“This’ll tell yeh what yeh need to know in hours,” Mot said once he was finished, offering a smug, brown-toothed grin as they peered down at the greenish concoction.

“That’s amazing,” Kiva said to the elderly man, inhaling the sweet, floral aroma. “Thanks, Mot.”

“Yeh just let me know if yeh need anythin’ else, luv,” he replied, handing over the ladle and stretching his hunched back, the resulting cracking sounds making Kiva cringe. “These old bones can’t keep up with the dead yeh keep sendin’ my way. Best yeh figure out what this illness is before it takes us all, eh?”

“That’s the plan,” Kiva told him, just as Tipp stepped back through the quarantine door, sealing it behind him. The look on his face meant Kiva knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

“We lost a-a-another one.”

Kiva sighed. “Who?”

“A woman from the w-workrooms. I think she repairs the g-guards’ uniforms.” Tipp’s throat bobbed and he amended, “Repaired.”

Mot ran a hand over his balding head. “I’ll send someone ’round to get ’er.” He exhaled loudly. “Almost feel like I should leave someone ’ere to keep draggin’ ’em over when they drop, since it’s ’appening so often now. Did yeh know Grendel’s been asked to stoke the second furnace? Rooke made the request ’imself, so ’e must think this is enough of an epidemic to plan for extra burnin’.”

The Warden had made the right move, Kiva thought, since the last thing they needed was for the bodies to pile up in the morgue, especially if the illness was infectious. Even if it wasn’t, the dead couldn’t lie around rotting as they waited for their turn to be cremated. Best to get them out of the way and lessen the risk of other diseases beginning to spread because of mass decaying flesh.

“Tipp, can you walk Mot back to the morgue, and then head to the rats’ nest Grendel mentioned? We’ll need more for my next samples, so catch as many as you can carry,” Kiva said, thinking the young boy could use some fresh air and time away from the near-constant cloud of death over the infirmary.

His blue eyes brightened at the idea of hunting for more vermin—something that Kiva couldn’t begin to understand the thrill of, but perhaps that was because she wasn’t an eleven-year-old boy.

To Mot, Kiva gestured to the elixir and said, “Do I just mix this into their food?”

“Yeh can do that, sure, or in their water,” he said. “Or yeh can just shove it down their throats with a dropper.”

Kiva pulled a face at the contact that would require. “I think I’ll keep my distance, thanks.”

Mot laughed, a deep, wheezing sound that should have been repulsive but was instead almost comforting.