Aelia caught a whiff of the graveyard -- if it could be called that -- long before she saw it. It pervasively perfumed the air miles around it with the scents of rotting flesh and feces disguised (a little) by a sweeter flowery fragrance. That perversity made it far worse than the blanket she had once wrapped around her shoulders. The dishonesty of the smell boiled her stomach and she did her best to stop it rising up her throat.

"You didn't check his pockets?" Henry said, chastising.

"Of course not," argued Aelia. "Why would I do that? I'm not a graverobber."

Henry sighed. "He's not in the grave yet, is he?"

"Point stands. Besides, wouldn't his family have taken anything of value off him already?"

"Would you touch a dead body that could give you the plague?"

Aelia grew indignant and a little concerned. "I just did! And if you think these gloves were any protection, then--"

"You and I both know we can't get the plague from touch. But the families don't. Superstition is still rife, even here. Most of them don't want to risk putting a hand in an inside pocket."

"Well, how do they get them to the front door without touching them?"

He shrugged. "They get inventive. Maybe they puy the body in a rug and roll it there. Maybe they just prod it along with sticks."

She almost laughed at the image of a family rolling a body along with sticks as if it were a game, but quickly repressed the image, angry with herself for having thought it. "Either way, it's still stealing for us to do it."

"We're honoring the dead."

Aelia snorted. How could stealing from a recently deceased person be honoring them?

Henry continued, "I'm sure they wouldn't want their fine property to go to waste, buried forever under the ground."

"No," she said, considering, "what I suspect most would like is for their 'fine property' to go back to their family."

Henry rolled his eyes but said nothing. Aelia considered it a little victory.

Houses (the few poor houses that lived in range of the foul odor) became more sporadic and the city itself seemed to have been left behind them -- although they were still within the walls, Henry assured her.

The sun was rising nervously and the ground oranged by its first beams. Aelia saw the earth around the wagon was loose here, as if recently turned. Not entirely, just little unmarked patched. Rectangles of disturbed soil.

The cart bumped its way over the mounds. Aelia wanted to ask about them, but also didn't want to ask about them. It would make what she knew was under them a fact, and she had enough facts to carry already.

Before long, there were no houses. Just a wide expanse of land, parts grassy, but mostly naked red earth. She heard clinking somewhere ahead, and soon saw the silhouettes of a good dozen men and women with spades in their hands, their backs hunched over as they piled earth to the side of new tiny pits.

"Welcome to the Great Morgue," Henry said, as the wagon rolled past the gray-faced gravediggers.

It didn't look like a morgue. Barely looked like a cemetery. But there were occasionally mounds she noticed that had wooden planks sticking out of them.

"Why do some have those sticks and not others?" she asked.

"Relatives can pay the Morgue for extra services. Get their loved one's name carved into the wood so they can come here and find them. Pay their respects."

"Come here?" she said, a little aghast. "Who would want to visit this? It looks like a battlefield where both sides lost."

"Not many choose to visit," he conceded. "More for worry of the plague than for how bleak it is here, I suspect."

No wonder, she thought. Even her own body wanted to jump off the cart and run back into town. But she needed a job and she'd come all this way.

A structure loomed into view. A strange structure for anywhere in Rhodes, Aelia thought. Not brick. Not thatched. But a large marble building with a domed roof. It wasn't quite circular, although it had a circular enough shape. It was many-sided, each flat. Next to the strange structure stood (just about stood) three wooden shacks.

A couple of horses and carts were parked outside one of the shacks, and a handful of people queued by the arched door of the main building.

"What is that place?"

"That's the Morgue itself. It's there where Phileas lives."

"Who's Phileas and why the gods would anyone live here?"

"Didn't I say? He's runs the Morgue -- and as such, he runs us. Oh, speak of the devil!"

The doors of the marble building slowly opened, and a tall man with long tufts of white hair on the side of his head stepped out. He wore a grey cloak, that might have once been white, and reminded Aelia of a priest.

"Is that him? Phileas?"

"That's him." Henry guided Rufus to the nearest of the three shacks, where bales of hay and a trough of water waited, along with two other horses. He hopped down and unhitched Rufus and patted his head. "Good work tonight, boy." Then, he turned to Aelia and said, "Come on, we'd best join the queue."

But the queue had already dispersed by the time they'd reached it and Phileas was turning to go back inside.

"Excuse me," Henry said, jogging up to the old man. "Mister Copperville!"

Phileas stopped, then turned to face them. Up close, Aelia saw that his face was a web of scars. Some deep, others raised as if the wounds that had caused them had been melted shut. His lips were thin and one of his eyes was white and only white, and she wondered if he was blind in it. His overall appearance made him look as if he had more right to a grave than the body she had hauled.

"Ah," said Phileas. "Mister Potro. What can I help you with? It's not payday and I won't pay you early."

Aelia couldn't bring herself to look at that ruined face for long. She glanced back and noticed that their wagon had been swarmed by the group of people that had been queuing. They were pulling down the bodies, removing shoes and jackets and throwing them into wheelbarrows.

Gods, she wanted to be back on the farm right now.

"You might remember, sir, that my esteemed colleague Warren quit on me, a few days back."

"Ah, you're chubby little partner. Stopped turning up for work, is that what you said?"

"Yes, sir," said Henry.

Aelia would have been amused by how formally Henry was trying to speak (she was sure he'd even poshed up his accent) if she hadn't been so revolted by the entire situation.

"And this," Henry said, putting a hand on Aelia's shoulder, "is a good friend of mine, a hardworking friend, who I would greatly like to work with me as Warren's replacement. She's already helped me out tonight, no charge, and was to me, invaluable."

Aelia forced herself to look back at the malformed mortician and even did her best to smile. "Pleased to meet you, sir." Did she really need this job? Give it a few days and she could probably find tavern work. How hard could it be to pour drinks and sweep cellars?

"What's your name, pretty child?

I'm not a child, she wanted to say, but instead answered, "Aelia."

"Aelia. With the phoenix hair." He held out a hand. Long spindly fingers with nails that twisted around themselves.

She repressed a shudder as she took it. It's just a hand, she reminded herself as she shook. Just a horrible dirty palm.

He let her hand drop and spoke to Henry, "You may have her. The plague is increasing its potency, it seems. More bodies are needed all around." He smirked, then said, more to himself than to Henry, "It might be back to pits instead of shallow graves soon."

"Thank you, sir," said Henry. "We won't let you down."

"Show her where the equipment is. She'll want her own gloves and lantern."

"Sir," said Aelia, awkwardly. "Thank you for hiring me."

He smiled, showing sharp crooked teeth.

"But I've one question."

"And that is?"

"Do any of these... victims, do any of them move after death?"

He frowned and looked curiously at her. Then laughed. "Everyone worries that the dead aren't so dead when they first start, my dear. No one wants to bury someone alive." He paused as if to let the words sink in. Then added, "You'll soon get used to working with the dead."

Something about his answer did less to reassure her than it did to add a new layer of concern.