Mazelton never knew how to describe the heat sensing ability of a polisher. Like the old riddle of explaining sight to someone blind from birth. It was like seeing and feeling and tasting and all the other senses, but only like them. Similar, but not at all the same. You relied on visual metaphors because, well, what else were you going to do?

Mazelton visualized his body as a bone white statue, with fine glass veins running through it. The heat passed through the fine veins and returned to the core- like a secondary system of capillaries covering his entire body. He had spent so many hours studying himself. Every night as he cleaned the heat from his body, he stared at himself. Letting the gentle pulse of his circulation help lull him to sleep.

He started sweeping the heat from his body. Comfortable in the steps of the dance he practiced every day. Sometimes he pushed the heat along, sometimes he flirted with it, luring it with his own energy. It spun and spun around him, aggregating, clumping, leaving the tissues and the blood unharmed as it spun down into the core of him. The shining sun dangling beneath his heart. Once the little dancers in his blood were organized, he started them racing along the little glass veins instead. The heat didn’t touch his flesh any more. It didn’t have a chance to burn away his cells, leaving future tumors and sickness in its wake. The heat, in this epoch as in all others, was obedient to the Ma lineage.

The Ma despised clanless polishers. They had the capital to do so.

The heat traveled through the little glass veins and congregated in his left thigh. A bigger amount to clean, but less risk if he had to carve away the flesh afterward. He would miss his left hand, but walking with a limp wasn’t too bad. The heat started to build around the wound. He let it leak out of the invisible veins, raising the temperature of the flesh. He knew that there was a point, a definite point, where both the invading sickness and the healthy flesh would both die. The key was to increase the heat to just under that point. He didn’t have to kill all the sickness, just enough to render it harmless. So he kept it up.

It hurt. It hurt so, so much! Like iron wires running through the open wound, one end stuck in a fire, the other drilled into his marrow. Like he was boiling from the inside out. He clenched his teeth as sweat poured down his face. He couldn’t scream. In his mind he chanted- “I’m not weak, I’m not scared. I’m not weak, I’m not scared. I’m not weak, I’m not scared.” The same chant he used when he went on to the sands to duel, and the moment before he bound his tools and felt them acknowledge him. It was his chant when he told his parents he wouldn’t be joining the Armaments Hall, or any of the polisher’s halls, but would fight for a title in the Flower Court.

“Stop. Stop! You did it, stop it now!”

With a groan, Mazelton drew the heat back into his core. He drank half a bucket of water, and lay twitching for a bit.

Madam Lettie didn’t say anything, just looked at him with enormous eyes.

Mazelton took a deep breath, sat up, and did it again. He couldn’t afford to lose an arm, so he’d just have to take the pain. When he was done, Madam Lettie left without saying a word.

Bastard arm was still broken, though, and his thigh was still shredded. He was confined to the wagon for the next couple of days. In an act of cosmic unfairness, the passing country remained as boring as ever. The only thing that happened for the next week was that the country got dryer, the trees got sparser, and Madam Lettie avoided him.

Mazelton sprawled around the campfire, his cane close to hand. The break wasn’t all that bad, so a splint and a sling was enough to keep him healing well. But it itched, and his arm ached. He moved it gently twice a day, just like the other times he broke bones. The inflammation was going down, but he knew it would be another three weeks at least before it was properly healed. The stitched up leg was, strictly speaking, in better shape than the arm, but he had lost muscle there. He didn’t know how long it would take before he could walk easily. So he stretched it, and stumped around on the cane as much as he could, to maintain flexibility and build the muscle back as fast as possible. It was incredibly exhausting. Mazelton couldn’t move how he was used to, which tired him, and moving at all was painful, which also tired him fast.

He started having people bring their barrels to him for purification. At the very least, he could swing a core around. Better than nothing.

Tonight, they were on the bank of a rather charming little river, some thirty or forty feet across at its widest, but not too deep. Willows shaded it here and there, with wide bottomed pine near the bank. Perhaps they were even Larch. Most folks were having fun splashing around in it, bathing, and cleaning clothes. It was hot. Early summer hot, not too terrible, but hot enough to steam up all the moisture the spring rains trapped in the ground. Mazelton would have liked a swim too. Alas.

He couldn’t help but notice most of the swimmers segregated by sex, and generally swam in turns. It was the dumbest thing he had seen in a while, the drunk fella who tried to kiss an auroch included.

It wasn’t a chaste kiss on the nose. He tried to slip the auroch some tongue.

Mazelton sipped his tea. He could understand, intellectually, that this really mattered to people. That these little invisible boxes were restricting, yes, but comforting. The nice thing about boxes is that they are tidy. Things fit in them, or not. And they are stable when stacked neatly together. No stress, no uncertainty. It’s in the box, or it’s bad. But he had never really fit in a little box. A big box was better, but still confined him uncomfortably. He thought that was the appeal of a new settlement- biggest possible box, or even no box at all. But here they were, bringing their boxes with them.

Mazelton grinned into his cup. He wondered if they would mind him seducing their sons. Of course, for propriety’s sake, no women would be permitted to watch. Oh, actually, maybe they could watch as long as he and his lover kept most of their clothes on. The womenfolk must be bored too- accommodations should be made.

He chuckled, which got Policlitus looking over at him.

“Something funny?”

“Just being silly. And some fun memories.”

“Not to be a jerk about it, but everything you have mentioned about your past sounds horrible.”

“Oh not at all! I had friends, loads of relatives I got along with, I was frequently out socializing and performing- it could be hard, but it was fun too.”

A teamster butted in.

“So, no piles of skulls haunted by slain enemies, bound to burn eternally in the cook fires of the Clan?”

“Where in the Dusty World did you hear that?!”

“Just checking.”

“I mean, how would that even work? We are a clan of polishers- we used hot stones for everything. I didn’t see a fire used for cooking until last fall.”

“Can’t help but notice you aren’t denying the “piles of skulls and tormented souls” bit.” Policlitus decided to “help.” He was bored too.

“We did have piles of skulls.” Mazelton admitted.

The campfire went quite still.

“In the catacombs, where almost everyone’s bodies got interred. Well, everyone not in a Clan.”

“And the tormented souls?”

“Nope. Not a thing. There is not a single ghost, demon or malign spiritual entity anywhere near a Ma Clan house, and few would be willing to come near us individually. As a Clan, we are more or less completely ghost free.”

“Auroch shit!”

“No really, we have people for that kind of thing.”

“People. Like… shaman or something?”

“No. Well, sort of. Kind of yes, mostly no. A division of the Hall of Rituals and Offerings would regularly patrol and cleanse the Clan house. Added to that, the patron spirits of the Clan regularly received offerings in exchange for disposing of any lingering spirits of resentment or other supernatural critters. Kind of a boring job, if you ask me. A lot of wandering around dark corners, chanting, carving your face with bits of obsidian, waving talismans drawn in blood and semen, and smearing walls with strange ungulants… might as well be a janitor.”

“Yeesss, that sounds like any job sweeping floors and mucking stalls that I ever did, mhm.”

People nodded firmly.

“Right? Really dull stuff. They kept trying to transfer out after a couple of years, but hey, the job needed doing and they were going to do it. No, the really freaky stuff was the stuff that wasn’t quite ghosts.”

Toko looked curious. “Not quite ghosts?”

Mazelton nodded firmly. “So, the main thing that the old cities are built on is older versions of themselves. The city got built in that spot for good reasons, usually, and those reasons stay good, even if the world around them changes. So you have millennia after millennia of stuff just piling up and compacting down.”

Mazelton took a long sip of tea.

“So this took place the week after my Rite of Passage. I was still really skinny, trying to bulk back up on oily noodles and more bean curd than could possibly be healthy. As a result, my stomach hurt. I also really didn’t feel like seeing anyone in my Clan for a bit. I couldn’t vanish for too long, or I would catch hell when I turned back up again. Just… having a quiet spot where I could be alone with my aching gut and not have to think about seeing anyone I knew, well it became a sudden obsession.”

Mazelton eloquently waved his mug.

“So I set off exploring. A bit of a tradition in the old cities, and I was always an enthusiastic explorer. Eventually I made my way to the catacombs, and from the catacombs to the tunnels under the catacombs, which have also been used as catacombs on occasion. Epoch and necessity demanding.”

He took a long drag of pine needle tea, and desperately wished it was wine or something stronger.

“I don’t know if you have ever seen bones in that kind of quantity. It just becomes stuff. Awkward stuff. Dusty, unhealthy, brittle stuff. It’s not even a question of becoming numb to it, it just fades into the background entirely. Lousy building material too.”

Someone dropped a bowl.

“How… do you know that?”

“Not relevant. Anyway-”

“No, I really want to know exactly how…”

“SO ANYWAY, I’m walking through these tunnels way, way down under the city. Generally Xi Clan turf, but even they aren’t too precious about it when you are that far down. Just too many miles of empty corridors and tunnels and abandoned sewers, and yes, catacombs. Most of it just pointless holes in the earth. It can be a problem if something collapses, sure, but there is so much stuff stacked on top of it that it infills really fast.”

Mazelton set down his mug.

“I found this little alcove with a skeleton in it. Cross legged, bowl in its lap. No idea what that’s about, but the skeleton has a slightly golden sheen. Not like it was made of gold or anything, but it was more yellow and metallic looking than bone generally is. I thought it was pretty neat, and had some vague thoughts about bringing it back to show off. My guts had more or less settled down, and the skeleton had made me forget, for a second, that I didn’t really want to talk to anyone.”

He waved his hand for emphasis.

“Gold. Skeleton. That’s pretty awesome, right? I was fourteen, everyone wants to show off when they’re fourteen. So I start looking around for stuff to make a sack out of. There are usually shrouds or something around, but they can be really rotten with age. Textiles generally don’t hold up well, but there are exceptions. But no, nothing. This really is about two miles beneath nowhere.”

“Alright, no shroud, but I have my robes, and robes have belts, so I can at least take the skull. Just hang it from my belt when I’m climbing, no big deal. Not the weirdest thing I have had hanging from my belt, even then.”

“Again, I think I really need to know exactly how…”

“So I went to lift the skull off, and got a hand on either side of it. You want to give a sharp lift and twist to sever any remaining organic material, but you have to keep the skull supported so the jaw doesn't break off. I set myself a firm stance.”

Mazelton paused and looked around the fire.

“The skeleton reached up and grabbed my wrists.”

Silence.

“Its fingers started digging in. It just sat there, squeezing. Like if it squeezed hard enough, my hands would burst off and I would bleed out in front of it. I panicked. Tried to yank my hands back, tried to kick the skeleton, but nothing worked. Eventually some part of my brain remembered the grappling lessons in the Martial Field. I made the little circles with my hand, putting my weight against the weakest point in the grip- the thumb. I broke loose.”

“I staggered back, ready to run like hell, but the skeleton didn’t get up. It just picked up its bowl and kind of… waved it at me.”

Mazelton mimed wiggling the bowl up and down, like he was asking for it to be filled.

“I stand there, frozen, as this thing is waving its bowl at me. I suddenly see it- it's begging for alms.”

He shook his head.

“I shine my light core on it, and the whole thing is covered in faint tracings. Runes, I think, and remnant technologies I won’t even pretend to understand. The skeleton stays right where it is, begging. Not knowing what else to do, I flick a rad into its bowl. It looks straight at me. No eyes, but I swear it was looking straight at me. It picks up the rad and pressed it right here- the third eye. The rad sinks in and the whole skeleton pulses with a golden light. It tilts its head up and opens its mouth like it’s screaming something. Then it shatters into dust. All of it, even the bowl.”

Mazelton shook his head.

“In the back of the alcove there were a few words written. No language I had ever seen, and I’ve never seen the like since. Below that was a picture of an incredibly fat man being carried on the backs of starving people. And the fat man’s eyes were still flecked with gold.”

He looked around the campfire.

“He had been waiting down there, or whatever they made him into had been waiting down there, for someone, anyone, to consider him worthy of charity. For epochs. The worst bit, for me, is that it was clearly still sane. It defended itself with the least force possible, then it begged as best it could. It recognized a real, living person and didn’t confuse it for a hallucination. It was alone, in the dark, horribly sane and conscious, for epochs.”

Mazelton picked up his tea and finished it off in one gulp.

“And that’s why the Ma Clan has people to keep the ghosts down. We insist on our dead staying dead, ourselves very much included. Pretty much every Clan has a similar office, for the same reasons. We tend to do it differently, though. For example, the Xia Clan sacrifices money. Nothing else, just money.”