The muslin-draped body shuddered and rolled up from the grave. Bloody muslin fell from the corpse, revealing a spiny, bloated torso clothed in a white habit. It flung out pale, meaty arms and shook away the flesh of the head, revealing a shiny carapace. Black roaches escaped the sleeves of the habit, spraying across the crowd. The body jerked and thrashed, sloughing off flesh. Long strings of mucus oozed from the gaping wounds in the chest—the ones Eshe had put there. One for each shape shifter the priest had killed.

Eshe took half a step forward, his whole body taut. He was more than ready to kill the priest again, even if this was just a bug clothed in a dead man’s skin.

As the sword-bearer swung, the giant beetle opened its gaping maw, and a cloud of flying black larvae escaped.

Isabet gasped.

The swordsman swung. The body juddered. A hunk of raw flesh and juicy white beetle ooze was exposed. It took three more swings to sever the beetle’s head from what remained of the priest’s body. The body dropped, and the beetle’s bloody, flesh-smeared head rolled neatly next to it. The cloud of larvae droned and circled the remains.

Eshe let out his breath. Moved his hand away from his knife.

The crowd broke into a hymn.

Eshe turned his back on the grave. “Let’s go,” he said. He started back to the church, pushing the weeping fingers of spiny widows’ tree branches away from his face.

Isabet hurried after him. “Is that all? That’s everything?”

“That’s all.”

“I—” She adjusted her wimple. In all the rain, the stiffness was beginning to give way, and the wings were starting to droop.

“I’ve heard about it, of course,” Isabet said. “But that was the first one I saw.”

“Sometimes they shamble on for a while longer. They only last three days like that before the body rots out, but its long enough to scare the hell out of people.”

“Why would God—”

“It’s the bugs,” Eshe said. “And stupid Ras Tiegan stubbornness. Not God.”

“But if that was so, bodies on a battlefield—”

“Bodies on battlefields aren’t buried. They’re carted home and burned. Because of… that. The bugs live in the dirt.”

He escorted Isabet as far as the edge of the graveyard where a long stand of incense burners flickered and sputtered in the heavy rain. From there, they were to take separate routes home. On the street, they were too obviously unmarried and unrelated to be seen together. It was another reason Eshe didn’t understand why she had been partnered with him.

“Well,” he said once they reached the tiled street, “you saw it through to the end. Satisfied?”