Mama grunted. “After Curfew.”
“Mama, I’ve seen you break Curfew a dozen times in the last month alone.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“Still don’t hold with this funeral business.”
I shrugged. I’d already explained to Mama why I thought it was necessary.
If we were facing sorcery, that sorcery was created to respond to certain acts or situations as triggers for built-in actions. That much I knew from being in the Army.
And if something in that cemetery was lying in wait for me, I didn’t want it choking me at the gate.
But anything that hides in a cemetery is going to have to be built to ignore a few things. First among these things would be funerals.
And even if what had tried to strangle Mrs. Mays was a murderous ghost, well, I had surprises in store for it too.
“Ain’t no way Granny is mixed up in no shenanigans, boy.”
“Not knowingly. I never said she knew what was going on.”
My reasoning was this-assume the man Gorvis is so bent on getting his hands on Marris Sellway one more time that he planned all this. He had himself buried right next to Granny Knot’s stomping ground, because he’d also heard she was the real deal. He comes spooking around to her, with sob stories of lost love and guilt. He hands her a small fortune and begs her to give it to the wife he left behind.
Only the coin is tainted, either cursed or ensorcelled so that it leads him right to her.
My reasoning worked whether Gorvis had hired a sorcerer before his death to put all this in place, or whether, against my better judgment, he’d risen from the grave to do the dirty work himself.
But either way, he hadn’t counted on Granny hiring me. Or Marris having so much money of her own that three hundred crowns was something she could sneer at.
But even without the money being near her, I knew whatever was out there would eventually find her, or her daughter. And that would be partly my fault.
And that wasn’t going to happen.
So the funeral carriage, and the coffin, and my old Army jacket to boot.
That’s something else I’d learned, way back when. Never go into a battle by doing exactly what the other side expects you to do. Show them something new. Make them pause and scratch their heads and think.
Make them wonder just what it is you’re up to.
“You understand what I need you to do, Mama?”
“I ain’t daft, boy. I remember.”
“Good.” I squinted at the light seeping around Mama’s doorframe. The sun was about to sink behind the rooftops. Soon I’d need to climb into my casket and prepare for my sad, slow journey through Rannit’s empty streets.
I just hoped it wouldn’t be my last.
Mama sent word to Mrs. Mays via one of the street kids she feeds. True to her word, Mrs. Mays met us at the corner of Stricken and Pack.
I popped out of my casket long enough to do a head count.
I whistled.
Summers, arrayed in clean, black funeral finery, sat atop a white widow’s cab. Behind the widow’s cab were six road-beaten heavy transport stagecoaches, and from the number of faces I could see through the barred windows I figured she’d brought close to a hundred men.
I could have kissed her. A hundred armed men, many of them presumably vets who rode with the Stig River Runners. The halfdead usually hunted in pairs. Even vampires would find those odds daunting.
Mrs. Mays popped out of her cab and lifted her veil so she could see better. Her face was half wonder and half horror at my choice of conveyance.
I opened the lid and sat up.
Summers cussed and spat.
“Good work, Mrs. Mays. Don’t be alarmed. This is all to get us in safely. Follow, please.”
I lay back down and let the lid slam shut. Mama snapped the reins and away we went.
Mama was dressed for the event too. She wore a stovepipe hat half as tall as she was, and she had her mane of hair pulled back into a bun. Her long suit coat had tails that actually dragged the ground behind her stubby legs. We would either fool the haunts or the magics, or we’d send them hiding from all the ugly.
We’d had to stop and light the stage and carriage lanterns before we got anywhere near Elfway. I had Mama circle around a bit, since I wanted us to arrive an hour after Curfew fell. I was hoping that would reduce the number of the curious that came out to see our little show.
It didn’t. Word got around, somehow, that some bunch of daft fools was breaking Curfew to hold a funeral. The presence of the stagecoaches and Mama Hog as driver provoked more interest than I had anticipated. By the time we reached the forlorn cemetery at the bad end of Elfway, my hearse was at the head of a middling good parade.
Nothing I could do about that, though. I did worry briefly about interference by the Watch, who I knew would let a hundred-strong funeral party get themselves killed if they wanted, but who might show up to disperse a crowd of gawkers. That worry died when I saw a half-dozen round blue Watch hats buying snacks from a woman who had turned her stoop into a temporary eatery.
My hearse rattled to a halt. A couple of stout, young men from the stagecoach behind us ran past, put fresh flowers in the gate urns, and mumbled the prayers begging mercy and rest for the one about to be interred. I could hear Mama muttering words of her own, but she was peppering her utterances with far too many curse words for them to be prayers.
The cemetery gates swung open with a pair of rusty screeches. Mama snapped the reins again, and I closed my eyes as we passed the threshold, since most corpses probably aren’t eyeing their lids with any kind of intense interest.
Nothing happened. We rolled uphill.
Mama got lost once, and the stages had trouble getting turned around, but we finally reached the wardstone.
I stirred, flexed my arms, but kept my lid closed.
“Granny ain’t here,” said Mama. Her tone was worried. “That ain’t right. She said she’d be here.”
I risked a whisper. “Have a couple of the boys look around.” I didn’t have a good feeling about what they were likely to find.
Either way, spook or spell, Granny Knot was a liability, once she’d served her purpose. Because if she could talk to the dead and help them enter the world of the living, she could also send them back where they belonged. At least according to Mama.
Shouts, and Mama cussed. My heart sank.
“Found her.” Mama was worried. “They’re seein’ if she’s dead.”
“Well?”
Mama clambered down, and I heard her stomp away. Someone called for water. Someone else called for a blanket.
Mama came rushing back to stand beside the rear of the hearse.
“Ain’t dead. Yet. Took a knock to the head. Pushed down into a wardstone, I reckon.”
“Is she conscious? Can she help?”
“Just you and me, boy.”
I bit back a curse. It was getting hot in the casket and sweat was pouring off me. I was tempted, so tempted to get out, to feel cool air, to at least open the lid. If Granny had been right, if spooks had nearly as much trouble seeing the world of the living as we did the spooks themselves, the risk would be small. All anything dead, alive, or ensorcelled would likely see was a hearse and a casket and a bunch of men milling around a grave.
“Let’s get this going then.”
Mama barked orders. I heard stage doors open and shut, the clang of shovels on shovels, the voices of a hundred wary young men.
And then I began to hear the thock-thock of shovels biting into the earth, and the thud of turned earth being cast out of the way, and I silently urged them to hurry.
It didn’t take them long.
I heard the first shovel strike the buried casket. It was a wet solid sound. Being shut in a casket myself gave the sound a certain memorable quality.
They went carefully, from that point on. I could hear them working in shifts-one man would take ten digs, then leap out of the grave and be replaced. Four men stayed down that way, all of them fresh. The others ringed us, facing outward, their shovels in one hand and plain sharp swords under their coats in the other.