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“Yes. Between telling me how many lashes the other team was going to get, and telling me how to make money betting on the outcome, he told me that the missing horses have been gone for quite a time.”
“Since right after winter solstice, I’d bet.”
Warren shielded his eyes with a hand as he peered into the window. “You’d win the bet. Four of his strongest horses, but full tack for only two, are gone. He’s still searching for the horses, and swears he’ll find them, but he thinks the tack was stolen.”
From behind the door in the back of the dark room, she could hear the sound of a file on steel.
Warren took his hand from his face and checked the street. “Sounds like there’s someone here who isn’t a Ja’La enthusiast.”
“Good.” Verna tied the shawl under her chin and then pulled open the door. “Let’s go hear what this gravedigger has to say.”
25
Only the small, street-side window coated with ancient layers of dirt, and an open door in the back, lit the dim, dusty room, but it was enough to see a path through the cluttered mounds of sloppy rolls of winding sheets, rickety workbenches, and simple coffins. A few rusty saws and planes hung on one wall, and a disorderly stack of pine planks leaned against another.
While people of means frequented undertakers who provided guidance in the selection of ornate, expensive coffins for their loved ones, people with precious little money could afford no more than the services of simple gravediggers who supplied a plain box and a hole to put it in. While the departed loved ones of those who came to gravediggers were no less precious to them, they had to worry about feeding the living. Their memories of the deceased, however, were no less gilded.
Verna and Warren paused at the doorway out into a tiny pit of a work yard, its borders steep and high with lumber stacked upright against a fence to the back and stuccoed buildings at each side. In the center, with his back to them, a gangly, barefoot man in tattered clothes stood facing away from them as he filed the blades of his shovels.
“My condolences on the loss of your loved one,” he said in a gravelly but surprisingly sincere voice. He resumed drawing the file against the steel. “Child, or adult?”
“Neither,” Verna said.
The hollow-cheeked man glanced back over his shoulder. He wore no beard, but looked as if his efforts at shaving were rare enough that he was close to crossing the line. “In between, then? If you’ll tell me the size of the departed, I can work a box to fit.”
Verna clasped her hands. “We’ve no one to bury. We’re here to ask you some questions.”
He quieted his hands and turned around fully to look them up and down. “Well, I can see that you can afford more than me.”
“You aren’t interested in Ja’La,” Warren asked.
The man’s droopy eyes came a little more alert as he took another look at Warren’s violet robes. “Folks don’t fancy the likes of me around at festive occasions. Spoils their good time to look on my face, like it were the face of death itself walking among ‘em. Aren’t shy about telling me I’m not welcome, either. But they come by when they’ve need of me. They come, then, and act like they never turned their eyes away before. I could let ‘em go pay for a fancy box what the dead won’t see, but they can’t afford it, and their coin don’t do me no good if I grudge ‘em their fears.”
“Which are you,” Verna asked, “Master Benstent, or Sproul?”
His flaccid eyelids bunched into creases as his eyes turned to up her. “I’m Milton Sproul.”
“And Master Benstent? Is he about, too?”
“Ham’s not here. What’s this about?”
Verna bowed her mouth in a nonchalant expression. “We’re from the palace, and wanted to ask about a tally we were sent. We just need to be sure it’s correct, and everything is in order.”
The bony man turned back to his shovel and stroked the file across the edge. “Tally’s correct. We’d not cheat the Sisters.”
“Of course we aren’t suggesting any such thing, it’s just that we can’t find any record of who it was you buried. We just need to verify the deceased, and then we can authorize payment.”
“Don’t know. Ham done the work and made out the tally. He’s an honest man. He wouldn’t cheat a thief to get back what was stole from him. He made out the tally and told me to send it over, that’s all I know.”
“I see.” Verna shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll need to see Master Benstent in order to clear this up. Where can we find him?”
Sproul took another stroke with his file. “Don’t know. Ham was getting on in years. Said he wanted to spend what little time was left to him being with his daughter and grandchildren. He left to be with them. They live downcountry somewheres.” He circled his file in the air. “Left his half of the place, such as it is, to me. Left me his half of the work, too. Guess I’ll have to take on a younger man to do the digging; I’m getting old myself.”
“But you must know where he went, and about this tally.”
“Said I don’t. He packed up all his things, not that that was much, and bought himself a donkey for the journey, so I reckon it must be a goodly distance.” He pointed his file over his shoulder toward the south. “Like I said, downcountry.
“The last thing he told me was to be sure I sent the tally to the palace, because he done the work and it was only fair that they pay for what was done. I asked him where to send the payment, as he done the work, but he said to use it to hire a new man. Said it was only fair what with him leaving me on such short notice.”
Verna considered her options. “I see.” She watched him take a dozen strokes on his shovel, and then turned to Warren. “Go outside and wait for me.”
“What!” he whispered heatedly. “Why do you—”
Verna held up a finger to silence him. “Do as I say. Take a little walk around the area to be sure… our friends aren’t looking for us.” She leaned a little closer with a meaningful look. “They might be wondering if we need any assistance.”
Warren straightened and glanced to the man filing his shovel. “Oh. Yes, all right. I’ll go look and see where our friends have gotten to.” He fumbled with the silver brocade on his sleeve. “You won’t be long, will you?”
“No. I’ll be out shortly. Go on now, and see if you see them anywhere.”
After Verna heard the front door shut, Sproul glanced over his shoulder. “Answer’s still the same. I told you what…”
Verna produced a gold coin in her fingers. “Now, Master Sproul, you and I are going to have a candid conversation. What’s more, you are going answer my questions truthfully.”
He frowned suspiciously. “Why’d you send him out?”
She no longer made an effort to show him a pleasant smile. “The boy has a weak stomach.”
He took an unconcerned stroke with his file. “I told you the truth. If you want a lie, then just tell me and I’ll build you one to fit.”
Verna shot him a menacing scowl. “Don’t you even think of lying to me. You may have told the truth, but not all the truth there is to tell. Now, you are going to tell me the rest of it, either in exchange for this token of my appreciation—” Verna used her Han to snatch the file from his hand and send it sailing up into the air until it vanished from sight. “—or in appreciation for my sparing you any unpleasantness.”
Whistling with speed, the file streaked out of the sky to slam into the ground, burying itself a scant inch from the gravedigger’s toes. Only the tang stuck above the dirt, and that glowed red. With angry mental effort, she drew the hot steel up in a long, thin line of molten metal. Its white-hot glow illuminated his shocked expression, and she, too, could feel the sizzling heat on her face. His eyes had gone wide.
She waggled a finger, and the ductile line of glowing steel wavered before his eyes, dancing in time with her finger’s movement. She swirled her finger and the hot steel coiled around the man, holding mere inches from his flesh.
“One twitch of my finger, Ma
ster Sproul, and I bind you up in your file.” She opened her hand, holding her palm up. A howl of flame ignited, hovering obediently in the air. “After I have you bound up, then I will start at your feet, and I’ll cook you an inch at a time, until you give me the whole truth.”
His crooked teeth chattered. “Please…”
She brought the coin up in her other hand, and showed him a humorless smile. “Or, as I say, you can choose to tell me the truth in exchange for this token of my appreciation.”
He swallowed, eyeing the hot metal around him, and the hissing flame in her hand. “It seems I do recall some more of it. I’d be most pleased if you’d let me set the story straight with the rest I’m now remembering.”
Verna extinguished the flame above her hand, and with an abrupt effort, flipped the Han’s heat to its opposite, to bitter cold. The glow left the metal like a candle’s flame being snuffed. The steel went from red hot to icy black, and shattered, the fragments dropping around the stiff gravedigger like hail.
Verna lifted his hand and pressed the gold into it, closing his fingers around the coin. “I’m so sorry. I seem to have broken your file. This will more than cover it, I’m sure.”
He nodded. It was likely more gold than the man could earn in a year. “I’ve got more files. It’s nothing.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder. “All right, Master Sproul, why don’t you tell me what else you remember about that tally.” She tightened her grip. “Every last bit of it, no matter how unimportant you consider it. Understand?”
