We walked through the cold, claustrophobic gloom for what felt like another half an hour. Several times we happened on piles of crumbled bone strewn across the path, and kicked or stumbled over them. They rattled across the floor, hollow and dry. “Are these where Kingsmen are interred?” I asked. “I remember you saying that Kingsmen can’t have gravestones.”
“No,” said Walter. “I believe these are previous royal family, and councilmen and women. You’ll know a king’s tomb when you see it. They’re the big stone sarcophagi.”
Normand sneezed. “When I die, I would like to be cremated on a pyre where my father’s ranch Oriensligne used to stand. It’s only a hollow now, a dip in the forest full of wildflowers and ringed by pines. When I’m finished burning, take my ashes to the middle of the Aemev, to Finback Fathoms.”
“Good lords, you want your ashes spread there?” asked Eleanor. “It’s nothing but a den of thieves, whores, and slavers, an island soaked in blood.”
“I don’t want them spread there. I want you to go and blow my ashes in the slavers’ faces.”
Noreen screwed up her face in disgust. “That’s gross, Dad.”
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