The other option was to channel Mortem into something living, usually plants—rumor was they had a garden full of stone flowers and rock-hewn trees. When the leaks got especially bad, the Presque Mort sometimes had to turn to the farmlands, razing entire fields, though a leak that dire hadn’t happened in ages.
The catacomb entrance was toward the back of the building, over a collection of graffitied rock and broken floorboards. Someone had helpfully painted a face with Xs over its eyes on the wall, with an arrow pointing the way.
Lore didn’t need the direction. The farther she went, the more her skin buzzed, her innate knowledge of the underground kicking to life with a sickly lurch. This close, if she shut her eyes, she could see the black lines of the catacombs in her head—a tangled maze of tunnels overlaying her thoughts, tinting them dark.
The effect always unsettled her, so she tried very hard not to blink as she approached the dilapidated door, taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth to keep her mind clear. Pushing a poison lode into the catacombs to get picked up was one thing; it was wholly another to walk through them, to feel them pressing down from all sides. It made the moon-shaped burn mark on her palm ache, and was distraction enough that she didn’t notice the person behind her until they were too close for her to escape.
An arm curled around Lore’s neck, the bite of dirty fingernails in her skin chased with the sweet, herbaceous scent of belladonna. Choking out a curse, Lore brought up her elbow, jabbing it backward into a frame that felt horribly bony.
Revenant, had to be. They always looked like walking corpses.
The revenant laughed, a breathy, wheezing sound that brought another waft of poisonous flower scent. The arm fell away, their slight weight lurching back—Lore spun on her heel, dagger drawn and held against the grimy throat.
Definitely a revenant, and one that should’ve been dead long ago. Skeleton-thin, not many teeth left, eyes sunken inches into a face the color of a fish belly and crossed with stone-gray veins. Too emaciated to make a guess at their sex. The revenant wheezed another laugh, and Lore could see the work of their lungs through their skin, laborious in a body that was more rock than flesh.
“Thought you’d hide, did you?” The revenant’s lips parted in a rictus grin. Their bottom lip split, but no fluid came out. “I could smell the death on you miles away, sweetling. Such a wealth of it. How are you so hale, so whole? A girl born to house oblivion shouldn’t be so.”
“Guess the mind goes quick even when the body lingers,” Lore hissed.
The revenant laughed, a rough, painful sound. “I got close, a few times. So close to being able to touch eternity.” One shoulder lifted, fell. “I never quite got there. But you… you have that power without even trying. How novel. How rare.” Chipped yellow teeth, bared in a smile. “They should’ve killed you when they had the chance.”
Lore’s knees locked. The tip of her dagger wavered.
“I went down there, you know.” The revenant smiled again. “Wandered for days. They’re filling up, all nice neat rows, ready for the war.”
Nonsensical rambling, the obvious sign of a mind long-gone. She felt briefly sorry for the should-be corpse, and it broke her murderous resolve. Lore sheathed her dagger and started back toward the door, legs slightly shaky. She could run. If she ran the whole way, she might be only a few minutes late to the rendezvous point.
Behind her, another laugh, a creak as the revenant laid their skeletal body on the floor. “Run, run, sweetling,” they sang softly. “You can’t outrun yourself.”
She knew she was too late before she even saw the guards.
They were hard to miss. The Protectors of the Citadel wore bright-red doublets and kept their bayonets polished to a shine, clean enough that one might doubt how many people met the business end. Lore knew better—they weren’t called bloodcoats for nothing. She also knew that with her hair tucked beneath a cap and her generous curves hidden in loose boy’s clothing, she could escape their notice as long as she kept her head down. Clearly, the guard had already changed, and she could only hope Jean-Paul had made it through while the checkpoint was unmanned.
The crowd here was even thicker than it’d been on the dock roads. Lore stood on tiptoe to watch the gate, searching for Jean-Paul’s distinctive red hair and the large, placid horse they used for drops within Ward limits. She couldn’t see him, and had to fight down a growing knot of panic in her middle as she made her way to the old storefront where they were supposed to leave the contraband. Maybe he’d already gone through the checkpoint, maybe he was waiting for her there…