The Ghost doesn’t give me any more specific orders, doesn’t even tell me to stop taking my tiny doses of poison. He doesn’t direct me to do anything differently; he leads me home to catch scraps of sleep just after dawn. As we’re about to part, I want to stop and throw myself on his mercy. I’ve done a terrible thing, I want to say. Help me with the body. Help me.
But we all want stupid things. That doesn’t mean we should have them.
I bury Valerian near the stables, but outside the paddock, so that even the most carnivorous of Madoc’s sharp-toothed horses are unlikely to dig him up and gnaw on his bones.
It’s not easy to bury a body. It’s especially not easy to bury a body without your whole household finding out. I must roll Valerian onto my balcony and hurl him into the brush below. Th
