Tiphaine jumped and looked to her right. Someone snuck up on me without my noticing anything. I am sick. I am very sick.

“Oh!” said BD, coming out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a filthy rag. She was a weathered woman in her sixties, tough and thickset and moving as if she was still strong but creaked a bit. Tiphaine pushed up the visor and blinked in the non-light.

“Grand . . .”

She stopped at Tiphaine’s urgent gesture and said: “Well, well, well, what can I do for the nobility today?” BD’s voice was light but there was a bite in it. BD, Beatrize Dorothea, businesswoman, big wheel in the autonomous Kyklos villages, intelligence agent and enemy-become-ally of the Association. Witch.

“Little help with a problem shipping contaminated goods. Hoping you’ll be able to give me good advice. Someone in a kilt said you were the best for some sorts of problems.”

BD clicked her tongue and then waved Tiphaine to the side and ducked out a short door, down an alley, across a street and up some rickety stairs. The apartment was small and shabby, but comfortable and BD quickly drew the curtains over the window. The stairs left Tiphaine panting.

“What contamination?” she asked tersely. “It’s bad tradecraft for you to come and visit me like this.”

“I wouldn’t if it wasn’t urgent and I couldn’t make it seem ordinary. Because it isn’t ordinary. See . . .”

Tiphaine stripped off her right glove and hissed. The pus had soaked through the gauze pad and into the soft suede and dried. It tore as she pulled off the glove.

BD pushed her into a chair and pulled back a bit of the curtain. She took Tiphaine’s elbow and maneuvered the hand into the stream of sunlight. The long, weeping, inflamed welt stood out, gaping deep into the back of her hand. There were shiny white flashes peeking through the leaking sera, the pinpricks of blood and green and yellow pus. Tiphaine felt a dry gag at the back of her throat.

“I’ve seen . . . most things in the world,” she said. “I’ve had some wounds I considered extremely serious. But this makes me . . . ill. Why?”

BD looked up from the trauma at Tiphaine and frowned. She put a hand on the Grand Constable’s forehead and scowled.

“How long have you been running a fever?” she asked.

Tiphaine frowned right back. “A fever?” she asked. “How would I know? Or even notice, unless it was bad?”

“You’re an idiot, Lady d’Ath,” said BD. “I don’t know what you call bad—but it’s bad. Bide a wee. I’ll need some help, and you’re staying right here.”

“I can’t! I’ve got to be seen . . . I have business with that fool . . .”