“Hilarious. I’m going to write that down. And people say sorcerers lack a sense of humor.”

Evis tired of making frantic shushing motions and opened his door with a sigh. Stitches followed him out, and I made it a threesome. Our driver, who looked decidedly worried despite the glowing long sword in his grasp, glanced down and acknowledged us with a brief nod.

Eyes and ears open, gentlemen, said Stitches. She pushed back her hood, did something to the back of her head, and long black hair fell down past her shoulders.

She marched down the short stone walk to the Corpsemaster’s big black door. Evis and I followed, trotting to keep up, and despite her short frame and our longer legs, she reached the stoop first.

Just like that, Stitches reached out and knocked. One, two, three.

It is I, Corpsemaster. Stitches. And two others known to you. We come out of concern. May we be admitted?

Silence. The voices in the wind fell quiet. After a moment, even the wind fell still.

I wondered how many ears and eyes were trained on us, and I pushed the thought aside before I could consider just who and what such ears and eyes might be attached to.

“Seems the Corpsemaster is occupied,” whispered Evis. “The door?”

Stitches reached out again, and her tiny hand fell on the latch. I saw the glint of her key vanish into the ancient iron lock.

It clicked. Stitches pushed and the door swung inward into an absolute darkness.

Stitches stepped inside and vanished. Evis turned to me, shrugged, and did the same.

“Last one in is a rotten egg,” I muttered, and I slipped my fingers through my useless brass knuckles and followed them both into the dark.

The door slammed shut behind us. I will not compare the sound to that of the sealing of a tomb, because I’ve never heard such, but that’s what it sounded like.

We are alive. Surprising. Gentlemen, shield your eyes.

I did not shield my eyes and was thus treated to a sudden wash of furious bright light that spilled from Stitches’s raised right hand and filled the room with a noonday glare.

Evis covered his eyes with his hand while he fumbled for his dark-lensed spectacles. I blinked, cussed, and wound up tripping before going to one knee.

My hand plunged into something dry and fragile. Cloth tore. Sticks make dry cracking noises. By the time my eyes cleared, I knew the sticks weren’t sticks but ribs, and that I’d tripped on a prostrate corpse right in the old spook’s fancy front room.

Evis yanked me to my feet. I brushed bits of a dead man off my sleeve.

“Maid’s day off,” said Evis.

There were bodies all around us. Two slumped on wooden chairs. The rest, nine in all, were strewn across the floor.

Stitches prowled among them, waggling her fingers and muttering. Her long black hair flowed about her as though in the grip of a wind, or suspended below perfectly clear water.

The dead were still. Hair still clung to fleshless skulls. Dry, empty eye sockets regarded us without fear or malice. Their clothes were tattered and stained where fluids had left dark smears.

Evis nudged one with the toe of his boot. It failed to rise up and smite him.

The Corpsemaster’s household staff, I believe. I see no signs of violence.

“Looks like they just fell over,” I said. “Any lingering signs that they might get up again, maybe take exception to our visit?”

None. These are mere remains. Whatever once animated them is departed.

Evis made his way to the door set at the other end of the room and tried the latch.

“Locked,” he said. “Any reason we need to linger here, Stitches?”

The sorceress turned, hands upraised, hair floating about her head as if she were falling feet-first down a chasm. She made two full turns, strange lights playing about her black-nailed fingers, her jaw working behind those sewn, bloody lips.

No. There is simply nothing here. Or, perhaps more precisely, there is nothing present my own skills are capable of detecting.

Evis nodded, reached into his pocket and produced his own key. “Never thought I’d actually use this thing. Wish me luck.”

He shoved the key into the lock and turned it before I could speak. Again, the door swung open, revealing nothing but darkness behind it.

Evis stuck his fool head through before Stitches, despite her diminutive size, grabbed his collar and hauled him back.

I will go first, Mr. Prestley. Need I remind you in whose home we are?

Evis grinned and made a grand sweeping motion toward the half-open door.

“After you, sorceress. I was only having a quick peek.”

Impetuous youth. But, as the deed is done, what did you see?

“Bodies, like these. Twenty, maybe more. No movement.”

“Impetuous youth,” I said. “That’s a new one. The hall itself-was it long, straight, and did you see a pair of big iron-banded doors on the left, about halfway down?”

Evis nodded an affirmative.

I sighed. “That’s the kitchen. We’ll be needing my key soon.”

Something sparked and flashed in the air around Stitches. Her hair went wild, standing out in every direction, most of it trying to aim itself at a moving spot that seemed to play along the walls around us.

We must hurry. A crowd is gathering beyond the Corpsemaster’s ward spells. Some within it are applying certain pressures to the wards.

“Will they hold?”

I cannot say. Haste is our best ally.

And with that, she was through the door, casting the fierce light of day about her. The kitchen was cold and dark and empty. There were no bodies. There was an empty teakettle on a stove, a cup in the sink, a plain wooden chair pushed back from the Corpsemaster’s monstrous oak table.

Something in the tableau stirred a memory. My last sight of my own mother’s kitchen. Her favorite cup in the sink, her favorite chair pushed back. Both waiting for their mistress to return. Both waiting in vain because she was gone and never coming home again.

Stitches poked here and prodded there, playing her strange lights throughout the room, sending glowing orbs soaring before they returned to her, whispering and flashing.

Nothing, she said. Old magic, yes, but old magic steadily failing.

“The last door isn’t far,” I said, gripping my key. I was ready to wade through corpses stacked knee-high if doing so would get me away from that lone cup and that angled chair. “Leave here and take a left. Hidden door by a lamp. Up a secret stair.”

Stitches regarded me with eyes that wept blood around the threads which held them shut.

And she told you this room was a means of escape?

“That’s what she said. If Rannit fell. If all hope was lost.”

Interesting. Shall we proceed?

Without waiting for an answer, she swept through the kitchen’s only door, a parade of darting lights in her wake. Evis and I followed, stepping over fallen bodies as we entered the hall.

Something like thunder rumbled and the Corpsemaster’s old house shook. Stitches halted and loosed a bolt of baby lightning that arced up through the ceiling before exploding with enough force to send down a rain of dust and leave Evis and I half-deaf.

I never liked any of those assholes. Cover your ears.

We did, and the bolt she threw this time dwarfed the first and knocked the breath right out of me. A portion of the ceiling collapsed, spilling dry corpses in a heap to the floor and revealing a disturbing patch of sky in which the stars spun and whirled as if battered by rushing waters.

Evis pushed his dark spectacles up on his nose. “So much for subtlety,” he muttered.

Stitches shrugged and sauntered ahead. Evis and I picked our way through the new pile of corpses and I, for one, was glad to lose sight of that moving, unsettled sky.