“No!” Irion cried as he heard Belot cry out the same. “Not this! Not him!” they cried.

  Toadly, now a hideous tadpole, made a slow orbit as Irion felt the putrid itch of Toadly’s fusion. Covered in the powder that started this, there was a sudden crowding in Irion’s mind.

  There was the collection of memory and thoughts that Irion identified as Irion. But there were others too. There was one: a maker of undead slaves and master of his craft. There was another: cruel, cunning, ever-working. Yet there seemed to be a looming fourth being, one who settled on them like a fog. Darker, this insidious force felt much older, and it was this one who Irion cried out to inexplicably in a dialect from times long ago, “What is thou which touches me?!”

  Maecidion then felt the rebirth that few creatures can know. Without eyes he saw; without body he began to feel. “Worry not, young one,” Maecidion said.

  Pathetic whimpers and yelps in the periphery were all that was left of Gormorster Toadly and Denoreyph Belot. “I, I am sorry,” that which was still Irion said. “Forgive me, my Lord. There was no way of knowing. I thought maybe, maybe in your final moments that you had gone mad.”

  Irion was sophomoric, but audacious and physically able. It was why he had been chosen, as both the other two had been chosen for their greatest endowments. Their poor qualities melting away, the synthesis was congealing as that which was still Irion pled, “Your Virulence, please—”

  What was once Irion remained only a moment more, a fluttering of two memories: perusing a scroll under candlelight at the lyceum, and then the midnight garden in the family keep, playing with his cousins under the moon. As excited cries carried on the night wind, he ran from his hiding place. Finding his playmates, what was once Irion faded as if never existing at all.

  Maecidion looked at his hands, then his feet. He breathed in the air of the splendid early morning, then extended an arm for his imp to perch.

  *

  The morning was the shade of gray that always brought rain. Irion, once again, stood at the giant obelisk of Maecidion the Virulent. Irion was mostly still garbed in Irion’s black, adding to the new form one of Belot’s cloaks. A satchel was slung about his shoulder; in it, choice mithridates and tinctures and philtres to help retackle the world. And his beautiful coiled imp. And his lapis lazuli hand.

  He smiled at the obelisk. His obelisk. The world could see this testament to his departure. The more, the better. Times were changing; that part of him had been right. Even an ancient must adapt. The man the world had known as Maecidion was just an earlier vessel, and the predecessor before Maecidion the same. He could hardly contain his amusement; simply clearing out the clutter of a closet was enough to mask his plan. He cared nothing for the recipients at what he was sure was a riotous hearing, and prior to had laughed as he’d laid dying while Morfil penned their insignificant names.

  Morfil had been a diligent and loyal subordinate, but he lacked Irion’s intrepid nature. Besides, he was now obliged to the duties of the highest order, whereas Irion was practically a nomad from the lower. It was time for something new. Through Irion, he was free.

  As the first rains splashed off his hood, he laughed as ghouls do. He was alive again, and the pitter-patter on his tongue was as sweet as bliss itself. It was time to pay his respects to the wondrous House of Rogaire. He marched toward the Thunder Bustle, through the flower-adorned precincts of the wealthier tombs.

  IV

  The Mortician’s Tale

  Part Two

  “And what are you two fine gentlemen gabbing about?” Somyellia larked at the base of our stoop. “How Maecidion is still rumored to rise again, even after these six years hence,” adjusting the grocery basket from one hip to another, “or how that monument to stupidity over in Do-Gooder’s is finally showing its figures below the knees?”

  “Snier here,” I replied, not done taunting my colleague, “studied math. Below the knees is, that’s over eighty percent done, right? Right, Snier?”

  “Oh, nothing, we’re just talking about that time you tried to sneak him into your old place,” Tymothus Snier said from the top step as I bounced up to lend Somyellia a hand.

  “That one,” she said. “Seasmil tell you how—”

  “How the fiendish guards persuaded me to find shelter elsewhere. Yeah yeah.”

  “Well,” said Snier, who had a fashion for clasping his hands more girlish than any third Somyellia’d ever brought over. “And shelter elsewhere you lovebirds did. Shall we?”

  We all went inside, where, as per usual, Snier began his prattle about our “menagerie of skulls” and the “religious graffiti.” My contributions, at least, were gradual preparations for the Institute, but even I had to concede how Somyellia’s flare for gratuitous macabre had taken over our decorative tastes. But, though he was reluctant to admit it, our decorations were becoming as neighborly to Snier as we who owned them.

  “Glad you’ll suffer the market for us, baby,” I said, tasked with a plum jar that Somyellia’d handed me. “They’d just come up with some new rule, say I violated it,” the reluctant lid opened and spun, “and jail my ass.”

  Snier was quick to agree. “You are worse than what they got in the dungeon downtown,” he said. “Sommy, let me tell you, having bumped into your menacing hunk here—while working his trade, no less—hell, I would have called the Ward. Bite marks, scars, clothing of nothing but black and questionable greens—well, let’s just say that raven hair of yours, Seasmil, doesn’t always look as charming.”

  I saw that the effeminate thief wasn’t the only one looking me up and down. Work had taken Somyellia on the road for almost a week. I watched as she fondled our bone wind chimes.

  Like most domiciles on the Avenue of Red Wolf, our place was coffin-like and smelled sour from an unfindable leak in the sewer pipes.

  For me though, it was perfect. Although fewer than in my teen years, my dissections hadn’t stopped. I’d made a pact with myself that I’d proudly kept: I never once took a human life in order to collect my materials. I came perilously close once, but two of my cohorts beat me to it. Their lust for inflicting pain and their general bristling nature, I had opted to view in quiet disdain, but that night I was grateful. Our assignment had tried to rise from his bed to cast some hex on us, and by the looks of his gaunt and soulless slaves, he was far too dangerous to be shown mercy. I’d left that night with one of his slave’s arms tucked into my belt. Her limb had been meant to serve as a premiere piece to cut open and inspect, but its ceaseless twitching forced me to give up and throw it away.

  This rule that I’d self-imposed may have been more difficult to honor if I hadn’t been a grave robber. When taking my work home with me made a stack too high, our tiny but high-walled backyard took care of the surplus. Like jagged teeth, towering slums hung over our yard, appearing in opium-induced stirs as looming onlookers. In the queer hours of morning, I would bury all that was to be buried. Snier, like a good neighbor, admitted once that it lullabied him, the soft digs of the shovel.

  The three of us reclaimed our stoop and I packed the pipe. The steps were still warm, but it would be night soon. Somyellia sidled onto my lap. It was easy to forget how fiercely she’d blossomed into full womanhood when she gave me her girlish smile. My gratitude had remained two-fold. This beauty wasn’t just cause for erections all over Nilghorde, but because of her beauty our rent was still usually paid.

  “The witch’s bosom still gives milk, Snier.” The cloud of smoke that burst from my mouth ate Somyellia like a wedding veil.

  “Yeah,” Snier said, sounding like he was already mulling over our night’s work. “Pass it here so I can share such enlightenments.”

  One puff was all it ever took for Snier; not hard to imagine, being that he wasn’t much bigger than one of my legs. The smoke tickled his lungs, then his brain, then shot out those blue eyes onto the beautiful filth of Nilghorde.

  “How’d I get here,” Snier said, “Nilghorde—ugh.” He had a habit of doing this. We’d usually just sit and watch. I’d gape. Somyellia’d usually giggle. “Not sure where to start,” he went on, “that’s all. Too hard on yourself. Always have been. You abandoned the thought of it. Besides, looks fade—like your hairline. Too hard on yourself. Always have been. Robbery is—”

  “Snier,” Somyellia said, “kind sir, may we have our pipe back now?”

  “Robbery is too dangerous. Street-thieving too competitive. Besides—here you go, Sommy—the margins are too low.” Snier was still carrying on as we made our way back into our side of the duplex. “Oh well, every now and again we get a good load.”

  “We sure do,” Somyellia said, grabbing my crotch then shutting our door with her heel.

  Draped in a fresh intestinal track, Somyellia ground on top of me. Once spent, our pipe returned, cradled in her hands, the golden snake. Too stunned to go at it again, exalted visions came to me in patches, like a dreary giant who was blinking as he lumbered across the world.

  “…You will be a doctor,” I heard, coming to. My love was on her side, reading my latest batch of notes and sketches, bare, save the scrolls ribboned over her thigh. “We’ll have droves of bodies to spin our wealth.”

  When I came to again, Somyellia was on the floor, dreamily covering our floorboards in the symbols of her craft with her red and white paints.

  “I can buy a batch of girl slaves,” Somyellia said, “and have a row of wiggling rumps waiting for you after a long day of curing washerwomen of their cough. Our garden will explode with all the illegal vines and bulbs. Finer arts demand it, you know. Many coffins will have to be dumped out for some of the advanced stuff. And I’ll need close to constant petting too.” I went for my work tools lying next to a jar of thumbs, a sight that would have made our landlord’s head pop off if he ever gulped down the courage to come in. “But if my brute is too busy writing books and cutting out tumors,” she blew me a kiss as I waved her off amiably, “then the boy slaves will just have to do.”

  *

  “She really thinks I can get into the—”

  “Institute of Human Sciences, never heard you talk about it,” Snier said, rearranging the picks in his work-belt.

  Copping to the sarcasm: “Just need the tuition.”

  We skirted a culvert and waded through a sliver of marsh. The night had come swiftly as I’d snored and drooled. During which, Snier reminded me, he’d paced all over our stoop until at last I emerged with our crowbar and short-handled shovels. My tools, of course, were now tucked away in my bag.

  But the moon and stars this night were remarkably shy. Hiding our larger tools was probably as unnecessary as scaling the roots of an old oak to make our way through a hole in the cemetery fence.

  Snier and I had met on a similar night. When Snier had fled to Nilghorde, his better judgment swayed him to put the sex trade on sabbatical. Snier had said his suspicions were confirmed when it trickled down that the Ward had ransacked every boy brothel. In fact, he’d told me a whole lot, which as we slinked past the first of several guardhouses, my amused mind replayed his grandest story yet:

  Without a coin in his purse, Snier had said, one evening he’d sat and watched as a funeral procession went by. The clamor had been clad in jewels. Gold plates weren’t sealed in some vault, but being banged by a parade of mourners.

  Breaking into mausoleums was easy enough for a competent thief, and Snier surely was. But too many were in parts where antsy, spear-kneading watchmen marched about. Though it never ceased to make his skin crawl, the safer bet was the endless sea of graves.

  Some graves are forgotten as soon as they are lowered, not even a shovel’s load covers some of the more extreme cases. Others are in the outskirts of any given cemetery, usually the side where overgrowth seems bent on reclaiming the land for the wild.

  One night, Snier wanted to try his luck in the Maedraderium. To him, as to most of us, the Maedraderium was a small city of twinkling lavish homes for those far beyond the ability to appreciate it all. Hoping to wash himself and bicker to no one about the heaviness of the coffin he’d given up on, he said he’d followed the gurgling of a nearby fountain. He went around one mausoleum wall just to slam face-first into another—his words. He wondered how a wall could have felt so warm on such a cool night. Then an arm pinned him flat to the ground.

  His kicks pitter-pattered against not a wall, but a man’s chest. Snier said his dagger was smacked away like a troublesome nat. Screaming may have alerted an eager watchman. Prison seemed like a dream by comparison, but his mouth was sealed shut by the man’s large hand.

  It was broken at the tip, but a thick knife flashed in caught starlight. As the knife rose higher, maybe it was his lust for beauty that pulled Snier to see the ornate casket behind the man on top of him. Yes, behind this man, this unrepenting fiend, a casket sat pulled out of the earth, and it sat unopened.

  “Ikin owen it,” Snier said against the palm covering his mouth, his eyes clinched like dungeon vises. After a moment Snier felt the hand lift off. “I can open it.”

  I let him up. The locks on that damn thing had cost me the tip of my knife, but with a little tooling, Tymothus Snier opened the griffin-emblazoned casket with a final chunk.

  A year later, Snier finally believed me when I’d said that I had no plans on killing him that night, that and he had long since moved into the other half of our duplex. Alliances weren’t just for the Ward and royal Houses. Nothing better than combining some muscle with a little coy lock work.

  “Snier,” I said, back in the present and entering a thicket of headstones, “remember the coffin that had that gold dildo inside?” Good ol’ Sniery had seen such things before—in fact, he may have been the only person in all Mulgara to have encountered one in two different professions.

  “Can we just get to it?”

  We laid our tools on the grass, but I whipped out the opium. “Yeah,” Snier soon giggled, “I sold it to a Chapwyn priest.” Any watchman or fellow grave robber may have run screaming from our ghouls-feeding laughter. “Should have given it to Somyellia…sorry, no offense.”

  “Meh,” I said, disenthralling myself from a comfortable headstone, “just her job. You wouldn’t understand.” Snier’s stare tickled me. “Now that was a joke, little buddy. Let’s get to work.” I grabbed a shovel and got digging.

  “We need to split the spoils the way you said you used to.” Snier said. We’d hit a good one! A bloated noble stuffed in a coffin studded in bronze-lined jade. “And to think, he thought going the in the ground route would fool entrepreneurs like us, Mr. Oleugsby.”

  “Ansul’s ass!” I let out. Quieting myself, I leaned in to stare at the plates and goblets. Disgracing the Chapwyn church father’s name had just been upped from time in the pillory to a lopped-off head, and grave robbing had been a death sentence for years—whether at the executioner’s axe or ripped limb from limb by the offended and turned-loose meek. Being killed twice over was a distilling notion, but the smiles on both our dirty faces gleamed still. I said without taking my eyes of our treasure, “The old arrangement was I’d keep the jewelry; he just wanted the body.” I glanced over. Snier appeared to be listening, though steadfastly working a jeweled bracer off a leathery arm. “Still want it how I used to do it?”

  “There,” Snier exhaled. “Got her—I thought you were the one who only wanted the body?”

  “No. It’s a great way to collect material, sure,” I explained. Snier handed me up the loot. Soft tinks and tanks sang as our bag swelled. “Materials is mostly why I do it now. That and bills. By the time I got back in business, I could hardly afford a bread crumb. But, such is your fate when a squadron of Ansul’s True catches you slipping rings off lower clergy.”

  Snier chuckled while handing up a goblet. “That story made it all the way to Pelliul.”

  “You’re kidding? Yeah, I’d probably have enough money for tuition by now if it weren’t for that storm of torches and hymns. But, yeah, back when Mr. Belot hired me, it was simple: More bodies for him, more coin from him. I kept anything I found—which was usually nothing but worm shit—and he got first crack at the haul.”

  Jumping out of the hole, “And for that there was a wage?” “And a decent one,” jumping down to cut off noble ears. “Of course, there was more to it.”

  “Not sure I want to know,” Snier said. “It’s a shame Belot’s gone. Probably dead.”

  “Seaz, I got to finally ask it. What the hell does taking apart a few stiffs over and over have anything to do with becoming a doctor? Why not—”

  —We were on their bellies. Out from nowhere a clamor of mounted watchmen had appeared. One said “Opium smell,” thankfully riding right past us and then disappearing.

  We slithered all the way back to the oak.

  Once on the streets my heart pounded less erratically. I continued, “For practice. So, yeah, I worked for him about a year, then he just vanished. It was like he went up in smoke. Metaphorically apt, too. I found signs there’d been a fire where he usually worked. Somyellia thinks Belot disappeared because this one vile man he had me take care of may have had even viler friends.”

  “Fires. Vile friends. Somyellia hasn’t pieced it all together yet for you? She’s from folk not too far off from your Mr. Belot.”

  “Only folk of hers I’ve ever met is that onion-headed cousin, Irion. Always tasking her out with brews and broths. I ask her what for and she just clams up and tells me family business.”

  *

  We made it home and divided the spoil, as we always did. No fuss. No squabble. The haul put food in the gullet, but greater things called. Not long after, Snier broke the news to me that he’d had his fill of grave dirt. I’d made a friend. I’d cared for the little thief from Pelliul, but as is my fate, like Belot, he too would vanish.

  V

  The Municipal Dungeon

  “Welcome home,” the guard jeered, tossing Tymothus Snier in the cage. Tymothus was once again in the Rat’s Nest, once again in the hay matting its floor, once again his back stinging and bloody from the lash.