“Do you remember the man I was sitting with-the one in the yellow shirt?”
She nodded.
“The woman who was sitting on his lap, the doxy, have you seen her since then?”
“The pockmarked woman?” Her voice was soft and sibilant; like all yuan-ti, she hissed softly as she spoke.
Arvin raised his eyebrows. “You saw her sores?”
“I saw through the spell she’d cast to disguise herself,” the yuan-ti answered. “From the moment she entered the tavern, I recognized her for what she was.”
Arvin was appalled. “You knew she was diseased? Why didn’t you warn us-or call the militia?”
The woman shrugged, a slow, rolling motion of her shoulders. “There was nothing to fear. Plague had touched her then moved on, leaving only scars behind.”
“But her touch-”
“Was harmless,” the yuan-ti interrupted. “Her sores had scarred over. Had they been open and weeping, it would have been another matter entirely.”
“What about her spittle?” Arvin asked.
The yuan-ti stared at him. “You kissed her?”
“My friend did. Or rather…” He thought back to the phlegm that had been smeared on his brow. “The doxy kissed him on his forehead. Would that pass the plague to him?” He waited, breath held, for her reply. Had he fought off the poison he’d been forced to drink, only to be condemned to death by disease?
The yuan-ti gave a faint hiss that might have been laughter. “No. Tell your friend not to worry. The plague that left the pockmarks was long gone from her body. From all parts of her body.”
She said it with such certainty, Arvin believed her. Relief washed through him. Knowing that he’d been touched by people who themselves had been touched by plague had filled him with dread. He wasn’t old enough to have witnessed the last plague that swept through the Vilhon Reach; the “dragonscale plague” had been eradicated thirty years before he was born. Like most people, though, he feared to even speak of it. The disease, thought to be magical in origin, had caused the skin of those it touched to flake off in huge chunks, like scales, leaving bloody, weeping holes.