I PACED THE forest.
A part of me knew it was dangerous. Most of the mob had fled, running to cower in their homes, comforting their children. Young ones didn’t belong at public executions, and it shouldn’t have taken necromancy to remind their guardians of that.
The Emperor’s Guard had disappeared—presumably whisking His Imperial Majesty off to safety. I looked up to the Emperor’s viewing box. Both he and Grey were gone, the ornate gilded chair tipped over. Two dozen soldiers—most on foot, some on horseback—patrolled the area.
And there were workers, too. Everyone always forgot about the poor souls who had to clean up after the dead.
I watched from the forest that lined the gardens as workers mounted the platform. A slender woman stretched out over the edge of the stage with a long pole that had a hook at the end. She grabbed each rope noose and pulled it—and the body that hung from it—closer to her, while another worker hacked at the rope with a machete. The bodies fell, one by one, onto the ground below them. Once all thirteen lay, limbs akimbo, in a heap on the ground, a soldier dragged an Elder closer.
The Elder trembled as he stood over the corpses. He moved his lips in prayer and his hands in a circle, the blessing for the dead to remain dead.
As soon as he was done, he scampered off. More workers appeared, loading the thirteen bodies into the same boxy wagon that had carted the prisoners to the Imperial Gardens while they still lived.
Follow me, Nessie, I ordered in my mind. What little life I had been able to give her was gone now, along with the black energy that had turned my ghost arm obsidian. But there were still inky shadows of black under my skin, swirling over my heart.
“Hurry it up,” the wagon driver called. “Got a long road, don’t I? Want to be back before dark.”
A long road . . .
There were plenty of crematoriums in Northface Harbor, all no more than an hour’s drive away.
But the superstitious people of the city wouldn’t want revenants burned here. They would want distance.
The pauper’s grave. They were going to bury the thirteen traitors in the pauper’s grave in the cleared-away forest in the center of Lunar Island. Nearly all the plague victims had been buried there. I had gone there with Grey, pressing an iron ring into the mounded earth for Burial Day.
There were thousands of dead buried in the earth there. And while I had gotten just a wisp of energy from the dead at the quarantine hospital, if I multiplied that with all the dead buried in the pauper’s grave . . .
I tried to tamp down the hope rising in me. They’d been dead for weeks, though in Miraband I’d seen the echoes of life, the impressions of the dead that had been gone for centuries. But perhaps, with that many dead in one place, there would be enough energy to give Nessie more than a few moments of real life. I was buying time I knew couldn’t last, but I had gotten this far on nothing but books and instinct. I would steal what moments I could with Nessie until I found a way to truly restore her.
I refused to believe it was impossible. What was impossible, anyway? I had already defied the world once when I raised the dead. I could do it again.
As long as she stood before me, there was still hope.
Without giving myself a moment to doubt, I left the forest, heading to the prisoners’ wagon. The driver was already atop it, pulling his gloves on and picking up the whip. The last worker was loading the final body inside—a slender boy about my age. I walked past the worker, stepping inside the wagon, and then turned to help her haul the body inside.
“Thanks,” she said, wiping her brow.
Nessie strode past her and climbed inside the wagon after me.
I could see the worker piecing together what was happening. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed the threads of her soul with my shadow hand, freezing her in place. I raised my right hand up, pressing my forefinger to my lips.
“Shhh,” I instructed.
Eyes wide and terror-filled, the girl nodded the second I released her soul and backed away. The doors to the wagon slammed shut, the latch falling into place. A moment later, the wagon lurched into motion, the driver clicking his tongue at the draft horses.
I settled into a corner of the wagon, my back against the wall. Thirteen dead bodies bumped along the uneven road with me. I glanced at Nessie. Fourteen dead, I supposed. It didn’t matter. I was used to death.