"Aah, you want corpses," Grian said in mild disgust, elbow-deep in the chestcavity of a floater. "We're havin' a plague of 'em. And the Shalpa-be-damnedmurderers hain't even got the courtesy to be half-decent quiet about it. Look atthis poor soul. Third one in the last two days. A few stones around his feet andinto the White Foal with him. Didn't the body who threw him in know that a fewcobbles won't keep 'em down when the rot sets in and the bloatin' and bubblin'starts? You'd think they wanted the body t' be found. It's these damn Piffles,that's what it is. Public Liberation Front, they call themselves? Publicnuisance, I call 'em. City ought to do somethin'."

Harran nodded, keeping his retches to himself. Grian had supplied Siveni'spriests with many an alley-rolled corpse for anatomy instruction, back in thewhite-and-gold times. He was the closest thing Harran had to a friend thesedays- probably the only man in Sanctuary who knew what Harran had been beforehe'd been a barber.

Grian paused to take a long swig out of the wine jar Harran had brought for him,"liberated" from the Stepsons' store. "Stuffy in here today," he said, wipinghis forehead and waving a hand vaguely in front of him.

Harran nodded, holding his breath hard as the stench went by his face. "Stuffy"was a mild word for the Chamel House at noon on a windless day. Grian drankagain, put the jug down with a satisfied thump between the corpse's splayedlegs, and picked up a rib-spreader. "No lead in that" Grian said with relish,eyeing the wine. "Watch you don't get caught."

"I'll be careful," Harran said, without inhaling.

"You want nice fresh corpses quietlike," Grian said, bending close and forcinghis wine-laden growl down to a rumble, "you go try that vacant lot over by theold Downwind gravepit. The lot just north of there, by th' empty houses. Put afew in there myself just the other night. Been puttin' all the bad 'uns inthere, all the hangings, for the last fortnight. Ran out of space in the oldgravepit. Damn Fish-Faces have been busy 'cleaning up the city' for their fineladies."

The last two words were pronounced with infinite scorn; Grian might be acorpse-cutter and part-time gravedigger, but he had been "brought up old-fashioned," and did not approve of women, fish-faced or otherwise, whowent around in broad daylight wearing nothing above the waist but paint. By hislights, there were more appropriate places for that kind of thing.

"You give it a try," Grian said, hauling out a lung like a sodden, reekingsponge, and tossing it with a grimace into the pail on the floor. "Take ashovel, boy. But you needn't dig deep; we been in a hurry to get all thecustomers handled; they none of them more'n two foot down, just 'nough to hidethe smell. Here now, look at this...."

Harran pleaded a late night's work and made his escape.

The hour before midnight found him slipping through the shadows, down thatdismal Downwind street. He went armed with knife and short sword, and (to anyassailant's probable confusion) with a trowel; but he turned out not to needmore than one of the three. Grian had been wrong about the smell.

The hour before midnight, one death-knell stroke on the gongs of Ils's temple,was Harran's signal. He got to work, going about on hands and knees on theuneven ground, which felt lumpy as a coverlet with many unwilling bedfellowsunder it-brushing his hands through the dirt, feeling for the small stiff shoothe wanted.

In the comer of the yard he found one. For fear of losing it in the dark (sincehe might show no light if the root was to work) he sat down by it, and waited.The wind came up. Midnight struck, and with it came the mandrake's swift flower,white as a dead man's turned-up eye. It blossomed, and shed its cold sweetfragrance on the air, and died. Harran began to dig.

How long he knelt there in the wretched stink and the cold, blindfolded withsilk and tugging at the struggling root, Harran wasn't sure. And he stoppedcaring about the time as he heard something drawing near in the darknessanother rustle of silk, not his. The rustle paused. Hard after the silkensusurrus came another sort of whisper, the sound of a breath of wind sinkingdown around him and dying away.

Harran couldn't take off the blindfold-no man may see the unharmed mandrake rootand live. By itself, that was reassuring to him; any assailant would not survivethe attempt. So, though the sweat broke out on him and chilled him through,Harran hacked away at the root with the leaden trowel, and finally cut throughit, pulling the mandrake free. The maimed root shrieked, a sound so bizarre thatthe huddled wind leaped up in panic and blundered about among the graves for afew moments-then dove for cover again, leaving Harran twice as cold as he hadbeen before.

He yanked off his blindfold, stared around him, and saw two sights. One was thetwitching, writhing, man-shaped root, its scream dying to a whisper as itstiffened. The other stood across the cemetery from him, a form robed and hoodedall in black. That form stared at him silently from the darkness of the hood, along look; and Harran understood quite well what had frightened even the coldnight wind into going to ground.

The black shape slipped pale arms out of the graceful draping of the robe,raised them to put the hood back. She looked at him-the lovely, olive-skinned,somber face with black eyes aslant, raven-dark hair a second, more silken hoodover her. He did not die of the look, as uninformed rumor said he might; butHarran wasn't yet sure this in itself was a good thing. He knew Ischade byreputation, if never before by sight. His friends down at the Chamel House haddealt with her handiwork often enough.

He waited, sweating. He had never seen anything so dangerous in his life, notTempus on a rampage, or thunderous Vashanka striking the city, lightningfashion, with testy miracles.

She tilted that elegant head, finally, and blinked. "Rest easy," she saidridiculous reassurance, delivered in a quiet voice laced with lazy mockery."You're not even nearly my type. But brave-digging that root here, at this hour,with your own hand, instead of using some dog to pull it for you. Brave-ordesperate. Or very, very foolhardy."

Harran swallowed. "The latter, madam," he said at last, "most definitelybandying words with you. And as for the root-foolhardy there too. Yes. But theother way, it's barely a third as effective. I could send away to an herb-dealeror magician for the man-dug root. But who knows when it would get here? And atany rate-in gold or some other currency-the price of the danger would still haveto be paid."

She regarded him a moment more, than laughed very softly. "A knowledgeablepractitioner," she said. "But this... commodity... has most specific uses. Inthis time, this place, only three. There are cheaper cures for impotence-notthat your present bedfellow would even notice it. And murder is far more easilydone with poison. The third use-"

She paused, waited to see what he would do. Harran snatched up the mandrake andclutched it in a moment's irrationality-then realized that the worst that couldhappen would be that she would kill him. Or not. He dropped the mandrake intohis simple-bag, and dusted off his hands. "Madam," Harran said, "I've no fear ofyou taking it from me. A thief you may be, but you're far beyond the need forsuch crude tools."

"Have a care," Ischade whispered, the soft mockery still in her voice.

"Madam, I do." He was shaking as he said it. "I know you don't care much forpriests. And I know you protect your prerogatives-all Sanctuary remembers thatnight-" He swallowed. "But I have no plans to raise the dead. Or-not dead men."