care.”
“All of them?”
Zalbar was suddenly aware that there were no less than a dozen skulls peering at
him from ledges and mantels around the room.
“You’re too kind, Madame,” he sighed heavily. “Now, if I could trouble you for a
bag?”
The rest of the night was mercifully fuzzy in Zalbar’s mind, as fatigue and
shock began to numb his senses. Ischade had revived Kurd by the time he arrived
back at her house … which was fortunate, for the vivisectionist was of
invaluable assistance as they faced the macabre task of matching the severed
vertebrae to discover which in the bagful of skulls was actually Razkuli’s.
He buried his friend’s now assembled body himself, not trusting the necromancer
to do it, digging the grave far from the normal graveyards, under a tree they
both knew. His task finally complete, he staggered back to the Aphro-disia House
and slept uninterrupted for more than a day.
When he awoke, the events seemed so distant and bizarre that he might have
dismissed them as a fever dream, were it not for two things. First, the spirit
of Razkuli never again appeared to spoil his slumbers, and second, Myrtis threw
him out of Aphrodisia House after hearing he had visited the House of Whips and
Chains. (She soon forgave him, as she always did, her anger dissipating almost
magically.)
The only other consequence of the entire episode was that a week later, Zalbar
was given an official reprimand. It seemed that while engaging in sword practice
with his fellow Hell-Hounds, he had broken off drilling to administer a