My bare fingertips strike against worn enameled keys.

Edmund and Marlene Barnes, aged 52 and 47, were executed by burning at the stake, Third Month of Summer, 27th Day.

I pull the lever. The yellowed paper rolls against the rubber barrel and shifts up. When I release it, a ringing clink echoes in the study office. By late afternoon nothing had been left of them except for their worldly possessions and charred pieces of bones and a soft mound of ash-I omit this information.

It takes me a moment to process the fact that I’m typing on Mr. Barnes’ machine, in Mr. Barnes’ mayoral office. Like everything, the Empire has taken possession of his belongings, and it was only part of the justice system to use it as agents see fit. 

I reserve no emotions for the Barnes', as do the rest of my covey. Perhaps we've experienced too many cases of Fiends to pay much mind. All I know is that without our services, and without the Creche, the world would be overrun with the undead.

I continue typing. Each key clacks with my strikes with a staccato rhythm.

Their crimes, as determined by a jury of their peers: harboring Fiend PA-178 for four months and feeding a total of six live humans to it.

A seventh victim, Mr. Ansel Cromley, had been bitten but self-excised the infection. He was brought to a criminal tribunal Third Month of Summer, 20th Day. He was found to have zero connections with harboring Fiend PA-178 despite profiting greatly from it.

However, Covey 709 bore witness and testified to several instances of Mr. Cromley’s theft and embezzlement. He was found guilty for petty crimes and was ordered by the townspeople to relinquish all the assets he had gained from the past four months to the Church.

He was also sentenced to nine months of community service effective immediately. No other secondary infections were reported or observed.

The men and women who had conspired with Edmund and Marlene Barnes were given lesser sentences. Their following names indicated by their conviction/s during the tribunal on Third Month of Summer, 20th Day:

My fingertips pause. I suspect the fines will take many the remainder of their lives to pay while I type out their names, closing with:

Commander Edith Victoria of the Western House of Cerna, Sabine of the North, 709th Covey, Creche of the Empire

I sigh aloud and pull the fresh paper out from the barrels of the typewriter. I take a long breath before reaching for a quill, exhaling while signing the five-page report above my typed closing. Once done, I press my thumb at the corner of the page.

I close my eyes and focus into the shadows through my thumb. A black seal imprints onto the page, like a flash of light against carbon. The atypical pattern of my print shows that I am from the House of Cerna, a descendant of the Blessed Consort of the West.

Alan stands nearby, hands held at the small of his back, patiently waiting for me to finish. As a member of Clan Aria, all communications are assigned through him. I make one more inspection through the pages and hand them out to my youngest covey brother.

“Alan, if you could please.”

After receiving the report, he holds the stack and straightens it by tapping it on the desk. Alan folds and creases the pages with military efficiency, bit by bit, and gently unfurls a set of feathered appendages. Soon, an intricate paper bird sits in the palms of his hands, cradled with care.

Alan holds the bird out of the office window sill and closes his eyes. A soft hum emits from his palms. Alive under Alan’s spell, the bird blinks and cocks its head at him before it flaps its wings and escapes out of the window and into the sky, leaving a trail of soft light.

---

It is the Third Month of Summer, 28th Day. It has been nearly three weeks since we first set foot in this village.

The weather is clear today, even pleasant, despite having to oversee the execution of the town mayor and his wife. But it doesn't take me long to move on from such events. We've all seen and experienced worse from this never ending hunt.

My covey brothers and I have set up a table by Mr. Cromley’s roadside wagon.  Several accounting books from the late Mr. Barnes are opened for cross-referencing. Before heading back to the Creche, we were ordered to process the liquidator’s assets so that the Empire could return the value to the town.

Gilbert is seated in a dining chair, busily swiping away at an abacus. His large fingers are deft and quick and his dark eyes shift back and forth with scrutiny. A pile of currencies sits on the table while he scribbles in calculations with an elegant hand. He does this with a perfect posture, like a conductor guiding a powerful symphony with a baton.

“Four shillings for Miss Newsom’s dress shoes. That takes Mr. Cromley’s debt down to 5 gold pieces.”

Thomas opens a potato sack full of clothing and scatters them out onto a dining table. Alan and I begin sorting out the plethora of items. I grab hold of a small button-up shirt, one that definitely did not originate from the large-framed Mr. Cromley, and fold it neatly for processing. Other articles, whether too worn or unfit for sale, are thrown into a pile later to be burned.

Alan pinches at a string of delicate lace and pulls it out from underneath layers of clothing. He holds up a skimpy transparent cream chemise.

“What’s this?”

Thomas begins to laugh. I snatch the silk lingerie away from Alan’s hands.

“Oh, Alan, you sweet summer child.”

“What?”

I ball up the chemise and toss it into the burn pile.

“It’s a woman’s unmentionables.”

Thomas continues chuckling while a pink flush sears on Alan’s soft face. Understanding his embarrassment, I gently push Alan to a stack of documents and a few volumes of textbooks.

“It’s better that I sort the clothing out.”

“What? Afraid Alan will get ideas?”

I emphasize my words with confidence.

“Alan is a gentleman.”

“How would you know? Maybe Alan prefers a little debauchery behind closed doors.”

Gilbert lifts his head from his work at the table. He throws a stern glance to Thomas, who unfortunately goads the topic further by nudging Alan with an elbow.

“Eh, Alan?”

I glance at Alan, who turns away from our conversation. He reaches for a large encyclopedia and his hands clumsily slip, causing the volume to fall to the floor. He sweeps it back up, opens it, and feigns ignorance by hanging his head over a random page. His face deepens to a beet shade all the way to the tips of his ears. I sigh aloud and shake my head vehemently at Thomas.

“This conversation is over, Rayner.”

“You heard the Commander, no more of this nonsense.”

“Just speaking the truth. Everyone’s entitled to a bit of pree-va-see, even from you, Commander.”

He says “privacy” in my dialect. My eyebrow twitches and he smirks that awful smug smirk of his, clearly trying to get a rise from me.

But Thomas was right. The covey’s personal matters are not my business and a proper commander shouldn’t pry. The Creche maintained a policy that entitled everyone to do as they please as long as there were no “dangerous fraternizing”. In particular, anything that resulted in the conception and birth of more unwanted Creche children.

“I really wonder how you ever managed to become Second-In-Command…”

  “Oh, you know, I'm a genius really, coupled with good looks.”

As he says this, he runs his fingers through his reddish blond hair.

“Your looks had nothing to do with it, neither had your overinflated genius. It was simply that bastard luck of yours.”

“Bastard luck” was a term the Creche coined specifically for Thomas. The Mother Superiors would constantly note that he must’ve been blessed by Cerna Himself, surviving incidents like a misfired bolt to his shoulder and a crushed foot from an errant cannonball. He really was no different from a cat with nine lives.

In the case of taking on leadership positions, Commanders and Second-in-Commands were elected once during our Mid-Years and again in our Dusk Years. In both situations Thomas was given the position as no other candidate was left standing. Other candidates would either face some disqualifying factor or bow out on their own, all without interference and purely on fortune. Again, it must’ve been his dumb bastard luck.

Thomas holds his chest with a mock expression of hurt, continuing on with his imitation of the Imperial dialect.

  “Commander! You wound me!”

“Enough, Thomas. Anymore and I’ll tack on more duties once you're back to the Creche, latrines especially.”

My threat is enough to keep him quiet for the moment, but I’m certain that he’s disinterested in our present duties as he’s minimally processing each article of clothing. His face has boredom written all over it.

Ugh, Cerna Almighty, he’s such a pain.