At dusk, a plain carriage stopped beside the cemetery on a street that had regained order but remained desolate.
The small merchant Alyosha stepped down from the carriage, then turned back to give the grocery-shop girl inside a few instructions. Wearing an old overcoat that lent him a touch of respectability, he looked around. Soldiers patrolled the street, but there were even more funeral processions.
Beneville had only just recovered from the chaos. All those who had died in the past few days for one reason or another were being buried now, making the cemetery—which usually saw few visitors—"lively."
Men and women wept around one freshly dug grave after another as coffin after coffin, all in a similar style, was lowered into the earth. The Winter Wolf priests, who rarely took part in comforting the dead, were unusually involved in the ceremonies.
Perhaps the inevitable rise of the Shrine of Wealth here had made these clergy, who had long stayed in their comfort zones, feel the pressure of strong competition.
That wasn't a bad thing.
Otherwise, the few fake priests in the city who specialized in funerals would never have been able to handle the current workload.
Alyosha didn't like cemeteries, but he had returned to Beneville only that afternoon and knew he had to come here. Whether to mark the end of the upheavals of the past month or to cope with all the sudden changes in his life, he needed somewhere quiet to think things through.
He faced a complicated choice.
Everyone around him had tried to offer advice, but he still wanted to make the decision himself.
Holding a bouquet of white flowers, the small merchant walked along the paved path toward the cheapest, most remote part of the cemetery. He soon reached Artyom's grave.
He had