All three of them looked warily about. They had done much more than that in their time. They had committed acts that would get them burned at the stake if the Inquisition ever learned about them. The Barbarian laughed. 'Time for a meat pie,' he said. 'They're really good here. Hot and juicy, just the way I like them.'
Weasel and Rik looked at each other and silently mouthed the words they both knew he was going to say. 'Just the way I like my women.'
'Better watch out — I hear that some strange ingredients been finding their way into those pies.'
'Just stories,' said the Barbarian. He downed a full glass of vodka in one and bellowed for another. 'Doubt anybody is collecting corpses for pies. The ghouls are beating them to it.'
Rik shot him a look. As a child, Rik had thought ghouls the most terrifying creatures imaginable. Tales of the monsters had always circled the orphanage. A vivid image sprang immediately from those days, of a creature horribly lean with grey mould-blotched flesh, sharp-toothed, eyes burning with an unspeakable hunger. And the worst thing was that you could become one. It was a disease that could be transmitted by their bite. 'What’s that?'
'You'd better get out of the Palace a bit more, Halfbreed,' said Weasel. 'Parts of the city are over-run with the corpse-eating bastards. The Quartermaster says we're going to be going on a ghoul hunt soon.'
“There are so many of them?”
“I don’t imagine they are running through the Palace gardens, but packs of them are haunting the graveyards.”
'Why do you think that is?' said Rik. 'Way I always heard it, you get to be a ghoul by eating the flesh of dead men. It’s not like we besieged Halim long enough for mass starvation to break out.'
'Maybe you should ask your girlfriend. She would know.'
'Maybe I will.'
'Let me know if you find out anything interesting. It might be worth something to the right people.' Weasel paused for a moment considering. 'That's if you're still interested in our sort of money.'
Rik was. Not because he needed the money, he realised, but because he needed the connection to his old friends and the life they represented. You never knew when you might need to disappear back into the mass of humanity.
“What’s new with the Quartermaster?”
“He’s keeping his hand in. See that fat guy with the handlebar moustaches over there?”
“The one with all the bodyguards? Black hair — looks dyed.”
“The very same. His name is Uri. He’s big in the local gangs. We’ve been doing some business on the black market with him.”
“For the Quartermaster?”
“Aye. He tells us some interesting stuff sometimes, when he wants to. The sort of stuff it might be useful to your Lady A and her cronies, if you catch my meaning.”
“Want to introduce us?”
“If you like, only I hope you’ve still got a head for vodka, because those lads like to drink.”
“Somehow I will survive.”
“Let’s go over and say hello then. One word of warning.” Weasel looked serious.
“What’s that?”
“Be careful what you say about corpses. Uri and his boys deal in them?”
“Bodysnatchers?” It was a business that Rik disliked; selling fresh corpses for dissection to medical students, or as subjects for the strange experiments of necromancers. Such people were often not too picky about how they got their raw materials.
“The same. Aside from that they are good blokes,” said Weasel. “And they like a game of cards.”
“Let’s have a word with them then and maybe play a few hands.”
“I won’t be joining you,” said the Barbarian. He gestured at a couple of plump bar-girls who were waving at him. “It looks like my luck is in.”
“He won’t be saying that in the morning,” said Weasel shouldering his way through the crowd.
Chapter Six
'You look like you've contracted the plague,' said Asea, looking up from the complex diagram she studied. Before she folded up the massive parchment, Rik caught sight of what looked like an architectural schematic — he had seen many of those during his time as a burglar in Sorrow- although the building it depicted was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
'My head feels like a bridgeback is stamping on it. I went drinking with Weasel and the Barbarian last night.'
'Did you find out anything interesting?'
'The usual rumours and some unusual ones…'
'How so?'
'It seems there has been a plague of ghouls in parts of the city — thick as rats in a garbage heap. The Foragers are supposed to be going on a ghoul hunt today.' Rik did not envy them that.
Asea pursed her lips and steepled her fingers under her chin. 'Ghouls are most common when there is a build-up of necromantic energies — there seems to be something about the presence of death magic in an area that encourages the disease.'
Without being asked Rik took one of the beautifully upholstered claw footed chairs opposite her desk. 'Would you care to explain that to me — I am just an ignorant slum boy from Sorrow.'
'All magic releases energy, Rik. Philosophers think it leaks into our worlds from the Great Deeps. Sometimes other things release specific types of magical energy. The magical engines of the Serpent Tower, for instance. Certain violent forms of death seem to punch holes through the fabric of reality into the darker realms and let baneful energies through. It may be why ghosts appear on battlefields and the sites of murders. They are particularly common where dark magic has been used at the same time as battles or slayings.'
“Why should there be such energies here?”
“After the Schism the Great Plague swept through Halim. Some considered it the curse of God for the murder of Queen Amarielle. There were so many bodies that they could not all be given individual burials or burnings. Huge plague pits were dug in the Grand Cemetery and bodies were just thrown in. There were thousands of them. Quicklime was used and alchemical fire. The pits were covered over. No one disturbs them for fear of releasing the plague again.”
“Is it likely?”
“Who can say? It’s certain that the Grand Cemetery contains a residue of death energies. That’s why it has its own tomb guards. Or at least it did.”
“What happened?”
“They were drafted into the city guard to fight against us. They are now badly under strength. That’s why your friends are doing the work now.”
Rik felt like he had found out enough on this subject.
'What are those plans you were looking at?' he asked. 'Are you thinking of building some sort of domed temple.'
'They are Signor Benjario's plans for a flying machine.'
'A flying machine?' Thoughts of the Serpent Tower and the flying coffin in which he had escaped from it filled his mind. They were not his fondest memories. 'You are not thinking of building one are you?'
'No, Rik. I am having him build one for me.'
'You are not serious.'
'I am, Rik. Deadly serious. We shall be paying the good engineer a visit later this afternoon. However none of this is why you are here today. We're going to continue your lessons in sorcery. After all, you did ask for them.'
Rik bit back a groan. All his life he had wanted to learn the forbidden arts. He had never suspected that they
