“Lieutenant Tiber? He’s here?”

“You know him?” Ebrooks looked surprised.

“Not really. I’ve heard of him.”

“What did you hear?”

“Oh, just rumors. He’s a noble’s son, isn’t he? Didn’t he go to the academy?”

“Who cares? Jumped-up bastards.” Kesey sounded disgusted that I’d even give it a thought. As far as they knew, I was a common soldier’s son, as they were. They expected me to share their disdain for officers who were born to that calling. That stung, but I nodded and went back to my food.

The potatoes were as overcooked at the carrots. The bread was good, though. I tore the bread and used the pieces to mop up the peppery broth.

I thought about the food, not about Tiber and the ambitions we had once shared. The jealousy of the old nobles’ sons had dashed his hopes. My brush with Speck magic had stolen mine. Ebrooks broke into my thoughts again. “What’d you ask the colonel?”

“I asked him if we could stockpile more coffins. We know the plague is going to come again. It comes every summer. And from what I can see, every summer, we run out of graves and coffins and the time to make more, and end up burying our dead in a trench. I just thought we could admit what happens, and have coffins ready. I’ve been doing my part. I dig a new grave every day.”

“Aye. See. I told you he wasn’t going to go off like Rheims did.” Ebrooks addressed this to Kesey.

“Who’s Rheims?” I demanded.

“Last fellow who had your job.” Kesey paused to suck noisily at the gaps in his teeth. “He come to town three times, begging the colonel to put someone else out there. Then he killed himself. Or so some say. Some fellows said they saw him dead over his gun, then come to town to report it. When they sent us out there to see, there wasn’t anything there. No gun, no body.”

“No blood?” I asked them.

They looked at one another and shrugged. They didn’t know. They probably hadn’t looked for it. I suspected they’d felt only relief at not having a body to bury. They weren’t curious in that way, I suppose. I’d met them the second time I’d come to the mess hall to eat. They’d sat down beside me and introduced themselves as gravediggers and caretakers of the cemetery in summer. The graveyard was the common bond that made us friends.

“Was his body ever found?” I asked. I expected that to be a negative.

Again, they exchanged a glance. “We found it. Finally. And we brought him back and buried him.”

“Where did you find it?” I felt resigned to having to pull the story from them a bit at a time.

Kesey ran his tongue over his teeth, then opened his mouth with a popping sound.

“The usual place. In a tree.”

“Someone stole his body and left it in a tree?”

“’Course in a tree. Where else?”