My Father’s Bones Are Winter’s Tithe
“Do you believe in ghosts, child?”
Men from the Hellions — a gang in the King’s City — came to find my father, but he was already dead. His heart had given out on one of the hunts in the summer. What lay in that grave now was not him — just a rotting carcass with maggots given way to what had once been a full form of flesh and marrow.
“That cannot be,” the first Hellion, a man in a crimson cloak, said.
“Why can’t it?” I challenged. “Do you want to see his grave yourself?”
The man wiped a hand down his face before he said, softly, “The King’s Seer said he was going to be the one to head the battle that would ensure our kingdom’s survival.”
I nearly snorted. My father had never given much thought to charlatans from the King and his ilk. “Oh, yeah? Maybe I should go dig up his bones then, and we can reanimate him, and then you can have your general for the coming war.”
The man’s eyes, dare I say it, lit with something like hope.
All I could do was laugh harder.
The man’s expression darkened. “You jest with me.”
“Of course I jest. You think I’m a necromancer? No. They exist, but they would take a kingdom’s bounty just to raise even one soul. Do you think any of…
