Chapter 2

Date: 10/15/1852 Town: Thornwell In which Letha attends a funeral.

The next time Letha saw Nathaniel, it was the night after his funeral four years later. The August air was cold and bitter, and she'd decided to stay behind in the funeral parlor after her family had gone home. After the guests had left the undertaker went home as well, leaving only his apprentice to clean up. And seeing as his apprentice was Marionette, that left Letha with a perfect opportunity to speak to her.

While she had been flighty and nervous in youth, at the age of sixteen Marionette was slowly coming into her own. The morgue wasn't exactly quiet, but when she had realized she was too anxious for a job as a nurse, she found her calling here instead. Letha was a bit jealous; though she was the same age as Mary, she had no idea what her calling was. After seeing her brother's broken body... she didn't know what she'd been thinking trying to be a warrior.

These days Letha had been following her grandmother's advice, trying to become a proper lady. She spent all day with her tutor, learning to curtsy and balance books atop her head, and she wore long gowns with skinny waists and thick bonnets when she was outside. She hated every moment of it, but it was hardly decent to hide from society just to avoid wearing proper clothing.

At least in here only Mary could see her, so she could pull off her bonnet and tug her curly mess of hair into a comfortably ponytail. Mary seemed a bit spooked, but she'd never had enough nerve to complain about others. Once Letha was comfortable, she set her bonnet aside near Nathaniel's casket and turned to Marionette.

"Mary? Can I ask you a question?"

Even though she'd been watching Letha the whole time, Mary seemed shocked to be addressed. "I... er... sure. Of course. Yes."

Letha had never liked how quiet Mary was. But she was small, slender, her black hair was always in a neat little bun.. Letha remembered when being neat mattered that much to her. She was sure all of the boys liked Mary.

"Do you think the dead are better company than the living?"

Letha could tell she'd caught the girl off-guard. Mary wrung her hands nervously and stared at the hem of her dress, before quietly responding, "I don't dislike the living."

"I'm beginning to believe the only people worth speaking to are dead." Letha sighed, "I spoke to an old poet the other day, he told me the same. And he would know, he'd been dead for at least four hundred years."

"I'm.. surprised." Mary spoke, just as timidly as ever, "I mean, not much.. you've always seemed so somber since we were children. But I... assumed you were dedicating yourself to-"

"To petty etiquette." Letha interrupted her, taking a seat in one of the piers, "It passes the time. It was supposed to pass the time until Nathaniel came home."

"Well.. I suppose you'll be seeing more of him now."

"That's hardly worth replying to, Mary." Letha let out a sigh, full of annoyance, "He's just left one less interesting person to talk to while I'm awake."

Perhaps Mary didn't want to argue, or perhaps she no longer knew how to, but she didn't respond. She simply checked the room to be sure it was neat, and gestured a mere suggestion that Letha stand back up, "I'm sorry, but my father did want me to lock up shortly."

Letha couldn't exactly argue against that. It was clear her moodiness wasn't affecting Mary in any positive way. So she took her bonnet and exited the parlor, scarcely bothering to say goodbye to Mary before she took the last remaining carriage back to her house. The driver seemed impatient, watched her with a hard gaze as she stepped into the cart, but he knew it was not his place to hassle her for taking her time.

When she got home the house was quiet, all the lanterns blown out for the night. The door creaked as she entered, walking carefully up the stairs to her room and trying to step softly through it. The thought had occurred at first to wake Julian and ask him to talk to her about the inevitability of death, but she realized belatedly that he had been married the month before to Aristeo Regis's younger sister and visiting now carried the risk of seeing the man himself, or at least hearing about him. She supposed she would have to speak to someone else. Someone without a pulse.

Once she had changed into her nightgown and slipped into her bed, she lay still and counted her breaths, felt her pulse fall and fall and fall and her soul slowly follow. Down, down into the reaches of the Netherworld...

A layer of clouds waited for her first, and she was careful not to touch them as she slipped lower through the sea below her. Cloud after cloud passed her, each a dream or a nightmare that she had no interest in seeing. It had been several years since she had properly dreamed; these days she only had time for the Netherworld. It was hardly healthy, she knew, but she also knew she could manage it. She simply had to be careful how much energy she used in the living world.

Finally her feet touched the ground, leaving her in a world of gray skies and dark, dusty earth. Leafless trees that shimmered with light grew around her, and bare riverbeds threaded through the underbrush of cracked leaves. When her childhood teacher had asked her what she believed the Netherworld to look like, she had said it had trees and rivers and a soft breeze that pulled one toward their goal... she had expected it to be livelier, but she supposed it had been when she was younger. She knew from that teacher that the Netherworld conformed itself to how each person saw it. Nathaniel had told her that his was a town where fallen soldiers drank mead in mess halls every night. Julian's was a field where animals played in the sun. Letha's was a forest that had been left to rot.

She closed her eyes, and trusted the winds to guide her as leaves crunched beneath her feet. There was only one person she wanted to see tonight. The breeze blew bits of dust at the backs of her feet as she walked solemnly down a pathway, tugging on a string in her mind to the person she wanted to see.

Nathaniel.

When she opened her eyes she saw him, still wearing the light black armored suit of the Regis warriors. It was a laughable affair, in her opinion, but she could still remember the thrill she'd had when she was eight, imagining herself being able to fill out the breastplate. It was a mix of modern and old, the breastplate made of thick black leather with studs like a vest's buttons, and heavy boots holding in the bottoms of thick wool pants. The shirt underneath was as black as the rest of it, and while ascots and other such things were allowed with the uniform, Nathaniel chose to wear it without decoration. It cut a dashing figure, but she viewed him bitterly and hissed as she addressed him.

"You told me I would see you in six months."

"Letha-"

"You told me it would be a few months, and you were coming back alive! I didn't wait four years for you to come back in a casket!"

"Letha, I'm sorry-"

"You had every opportunity to tell me you couldn't make it back, there are letters and messengers and I've been dreamwalking nearly every night since those six months ticked away, why didn't you tell me!?"

"Letha." Nathaniel grasped her shoulders, and it was not until then she realized she had been shaking. "I didn't know when we would be coming home, but I couldn't risk dreamwalking long enough to contact you. You studied the warriors' army, you know how dangerous it is to visit the Netherworld on the battlefield."

She knew. A good half of any lesson she'd been taught was a warning against dreamwalking in a place where one's body was not perfectly safe. If a necromancer's body was killed while their soul was in the Netherworld, they would not be able to gain a proper death. Their living soul would be left in the Netherworld to rot without being able to become a dead soul. Within a handful of years the unlucky necromancer would be nothing but a shell of their former self. A shade.

"What were you fighting?" Letha moped, "More direfoxes?"

"Dire- what?" Nathaniel shook his head, "No, Letha, it wasn't a bloody direfox den, this is serious. Someone's been animating risens and setting them free without disanimating them."

"For four years?”

“No, no, just the last few months, but-”

“Someone would have told us."

"The elders wouldn't agree to let the family know. They didn't want a panic. It's been this long, we still don't know who's been doing it."

"Sounds awfully incompetent of you."

"Listen- don't tell anyone about this. I wasn't meant to tell anyone, but you're my little sister. I needed you to know."

"What you needed was to live long enough to tell me in person." Letha crossed her arms and looked away.

Nathaniel's shoulders sunk, "I'm sorry, Letha."

"No, it's fine. I won't tell anyone. I hope the barracks burn down for it."

"Letha, don't be like that..."

But she was already walking away, and once she could tell Nathaniel wasn't following her she let herself float back into the world of the living.

For several minutes after she awoke, she simply stared at the ceiling. At the funeral, Mary and the undertaker Cephas Regis had insisted that Nathaniel had been killed by a sword wound. She thought that Mary at least would seek her out and tell her otherwise if he had been gored by a risen. And who among the warriors could possible have been loosing risen on the rest of them for four years without being caught? This troubled her too much to consider sleeping any longer.

She decided to speak to Mary as soon as she had the chance, but she doubted it would happen very soon unless she snuck out. With her heart heavy and her mind working at a hundred miles an hour, she dressed herself quickly and moved as quickly as should could down the stairs. She checked the old clock on the wall as she walked across the kitchen; it read four in the morning. At least it might be a reasonable hour by the time she reached the funeral parlor.

Unfortunately, at this hour there would be no way to reasonably convince a servant to wake and tack the carriage horses, and she didn't particularly want to put in the effort. It would be forty minutes' walk for a man, much longer for a woman in a corset, so that left only one option. Necromancy.

She took a lantern from the hook by the door, and searched the cabinet beside it for a moment before finding a match and lighting it. Outside, she clutched her shawl close to her body as she walked carefully toward the small cemetery beside the house, kept full of old servants specifically for necromancy.

She knew most of the corpses in the cemetery by name, but she hardly spoke to them anymore. About a year ago she had simply given up the courtesy. They always verbally tripped over themselves trying to be kind to her, there was never a genuine conversation to be had. Better to walk in, take whichever body she needed, and walk out again. And this was what she did. Gerard, the old farmhand, creaked to his feet and followed her back to the house, where she instructed him to properly tack the horses and watched him carefully to be sure he did it correctly.

Admittedly, her necromancy had gotten a bit sloppy over the years. There wasn't much need for perfect necromancy when one lived at home, they simply made good servants when one couldn't access the living sort. They took much more energy to maintain control over than one strictly needed to use every day, but they had their uses, definitely. Like sneaking around at four in the morning without alerting anyone.

Not that she expected the dead to keep their mouths shut. They might not be able to see from under the dirt but they would sure as all hell notice her footsteps. The dead were almost always listening for news above their graves.

Once Gerard had a horse attached to the carriage, Letha sat on the driver's seat beside him and silently instructed him to bring them to the funeral parlor. It was hardly lady-like to sit in the seat usually reserved for servants, but she needed to keep a close eye on her risen lest he stray from the path. And while she knew some necromancers had the gift of seeing through their risen’s eyes, she unfortunately did not.

They reached the parlor in twenty minutes, and she was disappointed to find that they had arrived so quickly. That, and the twenty minutes it had taken Gerard to tack the horse, had only taken enough time to completely ruin the urgency of her trip. Mary still wouldn't have shown up for work, not for another hour. With an annoyed wave of her hand, she disanimated her risen and turned to him.

"I don't suppose you know anything about the killings at the barracks."

"Killin's?" The old Irishman replied, "Ain't got a clue, ma'am. But... if you've the mind t' chat, it ain't exactly in me right t' walk away."

She regarded the rustically cleaned corpse for a moment before nodding, "I suppose I might as well tell you. Someone's been loosing risen on the barracks. One of them killed my brother, I don't know how many others have been killed by them and I honestly don't care. I'm sure they'll get over it eventually, the dead always do. But I hardly think it's decent for the elders to cover up my big brother dying the way he did, and - if I had managed to join the warriors instead of Severin-"

A brilliant thought occurred to her, and she could hear her voice becoming much lighter.

"Do you think Severin is dead yet? That would solve quite a few unresolved issues. Why, if Severin was dead it would nearly excuse Nathaniel dying. And then I might not have to take a pair of rusty scissors to him for letting it happen..."

"...Pardon, ma'am?"

"I'm sorry, I got a bit carried away there. You remember Severin Thornwell, don't you? Awfully pompous boy... I haven't seen him in nearly four years, but I don't care to. Oh, I'm dreadfully tired... I can't even bother to be upset at the moment. I just want Marionette to come to work already."

"...If it ain't too bold t' say, ma'am, y'might want t' reconsider y' choice o' words 'round other folks in th' future. Might get the wrong idea with you tossin' 'round threats o' rusty scissors and the like."

"I suppose so... but you understand, don't you, Gerard? I don't think I would ever really hurt someone with blunt scissors... but it seems nice to say it."

This was, in fact, a lie. There were a few people she had deeply considered injuring when she was truly livid. But that tends to be a normal impulse when one is young, impressionable, and reads too many books. Especially when one imagines oneself in the shoes of the unlucky dragons.

"'Course, ma'am." Gerard didn't seem to believe her, but she was hardly going to take offense. She'd always had the habit of running her mouth when she was angry, and he'd known her nearly since birth.

After that they stopped talking. Letha had been hopeful to assume Mary would come to work early, but they really did have to sit in silence for an hour. And by the end of it she was thoroughly sick of everything in the vicinity, from the horse's impatient whinnying to the vaguely unpleasant smell that Gerard emitted now that he was too old to truly stink. It was too cold to sit out in the open, but she didn't enter the carriage for fear that she would miss Mary coming in.

Finally Mary's carriage came to rest beside her own, and she waved as Mary exited the carriage. Mary was spooked, to say the least, and thanked her servant quickly before rushing over to meet Letha, who was just stepping off from the driver's seat. "Letha, do you- do you know what time it is?"

"In a vague sort of sense." Letha shrugged casually, "I want to talk some more about Nathaniel."

"Nathaniel..." Mary bit her nail, "Can we talk about this another time, Letha? I need to get to work, my father won't like it if the parlor isn't neat and ready once he gets here."

Letha thought it was a bit odd that they came at separate times, but it was hardly important at that moment. "I need to know exactly how he died, who killed him and how much he's told you."

"I really cannot talk right now, can you come in after hours?"

"But Mary-"

"I'm sorry, you need to go." And with that, the mousy girl fled into the parlor and slammed the doors behind her.

Letha watched the place Mary had been, a bit dumb-struck by the girl’s sudden courage, and her shoulders slowly slumped. Mary was generally too shy to let anyone know when she didn't want to talk to them, and being so rude as to leave in the middle of a conversation was completely unlike her. Just the day before she had nearly failed to have Letha leave at all. Whatever she didn't want to say, it was important enough for her to muster courage she didn't naturally possess. And she had fully succeeded in making Letha want to figure out what it was twice as much.

The moment she recovered, she spun on her heel and hopped back into the driver's seat, animating Gerard's corpse without a word to him. "Get me to the Hall of the Elders. I'm getting answers if it kills me."