I cussed, but not at length or with true passion. My time spent with the Watch had left me hoarse and tired. Evis puffed and sipped until I was done.

“So she’s not an old flame inflamed by your recent nuptials.”

I opened my mouth to cuss some more but decided on a long draught of Avalante’s good red wine instead.

“You can ask me that another half dozen times and I’ll answer the same. I never met the woman. I certainly never pitched any woo in her direction. Not my type.”

“You said she was a looker.”

“She was, but she smiled while she stabbed. Which means she enjoyed stabbing people. Not exactly a quality I look for in a woman.”

Evis nodded. “All right. Strange woman with a fondness for knives tries to gut you on a street corner with a crowd of dozens all around and the Watch waving at traffic not fifty feet away. You drop a box of fancy spoons on her toes. Your wife takes an exception to the whole affair, and strange woman winds up tragically deceased, but you take the credit for her mishap.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“The Watch buying your story?”

“The important parts are true. A dozen people saw her try to knife an unarmed man.”

“Not very discreet with her murderous rages, was she? A noontime stabbing on a busy street. I’d say she wanted plenty of witnesses.”

“Same thought occurred to me.” It was a troubling thought. Especially knowing that, had the knife found its mark and the lady had vanished into the crowd, the Watch would have sighed and rolled their eyes and written my untimely demise down to the fury of a woman scorned.

Evis drained his glass and sat down behind his desk. The single small candle illuminating the room barely lit his face, but I saw his brow crease in a pale frown.

“All this within hours of my leaving your office this morning.” He leaned forward, fingertips together, his bloodless skin ghostly in the flickering candlelight. “I’m not a believer in coincidence these days, Markhat.”

“You think someone doesn’t want me on the Queen?”

Evis sighed and the candle flame flickered, nearly extinguished. “No. I can’t even entertain that thought. We’ve been so careful, finder. So damned careful.”

“Maybe Avalante has been careful. Maybe the Regent’s people haven’t. Or maybe this has nothing to do with Avalante or Regents or steamboats at all. Maybe the woman just woke up batty and grabbed a knife and didn’t like my shoelaces.”

“Too bad we can’t ask her.”

“Darla didn’t mean to kill her.”

“Not what I meant.” His dead eyes met mine. “If the old spook was around, we could just let her rummage around in the body. She can yank memories out of fresh ones.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“She’d probably roast me if she knew I knew.”

“So the Corpsemaster is really gone? Not just napping somewhere?”

If it’s possible for a candlelit halfdead to look any more glum, Evis did just that. “We’ve been watching the dead wagons, Markhat. Since she dropped out of sight, they’ve been pulling nearly twice the usual number of bodies out of alleys in the wrong parts of town. Bodies that show no recent wounds. To quote a certain dead wagon loader, ‘they look like they was walkin’ around one minute an’ dead the next.’“

I cussed some more.

The Corpsemaster used the War to secretly swell her ranks with the dead. They had returned to Rannit alongside everyone else, with none the wiser, and since they’d slowly inserted themselves into the social order as drunks and weed addicts and street people-invisible to the living, but always awaiting the Corpsemaster’s commands.

Evis nodded. “Yes. They’re just falling over dead, practically in rows. That doesn’t bode well for us ever seeing the Corpsemaster’s black carriage again, does it?”

“You think she really bought it going up against the three wand-wavers from Prince?”

Evis shrugged. “Beginning to look that way.”

“You still getting a Captain’s pay?”

“Every month like clockwork. You?”

“Same here. In old coins.”

Evis leaned back into the comfort of the shadows. “The House considers it vital that the Corpsemaster’s status is known before we entertain the Regent, Markhat. If she’s dead or incapacitated, well, we need to know.”

I groaned. “Oh no. Nothing doing, even for old friends, even for old friends who yanked me out of a Watch house earlier today. I paid the Corpsemaster a visit once, yes, but I’m not about to repeat that. Please extend to the House my sincere regrets, but knocking on the old spook’s door a second time is not something I’m willing to do.”

“You won’t be the one knocking,” said Evis. He snuffed out his cigar in a solid silver ashtray and sighed, tired and raspy. “I’ll have that honor. And it isn’t the House asking you to go. It’s me. As a friend. I don’t want to go there alone.”

I cussed, dry mouth and all, with passion this time.

Evis had the courtesy not to grin with victory.

I didn’t lie to Darla.

I sat down with her on our new porch and we watched the neighbors across Middling Lane argue over where to plant a pair of knee-high rosebushes. The man of the house, who Darla dubbed Fussy Britches, wanted one at each corner of the steps leading up to their cheery blue door. The missus claimed they’d grow out and wind up being in the way. I named her the Queen for her imperious tone and habit of employing the royal “we” in reference to the digging of the holes.

Darla and I held hands. Our shoulders touched. We spoke in whispers while the controversy over the rosebushes raged back and forth.

I laid it all out. I was heading for the old spook’s house, after Curfew, with Evis and any Avalante foot soldiers he cared to bring along. Darla knew about the iron key the Corpsemaster once gave me. She knew what little I knew about the room the key unlocked.

I half expected Darla to insist on coming along. But if I surprised her by eschewing the easy lie, she surprised me by accepting the whole business as calmly as if I’d just announced a stroll around the neighborhood in the cool of the evening.

The rosebushes wound up at each end of the house. Fussy Britches did the digging with a rusty shovel and a fair amount of grunting and face-mopping. Her Majesty, the Queen of Middling Lane, put hands on hips and helped out by glaring at the excavated dirt so that it didn’t dare make a sudden dash for freedom.

Our neighbors surveyed their handiwork, graced us with smiles and waves, and departed indoors.

Darla and I sat on our porch and kept whispering. The sun set. Night sneaked up behind us and by the time Evis and his carriage stopped at the curb we’d run out of things to whisper except goodbye.

I’d been expecting two carriages, each filled with somber Avalante halfdead-each armed against the night’s potential for mayhem.

Instead, I was greeted by Evis and ignored by the slight hooded figure who sat beside him.

One black cab. A single human driver. Not a brace of cannon or a trebuchet in sight.

“Evening, finder,” said Evis. His smile was wet and toothy in the near-dark of the carriage. “Ready to dance where Angels fear to tread?”

“I’d sooner get a beer and call it a night, if that’s all right with you. Who’s your friend? Or am I not supposed to ask?”

The robes stirred. The arms lifted and gloved hands emerged from the sleeves long enough to pull back the hood.

A woman was inside. She’d been young. She was corpse-pale, like Evis-but unlike Evis, her lips and her eyes were sewn shut. Tiny points of blood still oozed around the threads.

She turned her ravaged lips up in a smile.

You may call me Stitches, Mr. Markhat.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I heard her words but my ears hadn’t played their usual role in the process.

“You get used to it,” said Evis with a chuckle. “Stitches is the House’s finest forensic sorcerer. She’s going along with us. Mind your manners and say hello.”