9

Hali didn't often take her clients so far into the graveyard, but this boy was a butcher's assistant who was engaged to his employer's daughter. Being caught with a prostitute would cost him his job as well as a profitable marriage.

Business among the cattlemen at the Red Ox was slow this evening. Hali didn't want to lose a potential customer just because he was nervous.

"Come along, lad," she coaxed. "Here, this'll be a nice spot, don't you think?"

She patted the white stone wall of the tomb beside her. The graveyard was shaded and cool even during daylight; the flowers hanging on the door and laid on the pavement before the tomb were still fresh enough to perfume the air. "Now, just give me the money and we'll have a good time."

The boy hesitated. He was a big youth with eyes too small and close-set to be attractive in his round face, but he had Hali's price, three coppers, in his purse. It was early evening; the sun had just set. Hali hadn't had a drink since noon and she really needed one. She planned to earn the three coppers and get straight back to the bar of the Red Ox with them.

She hitched up her tunic slightly, giving the boy a bit of a show. There was a vine-leaf pattern around the hem, worn now but good needlework. Hali had embroidered it herself not so many years ago when she was an honest woman earning an honest living; back when drink was a pleasure, not a need. A few years ago, and a whole lifetime past.

The boy wore his leather butcher's apron. He fumbled loose the strings to get at the purse hanging underneath, then paused again. "Say," he said, looking about him in cowlike wonder. "Isn't this where the trouble was the other day?"

Sister take me for a fool, he's right! Hali thought. And the Sister take this pie-faced booby too, for insisting we come so far in when leaning against the inside wall is privacy enough!

The stableman from the Red Ox had gone along with the crew of undertakers and city marshals who collected the body two days past. He'd described the place where it happened: paired tombs facing one another across a stone patio. The white one was in use by the bor-Rusamans, a family in the shipping trade; the killing had taken place in the black tomb whose reputation had kept it vacant despite its good physical condition.

"No, no," Hali lied. "That was clear the other side of the cemetery, honey. I went and saw the place myself and it was nowhere around here."

She patted the tomb wall again. "Now, give me the money, sweetheart, and let's take care of our business, right?"

Now that the boy had brought the matter up, Hali started to worry. She wasn't a flighty woman, but the stableman had been too shaken by what he'd seen in the tomb to embellish the story the way he'd probably intended to do. His description of a disemboweled corpse with an expression of stark terror on its face was the more frightening to hear because it had obviously frightened the man talking.

The boy stared at her. The young fool had no more sense than the sheep he butchered. How does he manage not to get hit on the head with a hammer himself and have his throat slit?

She sighed and stepped over to the boy, rotating the unfastened apron around to his back so that it wouldn't be in the way of business—and of the purse hanging from the boy's waist belt. It was getting noticeably darker.

His hands closed over the top of his purse. "Now, don't be a silly boy," Hali wheedled. "You're too handsome to worry about nothing, now aren't you?"

Something crashed inside the tomb behind them. The boy jerked away from Hali. She turned. It was the sort of sound a burial jar would make in breaking apart.

"Now, don't worry about a few tiles falling off an old roof!" Hali said, her voice rising in desperation as she saw the evening's wine vanishing along with the frightened customer. "It's nothing—"

Blue light flared within the tomb, leaking out the iris ventilators in the gable peaks. The door's metal bolt sheared with a sharp crack.

The boy bellowed like a stuck pig and blundered off into the gathering night. Hali heard him fall over a stone coffin. She hoped bitterly for a moment that he'd managed to break his fool neck but he was up a moment later, running on and still screaming.

Hali backed against the side of the tomb. She needed a drink; and suddenly, nothing she might be running away from seemed any worse than the life she'd be running to save.

The iron door squealed open. A man stepped out. He tramped slowly across the cemetery without looking around, vanishing at last behind a stand of centuries-old cypresses on his way toward the gate. There was a faint flicker when the man's legs moved, a dusting of blue light.

Hali recognized the fellow despite the dim light: Arame bor-Rusaman. She'd seen him several times being driven through the streets of Carcosa in a carriage with his coat of arms on the side. He was far too fine to be a customer of hers, of course, but sizing up men was an important part of Hali's business.

Three days ago Hali had seen Arame for the last time as the funeral procession made its way past the Red Ox. His features were painted larger than life on the sides of his burial jar.