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The water is grimy and cooling fast, and yet, I’m now hesitant to leave. My back still aches where Pestilence scoured it with the washcloth, and my nerves are rubbed even rawer.

I’m feeling a little weird towards him. I don’t know whether it’s weird good or weird bad—probably weird bad.

I pull my knees up to my chest, leaning my cheek against them. “You still don’t know my name,” I say.

“I don’t need to,” he says, brushing a stray lock of hair from his face. “‘Human’ is just fine.”

“No, it’s not.”

His eyes narrow.

“Sara,” I say. “My name is Sara.”

He frowns. “What does it matter what you’re called?” he responds. “You’re all the same.”

“Gee, you know how to make a girl feel special.”

His mouth turns down. “You aren’t special. None of you are. You’re all vile, violent things.”

“Says the guy who’s killing off people by the thousands.”

“I don’t enjoy it,” he says.

“Neither did I.” The memory of Pestilence bleeding in the road, bleeding and yetalive, it still sets my teeth on edge.

“Could’ve fooled me,” he says.

I force out a laugh. “Then you’re not nearly as good at reading humans as you are at judging them.”

He cocks his head. “Maybe,” he agrees, “but then, I don’t need to read them, do I?”

He just needs to kill them.

We’re quiet for a while. The horseman is scrutinizing the pliancy of his bow, and I’m letting the water’s chill sink into my skin.

“Do you have a name?” I ask. “Other than ‘Pestilence the Conqueror’?”

He sets his bow aside. “I was not named.”

I don’t dwell on the fact that implied in that statement is that someone else was around whocould’venamed him.

“Why not?”

Pestilence’s eyes sharpen on mine. “I do not need a name to have a purpose. Humans are the ones who demand names for every blade of grass on this good green earth.”

Because naming things humanizes them. And once you humanize something, you are essentially recognizing its existence. But considering that the horseman is on a mission to kill as many people as possible, I can see why he’d have a problem with humanizing anything.

He wasn’t given a name.I let that sink in.

Setting aside my intense dislike for the man, there’s a part of me that feels sorry for him. He doesn’t even have a propername.

Be happy, Sara. Otherwise, you might risk humanizinghim.

And wouldn’t that be awful?

“So … it’s fine to call you Pestilence?” I say.

He inclines his head. “It’s just a name.”