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.”
