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eyes flicked wide as we emerged from the brief blackness. Swallowing her surprise, she averted her gaze and stepped aside.
    “Where will we find Bastien de Caton?” said Leander. “We have the honor of initiating the fulfillment of his contract with the Pureblood Registry on behalf of the noble family Remeni-Masson.”
    The girl dipped her knee and near twisted her head off trying to catch a glimpse of us while keeping her eyes down. “’Crost the yard, sirs . . . lardships. Straight past troughs and slabs and up to the deadhouse.” Hervoice grated like steel on slate. “You’ll likely find him inta sargery off right, or round left and out ta the Hollow Ground or the Render. We’re plowin’ bones today.”
    Surely such abrasive, awkward diction could not have its origin in one of such ethereal form. And
plowing bones
 . . .
    Mired in disgust and disbelief, I’d not gleaned the least idea of where we were to go next. I’d never visited a public necropolis. Fortunately Leander kept a clearer head. He led us briskly across a broad, flagged courtyard toward an imposing stone block of a structure. The deadhouse, the girl had called it—a prometheum more like, a hall where the dead could be tended with proper ceremonies. But what was the Hollow Ground, the Render, or a sargery?
    On the other hand,
city of the dead
was a more accurate term than I’d ever imagined. Men, women, and children of every sort milled about the courtyard—singly or in groups—babbling, wailing, whispering, clinging to one another in gaudy displays of emotion. Indeed, the noise astonished me. Donkeys brayed. Hammers pounded wood here, hollow metal there. Water dripped and sloshed and trickled through stone sluiceways running under our path and around every side, while somewhere inside or beyond the formidable edifice ahead of us a choir chanted Karish plainsong as serene as divine Idrium itself.
    The cart road split to either side of us, while we continued across the flagstone court toward the prometheum. Discipline required my eyes be fixed straight ahead, but peripheral sight hinted at merchant stalls nestled to the walls, where hawkers bellowed the virtues of oils and unguents or touted the skills of Ledru the Coffin Maker or Eason the Stonewright. To either side of us, servitors in russet tunics bent over stone tubs or clustered round a few of the stone tables lined in ranks, dealing with their . . . occupants. Younger boys or girls perched on ladders, tending great bonfires that roared and snapped in stone cauldrons, creating pockets of heat despite the ice wind blowing through the close.
    “Hold back, slugwit!” yelled a gaunt, grizzled bald man in a stained apron as we neared the wide steps of the prometheum. He waved at someone behind us, where iron cart wheels rattled on the rough paving.
    “Sane man don’t drag a deadcart ’crost a processering. Not with magical folk. Cripes!” The willowy girl’s grating mumble preceded her own appearance pelting down a side path and up a ramp to reach theprometheum portico before us. She caught her breath just in time to pose beside the door and wave us under the carved lintel. Her draperies fluttered as might those of fair Erit, goddess of clouds.
    The incongruities of the girl’s speech, manner, and appearance—and this noisy maelstrom in a place of the dead—struck me so hard just then that I came near exploding in laughter. By the Mother, Juli was right. I had acted the lightning-struck ox since walking out of the Registry the previous morning. The humiliation of my dismissal was wretched, and being pawned off on a necropolis was not at all the future I’d planned. Indeed, my duties here must surely be vile and demeaning. But I was not
afraid
. These living seemed no different from crude and noisy ordinaries anywhere. And the dead held no terrors for one of the blood. I believed in neither ghosts nor phantasms, neither demon gatzi nor glowing blue Danae who wandered the wilds