Valerius had changed into a simpler brown robe, though nothing so plain as his old drysian garb from his wandering days. The lemniscate he wore around his neck was made of gold now, but his staff was the same simple, worn one he’d always carried.

His arrival caused quite a stir. Tongue-tied acolytes bowed and led their unexpected guests through the offering hall and into a larger room beyond.

Twenty-seven people—most of them children—lay on pallets around the room, each dressed in a long nightshirt made of cheap linen.

“So many!” Alec exclaimed softly, dismayed at the sight.

A drysian was at work over one of them, but it was a middle-aged, balding priest in green vestments who hurried in to greet them. “Brother Valerius! What brings you here?” He gave the rest of them a puzzled look, too.

Valerius wasted no time on pleasantries. Fixing the man with a dark look, he said, “I’m told there’s some new ailment going through the Lower City, but it came to me from these men, rather than one of you. Why is that?”

The priest seemed to shrink a little under that hard gaze. “We’ve been dealing with it, Brother, and saw no reason to trouble you—”

“Or attract the vicegerent’s notice? There have already been a few found up above. Fetch me water and clean rags.”

The priest gestured to the acolytes, who scurried away.

Valerius began his examination of the stricken, touching them with remarkable gentleness and skill. Meanwhile, Seregil knelt down by one of the few adults, an emaciated old woman with chapped, large-knuckled hands that spoke of a hard life. Her rheumy eyes were fixed; her chest barely stirred.

Across the room, Alec was looking at a tall, sharp-featured young man not much younger than himself. “This is Long Nais, the keek.”

“The what?” asked the priest.

“A kind of footpad, one really good at locks,” Alec told him.

Seregil joined him and looked down at the prone figure. “Yes, that’s him, all right. Odd finding him here among the likes of these others.”

“Tell me what you know,” Valerius ordered the cowering priest as he moved slowly among the sleepers.

“We’ve never seen the like, and nothing we do brings them around, Brother,” the man told him. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it that I can make out: young, old, men, women, children. The only thing they have in common is that they are all poor.”

“There are more children than adults,” Alec noted.

Valerius nodded and turned back to the priest. “How many have you seen so far?”

“There are reports of seventy-two dead since the beginning of the summer, and what you see here. And those are only the ones we know about.”

“It only strikes the wretched?”

“So far, Brother.”

A young drysian woman came forward hesitantly. “If I may, Brother Senus, there is what I was telling you yesterday.”