Belit’s eyes danced through the crowd before him. So many people. Browsing. Buying. Bustling.
Breathing.
How could there be so many?
He cleared his throat. “You know what this city needs?”
His companion, Derf, sent him an askance glance. “Enlighten me.”
“A new plague.”
“Belit, no.”
“Belit, yes!” His eyes danced to the pudgy man.
Derf sighed. “It's hardly been a year since the third hellthresh threshed its last.”
“Exactly. Just look how happy they all are.” Repulsive. They had no right.
“Maybe that's because they're not systematically crapping out their intestines in black globs.”
“Precisely. Morale is too high! Who let them get this cheery?”
The plump fellow scrunched his right cheek in an unenthusiastic smirk, then let it fall. “A spunge or
two might have had a hand in that.”
Belit scoffed. Expungers. Their bones could erode. “We need to do something about them eventually
as well.”
Derf pursed his lips. “Something like throw them a banquet? You know your hobby would be cut
woefully short if they weren’t there to stanch the plagues every time.”
“But their hobby would disappear if I did. They need me.” A woman walking by brushed his arm.
Belit shuddered and wiped at the arm. Disgusting.
“Expunging isn’t so much a hobby as it is an occupation,” Derf murmured, rubbing his brow with soft fingers. “Do you really need to pitch in? We recently had the eleventh yellowing that lasted a month, killed forty-eight. The eighth frenzy went nearly six weeks and left opportunity for eighty-nine new graves to be dug.
“Kudda is more a plague to the epidemes than he is to the general populace.” Belit watched two little girls playing with a doll. Nauseating. “You yourself just said he released his eleventh yellowing and it was expunged in a month. How long did my first hellthresh last?”
Derf made his best show of looking uninterested. Probably because he was. “Forty-one months.”
“And the second?”
“Forty-two.”
“And what about our most recent hellthresh?”
“Forty-three.”
“Do you have any idea what it would mean if my fourth hellthresh lasted forty-four months?” He kept his voice low enough to be shielded by the mumble of the multitude, but his eyes threatened to jump out of his skull.
“No.”
Belit glared at him. How he hated the man’s eyes. The way they protruded made him look sickly even when perfectly sound.
“Neither do I.” He turned toward a door in the wall, a sloping thing that started elaborate on the high end and ended decrepit on the short. “All of Dodane, Derf. My plagues reached all of Dodane—even spilling a little into Jubea and Yap. There hasn’t been another pandemic on that scale for over a century. How many died? What was the number?”
Derf wiped his hand on his trousers before grabbing the knob and pulling the door open for Belit. “Five million six hundred thousand twelve. Belit, why are we at this place?”
“And how many are left?” He entered the threshold and was greeted by warm, damp air. Perfect.
“Across Dodane? More than six million. It’s estimated there are several hundred million in the entire earth though.”
“How dare they!” Belit ignored the exquisite right side of the room and trod into the sickly, ramshackle side. He loved the way the walls always looked like they had just been coughed on. “These expungers really need to learn to let nature run its course.”
“And yourself?” Derf asked.
Belit waved a hand. “I already learned that lesson. Now I’m on to bigger and better.”
The pudgy man grabbed his sleeve. “Belit. Why are we here? I assume you didn’t come all the way just for a sip of ale.”
“A sip? I’ll need a mug at the least.” Silly, silly, Derf. Didn’t he know anything about the workings of the world?
“Belit.”
The plague maker stopped.
Though no light came to blind him, Derf squinted. “What are we doing here?”
Belit supposed he’d have to tell the chap at some point. Irritating. “I need to get a germ. I’m going to bond with a new plague.”
Derf’s squinty, stupid eyes widened, making him look more like a fish than ever. “But...that’s… You can’t.”
“No, Derfolte,” said Belit. “You can’t. Kudda can’t. Bialt can’t. But they can’t do much more than make transient diseases, not even worthy of the plague title. Remember Dwastane? The last supreme epideme?”
Derf swallowed uncomfortably. “Belit...no. Don’t you remember how much damage…”
The epideme widened his own eyes and smiled.
“Belit, yes.”
