Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,18

his greatest need. As death approached, Ji should have been at his side chanting the holy protective verses and helping Hayes feel calm and at peace. Instead, Hayes had died alone. Alone and in pain.

Ji knew Hayes had lived a good life filled with good deeds. He had accumulated good karma that could enable him to transition to an auspicious new life rather than be reborn as a hungry ghost or a hell creature. But Ji knew too that Hayes had done things in his past—dark things. In the transition from one life to the next, the final moment of consciousness was the most important of all, and Hayes’s last moments must have been hideous. He would need assistance on his path, yet in this vast, unfriendly alien city, who was there to help? Ji didn’t even know where Hayes was now. Was his body being treated gently and with respect? Was someone setting up an altar with offerings of incense, flowers, and fruit? Where?

As his breathing slowed, Ji washed at a public pump, then bought bread and gave half of it to the birds while chanting sutras to generate merit that could be transferred to Hayes. But it wasn’t enough. Hayes was now in the intermediate state—what Ji’s Tibetan nurse, Pema, called the Bardo. Some taught that in the First Bardo—the four days right after death—the dead often didn’t even know they were no longer alive.

Do you know? thought the child, choking back tears. Do you know you’re dead?

There were special chants that could reach the dead in such a state, to help them. But Ji had never learned them. If they were in Canton, the Hong merchant would hire monks—one hundred and eight of them—to burn incense and open the road to the next world. Hayes would be carefully bathed and dressed in proper burial clothes, and a priest would divine the most propitious minute to place the body in its coffin. The temple would be hung with odes and eulogy scrolls, and everything would be done as it should be. Except here, in this strange city, Ji didn’t even know where to sleep.

“Oh, Hayes,” whispered the child, “I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”

What do I do?

Chapter 14

S ebastian arrived at the Dover Street residence of Gilbert-Christophe de LaRivière to find a team of sweaty, foam-flecked grays and a dusty chaise drawn up before the French nobleman’s house. The Count himself was just descending from the carriage.

“Walk ’em,” Sebastian told Tom, handing his chestnuts’ reins to the tiger. “I doubt I’ll be long.”

Hopping down to the pavement, Sebastian caught up with the Frenchman as he was about to mount his front steps. “Good afternoon, my lord. If I might have a word with you?”

The Count turned, one hand fumbling for the quizzing glass that hung around his neck from a black riband. Eighteen years before, at the time of his lovely wife’s death, LaRivière would have been a man of thirty or perhaps thirty-five. Now he was a widower in his late forties or early fifties, his black hair still only lightly streaked with gray, his eyes dark and deeply set, his nose long and narrow. Unlike many nobleman of his age who’d grown soft and fleshy, LaRivière was still trim, his movements quick and sure. He was known as a fine dresser and a connoisseur of the arts who personally designed his own fobs and collected ancient artifacts. He also had a reputation as something of an artist himself and could frequently be found sketching London’s old churches and picturesque Renaissance houses.

Now he stared at Sebastian through his glass long enough to convey both annoyance and the faintest hint of derision. Then he let it drop and said in English only faintly accented by his native French, “You’re Devlin, I believe?”

“I am.” Sebastian paused at the base of the steps and said again, “If I might have a word with you, my lord?”

“I’ve just come from Ascot and am due to dine with the Queen this evening.”

“It shouldn’t take up too much of your time.”

The Count’s eyes narrowed in a way that told Sebastian the Frenchman knew exactly why Sebastian was here. “Very well. Do come in.”

Sebastian followed LaRivière to a richly appointed library filled with hundreds of leather-bound volumes artistically interspersed with fragments of Greek and Roman statues. For a man who had fled France a penniless refugee twenty years before, Compans somehow contrived to live quite comfortably. And Sebastian found himself