Fuck, Baldwin, were you trying to catch me just when I was actually getting some… good sleep? Tybalt sent, trying not to sound too cross.

  Sorry, master, did you want me to stay out in the wastes overnight to guard these bones, and just let everyone think I deserted in the morning? Baldwin replied sarcastically. Because the other alternative, besides disrupting your beauty sleep, is sneaking back into camp and abandoning these parts you sent me to collect… somewhere out here in the sand. Not many places to hide a bunch of bones around here, and if I bury them, I’m not close enough to any landmarks to be sure of finding them again. But if the master commands it…

  No, no, I’ll come out and meet you, Tybalt sent.

  Prick, he thought to himself. How is it that Baldwin worked harder to cultivate my good feelings before I held his life in the palm of my hands?

  Part of what annoyed Tybalt, of course, was that he still had one foot in the dream world. He wanted to know what the fox woman had been about to tell him, whether it was useful or sweet. He also just wanted to spend more time with Vidalia.

  Disturbingly, he wasn’t certain how much he cared if she was the trick of some god or a real woman. Her company was extremely pleasant. Potentially addictive.

  I could definitely see myself falling for her in real life…

  He pushed himself slowly, carefully to an all fours position, trying not to rock the hut as he moved. He desperately wanted to avoid waking Markus up again.

  He didn’t want anyone to notice how much time he spent outside the camp, or the fact that Baldwin would probably come back into the camp around the same time that Tybalt did.

  He had no way of knowing how well Baldwin had concealed his movements that night. If the squad was ever going to investigate the disappearance of multiple bodies in connection with the presence of a possible necromancer, it would be important that Tybalt had never stood out in this time period.

  Although Vidalia was very insistent that I’m not likely to succeed in keeping the secret…

  And Tybalt believed her.

  Hopefully he would have massacred everyone in the squad and the nearby mining camp and turned them all into undead by the time the truth about his class got out, but Tybalt wasn’t one for baseless optimism. He didn’t even know how many skeletons there would be for him to animate tonight yet, and the most damage he’d done to his squad was killing Baldwin and giving a fraction of the group a bad case of diarrhea.

  Hardly a promising start.

  I need to accelerate my plans.

  At least, after tonight, he would have some new tools to use.

  So Tybalt thought as he crawled through the door of the hut, keeping low to the ground and peeking from side to side.

  Preparing to sneak out.

  “What are you doing up, bastard?”

  Tybalt swallowed hard as Commander Volusia’s harsh rasp filled his ears. He thought quickly as he turned his head to see the older man standing over him.

  “Stomach trouble, Commander,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. He placed a hand over his belly and tried to inflate his normally flat stomach to look bloated. “I woke up and really needed to take a shit. I don’t know if it’s the same condition afflicting the others…”

  “Ugh.” Volusia made a face and stepped backward as if concerned that Tybalt was contagious—a far more sensible move than the Commander had reason to know, since Tybalt was the actual origin point of the virus. “Well, make sure you do it well away from camp. You know those foul odors can infect the healthy, too.”

  Tybalt nodded. This was one of the common myths about disease that Invisible Enemies had disabused him of. Natural illnesses did not, in fact, spread via odor—although at a high level, Pestilence Mage could acquire an ability that would magically make illnesses that spread by smell.

  It was really no wonder that his society was so afraid of disease. The level of ignorance they lived with made them extremely vulnerable. Nature had produced five plagues in the last six millennia, per Invisible Enemies. Sheer random chance, in effect, had killed millions.

  If someone like Tybalt came along, these people were beyond easy marks.

  “Take one of those,” the Commander said, pointing with a thumb at something over his own shoulder.

  Tybalt followed the direction of Volusia’s gesture and recognized that there were a half-dozen shovels leaning against a hut near the edge of the village.

  Of course, they’re burying their waste. That precaution would actually reduce the spread of Tybalt’s contagion, in theory.

  “Understood, sir,” Tybalt said, stepping forward.

  Volusia instantly stepped backward, both gaining distance from Tybalt and keeping the soldier in front of him.

  “Do you need anyone to go with you?” Volusia asked. “A few of the men were too weak to hold a shovel after their bowels vacated, so they needed an assistant.”

  Nicely done, me, Tybalt thought. The virus was better than I thought—or at least highly effective on one or two people.

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  He shook his head. “I think I’m all right, sir,” he said, pretending to labor over each word—attempting to play sick.

  “Right, then get out of here, bastard,” Volusia said. “You already stink.”

  Tybalt did not rise to the provocation. It would be out of character for him to respond to the taunt if he was actually sick. So he simply stepped around the Commander, retrieved a shovel, and explained why he was walking outside the camp to the guards on duty.

  Gratifyingly, they both appeared slightly sweaty despite the cool night air. As if the virus was having an effect on them too, but their bodies were processing it differently from those who were shitting out their guts in the desert.

  “Good luck,” said one.

  “Don’t get eaten by the demihumans,” said the other, barely restraining a malicious smile.

  Then Tybalt was walking out of the abandoned village. Once he got beyond the point where the guards could have physically pulled him back if they’d wanted to, Tybalt took the opportunity to turn back a moment and observe how the men on duty were moving.

  It was information he would want to convey to Baldwin, who would have to sneak back into camp at some point, lest the revenant genuinely get pegged as a deserter.

  Assuming we don’t actually want to desert… If Tybalt was guaranteed to be discovered as a necromancer at some point, should he be trying to get away now? Or would that only place him in more danger? How important was it to win Lieutenant Sperry over to his side?

  Vidalia had given him far too much food for thought, and Tybalt had not had nearly the time he needed to digest it. He was second guessing all his short term plans now.

  Perhaps the fox girl was right to be reticent most of the time.

  He shook his head and focused on the guards.

  At this late stage of the evening, they seemed pretty tired—they weren’t moving around very much, just guarding one end of the village against incursion. Tybalt imagined that the other two guards stood at the other end of the abandoned village, doing much the same.

  And the fog had remained a fog rather than turning into rain, so visibility was still bad.

  It would be easier than Tybalt had imagined for Baldwin to sneak back in.

  Thanks to the disease.

  Tybalt wondered why Volusia himself was awake.

  Is my virus getting him too? No, that would be too much to hope for at this stage. He’s got to be higher level than virtually anyone else in the squad, with his years of experience. He’ll be more resilient.

  He couldn’t think of any other reason for the Commander to be up, though. He put the question from his mind for the moment as he saw a shirtless Baldwin, standing in the sand, two sacks next to him—or rather, a shirt and Tybalt’s old gambeson, converted into two bags of bones.

  Two things immediately struck Tybalt.

  First, in the back of his mind, Tybalt recognized that some part of his brain had known exactly where to find Baldwin—one element of the link that bound him and his creation together. Baldwin had drawn his attention to it before, and Tybalt had already known bits and pieces of how it worked from Unholy Forces, but experience was another thing entirely.

  Second, there were a lot of bones. The makeshift bags were stuffed.

  If I had gone instead of Baldwin, it wouldn’t have just been a security risk, Tybalt thought. I couldn’t have carried them all. Though he could have raised some more undead on-site to help out, his own arms weren’t nearly as strong as they had been. I badly need more levels…

  Then he noticed the third thing: the way the revenant was looking at him.

  With eyes that shone with… what? Hope? Expectation?

  In an instant, Tybalt understood: the older man wanted praise.

  Baldwin had always been the sort of person who craved status and respect, but in a different way than Tybalt. In life, the revenant had cared far more for the opinions of others than Tybalt did. That characteristic seemed to be continuing on into his undeath.

  With only one real, major outlet.

  It was strange to think of, but Tybalt was probably the only person whose opinion mattered to Baldwin now. Other humans were all Baldwin’s enemies, though they did not know it yet.

  The necromancer finally spoke up.

  “Well done, Baldwin,” he said softly.

  “I strive to please, Ty—ah, master.” Baldwin automatically corrected himself mid-sentence with little change in expression, to Tybalt’s mild amusement. He still enjoyed the way Baldwin sometimes reacted to having to call him “master.”

  Tybalt nodded and smiled slightly.

  “Let’s take a look at the goods,” he said.

  He bent to open the first of Baldwin’s makeshift sacks. As he drew closer and began to untie the knots that held it together, he recognized that the bundle was not a shirt. It was a dress. There just appeared to be less fabric than there was, because Baldwin had tied several knots into it to hold it together—in part because there were multiple holes in the material, with bloodstains around them. There were tears in the fabric, too.

  Tybalt recognized the telltale signs on the clothing of one of the squad’s quarry who had been brutalized before being killed. He could almost picture, with his mind’s eye, what might have happened to this woman. It hit harder this time.

  Why are you focused on this now? he thought, annoyed at himself.

  But he knew why. This brutality had taken place less than twenty-four hours ago, not counting the timeless span he had spent in the Tower of Death. He had done nothing to stop any of this, just cynically looked on. He hadn’t had his powers, then, but he still could have done something—if he had been willing to risk his life to prevent a stranger’s brutal abuse. A stranger who he was supposed to help kill…

  Then there was the obvious personal reason for him having these feelings right now. Vidalia was a beastfolk too. She was a fox woman, and the person who wore this dress would have been an ibex woman, but the squad wouldn’t have treated the two any differently. The thought that this could have happened to Vidalia roiled his stomach. His fingers slowed at unraveling the knots for a moment, and he took a few deep breaths. He could afford to give himself that space right now. No one was coming after him in the next few minutes to check if he was done being ill.

  You need to be tough, Tybalt reminded himself silently after a long exhale. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The path you walk is going to get a lot uglier than this. You promised to be a force of destruction and unravel the world that is. You’re going to commit a lot of war crimes of your own, not just overlook things your squad is doing. And that’s what you need to do to have your full revenge anyway. Time to wave whatever conscience you had goodbye. Stop caring. As for Vidalia… remember that she might not even be real anyway. She might be the trick of some god or goddess. Wouldn’t it be just like Astara to play a game like that?

  He clenched and unclenched his fists for a moment, then shook his head and returned to undoing the knots in the sackcloth dress.

  As Tybalt managed to refocus on the contents of the knotted up dress, he also forced his lips into a cold smile. He could see the outlines of hundreds of bones contained in the fabric. He was going to create his second undead in the next few minutes. Multiple undead, in fact. This was the beginning of him having the power to shape the world according to his will.

  It was right to savor this moment a little.