I buttoned them up, pulled a new dress over my head, and fastened a new cloak at my collarbone. I stuffed the watch into a pocket. I would need to keep close guard of the time. I tucked kitchen knives into my boots and the pockets of my cloak. I was a butcher’s daughter, and a butcher myself, really, even if I’d never been given the official title. I knew how to use a knife. Last, I felt for the little wizened heart in my skirt pocket.
“You will come back, won’t you, Foss?” said Cornelius, who was hovering at my heels.
I snorted. “I don’t have much of a choice.”
“All right,” he said, looking small.
“Stop fretting,” I said. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you here for good.”
I didn’t think it through any more than that, for fear that the House might sense me thinking throw up obstacles in my way, or that the heartsickness would somehow grip me again before my hour of respite was up.
Once I had myself looking as respectable as I could, I groped my way out of the bedchamber and headed for the front door. The House, perhaps taken by surprise, didn’t do more than shiver itself a little, and I found myself with my hand on the knob, then stumbling across the courtyard, then opening the great door that led to the Outside.
“I’m coming back,” I said to the empty air, as if I were reassuring the House as well as Cornelius. The whole place seemed to sigh as I stepped out the heavy black door. I felt a suck of air, as if something inside was trying to inhale me back in, and then nothing.
I hurried as fast as I could and reached the tavern without incident. Every so often, I thrust my hand into my pocket to touch the little heart, reassuring myself that it was still there. I was all ready to show it to Basil when he answered my knock, but as soon as he opened the door, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me inside, shutting and locking the door behind me.
I noticed then that all the other Snagged who were present were standing in a tight circle around something on the floor and had not turned at my arrival. Just my luck—they were probably performing some eldritch ritual in which I’d be expected to take part.
Then I felt a stab of fear—there was a body on the floor. I backed away, walking into the door that Basil had just closed and bolted behind me.
“Open the door,” I said. “Let me go. I want no part of this, whatever it is.”
“No, wait.” Basil tried to lay a hand on my arm, but I shook him off. “It’s Jol,” he said. “The mold has spread.”
Which one was Jol? All the Snagged had blurred together in my mind. Basil went back to the circle, and I followed him.
The Snagged were clustered around a young man—ah yes, I remembered him now—who was curled up on the floor, panting and twitching. A woman had his head cradled in her lap and was washing his face with a soaked rag that she dipped and refreshed in a tub of water at her side every few seconds.
He was shirtless, his torso almost concave, eaten away by the same rot that had corroded Nat’s. It was a sickly, queasy green-gray, deepening to a bright sap green under his left ribs, where his heart should have been.
There was a smell, too, like fresh-turned compost—not wholly unpleasant, but strange in that stone room where nothing grew or should be decaying.
I did not want to keep looking at him, but I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away. As I watched, he started to writhe again.
“Shhh, love,” said the woman who cradled his head, as if he were a sprout having a nightmare. She even smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and her hand came away wet with his sweat.
A lump clogged my throat for a second, seeing her motherliness. Da had done his best, but there was something about a mam feeling her babe’s forehead for a fever that always made me wish for a mother of my own.
“We should call a doctor,” I said.
“There is nothing a doctor can do for us,” said Basil.
No one else met my eye. We stood, or sat, or crouched, and kept watch while Jol shook and spasmed. The green mold had spread up his throat and was reaching fingers into his mouth. He coughed, and something splattered on the flagstones. Everyone took a step back, except the woman who was holding him. The sputum was bright green.
“Not long now,” said Basil.
“How can you just stand there and watch him?” I shouted. “At leasttrysomething!” I was practically vibrating where I stood, so tensed was I with the desire to jump in.
“We have tried,” said Basil. “With others. Nothing helps when it gets this far.” He absentmindedly rubbed at his own breast, through his embroidered waistcoat, and coughed. I felt my own chest instinctively, wondering if I was short of breath because I was anxious, or because there was some creeping corruption beneath my own ribs.
“There is nothing to do but wait,” added Basil.
No one moved as Jol struggled to his death—no one except the woman who soaked her rag, wrung it out, and dabbed at his clammy forehead, over and over. The water was probably warm by now, and certainly filthy with his sick sweat, but she kept going.
I wished I had been given such a task, something to keep my hands and my head busy, but instead I had to stand and watch as the green decay bubbled in his chest with every labored breath, slowing and slowing, until I could not be certain if the faint movement of his lungs was more breath or just the mold itself shifting and settling.
I looked from one face to another, and saw them all determinedly still and fixed, never turning away, hardly blinking, as if bearing witness to Jol’s death was the only way in which they could do him honor.
