Crachian burial rites revolve around one’s station and importance within their Gen. Agricultural workers are returned to the earth as compost to aid the next harvest while their departed overseers are planted with a tree sapling that will sprout into a mighty monument. Sailors are given to the sea in quiet ceremonies while the bones of shipbuilders are fashioned into polished masthead sculptures adorning the finest seafaring Crachian vessels. Those not belonging to a Gen are slotted into space efficient stone mausoleums where the summer will bake them to ash, freeing their tier for the next body.

Whether they are to become dust or pillar, however, the dead’s first stop is The Dry House, where they are laid upon blocks of imported ice to preserve them until family can be contacted and burial or ceremony can be arranged.

Daian doesn’t mind being among the dead, or their scent, like animal carcasses half buried in snow. He enters the spare stony confines of The Dry House without hesitation, unmoved by the sight of row upon row of bodies resting on their ice-block cairn. Of course, it helps that the dead are draped in woven hemp shrouds (for preservation’s sake more than modesty, which most Crachians consider a wasted quality).

He finds only one living soul occupying the space. Keepers of Dry Houses are known as “huskers.” The husker on duty is an unusually young man with his long, hay-colored hair tied back and an even lighter, almost invisible scruff smattering his cheeks and jaw.

It’s uncommon for the Capitol, where dark hair like Daian’s is overwhelmingly handed down between generations. The boy’s ancestors must have come from across the sea some time after the Renewal, before Crache placed a ban upon such visitors settling within the nation’s borders.

“Can I help you, Aegin?” the husker asks around a mouthful of rice.

Whenever he’s had cause to deal with a husker, they always seem to be in the middle of a meal.

“I’m looking for two men,” Daian informs him.

The husker swallows, staring at him in confusion.

“All right, but unless I’m one of ’em I can promise you there’s no one here in a state to be arrested.”

“That’s funny,” Daian says in a tone that clarifies it was not funny at all.

Daian begins pacing between the rows of giant ice blocks propped on their wooden frames, copper drip pans carefully arranged beneath them. He peels back the shroud covering each unnaturally still face. Most of them are puckered with the wrinkles of old age. The few younger faces he uncovers are composed of smooth, well-fed features unmarred by the abrasions of a life spent in physical toil, let alone touched by any violence. None of them are tattooed, and all of them appear to Daian to be high-ranking Gen members.

“They’re not here,” Daian pronounces, equal parts confused and irritated.