"And you think Rosalind died from a quick-kill germ?"

"You said she was perfectly healthy a few hours ago. Natural throat infections don't develop that fast."

Silence. For the first time, Annah seemed to realize she was holding my hand; she looked down, saw her fingers clasping mine, and let go. Flustered, she turned away. Her voice sounded muffled as she said, "Who did it? Enemies of the girl's mother?"

"Most likely. Some of the Ring's rivals go back centuries: the Omerta… the Sons of the Black Czar… the Third Hand of Allah… they all originated in OldTech times. Any of those groups could have pilfered bacteria from a germ warfare lab while OldTech civilization was crumbling. Toward the end, military security was practically nonexistent. You must have heard about that group who stole an H-bomb and tried to blow up London."

"But they were stopped by the Spark Lords," Annah said. "That was the first time the Lords ever made an appearance. Then Spark Royal began the big purge-getting rid of the bombs, poison gas, everything. They eradicated mass weapons; that's one reason the Sparks claim they have a right to rule."

I shrugged. "There's a difference between finding huge nuclear missiles stuck in stationary silos and finding a single Petri dish containing a super-diphtheria. It's possible someone kept a germ culture alive all these years without Spark Royal knowing. Only using the germs for very special executions."

Annah shuddered. "I wish I didn't believe you-I wish I thought people couldn't be vicious enough to kill an innocent girl just to hurt her mother. But I know all too well…" She stopped herself, lowered her eyes, then crossed the floor and dropped into her chair. "It wouldn't have been hard to plant something in Rosalind's room. Probably tonight while we were at dinner; by then, most of the house staff had left for the weekend, so someone could sneak in without being seen."

"Right," I said. "An assassin would just have to rub some germs on the girl's toothbrush. The rim of her water glass. Any food she kept in the room. No difficulty at all; Feliss has never been a high-security institution."

"I used to think that was one of its charms." Annah let her head fall back against the chair. "Are we infected too?"

"Neither of us touched anything, and we didn't stay long in the room. We should be safe."

"We didn't inhale it from the air?"

I shook my head. "OldTech scientists weren't totally deranged!-they didn't want to release something so impossible to contain that it might destroy the human race. An airborne germ would just be too risky; better to have a short-lived aerosol, or something thick and creamy that could be poured down on enemies like rain."

"The white stuff in Rosalind's nose."

I nodded. Now was not the time to mention that even a curds-and-cream disease was insanely dangerous. Fluids had a way of sinking into the water table… and water flowed into the sea. Furthermore, once you'd visited a disease on your enemies, those enemies could grow cultures of the same germ from infected cadavers. Next thing you knew, saboteurs would be dumping the stuff on you. OldTech scientists devoted a lot of ingenuity toward getting around that basic dilemma-making germs that couldn't live outside the human body, and germs that stopped reproducing within a few hours so they couldn't spread or be cultivated-but nothing was ever foolproof. Which is why (God is merciful) no OldTech nation ever attempted a large-scale deployment of bioweapons.

"There's another reason," I said, "why I doubt the disease is too virulent. If rivals of the Ring of Knives started an epidemic, the Sparks would declare total war. One hundred percent annihilation of those responsible for the plague-the killers, whoever hired them, all known associates, all associates of the associates, the seamstress who hemmed their trousers, and the boy who delivered their coal. The Spark Lords are ruthless, and when they call themselves Protectors of Humanity they mean it. Whatever criminal clan killed poor Rosalind, I can't imagine they're crazy enough to antagonize the Sparks over a sixteen-year-old girl."

Annah lifted her head, large brown eyes looking up at me. "You underestimate the craziness of criminals." She spoke in a low voice. "There are people who think they're so clever they can get away with anything, even if it's outwitting the Sparks… and others who don't care if they get caught, as long as they first have the pleasure of causing pain… and even a few who believe revenge is more important than life itself-an absolute necessity, a religious imperative, taking vengeance no matter the consequences to friends and family."

I wanted to ask how she knew such things-quiet intense Annah-but I couldn't think how to phrase the question. She even waited for me to speak… but when I didn't, she just got out of her chair. "I'm going to wash my hands. I didn't touch anything, but I'm going to wash."

She held out her hand to me. In retrospect, it was an odd thing to do if she thought she might have deadly microbes on her fingers; but at the time, her gesture seemed perfectly natural. I took the offered hand and we went into her small bathroom together.

We washed for a long time. Without saying a word. Perhaps we weren't soaping off germs, but death itself. The smell of it. The cruelty. The sight of a dead sixteen-year-old lying bare, cold, and cooling because she happened to have the wrong mother.

We washed and washed and washed. The more lye, the better.

Annah checked her other girls. While she went from room to room making sleepy teenagers open their mouths and say, "Ahh!", I stuffed towels into the crack under Rosalind's door. However much I believed no microbes would ooze out, it was foolish to take chances. Eventually we'd have to incinerate Rosalind's entire room, preferably with the Caryatid supervising the flames… but that had to wait. If this was an OldTech bioweapon, we couldn't destroy the evidence until the Spark Lords had examined it.

We didn't want to upset the Sparks; they were a greater hazard to one's health than any disease. Besides, I truly didn't think the clotted-cream deposits in Rosalind's throat were overly contagious. Otherwise, I wouldn't have let Annah make the rounds of girls on her floor-I'd have locked us both into quarantine.

But I believed Annah and I were clean… thanks in part to the Caryatid's sort of a prophecy kind of thing. I was doomed to go questing-ergo, no illness would keep me home. In fact, the quest would almost certainly be a result of Rosalind's death; the only question was how that would come about.

I looked down the hall in Annah's direction. She was talking now to a seventeen-year-old named Fatima Nouri-a distant cousin of mine, though we'd never met before Fatima came to Feliss. (The Nouris controlled most of the power and money in Ka'aba province on the east side of the Red Sea, while my own family dominated Sheba on the west. Every generation, a diplomatic marriage was arranged between a Nouri and a Dhubhai as a gesture of goodwill… and as a way to plant spies in each other's camps.) I pushed the towels a little farther under Rosalind's door, then walked down to talk with my cousin.

Annah said nothing as I approached. Fatima grinned broadly, looking back and forth between Annah and me as if she was sure we were lovers-why else would we be together in the middle of the night? I could tell young Fatima was mentally composing a letter home: "Ooo, Cousin Philemon has a girlfriend. A dark and delicate houri." But let the girl gloat; let her flash her saucy grin as long as she could. She didn't know what had happened to Rosalind… and when my lascivious but decent-hearted cousin learned the truth, she would weep for days.