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“If they could afford decent places to live, and expensive health spells, they would not be poor, then, would they?”
No one asks to live in squalor, Tris. It is just that squalor is all that is left to them by those with money.”
“Trader, watch over those of our kindred, in port or at sea. Send them fair winds to speed them home.”
In Sotat, those of Deadman’s District who’d been unfortunate enough to be healthy and quarantined in an epidemic had said it was the most boring part of their lives. As far as Briar could see by that first day’s end, they had told the absolute truth.
“One does expect a modicum of manners in the young,” he remarked drily. “Good for one,” retorted Tris. “If you wanted manners, you should have come after I had my tea.”
Worse, he wished that he’d never heard of Flick. He hoped that she would die so he could get some rest. That last thought made him despise himself. Her life was surely worth more than his winks. He was a monster to think it. As penance he fought her to drink more liquid.
“She must feel some better if she’s tormenting people,”
“How would you know what she’d like and what she wouldn’t?” Sandry rubbed her hand over his hair. “Because no one who’s truly your friend would want you to feel bad for knowing them.”
“How can you object to the protection of those who keep the duke’s peace?” Frostpine sat next to Daja, plucking morsels from a muffin and popping them into his mouth. “A proper fear of such things keeps soldiers polite,” he observed. “Otherwise they might be tempted to push common folk around. Orders to enter people’s homes uninvited are a sore temptation for peacekeepers, I’ve found.”
“Have you any respect for proper order?” asked Crane. “Depends on whose idea of order it is,”
You know why I hate plagues?” The girl hesitated, confused by the abrupt change of subject. That was the fever, she realized. It made Rosethorn’s mind skip about. “Why?” Daja asked. “Most disasters are fast, and big. You can see everyone else’s life got overturned when yours did. Houses are smashed, livestock’s dead. But plagues isolate people. They shut themselves inside while disease takes a life at a time, day after day. It adds up. Whole cities break under the load of what was lost. People stop trusting each other, because you don’t know who’s sick.”
They would know, as he did, that his life began when Rosethorn had invited him into her world.
