“Please don’t break my hand.” I felt tired rather than scared. “I need it.”
“Will you come then?”
What was a man to do? I followed them out of the restaurant, into the streets filled with silvery mist highlighted by an occasional hazy sphere of a gas lamp. On our way, we took a shortcut and skimmed along the edge of the deaders’ town, where ghostly dead man’s birches shone through the droplets of moisture in the air, their branches studded with tiny green flickers, the condensation weeping silently down their trunks.
We walked across a wooden bridge that creaked and resonated under our feet. I smelled something musty, and a moment later spotted a dead beggar, who sat in the middle of the bridge, reclining by the guardrail. His eyes bulged out of his swollen dark face, and his thick purple tongue protruded where his lower jaw used to be, but was now gone, lost forever. He would not walk around for long, and seemed to know it—his white eyes were turned upwards, greeting the stars as they sprinkled across the darkened sky.
“Filthy rat,” said one of my guides. “He probably died a beggar.”
“Likely,” I agreed, and couldn’t look away.
The other guide spat, propelling a gob of saliva and phlegm that landed with a satisfying smack onto the beggar’s left eye. “I can’t believe it. They are everywhere nowadays—their part of town just keeps on spreading.”
“That doesn’t require a great deal of faith, to believe that,” I said. “The dead will always outnumber the living.”
“How’s that?”
“You live, you die. Everyone who’s now alive will end up in the deaders’ town. Even you, so be nice to them.”
The guards huffed, but their gazes slid off the beggar and turned downward, to the slats under our feet. One could live in this place and be carefree only if he did not think of his inevitable demise, the inexplicable one-way traffic. I couldn’t ignore this silent but constant shuffling from one side of the town to the other; I couldn’t forget that the deader city swelled with every passing year, encroaching onto the town of the living. Soon, the alivers’ town would be but a fleck in the sea of rotting flesh. I was never carefree.
I shook my head and stepped off the bridge onto the quartz pavement, where the gaslights were installed with regularity, and the trees emitted no deathly glow, but cast deep, cool shadows, soft as crushed silk. A light perfume of jasmine scented the night, and soft singing came from nearby—the sort of thing the alivers enjoy.
The Areti manor squatted squarely on the hillside, its windows shuttered, but a soft glow of lamplight seeped around the edges, beckoning. The three of us entered the hallway. Darkness pooled in the rounded recesses of the walls, and my soft-soled shoes seemed too loud. There didn’t seem to be any people here, just echoes. There were no doors either—just curtains that billowed in the entryways, blown about by the dusty winds that skipped around the manor, unchallenged.
“In here,” one of the goons said, and pulled open a curtain decorated with a beaded dragon. Its eyes glinted in the firelight that reached from within.
I entered a vast hall drenched in shadows. “Venerable Mistress?”
“Right this way, Lonagan.” She reclined on a chaise made of solid oak, and still it creaked under her weight. The fireplace cast a semicircle of orange light, and I stepped closer.
Her face was oval and pretty, with large doe eyes and a prim, full-lipped mouth. Her long auburn hair curled and cascaded, descending onto her shoulders and chest, playing like waterfalls across the vast terrain that was her body. She was a landscape, not a woman—hills and valleys of flesh stretched before me in every direction, barely contained on the gigantic chaise. Only her face and hands seemed human.
I bowed. “What can I do for you, Venerable Mistress Areti?”
She smiled, and for a moment I forgot about her distended body, and looked into her ink-blue, almost black eyes. “I hear that you can find things.”
I inclined my head. “That is indeed the case. What would you like me to find?”
Her smile grew colder, tighter. “I thought you could figure that out.”
“No,” I said with rising irritation. “I’m not a magician. I’m just a thorough man.”
She undulated with laughter, sending slow, hypnotic waves through her flesh. “All right then. I lost a gemstone—or rather, it was stolen from me. By the deaders.”
“Are you sure?” The deaders were not known for crime—that was the province of the still-living.
“Oh, quite sure. You see, they are recent deaders, and I fear that my men were somehow responsible for their transition.”
It still sounded strange to me, but I nodded. Who was I to judge? Perhaps they had the stone on them while they transitioned; perhaps their passions were slower to die than was common. “What is this stone like?”
“It’s a cherrystone.” She lifted a delicate, fine hand, and spread her index finger and thumb half an inch apart. “Small, pink. You’ll know it when you see it.”
I was certain of that. Even though I’ve never held anything as valuable as a cherrystone in my hands, I heard enough about them and their powers to know how rare they were. Especially pink ones—chances were, it was the only one in town.
“What about those who took it?”
She shrugged. “Ask my guardsmen for a description.”
“Do you know their names?”
“I would imagine they’ve shed their names by now, so they would be useless to you.”
So it was longer than a week since they were dead. Yet, I couldn’t imagine why she would wait a week to start looking for her cherrystone. The only conclusion that made sense was the one that didn’t make sense—that they were dead while committing the theft.
“Be discreet,” she said, just as I was about to leave. “You understand how precarious my situation is.”
“Of course, Venerable Mistress. I won’t say a word.”
I left the crackling of the fire and the oaken chaise behind, and walked along the corridor, back to the entrance. This place did not fill me with trepidation any longer—the air of lonely neglect made me feel sorry for her, despite the Areti’s bloody reputation. I liked to think that my sympathy was not contaminated by the promise of a paycheck.
One had to be careful in the deaders’ town, and I watched my step, even though I had connections there. The inhabitants were not violent by nature, but protective of what little lives they had. I prepared myself for the stench by putting a generous dollop of wintergreen ointment under my nose, and stowed the can in my pocket. Abiding the old habits, I waited for the nightfall, to sneak in under the cover of darkness.
The moment my foot touched the soft moss that grew through the cracks in wooden pavements, I realized that I was foolish— deaders did not sleep, and night made no difference. I heard the ice merchants calling in high voices, and the scraping of their trunks full of green translucent chunks of ice as they pulled them by the ropes.
I kept close to the buildings, and hid my face in the collar of my jacket. A few passersby did not seem to notice me, as they shambled along. Jas, the deader I was going to see, lived well away from the border of the alivers; it wasn’t the first time that I visited him, but the gravity of my task made me feel ill at ease.
I saw his house, recognizable because of the brick-red shutters, and sped up my steps. The houses seemed superfluous—if it wasn’t for the need to contain the cold, the deaders could’ve just as easily lived outside, shambled along whatever streets, forests or valleys they chose. But they kept to the town, nestled inside in the protective cocoon of ice, trying to slow their decay. Couldn’t say I blamed them.
I passed a white house, with a small courtyard and a garden in front of it, and paused. One did not see decorations in these parts too often. And I also saw a young girl in the yard. Unaware that anyone was watching, she hummed to herself, and practiced her dance steps. She must’ve died just recently—her skin was pale but whole, and her downy hair blew about her thin face as she twirled with her arms raised. I didn’t know exactly what happens after death, but I noticed that it affected coordination; the girl stumbled, and almost fell over. Stubbornly, she steadied herself, and started on sidesteps.
She noticed me watching, and gasped. In her fright, she bolted away, running straight into a gatepost. It would’ve been comical if the impact wasn’t so great—it threw her backwards, and she landed on her rump.
I swung the gates open, and helped her up. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just stopped to watch—you dance very prettily.”
She sniffed. “Do I have a bruise?”
I nodded. An angry purple spot was spreading across her white forehead.
She gave a little cry and whimpered. Dead didn’t weep, but there was a phlegmy rattle deep in her chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just a bruise.”
Her mouth curled downwards. “You don’t understand. It’ll never heal.”