or ask him any questions, but mutely nodded and let us pass. Renegade and Hitch had taken the lead and we followed. A few heads turned to mark our passage, but no one impeded us. They seemed unsurprised to see Lt. Hitch in such dismal condition. I merited longer stares than he got.

The inner Gettys disappointed me as much as the outside had. Instead of crack soldiers, I saw men who wore their uniforms with days of dust settled in the wrinkles, and frayed cuffs and stained shirtfronts. Some of them wore their hair longer than mine. I saw no one walking with purposefulness, no troops drilling, and felt no sense of military preparedness. The men on the streets looked listless and unhealthy. I had expected to endure the avid curiosity of their stares. Instead they regarded me with an almost bovine acceptance.

Lieutenant Hitch kept up his façade until we reached the doors of the infirmary. This structure appeared to be better maintained than the rest of the buildings inside the fort. I dismounted, exchanging the discomfort of riding for the new aches of standing on my own feet, and went to help Hitch.

“I can do it myself,” he said, and then fell off his horse. With difficulty, I kept him from hitting the street. He gave a soft caw of pain as I hauled his good arm over my shoulder and walked him into the infirmary. The front room was whitewashed with a single desk in it and a bench along the wall. A pale young soldier looked up at me in surprise. His uniform was badly fitted; his jacket, cut for a man with broad shoulders, drooped oddly over his concave chest. He did not look competent to be left in charge, but there was no one else there.

“Lieutenant Buel Hitch has been mauled by a wild cat. The wounds are badly infected. He needs a doctor’s skills right away.”

The boy’s eyes grew very wide. He looked down at the logbook and the two pens and inkwell carefully arranged on the bare desktop as if hoping to find some advice there. After a moment, he seemed to make a decision. “Follow me,” he said. He opened a door opposite the one I had entered by, and I found myself in a wardroom. There was a long row of beds along one wall. Only two were occupied. In one, a man was sleeping. In another, a man with his jaw bandaged stared disconsolately at the wall. “Put him on an empty bed,” my guide instructed me. “I’ll go fetch the doctor.”

Hitch roused himself slightly. “Get me Dowder. I’d rather have a drunk who knows what he’s doing than old Poker-up-his-ass, I’m-a-doctor-because-I-read-a-book Frye.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied, unsurprised, and hurried off to do as he was bid.

I sat him down on a tautly made bed. “You seem very familiar with this place.”

Hitch began fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. “Too familiar,” he agreed, but did not elaborate. As he worked his slow way down the row of buttons, he asked me, “Do you have a pen and paper?”

“Do I have what?”

He ignored my incredulous question. “Go borrow some from the desk. I’ll give you a note to the colonel. There’s no sense you waiting on me. They’ll be keeping me here a few days, I imagine.”

“Longer than that, I’m guessing.”