“Ikin owen it,” Snier said against the palm covering his mouth, his eyes clinched like dungeon vises. After a moment Snier felt the hand lift off. “I can open it.”
I let him up. The locks on that damn thing had cost me the tip of my knife, but with a little tooling, Tymothus Snier opened the griffin-emblazoned casket with a final chunk.
A year later, Snier finally believed me when I’d said that I had no plans on killing him that night, that and he had long since moved into the other half of our duplex. Alliances weren’t just for the Ward and royal Houses. Nothing better than combining some muscle with a little coy lock work.
“Snier,” I said, back in the present and entering a thicket of headstones, “remember the coffin that had that gold dildo inside?” Good ol’ Sniery had seen such things before—in fact, he may have been the only person in all Mulgara to have encountered one in two different professions.
“Can we just get to it?”
We laid our tools on the grass, but I whipped out the opium.
“Yeah,” Snier soon giggled, “I sold it to a Chapwyn priest.” Any watchman or fellow grave robber may have run screaming from our ghouls-feeding laughter. “Should have given it to Somyellia…sorry, no offense.”
“Meh,” I said, disenthralling myself from a comfortable headstone, “just her job. You wouldn’t understand.” Snier’s stare tickled me. “Now that was just a joke, little buddy. Let’s get to work.” I grabbed a shovel and got digging.
“We need to split the spoils the way you said you used to.” Snier said. We’d hit a good one! A bloated noble stuffed in a coffin studded in bronze-lined jade. “And to think, he thought going the in the ground route would fool entrepreneurs like us, Mr. Oleugsby.”
“Ansul’s ass!” I let out. Quieting myself, I leaned in to stare at the plates and goblets. Disgracing the Chapwyn church father’s name had just been upped from time in the pillory to a lopped-off head, and grave robbing had been a death sentence for years—whether at the executioner’s axe or ripped limb from limb by the offended and turned-loose meek. Being killed twice over was a distilling notion, but the smiles on both our dirty faces gleamed still. I said without taking my eyes of our treasure, “The old arrangement was I’d keep the jewelry; he just wanted the body.” I glanced over. Snier appeared to be listening, though steadfastly working a jeweled bracer off a leathery arm. “Still want it how I used to do it?”
“There,” Snier exhaled. “Got her—I thought you were the one who only wanted the body?”
“No. It’s a great way to collect material, sure,” I explained. Snier handed me up the loot. Soft tinks and tanks sang as our bag swelled. “Materials is mostly why I do it now. That and bills. By the time I got back in business, I could hardly afford a bread crumb. But, such is your fate when a squadron of Ansul’s True catches you slipping rings off lower clergy.”