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I turned to the back of the news sheet and saw a map of Lunar Island. It was larger than the one Master Ostrum and I had hung in the school lab, and it had more details on the northern villages. A list of names ran down the side, and I scanned for my parents, for my sister, for anyone from my village, but my eyes blurred. There were too many names to keep count.

“Make way!” A large cart parted an ocean of people walking toward the factories. Two draft horses pulled the wagon, and a driver sat on a raised seat. “Make way, make way,” he shouted impatiently. He finally broke through the crowd of people, and the empty wagon rattled on the cobblestones toward one of the factories.

It stopped at a three-story-tall warehouse with black draped over the windows. The man bellowed for someone to hurry up, and the doors opened.

I watched as people dragged bodies from the factory. They were thrown haphazardly onto the back of the cart, arms and legs spread wide, ashen faces staring in all directions with unblinking eyes. As soon as the wagon was full, the driver turned the cart around, driving it straight to a large ferry that had no seats or benches.

I watched from the road as the skipper and the driver dumped the bodies from the wagon and onto the boat. They were nearly done by the time I reached the dock. The skipper pushed off from the dock, his boat cutting through the water like a knife. I watched until I couldn’t see it anymore, even though I knew where it was going: the field Dilada had helped clear, the new grave where victims would be out of sight and out of mind. I wondered how many hundreds were there already, how many had been so swiftly forgotten.

Grey sat down beside me.

“Nedra?” he asked, leaning over to brush my hair from my face. “I thought you were going to wait for me at Yugen, that we would walk down here together.”

“Sorry,” I said hollowly. “I needed some time to think.”

He saw the news sheet in my hand. “I read about that this morning. Everyone’s talking about how the governor is sick. Tomus was going on and on about how the Emperor will take over if she dies.”

This is why citizens accused Governor Adelaide of being negligent for not appointing a Lord Commander, a second-in-command to runthe government if she was incapacitated. I wondered whatwouldhappen if the Emperor took control. The girls in the history study group probably would say this would be the tipping point toward revolution.

What did it matter, though?

“Is everything okay?” Grey asked.

I looked him in the eyes. “No,” I said.

He frowned, but I could see he didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the lab. He leaned down, bumping his forehead against mine, and we stayed there for several long moments, willing the world to not exist outside our touch.

“What do we do when everything falls apart?” I asked, still not opening my eyes.

Grey wrapped his hands around my face, drawing my gaze. “We do what we can,” he said. “I learned that from you.”

I nodded and took a deep breath.My blood is made of iron, I reminded myself, and the thought did not disgust me.

•••

I was surprised to discover that Master Ostrum was at the quarantine hospital when Grey and I arrived. The receptionist directed us to a suite where he was working, assuming he was waiting for us. He did not seem pleased by our interruption, blocking the door and the patient inside when we knocked. He stepped into the hall.

“I thought you were focusing on research, not patients,” I muttered to him.

Master Ostrum ignored me. “Greggori,” he said, “go find the head potion maker and see how much tincture of blue ivy is left.”

Grey shot me a worried look, but he turned back down the hall, toward the foyer. I hesitated, but my curiosity overcame me; I followed Master Ostrum into the suite.

Lord Anton lay in the same bed as before, but his skin was sallow, his breathing slow. The blackness of the disease had spread to bothlegs. His right arm had already been amputated, bloody gauze covering the wound.

Master Ostrum greeted Lord Anton like a friend, but all I could do was stand and stare. When I had last seen Lord Anton, he had barely a shadow of the illness. It had spread enormously through his body since then.

“She’ll be happy I can’t vote against her anymore,” Lord Anton said weakly, lifting up his residual limb.

“You’ll have to vote with your other arm,” Master Ostrum said. He busied himself inspecting his patient, tilting Lord Anton’s head to the light, lifting his eyelids. My attention focused on the hazy green film, barely visible, over Lord Anton’s dark brown eyes. Master Ostrum looked at me. We both knew what that meant.

Rather than move on to other patients, patients that could actually survive, Master Ostrum sat down on the edge of Lord Anton’s bed.

“You have to continue,” Lord Anton said in a weak voice. He glanced at me.

“Nedra is safe,” Master Ostrum said. “You can speak freely in front of her.”

“What’s to say?” Lord Anton’s voice was bitter. “Everyone knows I would have torn Lunar Island from the Empire if given half a chance. Lucky for the child Emperor that Adelaide took the castle, not me.” His lips snarled bitterly. “Not luck. He controls everything, doesn’t he, in the end?”