“I’m sorry,” I said immediately.

“Of course you are! You should be. It was despicable. But being sorry doesn’t change anything about the shameful thing you’ve done. And your own poor little sister, all this time thinking you’d gone to your death, imagining your body rotting unburied in a ditch somewhere. How could you do that to us, Nevare? Why?”

And in that moment, all my excellent reasons suddenly seemed shallow and stupid and selfish. I tried them anyway. “I was afraid it would ruin your reputation if people knew you were related to me,” I said awkwardly.

“And I’ve always cared so much for my reputation and what other people thought of me!” she fumed at me. “Did you truly think I was so shallow as to put such things ahead of family, Nevare? You are my cousin! And you saved both Spink and me, at great risk to yourself. Do you think I would forget that, and shun you because of what the Speck magic has done to you?”

I hung my head. She had taken both my hands in hers, and that simple act of honest affection in the midst of her anger moved me terribly. I spoke simply. “Sometimes I think you need to be protected from your good intentions, Epiny. Now is one of those times. You may have the moral fiber not to care what others think of you. But what others think of you may well cost Spink a promotion, or you may find that other officers may not wish their children to play with yours. Think of what it would do to your status among the women you have championed if they found out you are related to a man they have accused of the two most heinous crimes that exist. I think you must know by now that I’ve been accused of murder.

Until I can prove I am innocent, I do not think our connection should be revealed.” I squeezed her hands affectionately, wincing at how thin her fingers felt, and then let them go.

“No, do not argue with me about this now,” I cautioned her when she opened her lips to speak. “I’m on a desperate mission tonight. The one man whose testimony could prove my innocence has just escaped premature burial. He’s what they call a ‘walker.’ He’s in my cabin recuperating, but he’s still very weak. I need to get a doctor to come out to see him. Or, failing that, I need to know what I can do to help him recover.

My life depends on this as well as his.” She began shaking her head slowly before I’d even finished speaking. At my final words, a look of despair crossed her face. She spoke softly. “I don’t know of anything you can do, Nevare, other than the obvious. Give him water and thin soup, if he will take it. I’ve seen one other ‘walker.’ A woman came into the infirmary tonight, trailing a shroud sheet. She begged us all to leave Gettys forever for the sake of her children. She begged us to make sure her children were taken safely west. Then she lay down and died again. Someone recognized her and went running for her husband. The poor man came racing to the infirmary in shock. He said she’d died hours earlier and he had put her body out. We had to tell him that she’d died again. Dr. Frye only made it worse when he tried to tell the man that his wife had never revived, that it had only been an evil Speck magic reanimating her body. I wanted to throttle the man.”