She blinked and focused on BD, standing in the door talking to a deepvoiced man. “Armand?” she asked.

BD turned and nodded. “He came to get you out of that tin can you wear. Thierry Renfrew came into camp yesterday and I’ve told him you’re quite ill and that nobody is to know. Conrad introduced us a while back, so he’s in the know. He’s taking over the camp as your second for now. When you can use a pen, you can write up the necessary documents for him.”

Tiphaine glared at the old woman, but it didn’t seem to work. BD gave her a small sour smile.

“When you can muster a real, glacial, Lady Death glare, then I’ll know you’re better.”

She took the aching hand in her own, a hand like a claw carved from horn, shaped by a generation of reins and tools.

“How did this happen?”

“As best I can make out, Mary Liu spit on her needle and touched me with it. And cursed me. While her eyes turned to something that looked like black tar.”

She met BD’s skeptical eyes defiantly.

“So, tell me the whole story,” said the woman. Tiphaine did, and BD went on: “You sure Fen House was clean? It is a prison in the middle of a lake.”

Tiphaine shook her aching head. “How do you know that?” she demanded.

“Don’t be an idiot, Grand Constable. I’m the spymaster for the Mackenzies, Bearkillers and Mount Angel. Of course I know what Fen House is. And where.”

“Oh, of course. No,” said Tiphaine. “No, it’s usually fairly clean. They scrub down every second day. Disinfectant. No lice. Even Norman hated lice, no matter how period they were, and he was the original Period Nazi. Rats and lice.”

“Everyone did, after the epidemics,” BD said grimly. “Nearly as many died of typhus as the Black Death.”

“Yeah, I remember. They scared even him, he couldn’t intimidate germs . . . I checked back with Stratson three times, now. She’s not scratched anybody else and nobody else who has gotten a scratch or burn has an infection like this.”

She hesitated and then gritted her teeth. “I’ve been very careful to touch nobody and burn all the dressings and anything it drips onto, but a dog snatched one of my gloves yesterday. I had a lance follow it. It died within an hour, bubbling green and yellow mucus out its nose and mouth. I made them use shovels to move it and burned it completely.”

“Well, you remember enough germ theory from before the Change to be useful. Sounds like you’ve been doing a good job keeping it from spreading. What have you been doing to your hand, itself?”