Marrow and Marigold

The plague killed faster than Veska Tallow could bury anyone. The marigold beds outside her workshop were full, so the new dead waited in the yard. By candlelight she pressed her thumb to a femur and the bone told her its truth, the way bones always did: fever first, then drowning in your own lungs. She had read ten thousand deaths this way. But the rib in her other hand stayed silent. No fever. No drowning. Nothing at all.