The fires had stopped burning, but the smell lingered.
Lysander walked through the northern section of the settlement on the morning after the last shelter had been reduced to ash, and the air was still thick with the scent of charred wood and something heavier, something that clung to the back of the throat and refused to fade. The quarantine had held. No new cases had appeared in three days. Antiphus had said the worst was over, and Lysander had nodded and written the words in his report and felt nothing at all.
The burned shelters had been cordoned off, a ring of empty ground where the fires had consumed everything. Twelve bodies had been recovered—the ones who had been too sick to move, the ones who had been given poppy milk and left to sleep while the flames took them. Their families had been told. Their names had been recorded. Maea had seen to it, her face pale and set, her voice steady as she wrote each name in the settlement register.
