The full moon hung over London, pale and draped in clouds like fine cloth the way it had looked since the time of the romans, and it drew a light drizzle over the city like a blanket. Le Tymp pulled his hat down to shield his face as he drove the spade into the ground once more.
The damp made the earth pliant under their tools, and soon his accomplice and he had finished their grim work and the body lay revealed. A drop of rain ran down his pale cheek as they stood over him.

"You get the legs," 04 said, and together they heaved their prize into a waiting crate. He was fresh enough to be heavy and delicate, plump flesh only just staining with decay. Pristum would pay them good money for him.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

As they did every week, they trudged out of the graveyard and set their cargo down at the entrance to brush the grave dirt off their hands and boots. Theirs was a dangerous business, but it payed well enough that they could afford the handsome cloaks that warded off any passing constable's suspicions. Sometimes even the other night dwellers shunned them; not a soul on these streets wanted to acknowledge that the medical advancements of their time had been carried into the academies and hospitals on their backs.

They rested the crate against Doctor Pristum's front stair and 04 ascended to call on the man. Le Tymp shoved his hands into his pockets and wandered off around the building. It was the last on the block, and both the good doctor and the shop in the neighbouring building used the alley between them as a temporary storage space. From time to time he enjoyed the clandestine look at things he would never be able to afford in his life time.
In the half darkness Le Tymp tripped over something, and when he tried to catch himself his hand found no purchase in a toppling stack of boxes and barrels. The cool wet cobble stone knocked the breath out of him, but at a noise behind him he instinctively scrambled to turn around. This ended with him on his behind, clutching the arm he'd landed on and staring up at an unfamilliar young man in the process of catching a barrel that would have crushed his leg.

He was tall and almost oddly proportioned, with dark hair and darker eyes that regarded him with little interest.
With a heavy thump that made the liquid inside slosh, he set the barrel down, and for a split second it looked like he was surrounded by a halo as the light of a lantern in a window above glinted off the fine hairs sticking out from his head.

"Are you an angel?", Le Tymp asked, sounding breathless as the night air rushed back into his lungs, bringing with it a wave of dizziness.

The man laughed at him, although his face barely moved with the expression. He stepped close, holding out a hand to help him up, and Le Tymp noticed how strangely handsome he was lit up with the lantern's warm yellow and the moon's pale blue.

"Something like that."

His hand was cold as ice, but at least it wasn't wet like Le Tymp's was. If the man noticed, he made no comment about it.

"You must be the resurrectionist," he said with a rudely raised eyebrow.

"As I live and breathe. And you are?"

"Your gracious saviour, naturally."
His voice was gravelly, and as he spoke he bared his teeth a bit in a way that reminded Le Tymp of the stray dogs they sometimes had to compete with for the dead.
"You may call me Tex. I am doctor Pristum's new assistant."

"What happened to the old one?", Le Tymp asked, discreetly brushing his hands off on his cloak.

"How should I know," Tex said flatly, and led him to the building's back door, swinging the key ring around his finger casually.

He did not help them as they carried the corpse inside and unloaded it, just stood and watched with his arms crossed and meted out their payment when they'd done it.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

There was something about Tex that stuck in Le Tymps mind. He didn't have the look of a student of medicine; previous lackeys of Pristum's had all had that gleam of excitement in their eye. The upper class boys found a thrill in transgression that the rest of them could scarcely afford.
His dress, too, was more akin to that of a workman than a sawbones in training. Unwisely, he found this intriguing instead of irrelevant to him, which it was.

Unexpectedly, the next time their paths crossed was later that same week, when he came across Tex emptying buckets of blackened congealed blood into the Thames.

He greeted the man cheerfully as he came up beside him, but Tex did not acknowledge him.

"The name's Le Tymp. Since we didn't introduce ourselves the other night," he continued, undeterred.

Tex slanted a glance at him that clearly said he wished him gone.
"What an odd name. Your mother must not have liked you very much."

"She had nothing to do with it," Le Tymp said crossly, "for I picked it myself."

Tex laughed at him again, and tapped the bucket against the edge a few times, dispelling the drops of blood that clung to the rim. His laugh was ugly yet intoxicating.

"You've got too much pride for your line of work, boy," he intoned, and turned to walk away.

Le Tymp didn't let him.

"You look like you've too much sense for yours," he taunted, following a step behind as Tex wove his way through the pedestrians and beggars of the water front until they could slip into the quieter side streets.
"Were it fanciful dreams of luxury that drove you to Pristum or do you just have a taste for the grotesque?"

Just out of sight of the street, Tex spun on him, the emptied bucket clattering to the ground. He barely had time to react as the man wound a hand around his neck and pushed his back up against the nearest wall. As they stared at each other, a bit of grout and dust crumbled off the facade and into Le Tymp's hair.
Tex's hand was as cold as it had been the first time, but having his icy skin right up against his throat made him shiver, Le Tymp's pulse beating hot against his grip.

"You need to learn to leave well enough alone," he growled, leaning closer. He smelled faintly of earthy sweet decay.

"Your means of conflict resolution are as childish as they are ineffective," Le Tymp chided, although the last word came out almost as a whimper as Tex squeezed his throat in warning.

Then he huffed in annoyance but released him, and before Le Tymp had gathered his bearings the man had picked up his bucket and left.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

"Texy!", he called, swinging the door knocker down on its metal plate.

"Must you be so loud," 04 whispered, just as the door was wrenched open.

"Delivery!"

Tex looked down at them blankly, like it was taking him a moment to place their faces, before he stepped aside to let them in.

He instructed them to bring the night's wares down into the cellar, and walked ahead with a candle as they lifted the crate, today containing the fresh corpse of an old woman.
Tex walked with his back perfectly straight, dressed in nearly all black with only his white shirt collar poking through the malaise. The dim light gave him an unsettling appearance. His cheek as he turned to throw a glance back at them was wan, almost corpse like.
It was damp in the house's cellar, where the moisture sat in the walls unable to escape and formed in beads on their skin as they laboured under the weight of their trade. The walk was surely no longer than a minute or two until they stopped in front of a door, but trudging through the heavy darkness was harrowing. The chill turned his mind against him, making him see unworldly things in the domed ceiling of the low corridors.

The room where doctor Pristum housed his bodies was much like a cellar one might store food in, hoping to make it keep a little longer. It was just as cold as the rest of the cellar was, but miraculously much drier.
They laid her to rest on an old glass table as Tex stood in the door with his candle, eerily still in the unmoving air.

The walk back up was less unnerving, but nevertheless Le Tymp's capacity for whimsy had been exhausted, and so he had no quip to throw at Tex as they parted.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

"What'll you do once they order your lot on the dissection tables you used to supply?", Tex asked as they carried the crate inside the next week, breaking the silence that had reigned so far.

"They won't leave us with no loophole. Whether you people like it or not you cannot deny the necessity of our business," 04 argued back sharply. There had been a palpable tension among London's professional grave robbers ever since they'd caught Burke up in Edinburgh last year. As gratifying as it was to see the fancy Lords and Ladies confronted with the ghastly reality of modern medicine, they were practical people. Attention was a danger to them.

Tex scoffed, and bade them to unload their expensive cargo onto one of the porcelain dissection tables. He stepped up to examine the body, which brought him exactly close enough for Le Tymp to poke a finger in his chest.

"If they thought they could afford to kick us to the curb, they already would have, I say. You can wash your hands of us all you like but your disavowal won't make us less essential!"

Tex pushed his hand away, and Le Tymp noticed that he was wearing gloves today.

"Open those pretty eyes of yours to reality, lad. The outcry will be just enough to let them finally suggest stripping the last of the poor's rights to life and limb, and then you'll be obsolete."

"You think my eyes are pretty?"

"Take your money and get out of my sight."

Tex stood by the table, his face stony, expression never changing even as Le Tymp threw him a wink before he closed the door behind them.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

They met again in the street and this time Tex was the one who came up to him. This was unfortunate, as he had just been engaged in scoping out a way to avail himself of the umbrella of his dreams, and by the time the surprise of seeing the man had worn off, the umbrella's owner had moved on.

"Up to no good I see."

"Do you?", Le Tymp asked before he could think better of it.

Though Tex' face showed the most emotion he'd ever seen on it as he gaped at him, nearly half of it was obscured by a bandage.

"I have half a mind to drag you to the coppers myself."

"I thought you were ever so confident in my inevitable demise, why bother risking the suspicion?", Le Tymp teased. Tex looked sickly today, upon further examination, his skin pale and waxy.

"Suspicion?", he asked haughtily, with a handsome rise of his eyebrows.

"Well Texy," Le Tymp said with a mean grin, leaning forward to wag his finger in Tex' face, "How do you know about what I do?"

He was wearing the gloves again, he noted, as Tex' hand closed around his arm in a bruising grip. He pulled him in roughly, so close he could feel Tex' rancid breath on his face like an angry beast's as he spoke.

"You're right that I needn't bother. Problems like you tend to solve themselves."

Le Tymp spat at him, and stomped on his foot, too. He just saw the beginning of rage twisting the man's mouth as he slipped out of his slackened grip and disappeared into the crowd.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

Tex ushered them in the next week like nothing had happened, and 04 and he lifted the body of a young man onto one of the dissection tables. A bit of grave dirt tumbled down the blood drain.
He looked to be about their age, and it was certain he had not died of natural causes - they'd only taken the parts of his skull that had been attached when they pulled him out.

In the corner by the desk hung a new poster, a large sketch of a flayed open body with the organs labelled. Below it Le Tymp could see the master's tools; a few half carved wooden printing plates.

Tex had noticed his interest and waved him over, and so they stood together in front of the grim illustration. He was still wearing the bandage, although it didn't look fresh and clean anymore.

"Your doctor has a certain way with the dead."

Tex laughed bitterly.

"That he does."

A gloved hand snuck into his cloak to lay against his ribcage, and Le Tymp shivered. Two of his fingers pressed uncomfortably into the space between his ribs as Tex led him to the door where his accomplice was waiting.

"Any man in the whole of London, Tymp," 04 said gravely once the door had shut behind them. "But not him."

"Huh?"

"Not him," he repeated seriously, and started walking, so quickly that Le Tymp had to hurry to catch up before he lost him in the nearly moonless night.

Later, he dreamt about Tex taking him apart on one of those tables, both figuratively and literally, and he awoke in a sweat, heat radiating off his skin like in sickness.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

"Memento mori," said a rough voice right in his ear, making him nearly choke to death on his coffee. He'd not heard the man coming at all, nor the rustle of his clothes as he bent down to him.

"Although you may dine like a roman emperor now," Tex said, coming around the coffee house's rickety old metal table to sit across from him, "you'll be dead in the ground in a pauper's grave soon enough, corpse merchant."

Le Tymp made a grimace that didn't try very hard to be a smile and offered him one of his pastries. Tex declined, unnervingly looking him in the eye the entire time. It was odd to see him not only in broad daylight, but also in such an innocent scene.

"Death begets life," Le Tymp said, "and life begets coffee. So I'm happy."

"Will your brother mourn you when he has to bury you, or will he rejoice at selling you?"

Le Tymp scowled.
"Your predecessor never made it in a grave, where do you reckon he ended up?"

"My master does as he sees fit with the resources at his disposal," Tex snapped.

"What a loyal dog you are."

Tex snarled at him, and Le Tymp laughed. There really was something animalistic about him, something raw that made him seem more like a body than a man.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

People were always dying in this city. The next week it was the body of a young woman, her cheeks sunk and limbs bony.

"Doctor Pristum has requested you come help carry something in three days' time," Tex said, as he counted out the money into Le Tymp's waiting hand.
"You'll be payed for your service, naturally."

"Sure," he agreed readily, and wondered at how Tex' lips were just the slightest bit upturned so that it almost looked like a smile.

/|\(^._.^)/|\

He strolled into the alley into which the building's back door opened later that week, which was surprisingly empty of crates considering he'd been hired as an extra pair of hands.
Like he was used to, he knocked, and Tex opened, peering down at him with his one visible eye.

Le Tymp was waved inside, but before he could turn to ask what he had been summoned to carry, the doctor's assistant brought something down on the back of his head so hard his vision went black.

When he regained his senses, he found himself tied down to one of the porcelain dissection tables by multiple tightly secured belts. He struggled, panic making him light headed, and it drew the attention of doctor Pristum, who was standing by a side table sorting his medical instruments.

"My apologies. It pains me that you'll need to be alive for this, but," he shook his head sadly, "my Tex badly needs your eyes undamaged."

He kept speaking, something about him regretfully being the perfect candidate for an unsuspicious disappearance, but Le Tymp wasn't listening. He was staring at Tex, sat on the other table in the room and looking back at him almost tenderly. The bandage that had hid his eye had been removed, and Le Tymp could see an empty socket rimmed by glistening, blackening skin.
Tex' chest was bare, and in the low candle light he could just make out the rows of metal stitches that ran up his torso in a Y shape, the edges of his flesh tinged green and pinched into folds by the tension of the stitches. Possibly the most horrifying of all was the realization that there was no blood - only decay, like he'd seen on a million bodies, bodies that he'd brought here, about whose purpose he'd never asked.

Gloved hands gripped his face and turned him back to look at doctor Pristum, a mad grin on his face.

"Hold still."