“No need for such…barbarity,” the man said, unclasping his hands and depriving me of my knife. The man straightened, looking at my blade, turning it this way and that. A milky light, brighter than the moon’s clung to his cloak. “Do you always dispatch them?”

  Odd, I know, but I felt whatever faculties had left me now making a slow return. The moment I was able, I rose to my feet and stood a clear head taller than this oddest of inquisitors. From this perspective, a far more familiar view, the stranger’s regality lessened, and my knife in his grip looked more like a woman’s hand fondling a Pelat machete.

  “They call me Belot,” the man said.

  In my frenzy, better sense had escaped me. A few years around a woman like Somyellia had left me keen to know when black magic brewed. This man was a grave-walking necromancer. But threat of being turned into a toad wasn’t my worry. In these queer years, dark practitioners were as liable to turn in lawbreakers at one of the many pavilions snapped together by confederacies made between the Ward and Ansul’s True than sicking hexes on someone. Rumor had it that the cash reward could be handsome, especially if the misfit had violated both the laws of Man and Nature all at once. This stranger had seen my face, and though I’d only been caught violating the laws of Man, he—

  “You don’t speak?” he said.

  “Bell-ought,” I said, “split the purse and call it a night?”

  “Do you always dispatch them?” he laughed, giving me back my knife. “Your holders of the purse?”

  “No, never,” I shot, jostling like I’d just discovered an itch, finishing with, “Well, not if they’re smart about it.” But this caused only more laughter. He looked over his shoulder at the abandoned house.

  “Drab, rotted place. My own is but next door. Join me?” Before I could answer, he turned, taking no more than a step, “Bring him with us.”

  When I reached for the purse, I was ready for this bizarre courtship to come to an end. After all, that’s what this Belot was after, for nobody disliked money. But this stranger responded to my grabbing in way that was uncharacteristic of a robber. He smiled. A smile that if placed on every man at once would put merchant’s like Somyellia out of business. I hoisted the innkeeper on my shoulder and followed.

  —

  “So you are the source of all that noise.” Mr. Belot gestured toward Somyellia and I’s house. “Thought I’d have to call upon the zoo so they could retrieve some tenants on the lam. Spirited girl.” I had to put down my second glass to laugh bashfully and spill wine.

  It turned out Mr. Belot shared both my old tutor’s nihilism and my fondness for capitalizing on the deceased. Mr. Belot’s eyes glowed, followed by full admission that he was nothing short of astonished; how a “large knifeman from the streets” could know every bone in the human body. Mr. Belot’s interest in my ambitions had swept away the initial discomfort I’d felt. Soon we were gabbing like drunken military wives.

  As the night stretched, I ogled at the skulls and bones and books. The prowess of scales and cauldrons were unlike anything I’d ever seen, and it filled me with a bizarre joy that Mr. Belot’s collection of femurs was larger than the one I’d amassed in the old cellar. Then there was the wooden table. On it were leather straps, pulled and worn taut. At Mr. Belot’s request, I had lifted the moaning innkeeper onto it, during which I saw bloodstains that had seeped deep into the wood. My timid inquiry into this man’s looming fate was met with Belot’s caress. I don’t recall what his answer was, only that I was sated. It was as if I’d been charmed, though a necromancer practicing such things was pure and utter silliness.

  A second bottle of Grest opened talks about more pressing matters. To Mr. Belot, I would learn, the world was becoming harder for lovers of the dark and the courageous. “You see those silly statues, Seasmil?” he said. “Placating the masses; scared of their own shadows as good as a plague. Do-Gooder’s Row is halfway built and Maecidion the Virulent is dying.”

  It was true, I supposed, at least to a degree. I’d seen the Chapwyn fliers swell in numbers and the pitchfork wielders soon follow. Although the poor and wretched had swollen even greater, a formidable army of limpers and squabbling hags, oaths to eradicate the world of wickedness seemed all that was necessary to satisfy the barking mob. But to people like me, such social ebb and flow meant about as much as what Lotgard shit last and where. I didn’t want to tell Mr. Belot that those whose entire cosmos is the calling cookpot and alley didn’t concern themselves with such prattle, especially dying royalty. But even I drank from the trickling stream of gossip—Maecidion, that lauded patriarch of Somyellia’s, had indeed fallen ill.

  Mr. Belot looked over the rim of his glass, “Times are changing, my hulking friend.”

  I am no hero, nor am I the stuff of legend. No kraken to best. No dragon to slay. My war was painfully simple. I had to survive, and even amidst the brawls and illness and thievery, I still clung to the hope of one day being, yes, a doctor. It was perhaps my greatest fortune then that Mr. Belot and I’s interests shared a common component: bodies.

  I left with a friend, a mentor, and most important of all, an employer. By the time Maecidion died, I was leading a pack of rogues. I would put intimidation to even better use, but Mr. Belot’s thoughts on confrontation were even more prudent than my own. Most of the time, I would be working alone, and, at Mr. Belot’s direction, digging up graves.

  V: Seasmil and Snier

  And what are you fine gentlemen gabbing on about?” Somyellia larked, appearing at the base of our stoop with groceries. “How Maecidion is still rumored to rise again, even after these six long years we’ve been without him,” her hair thrown back by the wind, “or how that immortal monument to stupidity over in Do-Gooder’s is finally showing its figures below their knees?”

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

  “Oh, we’re just talking about the 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, handing me the basket. “Seasmil tell you how—”

  “How the fiendish guards persuaded me to find shelter elsewhere,” I said, “yeah yeah.”

  “Well,” said Snier, who had a fashion for clasping his hands together more girlish than any third Somyellia’d ever brought into our bed. “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 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 thickened member and 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 of 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 just 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.”