“We’ll keep an eye on him. Thank you for the warning. Is that all?” I pat Kalos’s arm, waiting for someone to demand that “my husband” lower his hood so they can check him for plague.
The guard waves a hand. “On you go.”
Whew.
Chapter
Eighteen
The interior of Balsingra is unlike the other town we passed through. The streets are cobbled instead of dirt, with large, rutted trenches down the sides for people to toss their trash and chamber pot discards into. There’s a sweeper that comes through and shoves everything into the trenches with a broom, but it still leaves behind a horrid smell. The buildings here are tightly packed along the streets and they’re tall, looming over us, and I feel like a mouse being corralled through a maze.
It’s a little unnerving.
Also unnerving is just how quiet it is for a busy city. Balsingra is easily ten times as large as the town that Gental had claimed, and yet all is quiet. The people we do pass on the streets either have their mouths covered with a scarf or they wear wreaths of garlic around their necks. No one stops to chat, and everyone keeps their distance. There are a few shops scattered along the streets, but most are boarded up, their doors locked tight.
Then, of course, there’s the plague district.
The crowds grow sparser the deeper we set into the city’s winding streets, and it soon becomes evident why. There’s a large, hastily constructed gate just outside what looks like a town square with a water pump in the center of it, topped by a large statue of a woman pouring a jug. There’s a symbol painted over the statue’s face, and the same symbol is painted on the cloth draped over the gate. A guard stands there, his face swaddled, and he holds a hand up as we approach the street.
He shakes his head at us. “No one comes this way. Plague.”
“We’re just passing through,” I say. “Heading for the temple district.”
The guard points down the street we’re on. “Keep heading that way and cover your mouths. You never know what kind of bad air has been left behind.”
I nod and thank him, obediently using some of the fabric of my hood to cover my face. As we walk past the district, I see each door in the neighborhood is painted with the symbol, and there are cloth-covered human-sized lumps lining the street. A knot forms in my throat.
“Before you ask, yes.” Kalos says as we continue past, the streets eerily quiet.
“What do you mean?” I turn to him, curious.
His face remains shrouded in his hood. “Yes, that’s my symbol. And no, this wasn’t me. It was the other Aspect. You’d know if it was me.”
Because I’d feel feverish and I’d sneeze. Every time he’s started to lose control, I’ve felt sick as a result. “What Aspect do you think it was that left here and came after us?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Frustrating. “But it is plague? Truly?”
“Usually it’s not,” Kalos says in a sour voice. “Usually it’s just bad meat, or someone with a sore they won’t stop pickingat. This time it truly is plague, though, due to my Aspect’s interfering.”
“They mistake sores forplague?” I’m shocked.
“Perhaps you haven’t noticed, little martyr, but the peasants aren’t exactly scrambling over each other to educate themselves.”
I don’t take offense at his tone. It just makes me sad, instead. “Doesn’t it bother you that they blame you for everything when it’s not even your fault? Maybe you could educate them on medicine, and your reputation would improve.”
The god gives me a flat, green-eyed stare as if I’ve said the most ignorant thing possible. “Do you think I care?”
“I do.”
He turns to look at me, faint surprise on his jaded features.
“I care what others think of you,” I continue. “You’re a good person with a bad job, not a bad person. So yes, I do care what people think of you. I want them to think the best.”
Like I do.
I can’t say the words aloud, but I think them. Hard.
