When it came time to build a lab more suited to their growing needs, they had settled on the Middens. Their hovel was a stone's throw from a large potter's field -- a very fashionable term for a pit full of corpses, she'd always thought -- tucked away in one of the many poor neighborhoods dotting the Middens. She had considered the location inauspicious initially, but she couldn't refute her partner's arguments that this was, likely, the last place lawmen were bound to look for unusual bodies disappearing or reappearing, given the sheer amount of death that happened here to the tune of an apathetic yawn every day.
Inside, a swarthy Human woman leaned over a long, cluttered worktable, poring over an arcane-looking diagram scrawled in a notebook while occasionally pausing with an irritated grumble to readjust the reading glasses she wore. A large marble slab rested within arm's reach, its surface scrubbed but bearing dark stains. On the slab a series of knives, some plain and utilitarian and others glittering with rare jewels or metals, lay shoved off to one side in favor of a large and tangled mass of yarn and a pair of knitting needles.
A knock came from the reinforced door. "It's open," she called without glancing up. Inside strode a bespectacled young Human man, barely past boyhood and still carrying all the awkward gangliness of youth, with a light complexion and curly black hair not unlike the woman's.
"Heyo," he said, eyeing the slab. "What're you up to?"
"New knitting pattern." She glanced up from the diagrams to scowl and glance pointedly at his feet, which had trailed clods of muddy slush from the door.
"I really don't like it here," he said, hastily retreating to the stoop where he began to scrape mud and slime from his boots.
"And why not?"
"It reeks and it's muddy all the time and there's pickpockets."
"It's charmin'."
"I tripped over a corpse on the way here!"
"Grand," she said, standing up and flipping the notebook closed. "Let's go get it."
"What!"
"Waste not want not," she said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Where was it?"
The corpse in question was some ways down the road toward the path to Zehila, half-buried in dingy snow. It was fatter than she expected, your average resident of the Middens not squaring away remotely enough meals to reach any level of corpulence, and her curiosity was piqued. Cautiously, she knelt and prodded the stiff green-black flesh around the neck and head, then slowly flexed the fingers, finding a shiny golden ring with a Traders' Guild crest on it beneath a later of caked-on mud.
She whistled through her teeth. "Look at this flash. We've got a guildsman. Don't seem like the gods were too fond of it though. How long you reckon it's been dead?"
"I uh... I don't know, maybe a day?"
"Close. It's probably gone, oh, day and a half, maybe two days now."
"How can you tell?"
"You get a knack. Now, c'mon, I'll get one end and you get t'other."
As she spoke she took mental note of the direction of the wind and moved to take the corpse's feet, aware this would place the lad downwind. She considered it good for his moral education.
*
They'd laid the corpse out on the slab, together peeling off his clothing indelicately and scraping off as much muck as they could. Most of the corpse's belongings were too cheap or too stained to fetch any kind of price, but she ripped off a few likely-looking gold buttons as well as the crested ring, slipping them into her pockets for pawning later. Old habits die hard.
"Weren't killed by nobody from the Middens," she said distractedly, running her fingers over his sides and pausing once she'd found a thin, deep wound with curiously scorched edges.
"Why not?"
"Still had flash on it. No Midden-folk would put paid to a guildsman then leave the flash on the corpse. No point." Snapping her fingers, she drew the boy's attention to the wound.
"A war mage then," he said after a moment. "That's from an elemental weapon. Probably didn't even realize what he was swinging at."
She looked pleased. "Right. Open it up, then."
He selected a likely-looking knife -- large and heavy, with a weighted spine -- and meticulously laid open the torso with practiced gestures, peeling back layers of flesh and fat and opening the ribcage with a series of efficient pops and cracks. The inside was a mess of both old blood from the injuries that had caused his death and the subtle beginnings of putrefaction, and he moued as she gingerly prodded at a number of organs in turn, drawing his attention to this or that detail.
"Now take your ritual knife," she said, "and find the vital lines here. See if you can follow them this old."
He set aside the heavy knife and produced a different one, a finer, smaller one made of antique silver, and ran the blade gently along nerves and blood vessels. She knew from experience he was sensing rather than seeing the flow of the body's life force within, snuffed in death but leaving subtle traces that could be felt. He stopped suddenly near one of the kidneys and knitted his brow, reaching in and using his fingers with the tip of the knife to attempt to move the intestines aside.
"Watch it, you'll nick--" she began, then halted as he abruptly stumbled backwards away from the slab, the knife dropping numbly from his fingers with a clatter. He was halfway to the door before the reek -- an impressive crescendo of offensive aromas -- washed over her as well, so cloying it felt greasy. It was a stench so carefully matured it could have come with tasting notes, one word in length: Don't.
She heard the loud and unmistakable noise of retching from outside and her stomach feebly extended a suggestion to join in, which was promptly vetoed. She couldn't actually recall the last time she'd vomited due to her work, and she wondered idly if she ever had while she calmly gathered up her supplies and joined the lad outside.
She found him braced against the side of the hovel while dry heaving, the actual contents of his stomach long abandoned behind the wisteria. She rinsed her hands in a shallow rain basin then casually lit a cigarillo as, slowly, he regained something resembling composure and straightened up, taking several deep breaths.
"That," he gasped, "That -- that was --"
"Yeah," she said. "Putrefaction. Affects the bowel first. Wheesht, lad, I know this ain't your first corpse."
"That was foul!"
"Death tends to be." She sniffed, then tugged on the door to ensure it was shut and closed the padlock.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's get some food back in you."
*
Some time later the two huddled in a private booth in Zuhaichaga, performing the simple arithmetic of drink-plus-drinker-equals-drunk. Between them sat a lovely Kaldar woman with a dark violet-streaked mohawk, bedecked in holy symbols of Idon and seemingly enjoying attention from them both.
Suddenly there was a thump from the common room and a furious series of footsteps as a pale blond-haired man -- her partner, with whom she'd built the hovel-cum-laboratory -- came into view, dropping the lad's bloodied ritual knife on the table between them with a clatter. She calmly sipped her beer while he went through a series of fits and starts, ending up looking completely flustered and failing to get so much as a single word out before he turned around and marched back out.
The Kaldar stared after him, nonplussed. "What was that about, exactly?"
"Nothin', dear."
Thayet
Twitter: @thayelf
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