“Goodbye, Gertrude. May you find your rest where no shadows are cast, and no eyes may see you slumber.” (MAG 157)

Gertrude Robinson puts the last statement of Adelard Dekker back on her desk. Her hand shakes as she does so, though she’d never admit it. She huffs and walks out of her office, putting the file into a random folder full of statements from 19th century America, and stands there, looking at it.

She’d liked Adelard. He was always trying to do the right thing. Maybe a little idealistic, but…he was a valuable asset. Yes. That must be why she’s still thinking of the letter, when she was able to move on from Michael Shelley’s death, from Fiona Law’s, from Emma Harvey’s, quite easily. Adelard was simply…more useful than them.

She thinks of the fire that burned Adelard and the sick, decaying, stiffening bodies. Like Agnes’s fiery red hair, the desolation of loss. The Desolation seemed to be quite effective in countering other fears, she muses. Yes. That’s surely why she’s thinking of the fire that consumed him, filling the air with the rotten stench of the Crawling Rot.

She considers that she would likely do the same, immolated herself, if she had been infected. It was why she had not gone herself. It was too dangerous. She shakes her head. She’s getting sentimental in her old age.

She turns away and walks back to her office. She sits in her chair and begins to make a plan to stop yet another ritual. It would not do to stop working just because Adelard was dead.

She dreams of him burning that night. The image doesn’t leave for a long time.