Behind them, they could hear the other two soldiers pushing, shoving their way into the alley.

“Get them! Go!”

“Yes, Mottke,” said Yehuda Leib. “Tupik. The community there, we pay you a salary.”

“Hrm?” said Mottke.

“We’ve already paid.”

“Ah!” cried Mottke with delight. “Aha! Too-pikh!”

And, turning to the side like a door swinging on its hinges, he bowed low and cleared the way.

Bluma shot out into the second cemetery, Yehuda Leib and the pram following close behind. It was exactly how it had been the night before—cold, barren, empty—except that where the brick wall ought to have been, the Cemetery stretched on as far as the eye could see. In the distance, a few small headstones peeked up through the snow, and high above, the color of the sky passed from cloudy gray through the bruised purple of dusk and, finally, into the black night of the Far Country.

Bluma turned to look over her shoulder, sure that the dead soldiers would be hot on their heels, but they were nowhere to be seen: the soldiers, the alley, even the ferryman himself, had all been left behind in their crossing.

Yehuda Leib heaved a deep sigh.

“We shouldn’t tarry,” said Mammon. “I don’t know what you’ve done to make an enemy of Lord High General Dumah, but he’ll catch up with you sooner or later.”

Two pairs of eyes, keen and obscure, met over the little demon in the pram. The wind was blowing, cold and sharp, and it seemed to scrabble at Yehuda Leib’s neck like a pair of sharp claws.

Where had he left his scarf?

“Well, then,” said Yehuda Leib. “Shall we?”

Bluma took a deep breath and turned her eyes into the darkness. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They trudged forward into the purple dusk, and the bells of the town tolled out behind them.

—

It was beginning to snow. The bells of the old church on the hill were ringing, and in the first cemetery, deep inside an open grave, something was waking.

With a groan, the Dark One rolled onto its back and blinked its eyes open. It had been millennia since the Dark Messenger had had a full night’s sleep, but it hardly felt refreshed. The pale gray light of the dying day seemed to cut straight into its head, and the tongues of the pealing bells might as well have been clattering in its own skull.

Headache was altogether too polite a word.

What had happened?

As the Dark One lay moaning in the grave, the dusting of snow filling the folds of its black, black raiment, flashes of memory came swimming back:

A cold glass bottle. Burning liquor. Smiling faces. Dancing and song.

But something else, too: a feeling of dread, of foreboding.

Of guilt.

What had happened?