Uncorpselike

At first light, around the time that the body of the kagan — a body that had already begun to manifest decidedly uncorpselike signs of movement — was being carried by an ill-assorted trio into a springhouse near a little-used gate of the Palace through which corpses and those who tended to them traditionally passed, the watch posted atop Qizl caught sight of a scattering of black seeds against the flickering gray of the southern horizon.