A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man. -- E. M. Forster, Howards End

The trip to Gialma's house only took a few minutes of brisk walking. Even then attempting to talk to the Reapers was out of the question. The guard, Lauyajim, and two of her sons -- armed with the large wooden hammers used for playing hogo[1] -- accompanied Gialma. Some of the Reapers disappeared before the group left Lauyajim's house. Others stayed around and kept out of sight. None of them dared approach Gialma directly. He saw a few of them eyeing the hammers nervously.

Logically they shouldn't be afraid of any weapon. They were dead. It wasn't as if they could be hurt or killed. Yet they still kept a safe distance between themselves and the hammers. Gialma was less surprised than might be expected. He had learnt years ago that "logic" and "Reapers" were two words that had no business being in the same sentence.

It was a very strange procession that walked through the gates of Gialma's house. Well, only part of it actually walked through them. The other part flew over them. Gialma shuddered when he saw the Reapers swoop overheard. If Lauyajim really could see them, she could hardly fail to notice them. They were like enormous black birds blocking out the sun. The shadows they cast flitted over the lawn.

He frantically tried to divert attention away from the Reapers. "Has anyone else reported seeing the... er..." He didn't like to call them akoshifei when he was almost certain that was not what they were. "...intruders?"

"No one, your Highness," Lauyajim said. She sounded somewhere between proud and downright disappointed about that. "The palace guards think they're ordinary thieves and they expect an attempted break-in any day now. The empress insisted to coming to the palace in person to keep an eye on the situation."

Gialma almost stumbled. His brain ran over that last sentence several times before he understood what it meant. Empress Qihadal was no longer in Risingau Palace. She was back in the capital. She was living less than a mile away from Gialma's house.

Well, and what did that matter to him? Why did a very strange feeling take up residence in his chest? Why did his heart suddenly seem to be moving around in his chest? And why in the world had his face gone red at those words?

Am I sickening for something? Gialma wondered in alarm.

These symptoms were not normal. His father's grandmother's aunt -- or was it his father's aunt's grandmother? -- had died after developing a rare and most unpleasant heart condition. His father dragged that ghoulish old story out at every kanreishiguo-nama[2]. The first sign something was wrong with her was when her heart began to beat irregularly. Could such a disease be passed down through families? Even though he wasn't her direct descendant, was it possible he had inherited it from some other relative?

The thought of his possible early death took his mind completely off the news of Empress Qihadal. What was any number of empresses in comparison to dying of some horrible disease?

All four of his mortal companions were afraid of what they might find as they approached the house. They expected Gialma to share their fear. Unexpectedly he found he didn't have to feign alarm. His mind solved the problem for him by conjuring up delightful images of his slow and painful death. It didn't matter that he knew nothing about heart disease or how it affected a person. His imagination was more than happy to fill in the blanks with endless suitably horrific details.

It was a relief when they finally opened the front door and stepped inside. Investigating the case of the intruders gave him something else to think about, something much more preferable to dwelling on the awful ideas his mind had come up with.

"Two of them were already in the kitchen, your Highness," Lauyajim said. "They looked like foreigners. Another one barged in after I opened the door. I don't know where that one came from. Somewhere upstairs, I think. That was the one I hit with the lampshade. It hopped towards me and it was about to kill me!"

Gialma suspected there might be a few slight exaggerations in this version of events. "Let's check the kitchen first."

He spared a glance over his shoulder. A small crowd of Reapers were gathered in the doorway, watching with wide eyes and worried expressions. He was about to turn and lead the way to the kitchen when there was a disturbance at the back of the group. Varan pushed her way through, shoving her friends out of the way if they didn't move quickly enough.

"There you are!" she gasped.

A beat of her wings carried her right across the entrance hall to stand in front of Gialma. The draft she created sent a cloth sliding off a table. The curtains rustled as if caught in a gale. Behind Gialma, the other mortals yelped and exclaimed at the unusual wind.

"It's another akoshifei!" one of Lauyajim's sons yelped.

"Don't be absurd," the guard said. "They can't control the weather."

Gialma tuned out the rest of their remarks. He couldn't speak out loud to Varan. So he settled for raising an eyebrow curiously and hoping she got the message. Why are you all here?

Thank goodness, she understood what he wanted to say. "Listen, you have to be very careful. I don't know what happened here. I don't know who's to blame. All I know is, Death only found out about an hour ago. She's in a fine rage now and she'll be here as soon as she calms down."

What a delightful prospect, Gialma thought with a barely suppressed shudder. He immediately made a note to get out of the house as quickly as possible. Staying around when Death herself was going to pay a visit would be nothing more than the height of stupidity.

"Your Highness?" Lauyajim said behind him. "Are we going to the kitchen now?"

Gialma was embarrassed to realise he had been standing still and staring at nothing -- as far as they knew -- for well over a minute. He scrambled to find some explanation. "Yes, if everyone's ready. I was just... making sure nothing was stolen."

He sent up a quick prayer of thanks when no one noticed how threadbare that excuse was.

Varan hadn't finished yet. "Wait, you don't know the worst yet."

There's something worse than Death coming to my house? he thought with genuine surprise.

"Those... intruders. Robbers. Whatever they were. We've searched everywhere. Asked everyone. And we know now that they aren't Reapers at all. We think they're lingering souls."

Lauyajim and her sons were already heading towards the kitchen. The guard was following some distance behind them, opening doors and poking his head into rooms as he went. Gialma couldn't wait any longer. He moved towards the passage leading to the kitchen. He walked slowly enough for Varan to keep up with him.

The others were far enough away that he felt he could risk speaking to his cousin. In barely more than a whisper he asked, "What are lingering souls?"

Varan walked beside him as he reached the short flight of stairs leading down to the kitchen and the servants' quarters. "They're souls that refuse to come with us when we go to collect them. So unless there's some real reason why we need to bring them, we usually just leave them."

What an excellent way to cause trouble for everyone later on, Gialma thought. Why did no one see the problems with this?

"And then those souls stay in the Land of the Living, and they give rise to all sorts of ghost stories," Varan continued. "Some of them can actually possess people. Death thinks that's what the things in your house were."

Suddenly Gialma wished the products of his morbid imagination were the worst things he had to think about.

~~~~

I wonder what sort of day Gialma's having, Hailanyu thought. It must be so much better than my day.

There wasn't much chance his brother was crouched in the bottom of a rickety old boat, with his feet in a freezing cold puddle, huddled up in his blanket to keep off the steady drizzle, and using a battered tin can to bale out the boat. Hailanyu had never known the true meaning of misery before this trip. Forget the dangers of dodging police and soldiers; just rowing along the river was enough to make anyone wish they were a hundred miles away.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if it wasn't for the reason he was on bailing duty and wasn't helping to row. The extremely obnoxious reason that was sitting beside him, pretending to help, and instead only splashing water on his clothes.

After the assassins met Kiroshnoy, there was nothing for it but to bring her along with them. No one was happy about it. Nimetath pursed her lips whenever she saw the girl. The others muttered under their breath and shook their heads. Hailanyu would have felt sorry for her, if not for how incredibly irritating she could be.

She reminded him a great deal of Rurika. Neither of them could leave anything alone. Both thought they were much smarter than everyone else. And both had an amazing tendency for making a mess when they tried to help.

Case in point: the disastrous Rowing Incident earlier today. It was the sort of incident that required capitalisation even in his mind. The entry in the prince's imaginary diary summed it up best.

Today I learnt two things. Rain in Malish is very cold. And Kiroshnoy cannot row.

They had taken the boat from the shore. In the days since that they had discovered and "acquired" several other boats of varying sizes -- and seaworthiness. Or river-worthiness in this case. Hailanyu found himself on the boat in the worst condition. Alas, Kiroshnoy was on it too.

At first both of them were helping to row the boat. Then Kiroshnoy almost fell overboard. As she struggled to right herself she hit Hailanyu over the head with her oar. It left him with a splitting headache. Nimetath ordered him to switch places with the man bailing the boat. Kiroshnoy was let off rowing duties because she was clearly not able to carry them out without endangering life and limb. So now both of them were sitting in a puddle, feeling cold and sorry for themselves.

Today can't possibly get worse, Hailanyu thought with a grimace. He should have known better than to tempt fate like that.

"I don't suppose your powers are working again," he said grumpily. "If they are you could just magic these leaks away."

Kiroshnoy put down her bucket with a thoughtful frown.

Oh no, Hailanyu thought with dawning horror. What have I done?

"I'll try," Kiroshnoy said with alarming cheerfulness. "Let's hope this works!"

Hailanyu squeezed his eyes closed and prayed as he had never prayed before. It would be just his luck if her powers removed the leaks by destroying the boat itself.

A chorus of shocked exclamations made him open his eyes. To his surprise he found himself looking at the amazed faces of the assassins in the other boats. This made no sense. His boat was, for obvious reasons, the slowest. And therefore it was the last in the line of little crafts slowly making their way along the river. Yet now it was ahead of all the other boats. More than that, they were rapidly growing smaller and smaller behind it.

Hailanyu looked at the floor. The puddle had disappeared. So had all the leaks that had made the boat so unsafe. The oars were working at a tremendous speed. Yet no one was moving them. All the rowers sat in stupefied silence.

Slowly everyone turned to stare at Kiroshnoy.

"What," Hailanyu asked flatly, "have you done now?"

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] hogo = A game somewhat similar to both croquet and football. Players hit a ball (about the size of a football) with a hammer and try to get it into the other team's goal.

[2] kanreishiguo-nama = Literally means "ancestors' day". This is a festival held twice a year in Carann in memory of each family's ancestors. The stories of their lives and deaths are recounted, their favourite foods are prepared and served to their living descendants, and chairs are specifically set aside and left vacant for their spirits to attend the celebrations in their honour.