with the gravedigger’s there had to be a good reason.
“We tend our own,” he told the gravesmen.
“The plague, sir. Orders: your orders.”
It was easy for the straw-blond commander to lose his temper. “My man hasn’t got
the plague, damn you. He’s got a big, bloody hole where his stomach used to be!
Take him to the barracks, Thrush-now!”
Thrush and Cythen needed no urging to heave the sagging burden to their
shoulders and double-time it across the parade-ground while Walegrin dueled
silently with the gravediggers.
“Got to tell ’em,” the gravesman said, looking away as he cocked a thumbtoward
the Hall of Justice dome. “Orders’re orders. Even them’s that make ’em can’t
break ’em.”
Walegrin ran a hand through the ragged hair that had escaped the bronze circlet
on his brow. “Take the message to Molin Torchholder, personally then. Tell him
Vashanka’s rites -want performing in the barracks-plague or no plague.”
The least of the diggers headed for the hall. Walegrin waited a moment, then
turned back toward the barracks, quite pleased with himself. Until the gravesman
threatened him, he hadn’t been certain how he was going to get a message to his
mentor without drawing the wrong kind of attention.
“Upstairs-Cythen’s room,” Zump said as soon as he’d crossed the barracks’
threshold. Every one of the half-dozen men in the room was watching him. But at
least they weren’t thinking about plague or imperial barges. Walegrin forced
himself to walk slowly as he climbed the half-flight of stairs to where Cythen,
the only woman billeted with the regular garrison, slept.