She probably could, too, for all that Arkady had never seemed to have the dimmest glimmer of power about him. The Work gave you a feel for life, for the ebb and flow of blood and tides. They had to wait a long time for Charles. The log in the fire had almost burned down and Nate had started to worry that his old friend had left Highfall, or been taken by the guards, when there came a low knock at the back door. Nate let him in and nearly gasped. Charles had been well-muscled when they’d arrived in Highfall, even after the long trip across the Barriers. Now he was skeletally thin. His skin was patchy, his eyes bloodshot and deep-ringed with purple. The hair that Nate had last seen perfectly combed into golden curls hung ratty and limp. His dark roots weren’t showing, so at least he’d managed to keep up with the bleach, but the luxurious courtier’s clothes they’d worked so hard to steal were rumpled and soiled, the boots scuffed.
“You look awful,” Nate said. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. Let’s get this over with.” His words sounded dull around the edges. His Highfall accent slipped and slid; behind it, Nate could hear the broad vowels of the Slonimi.
In the parlor, Derie, sitting by the fire with her hands propped on top of her cane, stared at Charles with hard, suspicious eyes. “Charles Whelan, is your head clear?”
“Yes.” Charles’s voice was curt. Without another word, he began to climb the stairs.
Nate followed. They wrapped Arkady’s body in the soiled sheets and blankets from his bed and used three of the old man’s plainest belts to bind it. As they carried him downstairs, Nate told himself that it was a bundle of wood they carried, that the thin bones of Arkady’s ankles weren’t bones at all, but twigs in cloth. Derie had them bring down the dirty featherbed next, so she could remake it. Then they dragged Arkady out into the garden, where Charles had brought a wheelbarrow.
“Fold him,” Charles said. But Arkady was beginning to stiffen and bending him to fit in the barrow took much massaging and coaxing of the dead muscles. When he was finally inside, and Charles moved to pick up the barrow handles, Nate stopped him.
“I’ll do it. I’m dressed more like a laborer than you are.” He paused, and then added, “If we get stopped, you should run. I hear things about the guards.”
“We both look disreputable enough,” Charles said. “And the guards won’t stop us if we keep to the alleys.”
They did just that, pushing Arkady all the way through Porterfield and Marketside to Brakeside. The manors gave way to row houses and attaches; the row houses and attaches gave way to warehouses, with taverns and rooming houses and eel shops squeezed between them. Their first night in Highfall, before they’d separated, Nate, Charles and Derie had stayed in just such a rooming house, in a clammy basement common room, sleeping draped over their packs to keep away thieves. It was almost midnight now but barges were still unloading on the Brake by lantern light, the shouts and directions of the stevedores drifting disembodied through the darkness. Nate and Charles carried their dead cargo long past the barges to a disused landing near the charred rubble of a burned-out warehouse. The embankment wall had crumbled low there. They weighed Arkady down with rocks and slipped him into the water that lapped gently at the broken stone; watched, together, as the pale color of the once-rich bedding they’d used as a shroud disappeared.
Nate looked at ragged, bony Charles, staring down after the corpse, and was filled with a sudden certainty that his friend would try to follow it. He found the thought alarming. The Work forged connections between its users—everyone you touched, everyone they touched—and the connection between Nate and Charles was old and clear and strong. But before Nate could speak, Charles pivoted away from the water on one scuffed heel and said, “Let’s go.”
They didn’t speak on their way back to the manor, where they found that Derie had finished sewing the new featherbed. The parlor reeked of burned feathers; she had ripped open a pillow to replace the fetid ones she’d destroyed. “Going to report this to the Seneschal? What are you going to say happened?” she said to Nate.