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.

A sharp knock hit the workshop door. Veska slid the silent rib into her apron pocket just as the town magistrate stepped in, rain dripping off his coat. "You read the bones," he said. "I need you to read one for me. Quietly." He set a small wrapped bundle on her table and would not meet her eyes.

Veska refused to unwrap it until he told the truth. The magistrate sighed and admitted he had been hiding deaths that were not plague at all, marking them sick to keep the town calm. "There are dozens," he said. "And someone is killing people while we all look away." He pushed the bundle closer. "Help me, before there are more."

Together they pulled record after record. The pattern was clear: every hidden death left someone richer, and every body carried the faint gray mark of marigold ash. Someone with money was paying to bury murders under the plague. Veska and the magistrate swore to expose them, no matter how high it reached. The hunt had only begun.