Hadrian explains that Emesh is suffering from the Gray Rot, an offworld disease that devastates the native population and the poor. Because Hadrian is palatine, his altered biology leaves him immune, which makes him feel like a ghost as he watches others die, especially Cat.

In a storm drain beneath High Street, Hadrian returns to Cat, who lies feverish on a cardboard pallet under a thin curtain taken from an abandoned tenement. The pair have been partners for nearly two standard years, but poverty, Hadrian's need to avoid blood-typing that would reveal his identity, and the city's shortage of medicine have left Hadrian able only to buy bandages and compresses while the plague worsens.

Hadrian brings Cat soup and changes her infected bandages, knowing she has little time left. Cat wakes briefly and asks why Hadrian has stayed; Hadrian insists he has nowhere else to be and tries to reassure Cat that she will recover, though both know this is false.

Cat asks Hadrian to promise that Hadrian will not let the city burn Cat in the mass plague pyres. Cat then asks for one last story, and Hadrian tells Cat the tale of Kharn Sagara, a warrior born in a pacifist city of poets who survives its destruction by Extrasolarians and later takes revenge by seizing power over them.

While Hadrian tells the story, Cat dies quietly, her hand growing slack and cold. At sunrise, Hadrian wraps Cat in the flowered curtain, carries Cat through back alleys and canals, and gives Cat a water burial weighted with stones instead of allowing her body to be burned.

After laying Cat to rest, Hadrian cannot find the burial place again and performs no formal rites. Truly alone, Hadrian returns to the sick, living city, recognizing that although Cat's story has ended, Hadrian's own has not.