The words seemed to hang in the still air of the alcove longer than they should have, refusing to settle into something I could simply absorb and move past.
"Deliberately seeded," I repeated, my voice barely audible even to her own ears. "You're certain that's what you heard?"
"I wouldn't risk telling you otherwise." Lydia's composure had thinned to something brittle, her usual haughty control replaced by the particular tightness of a woman carrying a weight she hadn't asked for. "The physician mentioned a village near the eastern granaries. Said the compound would take three days to manifest symptoms, long enough that no one would trace it back to anything but bad water and bad luck."
My mind raced ahead, cold and clinical despite the horror clawing beneath my ribs. A seeded plague in
