Trapped

3: EATING HER CURDS-AND-WHEY

I stood outside Annah Khan's room, mustering the nerve to knock. Not that I was concerned about disturbing her at one in the morning — our musicmaster Annah was don of Ladies North 3, and in that capacity, she was obliged to accept crises during the wee hours. Heaven knows, I had people banging on my door after midnight several times a month: boys who wanted help with their lessons… boys who'd just had their first wet dream and were sure it was some horrid disease… boys who desperately needed to know if I believed in God (whichever particular God was weighing on their minds)… not to mention the future Duke Simon Westmarch who owned his own stethoscope and woke me at least once a week to listen to his heartbeat because this time he was positive it "had gone all funny." If I had to cope with such nonsense, why should any other don have it easy?

But Annah wasn't just any other don: she was a don who'd nursed a crush on me since we both arrived at the school ten years ago. A crush of operatic proportions, but conducted pianissimo. I'd catch her staring across the study hall with her huge brown eyes, wearing an expression so intense it seemed she might devour me… but when I talked to her, she barely answered. The few times I'd asked if she'd like to go for a walk — because she was certainly worth the attention, thirty-two years old and delicately lovely, like porcelain the color of coffee — she'd invented awkward excuses and practically fled the room. My psychic friend Myoko contended Annah didn't want me as a man at all; Annah wanted me as an object of Tragic Yearning, someone she could pine over from a distance while writing torrid sonatas for unaccompanied violin.

Therefore, knocking on Annah's door in the middle of the night was fraught with implications. In my then mental state (muddled with drink, and a touch hysterical over what I'd seen in the music room), I imagined she might react to my arrival in some extravagant way: screaming in terror perhaps… or shouting, "At long last, darling!" and throwing herself into my arms… or even letting the clothes drop from her body in naked surrender, a tear trickling down her cheek as she waited for me to slake my bestial appetites.

Or, I told myself, she could react like a real human being instead of some drunk's sexual fantasy — which meant she'd glare and say, "What the hell do you want at this hour?"

I knocked.

There was no noise within. All the rooms in the school's dormitories were moderately soundproof and the dons' suites deliberately more so — when a student and don had a heart-to-heart chat/sob/confession, it was best if such confidences weren't overheard by prying ears in the hall. The extra soundproofing was also useful when a don wanted to entertain company of a romantic nature without providing an audible show for snickering teenagers; and the teenagers liked the soundproofing too, since it meant they could sneak around after hours without the dons hearing. (Feliss Academy discreetly indulged interstudent liaisons. These were, after all, children of privilege; as education for later life, they were expected to dally with one another, provided they kept such affairs clandestine and Took Sensible Precautions.)

Ten seconds after I knocked, a light came to life on the other side of the door. I could see it through the peephole — not that the peephole was designed to let visitors see into the room, but I was standing in pitch blackness so it was easy to notice any illumination coming through the fish-eye lens. Annah had lit a candle or lamp. I composed myself in front of the peephole, trying to look sober and respectable… but I gave that up as soon as I realized the hall was too dark for Annah to see me, no matter how much she peeped through the viewer. All she could do was open the door; and a few seconds later, that's what she did, holding a rose-glassed kerosene lamp in her hand.

She'd been sleeping in a long white nightgown — not excessively sheer, but modest white cotton simply isn't equipped to hide warm dark skin completely. Over the top of the nightie, she'd donned a thicker brown robe but hadn't bothered to tie the belt; no doubt she'd assumed the knock came from one of her girls, some fifteen-year-old with a sore throat or a broken heart. Why would Annah fret about modesty under such circumstances?

When she saw it was me, she froze. Like a stage actor doing a double take: eyes going wide, body turning rigid. It almost made me laugh… but my nerves were so strained from the ghost-harp concerto, the laugh would have come out shrill. I swallowed the hysteria and simply said, "Annah."

My voice seemed to break the spell. Annah's hand flew to the lapel of her robe, ready to pull her clothes hastily shut; but then she let go, as if there was no point in covering up: as if some irredeemable damage had already been done. Instead, she moved the lamp toward my face, peering intently into my eyes. She said nothing. Just waiting.

"Annah," I said again. "I saw… I was coming back tonight and I heard… in the music room…"

Bollixed and tongue-tied. Wondering what thoughts were going through Annah's mind. She surely smelled the ale on my breath, not to mention on my coat and hair. I had the galling apprehension she saw me as a drunk turned amorous, on the prowl for some slap-and-tickle; I pictured her previous infatuation with me twisting into disdain, and though I'd been exasperated by her puppy-eyed glances, I didn't want to lose them this way. "Someone was playing the harp," I said. "A ghost. And there was blood. On my boot."

Stupidly, I held out my foot for her to examine. She never took her eyes off my face. My skin was turning clammy, my tongue stumbling over words. "I came here to ask if you knew about the ghost… or if there's someone in your classes, a girl who plays the harp, and maybe, if she died tonight, cared enough about the music that she'd play one final piece—"

Annah reached out and put her fingers to my mouth. Touching my lips, silencing me. Then she took my hand… drew me into the room… shut the door… set down the lamp… wrapped her arms around me and pulled my head into the curve of her shoulder where I blubbered into her hair.

Some time later, I pulled away. "Sorry," I said. I touched her hair where I'd pressed my face against it: the thick dark strands were damp with my ridiculous tears. "Sorry," I said again.

"Shock," she replied. A soft voice, but controlled. The Caryatid once told me Annah had trained as a singer, until some vocal coach informed her she'd never amount to much because she didn't have enough resonance in her head. Small sinuses or something. It tells you a lot about Annah that she took the coach's word and gave up immediately. It also tells you a lot that she turned straight to the violin instead… and to the oboe, the cello, the sitar, the celeste…

Music, one way or another. She'd known what she wanted to do with her life — what her calling was. I envied her.

Annah stepped back and studied me. For a moment, I worried she would revert to her habit of silent staring… but then she said, "Yes. Just shock. Delayed reaction. You think you saw a ghost?"

"I didn't see it; I heard it. In the music room."

She took another step back, then sat gracefully in a chair covered with a throw-cloth of red and yellow satin. Her eyes never left my face. "Tell me," Annah said.

I did… settling into a wooden rocking chair padded with a white wool quilt. It was positioned opposite Annah's seat — probably where girls from the dorm sat when pouring out their hearts. I felt sheepish being there. But she wasn't listening like a don forcing herself to endure the woes of a whiny adolescent; her eyes were bright and glistening, her whole body leaning forward to catch every word. And why not? A ghost in her music room. A man who came babbling to her door. A chance to embrace him and give silent comfort. Deliriously operatic stuff. However soberly she sat, her face shone.

"So," I finished a few minutes later, "I came to you. Because it's your music room. You'd know if there'd been hauntings before. But I also wanted to ask who played the harp. In your classes. If there's a girl so devoted to the instrument that when she died… that her ghost… not that I believe in ghosts… that some effect would make it look as if her ghost had gone to play all the things she never had time to learn…"

I stopped because Annah was nodding. "There is such a girl. Who cares deeply. Who has a gift. When she arrived at the school, she already played a number of instruments, so I set her to learning the harp. It's such a lovely instrument; I wanted to hear it played by someone who wouldn't just go by rote. Rosalind's still just starting, but you can tell—"

"Rosalind?" I interrupted. "Rosalind Tzekich?"

"Yes. You know her?"

"She's in my Math C."

Rosalind Tzekich. Sixteen years old, very quiet, very intense. Perhaps the same sort of girl Musicmaster Annah had been at that age, except that Rosalind had black hair cut in bangs, a Mediterranean complexion, and a plumpish body she hid under shapeless frayed-hem dresses. Compared to the stylish fashion-plates who populated our school, Rosalind stood out like a sack of onions… though she could probably buy and sell the entire families of many of our students.

Rosalind's mother, Elizabeth Tzekich — known also as Elsbeth the Bloody, Our Lady of Shadows, or Knife-Hand Liz — was the outlaw terror of Southern Europe… or at least one of the terrors, since Hispania, Romana, Hellene, and the Balkans all seemed to cultivate criminal organizations as profusely as olives. (The Black Hand. The Hidden Cry. The Circle of Friends. Each specializing in some form of ugliness, from extortion to smuggling to kidnap.)

Mother Tzekich ran a band of thugs called the Ring of Knives. They made their money through sleazy mod-and-aug operations in back alleys from Gibraltar to Jerusalem. Did you want a poison gland implanted in your tongue so you could murder someone with a single kiss? Did you want a winning smile and a constant halo of pheromones? Or maybe you just fantasized about looking younger, more svelte, better endowed. Your dreams could come true for a price: through surgery, through sorcery, through OldTech procedures that rewrote your genes. A number of patients died on the operating table, a number came out disfigured or blighted, and plenty emptied their purses for no results whatsoever; but a sufficient tally of customers got enough of what they wanted that the Ring of Knives grew and prospered.

Ambitious Mother Tzekich didn't rest on her laurels. After making a name in the slice'n'dice trade, the Ring branched into other realms of business: forcibly seizing enterprises run by other criminal clans. The resulting gang war shook the Mediterranean. Soon it escalated farther afield, as the Ring fought to expand east into Asia and west to the Americas. In skirmish after skirmish, the Ring never suffered a significant defeat — partly because Tzekich had a genius for choosing the right targets, and partly because the Ring decked out its people with subcutaneous armor, enhanced reflexes, and even (so the rumors went) genes spliced from nonhuman sources. Animals and aliens, plants and ETs.

So the Ring of Knives gashed its way around the planet. Rival gangs fought back without mercy: dons and capos and czars would stop at nothing to see Elizabeth Tzekich dead. All this time, Rosalind stayed with her mother; but after a close call with a bomb spraying OldTech neurotoxins, the girl had been sent away for her own protection, to a boarding school in Nankeen.

Then to Alice Springs.

Then Quito.

Then Brazzaville.

Then Port-au-Prince.

Now it was Feliss. Where the girl was expected to last another month or two before being hustled off in the dead of night, moved to another school on another continent to keep ahead of her mother's enemies. Rosalind's clothes were worn and threadbare because she'd been living out of suitcases since she was thirteen; her soul was worn and threadbare for the same reason.

As far as I knew, Rosalind had never tried to make friends at our school — why bother when she might be dragged away at any moment? She did her homework as a way to keep busy, but mostly she passed her time staring out the window. In the middle of class I'd glance in Rosalind's direction and she'd be gazing out at bare trees against the winter sky. Perhaps she was wondering if she'd stay long enough to see leaves on those trees; or perhaps she didn't ask such questions anymore: she just disengaged her mind and let minutes or hours roll by. I was glad to hear she had a passion for music… glad she cared about anything. Rosalind had struck me as a girl who might do nothing but stare out the window her entire life.

"We should check on her," I told Annah. "To see if she's all right. Do you know which dorm she's in?"

"Mine," Annah answered. "I asked for her especially. Because she was so good in music. She's just down the hall."

Annah stood, reaching down the front of her nightgown and pulling out a thin silver necklace. On the end was a pass key, similar to the one in my pocket. (Similar, but not identical — for the sake of propriety, my pass key didn't work on girls' rooms and Annah's didn't work on boys'.) I had to smile at the notion a pass key was so valuable one had to wear it on a chain close to one's heart… but that was just like Annah, going the extra distance to imbue tiny things with dramatic import.

She ducked her head and lifted off the necklace, squeezing the chain in her fist as she stepped to the door. I rose to follow. Annah turned… and for a moment there was something in the air, something she was going to say or do; I could see it pass through her mind, though I couldn't tell what it was. Maybe she was just going to say she wanted to check on Rosalind alone — to avoid embarrassment if the girl came to the door in her underwear. Or maybe Annah was thinking something quite different. In the end, she simply picked up the rose-glassed lamp and said, "Let's go."

By the time we knocked on Rosalind's door, tousle-haired heads had appeared up and down the hall. I suppose they'd been wakened a few minutes earlier, by my babbling in Annah's doorway… or perhaps they possessed some instinct for sensing trouble. Whatever the explanation, all the girls on the floor had got up to see what was happening. Now they peered out of their rooms, holding their nighties closed and squinting blearily as if they needed glasses. Most of them did.

Without looking at anyone in particular, Annah announced, "Well-bred ladies do not pry into another lady's affairs." Her voice had a stern edge I'd never heard before; I hadn't suspected her capable of it. Full of surprises, our Annah — I mentally kicked myself and resolved to stop underestimating her. She was, after all, an experienced teacher… and a teacher needs many different ways to speak to students.

This particular way was effective. All along the corridor, doors closed immediately.

Rosalind didn't answer our first knock. Annah knocked again, more sharply. "Rosalind dear, it's Professor Khan. Sorry to wake you, but could we see you a moment?"

Not a sound from inside. No light through the peephole.

"Of course," Annah murmured, "the poor girl might be afraid to open the door. It's the middle of the night; how does she know we aren't enemies trying to kidnap her?"

"In that case," I said, "she may try to shoot us through the door."

Annah met my gaze. Firearms were technically forbidden in the dorms, but parents often went to great lengths to make sure their children had an ample supply of concealed weapons. Especially parents like Elizabeth Tzekich.

Quietly, Annah and I moved to either side of the doorway, out of the line of fire.

Seconds passed. Annah knocked a third time. "Rosalind, please, we're worried about you. If you don't answer, we'll have to come in."

Still no response. Annah clutched her pass key and gave me a look; I nodded. Staying off to one side, Annah slipped the key into the lock. The dead-bolt slid back with a solid thunk. Annah took a deep breath, then gave the door a light shove.

Neither she nor I tried to peek around the door frame — just in case Rosalind really did have a shotgun or some other violent reception for unwelcome visitors. Three seconds later, I knew we didn't have to look… because a terrible smell of meat and excrement oozed into my nostrils.

I hadn't seen death all that often — I wasn't a surgeon, soldier, or in any other profession that regularly produced cadavers — but I came from a family where generations lived and died together in the same house.

When I was very young, I clutched my mother's leg as she and my great-grandfather washed the wrinkled skin of his just-dead wife, carefully preparing the old woman for burial. Several years later, that same great-grandfather died right in front of me; he was withering away from a cancerous mass in his belly, and toward the end, everyone in the house took turns reading him the Koran, around the clock, twenty-four hours a day. (For some, it was the first time we'd read the Book: Great-Granddad was the only genuine Believer in our family. The generation after his had all become adamant atheists for reasons they never discussed, and those of us born later were brought up in bland secularity… idly curious about the old ways, but never to the point where we considered prostrating ourselves when the muezzin called.) I was waiting my turn to take over the reading from Aunt Rahel when the breath slipped out of the old man and the smell of his loosened bowels filled the room. (My aunt immediately turned to the Opening, Al-Fatiha, and read, "In the name of Most Merciful Compassionate God: Praise be to God, the Lord of all Being; All-Merciful, All-Compassionate, the Master of the day of judgment. Thee only do we worship and of thee do we beg assistance. Guide us in the straight path, the way of the blessed — not of those who have earned Your wrath or those who have wandered astray." Only then did she look up and say, "He's gone.") And there were other deaths through the years, great-uncles and elderly cousins, a maid who drank poison (no one knew why), a gateman stabbed by a thief, the thief himself brought down by guard dogs and shot in cold blood by my grandma Khadija, a peasant boy who'd climbed our wall and was found floating in the fish pond (probably chased there by the dogs)… perhaps two or three dozen dead in all. Not a lot of corpses by many people's standards, but enough that I recognized the smell of a room where life had vanished.

Rosalind's room had that smell.

I glanced across at Annah. Her expression showed that she too recognized the odor of death. Even the oil lamp in her hands seemed aware of the smell — the lamp's flame burned brighter, fed by the gases of putrefaction. Or perhaps I just imagined that.

It's hard to describe how I felt at that moment — not calm, certainly, but neither was I falling apart. I'd already had my breakdown. And the smell from Rosalind's room wasn't a surprise… just the confirmation of something I'd suspected ever since I heard that harp.

If I was worried about anything, it was Annah. Her hand had begun to tremble; the lamp rattled in her grip, enough to send our shadows veering across the wall. I reached out and took the light from her. "Do you need to sit down?"

She didn't answer. Her other hand clutched the pass key so tightly, the metal must have dug into her palm. I took a step forward, opened my arms — intending to hold her the way she held me. But she shrank away. "No," Annah said. "No. Just… could you… you look. I'll be along. In a second."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'll be all right. Please go."

I stared at her a moment longer — stupidly affronted she wouldn't let me wrap her in my arms. But her body was clenched so tightly she looked like she might scream if I moved any closer. "All right," I said, "I'll go see what's happened. Call if you need me."

She gave the slightest hint of a nod. Not even looking in my direction.

With lamp in hand, I moved into the room. My first impression was how clean it looked — nothing strewn on the floor, no piles of books in the corner, not a single paper out on the desk. In my own section of the dorm, students kept their rooms more cluttered… even the boys who were taunted for being fastidious. Perhaps the difference was that my boys lived in their rooms; Rosalind Tzekich had simply been passing through. Beneath the window stood two modest carrying cases, as if the girl was packed and ready to go the instant her mother commanded. I could almost believe Rosalind locked her meager belongings in those cases every night, so there'd be no delay if she had to flee.

But now she was going nowhere.

Rosalind lay on her back in the bed: her plump body naked and spreadeagled, the sheets and blankets thrown open. I caught myself thinking, She looks so cold — splayed pale and exposed, as if she should be shivering in the dark chill. But she wasn't.

I crossed the room quickly, intending to cover the girl's corpse. Not just because she looked cold — it felt indecent for me to be seeing her breasts and bare pelvis, her lifeless legs spread obscenely wide. An unforgivable desecration. My hand was reaching for the blankets, my eyes locked on the girl's face to avoid looking at any other part of her…

…when I saw a gooey white nodule ooze from her left nostril.

My hand froze. I clenched my fingers. Drew the hand back without touching anything. Held the lamp closer to Rosalind's face.

The nodule reminded me of cottage cheese: a soft curdy nugget sodden with creamy white fluid. The same sort of fluid had run from her other nostril too — it glistened wetly on her upper lip. As I watched, another soft curd forced its way from her nose, like an insect egg being laid. The nugget balanced stickily for a moment, then slid off down her cheek. It left a damp trail on the girl's skin.

I retreated a step. Forced myself to be clinical as I ran my gaze over the naked corpse. No obvious cause of death: no bleeding, no bruises, no marks on the throat. There might be some wound I couldn't see, a stab or bullethole in her back, but I wasn't going to turn her over to check. I had the sudden suspicion it would be suicide to touch anything in this room. Certainly not poor Rosalind's body.

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out one of the pencils I always carried with me. Back to the girl's face, holding the light close. I teased the point of the pencil between the girl's lips and levered it between her teeth. The jaw was slack — no rigor mortis yet. When this was over, I'd have to check my reference books to see how soon after death the rigor sets in; that could tell me how recently Rosalind had died. In the meantime, I worked the pencil until I'd pried open her jaw.

The dead girl's mouth was half full of curds. Cottage cheese goo. A mass of it clogged her throat, and the mass was growing. I could see it expand, inching up the girl's tongue. (The tongue was swollen a dark ugly red.) In a few minutes, the white infestation would spill out and slop down her chin.

I didn't want to be here when that happened. The sight would make me sick.

But there was one other thing to check before I got out of the room: the girl's eyes. Their surface had begun to flatten — internal fluids seeping away, unable to keep enough pressure for normal roundness — but it was easy to see tiny red dots in the whites. Pinpricks of blood I knew were called ocular petechiae. Typically seen in cases of smothering and strangulation. As the dying body struggles for air, as the eyes bulge wide, small blood vessels pop under the strain. The results were those scarlet specks.

Whatever the white substance was in her mouth and nose, Rosalind Tzekich had choked to death on it. Silently. Unable to scream.

The end of my pencil was damp with the stuff. I threw the pencil down and kicked it under the bed.

"Some sort of disease?"

Annah had come in quietly. Her face was composed into careful blankness — no tears, no expression. She leaned over Rosalind and pulled lightly on my hand to bring the lamp closer. Annah's fingers felt cold where they touched me. "I've heard diphtheria produces a growth in your throat. Something that suffocates you."

"This isn't diphtheria," I said. "Not a natural strain anyway. Diphtheria doesn't grow so rampantly it oozes out your nose. Besides, a normal disease takes time to develop. Fever. Pain. Days of being sick. Rosalind was in my math class this afternoon and she looked fine."

"Yes." Annah stared down at the dead girl. "I sat with her at dinner. We talked about music — a few simple pieces by Bach she might be ready to play. She had a healthy appetite; a little distracted but in quite a good mood."

Annah reached out as if she were going to touch the girl: pat her cheek, straighten her hair. I grabbed Annah's hand and pulled it back… maybe too roughly, but this was no time for delicacy. "Don't touch," I said. "We should get out of here fast. Before we catch something."

"You said it wasn't a disease."

"I said it wasn't a natural disease. Let's go."

I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to nudge her toward the door. Annah's body had gone rigid, eyes still on Rosalind. "You think it's sorcery?"

"Sorcery is extraterrestrial science; I think this stuff is homegrown. A plague made by OldTech bioengineers: very human, very deadly. Annah, please, let's leave."

I took her hand in mine. This time, she let herself be led away. I closed the door behind us and made sure she locked it.

Back to Annah's room. It wasn't until we got there that I realized I was still holding her hand; when I tried to let go, she kept a solid grip. "What is it?" she asked, refusing to release me.

"What is what?"

"Inside Rosalind. What was coming out of her nose?" When I didn't answer right away, she squeezed my fingers impatiently. "You think you know, don't you? Something OldTech. Tell me."

I sighed. "When OldTech civilization began its breakdown, certain governments thought there'd be war. A big war. They couldn't believe everything would just fall apart quietly — if their world was ending, there had to be an apocalypse. Nothing else would give closure. Never mind that there was no reason for anyone to fight: nothing to fight over, no enemy you could shoot to fix the world's problems. People thought there'd be war. So military scientists worked day and night to develop weapons worthy of Armageddon. Including bioweapons: ultra-lethal diseases; virulent molds and fungi; deadly internal parasites."

Annah looked as if she didn't believe me. "It's true," I said. "They created plagues. Some designed to stay latent a long time until they'd infected huge chunks of the populace; others intended to be deadly fast. The slow ones were for terrorism, the fast for actual war: spread quick-kill microbes on your enemy's army and within hours there'd be no one to fight you. Ideally, they wanted the effects of the disease to be horrifyingly repugnant… demoralizing for those who didn't actually catch the bug."

"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.