You don't have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right. -- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
The constable came huffing and puffing over to the shrine. "What is it now?" His eyes bugged out. "Gods! What are they all doing in here?"
Kitri was about to answer when she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. Her head snapped round. She stared very hard at the pile of skeletons. None of them moved so much as a finger. Their empty eye-sockets all seemed to be looking directly at her. Their bare teeth made it look like they were grinning malevolently.
"I think the grave-robber left them here to collect later," she said. That explanation was unsatisfactory, but it was less insane that her suspicion the skeletons had moved themselves here. Again she thought she saw movement. "Quickly, help me put them back in their graves."
The constable blinked and scratched his head. "But, ma'am, why bother? They're doing no harm here. We can send for a team to move them in the morning."
A faint rustling noise came from a corner of the shrine. The sun's last rays were already fading from the sky. Was the wind normally so cold? Kitri suppressed a shudder. In the vanishing light she could see just enough to make out the candles placed on small shelves around the shrine. Those were supposed to be lit only during funerals. The priestesses of Lashkó lit them to represent the deceased person's life then extinguished them to represent their death. No one else was allowed to touch them.
There were no priestesses around to object, and it was too dark to stay here without any light. Kitri reached for the nearest shelf. She fumbled for the matchbox.
What was that noise? It couldn't be the constable. He was still behind her, grumbling about how cold his hands were. She heard the faintest scrape of something moving on the stone floor.
Why won't the match light?
In the dark and cold it was hard to strike it against the matchbox. Finally she succeed. The tiny flame gave barely any light yet it seemed to make the night even darker. Kitri held it against the candle's wick. For a chilling moment the candle refused to light. At last the flame caught. It filled the shrine with a faint but warm light that almost drove away Kitri's fears.
Then she saw what the light revealed and her fears came rushing back tenfold.
The skeletons were moving.
All of them recoiled from the candle-light, shrinking deeper and deeper into the shrine. They crowded in the shadows around the altar. Kitri remembered the skeletons Abi had raised. None of them had acted like this. They'd been brainless but harmless, and the light hadn't bothered any of them.
"Did you see that?" The constable's voice was a high-pitched squeak. "Did you see? They're moving!"
"I see it," Kitri said grimly. She raised her shovel. "See that statue there?" The statue was a small moveable carving of Lashkó, goddess of death, with all seven of her faces. "Pick it up and help me destroy these things."
She lit the other candles around the door. The light made the skeletons try to shrink back further. Unfortunately for them there was nowhere left for them to go. They made an attempt to skitter out of the way as Kitri brought the shovel crashing down. Not all of them were lucky enough to evade her. The shovel smashed through four skulls. Those skeletons immediately collapsed motionless on the floor.
"Destroy their skulls," Kitri ordered. She raised the shovel for another strike.
The constable was having some difficulty picking up the statue. He cursed under his breath as he struggled with it. By the time he got it moved, Kitri had already killed -- well, as much as these things could be killed -- another twelve of the skeletons.
"Ow!"
Her head snapped round. The constable was hopping on one leg and clutching his ankle.
"Bloody thing bit me," he complained, glaring at one of the skeletons. He hit its skull with the statue.
All things considered it was astonishingly easy to destroy the skeletons. Apart from the one that bit the constable, none of them tried to fight back. In that way at least they were as stupid as Abi's creations. Within an hour all of their skulls had been crushed.
Kitri said, "We'll have to check the rest of the graves in the morning." Mentally she added, And I'll have to tell Abi.
It was too much of a coincidence to think this had nothing to do with her necromancy.
~~~~
Once it began to rain in Gengxin the rain tended to last for days. Combine the terrible weather with how Mirio couldn't visit any of his cousins even if he wanted to, and he ended up spending most of his time indoors. News from the rest of the palace came every day. It was never encouraging. The Fifth Prince was near death. The Second Princess had taken ill too. Still there were no reports of anyone else catching the disease.
With how many of his cousins were sick, it would soon be easy to deduce who had cast the curse just by seeing who was left unharmed. That thought niggled at Mirio endlessly. His cousins weren't exactly geniuses, but surely even they would know cursing their siblings would only raise questions about their continued good health. Was Lian wrong? Was it not a curse after all?
Or, even more alarming, was it a curse cast by someone else entirely?
If it was one of his cousins there was an obvious motive: to get rid of the competition for the throne. Add in other suspects and the motives became much less obvious. What would an outsider have to gain from killing off most of the royal family? Revenge, personal dislike, or simply making it easier to stage a coup were all potential options. The more Mirio thought about it the more possibilities he came up with. At this rate the entire kingdom would become suspects.
In an effort to find something else to do he took it upon himself to teach Zi Yao how to play noyo[1]. After the first two games Zi Yao got the hang of it and won every time, to the amusement of Lian and Lady Yuan. Mirio continued to play even when he kept losing spectacularly. It kept Zi Yao happy and it passed the time, so what did it matter that he was losing to a child?
At least he had one consolation. Lian was even worse at the game than Mirio was. No one who witnessed it would ever forget his bewildered expression when he lost a game before he had the chance to move a single piece.
When not playing with Zi Yao or making polite conversation with Lady Yuan, Mirio began to think more and more about Lian. All sorts of little things he'd overlooked were now popping up. None of them were sinister in and of themselves, but they were certainly odd.
Lian had very expensive clothes, and apparently had almost bankrupted himself buying them. He had so little money right now that he had to save up just to buy sweets for Zi Yao. Lian never sent or received any letters. As far as anyone knew he had no friends outside the palace. Yet every week he had a day off and disappeared for the entire day -- unless Zi Yao's health had taken a sudden turn for the worse. No one knew where he went on those days. Lian spoke multiple languages, could draw Saoridhin calligraphy of the Biarorth style, but claimed his family were only shopkeepers.
That claim would have fooled anyone except Mirio. Unfortunately for Lian, Mirio had a Saoridhian foster sister and had witnessed the debates between his parents and hers on how to ensure her education covered everything taught in Saoridhlém as well as everything taught in Seroyawa. He knew more about Saoridhin calligraphy than he knew what to do with. There were at least twenty different styles of calligraphy, all taught with different methods, with rules about who used which style. A shopkeeper's family would have learnt -- assuming his memory wasn't playing tricks on him -- either the Ondern or Aivranto styles. The Biarorth style was taught only to aristocrats and royals. Mirio remembered Abi's grumbles about how complicated it was too well to forget what it looked like.
Lian kept a diary which he made no attempt to hide. He wrote entries while the servants were right there. He even wrote in it when Mirio was beside him, and he knew Mirio understood Saoridhin. It was easy to assume that meant he had nothing incriminating in it. Mirio wasn't so sure. He caught a glimpse of the pages on several different occasions. It was written in the Saoridhin alphabet, yes, but the language wasn't Saoridhin.
Take today's entry for example. Lian wrote it sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Mirio's chair. Mirio read the writing over Lian's shoulder while pretending to be absorbed in his own book.
Its first sentence read, Rophledok dosde'v loddosk w'dr idrosk di r'xo e levriero e kiso gevdeky-oktio kiivk.
Not one word of that was even close to Saoridhin. Nor was it any other language Mirio knew. He considered Kazincgish, Nabevskan, Lagoeulian, Qytanth and Uvnoir, all without success.
Lian continued writing gibberish. Mirio watched for a while before he decided to risk asking about it.
"What language is that?" He tried to make the question sound as careless as possible.
If Lian was surprised he didn't show it. "It's not a language. It's a code my siblings and I invented."
Well, that wasn't really suspicious or unusual. Seitomu and Azarin had invented a code of their own when they were younger, and it was perfectly normal for someone to want their diary to be private. Yet in spite of his attempts to explain it Mirio still felt there was something strange about it.
Where did you learn that style of calligraphy? he wanted to ask. But he had an unpleasant feeling that question would open a can of worms better left undisturbed.
Lian couldn't possibly be an aristocrat. None of them would have been caught dead working as a servant in a foreign country. Mirio didn't know enough about Saoridhin accents to distinguish between them, but Abi had a very upper-class accent when she spoke her native language and Lian sounded nothing like her. Not to mention the way he was currently leaning against the wall. Deportment teachers would have a heart attack at such poor posture.
No, there was probably a very good explanation for Lian's oddities.
So why did Mirio feel like he had stumbled upon something sinister?
~~~~
Coming to Gengxin had been a mistake. It had caused more problems than the ones he'd come here to escape. Years ago Vieraneth -- or Riyeira, or Lian, or whatever his name currently was; he'd had so many identities not even he could keep track of them all -- had learnt there were only two sorts of people. Those who were useful and those who weren't. Zi Yao had changed that. He should have only been useful in the sense he gave Vieraneth a job. He should have been a temporary nuisance at most. Forgettable. Disposable.
But he wasn't. The first time Vieraneth had seen him in one of his fits, Zi Yao had reached out to him for help. Not to his servants, not to the other doctor, him. There were three certainties in Vieraneth's life. The sun rose and set, the tide went out and came in, and no one ever chose him when they could chose someone else instead. No one except Zi Yao.
And now, no one except Zi Yao and Mirio.
Zi Yao liked Lian, admired him, considered him a friend. Mirio was patient with, even friendly towards Zi Yao and made a point of talking to Lian. Mirio paid enough attention to him -- and knew enough about Saoridhlém -- to notice there were inconsistencies in his cover story. Most people didn't even acknowledge his existence long enough to hear his cover story.
For the first time in millennia Lian had a reason to want to stay somewhere and a person he wanted to protect. And thanks to someone else's stupidity the whole thing was in danger.
Let Gengxin's entire royal family kill themselves if they wanted to, just as long as they didn't harm Zi Yao. But if this curse continued then sooner or later they were going to harm Zi Yao. And that was simply unacceptable.
Mirio apparently had not taken the bait when Lian told him about the curse. Maybe he should tell him everything. If he did, maybe Mirio would help him find its caster. Maybe they would join forces to protect Zi Yao.
Or maybe Mirio would recoil from him in horror like everyone else he'd told. Lian hadn't cared what they thought. Now he found he cared a great deal what Mirio thought. For the first time he had someone he considered a friend, and he didn't want to lose him.
As he scribbled in his diary a plan took shape in Lian's mind. Mirio was clever. He'd already become curious, possibly even suspicious. Why not leave more clues for him? Let him piece them together on his own. If he did, if he figured out most of the truth without being told, then Lian could see how he reacted before confirming it.
It was time to frighten the curse's caster anyway.
Chapter Footnotes:
[1] noyo = A Seroyawan game similar to snakes and ladders.