The problem was simple, insofar as the necromantic logic of the Craft was concerned. A hundred fifty years before, as the first Deathless Kings formed a society free of divine meddling—and, incidentally, of mortality—they’d faced a practical concern: How does one discourage antisocial behavior among formerly human beings for whom life imprisonment is a brief inconvenience, if not an undefined term, and the death penalty a slap on the wrist? How do you keep a necromancer bound to the world by thousands of debts from climbing back out of her grave?

The answers ranged from grotesque to merely inhumane, but all shared a theoretical foundation: you don’t let the dead go free.

Tara set her purse on the counter and produced from within a retort, a bit of silver chalk, three gas burners, several large pieces of glassware, and two silver bracelets. She shucked her jacket, rolled up her sleeves, donned the bracelets, and struck them against each other. They sparked, and slick black oil rolled from them to cover her hands. The glyphs machine-tooled into her forearms glowed silver against her dark skin. She drew her work knife from the glyph above her heart, and its moon-lightning blade cast queer light into the corners of the stone room.

Denovo lay before her.

She took a deeper breath than she cared to admit she needed, and touched the cold dry skin of his temple.

“Hi there,” the corpse said.

Ms. Abernathy?

“It’s all right,” Tara told the Blacksuit. She forced her heart back to a slow and proper rhythm. “He’s dead, but there’s still power inside his body. That power can”—she groped for terms the Blacksuit would understand—“push on my memories of him, like organ keys. The gloves keep most of it out, but he was strong. I’ll be fine.” She made her knife sharp, took hold of his collar, and carved off his clothes.

“Fine,” the corpse said in a wry voice. “Will you be fine, Tara, really? Fine, in this benighted city, slaving for a mad goddess and an equivocating god not fit to kiss a Craftsman’s boot?”

Answering a phantom’s taunt was bad form, but she was not being graded here. “Kos Everburning is a good God. He stayed out of the Wars. He’s needed an in-house Craftswoman for a long time. And Seril isn’t mad anymore.”

Ms. Abernathy?

“You can wait outside,” she told the Blacksuit, “if you’d rather. This will take a while, and you’ll make me nervous if you just stand there.”

The statue flowed out the door and shut it after, leaving her alone with the body.

She removed his shoes one at a time, and cut his trousers off. He lay nude on the slab, paunchy and pale.

“Such service,” the corpse said. “I should come here more often.”