Frank Tuttle - The Cadaver Client

“We’re going to a funeral, Mama. Better knock the moths off your best black dress.”

Mama scowled and set about gathering a bagful of her most potent dead birds.

The undertaker’s parlor smelled of fireflowers, cinnamon and half a dozen kinds of particularly pungent incense.

And something else, of course. An odor so primal and familiar and so immediately and deeply disturbing that no number of imported incense-sticks could ever hope to do anything more than slightly obscure it.

If the smell of death bothered Echols, of Echols, Masey and Benlop, Morticians, he didn’t let it show.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said in a voice that oozed a deep and sincere concern. “How may I be of assistance, in this hour of your deepest sorrow?”

We were seated in the reception room. The walls were pine stained dark to mimic oak. The floor was covered in at least three threadbare rugs, each placed to cover the holes in the one beneath it. The ceiling was warped and cracked, and at one point I could hear scrambling above as rats scurried by on urgent business of their own.

I did not want to know what those rats had last feasted upon.

“I’d like to hire a hearse-wagon and a pair of ponies for the night.”

The imperturbable Echols raised an eyebrow.

“And caskets. You have a selection here, I presume?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Finely made, I dare to add, yet priced with an eye toward consideration for the family of the deceased.”

“I’ll need one. A good one. Top of the line. Shiny, with lots of trim.”

Echols almost brightened at that, but managed to keep his enthusiasm from inducing more than the slightest reduction in the furrowing of his brow.

“One is saddened to have to ask this, sir, but nevertheless I must.” He paused dramatically, leaning in toward me. If I’d been a woman, he’d have laid his right hand gently atop mine. His big soft eyes practically welled up with heartfelt tears of abject sorrow.

“When will Sir be bringing the remains by, for final preparations?”

I grinned. “I’m right here, my good man. Shall we start by settling on a price?”

“Boy,” said Mama. “I’m tellin’ you right now I don’t like none of this.”

I grunted. The closest thing I had to a suit was my old Army parade jacket and a freshly bleached white shirt and a pair of black pants I’d managed to haggle out of Echols. I’d put a shine on my old Army doggers, and they’d have to do as fancy grave slippers.

I was more worried about my possible need for sudden mobility than actually completing the look of a well-dressed corpse.

I finally got the jacket on. Buttoning it was out of the question. Who’d have thought wool would shrink so much, hanging in my tiny closet for ten years?

“I’m the one who’ll be taking a ride in a coffin, Mama. All you’ve got to do is sit there and look bereaved.”

Mama grunted. “After Curfew.”

“Mama, I’ve seen you break Curfew a dozen times in the last month alone.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

“Still don’t hold with this funeral business.”

I shrugged. I’d already explained to Mama why I thought it was necessary.

If we were facing sorcery, that sorcery was created to respond to certain acts or situations as triggers for built-in actions. That much I knew from being in the Army.

And if something in that cemetery was lying in wait for me, I didn’t want it choking me at the gate.

But anything that hides in a cemetery is going to have to be built to ignore a few things. First among these things would be funerals.

And even if what had tried to strangle Mrs. Mays was a murderous ghost, well, I had surprises in store for it too.

“Ain’t no way Granny is mixed up in no shenanigans, boy.”

“Not knowingly. I never said she knew what was going on.”

My reasoning was this-assume the man Gorvis is so bent on getting his hands on Marris Sellway one more time that he planned all this. He had himself buried right next to Granny Knot’s stomping ground, because he’d also heard she was the real deal. He comes spooking around to her, with sob stories of lost love and guilt. He hands her a small fortune and begs her to give it to the wife he left behind.

Only the coin is tainted, either cursed or ensorcelled so that it leads him right to her.

My reasoning worked whether Gorvis had hired a sorcerer before his death to put all this in place, or whether, against my better judgment, he’d risen from the grave to do the dirty work himself.

But either way, he hadn’t counted on Granny hiring me. Or Marris having so much money of her own that three hundred crowns was something she could sneer at.

But even without the money being near her, I knew whatever was out there would eventually find her, or her daughter. And that would be partly my fault.

And that wasn’t going to happen.

So the funeral carriage, and the coffin, and my old Army jacket to boot.

That’s something else I’d learned, way back when. Never go into a battle by doing exactly what the other side expects you to do. Show them something new. Make them pause and scratch their heads and think.

Make them wonder just what it is you’re up to.

“You understand what I need you to do, Mama?”

“I ain’t daft, boy. I remember.”

“Good.” I squinted at the light seeping around Mama’s doorframe. The sun was about to sink behind the rooftops. Soon I’d need to climb into my casket and prepare for my sad, slow journey through Rannit’s empty streets.

I just hoped it wouldn’t be my last.

Mama sent word to Mrs. Mays via one of the street kids she feeds. True to her word, Mrs. Mays met us at the corner of Stricken and Pack.

I popped out of my casket long enough to do a head count.

I whistled.

Summers, arrayed in clean, black funeral finery, sat atop a white widow’s cab. Behind the widow’s cab were six road-beaten heavy transport stagecoaches, and from the number of faces I could see through the barred windows I figured she’d brought close to a hundred men.

I could have kissed her. A hundred armed men, many of them presumably vets who rode with the Stig River Runners. The halfdead usually hunted in pairs. Even vampires would find those odds daunting.

Mrs. Mays popped out of her cab and lifted her veil so she could see better. Her face was half wonder and half horror at my choice of conveyance.

I opened the lid and sat up.

Summers cussed and spat.

“Good work, Mrs. Mays. Don’t be alarmed. This is all to get us in safely. Follow, please.”

I lay back down and let the lid slam shut. Mama snapped the reins and away we went.

Mama was dressed for the event too. She wore a stovepipe hat half as tall as she was, and she had her mane of hair pulled back into a bun. Her long suit coat had tails that actually dragged the ground behind her stubby legs. We would either fool the haunts or the magics, or we’d send them hiding from all the ugly.

We’d had to stop and light the stage and carriage lanterns before we got anywhere near Elfway. I had Mama circle around a bit, since I wanted us to arrive an hour after Curfew fell. I was hoping that would reduce the number of the curious that came out to see our little show.

It didn’t. Word got around, somehow, that some bunch of daft fools was breaking Curfew to hold a funeral. The presence of the stagecoaches and Mama Hog as driver provoked more interest than I had anticipated. By the time we reached the forlorn cemetery at the bad end of Elfway, my hearse was at the head of a middling good parade.

Nothing I could do about that, though. I did worry briefly about interference by the Watch, who I knew would let a hundred-strong funeral party get themselves killed if they wanted, but who might show up to disperse a crowd of gawkers. That worry died when I saw a half-dozen round blue Watch hats buying snacks from a woman who had turned her stoop into a temporary eatery.