The two women winked.

  It was impossible not to feel the giddiness. Somyellia had enjoyed making her costume, parting with coins to conjugate straps of shamrock with her snug censors of seafoam green. Only the silk between her legs betrayed her monochromatic delivery, leaving paled husbands and reddening wives to stare at reptilian yellow.

  Somyellia had hoped Rinlot would have been the one making the announcements. So had Morlia. That way the young witch would’ve accepted the second sword, touched the damned man, then begun concocting her best exit strategy.

  But the lord of the home was still busy meandering, as he had all evening, disappearing to emerge at other corners of the loud mansion as if magically propelled by the fairies who dotted stairwells and danced drunkenly in the great hall.

  Every time her moment approached, the Minotaur would hoof out of reach. But she’d just won best costume. Etiquette demanded the prison master come to congratulate her.

  The lights were lowered for the sword-bearers as they sliced into the pig. Other than butcher’s duty, the only requirement was passing the first cuts to the hosts. The lady, having no stomach for such things, excused Somyellia to break off from the clump and give Rinlot his due.

  Due indeed, she thought, carrying the plate through the crowd, parting the partiers with her cattish strut. Rinlot Rogaire was one of the bigger men there, as big as Seasmil, though blockish and without the limber look that intimated her lover’s athleticism. Keeping an eye on the oaf was made all their easier by his fashionable horns. They were breaking out of a pleasant tide of demons. Below such wooden foolery the man seemed to lock on her. He smiled and nodded, pointing to the obligation she held and gesturing a spoon to his mouth.

  Here we go. She balanced the plate in one hand, extending the other for whatever form of handshake this impostering aristocrat was about to deem fit. You’re welcome, Irion—

  “You’re the finest fuckin’ thing I’ve seen in a long long time,” spouted the toad, appearing in front of her as if she’d accidently summoned him out of a damned lamp. “Werlyle’s the name.”

  “Thanks,” she said. No, not a toad. The short drunk who blocked her way was an insult to such beasts. Toads were at least helpful components, or familiars.

  Next, in one sweeping motion, a sequence unfolded. He relieved her of her dish, turned, gave it to Rinlot, spoke some familial trivia to that white-toothed grinner, then led her halfway out into the night before she’d realized, once again, her target had been diverted.

  “No one—I mean someone,” wrestling her arm free. She pressed against what little was there to prevent her breasts from baring themselves, ensuring he hadn’t somehow diverted them, too. “I mean I came here with someone.”

  “Aw,” the drunk gloated, “he oughta be keepin’ a better eye on a lady like you.”

  It surprised her she’d let herself be escorted out a door and down the few steps. Now under the stars, it surprised her less that she allowed this kidnapping to continue. Outfitted most certainly for the macabre and lukewarm startles the holiday had become, a bar had been erected and manned amidst the obelisks of the Rogaire family graveyard.

  She turned down his offer. A shot of Bleeding Anna sounded something euphoric right about now, but even the horniest dunce knew refusing a drink was a sign the shop wasn’t open. One of his earlier advances was an attempted fondle that she smacked away. Though forcibly remaining herself the dainty mooncalf, her eyes belied simmered annoyance. The awful power in her hand, the one she’d used to fasten back his fingers, if he only knew.

  “What fun’s a party then? No drink.” His head had been painted, cartoonishly depicting his brains as having suffered full removal. Normally, she would’ve twisted and snarled, noting the perfect metaphor. But not even the Worlds Smartest Ouvarnia sign hung about his neck beckoned her mirth.

  The spell was going to wear off. The hand resting on her hip was her own; that, at least, was a positive. The spell was going to wear off and she needed to get back inside. “You’ll have to excuse me.” Whatever else she’d said trickled out while she scanned the windows for any signs of a passing Minotaur.

  “Here we are. Somethin’ a bit more fittin’ a woman of yerr beauty.” The demon barkeep had left them with Sweet Victory.

  Somyellia reluctantly accepted, sighing into the hand-blown glass and pretending to sip. Its translucent mouth ran rimmed with gold, the glass decorated with delicate and proud lilies. She observed such craftsmanship for it was a way to seem attentively absorbed in his newest onslaught of prattle. This time a grope landed.

  “Enough.” Her voice jarred the barkeep. “Lay one more finger on me, I promise you the first five who bring me your jelly-lathered ribs—man, woman, or child—they’ll get me the way you’re wishing.”

  What the hell is Morlia doing?

  The somatics and subordinate incantations had been calculated, executed. The rites written, read, burned. The ashes used in the three ways only witches knew. The spell, the curse, the second act of three, it was loaded; crackling in her palms and ready to rip through the sorry carcass of Rinlot Rogaire. Morlia had told her she’d send her husband over if there were any complications. This wobbling blowhard was most certainly that. Opportunities were running thin. Moments left before the spell’s depletion, even thinner.

  No sooner had she sat down her glass than Rinlot came running. If a real bull had been unleashed into the parting crowd, their urgency may have only been slightly greater. Chatter and banter and the calling of night birds ended as Somyellia become the victim of the large man’s sprint.

  “Cousin,” he cried, skidding to a halt just before the boot toe of the drunk who’d been pestering her. He breathed and billowed into the short man’s face, panted and cussed out nonsense. And, as he was knocking her flat, he’d had his ribs squeezed by the unloading hands of Somyellia.

  When she rose, she hid her face. Her knee scraped, her ensemble in tatters, the dirt clinging to a bare thigh was enough to distress any woman, or so the hoity partygoers would readily believe.

  Satisfied she’d suppressed her grin, she stood tall. “A hex upon you,” she said, following up with hummingbird-quick traces of the inverted triangle into the thin air between them.

  After a time Rinlot blinked, confusedly. “Get this drunk whore outta here.”

  Not a moment more she was in custody. “Got a lively one,” said one of Rinlot’s men.

  “Hot pepper,” gleed the other, wrenching down on her arm. Their black paint rubbed and smudged against her, all the while her feinting a tantrum.

  The lugs bellowed. The party began its resurrection. Rinlot squawked, unaware his pending doom. The lugs laughed the hardest when she tried to kick them.

  Somyellia was being carried off by the guards, pretending she was screaming, but she was laughing. She was looking at the glass of Sweet Victory, noting its perfect metaphor.

  VII

  The Mortician’s Tale

  Part Three

  “A hidden grace

  In this horrible place,

  Come loping and leaping with breath.

  The fugitive flowers

  In the malefic bowers,

  The captors of beauty and death.”

  —Denom Vandahl, Poems of the Classics

  All Malevolent Masquerade was always our favorite holiday. She’d told me the party at the Rogaire mansion had gone off without a hitch, but I was still sour that I had to spend the night elsewhere. Duty came first, she’d said, but she’d also mused how she rather would have joined me on the one night a year the proper spilled into graveyards and disreputable bars, banging drums, running up tabs, puking on headstones, and cutting up roasted pigs while dressed as goblins and muskrats.

  Somyellia lay in bed with her eyes shut. Some nighttime clamor out on Red Wolf had distracted her, but she’d resumed one of her fonder pastimes. She dug her hand through the jar of severed tongues. Pulling a shriveled one out and giving it a good lick, “Thee neighborly would be less incorrigible if it weren’t for those drat newcomers, by rights,” said Somyellia. One more, swollen and still holding its redness, proved to be decidedly male. “Not that bonnet, woman! Makes you look a frumpish bar trout,” she boomed, and then her voice returned to normal. “Lovely stuff.”

  I stood there, drying my hair. “So we’re going to be swimming in silver soon for all this?”

  “More to life than metal,” lidding the jar, “one as keen for stomach tubes and finger bones as you should know this,” Somyellia said. “Don’t sound too Chapwyn on me.” I tossed a severed hand that we used for intimate petting off the bed and flopped down beside her. “Mediocre in the many ways that he may be,” Somyellia continued, “Irion easily dominated the Rogaire prison master. Asking for a guard change and an escort out of that lovely dungeon was no harder than robbing graves in a blind man’s graveyard with a silent shovel.”

  As she came up on her hands and knees, the window above our bed held the night. She studied the angle of the moon. I studied the sleek dip of her back and bare buttocks. “It’s almost time,” she said, staying me and hopping toward her wardrobe.

  “It’s a wonder that termite box hasn’t exploded,” I said. Rummaging through the clutter, she swung out ribbons of dazzling green before tossing it in the trash. I snickered, “sexy lizard costume?”

  “Ansul’s ass, don’t make me relive it.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Told you, my beast, I introduced Irion and Morlia years ago.”

  “Eight years ago.”

  “You do listen. And soon, as you know, after they’d met they agreed Morlia’d approach that dim prison master. Who knows, it could have been my tasking if Morlia hadn’t been so insistent,” giving the rummage a rest, her eyes sparkled, “but, of course, I would have tactfully explained I was already so uncompromisingly taken. But I knew it would work well. The weak charm Irion drenched her in probably wasn’t even needed.”

  “Seduce the warden?”

  “She is perfect for the prison master. Well,” erupting in the laugh people do when ruminating on a joke’s punch line, “perfect for both of them. Irion has really taken a liking to her.”

  This Morlia, the object of Irion’s affection, had been Somyellia and I’s third-lover many times in the earlier days. She’d stiffened me the first night I’d met the two of them as a teen in Templeton. Though I may have been overestimating Somyellia’s sensitivity, I kept to myself my understanding of why men were so wrapped around Morlia’s finger.

  “The charm spell wasn’t necessary,” I said, trying to make it sound like a question.

  “Hadn’t seen Cousin Irion in ages,” Somyellia said, perhaps wanting to shift the course of our conversation, “since playing in our family’s gardens as children. Then there he is, rapping at the doors. Right after Maecidion died, actually. Funny how a death in the family can change people. Irion acted different. The way he moved. How he spoke. A lot like Maecidion used to, really. I think his death really straightened Irion out.”

  “That’s fantastic—so listen, if he’s so low in your branches or what have you, why the servant-girl role whenever he graces our stoop?”

  “When you talk like that sometimes it makes me think I really should’ve entertained Morfil’s advances,” she said, successfully irritating me. I watched her as she pulled out what she’d been looking for: her dark robe covered in family regalia. She wore it only when practicing the type of witchcraft that demanded her utmost.

  It didn’t take living with a witch to know her work was outlawed. Along with the parchment plague of new maxims about labor class virtue nailed everywhere, many false witches had been rounded up in plazas and burned to kick off the Years of Peace. Now all that remained seemed to be the real ones. Although there were those practicing black magic who stalked the periphery, Somyellia’s House had, according to her, earned the trust of the evil gods. Such trust bestowed on the Ordrids the secrets of their trickery. But it came with a heavy price. When her family called, she said she had to listen. Noticing I was still waiting for an answer, she only said, “Tersiona weeps for a reason.”

  “I’ll remember that. Who penned that lofty explanation for all life’s quandaries, you or Vandahl?”

  “We’ve been over this,” she sighed. Somyellia knew I didn’t care for Irion. He lived somewhere in the Bustle, and it was rare he appeared at our door, but when such rarities encroached, I always found a reason to slink on over to Snier’s side.

  “It’s just I hear so many times,” I said, launching my impersonation of her that made her blood boil, “my beast—my beast, I can’t do this or that or that and this—but then he shows up and your schedule’s wide open.”

  “Seasmil.”

  “Wide open.”

  “Seasmil,” she said, culling a tone that started to bring me down out of webs in the rafters.

  “Wide open as…like the Moliahenna River’s mouth after a damn flood.”

  “Vandahl pen that?” she said, returning to bed.

  *

  “I’ll let you get to witchery then,” I said, climbing off her. Irion’s most recent visit was to ask of Somyellia her major discipline. And she’d done her part. Somyellia had touched some warden who Morlia had somehow found a way to send barreling over to her. The curse had been locked by waves of her hand that she told me was passed off as nothing more than churlish girl anger.

  Somyellia was happy to help. The House of Rogaire had wronged the House of Ordrid, and Irion—in this newfound severity Somyellia occasionally mentioned—was just tidying up family business.

  Even the common-most dung-scooper on the common-most street knew that when the Conqueror’s campaign had swept over the peninsula that it had ended at the doorsteps of Maecidion’s keep, and after enough death and chaos deals were eventually struck and the land was renamed.

  Yet after enough talks from the bottom of our pillows, I myself could orate the finer points in her family’s spiderweb of shifting powers and trickery.

  The tale told within Ordrid confines was that after necromancy had been outlawed, and Maecidion and his kind were allowed to practice in secret, it didn’t take long for the freshly outfitted Metropolitan Ward, and the people cheering them, to look for a new threat to their newfound tranquility.

  Rinmauld Rogaire, father of the warden they all hated, was one of the chief legislators after the Conqueror turned to his unyielding seclusion. It turns out that law was the one magic blacker than necromancy. Extorting Maecidion had been both legal and lucrative. Keeping the House of Ordrid’s share of agreed-upon war spoils was payment for Rinmauld not sicking on Somyellia and Maecidion’s House the society that had as soon forgotten war as was quick to start a new one.

  An Ordrid vendetta on the House of Rogaire had been talked about in their circles for decades. For reasons not entirely explained, her cousin Irion had picked up the proverbial hatchet on behalf of the late Maecidion, and now apparently planned on burying it into the heads of the Rogaires who remained.

  Somyellia now had to conduct the final ritual and erupt the curse they’d set. I personally didn’t bother much with her duties in this arena, but I also hadn’t in her leg-spreading one either. Our time together was all that mattered; however, even I had learned that all “great curses” required three parts. The victim must be touched by the curser or cursers, and she and Irion had. The curser or cursers must lock in their work with particular gestures, as she had done at the party. Now, the final act was being executed. It would take time, and the moon in the right position.

  She began her work as I grabbed my shovel and crowbar to head out to do mine.

  *

  When I returned home, my rather lackluster night amongst the graves felt noisy when compared to the silence that met me. I stepped inside.

  Crimson and bone-white moons, half-moons, quarter-moons, and languages I never understood covered our floor. Near the middle, in the largest the red-white circle, Somyellia lay still.

  Perfectly still.

  Some of the red was reflecting the moonlight. Odd that it would, for her paints had to my mind always been ordinary. Odder still, her usual exactness had not been carried out; the shiny pools near her mouth and legs bled out and over and down what symbols had to be of her most importance.

  I walked closer.

  I called her name.

  I stomped on a floorboard when she didn’t stir.

  The silly girl’s morbid games would not get the best of me, even as I went to shower and later returned to the tomb-like silence that had become my apartment.

  I am Seasmil, and Death has followed me from an early age. Mother and Celly had left the world in different ways, but stalked my dreams equally. Death was a part of life to me as was ink to a book.

  Life owes us nothing.

  She had died suddenly, without warning, at the hand of a ruthless venereal disease. Carried coolly by men but cursing the innards of females, I knew this from the blood that had let from all her orifices and pooled over the symbols she’d repainted. Although I had to be a carrier, she was most likely infected while working her trade.

  In this moment she was terribly beautiful, her nose and mouth spilling forth blood as wicked as her ancestors that danced under the feminine moon. Those golden eyes stared at me as if to ask one final question. Her skin was still warm under the robe she sometimes wore when practicing her finer craft.

  I lifted her off the floor. Her head hung far back and her hair waggled in her blood, like the fine tip of a large paintbrush. Hugging her was all one could do. Silence. I had never been in a place so quiet, not even the old cellar or the furthermost grave.

  My own blood roared. I told myself she’d gone back to revel with her kind; wrought not of our world. And though this made me feel no better, after a moment the silence seemed broken by echoes from some far off place, a place I partly understood her to be. All of this could have been my own wishful thinking, of course; maybe the worms were the last to taste my sweet Somyellia.