Mama kept me updated in whispers. The crowd remained outside the fences, hooting and drinking and setting fires in the street and generally doing the things that might attract a bevy of thirsty halfdead and thus get them killed. The Watch, as far as Mama could tell, had lingered for a bit and then vanished, apparently deciding that if a whole neighborhood wished to commit mass suicide, it was no concern of theirs.
Still, no halfdead had appeared. I knew that by the lack of agonized screaming from the street.
“They’re ready to lift it out,” said Mama.
“Go ahead.”
Mama gave the word. Men grunted. Ropes strained. Clods of wet earth fell.
There was a thud, and it was done.
I slammed the lid of my coffin back and hauled my stiff, sweat-soaked body out of the damned thing. Mama had a half dozen of Mrs. Mays’s troops haul it out of my hearse, and put it on the ground next to the one they’d just dug up.
Everyone tensed. Mama had her dried owl in a white-knuckled death grip. Mrs. Mays floated to my side, her eyes wide and wet behind her veil. Her daughter stood with her, holding her hand. Natalie met my eyes and held onto her mother for dear life.
“We’re ready, Mr. Markhat.”
I nodded. Axes flashed. The lid of the coffin put up a fight, but six months of wet earth had done its work.
There, after a moment, was the man himself.
I’d expected a bundle of sticks and hair or a complex arrangement of bones and silver threads-anything of the sort sorcerers tend to favor when they’re fashioning their wonders.
But this was just a man. A dead man, a dead man buried for six months.
There wasn’t much left. The coffin had leaked. The smell wasn’t even what I’d expected. Instead, it was more wet, rich earth than a full and awful dose of the odor from the undertaker.
I doubt even the corpse of a kindly old granny ever looks benign and peaceful. But even after six months in the ground, I could still see the hate and fury in the set of the dead man’s jaw, and the shadowed gape of his hollow eyes. His skeletal hands were on his chest, but they were clenched as if holding something, or choking it.
“I speak your name, Horace Gorvis. You have no power over me,” said Mrs. Mays. Her voice shook, but she got the words out, just like Mama had written them. I hoped they were the right words. “You never did. I said no then, and I say no now. I spoke your true name. Trouble me no more.”
“I speak your name, Horace Gorvis. Your power died when you did,” intoned her daughter. “I spoke your true name. Trouble us no more.”
“I speak your name, Horace Gorvis. You’re dead and gone and good riddance,” said Mama. “Mr. Summers, knock his damned fool head off.”
Summers lifted his shovel high and let it fall.
The air around us went cold. Dead of winter cold. Our exhalations steamed and twisted in a wind none of us could feel.
Mrs. Mays’s hands went to her throat.
“Oh, I reckon not, Horace Gorvis.” Mama stood on her tiptoes and slipped a loop of string around Mrs. Mays’s throat. A little bag, twin to the one Mama had given me, settled at the base of Mrs. Mays’s throat.
“You ain’t got no business here, Horace Gorvis. Whatever you was when you lived, all that’s over. Over and done. Now git.”
Mama reached down into the coffin and held up the man’s freshly severed head. She eyed it critically and knocked it hard twice against the wardstone. Most of the clinging hair and remaining tissue fell away.
Mama wrapped what looked like a dirty rag around the skull’s vacant eye sockets. Then she drove thick iron spikes into the spots the ears had been, and she grunted as she tore the jaw away.
“We come to bury this sorry excuse for a man,” said Mama. She chunked the skull into the new casket. “He can rest in peace or not, for all I care, but he ain’t gonna walk no more.” The jawbone followed. Teeth came loose and bounced and rattled. “May Angels fly him to his rest and all that hogwash, amen. Mr. Summers, finish him.”
“More’n happy to.”
Summers and his shovel went to work. Mama hauled the parts out as they became available, saying a few words over each one. I didn’t think the somber Echols would have approved of Mama’s hostile running eulogy one bit.
The air grew colder. Torches flickered and wavered, and a few went out. Mama handed Natalie a bag of her own when she yelped and whirled as though she too had been touched.
“Mind me, Horace Gorvis. This is for them fires what you set,” said Mama. She tossed the man’s two severed hands into the coffin and then opened a bag of what appeared to be salt and poured it over the remains.
“And this is for all them you hurt.” Another bag, this one of ash.
“And this is for Granny Knot.” A final bag, the contents wet and dark and dripping.
Out in the night, something shrieked.
Mama nodded at me. I called in the troops and had them gather around, more to block the view from the street than for any other reason. The very last thing I wanted was a sudden mob of enterprising grave robbers showing up the moment we were at home in our beds.
I called out. True to his word, Skillet scampered up, out of breath and grinning. If he’d followed my instructions, and his mere presence suggested he had, he’d carried the bag aimlessly around Rannit, keeping anything attached to it occupied while we’d dug it up.
I opened the bag and made a quick count. Skillet looked hurt. I eased his delicate feelings with a handful of perfectly good silver and sent him on his way.
The dead man’s coin was all there, aside from the few I’d spent. Mama had assured me that which remained would be enough.
“This is for my window pane, you bullying worthless spook,” I said. “Take your money. We don’t want it. I hope the winged Angels drop you on your nasty head.”
And I poured the bag of treasure out, coin by coin, onto the scattered corpse.
I heard it. We all did. A long, high, agonized scream, a scream mad with rage and fury and, finally, defeat.
The chill in the air died as the last coin joined its brothers.
Mama spat down into the casket.
“Now stay dead.”
I nodded, and shovels were replaced with bright new hammers and silver nails, and if anything remained aware inside that casket after Mama’s bags and Summers’s shovel, I almost pitied it.
Almost.
The rest was anticlimax.
Granny Knot started moaning and moving about the time we got the new coffin lowered into the grave. I had the boys scrape the bits of the former Horace Gorvis that had spilled onto the ground on top of the lid, and then we covered it with a thin layer of earth.
Next, we burned the old coffin. Mama added some of her own special items to the flames, and whatever she added made them burn high and fast and blue and hot. When the sudden inferno finally died, there was nothing, and I mean nothing, left but ashes and a handful of melted iron nails.
They went into the grave too. With so many men working, it was over before I’d had time to say much to Mrs. Mays or her daughter.
They kept watch over the proceedings though. They held one another, and I suppose they both cried a bit. Ten stalwart Runners kept them in the middle of a tight circle of swords the whole time.
I let go a sigh of relief.
“Granny any better?”
Mama’s face was blank. She does that when she has unpleasant things to say. I put my hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll get her a doctor,” I said. “Least I can do. Should have seen that coming.”
“Wasn’t your fault, boy. You put down the one what done it.”
I spoke softly. “You sure about that?”
Mama nodded an affirmative. “I ain’t got to be a spook doctor to know when Death has took his own. That one there won’t be troubling nobody never again.”