Chapter 15
LATE IN the afternoon, when the light filtered by the cover of clouds was fading, a handful of people gathered on the windy hillside on the eastern fringe of Tiverius. Women, mostly, those Lana had maintained contact with during her life. Her sister, a middle-aged woman with a heavy brow, and a cousin Sady remembered sitting in the kitchen at times. Only six of them to watch the bier, with the cloth-covered body, be swallowed by flames in the fire pit, standing a bit further away than usual, because the wind was particularly fierce and carried gouts of flame up the fire pit wall each time the wood popped.
The funeral celebrant from the Central Tiverius morgue—Sady made sure she got the best one—was unused to ceremonies with so few attendants. She seemed awkward, glancing from
