"My god," Shed whispered. "He's found a way into the Catacombs. He's looting the dead."

"I came straight back," Shed gasped. Raven was amused by his distress. "I knew Asa was foul, but I never dreamed he'd commit sacrilege." Raven smiled.

"Aren't you disgusted?"

"No. Why are you? He didn't steal any bodies."

Shed came within a hair's breadth of assaulting him. He was worse than Asa.

"He making out at it?"

"Not as well as you. The Custodians take all the burial gifts except passage urns." Every corpse in the Catacombs was accompanied by a small, sealed urn, usually fixed on a chain around the body's neck. The Custodians did not touch the few coins in those. When the Day of Passage came, the Boatmen would demand payment for passage to Paradise.

"All those souls stranded," Shed murmured. He explained.

Raven looked baffled. "How can anybody with an ounce of brains believe that crap? Dead is dead. Be quiet, Shed. Just answer questions. How many bodies in the Catacombs?"

"Who knows? They've been putting them away since. . . . Hell, for a thousand years. Maybe there's millions."

"Must have them stacked like cordwood."

Shed wondered about that. The Catacombs were vast, but a thousand years' worth of cadavers from a city Juniper's size would make a hell of a pile. He looked at Raven. Damn the man. "It's Asa's racket. Let's not try."

"Why not?"

"Too dangerous."

"Your friend hasn't suffered."

"He's smalltime. If he gets greedy, he'll get killed. There are Guardians down there. Monsters."

"Describe them."

"I can't."

"Can't or won't?"

"Can't. All they tell you is that they're there."

"I see." Raven rose. "This needs investigating. Don't discuss it. Especially not with Asa."

"Oh, no." Panicked, Asa would do something stupid.

Word drifted in off the street. Krage had sent his two best men after Raven. They had disappeared. Three more had vanished since. Krage himself had been injured by an unknown assailant. He had survived only because of Count's immense strength. Count wasn't expected to live.

Shed was terrified. Krage was neither reasonable nor rational. He asked Raven to move out. Raven stared at him in contempt.

"Look, I don't want him killing you here," Shed said.

"Bad for business?"

"For my health, maybe. He's got to kill you now. People will stop being scared of him if he doesn't."

"He won't learn, eh? A damned city of fools."

Asa boiled through the doorway. "Shed, I got to talk to you." He was scared. "Krage thinks I turned him over to Raven. He's after me. You got to hide me, Shed."

"Like hell." The trap was closing. Two of them here. Krage would kill him for sure, would dump his mother into the street.

"Shed, I kept you in wood all winter. I kept Krage off your back."

"Oh, sure. So I should get killed, too?"

"You owe me, Shed. I never told nobody how you go out at night with Raven. Maybe Krage would want to know that, huh?"