“Oh.” He struggled to his feet and shrugged the long cloak on, lifting the hood to cover his head. They thought he was Horde.

Was he?

“Drink,” one of them said, shoving a flask at him.

The water inside smelled brown. “Spit water,” they called it in the forests. But today spit water went down surprisingly smoothly. He drank half the flask before the Scab pulled it away.

Almost immediately his head began to clear some.

Was he really Horde?

“She wants to talk to you,” one of the men said. They led him to a small caravan with roughly twenty horses. The woman who came out to talk to him was dressed in a white tunic unlike any he’d seen, certainly nothing worn on the battlefield. She moved like swaying wheat.

Her eyes studied him from head to foot.

“Why do you wear your hair like this?” she asked. True, he didn’t have the dreadlocks so typical among Horde. Long wavy hair dirtied by the desert, but no locks.

“Does every man need to be cut from the same mold?” he asked.

The answer seemed to amuse her. “Are you married?”

Thomas stood there, scalp burning under the hood, and stared at the desert dweller, taken aback by her question. If he said yes, she might ask who his wife was, which could cause problems.

“No.”

She stepped up to him and searched his face. Her eyes were a dull gray, nearly white. Her cheeks were ashen.

She drew her hood back and exposed bleached hair. In that moment Thomas knew that this woman was propositioning him. But more, he knew that she was beautiful. He wasn’t sure if the sun had gotten to him or if the disease was eating his mind, but he found her attractive. Fascinating, at the very least. And no odor. In fact, he was sure that if he were somehow miraculously changed back into the Thomas with clear skin and green eyes, she would think his skin stank.

The sudden attraction caught him wholly off guard. Until this moment he’d never considered what a male Scab’s attraction to a female Scab felt like.

The woman reached a hand to his cheek and touched it. “I am Chelise.”

He was immobilized with indecision.

“I am . . . Roland.”

“Would you like to come with me, Roland?”

“I would, yes. But I first must complete my mission, and for that I need a horse.”

“Is that so? What is your mission?” She smiled seductively. “Are you a fierce warrior off to assassinate the murderer of men with all the other thugs?”

“As a matter of fact, I am an assassin.” He thought it might earn him respect, but she acted as if meeting assassins in the desert was a common thing. Unless she was referring to the search for him that was underway at this very moment.

“Who is this murderer of men?” he asked.