“Look, either I went completely mad in the space of seconds or I’m seeing something you can’t.” A word had already formed in his mind; of course it had, it was a word every child knew. He wasn’t going to voice it, though, not unless she said it first.

She stared at him for another minute while he kept his shoulders stiff and tried not to wince beneath the ongoing deluge of noise. Then she licked her lips. “What do they look like?”

“I don’t know if I can answer that.” He spoke very slowly to make certain his voice didn’t shake. The horrible weeping woman slid deliberately between them, and he turned his face aside to hide a flinch. He couldn’t pick her voice out of the maelstrom, and he was glad; now she stood so close, he could see the murky water dripping from her hair. Each black droplet hit the dusty floor with a splash and disappeared.

“They’re hard to see?” the girl asked, equally, exquisitely matter-of-fact.

“I meant there’s too much variety. There are old people and young people—” Something struck him even through the shock. “But no children.”

“Huh.”

“Some of them are very easy to see, but some of them are dingy, like they’re standing in the dark. It doesn’t seem to have any bearing on how close to the light they are.”

“Are they cheerful?”

If she didn’t say it soon, he was going to kill her. “No. No, they are not.”

She let out a gusty sigh he couldn’t hear over the cacophony. “The restless dead. There must have been looting. That, or the governor is shirking his duty to their tombs.”

Now one of them had finally said it, Havec found it didn’t help at all. “Why are they all shouting at me? I’m not the one who messed with their graves, I’m not even Tabbi.”

Qanath licked her lips again. “You said they’re shouting at you?”

“I can’t hear any of them for all the rest!” It came out more desperate than he meant it to, and he cleared his throat.

“Are they menacing you?”

His eyes darted off her onto the crowd around them, all still speaking urgently, but he put his eyes quickly back on the girl. “They’re trying to talk to me.”

The girl had both hands over her face. He could barely hear her next words: “It’s Kebbal, it has to be. That’s why they’ve only made themselves known to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“They want revenge.”

Havec felt his lips part involuntarily, but it was several seconds longer before he could find something to say. It was hard to think clearly surrounded by a hundred angry ghosts all trying to plead their case. “I’m sorry?” He was amazed by how calm he sounded. It was in no way whatsoever an accurate expression of how he felt.

Qanath folded her hands together, and he couldn’t tell if she meant the mannerism to be teacherly or was just trying to hold her shaking fingers still. “Souls dwell in barana rakis, the soul realm. Well, I say realm, but it’s really more a plane. You know, another dimension of reality like time and space?”

Havec looked at her.

“Anyway, it’s only natural they would be able to see what you are, I bet Kebbal is more clear to them than your physical shell.”

“Don’t your people have like a hundred thousand gods to deal with crap like taking in lost souls?”

She bit her lip, casting her eyes around uneasily at the darkness that must look empty to her. Disturbingly so, now she knew it wasn’t. “They’re supposed to. But so long as anything remains that ties the soul to hagila ra’ir, the physical plane, the soul can be pulled back out of its final resting place.”

“Anything?”

“Bones or ashes. Treasured possessions.” She paused, then added unhappily, “Descendants.”

“In summation, it’s basically impossible to lay a soul to rest for good. Some asshole came along and fucked with these people’s shit and woke them up. At which point they remembered they were pissed.”

“It wasn’t necessarily looting. It has to be hard to keep up with all the old propitiation rites, and I bet the governor of Dareh doesn’t have a lot of money.”

His calm broke and he lurched up on one knee so fast he would have knocked his head on the Wailing Woman’s knees if she hadn’t been a ghost. Reaching around her, he thrust a finger in Qanath’s face. “You told me this kind of shit didn’t happen! You told me the spooky stuff wasn’t real! And I quote: ‘that kind of hoodoo witchery exists only in tall tales’!”

“You asked if I could ‘hex’ you!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right, that’s completely different from rational, everyday vengeful spirits! Well, I goddamned hope you know what you’re talking about, because it’s your job to get rid of them!”

***

Qanath stared at her companion, waiting for him to admit this was a feeble joke. He only went on looking angry and accusatory, though. And, it had to be said, pretty wild around the eyes. His gaze kept darting into the darkness, and it was incredibly disconcerting to know he was looking at something real she couldn’t see; the knowledge made her skin crawl like a hand hovering. The fact that he was seeing angry spirits was almost beside the point.

Finally, she marshalled her wits. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Be a sorceress, how about that?”

“And do what?”

“Lay them back to rest!”

Qanath leaned away from him. “I can’t do that. Necromancy is a post-graduate field.”

He clamped his hands over his ears, and she could hear a whisper of a stifled moan. “I’m going to go mad if you don’t get these things away from me.”

“They came to you, they want your help.”

“I can’t, Qanath!”

“You’re an Avatethura Master, at some point you’re going to have to—”

“I can’t help them,” he interrupted, and his voice was still too loud. He wasn’t shouting at her but projecting as if he was trying to make himself heard over a crowd. It echoed uncomfortably in this big empty space.

“Havec…”

He leaned aggressively toward her again, but he kept flinching back and coming at her obliquely. It gave her the deeply unpleasant suspicion that something was standing between them. “Do you not know what ‘can’t’ means? I don’t recognize anything about these people. Their hair is weird, their clothes are weird. I’ve never seen this jewelry. They’ve been dead for hundreds or thousands of years: there is no revenge left.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Everyone and everything they ever knew is gone. So long ago that no one even remembers it.”

Qanath was appalled. “There’s nothing we can do for them.”

“Nothing but put them back to sleep.”

“Okay,” she said, making herself sound calm. “We’ll go find a necromancer—”