To Best the Boys(3)

I roll my eyes and glance down at the vial I’d been siphoning the body fluid into. Good. None of the precious liquid has spilled.

But the lid . . .

I disregard the fallen table and the smell that’s permeating every fiber of my scarf—and scan the dirty floor. Where’s the vial lid?

“Rhen, hurry up in there.” Seleni’s delicate voice muffles through the rear door. “Beryll, tell Rhen to get a move on. We have my parents’ party to prepare for.”

“Miss Tellur . . .”

I ignore them both and search the floor around the upright table with the dead man. Then around the lady’s body still lying stiff with the others on the floor. The old woman’s skin matches the storm-grey slate tiles, like the petrified hand of a knight I’d once unearthed.

“Miss Tellur—”

“I heard her, Beryll.”

“Good, because I feel the need to inform you—”

“I know, Beryll, but I’ve dropped the lid.”

“Not your cousin. The corpse. Something’s happening. The stomach’s moving again, and—”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, if you’re that nerved out, just go stand by the—”

A gurgling sound emits from the table above my head.

I grab the glass lid that my boot’s just bumped against and slowly rise, lifting my face eye level with the cadaver. One calculated look informs me what’s making the noise. Beryll’s right. It’s not just another odd twitch of the nerves. The guy’s bloated stomach is rippling.

I frown. No, not just rippling. It’s . . .

I plunge the lid onto the vial. “Beryll, get to the door.”

“What? Why? Is he actually alive? I told you—”

I launch for him and pull us both toward the back entrance just as Beryll lets out a horrified whimper.





2

I grab the door handle and yank it open as a popping sound occurs from the dead man’s body—right at the place I’d made the first inspecting incision. I must’ve cut too deep—too near the bowels—because the noise is accompanied by a sudden bursting, and then a haze of gas and fluid erupts from the poor soul’s left side like a decrepit volcano. It sends flecks flying across the room to spatter against our skin and hair and faces.

With a hard shove I thrust Beryll out into the shimmering light of the dying afternoon—where we both slam into Seleni in her new lace skirt and take her sprawling to the ground with us.

“What in—? Rhen, I beg your—”

I don’t speak, just jump up and pull the two of them with me while gulping in briny ocean air to exorcise the death stench, then turn and propel the undertaker’s door shut behind us. Oops. I push too fast and the string attached to the bell clapper above the doorway—the string I always pull taut before entering or leaving in order to keep it from ringing—gets tugged, and the thing goes off with a clang.

The sound rings too sharp, too loud, in the narrow stone passage, spiraling up to echo across the rooftops to rouse the constables, and down into the old underground catacombs to wake the ghouls.

Seleni gasps and flips around as her beau, Beryll, turns the color of a late-harvest apple. “Rhen, what in King Francis’s—?”

“Nothing. Just go!” I snag her arm and shove her toward Beryll, then click the door’s footlock in place before I take off after them down the narrow cobblestone alley that is all filth and stone beneath our feet—and walls of rotting wood on either side of us—with a thin ribbon of sapphire sky peeking through the patchwork of eaves overhead.

The tall, two-story houses slip past, dark and creaky, as we sprint through the winding alleyways. My gloved left hand grips the sealed vial while my right hand tugs my flimsy cloak closer against the specter of cold that haunts every recess and shadow of our otherwise overbaked coastal town.

Behind us, the bell on the inner door starts ringing. The sexton.

“Getting sloppy, Rhen,” I can almost hear Sam and Will say.

“Overhead!” Seleni squeals.

I look up, then slow down, just as a waterfall of swill lands on the path fifteen steps in front of us. It splatters the ground and walls and our boots as the woman in a shawl tossing it from her window doesn’t even bother giving us a second glance.

With a leap and a skip, Seleni and I dance past the mess in the same pattern we did as children when we’d play hop frog along the Tinny River. We wait for Beryll to gingerly step around it before we turn the corner and pick up running the narrow labyrinth of more lanes.

Just above the midway street, which cuts widthwise through the entire sloping hill of cottages and alleys, we reach a clump of steps, which we clear in one jump, to arrive in the middle of the cobblestoned heart of Pinsbury Port. Namely, its teeming and smelly afternoon market.

Seller booths and mingling bodies rush into view, as does a tall, flamboyant flutist trying to earn coin as children dance and giggle. I slam my soles into the ground to avoid hitting them, except my body keeps flying—straight into a man walking in front of the herbalist’s booth.

“Look ou—” My strangled yelp retreats down my throat as my face plants into the back of the gentleman’s broad frame, right between his massive shoulder blades, just as Beryll and Seleni skid up behind me.

The poor man lurches forward enough for my face to peel off his damp fisherman’s coat. “Sorry, sir,” I choke out. “I—”