The ground beneath me remains steady. The birds above me still chatter and squawk. All around me people eat their lunch rations and huddle in small groups. Everything is the same, and nothing is the same. My hands start to shake and my pulse feels heavy and uneven as it slams against my skin.

“The message said the marked will die. We think the killer poisoned the people in the marked rooms. He could’ve taken a syringe from the medical wagon. If someone is sleeping heavily enough, a little prick against the skin isn’t enough to bring them fully awake,” Drake says. His words rake across the silence inside of me, and I wrap my arms around my stomach as I stare at Logan.

“Sylph was in a marked room.” My voice is a desperate, haunted thing, and Logan looks as if I’ve struck him.

“I know.” He reaches for me, but I can’t bend into his embrace. I can’t let him comfort me, because I won’t need comforting. Sylph will be okay. We’ll find the antidote. Better yet, we’ll find the killer and force him to give us an antidote. She’ll be fine. Everyone will be fine.

“We won’t know for sure unless people start getting sick,” Drake says.

“We can’t wait for that.” Logan shoves the dart into his cloak pocket and takes out the packet of pain medicine Sylph gave him earlier.

While he measures out a dose for his headache, I scan the little clearing we’re using for our lunch break and find Sylph laughing with Jodi and Cassie, her arms wrapped around them both. My heart twists painfully inside my chest, and I have to look away before my eyes start to sting.

I turn to Logan. “The message said the marked will die. That’s in the future. Maybe he was warning us. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.”

He takes my hand in his. I imagine I can still feel the cold imprint of Rowansmark’s dart on his skin. “I hope so. But we need to keep a close eye on everyone who was in a marked room last night. And we need to start looking for anyone in the group who could have loyalty to Rowansmark.”

“The real problem here is that Baalboden was a city-state of thousands, and there’s only a handful of us left.” Drake scratches his leg with fingernails that have tiny half-moons of dirt beneath them. “Many of us didn’t know each other before the fires. We’re just taking everyone’s word that they lived in Baalboden, because why else would they be here?”

“We can start by checking again to make sure everyone in the group has a Baalboden wristmark. It was chaotic before the funeral. We could’ve missed someone,” I say. “Anyone besides Quinn and Willow who doesn’t have one—”

“Will be arrested.” Logan gets to his feet and reaches down for me. “And then questioned.”

“Forget questioning. I want whoever did this to be dead.”

Logan’s eyes are grim. “Oh, he will be. But not before he gives us the answers we need.”

Drake stands. “I’ll go line everybody up.”

In minutes, the entire camp stands in two rows facing each other. Drake and Thom walk down one row, checking each survivor’s right wrist for the distinctive tattooed ridges of Baalboden’s mark. Logan and I take the other row.

“Right arm, please,” I say to a man nearly as old as Oliver. He raises his hand, and I slide his tunic sleeve down his arm. His skin sags away from his bones, and the wristmark has faded over time, but it’s there. I rub my thumb over it, searching for any signs that it could be fake, but the ridges are right where they should be and the ink is a permanent stain on his forearm. The ridges in his mark are longer than mine. Skinnier, too. Each mark is different, so that a guard’s Identidisc can bounce sound off of the mark and come back with a sound signature unique to that citizen.

Logan stands beside me, checking Jan’s wristmark. I move past him to check the next person, and we quickly fall into a rhythm.

Cassie. Ian. Elias. Geraldine. Susan. Nick. So far everyone in my line has a wristmark. Logan is checking the wristmark of a woman whose brown skin gleams like a polished jewel beneath the midday sun. I step around him and discover that Sylph and Smithson are next in line.

“Right arm, please,” I say to Sylph. She smiles at me and lays her hand in mine. I lift our hands in the air, and her sleeve slides to her elbow. I gasp. A deep purple bruise blossoms like rotting fruit along the underside of her arm.

“What happened?” Abandoning any effort to check her wristmark, I grab her arm as she starts to pull it down. “Who did this to you?”

The bruise is easily the size of my palm, and its center is black. Whoever hurt her meant to hurt her. With a bruise like this, she’s lucky her arm didn’t break. Fury gushes through me, sharp and vicious.

My eyes find Smithson, and I arrow my rage at him, as if I can flay him to pieces with nothing but my glare.

But he isn’t looking at me. Instead, he’s staring at Sylph’s arm, worry in every line of his face. “What happened?”

Sylph pulls her wrist free of my grip and examines the bruise. “I guess this is from hitting my arm when I got our lunch ration. I slipped in some mud and fell against the wagon. I must have fallen harder than I realized.” She sounds puzzled, but not upset.

Poison.

The air is suddenly too thick to breathe. I’ve known Sylph for most of my life. I’ve never seen her bruise easily. Sickness crawls up the back of my throat as I make myself ask, “Any other bruises? Do you feel sick? Tired?”

She shrugs and smiles at us both. “I’m fine! I feel fine. I didn’t realize I hit my arm that hard. That’s all. Honest. Stop worrying. Both of you. I’m not used to roughing it, but I’ll toughen up. We all will. Now shouldn’t you be checking my wristmark to make sure I’m really from Baalboden?”