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the time Larten cleared the city. The sky had been dark all day, and now it began to blacken with the coming of night. There was a cruel bite to the air. Larten had no coat, and he shivered in his short-sleeved shirt. He was hungry and thirsty, but the cold was his main concern. He had to find shelter or he’d end up like one of the stiff, frozen street people he’d often seen.
    Hunching his shoulders against the cold, Larten walked along the main road for a while, then took a dirt track. His vague plan was to find a village and hide out in a cowshed or a barn. He didn’t know how long a walk it would be, but he guessed it couldn’t be more than a few miles.
    If it hadn’t started to rain heavily, Larten would have kept going. Maybe he’d have slipped along the way, twisted an ankle, and perished of the wet and cold in the open. Or maybe he’d have made good time and found shelter, stolen a few eggs in the morning, and set off in search of a job. He might have scraped by, worked hard, earned some money. Perhaps he’d have lived a good life, married and had children, and died at the ripe old age of forty or forty-five.
    But Larten’s destiny didn’t lie in a ditch or any ofthe nearby villages. Rain soaked him, forcing him to look for immediate shelter. A tree would have been fine, but the clouds looked thundery, and he’d heard tales of people who had been struck by lightning under trees. There were no caves that he knew of. That left…
    Larten looked around, praying for inspiration, and through a brief break in the rain his prayers were answered. He spotted the heads of tombstones and realized he was close to a graveyard.
    Larten had only been to a graveyard once before, one Sunday when he and Vur had trekked to the northern part of town, where a large cemetery stood. They’d gone hoping to see ghosts, having heard tales of headless horsemen roaming the rows of graves. Of course, they didn’t see any–ghosts mostly came out at night–but they saw plenty of monuments to the dead.
    The poor of the city were carted off to be dumped in mass graves, nothing to mark the spot where they lay. Those with money secured a grave. Wealthy people bought tombs.
    Graves and tombs were of no use to Larten, but some of the truly rich invested in family crypts, small houses for the dead. If they kept the dead dry, they could keep the living dry too, at least for a night.
    Larten didn’t know if this small graveyard would boast any crypts. But on the off chance, he abandoned the path and splashed through sodden fields, fearfully edging his way towards the home of the (hopefully) sleeping dead.

Chapter Six
    The graveyard was larger than Larten had imagined, and while it was no match for the lavish city of the dead to the north, there were a few crypts jutting out of the crop of crosses and tombs.
    Larten scrambled across the graves, muttering prayers to every god he’d ever heard of, eyes cast low. He wanted to look every which way at once, to check for ghosts, witches, demons. But he thought that if he saw them, they would see him too. By not looking, he hoped no ghosts would notice him, so he kept his eyes on the ground. It was a foolish notion, but it gave Larten the courage to go on.
    He couldn’t get into the first crypt that he tried—the doors were sealed shut. There was a chain on the woven copper gates of the next. He tugged at the gates as hard as he could, and the chain gave a little, but not enough.
    Larten thought he heard movement behind him. He stood, head lowered, expecting an attack. When nothing leapt out of the growing darkness, he looked around for another crypt, then hurried towards it.
    He almost didn’t try this door. It was on hinges and slightly ajar, but it was carved of stone, and he doubted he had the strength to move it. But rain was lashing down, exhaustion had set deep into his bones, and the next crypt was some way off. So, with no real hope, he grabbed the edge of the door and pulled.
    The