Chapter one of Thief of Death
The corpse sat up and screamed at Spencer. Most people would find this alarming, but Spencer was a priest of the Gray Lady and, as such, had been yelled at by dead people more frequently than the average person. This was an angry, defiant yell rather than the usual high-pitched wail of lament. He sheathed his spade in the pile of freshly turned dirt and squatted at the edge of the hole, struggling to discern any details in the dim light of the waning moon. A fist-sized rock hurtled out of the dark grave, striking Spencer in the chest just under his collarbone. He rubbed the tender spot, certain that he would have a bruise in the morning, and chastised the corpse.
“Now, now. No need for all that. I’m here to help, unquiet one.”
“Stay away from me!” The corpse scrambled backwards and clawed at the thin shroud on its face. “You tell Skunner I can’t pay Jenny Two-Knives if I’m dead.”
Now that was strange.
The Gray Lady’s touch tugging beneath his breastbone had guided Spencer to this grave for a reason. The yelling was to be expected. Death was a disorienting experience, and a spirit lingering near its body, unable to move on, often shrieked or moaned. On occasion, a shade might summon enough energy from across the Veil for small movements, a death rattle or arm flail. More often, they slammed doors and windows and whipped around small projectiles. Lingering spirits did not, in Spencer’s experience, cause their previously shuffled mortal coils to jump up and clamber about.
Spencer moved his lantern, splashing the dark pit of the grave with golden light. Ignoring the itch of sweat and dirt caked on his brow, he leaned in closer, searching for something amiss. Well, more amiss than the reanimated corpse currently struggling and swearing under its burial shroud.
The grave was fresh, a fact Spencer’s aching arms had appreciated when he exhumed it. It was also shallow, barely three feet deep, but that was common enough in the pauper’s corner of the graveyard. Less commonly, the shovels still sat nearby, thrown under a tree a few feet away. Spencer knew the caretakers for this cemetery. Old Paulie and his son Gregor didn’t leave the most valuable tools of their trade lying about where they could be stolen or rust out. Swinging the lantern again, Spencer turned his attention back to the corpse. With the thin shroud torn away, it became obvious it wasn’t a corpse at all, but rather an angry woman.
She crouched in the farthest corner of the pit from him, gulping in air like someone who had been slowly suffocating to death, which, in all fairness, Spencer supposed she was. She’d thrown the shroud down at her bare feet, revealing dark canvas pants and a plain jerkin over a black shirt with loose sleeves. A coarse hemp rope trussed her wrists in front of her. More of the same bound her ankles with enough length between them to walk but not run.
Not the usual burial gown.
The woman fixed Spencer with a calculating glare, reminding him of a cornered animal that might snap if he got too close. Tanned skin, dark eyes, and a sharp line to the nose and cheekbones gave her the look of the Islas States. But then, so many different peoples mixed and mingled in Fenholt, appearances hardly denoted anything. The woman’s scowl was softened somewhat by full lips in an oval face and a bedraggled braid glinting chestnut brown in the lamplight. Pretty, or at least she would be if she wasn’t covered in dirt and squatting in a grave.
“So … you’re not dead then, are you?” Spencer asked.
“Of course, I’m not dead! Why would you think that?” she sputtered.
“Because you were in a coffin, under three feet of dirt, with a burial shroud wrapped around you?”
“I can see how that would be misleading.”
Dark eyes raked over him, and Spencer felt the woman making judgments and drawing conclusions. Despite the burn in his legs from crouching so long and the chilly breeze prickling his skin, Spencer did his best to remain still. He had been taught to meet a spirit’s storm with calm, and he could only hope the advice would serve him equally well in this new situation.
“Look.” The woman’s voice lost some of its earlier venom. “I made some people angry, and they stuck me here to stew a bit. They’ll be back soon, planning to dig me up and finish explaining in painful detail just how upset they are. If you give me a boost up and get me out of these ropes,” she waggled her eyebrows and added, “I can make it worth your while.”
“Excuse me, madam!” Spencer sat back on his heels, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “I am a priest and a gentleman; I would never take …” He floundered, groping for a word to describe what he wouldn’t take. “… liberties like that.”
“A priest?” The woman snorted, standing in her corner of the grave. “If you’re a priest, then I’m the Mother Superior. And untwist your knickers. I was talking about money, not sex.”
“What makes you think I’m not a priest?” Spencer was torn between relief she wasn’t propositioning him and offense that she doubted his credentials.
The woman didn’t answer, instead turning her attention to scrambling out of the grave. She made it look easy, levering her elbows on the hole’s edge and digging her bare feet into the soft dirt on the sides until she managed to flip sideways onto the open ground and roll to her feet.
“No offense, but I don’t care who you are.” The woman’s earlier panic seemed a distant memory now. “Priest, grieving relative, grave robber, makes no difference to me. If you untie these ropes, or better yet, lend me a knife, I will pay you in coin for the kindness.”
The amber glare of Spencer’s lantern shone against chafed wrists and bloody ankles, making him feel like an utter tit. The implied grave robbing rankled, but this young woman was having a trying night, and he was a large, unknown man looming over her in the dark. Of course she didn’t trust him. Why would she? Most respectable people didn’t loiter around graveyards at night. For all this woman knew, she had simply traded one abuser for another.
“I have a knife I’ll gladly give you. You don’t have to pay for it.” Standing slowly, Spencer pulled a small knife off his belt and placed it on the ground in front of him. Then he took two long steps back and held the lantern so it shone on the blade.
“That’s just as well, seeing as how I’m a bit light on coin at the moment.” The woman grinned at him, a wolfish, lopsided smile that made her eyes sparkle.
Spencer laughed. The whole thing was absurd. No wonder the dead were so reluctant to cross over. No afterlife could be as wildly entertaining as this. While Spencer laughed, the woman darted forward, lightning quick despite her bonds, and snatched the knife off the ground.
“A very fine blade. Nice edge to it … Father?” The woman sawed as she talked, bits of rope fluttering down around her feet.
“Brother,” he corrected her. “Brother Spencer.”
“Well, Brother Spencer, I thank you for your fine manners and even finer steel, but that’s my signal to be off.” The woman pointed over his left shoulder, and Spencer turned to look. A lantern shone in the distance, weaving drunkenly through the gravestones and heading in their general direction. When he looked back, the woman was gone, swallowed by the night.
A pair of blue-green flames, no larger than the blaze on a candle’s wick, rose from the ground near Spencer’s feet. The pale outline of a skull framed them, the twin flares lighting the eyes of the thin apparition.
“It has been an odd evening, Reggie,” Spencer told the skull. The skull bobbed up and down in silent agreement and then swooped low, hovering near the ground. Something glinted in the light of the cerulean flames.
Spencer bent and set his lantern on the ground. A silver necklace glimmered in the dirt, set with three purple stones, each the size of his thumbnail. Polished smooth and round, the gems sat in a row, one on top of the other. Each was held in a setting fashioned to resemble a yawning skull. The long silver chain appeared broken.
“Do you think she dropped it?”
The skull answered Spencer’s question with a wobbly bob. The fuzzy aura emanating from the specter suggested Reggie was at a loss. Despite his knees’ objections, Spencer crouched again, intending to retrieve the bauble, but stopped short of picking it up. Yawning hunger prickled against his skin, and a nauseous wave rolled in his guts. It was a familiar sensation, as unmistakable as it was unwelcome.
Spencer heaved a tired sigh and used a handkerchief to slip the necklace into his pocket. He would ask around with Old Paulie and the families of the recently deceased. Maybe someone else dropped it. It might have nothing at all to do with the mystery woman.
And fairies might pop out of the ground and braid my hair with pretty ribbons.
The lantern that had chased the woman off drifted closer now, trailing bulky silhouettes and muffled conversation in its wake. He considered staying where he was, a reprimand already half-formed on his lips, but there was that tug again, the icy prod of his faith. Another blast of wind dragged frigid claws across Spencer’s face, carrying a mournful wail to his ears.
Reggie bobbed up and down, urgency and excitement radiating from the skull. Lectures will have to wait, I suppose. Spencer stood up, dusted off his pants, and snatched up his shovel.
A nice, normal exorcism was just what he needed to settle his nerves.
Wren wiggled and turned, wedging more deeply between two vine-covered tombstones. Drenched with dew and pressed against cold stone, her frozen toes felt like they might fall right off.
“That could have gone better,” she muttered to the moss-covered statue of doves nestled in the vines on her right.
It also could have gone a great deal worse, Wren thought as she watched the path by the cemetery entrance. A pair of brightly burning lamps on either side of the wrought-iron gate would make it impossible to slip by unnoticed. It was a good spot, one where Wren could watch without being seen, just the way she preferred.
In particular, she hoped to avoid Bricks and Davey. Skunner’s two favorite knee breakers had tucked her into the ground, and it was their responsibility to dig her up. Uncomplicated men with thick necks and thicker skulls, they wouldn’t bother slipping over the wall or taking an unlit path through a side gate. They’d look about for a bit, kick and punch a few things to vent their anger, and then stomp back to Skunner to deliver the bad news. And once Wren knew which way Bricks and Davey were headed, she could point herself in the opposite direction.
Ivy rustled in a breeze that smelled of salt and damp earth, heart-shaped leaves tickling against Wren’s cheek. The tall stone walls muffled the city’s nighttime song save for the deep clang of a distant bell tolling two hours past midnight. Wren ran a thumb over the polished bone handle of her borrowed knife. Hopefully, the man who’d loaned it to her would be long gone before Skunner’s muscle showed up.
Such a pretty face. It’d be a shame if Bricks pounded it in.
The man had seemed made of moonlight and shadows, his porcelain skin glowing in the lamplight, stark against waves of inky black hair. With those sculpted arms and chiseled features, one could easily mistake him for an angel statue guarding the cemetery grounds. If Wren had to be rescued by some nutter digging up stiffs in the middle of the night, at least he was a handsome nutter.
I wonder if he really is a priest.
It wasn’t the sort of thing people often lied about. The gods tended to get a bit tetchy with people masquerading as one of their own. And even sweaty and covered in grave dirt, he had a bit of squeaky clean about him that lent credence to his claim. The look on his face when he thought she was offering him sexual favors had almost made it worth being buried in that hole. Like a fish whacked on the head with a boat paddle. The memory brought a smile to Wren’s face. It was oddly comforting to know that there were still people in the world with enough moral fiber to be offended on her behalf.
Wren clenched her jaw as a shiver rattled her limbs. Frostbite wasn’t a concern in Fenholt this far past winter, but going barefoot was far from comfortable. “Those were my favorite boots.”
She’d paid good money to a highly sought-after cobbler and spent four months on a waitlist for those shoes. Soft suede with just the right amount of leather sole, they were thick enough to protect her feet but thin enough that she moved like a whisper in the night when she wore them. And, of course, Skunner took them. It was always something with that bastard. If he wasn’t stealing boots and burying his prisoners alive, he was brewing them a pot of tea while explaining the effects of various poisons or dangling them over a pit of hungry ferrets.
The soft crunch of gravel on the path caught Wren’s attention.
Think of the devil, and his minions appear.
Two hulking shadows stalked towards the gate with shovels slung over their shoulders. Davey’s thick shoulders hunched, and his even thicker mustache curved over an angry scowl. Bricks looked the same as he always did: ambulatory slabs of muscle under a layer of insulating fat topped with a shiny bald pate and a dim expression.
“Skunner is gonna skin us. And then he’s going to turn our skin into jerky, and then he’s gonna feed it to us,” Davey muttered under his mustache.
“Nah.” Bricks answered with the calm air of a man it would take an army to skin.
“Nah?! Ain’t you even a little bit worried?”
Bricks shrugged. His shoulders moved like two boulders rumbling down a mountain. “Weren’t our fault. Boss said put ‘er in the hole, then go have a drink or two, then go back and get ‘er outta the hole. We did what we was tolt. Weren’t our fault somebody else dug ‘er up first.”
“You really are thick, Bricks! Skunner don’t care if it’s our fault or not. He just cares that she got away on our watch,” Davey growled. “He’s gonna skin us, and then when he’s done, Jenny Two-Knives is gonna string us up by our bollocks in the middle of the Oyster House!”
“Nah. Weren’t our fault,” Bricks repeated as they passed through the gate and turned right.
Davey barked an angry answer, but they were past the stone wall, and Wren couldn’t quite make it out. They’d turned right. Right was good. They were heading south, back to Blackboot territory, clearing the way for her to turn north.
“Not that you haven’t been good company and all …” Wren patted the pair of stone doves and stood up, wincing a little at the tingle of blood rushing back into her legs.
Once she made it to her bolt-hole, she could nab her second favorite pair of boots, some coin, several daggers and put this botched evening behind her. What was meant to be a quick bit of reconnaissance was swiftly turning into a quagmire. The less time she spent in the city, the harder it would be for Skunner to track her down again. Wren gave the priest’s bone-handled knife a little twirl with her left hand and reached inside her jerkin with her right. Her finger slid into the secret pocket sewn in the lining, pushing all the way through and out the frayed hole in the bottom.
“Son of a squealing, mangy, flea-bitten bitch!”
