As the line kept moving, more carts rolled into the city without so much as a snag. The attendants met them with the same neat precision each time.
Ghosts and wraiths in borrowed faces, hands quick, backs straight, eyes that never quite learned how to squint into sunlight.
They moved almost like clockwork, and Radeon could not help his amusement.
They were unaccustomed to the press of humans and the stink of sweat and the sight of food in abundance, yet they did their best not to fumble a job this lucrative.
He even let the ghosts and wraiths eat as they worked. The reason was simple. A human mind understood warmth at once when it saw someone chewing.
It made the dead seem less dead. What's more, the hunger of the ghosts was sated. It was not simply shooting two bird, but sniping two great eagles with a stone's throw.
Yet there was a hollowness to them that no amount of efficiency could fill.
