The Necromancer’s Parlour (The Necromancer’s Remorse #1)

Ring-Lost Burden

Worthless. Unnotably worthless. A paperweight picked up and tossed in the bin without hesitation when the detritus builds up. I am nothing.

I knock my head into the wall again. The rush of feelings from my self-flagellation are making my fingers lose too much muscle tone to even keep biting their nails into my palm.

I can’t even suffer and scream correctly.

Lucia tried to be kind and get me an interview at her university. She said they were employing non-students too. Sweet act, if only the first sign I saw didn’t say ‘non-student Ringborn welcome to apply!’

Consorts could apply. If they could afford tuition and had any modicum of demonstratable skill in anything. I lack either. I can’t even properly work.

Another canning factory, too unsafe for the corpses to work in.

The rich consorts and their patrons wouldn’t want a cadaver to cut itself and get rotten embalming fluid all over their meats.

Fresh blood is far more food safe after pasteurization.

More twelve-hour shifts until I break my body and mind.

That’s what’s next for me. That’s what my vacant body is supposed to be good for. And when I learn again that it’s not…

I promised my mother I would interview today. She was confused enough at the idea at why I would consider any job fancy enough to need interviews; I can’t face home so soon to tell her I failed to even make it to the briefest of considerations.

So, I miss the streetcar. I take a different route. I make a few confused steps. I let the Ring guide my ignorant travels. May it make home far from me.

And it took me somewhere worse. A well off block, a little hub of comfort and decadence of the quality only a specific class of Ringborn knows.

The lesser Ringborn, still my greaters. They can touch the Ring and uplift a few consorts with them through their patronization to perform magic, but aren’t of any other aristocratic inheritance.

No, these are the boring rich. They can earn anything, but don’t yet own everything.

The Ring shines its light especially on a little place with a sign plated in sterling silver.

The Necromancer’s Parlour.

I’m not worth even one of those decadently reflective letters.

“I wish I wasn’t nothing.”

Some lucky person other than me will be though. ‘Closed for apprentice interviews,’ reads the poster outside it.

Everyone praises the necromancer. As taught to us by our Immortal Queens, there is no higher art for a Ringborn.

I can see the silhouettes of some of the Lich Queen’s soldiers on the other side of the street, near pitch black in the shade from the Ring’s radiance with only a dusting of street lights.

Whoever wins this necromancer’s apprenticeship will probably raise similar… The interviews are over, right?

The paper is undated, but it covers the main door. Though, it is dark—which might be when a necromancer would interview? Maybe interviews are ongoing? Still, the lights inside the parlour are off, so it’s weird that there’s nothing to say the shop is closed.

As I lean a hand on the door to inspect it, it effortlessly opens.

The, uh—well, I guess it’s open.

Ring, I’m stupid, aren’t I? If coming in here does nothing else, it means I don’t have to face another night at home so soon.

“Great Ring, I trust in you and you alone to guide me through this trial.”

I have absolutely nothing going for me. I’m not a Ringborn. I’m definitely not wealthy enough to afford the patronization of one. I don’t know the basics of necromancy.

I have only my faith in the Ring, just like every last person I’m competing against.

Though I… am alone right now, finding a seat between the books and cobwebs. The dark mahogany steals the weak illumination of the Ring’s equatorial reflection that seeps through the window. I am barely aware of even my own presence as I awkwardly sit and wait for something to happen.

Over seconds. Then minutes. And then an hour. The time spent wishing and ruminating.

I must really be late. Or maybe not in the right spot? But I can’t make myself disturb the mistress of this shop—She could be in an interview! I could ruin my distant chances, and not to mention the very real chances of the more fit person that would be in her room.

My hands clasp over the edge of the armchair I’m loitering in.

It could be good to make a fool of myself and leave.

But then she might think I was just a thief.

But it would also just be reasonable for her to realize I was applying to be an apprentice and hopefully not ask the Lich Queen’s soldiers to pursue me.

But I don’t know where I would excuse myself after that. I still need a couple hours before I can face another night at home, another wasted week to be interrogated over.

Brief sounds of footsteps click behind the only door in my sight, old planks creaking like they’re being stressed under heavy boots. The door opens, revealing a tall woman in a stereotypical black dress.

She’s old. The black of her tied back hair is interrupted by white strips.

Her face has some benefit of a necromancer’s preservation, but it’s weighed down by years of torment—same as about every other necromancer I’ve half seen.

Even the holy rings on her fingers have gone dull with age.

I’d place her as about a stressed out forty-year-old with decent fitness, which probably means she’s fifty to one hundred and twenty.

“We’re closed for today. Leave and come back tomorrow,” she demands in a voice both authoritative and absent minded.

“A-are the interviews over?”

She straightens and glares at me. “You came for an interview?”

“Yes! Please. I, uh, thought I could…”

“Come in.” She walks back through the door without waiting for my response.

I hop out of the chair and follow. The hallway is tight, with only two doors on this level and a steep stairwell up. One is already cracked open, and she leads me inside.

It’s a cramped office, but orderly. There’s very little in the way of a mess, except for the split cord on the landline.

She sits behind her desk, too large for the room it occupies. “Sit down.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I comply, chest held tight.

“Experience with necromancy?”

“None... Sorry.”

“What?” She inputs something into her typewriter before starting a new line. “Never mind. Next question: strength of your Ringborn ancestry?”

“I don’t have one.”

“…And you wanted to interview to be my apprentice?”

“Yes?”

The typewriter rings as she enters the next line. And then the next. And then the next next.

“I don’t know why I’m even…” She sighs and continues, “origin of your appreciation for necromancy?”

“I just saw the sign. I never actually cared about it before.”

Maybe I could’ve said something more tactful than that.

She already looks like she hit maximum disappointment. “Religion?”

“Ring?”

“I know.” Maybe… not quite maximum. “Which church are you?”

“My family doesn’t really go to any church.”

“In…active. Okay.”

New line.

“Do you ever smoke?”

“Tobacco or opium?”

Her eyes lift slightly off the keys. “Either.”

“No.” And I now feel stupid for needing clarification.

New line.

She stands up from the typewriter and fiddles the paper out of its hold. “Follow me.”

I didn’t even have to say my name to get rejected. Probably about what I could expect from such a terrible entrance—What was I thinking? Access to the Ring isn’t something given out for free, and not to people like me.

She locks the door behind me, slipping the key into her dress pocket. “Have you ever interviewed for anyone before?”

“No, sorry.”

“That explains a lot.” She sighs… and heads up the stairs.

I tentatively follow behind, losing confidence in what’s happening.

Another narrow hallway with three doors across its different sides. From her opposite pocket comes a loose key which opens the one directly straight from the stairwell exit.

She pulls the door open and holds out the key. “Don’t make a mess. I’ll start your work in the morning.”

I freeze.

I didn’t earn—What?

“Shouldn’t I sign something?” I stutter.

“Do I care?”

“You don’t even know my name!”

“And? You’ll say mine far more often than I’ll even think of yours. Mistress Vincenza Nasciowa, I’ll clarify. You may call me Mistress, Mistress Vincenza, or Mistress Vincenza Nasciowa.” She swings her hand into the cramped little room. “Are you taking it?”

“I have a home to get stuff back from and people to tell.”

“Then call them on the bedroom landline and or come back later and ask me for the key. I am not taking any more sass from an apprentice, got it?” She stomps up to me, looking down with a towering height advantage.

The offer is real, actually real. It never occurred to me that this was going to end up anywhere.

I can’t even begin to think about the implications, to hope about a secure future; I grab the key and run to claim the room.

“I am sincere about the consequences for you if you cause problems,” she warns.

“I understand, Mistress. Also, it’s Catarina de Alioni,” I pant.

“Mhmm.” She throws my door shut, deeply uninterested in my life changing moment.

Feeling my limbs start to tense from euphoria, I hop onto the tiny bed and take it in. This is a private room! It’s small, but it has a wardrobe, a door to probably a closet or bathroom—and a landline!

Calling them will make this real.

It will show them, too.