His leg woke him up at midnight. It did that now.

  Beside him, his wife pretended to sleep. She'd been pretending since the smell started.

  He lay still. The leg throbbed. The kind of throbbing that meant something was happening down there that he didn't want to look at.

  He looked at it.

  Mistake. Even in the dark he could see it. He touched it. His fingers sank in.

  His children slept in a pile. Six — no. Dmitri had been gone since winter. What a relief.

  Five children. Five mouths.

  He picked up his life savings. Three coins. It would have to be enough.

  The streets were empty. His leg disagreed with every surface.

  He'd cheated Nikolos. He could admit that now, at this hour, with no witnesses.

  His wife said the leg was punishment. Divine accounting. She had a system: the blackness was the cheating. The smell was the lie about it. The pain was his refusal to confess. He thought this was horseshit, but it was difficult to argue with logic.

  A dog watched him pass. Moved upwind.

  He rehearsed what he'd say. Got as far as "Prophet, I am a faithful—" and the leg called him a liar.

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  Third building past the fountain.

  Door.

  He knocked.

  Nothing.

  "Prophet! Please! I must know!"

  A man's voice, flat behind the wood. "She's not here."

  "I'll wait."

  "You do that."

  He waited. He knocked. He waited. He knocked. His leg begged him to sit. He couldn't get back up if he sat.

  "I have copper! Three whole coins!"

  Nothing.

  "I'm a good man! I work hard! I only cheated Nikolos the once!"

  Nothing.

  "Twice!"

  The door opened.

  She was younger than he expected.

  "My leg," he said. That was it. Everything he'd rehearsed, gone.

  The smell walked in with him. He'd stopped noticing it weeks ago. She hadn't.

  "Get out," the man with the knife said.

  Vomit on her lips.

  He took her hands before either of them recovered. Pulled her to the floor where his bandages were already coming loose, guided her fingers to the place where the darkness spread, and pressed.

  Her hands sank in where his had.

  "Feel that? The spirits. They're in there. My wife says they're claiming me but you can tell them — you can tell them I'm a good man."

  She was trying to breathe through her mouth. Mistake. Now she could taste it.

  "I pray. I make offerings. When I remember to. I cheated Nikolos but his family was fat enough to take it. Tell the spirits I've suffered enough!"

  "I have children, six — wait. Five. Forget Dmitri. He's dead. Tell the spirits!"

  He fumbled for the pouch with one hand, keeping hers pressed with the other. Three coins bounced across the floor.

  Her hands were still where he'd put them. She could feel the border. Where warmth became nothing.

  "The flesh that's turned black is dead," she said. "It won't come back."

  "But the spirits—"

  "The spirits can't resurrect dead meat." She could feel it under her fingers — the nothing. "You can feel it too, can't you? How it doesn't hurt where it's blackest? That's because there's nothing left to feel with."

  He looked down. At her hands. At the black.

  "Find a surgeon. Today. Let them take the leg while there's still something left to save."

  "My wife's cousin knew a man who prayed for seven days and his foot grew back. The priest said—"

  "Your wife's cousin lied. Or the priest did. Or both."

  "My children. How do I feed five children with one leg?"

  "Better a living father with one leg than a memory with two."

  He left the coins on the floor.

  "Well," Damon said. "That was educational."

  Cassandra looked at the coins. One had blood on it. "Is this my life now?"