“Will they execute him, do you think?” he asked next.

“It’s possible, though I think it’s more likely they will keep him imprisoned, as long as Ariana Bayless believes she can still use him to bargain with you.”

Chay smiled thinly. “It is my guess,” he said coolly, “that she does not expect to have to bargain with me for very much longer.”

Kit digested that a moment in silence. “So your physicians have completed their tests.”

Chay nodded. “And I am well and truly infected with the virus.”

She felt a stab of fear plunge from her stomach up through her throat. “Can it be treated? Arrested?”

“They aren’t sure.”

The air was unbreathable; the sunlight had failed. “You mean—they think you are—it’s possible you could be dying?”

Chay nodded again. “They are experimenting with the prescriptions your friend brought. I am already on a regime of drugs. But we might not have caught the disease in time. It will be a week or more before we know.”

“But Chay,” she said, and could not find any words to complete the sentence.

He gave her a faint smile. “I know,” he said gently. “And there is worse news.”

“How is that possible?” she breathed.

“For Nolan Adelpho was right. The infection is highly contagious, and many of those I have spoken to in the past weeks have begun to develop its symptoms also.”

Now her body was alive with panic; her veins jumped with adrenaline. “And those they have spoken to—and those—?”

“Yes. It is a chain without an end, and its links spread in all directions. There is some hope that the drugs your friend brought us will arrest the disease in its early stages. We cannot know yet. And there is also a slim chance of good news.”

“What news?” she whispered.

“Among the papers he brought us was the formula for a vaccine. A preventative pill. My doctors are preparing quantities of that even now to duplicate and distribute throughout the nation. If we can inoculate everyone against this disease, we will have thwarted Ariana Bayless’s main ambition.”

“But if you die,” she said, still in that whisper, “the world may as well come to an end.”

“Not true,” he said briskly. “I can think of five men I would trust to take my place. I have no fears for Geldricht, but I have some concerns for my family. With me dead and Jex in prison, my nephew Girt would become head of the Zanlan clan, and he is not always the wise patriarch I would wish.”

Kit thought of the family slaughtered in the Lost City a few weeks ago. “He is not a thoughtful man,” she said. “And he is steeped in the oldest and most violent of Geldricht traditions.”