It had only been an hour, yet Horsey was relentless in his search. The stench of rot and untended soil clung to the air, oppressive and familiar. Yet if he had to make his way back with that aroma trailing him but with pockets two pounds heavier than when he had begun his secret venture, he would be content.
"I never thought you would give me a hard time, Elder Lajik. We were never even the best of friends," Horsey muttered gruffly, his breathing coming in short, laborious bursts. He threw his weight onto the shovel, sweat dripping down his face. He wiped it away, the salt of a long-forgotten sea still lingering on his tongue.
"But you owe me that ring."
Horsey had lost all his hair in the last two decades. A blessing, he figured—being bald kept him cool as he worked under the unrelenting midday sun; for now, the grave's depth, six feet beneath the surface, lent him its momentary sanctuary.
On a normal day, an act such as this would not demand much effort, but Elder Lajik's grave was no ordinary one. Buried alive along with the ministers who foolishly defended him, the man had become a cautionary tale. Still, Horsey dug deeper, eager to face him again, even if only his corpse.
His shovel scraped something solid.
As he shifted through the dirt he had dug up, he discovered the cause of the scraping sound. He prodded yet again. A dull rasp, like the sound of bones shifting. A chill ran down his spine as his eyes widened.
Greeting him was a hollowed skull poking through the mound. He dropped the shovel with a loud clutter, breaking the graveyard's suffocating silence.
Buried alive, they claimed, was the fitting punishment for this unwilling cause of rebellion: instigator and victim, all in one. The decision had been unanimous; Lajik had no room to reason.
"Found him, boy," Horsey called up to Swinebroth, his voice thick and grim, cutting through the still air. "I will need that rope ready when I am through. Too humid here for my liking."
From above, Swinebroth, a boy of only ten summers, shifted groggily against a weathered rock beside the grave. A thick bundle of ropes sprawled across his lap, worn from previous missions. As his consciousness returned to him, he felt the rough edges of the stone digging into his skin. In such a decreased state, he had hardly noticed. His body swayed slightly as he got up, the exhaustion of the past days threatening to drag him into a deep sleep where the world would feel less real—where he could, for a moment, forget the fact that he was the accomplice to yet another crime.
"I hear you, Horsey!" he replied in a daze, his voice a faint whisper, barely rising above the rustling of the dry grass in the distance. He fixed his gaze in that direction momentarily, unsure of whether they had been caught. After the rustling had stopped, he scrambled to his feet, his limbs heavy and slow, accompanied by the dry, gritty sound of his sandaled feet shifting in the earth.
Marked with faint scrapes and bruises from doing his share of the labor, Swinebroth was all knees and elbows. With a tunic too big for his own body, and large round eyes that flitted nervously about, he looked awkward. Out of place. Among the Setikosi, he sunk further into himself, often unnoticed unless there was an errand to be done. The boy would come running at their call, restless, armed with a stubborn refusal to be dismissed. It was no secret he idolized the old master Horsey, envying the man's long-established authority. He was often by his side without question, without complaint.
Yet he carried his own quiet dreams. Uttered in the dark, or between the notes of a myriad of symphonies in the temple ministers' halls. Lingering on the edges. Too tired for his years.
And he did so without complaint.
Below ground, Horsey was on his knees, prodding at the remains, meticulous not to disturb the disarray of bones piled atop Elder Lajik's frame. Those ministers had been dismembered before their burial, severed with cold precision. Lajik, though suffocated beneath their weight, remained oddly intact—a strange testament to his tragic end.
"You stupid, stupid pig," Horsey muttered under his breath, frowning at the skeleton. Memories of the dead, twitching and nervous, flooded back to him—the tremors in his hands, the way he flinched at the slightest provocation.
An easy target for men in his line of work.
"Why did you break the Du Ku'am's prized horn? He still dreams of that wretched relic until now. To bury with him, to take to the afterlife."
Something gleamed among the dirt-streaked bones. Horsey's hand shook as he reached for it, for that sensation of cold metal, an unexpected relief. The ring he unearthed, though slick with grime, gleamed unspoilt. A coldness that pulsed up his arm as if alive.
"You would not mind, right?" Horsey said with a nervous smirk, his fingers tightening around the discovery. For a moment, his throat tightened, the words caught in a choke. "You have no use for this now, but they might just save a wretch like me."
Lajik's hollow sockets glared in silent defiance as Horsey slipped the ring off the bone.
"You must not look at me like that, Lajik," Horsey snapped, his voice laced with frustration. "If you had learned to manage your nerves better, none of this would have happened."
Horsey reached into his sleeve, producing a crumpled piece of parchment—a list of names, smudged and softened by sweat and time. The paper felt thin and fragile in his grasp, its corners frayed.
"You know these names—your favorite ministers. The new Du Ku'am will sentence them to death soon. Perhaps he figured you needed the company."
He dropped the list, sprinkling salt over it with haste.
The skeleton stayed mute.
"This, too, shall be mine." He pried another ring from Lajik's skeletal finger. This one seemed to hum with energy, a faint, almost imperceptible vibration against his skin. Its indentations seemed to hold a strong magical quality uniquely infused from the soil. The old man knew it. He stuffed it in his sleeve also, glancing uneasily at the remains.
Of course they were watching him.