As I came out Clove lifted his head and gave me a rebuking stare. Why hadn’t I freed him from his harness to graze? I glanced at the sun. I’d leave him here, I decided. It was believable that if the big horse had got loose in Gettys, he’d come back to his stall. I couldn’t take off his tack; someone would wonder who had done that for him. I hoped whoever took him over would treat him well. “Stay here, old chum. Kesey will look after you. Or someone will.” I gave him a pat on the shoulder and left him there.

I walked across the cemetery grounds that I knew so well. I passed the butchered remains of my hedge. I shuddered as I recalled it as I’d last seen it, with the bodies jerking and twitching as the rootlets thrust into them seeking nutrients and for a moment I was plunged back into that torchlit night.

It was rare but not unknown for a person who died of Speck plague to be a “walker.” One of the doctors at Gettys believed that such persons fell into a deep coma that mimicked death, to rouse hours later for a final attempt at life. Few survived. The other doctor, an aficionado of the superstitions and psychic phenomena that so fascinated our Queen, believed that such “walkers” were not truly the folk who had died, but only bodies reanimated by magic to bring messages to the living from the beyond. Having been a “walker” myself, I had my own opinions. In my year at the King’s Cavalla Academy, I’d contracted the Speck plague just as my fellow cadets had. Once I’d “died,” I’d found myself in the Specks’ spirit world. There I’d done battle with my “Speck self” and Tree Woman, returning to life only after I had defeated them.

My erstwhile fiancée Carsina had also been a “walker.” In my final night as cemetery guard she had left her coffin and come to beg my forgiveness before she could rest in death.