The Power and the Glory

Book 1 Chapter XV: Skeletons

...great schemes make the actors in them careless of humanity; the life of a man goes for nothing against a point in the game. -- Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau

The royal crypt was exactly the same as it had been before. Still lifeless, still silent, still lit only by the pale glare of the gas lamps. The only difference was that now there was no one else at all. Abi took the precaution of checking. It took her over an hour to search around all the graves and monuments until she was sure she hadn't missed anywhere a person could be hidden. And that was only the third and lowest lever. Hunting around the other two would have taken the better part of a day.

Finally she was convinced that she was alone. No one would think of looking for her here. They were all too busy panicking over Kiriyuki's unexpected arrival and the diplomatic headaches it caused. Under other circumstances Abi might have tried to help her. Right now she was thoroughly angry with Kiriyuki, and more than happy to let her sort out the consequences of her actions on her own.

If she had time to think things through, the royal crypt would be the last place she tried necromancy. An undead royal wandering around the city was the sort of thing that would attract notice. But she was in a hurry, and one of her distant cousins had died only a few weeks ago. He'd come off the worst in a duel and bled to death before his friends could get him to hospital. 

In most cases this would have been the prelude to a murder trial that would keep tongues wagging for decades. In this case the other party in the duel had been the dead man's sister. The cause of the fight was a dispute over inheritance. The pair's great-great-grandmother had died without making a will. Both of them insisted they deserved the same amount of money. There simply wasn't enough money in the estate for both to get what they wanted. It ended in months of unpleasantness that culminated in a duel and a disaster. Their mortified family brushed the whole thing under the carpet and pretended Lord Tiraldhros had died in a tragic accident.

None of this would have had the slightest effect on Abi if not for a simple fact. Tiraldhros was the most recent member of the Sinistrah family to die. His body would be the least decayed -- especially in the midnight-cold depths of the crypt, walled into an airless stone tomb.

There was just one problem. She would have to open the tomb to get the reanimated body out.

Experimentally she pushed the edge of the lid. It didn't budge. Some far too conscientious builder had cemented it in place. She rapped her knuckles against the top, then further down against the walls. They were all solid. Nothing short of an explosion could open them quickly.

At some point in their life everyone learnt how to magically make things explode. It sounded like a very exciting skill to have. Of course, no sooner had they acquired it than they discovered it wasn't nearly as exciting as it seemed. Explosions were loud. And messy. And brought people running. Worst of all they had a nasty tendency to destroy indiscriminately.

Blowing up the tomb would also blow up the body. And possibly half of the crypt. No, it simply wasn't practical.

Where's the nearest pick-axe? Abi wondered.

It would take hours of hard work. There was a good chance someone would notice something odd was happening. What in the world was she to do with all the dust? The more she thought about it the more impractical the whole thing seemed.

Finding a corpse in a common graveyard would be easier, she decided. I'll just have to find the freshest one I can.

Recently-dug graves were always easy to spot. The most difficult part would be dodging gravediggers, cemetery caretakers, and relatives.