Mike said nothing, which was a good deal better than saying what he would have liked to have said. -- P. G. Wodehouse, Mike and Psmith
Once again Abihira stared at the corpse. Once again she felt sure the corpse wasn't actually staring at her. Never once did she turn her head to look at her. Now that she'd raised her hand she kept it up, as if she'd forgotten it lower it again.
How very strange, Abihira thought. "Can you talk?"
Silence. Perhaps this needed some more necromancy. She pictured a voice box -- she knew what one looked like from her experiments in dissecting fresh corpses back in Seroyawa -- and tried to imagine how it would work as someone spoke. That was something cutting open bodies hadn't taught her. Any medical professional would have shook their heads in despair at the picture she conjured up. Then she gathered her magic and reached out with it towards the corpse.
Speak, she ordered it.
It opened its mouth. Then it closed it again. It repeated this over and over until it looked like nothing so much as one of Mirio's pet fish. No sound came from its mouth. Abihira scratched her head. This necromancy business was turning out far more complicated than she'd expected.
"Can you still understand me?" she asked.
The corpse froze with its mouth still hanging open. Its veil, still covered in mud, had gotten stuck together so that it no longer covered all of its face. The left side of its face was almost completely bare, while the right side was still behind the veil. All things considered it was not a sight that would strike terror into anyone's heart -- except perhaps someone with an intense dislike of mud. Slowly it nodded. If it was possible for a not-quite-sentient walking corpse to be wary of answering, that one was then. It was almost as if it knew it wouldn't like whatever she said next.
"Good. Now listen closely. There is a woman named Haliran--" Abihira stopped abruptly as she realised she didn't know Haliran's matronymic. "Er, Haliran-rúdaun. She lives in Kastlán Manor."
Never before had a corpse worn such an air of sheepish non-comprehension. None of Abihira's creations were exactly alive, but all of them were capable of feeling and displaying emotion. Even the skeletons had managed to convey confusion and helplessness. It was very strange. Just how much did they understand of the world around them? Did they know they were dead? Perhaps they still had some memory of being alive. Or perhaps emotions somehow lingered after death. Whatever the reason, it needed investigation. Abihira made a mental note to look into that later.
Now, where was she? Oh yes. Explaining where Haliran lived. It seemed she needed to give more thorough directions than just naming the house.
"Do you know where Kastlán Manor is?"
The corpse shook her head.
"Ever heard of Ialimu Avenue?"
The corpse continued to shake her head. It was hard to tell if she was answering the second question or hadn't yet stopped answering the first one.
Using necromancy as a weapon had sounded like such a good idea in the immediate aftermath of Haliran's unwanted visit. Now that she was confronted with the actual drawbacks of such a scheme, Abihira had to admit it wasn't quite as good an idea as it had seemed. Perhaps it would be easier if she was a more experienced necromancer. But she had to sort this out tonight, before Ilaran went to her grandmother when court opened tomorrow. She didn't have time to practice.
Giving the corpse directions would obviously not work. So there was only one possible course of action left open to her. She would have to lead the corpse directly to Haliran herself.
Abihira looked askance at her creation. It was still shaking its head; more slowly now, like a clockwork toy that needed wound up again. Hardly the sort of thing she could trust to carry out a mission like this. Truth be told Abihira had no idea what she actually intended the corpse to do to Haliran. She didn't mean to kill her because then how would Ilaran bring her to justice? But she meant to frighten her so badly that she wouldn't dare say a word about necromancy to the empress. And there lay the problem. A corpse who needed ten minutes just to move or stop moving would hardly frighten anyone.
No one liked having to face the unpleasant fact that they simply didn't know what they were doing in spite of their protestations to the contrary. Abihira's usual method of dealing with that fact was to ignore it and hope it would go away. This was one time when doing that would just lead to disaster for everyone.
~~~~
If someone had asked Irímé a day ago how he expected to spend the early hours of the day after the festival, his answer would not have been "climbing out a window and running to Abi's house while dodging guards like some sort of criminal".
After all that he expected Abi would at least have the decency to be at home when he knocked on the door. Where else would she be at this time of the night? The servant who answered the door quickly disabused him of this notion.
"Her Highness left half an hour ago," she said. She wasn't the usual servant who opened the door. Her uniform and air of bewilderment suggested she was a kitchen maid unexpectedly handed someone else's duties. Just as well for Irímé; the usual servant had been with the family for centuries and would have been very reluctant to answer questions about any of their whereabouts. No matter who the questioner was, or the reason for them asking.
"I don't know where she's gone," the maid continued. She winced at the very loud shouts from one of the rooms down the hall. It sounded like at least ten people were having a contest to see who could yell the loudest. "She seemed very angry. I think that visitor said something to upset her."
Irímé had been about to thank her for her information and go back to Ilaran, who -- being a stranger to the family, and therefore unlikely to be granted entry at this hour -- was waiting at the gate. Her last sentence stopped him in his tracks. "Visitor? What visitor?"
"One of the people who'd been at the party," the maid said, which hardly narrowed it down much. "Didn't much like the look of her. Not the sort of person I'd ever want to play cards against." She suddenly blushed. "Er, not that I ever play cards, your Highness."
'Your Highness'? Just who does she think I am?
On the bright side, if he'd been mistaken for one of Abihira's many cousins it would prevent any of the nasty rumours that might start if word got out her fiancé had visited her house late at night. Almost everyone would take into consideration the extenuating circumstances of the fiasco at the party and would realise there was nothing untoward about it. But certain people would make a scandal out of anything. If the situation was less dire Irímé would have waited until the morning to visit.
He thanked the maid for her information and made some vague comment asking her to tell Abi he hoped she was all right. He was hardly aware of what he said, too preoccupied by worrying about the mysterious visitor. There was only one person he could think of who would have any reason to visit Abi at such a time. But what would Haliran want with her?
Irímé scurried out of the gate. He stopped abruptly. Where was Ilaran? He'd been here just a minute ago.
A shadow detached itself from the darkness under the trees a short distance away. Irímé started violently before he realised it was only Ilaran.
"Where were you?" he asked, more sharply than he intended.
"I thought about where she's likely to go after this, so I went over to the crypt," Ilaran said. "There's a light on in it. I expect that's where she is."
For a minute a horrible thought filled Irímé's mind. What if Abi was reanimating every body in the crypt?
"We'd better find her quickly. I think Haliran's already been to see her."
~~~~
From the minute he saw the light in the crypt Ilaran imagined all sorts of horrible things happening down there. An incompetent necromancer was the last person who should ever be allowed near dead bodies. Nothing could have prepared him for the actual reality of what Abihira was doing. He'd pictured corpses crawling from their graves. He had not pictured Abihira ordering a very muddy corpse around as if she was a general and it was a not-very-promising soldier.
Irímé saw it at almost the same moment Ilaran did. He stopped so abruptly that Ilaran had to grab hold of the staircase rail to avoid falling.
"What are you doing?"
It was a rather pointless question when the answer was so obvious. It was also exactly what Ilaran himself wanted to ask. This was no time for training zombies to turn left or right on command!
Abihira blinked up at them as if she couldn't see them clearly. Irímé half-ran, half-jumped down the remaining stairs. Luckily for him he was already close to the bottom. Ilaran followed at a less breakneck speed.
"Oh, it's you two." From her tone anyone would have thought they were unexpected guests who'd just dropped by for tea. "I have... Er, that is... I've some bad news for you." She looked at Ilaran specifically. "Haliran knows about the necromancy."
At first he didn't realise he'd heard correctly. How could Haliran know when she hadn't been there? It was impossible.
"Somehow she knows this," Abihira gestured to the corpse, which was now standing in front of one of the tombs, "is a reanimated corpse, and she's figured out I'm responsible. I think she's a telepath."
If Haliran was a telepath the entire empire would know about it by now.
"That can't be right," Ilaran said. "Siarvin would have told me if she was." Not to mention Shizuki would never have been able to meet him.
"Then how does she know so much?"
That unfortunately was a question he couldn't answer.
Abihira continued without waiting for a response. "She wants me to do anything she tells me, and never to mention the ghosts. So if you go to Grandmother, she'll tell everyone about my research."
Blackmail was exactly the sort of scheme Haliran would come up with. It was also the sort of scheme Ilaran had dealt with many times in Tananerl. It was fairly popular among a certain group of journalists to dredge up something embarrassing in the past of any prominent public figure they didn't like. Over the years hundreds of people came to him with complaints they were or they knew someone who was being blackmailed. In the vast majority of cases the best solution was the simplest one.
"What evidence does she have?"
Abihira and Irímé both stared at him.
"Evidence?" Abihira repeated, sounding as if she'd never heard the word before.
"Did she personally witness you raising the dead? Did she force you to sign a written declaration about it?"
Now both of them were looking at him as if he'd lost his mind.
"Of course not," Abihira said.
"What has this got to do with anything?" Irímé asked.
"Then she has no proof."
Abihira frowned. "I don't see--"
Ilaran interrupted her before he lost his train of thought. "She claims a walking corpse interrupted the festival. Very well then, the empress will say, show me the corpse. Obviously she can't. The next question would be, Are you certain it was a corpse? Haliran will be in a predicament. If she insists it was one, she'll have to explain how she's so certain and why it didn't act like any of the other reanimated dead in the records. If she claims you raised it, with no evidence to support any of her story, she'll be laughed out of the palace."
Understanding dawned in Abihira's eyes. Irímé continued to look unconvinced.
"But didn't you plan to use the ghosts' testimony in the case? That will just prove her story."
"It would," Ilaran agreed, "so we won't use it. We have enough evidence without it."
Abihira looked over at the corpse. It hadn't moved an inch in all the time they'd been talking. "Then what will I do with her? You don't know Grandmother. She'll order a search for the corpse just to make sure it's not true."
Irímé suggested, "Bury her again."
Ilaran nodded. The corpse herself said nothing.
"All right," Abihira said. "We'd better do it quickly, before your mother comes looking for you."
The last part was directed at Irímé. He smiled sourly. "I'd have to be a rare animal for my mother to ever come looking for me."
There was a great deal of barely-concealed bitterness and anger in those words. Ilaran stared. In their short acquaintance he hadn't realised Irímé was capable of so much venom.
Oh well. He was no stranger to unhappy, dysfunctional families. Whatever bad blood there was between Irímé and his mother, it would have no effect on the case. So it was none of his business.