Nolan nodded. “That’s her. She brought the virus in a vial of some sort—a perfume bottle, perhaps. Something she could open at the table and seem to accidentally spill so it splashed on you. I wasn’t there. I don’t know how she accomplished it.”

“She said it was medicine,” Chay said. He spoke very calmly, precisely, as if recalling an episode that held no particular significance for him. “She poured it into her dinner drink. But she miscalculated, and some of it dripped on me. She was very embarrassed.”

“That would be it, then,” Nolan said.

Chay spread his massive hands. “But I saw her sip from the drink. Surely, even to kill me, she would not be so reckless?”

“You don’t understand. It’s a selective virus. It strikes only the gulden. The indigo can eat it, drink it, rub it all over their faces, and it will have no effect on them. It was tailored.”

Chay nodded. “Ah. How did she know that such a brief contact with the virus would infect me? For of course I soaked up the spill immediately.”

“But I’ll wager your sleeve was wet. Or your trousers.” Chay nodded. Nolan went on, “And this particular germ thrives in a damp, warm place. You were probably at the restaurant another hour or so, while the sample festered against your skin.”

“Yes, as I recall, you’re correct. But I did not begin feeling ill for another two or three days.”

“And you probably won’t start feeling really bad for another few days. The virus has a slow gestation period, but it’s replicating and settling in throughout your body. In your lungs. In your liver. In your blood. Once you start to get very sick, you have a very short time to live.”

“I take it that this disease has been observed in other gulden, then?”

“Yes. At the prison. There have been several deaths among gulden men, all attributable to this virus. The disease followed a virtually identical course with each man. Between inoculation and demise was a matter of three to four weeks.”

“And were these men, too, deliberately infected?”

“From what I’ve been able to determine,” Nolan said, “yes.”

There was another profound silence in the room. Kit still had not said a word. She might as well have been turned to ice or stone; Nolan could not even feel the weight of her stare upon him anymore. He dared not do more than risk a sideways glance at her, for all his attention was focused on Chay Zanlan.

Who at last spoke again. “If this is true,” said the gulden leader, “it is a crime so heinous as to be almost incomprehensible.”

“I know,” Nolan said. “It took me a long time to comprehend it myself.”