by Joshua Khan
Thorn had dragged her out of her misery. He, K’leef, and other people had cared for her, and eventually she’d cared for herself.
Now this.
Tyburn couldn’t be dead. The world didn’t work like that.
Grim news traveled fast. By the time Lily and Thorn reached Skeleton Gate, half of Castle Gloom had already collected to view the return of Tyburn’s body. Some of the servants, Black Guard, and squires, still nervous about Lily’s sorcery at Old Keep last night, watched from a wary distance. Dott stood at the door of the kitchens, with Cook and the rest of the staff. She had the baker’s boy on her shoulders so he could see. The soldiers were pale-faced. Most had been through the wars with Lumina and knew death well, but this was different.
This was Tyburn.
He was a killer. An executioner who coldly meted out justice. But he was loyal to the Shadows and had never failed them. Lily’s father had trusted him above all others, even old nobles like Baron Sable. He was as much part of Castle Gloom as the ghosts and the gargoyles. An ever-present mystery: no one had even learned his first name after all these years. What could she do, without her father to guide her and Tyburn to protect her? The executioner’s reputation had been worth an entire army.
Lily felt truly defenseless. Truly afraid.
And she wasn’t the only one. Her servants backed away as she passed by. Some, people she’d known her whole life, lowered their gaze so as not to meet hers.
How can they fear me? I’m the same Lily. Why should me being a necromancer make such a difference? They never looked at my father like that. They adored him.
Thorn drifted away from Lily and joined the returning squires. He lowered his head to whisper to Wade. The boy was leading Thunder, Tyburn’s great ebony warhorse. The stallion had cuts on his legs and flank; he’d been fighting.
Old Colm looked like he’d aged ten years, and he didn’t have the years to spare. He bowed awkwardly as Lily approached. “I must warn you, m’lady, it’s not a pretty sight.”
“Death rarely is,” Lily replied. She reached a covered wagon. “Tyburn’s in here?”
“What’s left of him. Trolls smashed him up, not two whole bones in his body. Then dropped him to be picked at by whatever beast was passing.”
Lily swallowed. They’d brought the remains of her parents and Dante back on a wagon just like this, each covered by a sheet. They’d looked so much smaller than she’d expected. But this…thing under the sheet wasn’t even a human shape anymore.
Lily set her mouth into a hard line. She was House Shadow. Death couldn’t frighten her.
She pulled back the sheet and wished she hadn’t.
Lily closed her eyes to steady herself. I’m weak from last night’s magic, that’s all. It’s just a body. I’ve seen worse.
But only once before.
“Send everyone back to work, Baron,” she whispered.
Baron turned around, and the anger in his eyes had people scurrying off before he’d even taken a breath. When he did shout, the bats sprang awake in their hidden nests and flew, petrified, out and over them like a massive, swirling, shrieking cloud.
“Who are they?” Lily asked, pointing at the two other covered bodies.
“Pitch and his wife, Milly,” said Old Colm. “We’d been patrolling the edge of Bone-Tree and saw their farm. Been attacked by trolls. Young Thorn found them but not their two sons. So I decided to spend another day searching, in case the boys had hidden themselves deeper in the forest. No luck with them, but we came across Thunder. He’d been attacked. Nothing broken, thank the Six. He’s a tough beast.”
“Where did you find Tyburn?”
“Nearby.”
“Why did they smash him up so much?” They must have continued beating the body well after he was dead.
Old Colm sighed. “Revenge. The trolls hated Tyburn.”
Lily scanned the crowd for Dott. There she was. The young troll met Lily’s gaze, and it was obvious that she was frightened. Dott had had nothing to do with this, but Gehennish prejudices against trolls ran deep and long. Lily saw how some of the Black Guard and kitchen staff glared at Dott now.
What do I know about trolls?
The body lay under the shroud. It had been dead awhile, frozen in the snow.
The trolls feared Tyburn. Dott had told her that Tyburn was their bogeyman. Troll parents used him to frighten their children. You misbehave and Tyburn will get you.
Trolls feared and respected Tyburn.
Wait a minute….
Lily stared at the covered body.
A body.
Her heart leaped in her chest, but on the outside she remained emotionless.
She couldn’t let them know, not yet, but she had to tell someone. Who?
She searched for Thorn and found him, grim-faced, among the squires.
Baron Sable stood a few yards away, his hand squeezing his sword hilt so tightly it trembled. “No way for a man like Tyburn to die.”
“No way for any man to die,” said Lily.
He’s thinking about his son Baal. By the Six, has the same thing happened to him?
Lily shook the hideous thought away. She needed to act. Everyone was standing around, too stunned to think. She needed to be Lady Shadow. “Gather your men, Baron. I want you at the Troll-Teeth.”
“M’lady, this changes everything. Without Tyburn here, who’ll keep you safe?”
“And without you at our borders, who will keep all of us safe?”
She could see that the baron was conflicted, torn between his love for his son and his sense of duty to her.
“Go, Baron. I need you up north.”
“The Six guard you, m’lady.” The baron snapped a half bow, then gestured to his captains. They marched off, their armored steps clanging on the cobblestones.
She could speak to the dead. She’d done it before, poorly, but she knew she could do it. Not with this body, though. It was so mangled that any spirit she’d summon would be in turmoil, consumed by madness and pain.
“Take the body to the chapel, Colm.” Lily touched the old man’s arm. “Have him prepared as best you can.”
“And these two?” he asked.
Lily took a deep breath. “Pitch and Milly go to the mortuary.”
“Why are we going to the mortuary?” asked Thorn. “Why am I going?” He hated the place.
Lily put her finger to her lips.
Thorn followed, but slowly. Lily was up to something and that made him…wary.
Tyburn’s dead.
That made as much sense as…fish flying.
He owed so much to Tyburn. His place here in Castle Gloom, his friendship with Lily, his very life, even. The executioner had rescued him from slavery and brought him to Gehenna.
He’d never really liked Tyburn—Thorn reckoned nobody did—but he’d respected the man. Thorn was more shocked than anything. How could Tyburn, of all people, be dead, just like that?
As for Lily, she seemed completely unmoved. Her coldness seemed cruel. But she was a Shadow; maybe the rules about life and death were a bit different to someone who could summon ghosts.
I’ll never understand her.
“I should be helping the other squires,” he said. “They’ll be needing everyone at the stables.”
Lily glanced back at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were scared.”
“That I ain’t.”
“Then hurry up.”
The mortuary was busier than usual.
A line of zombies waited patiently for the surgeon. Zombies were good at waiting patiently. Each had a body part missing. A trio of squires shifted through a pile of limbs, searching, comparing, and fitting arms to sockets, legs to hips, heads to necks, looking for the piece that matched.
Thorn stepped carefully over a pile of left legs. He’d swapped double stable duty to avoid having to work down here. Sweeping up horse dung was way better than sweeping up bits of people.
“M’lady!” The surgeon
dropped the arm he was working on and rushed over. “How good of you to visit!”
Lily greeted him. “I should have come earlier, Dr. Byle. How goes your work?”
“Overflowing with patients. Not that I’m complaining, but I could do with some extra hands? Preferably attached?”
“I thought I’d sent two of my serving girls down?”
“Lisbeth fainted the moment I asked her to push the intestines back into Mr. Gareth so I could sew up his belly. Such a mess she made, getting tangled up in all that tubing.”
“Do zombies need intestines?” asked Thorn, trying to hold down his breakfast. The air was practically green with decomposition.
Dr. Byle stiffened. “They come in with guts; they leave with guts. It’s called professionalism.”
“What do you need, Dr. Byle?”
“A butcher’s boy, handy with offal. I’ll teach him to sew. To be honest, it’s thick needles and twine for this lot.” He gestured to the queue. “And not a few nails.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Lily replied. “Now, I need to see the two cadavers Old Colm brought in.”
“In the cold room. You asked me not to work on them.”
“That’s right. I’ll deal with them.”
Dr. Byle bowed. “As you wish, m’lady.”
“Is that it, Lily?” snapped Thorn. “Tyburn’s dead, and you’ve not said anything.”
How could she be so heartless?
He should have known she’d be like this. That was the trouble with nobles. They kept everything under wraps. Or maybe Tyburn was just another servant. They came, they went, no big deal.
“Or are you gonna bring him back? Make him one of your zombies? Get him to carry drinks at dinnertime?”
“The body’s too badly damaged, Thorn. He’d be of no use.”
Thorn grabbed her arm. “Tyburn’s dead!”
Lily looked down at his hand, gripping her.
Still angry, Thorn let go.
“I know you’re upset,” said Lily. “I was, too.”
“But now you’re not? Wow, you got over it very quickly,” Thorn replied bitterly.
“That’s not Tyburn.”
Thorn’s breath stopped in his chest. He stared at her. Was this some bad joke? “But the body…”
“Some poor man’s been killed, and the person responsible will pay for that, I promise you, but it’s not Tyburn, and it wasn’t trolls.”
“What and…what?” He rubbed his head. “I think you’d better explain. Assume I know nothing, it’ll be easier.”
“Old Colm should have realized, but he’s so caught up in his hate that he can’t see what’s right in front of him: a body.”
“A dead one. A very dead one.”
Lily faced him, those gray eyes of hers shimmering like quicksilver. “Trolls ate Old Colm’s leg. You know that?”
“Yeah, everyone knows that.”
“Then why didn’t they eat Tyburn?” said Lily. “That’s what trolls do. It’s a sign of respect for their enemies.”
“So you think…?”
Lily smiled. “No troll would abandon Tyburn. He’d be part of a feast, a big one. The trolls would hope to gain his courage, his skill, by eating his flesh. They’d decorate their armor and weapons with his bones, believing his spirit would lend them greater power. No, a body was left for us to find so we’d think that Tyburn’s dead. That the trolls did it. But whoever’s done this doesn’t know about trolls like I do.”
“All right, suppose you’re right and it ain’t trolls. It could still be brigands, or someone else with a grudge against Tyburn. The man must have had hundreds of enemies. Thousands.”
Lily shook her head. “What does your gut tell you, Thorn? Do you honestly think a bunch of outlaws could take down Tyburn?”
Thorn could recall at least one occasion when Tyburn had wiped out a band of outlaws single-handedly. He nodded. “True, no bandit could. But as Ying said, there’s always someone better out there.”
“Ying said the same thing to me,” added Lily. “But there are only two others who might have a chance against Tyburn. They are executioners, too. There’s Lady Kali, who serves House Djinn. But they’re our allies. The Solars have Golgoth, but the only Solars within a thousand miles of here are Gabriel and poor Mr. Funny.”
“Then who—”
“It’s a mystery,” Lily said, looking at the two corpses. “A mystery I hope to solve—with them.”
Thorn scowled. “So you’re gonna talk to the dead? You sure about this?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m looking at a jigsaw puzzle and there’s a big piece in the middle missing. I need that piece if I’m to understand the picture.” She pointed at a small vase. “Light those incense sticks, will you?”
“Is that to appease the spirits of the dead?”
“No, to appease their smell. This pair have a bit of a pong now that they’re defrosting.”
Death had locked their limbs, and the mixture of mud and blood on their skin had dried almost black. Their clothes, in the candlelight, seemed too thin for winter.
“They had hard lives,” said Thorn.
Lily peered at the slash in the man’s belly. She dipped her fingers into the gap and gently pulled the tear wider. “Their deaths were harder. Look at this.”
“No.” He didn’t like being down here. Why did she need him, anyway? This was Shadow magic.
Necromancy.
Thorn gazed around the room, looking everywhere but at Lily and the two corpses. He took a candle and lit the incense sticks and watched the thin smoke spiral up from their glowing tips. “Don’t you think it’s weird? How easy you are with them?”
“Them?” Lily had her hand on the cheek of the woman. “They are my people, living or dead.”
“And anything in between, right?”
“I was raised by a zombie, Thorn. Dante and I played with One-Eyed Ron since we could walk. He let me practice my sewing on him and never minded if I didn’t get his ears exactly level.”
“You’re a strange, strange girl, Lily.”
Lily collected a basin from a side table. “Let’s get to work.”
Black rose petals floated in the water, and they smelled of the perfume of soft dreams. Thorn took a cloth and washed the faces clean while Lily wiped down their hands. They cut the rags off their bodies and cleaned the dirt from the worn, pale flesh. Finally Lily spread black linen sheets over them, folding the edges neatly so it looked as if they were only sleeping, hands folded on top.
Lily moved to the head of the table. She looked up at Thorn. “Ready?”
“Not really.”
Lily didn’t bother to reply. She put one hand on the forehead of each corpse and closed her eyes.
“What are you doing?” Thorn asked. Was it his imagination, or was it getting colder?
“Shh.”
The hairs prickled up along the back of his neck. What was going to happen? Would a spirit enter Lily and she start talking in the voice of one of the dead? Or would their ghosts appear, hovering above their torn bodies? Maybe they’d sit up, blink, and shuffle off to join the ranks of zombies already occupying Castle Gloom….
He really wished he hadn’t come along.
How could she be so calm about this? Did Lily have nightmares? What scared her? Certainly not ghosts, ghouls, or vampires. They were her relatives. Maybe she was scared of fluffy cats and prancing ponies.
Custard jumped up on the table. He stood on the chest of the dead man, growling at his face.
The man’s mouth moved.
Lips slowly parted into a loose sneer.
The body juddered, shaking and thrashing on the black marble slab.
Thorn’s hand went to his belt; then he realized he hadn’t brought his dagger.
The woman began to tremble. Her head twitched. Her neck stiffened as she arched her head back. Her jaw creaked.
“Lily, what are you doing?” He picked up a hefty candlestick.
Lily�
��s eyes snapped open, and she stepped back. “It’s not me.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
He’d had enough. “Time to go.”
“No, I need to see.”
“Lily…”
Both bodies were shaking. Under the black sheets their bellies began to swell, pushing the cloth up until the sheets were sitting over them like tents. Custard leaped off and scurried out through a wall.
That’s not good….
Much more and they could explode, which would mean he’d be having his weekly bath early.
A hideous, leathery sound interrupted the horror of the thrashing bodies. Thorn watched as the swollen bellies quivered under the cloth, then sagged.
“Get behind me,” Thorn ordered.
“I will do what I—”
“Do it!”
She did. Thorn didn’t need to see Lily to know she was scowling at him, her lips thin with anger. He held up the candlestick.
Something crawled out of the man’s mouth. A needle-sized pair of crystal stalks. They twitched and tapped the man’s lip.
Not stalks. Legs.
The man’s mouth widened, and the legs were followed by another pair. The throat swelled as an object forced itself along, a body attached to the legs seeking freedom.
“Thorn!” Lily screamed.
The cloth bubbled.
Thorn used his candlestick to flick off the cloth.
Spiders covered the corpse. They were crawling out of a gash in his belly. Greasy with blood, they spread across him, their bodies all nervous and angular. Spiders and other insects sometimes planted eggs in other animals. But not like this….
They were different sizes. Most not even an inch long, some almost the size of his fist. But they weren’t anything like spiders he’d ever seen.
These were made of crystal.
Though still covered in gore, their limbs and bodies shone in the candlelight. They glistened like diamonds, or prisms. They reflected the light around them, breaking the glow into multicolors like sunlight on a raindrop.
The man’s jaw cracked as another spider finally heaved itself out. Others followed until the man was lost under a sparkling shroud of crystal.
“What are they?” Thorn asked.