I would have told them all to go hang, but my assistant, Captain Renprow, proved annoyingly persistent, an example of the “raised on merit” class of energetic low-born types that the system needs in order to function but who have to be watched closely. Additionally, continued reports of rag-a-maul and ghouls in the poor quarter acted as an added incentive. If there’s one thing that will get me to do half an honest day’s work it’s the conviction that doing so will make me safer.
“What are rag-a-maul, Renprow?” I leaned back in my chair, my feet in their shiny boots on my shiny marshal’s desk.
Renprow, a short dark man with short dark hair, frowned, favouring me with a stare that put me uncomfortably in mind of Snorri. “You don’t know? I’ve passed you a dozen reports . . . you attended that strategy meeting yesterday, and—”
“Of course I know. I just wanted your opinion on the subject, Renprow. Humour me.”
“Well.” He pursed his lips. “Some kind of malicious ghost. People describe them as miniature whirlwinds raising rags and dust. Whirlwinds so full of sharp edges they can flay a man, and when the wind drops the victim is possessed and runs around on a murderous rampage until they’re put down.” He puffed out his cheek and tapped two fingers to it. “That about covers it.”
“And these incidents are peculiar to Vermillion?”
“We’ve had reports far and wide, but we do seem to have a higher incidence in the city. Perhaps just because the population is so much larger.” He paused. “My father’s people know them too. But they call them wind-stick devils, and they’re very rare.” Renprow had a heritage that began far south of Liba, giving him command of many odd facts.
“Well.” I swung my boots off the desk and glanced around the room. The marshal’s manse was a spacious building but had been unoccupied for so long that most of the furniture had wandered off. “If that concludes our business for the day?” The sun had passed its zenith and I had a flamehaired beauty to visit, a sweet girl named Lola, or Lulu, or something.
Renprow’s mouth twitched into a shortlived smile as if I’d been attempting a joke. “Your next appointment is with the menonites in the Appan suburb. They’re proving resistant to the idea of disinterring their cemeteries. After that—”
“We still have dead in the ground?” I stood up fast enough to knock the chair over. “Have the guard do it for them!” I’d seen what happened when the dead come clambering back from where they’ve been put. “Better still, have Martus’s soldiers do it. I want every corpse burned. Immediately! And if they have to make more corpses to do it . . . that’s fine. As long as they burn those too.” I shivered at memories I’d been trying to bury—like the Vermillion dead they weren’t buried deep enough.
Renprow picked up a weighty ledger from the shelf by the door and held it across his chest like a shield. “The menonites are unruly at the best of times and numerous. Their sect venerates ancestors to the ninth generation. It would be better if we could negotiate.”
And there went my afternoon, just like the three before it. Smiling and performing for peasant stock, a bunch of ingrates who should be falling over themselves to obey my commands. I sighed and stood. Better to cajole the live ones than have to contend with the dead ones later on. The live ones may smell bad and have irritating opinions but the dead ones smell even worse and hold the opinion that we’re food. “All right. But if they don’t listen I’m sending the soldiers in.” I found myself still shivering despite the heat of the day, visions of the dead crowding in, patient, silent, waiting . . . until the Dead King woke their hunger.
“Jalan!” The door burst open without a knock and Darin stood there, pale and serious.
“My dear brother. And how have you decided to brighten my day? Perhaps some overflowing sewers need my attention?”
“Father is dead.”
“Oh, you liar.” Father wasn’t dead. He didn’t do that sort of thing. I took my cloak from its hook. The day outside looked grey and uninspiring.
“Jalan.” Darin stepped toward me, a hand reaching my shoulder.
“Nonsense.” I brushed his arm aside. “I’ve got menonites to see.” A coldness sat in my stomach and my eyes stung. It made no sense. Firstly he wasn’t dead, and secondly I didn’t even like him. I walked past Darin, aiming for the doorway.
“He’s dead, Jalan.” My brother’s hand settled on my shoulder as I passed him and I stopped, almost at the door, my back to him. For a moment visions of a different time replaced the square outside and rooftops beyond. I saw my father young, standing beside Mother, bending down, a smile on his face, arms open to receive me as I raced toward them.