“Oh, yes, master-a work of marvels!” Abdmachus rubbed his hands together.

“What is it?” Krista stood on the other side of the table, with Gaius Julius. She looked upon the body in the crate with ill-disguised revulsion. It was not pretty. The skin had become a sallow yellow-green with dark patches and bruised traceries in the translucent skin. The hair on the head was matted and plastered to the skull. The remains of a dark-colored cloak and tunic clung to the limbs and torso, or such that was visible within the crumbling mud that still cradled it.

“Lady, it is a homunculus!” Abdmachus’ voice was breathy with delight. “The most useful of conjurations! A man made of the limbs and organs of the dead, but given new life by sorcery. See, his skin…”

“Stitched together,” said Maxian, who had broken the right arm free from the earth and extended it. His face was close to the mottled skin, so that he could make out the fine lines of skin that had been sewn together to hold the organs of the creature. “It must have taken months to construct such a thing.” He laid the arm down, and it hung limply over the edge of the table, the fingers still clutched into an agonized claw.

“Gaius, Abdmachus, help me remove it from this clay and ash. Krista, bring warm water from the fire, and cloths.” Maxian began to break the clods away from the body.

An hour later the body of the homunculus lay naked on the table. The charred tunic and tattered boots had been cut off it, and Maxian and Gaius Julius had washed the remainder of the dirt away. The body was of a man with craggy features and a high forehead. His arms were long, and his legs a little short for his torso. The trunk of the body showed the signs of ancient wounds, long ago scarred over. Its hair was lank and dark, not quite coming to the shoulder.

“It must have been on one of the upper floors of the house when the explosion came.” Abdmachus was sweeping the dirt up and piling it back into the crate, which had been pushed to one side of the kitchen. Outside, night had fallen fully on the city.

“We found it when we broke into the bottom of a chimney. It was there, packed into the bottom of the shaft, with rubble above it and deep in mud. I could feel it, though, even through the brickwork, like a dying flame. It might have been able to crawl out, if its master had not died in the fire.”

“And,” Gaius Julius said, “why do we care that the household was frequented by a walking pincushion?”

Abdmachus glared at the Roman. “Such a creature is well made for discreet errands, friend. It would be privy to many of the secrets of the house. If it could speak again, it could tell us much of its master’s business-perhaps even what we want to know. It may be centuries old. Ah, the things it has seen…”

Maxian leaned over it, his hands gently exploring the face, the throat, the rib cage. Gaius Julius sat down on the steps leading up to the rear kitchen. Krista was sitting there as well, her face pale. She moved away to the other end of the step. The dead man affected not to notice. The Prince began to hum a little tune, and in a moment there was a basso response from the stones of the floor. Then it stopped. Maxian looked up, his eyes unfocused. When they cleared, he cocked his head at Gaius Julius.

“I can restore this thing to life. Bring me blood, fresh blood. At least a gallon.”

The dead man’s eyes widened. The look on the Prince’s face was inscrutable, a mask.

“Ah… blood? What kind of blood?”

Maxian smiled at the fear in the eyes of the dead man. “Pig’s blood will do, Gaius Julius. But be quick, there is much work to be done.”

The dead man left, taking a copper bucket from the little kitchen. Krista disappeared upstairs. Maxian sat down on the step and wrapped his cloak around him. It was cold in the ground-floor room. Abdmachus sat on the chair, staring at the homunculus, muttering to himself.

A fat blue spark jumped from Maxian’s fingertips to sizzle on the cranium of the homunculus before it seeped into the flesh of the dead thing. The air wavered in a heat haze around the Prince as he bent over the body on the table, his hands held a knucklebone’s distance away from the head. He chanted under his breath, an ancient invocation to steady the mind and guide the thoughts. Abdmachus was his anchor, kneeling at the base of the table within the circle that they had hastily drawn in chalk and silver dust. Blue-white lightning rippled in the air between the two sorcerers, wrapping the body of the thing in a corona of light. Its limbs twitched and spasmed. Maxian’s voice rose into a shout as he funneled the power inherent in the air and bricks around him into the trembling form that he was drawing forth in the body of the dead man.

Suddenly, as that immaterial form coalesced into a shining perfect geometric shape, the body convulsed and the eyes, a bright yellow with red pupils, fluttered open.

“Aaaahhh!” The throat of the creature was dry and clogged with soot. It hacked and gasped for air.-Maxian’s gaze darted to Gaius Julius for a second, and the old Roman, his face a mask of disgust, leapt to the side of the table and turned the body over. Soot and water dribbled out of the thing’s throat. Lightning crawled across the tabletop and burrowed into the body. With each burning entry, the thing howled and twitched. It began to breathe, its airway clear at last.

“The blood,” Maxian snarled to Krista as Gaius Julius turned the body back over and held it down. It had begun to thrash and its strength, even weak from near dissolution, was immense. The old Roman’s veins stood out in his forehead as he struggled with his full weight and strength to hold it down. Krista hesitated but then stepped to the edge of the table. She held a heavy bladder in one hand, bulging with liquid, and a hose made of pig intestine in the other. Her hand darted out and speared the tip of the hose into the thing’s mouth. The head whipped from side to side as it screamed in agony.

Maxian’s hands seized the sides of the head, holding it still, though the neck muscles bunched and he was nearly thrown aside. Krista, her face an impassive mask, shoved the hose deeper into the thing’s throat. It bit at her, and Maxian’s fingers dug into the corners of its eyes. It shook again, its feet frantically beating a tattoo on the tabletop. Krista squeezed the bladder under her right arm and the hose filled with a thick red fluid. The blood surged into the mouth of the homunculus and filled its throat. Its screams were cut off by a horrible gargling noise, and blood spattered out of the mouth. Krista lunged in, her face twisted in disgust, and snapped the jaw up with one hand, while the other kept the hose from flying out of the mouth. Gaius Julius cursed; pig’s blood had sprayed across his face and chest.

The Prince’s fingers danced in the air above the corpse, and the flesh around the mouth suddenly crawled together around the hose, fixing it tight. Krista put her hand over her mouth and staggered back, overcome at the sight. Gaius Julius, lying fully athwart the corpse, gagged and turned his head away. Satisfied that the hose would not come loose, Maxian’s fingers sank into the bone and sinew around the skull, and the thing, with one last convulsion, lay still. A white-hot glow spilled from the thing’s eyes for a moment, and then the Prince withdrew his fingers, the bone melting back into place where there had been gaping holes a moment before.

Gaius Julius rolled off the bloody body and fell heavily onto the stone floor. He began retching in great heaving motions. Against the wall, Krista was huddled, her face in her hands. Only the Prince and Abdmachus still stood. Maxian laid a hand, gently, on the side of the homunculus’s throat. The flesh peeled back away from the hose and it slid out onto the tabletop, dribbling a last bit of blood. The creature breathed then, in a great shudder, and its eyes flickered open. Red pupils stared up, meeting Maxian’s calm brown eyes.