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Mellinsmot. The gates stood half-closed and a handful of travelers scurried through, dimly seen figures, to hasten away into the gathering darkness. The people were leaving Mellinsmot and heading along the beaten path by the river.
    Tandu offered no comment.
    Delia swiveled in the saddle. “Odd,” she said. “Folk usually enter a town at night, not leave it.”
    “Going back to their holdings, my lady,” ventured Dalki.
    “Probably.”
    The brick archway echoed their totrix’s hooves, and the guard detail would be springing out to challenge them—
    There were no guards on the gate of Mellinsmot.
    “Odder and odder,” said Delia.
    Tandu loosened one of his swords, and brought his bow forward, holding it half-drawn, arrow nocked in the practiced archer’s grip. Delia brought her own bow up. Dalki, at her back, followed the example of his father and the queen.
    Echoes rustled from the brick walls. The streaming radiance of the suns was almost gone. Shadows, plum-colored, bruised with darkness, fell about them.
    “The Feathered Risslaca is a comfortable inn, my lady, so I have been told.” Tandu did not turn to face Delia as he spoke. Beyond the next edge of twin shadows might lie danger. Tandu kept his gaze darting about, taking in everything, watching for the first suspicious movement. By now they all knew something was wrong in the town of Mellinsmot.
    “Or,” went on Tandu, “perhaps my lady would sooner go straight to Strom Dogan’s villa, here?”
    When the strom, who held this town and surrounding lands, his stromnate, at the hands of Kov Vomanus of Vindelka, understood that he was to host the empress, lavish hospitality would be immediately forthcoming. Delia, looking about at the deserted streets, the boarded-up windows, wondered.
    A dog slunk away into the enveloping shadows. His tail dangled between his legs. Dalki rode with his head screwed back, alertly scanning every window, every shadowed doorway.
    “D’you smell it?” demanded Delia.
    “Aye, my lady.” Tandu’s broad face lifted. “By Djan! Like intestines left out in the suns.”
    Delia made a face.
    “Apt, if unpleasant, Tandu.”
    The way lay ahead through a crossing, where the houses stood back. One side of the road lay swathed in blackness; the other was mildewed with a ghostly glow of fading red and green. A door opened and a lozenge of yellow light burst across the beaten way. A voice screamed.
    A figure fell out of the door, was hurled out, for the violence of its movement sent up a swirl of dust in the half-light. The figure tottered forward, twirled about with flailing arms and as the door slammed shut fell to lie sprawled in the dust.
    Delia nudged her totrix forward.
    “Caution, my lady!”
    Tandu was there, before her, dismounting to bend over the dark sprawled figure. He twitched away a corner of the raggedy blanket that concealed the figure’s face.
    He jumped back. He jumped back a clear three feet, and stood, frozen.
    Delia looked down.
    The face had been that of a young girl. No doubt it had been comely, with smiling eyes and smooth cheeks. Now that face was smothered in suppurating sores. The stink broke up as fresh sores burst, to run in greenish pus.
    “The Affliction of the Sores of Combabbry!”
    Dalki said, his voice high, “Do not touch her, my lady!”
    “No.” Delia’s voice shook despite all she could do to hold herself steady. “This explains all. Mellinsmot is a town of contagion and death!”

Chapter four
    Affliction
    Serried in rows beneath the gilded ceiling of Strom Dogan’s Great Hall the suppurating sufferers lay festering in their sores. Twin white half-moons shone beside Delia’s mouth; to disappear instantly as she smiled at the person for whom she ministered. Pus, vomit, blood, excrement, filth and muck — all were as one to Delia. She bathed foreheads in the approved stiffly starched yellow romantic way; she scraped the muck off the floor and scrubbed the strom’s boards clean.
    He,