One of the reasons couriers were assigned to the same routes for years at a time was so they learned the lay of their landscape. People who knew the land well could thereby catch Spore-sign so early they could dispatch it on their own even though they carried only the most basic of magical weapons. From the pack she extracted a courier’s Spore-killing tools: a vial of salt spirits suspended in liquid form by means of a theurgist’s spell, and an obsidian dagger. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing, part of every courier’s standard kit together with a weather-proof dispatch pouch, a pocket watch, a spyglass and a magnifying glass, a steel-tipped walking staff, a pair of boots, an oilcloth jacket, a seal of office, and a transmission log.

Unlike every other courier in the empire, Elen carried something more. Something no human was meant to have. Something that would condemn her to death by burning, should the administrative apparatus of the empire ever find out. Something that maybe a haunt could perceive, even if no humans could, not unless they saw it with their own eyes.

She looked up the ridge. Kem was almost at the lookout, so not only was he out of range if a Spore-burst took her, but he was too far away to see her as anything but a tiny and thus indistinct figure in the distance. She pulled up her sleeve to expose the lower part of her right forearm, revealing the tip of a ropy scar that ran all the way up her arm. She was as prepared as she could ever be.

To begin with, she paced a slow circle around the jumble of bones, keeping her distance, looking for anything different from what she’d seen last month. Any sign that might tickle her brain.

“Jumble” was the wrong word for the bone pile. Two monstrously sized rib cages like passageways crossed each other to create a cruciform architecture. The skeletal structure’s clean lines and orderly spacing were a marvel, even beautiful, if beauty could be measured out of death. Natural rib cages would have long since fallen apart, but these were no longer natural.

Smaller skeletal remains lay inside. Perhaps they were the bones of creatures the two leviathans had devoured before they’d collapsed and died. Perhaps they were the remains of people and animals foolish enough to wander beneath the ribs at the wrong time.