Callis and Toll by David Annandale

Author:David Annandale
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Dark fantasy
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2024-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

For the discarded of Cinderfall, death meant a pauper’s cremation. The district’s clean-up crews gathered up the bodies they found, or had heard about. Every dawn, there were always at least a few. After some nights, there were more than a few. They would bring the corpses to the giant crematoria that crouched like the dark dream of a bellows tower at the edges of the main cemeteries. The bodies went in, and another stream of anonymous ash poured out of the chimneys, adding itself to the perpetual gloom of the sky.

There were no ceremonies, no mourners, nothing to mark the passing. There was only disposal.

To be buried in Cinderfall signified status, however slight. To have a grave marker meant that one’s existence had been noticed, and one’s death mourned. It meant that, at some level, a life had mattered, and for many in Cinderfall, this would be their sole step outside the indistinguishable mass.

And to be buried in a coffin, rather than an urn: to enter the ground as a body, to take up that much space… That represented a level of aspiration.

Ivon’s burial took place in the cemetery of Toil’s End, south of the warehouse district. The day before, while Callis made the arrangements, Toll started to ask, ‘Is this something Ivon would have–’

Callis cut him off. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He didn’t care about any of this.’

‘He deserved this much,’ said Toll, and immediately regretted his words.

Callis glared at him. ‘And what is it, exactly, that you think he deserves?’

Toll said nothing. The day and night ahead were going to be difficult. No point enraging Callis ahead of time.

The crematorium tower cast its imposing shadow over the whole cemetery. Smoke poured from its great chimneys, and ash fell gently over the wide expanse of the graveyard. Ivon’s grave had been dug near the bottom of the hill that sloped down from the crematorium. A small iron marker would show where he lay. Further up the slope, the graves became more substantial. Stone slabs crowded each other, growing larger and larger until they became rows of mausoleums that surrounded the tower. The vaults and obelisks were the oldest monuments in the cemetery. It had been many years since anyone of that stature had been buried here. The rich of Hammerhal did not die in Cinderfall. If misfortune saw to it that they did, they would still find their resting places outside the district, in regions where splendour had not yet departed.

In the early evening, Toll stood just upslope from the grave, waiting for Callis and the other mourners to arrive. He watched them approach from the western end of the cemetery. It was not a long cortège. Callis and three comrades carried the coffin between them. They made a lonely, unescorted journey through the other graves.

Callis had paid for the burial. He had not paid for an ale-fuelled wake at the Head & Anvil afterwards. ‘I’m not buying friends for him,’ he had said. ‘If it matters to them, they’ll be here.

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