“Of course, of course,” Urvenon said, Evelyn hearing her as if through a tunnel. “I only wanted to ask if you had received my invitation. The last several must not have reached you, as I never heard a response.”
Her jaw clenched. She would have to accede to this one. Her mourning remove could only cover so much of her misanthropy. “I did,” she said, glancing at Urvenon and then away, across the crowds. “I would be honored to attend.”
Urvenon smiled. “And will you be bringing a guest? Officer Pollard would certainly be welcome.”
Pollard said something in return, but Evelyn’s gaze had fixed on Urvenon’s maid, still waiting by her carriage.
Urvenon’s maid, looking straight at her. Unblinking. “Lady Perdanu?” Pollard asked, and Evelyn looked back at him and Urvenon, eyes wide, lips parted. Her chest shivered, her lungs refusing to work.
“I apologize,” she managed. “I thought I recognized— somebody.”
“Everybody does seem to be out today,” Urvenon agreed, warmly. “I’ll leave you to your socializing. But please, do consider bringing Officer Pollard.”
Evelyn nodded. She watched as Urvenon went back to her carriage, back to the maid. She watched the maid blink, incline her head, act entirely normal. She never turned to look at Evelyn.
“My lady?” Pollard asked, touching her hand lightly. She shook her head. “I apologize,” she repeated, and they began to walk again. “If the party interests you, you are welcome to come.”
“As your guest?” She looked up at him, feeling blank and hollow. “You need not accompany me to be welcome, if that is what worries you. Attend if you wish; I’m sure you will find your name on the list now.”He colored, shook his head. “While the invitation is flattering, I fear those sorts of engagements are not for me. I take it they are not for you, either.”
“Hardly. But they are a hazard of my position,” she murmured, gaze once more roving over the crowd. Those eyes. She couldn’t shake the image, the chill that had settled into her spine. Her fingers perched on Pollard’s arm pressed harder into his uniform sleeve. She must have imagined that unnatural attention, casting the maid’s face in the shape of the bryony girl at the side of the road. The maid was healthy. But the bryony girl, she had been so undeniably afflicted. They hadn’t told the constable yesterday when directing him to the body, desperate to hide any connection between her and Evelyn’s ships. The weight of that secret now pressed up in her throat like a wave of vomit.
“My lady, is something the matter? You’ve gone pale,” Pollard said, voice soft.
She would burn for this, if he knew that it was spreading. But if it was spreading, he would learn from someone else soon enough.
“Have you heard,” she ventured, “any updates from the sanitarium?”
He shook his head. “Not since yesterday. I’ve heard of no new cases among your men, either.”
She didn’t have to speak, didn’t have to say a single thing. But she found herself looking out into the crowd again, hunting for that piercing gaze. Nobody looked at her. The streets were full only of the grey bustle of bodies.
“It may be spreading,” she said, softly. Pollard frowned, then drew her off the main thoroughfare and close up against the nearby shop. “The report from the sanitarium said they had determined further cases unlikely, as nobody else on the ship’s roster was exhibiting symptoms. That’s why I cleared The Verity. Have you received an update today?”
“Yesterday,” she said. She took a deep breath, keeping her features even and bland. “Though not from any doctor. I saw a girl, by the side of the road. She had the same blank stare.”
Evelyn could still see her, lying broken on the cobblestones. “Where is she now?”
Dead.
“I don’t know,” Evelyn lied. “It was only for a moment, but it was unmistakable. I think...”
That it was unnatural. That it was not illness. That it— “I think my men might have brought a new intoxicant back with them from some other port. Not so tempting as poppy juice, at least, or more of them might have succumbed to it, but something that may have been passed between hands in the alleyways after their arrival.”
“Their strange dispersal right after The Verity docked.” She nodded. The explanation still sat ill in her mind, but she couldn’t bring herself to voice her other theory. Even Violetta had rejected the thought that this could be something beyond the workings of man and earth, something apart from plague or vice. If even Violetta did not believe her, what chance did she have of Pollard listening?
No, the important thing was that he was prepared, if it began to spread. Even if that meant holding her responsible for it.
She lifted her chin, meeting his troubled gaze. “I hope that there is a limited supply, and that the knowledge of where to obtain it is lost with the minds of the afflicted,” she said. “But if it is not...”
“Then I’ll have my officers ready.” He covered her hand with his own. Her skin burned at the contact, and she almost pulled away. “I will do my best to shield you,” he added, quietly.
Her breath caught. Her stomach twisted. She felt once again as if she were going to be sick. All the little signs fell into place then, making sense of the whole. He had summoned her to him when he had no need to. He had walked with her in the fashionable part of town. He had asked if he could go with her to the dance, though she had interpreted it as asking if he was required to go with her.
He would do his best to shield her. In an instant, her comfort around him evaporated, and her mind dashed in twenty different directions, frantic and fevered. She was stiff beside him, unable to control the horrified, frightened expression on her face. He didn’t see it, eyes downcast, and in that moment she thought to flee. She wanted to be gone, wanted to be in her carriage, wanted to be in her garden.
She did not want this. But oh, she did not want to burn, either. She wanted his protection, and hated that she needed to rely on it.
“Thank you,” she said at last. It came out thin. Hollow. But he smiled.
They walked another ten minutes, back around to her carriage. They parted ways. He clasped her hand perhaps too warmly, and she managed a brittle little nod in return.
She climbed into the cab and trembled the whole drive back to the mansion.
“Your patient is awake, my lady,” Violetta said. “And growing lucid. Do you still wish to speak to him?” Evelyn didn’t look up, focused on the earth she was turning with her bare hands, loam pushing up beneath her nails. “Yes,” she said. “But not immediately. Has he tried speaking with you?”
“On several occasions, only this last successfully.”
“And has he been made a fool?” Either from his injuries or from her medicines.
“No. He didn’t proclaim a name and rank, so he must remember that he is on unfriendly soil.”
Would a defector hide that information? Would he be so slow to throw himself on the mercies of his rescuers? Surely he could tell his tattoos were bared to the open air. Surely he knew he was compromised.
If he was hiding his name, did that mean— She forced the thought away and hollowed out a bowl in the soil, then gently lowered a yarrow splitting in and mounded the earth around it. The garden’s soil drained well due to a complex system of channels cut into the floor below, leading to pipes that ran into the cellar, where the water could be collected and used again. It was a world apart from the mud pit that the grounds surrounding the mansion were. Things planted here in her greenhouse thrived year round, and she had cultivated over a hundred species, competing with each other for sunlight and for her attention, some native and some brought from far away.