The last of the light from the ghosts’ silvery silhouettes crept away, leaving the necromancer isolated amongst the flickering black candles. Kayn set her plague mask on a nearby surface, the empty hand withdrawing with trembles. She picked up the skull binding Tommy’s soul to the carnival grounds, brought her nose close to it, and inhaled with closed eyes.
There was ectoplasmic moisture on the ground. Tears shed from sheer joy.
How sweet, the quiet life of wilful ignorance that the ghost courter led. He reaped happiness and gratitude of her work in the mud. But who saved the ghosts that haunted her? Envy constricted Kayn’s heart so tight sometimes that it burst and splattered her insides with the kind of bitterness that rots organs.
Other times, that same heart admitted that she didn’t mind.
They lived in a world that was not her own. She didn’t belong to it anymore. Couldn’t.
Now the necromancer was shedding a tear of her own. Lately, she hadn’t the faintest clue what emotion caused it. A broken grin appeared on her face. Another object without a discernible origin.
Inquisitive passion. Curiosity insatiable, the deep mysteries of sinews stripped of their hiding. The unfolding. Scarlet lotus blossoms. Their bones speak to me. They know secrets. It was necessary. A sacrifice. Mistress Lester commanded me. This is what she wanted. So why shouldn’t the rest see it? Why should I—
“Abbess Kayn?”
The necromancer’s gaze snapped from the skulls’ sockets. Her apprentice’s worried expression bled through the mask.
“Simon is here to see you. He’s in the Red Room.”
“The other delivery boy,” Kayn said. “Don’t you bother with him, I’ll take care of it. Double check the inner circles on these twelve stations, won’t you?”
“Yes, Abbess.”
“Tune them, if you have to. I fear Camila’s runework was lacklustre, and we can’t afford to lose anymore of Ivory’s workers. Gehenna knows London’s a circus of its own. And change that damn music, won’t you?”
Her fingers trailed the edges of the stations as she navigated through them. Another morning with too much to do on too little sleep. Her tired eyes fell on the artistry of the bonework. She paused, at the far back of the tent, to appreciate her five apprentices’ toil.
Then she saw what remained of a station that had been activated several weeks prior. The skull and bones were evaporating into the air, diffusing like incense. If Kayn so much as prodded one of the pieces, the fragile ritual would collapse, and the carnival would lose one of Ivory’s impassioned souls.
This was why they needed a steady supply of bones.
They must never have to watch this.
The necromancer swept through into another section, the Red Room.
For all intents and purposes, Simon does not exist. Of the few who’ve spotted an unmarked carriage delivering a bulky package to the back of the Cloak Room, it’s been waived away with the same lie that Ivory tells his ghosts.
Nobody besides Kayn and her apprentices know. Them, and the jester that sits atop the lantern. He sees most everything.
Bones contain the excitement of their final living moments.
Colleges never accept our bids for cadavers.
Stolen corpses from graveyards yield unusable ingredients.
This is not only necessary for the carnival—it is the only way.
She repeated the mantra, whether it not it soothed her. It numbed the pain of passing payment to Simon’s gloved hands. It fogged the vision of his guiltless, grey eyes. It deafened the thud of the tranquillised body being dropped at her feet.
“How long will the sedative last?”
“Eleven, twelve hours.” His voice was soft, but earthy. Tobacco ash and autumn rain.
“And who is he?”
“Someone who deserves it.”
“Thank you, Simon.”
The taker reached his arm through the flaps coiling tightly together. “You are not alone in this.”
Kayn gazed at him behind her mask.
“I am more alone than any soul, young or old,” Kayn mumbled, clenching her fists. Then the door to the Red Room sutured itself shut. “Guilt cannot survive the starvation of solitude.”
“That’s wrong, Kayn! It will survive. It will eat you!” Simon shouted through the thick canvas.
Art by Astrid Grim.
She would always wait until long after dark. She waited until the carnival’s cacophonies clouded the air. Shrieks, laughter, announcements and music. Her apprentices were instructed to enjoy themselves on opening nights. Meanwhile, their abbess was lighting incense, candles, and strapping the body that Simon delivered to her operating table.
The subject awoke to the sound of her shuddered breaths.
“This never gets easier,” she told him.
“What? What is this? What doesn’t get easier?” he asked. The sedative hadn’t worn off completely. Fear bubbled from his mouth. Drool slicked down the side of his cheek and onto the grass below. This was the only room in the carnival that didn’t have wood platforms.
But it was an exhibition just like any other, even if nobody else would see it. It was designed for the acute mental excitement of one tortured individual: the one who built it.
Kayn wiped the saliva from her subject’s face with a nearby washcloth. It was taken from a stack of several dozen. Being prepared was vital.
“But you know something?” she continued. “I never regret it. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!”
The subject spotted the stiletto clenched in Kayn’s shaking hand. Despite it being clean, small spots of rust were creeping out of the steel. Noticing this, the man thrashed in his restraints.
“You will! You will regret it! Look at you!” he shouted.
“You won’t buy yourself any time!” Kayn laughed. Tears streaked down her eyes and behind her mask. She tore it off. “That’s what you said last time! You always lie! Why do all of you always lie?”
The man continued to thrash. The necromancer’s vision blurred. His shouts shook her very ear drums It was happening again.
But Kayn’s blade wasn’t the only thing worn well from consistent use. The leather buckles on the operating table were withered. One of its metallic clasps was begging to snap.
“Why do you think I talk to you at all?” she asked him. “Do you seriously believe it’s because I’m weighing my options? I’m evaluating your life? I do it because it makes it easier.”
The right arm of the subject sprang free of its restraint. His hand swung wide, crunching into Kayn’s neck but failing to grasp it.
“Look! I was never a friend of the living,” she said and slashed at the freed arm. “You wasted your life, but your body is still a canvas. You won’t waste it. I won’t let you!”
The man groaned into the pain, fumbling for the other buckle to free his left arm. But his fingers slipped on the blood.
Kayn screamed and drove the point of her blade through the centre of his right palm. She felt the tug of the flesh. Muscle strained against the sharp edge slicing through. His strength buckling from the agony, Kayn drove the blade through to the hilt and into the operating table, then jumped onto the subject and straddled his body.
“This sacrifice is necessary,” she seethed, taking his neck between her hands. She shifted her weight into her forearms and crushed the oesophagus. “All the joy you’ll bring. The laughter. The relief from the monotony. And your body. Untapped knowledge. A trove of creation. This!” the necromancer repeated as blood from a cut artery painted her face, “is necessary. But I don’t mind it!”
Her knuckles were pale long after the man’s body stopped spasming.
She stayed on top of him. Felt the air settle. The blood cool. Outside, the carnival was still making a racket. It produced other kinds of screams—lighter ones—that soothed the throb of her slowing heartbeat. With a sigh, she deflated on top of the body.
That’s what it was now. An ‘it’. An object. His skin no longer felt soft. She was laying on stone. His expression was a shattered light bulb left to sit out in the open. Untidy, ugly to look at.
The tension left her. So swift it felt traceless. A relief that brought a small grin to her face despite the contorted agony still fighting to linger.
“You don’t feel like anything,” she said to the corpse. “Finally, I can get to work.”
