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“Do you honestly believe that dogs don’t have souls? Have you ever met a dog who wasn’t a hundred times nicer than your average human being?” “Um, no?” “Exactly. Don’t insult dogs like that.”
It was simply that she believed everyone deserved a ritual to usher them into the next life, and if that left no one but her to say a few words over an unmarked grave, she was more than willing to do what was good and right.
“I know this pit is probably not what you would’ve wanted for yourself, but to be honest, it’s the living who care, not you, not anymore. All those folks in their fancy boats getting interred here or shipped home? They’re going to the same place as you. Some of them have been preserved in Tanrian heartnut sap. Some of them will be buried in shipyards, in airtight boats that aren’t supposed to leak. Some will be burned to ash in their boats and scattered on the ocean by loved ones. But in the end, they’ll all sail the Salt Sea, like you. The Warden will welcome them into the House of the
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Lilian nudged Mercy. “Let’s escape while we can. Want to get another slice of cake?” “Does the Mother of Sorrows want a vacation? What kind of question is that?”
She hoped this woman loved her husband as much as he seemed to have loved her. Then again, she wondered which was sadder: losing someone you truly loved, or never loving someone to begin with.
Hart thought, not for the first time, that a human soul would have to be pretty lost and desperate to possess a half-rotted grap. Then again, who was he to judge? He was lost and desperate with increasing frequency himself.
Good gods, he thought, I’m turning into a fucking feelings factory.
Here are some bills. I suspect they shall be as depressing as a silent lover. Kiss, kiss.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.” “But you love me anyway.” Duckers shot him a bright, toothy grin before opening the door with his butt and exiting with a flourish. Salt Sea and all gods of death, Hart did kind of love that brat.
There are still war and greed, envy and fear, and all the dark, sad things that the Old Gods put into the world. Once those things entered our hearts, there was no removing them, even if the gods who created them are long gone.
“I am taking advice from a drunk rabbit,”
Mercy spent the rest of the day with a sinus headache and a mediocre novel. It was, by far, her best day of the week.
“I’ll take her,” the man with his hand on Mercy volunteered, and Hart wished there were dragons in Tanria so that he could chop off this incompetent asshole’s arm and feed it to one of them.
Hart glanced down at the Handshake That Would Not End.
Hart was late for work. Very, very late. He could not possibly care less.
“I’m not trying to tell you anything. You’re yanking it out of me with brute force.”
“They’re terrifying, but you get used to them.”
“Forgive her. Her filter is flimsy.”
“Solid plan, especially the chocolate part, but only if it also involves you buying me a blueberry muffin the size of my head.”
“Why did we bring him?” Lilian whispered to Mercy as if Nathan couldn’t hear her, when he was literally crammed up against her in the autoduck. “In case Cunningham’s henchmen want to murder us when we catch them red-handed?” “Yeah, all right. That makes sense.”
“Stay here,” Mercy told Lilian as she got out of the cab. “That’s what he said!” “Are you seriously making a ‘that’s what he said’ joke right now?” “No, that’s what Nathan literally said! And now they’re shooting at us!”
Then again, any bed without Mercy in it felt empty. He wondered if that emptiness would dissipate with time. Part of him hoped it would, and part of him hoped it wouldn’t.
One of them—the girl—was smart enough to run. The boy remained pinioned in place by Hart’s icy glare. Girls were always smarter than boys.
