“Daddy! Daddy! I met an old woman.”

  “You did?” He would have covered his work with a sheet if in any way his daughter would have been bothered by it. But, settling in Seasmil an unmovable plaque of discomfort, Niera was far too much as he was, or at least had been. She breezed past a festering stack and leaped into his arms.

  “Yes,” she said, “and she said I have the most beautiful name ever.”

  “That you do, the name my own mother once wore. Now what is this about an old woman?”

  “She’s down in the vault!” Niera pushed herself off his chest, scrutinizing him with her dark eyes. “Daddy, who was Sumeelia?”

  Staid—that idiot. He’d promised shortly after their marriage he’d never mention Somyellia again. It pained him to do so, but not such a pain as his wife, he conceded, must have felt when his ramblings led to troublesome waters. “Why is your mother telling you about her?”

  “Mommy didn’t say it! The woman down in the vault did.”

  “Honey,” he said, moving her to his other knee. “You remember what I said? Make believe makes the world go round…but not when talking to Mommy and Daddy. That’s lying.”

  “But I’m not lying. The old woman said you two used to love each other like you and Mommy do, and her cousin’s name is.” Seasmil watched as she searched, nearly dropping her when she announced: “Irion!” He asked her to repeat it. She did. “Is he like an uncle to me?”

  Niera held imagination in no short supply. Her adventures in City Cemetery often brought back tales of friendly ghosts, bones that moved, smiling fairies that hid behind thoroughly searched tombstones. But no such childish grandeur had ever produced a name he had never told her. Seasmil had never even told his wife about Irion. No reason to: just an apparition in an epoch he’d decidedly put behind him.

  Unable to decide how to think or feel, he asked his daughter to tell him her tale.

  “Well, Daddy. The old woman—who we must rescue—she said to tell you that Irion did something bad to Sumeelia.” Her face took a turn for the serious. “Something really bad, Daddy. And that you should know.”

  “Know what, honey?” She stared down at the floor as if searching for the right clod of dirt to jar her memory. After a moment she cried, “I can’t remember.”

  “I don’t like you running around the graveyard.” He put her on her feet.

  “You said you used to.”

  He cleared his throat and glanced her a wry one. “If I go look for this old woman, she will be there?”

  “She has to be. Someone threw her down the vault.”

  Seasmil took off his smock and grabbed, certain he was a fool, a length of rope. “Let’s not mention this to your mother.”

  *

  As he’d expected, no woman was there. Niera wailed and pled, pled and wailed, pointing to the “exact spot” where a dirty smiling witch had told her things that caused Seasmil to scratch his head and console his girl that yes, of course he still believed her.

  What he hadn’t expected was for Niera’s tale to burrow so firmly in his chest.

  Next morning, after Staidilia’s usual breakfast, he told his women he’d be gone until sometime in the evening. “What for?” Staidilia asked, but he felt disinclined to answer.

  It was a long walk to the skirts of the Morgeltine, but he could use the fresh air and exercise. It had been ages since he’d sojourned the city. He marveled at all the new buildings, the cleanliness of the streets, the unpuked-on cobblestones devoid of the type of society who still found itself almost daily onto his worktable.

  By noon his legs ached. The highest obelisk in Laugher’s Lot was long hidden by steep roofs and smoking chimneys, and now the untamed luxury of mansions shined and mixed with the sweat in his eyes. Maybe I did need a walking stick, he thought, mirthfully shaking off his breathing. No matter, the forest at the city’s edge now in view, a few more palaces to his back and he’d be in the shadow of the old Rogaire place.

  After what felt a hundred miles more, he was standing in front of a guard. “What’s your business,” the thug said, clacking to life to place his shield and armor in Seasmil’s way.

  Seasmil looked beyond the helmet and the frowning face staring out from underneath. Somyellia had told him the grounds were vast. Growing up in Templeton, he couldn’t exactly agree; lawns of higher Wardsmen there had been that of small fields. But, through the guarded side gate and beyond the bailey wall, sun-whitened tips of, of course, more obelisks seemed to stretch out in an expanse fitting a district of such wealth and territory.

  “Do you have an appointment? You don’t look like a tradesmen.”

  “I’m not a damned carpenter,” Seasmil said, hearing now the rhythmic beating of hammers. “Your boss and I, we have, we know some of the same people.”

  The guard rubbed his beard. It perhaps served Seasmil his hair was long and dark, matching the clothing he now deemed unfit for such a journey under a scorching day. “Begging your pardon, sir, but if you are an Ordrid please say so.”

  “I am no Ordrid.”

  “And no tradesmen either. I dare say, you strike me a lurker. Perhaps looking for another purse to plunge.” The interrogator removed his hand from the pommel of his sword to grab the whistle hanging about his neck.

  “Would a thief come and strike up a lovely chat with an armed guard, midday, and have you ever seen one so damned out of shape? I’d die before besting the first open window. Now tell Irion that Seasmil Oleugsby is here. I need to speak with him on, about family matters.”

  At length the guard unglued his eyes and chirped out a cadence from his whistle. Another soon appeared, receiving orders and disappearing once more behind the wall. And there Seasmil waited, being baked by the sun while the smirking guard drank theatrically from his jug. What an idiot Seasmil felt. Word had reached him years ago of her cousin’s maneuvering into this very mansion. Whomever Irion had become, the dour little Ordrid was sure to have no interest in entertaining the question if he knew of a pit-trotting wench.

  “Oh, to hell with it.” He threw his hands up and took the first step home, already contemplating the extent of his foolishness and the workload that had surely piled.

  “Seasmil,” a cool voice said. “Is that truly you?”

  He turned to see Irion standing at the gate. Age had landed on Irion too, though graciously so. As we all do, Seasmil took in the wiser features: the familiar cheekbones, a more sunned skin, the subtle creases sowed into the corners of eyes that stared at him.

  “Tis I,” Seasmil said, embarrassed. “It’s been a long time—”

  “Come in, come in,” Irion burst. Only the guard’s oft-tested bearing prevented ogling at his lord’s current demeanor. “Come in, Seasmil. Let us speak.”

  Time as an aristocrat must’ve rubbed off. Irion led Seasmil by the hand, speaking pleasantries until they were both seated in the graveyard. “It’s too loud in there,” Irion said, waving a hand at the wall of his glittering mansion. And indeed it was. Irion explained the pounding hammers and saws that were grinding were all for renovations. Two girls emerged, each bearing a glass of wine. The black one, carved and velvety beyond much anything Seasmil had ever seen, handed him his glass. The auburn Serab, looking almost Rehleian, served her master where after they both simply bowed and marched back into the cacophony. “Salt and pepper,” Irion winked, then referred to the chambers underway. “For the newest batch of slaves. A man needs joy after the untimely departure of his love. You of all can understand this.” Irion nodded at someplace beyond his guest’s shoulder. Seasmil turned to see a weathered headstone: Morlia Ordrid.

  “No obelisk?”

  “Another?” Irion said, finishing his wine. “Werlyle! You maggot!”

  Seasmil hadn’t even taken a sip, and didn’t plan to. No sooner had Irion barked than, stumbling out from where the slave girls had vanished, the most unsightly creature appeared holding a laden tray.

  For a moment Seasmil thought one of his old bosses had risen from the dead to serve drinks to the living. “Ah, Werlyle,” Irion said in a way that reminded Seasmil of the man he’d used to know. “My favorite slave.”

  What waddled out to sate his master’s thirst was short and fat and bereft of eyes that signified even the slightest sentience. The foul slave’s preternatural silence was not undone by a mouth that hung permanently open. In it Irion worked the base of his empty glass, causing the bailey to come alive with chuckles from the watching guards. Irion patted his slave on the head, sending him off.

  “You’re not drinking.” Irion said.

  “A bit early for me.”

  Irion sidled closer on the sarcophagus. “Tell me, what’s on your mind.”

  After a self-conscious delay, Seasmil did. It was true he never particularly cared for Irion, but coming to a man’s home to try and explain Niera swore she’d met an old woman who’d had tales to tell—he could hardly believe his words.

  In contrast to Seasmil’s expectations, Irion did not smirk or sick on him his guards. He listened attentively. “The Pauper Vault, you say?” Without a trace of judgment the Ordrid nodded his head and showed only the friendliest curiosity.

  Seasmil went one deeper: “If this woman wasn’t real, how could my kid have made this up?”

  “Dear Seasmil, the world is nothing if not noise. Why, the very sarcophagus we now perch on once rattled with nonsense. Now it’s as quiet as peace herself, as your daughter’s glorious imagination will one day be.”

  Seasmil took in these words, careful not to lay out any accusation when he explained Niera had relayed that the old woman had said Irion somehow wronged Somyellia.

  “Seasmil, many people know of me, and of Somyellia. And I suppose of you too. More importantly, this old woman, as you say, she wasn’t there when you searched for her?”

  “Likely never was.”

  “I see. Well, black magic is everywhere, especially these days.” Irion sat on his next thought. “With your permission, I’d like to look into this a little further. My House, as you know, has its fair share of enemies. Curious that this…information is being put into the ears of little girls.”

  “Very.”

  “Thank you for stopping by, Seasmil.” Irion stood. “Though,” he added as they walked, “I am not pleased to have to revisit the demise of my cousin, it pleases me all the same to see you. Again, after all these years.” Seasmil prepared for the long walk, no less confused and now owning a head swimming with wine. At the gate Irion said goodbye. “You shall return? Perhaps next time with the new missus and that little storyteller of yours.”

  *

  According to the city of Nilghorde, Gormorster Toadly had simply vanished. This humorous fiction complicated Seasmil’s ambition when he petitioned to buy Toadly’s home. Close to work, a top-floor view of the cemetery’s white-green sprawl; it would’ve been foolish not to purchase the old tower. The waiting period slogged and agonized to where, at one point, shortly before being handed the deed and a new set of keys, Seasmil considered testifying that good old-fashioned homicide had rid the city of the tower’s previous ruler.

  Now the Oleugsbys lived there. Staidilia’s tastes had swept and polished a rotting cadaver into a flowered conquest of the domestic. Where undead slaves had once been made now hummed and steamed the work of a warm kitchen. A built-in shelf had recently become a repository for a number of Niera’s dolls. An office at the top of the tower, however, had stayed very much the same. In its gloom, that same evening, Seasmil sat down to write.

  Work at the morgue still paid the bills, but he’d long ago lost his necrotic zeal. Writing—the immortal written word! The greatest, truest way to explore life’s ephemeral nature. And there was that, too: life. That sunray which had entered his dark cosmos on the day of Niera’s birth. Now he held new inspiration.

  But his thoughts this evening were blockading him even worse than usual. The odd, fruitless talk with Irion had been replaced by an even greater despair. Vandahl: if this was the direction of the market, his hen scratch would now surely never see print. Sunk in his chair, surrounded by bookshelves broken by the window lighting his desk, he stared solemnly at his collection. He chuckled. They hadn’t had a reason in quite some time to throw him in the dungeon. He slid all his Vandahl under a shelf, infuriating his dreariness by then picking up his own work.

  I lie here, awake, on a hard made bed

  Where branches and moonlight scrape a window

  Nights are cold and old arc the shadows

  Busy raping a day’s familiar room.

  Awake I gape at milky moonlight

  Traversing a course— sly and majestic

  These weary years begat worn wasted tears

  Until morning peeks then off to work I go.

  He crumpled the poem he’d penned in an idle hour and tossed it into the wastebasket where it belonged. If Vandahl was base and pornographic, his own attempts to depict life in its truth were downright villainous. He let out a sigh and moved on to his manuscript.

  What a beast. What monument to confusion. What a hulking once-tree, unfinished and bogged down to a penultimate screed with likely no ending worthy of all the sore wrists. The Hero Fails Comes Returns—no title worked. Nothing encapsulated what he was trying to say, and perhaps, he brooded, it was simply because he himself didn’t know.

  He set the pages down and made anguishing gestures at his inkwell until becoming thirsty. Seasmil headed over to the bottle, but before he could get to its shelf his eyes caught something orange glowing outside his window.

  Down below, a crowd of men stood, stoking a fire. In his tenure he’d seen one or two cremations. Yet the black smoke that billowed out from the vault was not the inferno of a corpse, but of hundreds.

  “They must really hate protesters,” he said, pouring himself his drink. The vault was technically his duty, but zealots burning down the population only made his work easier. He’d even asked the city to do the same, once. And now they did, burning the protesters who’d possessed more spine than he, those he watched fly up into the evening to greet the heavens as one torrid smog. His glass broke against the wooden floor when Niera screamed.

  That wasn’t an ordinary one: the thought shot through Seasmil as he leapt down the stairs and ran out the front door. Her cry had been desperate, shrill, and too close to those flames.

  A ruckus had ringed the vault. Its iron door open, members of Ansul’s True were looking down into the fire, holding tight their torches and swords. Their presence meant little, but what caused Seasmil confusion and concern were the black-sash ruffians mixed in with the holy warriors. Guards from the Ordrid mansion were there, pouring jugs of oil into the roaring flames.

  “Is this one yours?” one of Irion’s guards demanded. Niera was flailing in the man’s grasp, bawling, pounding her little fists against a mailed thigh, crying on and on about a poor old woman.

  “She is.” Seasmil eyed the curious mix of men. “What are you doing here?”

  “Thank the gods,” the guard said, shoving Niera toward Seasmil in way he did not like.

  “It’s okay, honey.”

  “But the lady, Daddy. She’ll—”

  “Niera.” Seasmil bent down, straightening her dress and making her look at him. “I want you to go home. Right now.” After a teary protest she did, running up the trail until all that was left was her father and a crowd of armed men lighting fire to his vault.

  “This vault is my responsibility. Church or not—”

  “We have responsibilities too,” a Chapwyn crusader wiggled his torch and said.

  “Weren’t we supposed to,” a guard pointed at Seasmil, turning to his cohorts, “if we saw him—”

  “Silence,” another guard said, emerging from the rear. Seasmil immediately recognized the beard.

  “You were at the gate,” Seasmil said. “This morning.” Seasmil eyed all the naked swords, the balled fists. He’d seen worse. “Why are you here?”

  “You sure ask a lotta questions,” the leader said. “Too many. Now get outta here!”

  But Seasmil didn’t. The guards became indignant. Seasmil made things worse when he asked if the Chapwynites had castrated them too. A fight ensued. Ansul’s True stood over the dogpile, sanctimoniously holding their torches while Seasmil, despite his best efforts, definitely got the worst of it.

  *

  Next morning, Irion sat at his desk, petting his imp. The little fiend was hidden from their esteemed guest. Coiled in its master’s lap like a kitten, it pawed at the underbelly of the desk’s walnut apron.

  Over the sound of hammers finishing up somewhere below, Archbishop Drot said, “Is it true, Irion, that the ghoul originated from here?” The portly leader of the church frowned at all that covered Irion’s desk: books sealed by heavy locks, a vial full of squiggling worms, and one clean, white, grinning skull.

  “I am afraid it is so,” Irion said. “You must remember my House comes with much baggage. Poor girl must have been banished from her clan. Must’ve been seeking old refuges, and,” nodding out his window at the mansion’s graveyard, “perhaps an untapped larder.” Irion fed his imp a fat worm.

  The archbishop had arrived and took off his ornate chasuble, spinning through a preliminary of small talk. He was still looking out the window at all the dead Rogaires when he turned and said, “Well, at any rate, reports are that a she-ghoul barreled over watchman, eventually turning eastward, taking out every picket fence along the way.”

  “It didn’t smell like a Rehleian ghoul.”

  “How do you know such things? It seems—”

  “It seems it probably scampered back to Azad. Allowing, of course, it found sufficient shade along the way.”

  Archbishop Drot furrowed his brow, immediately dropping another question before clasping his hands. “At any rate,” he rejoiced, “dear friend, that undead horror we owe a great deal of gratitude. We’ve worked all month and now it’s being carried over by the Ward to be signed by the Scepters this very minute.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because of this most unusual sighting, the church was able to pass this morning a more profitable charge for funeral costs—to laden coffins with slivers of iron and vials of blessed water—to prevent the deceased from becoming themselves such a stinking horror, through digestion or otherwise. The people won’t like the new prices—those who can avoid Grandmother from going into that Pauper Vault, anyhow. But they like the thought of ghouls even less. The coffers will swell. I must ask, did you plan this?”