Who was she really, though? Mocking her by remembering the version that suited me best held no love or honor. She was strong in life, and surely would laugh hideously at my weakened state. She would have nodded with that haunting nod, then “Do it, lover.” Whereever she was, she had no need for my indecision.

Yes, this is how I got here.

Telling them I accepted made them smile—sluggy, melted smiles—and when they told me the wages I almost danced on the ceiling. I wasn’t going to rival the vaults of the ruling, but by my quick arithmetic, in a year I would be able to enroll at the Institute.

The former mortician was gone in no time. The first few days were shadowing the two waddling managers. My workspace was the morgue itself, vast and set back from the street. Inside, its walls made a stone honeycomb that contained bodies in all sizes and conditions. At its center, where I’d spend most of my time, was the table.

Above my station, the domed ceiling was a cap of painted glass. Hilarious in its irony, it depicted the poor and pious being whisked away by serene carriers to some orange and golden field. Waiting for them, Tersiona sat in a throne of wheat, surrounded by Ansul and a ring of lesser figures. By day, the ceiling provided a glowing vale of sunlight, and on the nights I chose not to go home, church icons holding books and teapots glared down on my solitude.

Following a downhill path, my designated cart was to be led to an iron door on the northern edge of the cemetery, an edge well known to me. This door was much like a cellar hatch, bolted on a granite frame leading to the Pauper Vault. The dead poor were dropped to reside forever with carrion, foulness, and things that scampered from the light. Even for me, the stench that belched up from that darkness didn’t only offend the nostrils, but clawed at the skin and smothered.

Continuing downhill were the graves for those buried with just enough money to avoid the filling pit. And there was Somyellia.

At the end of my first day, I went down to see her. I sat at her graveside and stared across the sea of weathered stone teeth. Across the vast distance, through the gleaming spires of Laugher’s Lot, I could make out our abandoned house, a speck that was once our grandest meeting place.

Pain exposes itself when it chooses to, and as most harden with the passing years it becomes an indistinguishable part of life. I leaned against her brand new stone and wept. It’s like Vandahl wrote: “Life is but wild flowers in the graveyard.”

A void in me was undeniably ripped open after Somyellia left. Perhaps that is why I fell into my work so. I enjoyed the sweating from the lifting, all legal for the first time.