“So what did the Shoseki say?” Deidre asked, “He’s been marked by a death god hasn’t he?”

We were walking to Herne’s study because he needed “to attend to business that were not our concern”.

“I’ll explain later”. Frustration or perhaps annoyance clipped Herne’s capacity for small talk and general ability to weather Deidre’s incessant pestering.

Unable to get any information out of Herne, she turned to me.

“What’d he look like? This god of yours. Or goddess, you have that cherubic look, old ladies must love you, don’t they?”

“Um, I guess”, chatting with Deidre seemed like a quick route to getting verbally clawed. Needless to say, I was trying to keep conversations to a minimum. “It was a god, with these crazy, bulging eyes, messy hair, homeless looking. He had this gorgeous pen. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Huh, that doesn’t sound like anyone I know.”

“What’s with those contracts though?”

Deidre looked at me, incredulous. “Do you really not know anything?” She turned to Herne, “How could you not even explain the contracts? Is he even dead?”

She picked up one of my hands, the unmarked one, examining it with scientific rigor. “There isn’t even any sign of cracking, the color’s perfect.” She looked me in the eye, “there isn’t even any sign of clouding of the lens.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are, Finn. Glaucoma has to be the worst thing about dying.”

Looking at her again, I did notice that her skin had a pale, gray sheen, and her eyes were a very pale blue, made more so by a slight clouding of the lens.

“There’s no way you did his resuscitation, Herne. It’s too good.”, she glanced at me with an eyebrow arched. “So who did it?”

“My sister” It hurt to even think about Macha. Homesickness rolled over me like a sudden wave of thunder. Deidre gave a scandalized gasp, “Herne! You grave robber, what a thing to do, stealing poor babes out of their caskets! How could you?”

“Stop being so dramatic, Deidre. I did no such thing. Finn was dead. He came to life. The only thing I did was open the lid.” Herne said, exasperated.

“If Herne didn’t rescue you from the grave, why are you here, Deidre?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Deidre tossed her hair over her shoulder. “If you must know, my full name is Deidre ó Maoilriain, heiress to the Maoilriain company and fortune. Or I was, until a tragic incident that ended with my beloved betraying me which resulted in … you know”, she gestured flippantly, “at least we hadn’t gone through with the wedding yet, then the company would really be in trouble. Anyway, after all that drama, Papa decided it’d be best for me to live and learn with our dear old guardian, Herne, for the time being.”

“He has a history of dealing with these things” she said in stage whisper. “So that’s my lifestory. Woe is me”, placing her hand dramatically on her forehead.

We arrived at Herne’s study, a great hulking beast of a door barred the entrance. Herne whipped around, “Stay!”, he spit, then locked himself in. Instead of opening on its hinges, the planks of wood and metal simply rotated as Herne walked towards it, opening up a perfectly sized whole to allow him entrance. Once he was inside, I could hear at least several locks being turned, the entire door shuddering, the metal and wood flipping back into place as gears turned, aligning in a wonderous feat of engineering. The whole contraption stopped with a great, satisfying thud.

I tried walking towards the door, which unsurprisingly, stayed shut. It might as well have been a wall. The whole display only left me more curious about what could be behind that door, such a device must offer great security and not even the door to the house was so secure.

“Have you ever been inside?” I asked Deidre.

“No of course not”, she replied archly, “Don’t even think of asking, I did once, and he got himself into such a rage, he wouldn’t even look at me for three days.”

We waited, or rather I waited, after a few minutes Deidre lost interest and wandered off, to the library, or her room, or elsewhere I do not know and she wasn’t interested in sharing. Finally, Herne emerged and again the door made a wonderful performance of turning itself inside out.

“Still here, eh?” Herne glanced at me, with glazed disinterest.

“That god of yours is bad news, boy. Took me ages to track him down, an obscure one. Tries to keep a low profile, but when he gets ahold of an acolyte, that’s you by the way, bad things happen”, an ominous tone creeping into his voice.

“Well, that’s not by problem”, he said nonchalantly, “that’s for whoever sponsors you.”

He led us into the living room and dropped himself in an armchair, kicking his feet up.

“Sponsor?” I asked.

“Oh did I forget to tell you? Old age you know”, he tapped a finger on his head, “you’re dead. I think we established that. Well, us living folk don’t really like having the dead running around acting as if they’re just as good as the living, not me though I couldn’t care less to be honest, so they established a sort of patron system where the dead need a patron in order to go about the lives. It’s unfair and unnecessary if you ask me but it pays my bills so I don’t mind a bit. The divine contract bit is just to make you more attractive to the patrons, you can get quite a bit more for a corpse with some magic than one without.”

“Though I don’t know whether the customers would like a slave who’s likely to set the city on fire or drive the parliament mad.” He added. “Hmm, the Underhands might be interested. In fact, I’d think they pay a hefty sum really.”

My heart was pounding, did he just say slave? At this rate, I’d never make it out of the city, much less find my way back home. Herne was a businessman, or at least he seemed to be one, and businessmen were loathe to make losing deal. All I had to do was make it seem like a terrible idea to sponsor me and make life for Herne miserable enough that he would be begging me to return to Macha.