It is the custom in Yestron South to keep one's recently deceased relatives in the house for a full seven years (no more, no less). Preparing corpses is the job of corpse masters, who also handle the dissection of dragons, which is another foul, filthy, dangerous job.

        
         Chapter 36
        Grand Arena: the colosseum of Dalar ken Halvar where bloody spectacles are staged during the Season. It is the traditional site for a general distribution of alms, a process which would lead to riot if attempted on the open dust. Furthermore, uncontrolled charity might mean some people getting more than their due, a possibility which would cause any Treasurer to sweat blood in nightmare.
        In the Arena, all is orderly, the order being enforced by the Imperial Guard. Those who wish to receive imperial charity are seated, then all ways of ingress are sealed. The beggars leave a few at a time, receiving their money as they go; nobody, of course, is allowed to re-enter.
        It is a neat and simple process, and one which always runs without a hitch, as Treasurers are at pains to ensure that funds are always ample, the bloody aftermath of the Cash Riot of the reign of the Emperor Po having left indelible marks upon the racial memory of Dalar ken Halvar's bureaucracy.
        
         * * *
        So he purchased pleasure with his purchase
        And in his bones he locked in lust with silver,
        Ravished gold,
        And now within the tomb they -
        They do as they, but still
        Her flesh is smooth, her pefume tender,
        The chicken in its blandishments is sweet.
        
         * * *

        
        Then Dog exited from the simulated MegaCommand Cruiser, leaving Lupus Lon Oliver alone with his thoughts.
        What was he wondering about?
        Not about whether Dog Java would actually succeed in killing Asodo Hatch. Not about knives, or blood, or dead, or murder, or the consequences of the planned assassination. But about self- awareness, and thought, and the experience of time.
        In Lupus's experience, self-awareness was something that happens at speech-speed. In the crisis of combat, when trained reflexes come into play, there is no time for thought. The speech- space between circumstance and action is abolished.
        The implication is that the experience of self-awareness is time-dependent, and is something which takes place comparatively slowly, something so complex that it is consistently outperformed by the programmed reflexes, something which takes place not at combat speed but at speech-speed.
        In fact, an enormous amount of our subjective mental life takes place at speech-speed as we argue things out with ourselves - and then there are these moments when we understand an entire gestalt instantaneously or create and elaborate in a matter of moments a vast scheme of interlocking plans so elaborate that the business of talking it through with ourselves afterwards can take half a day or more.
        So why is it that we commonly live out our subjective mental lives at speech speed yet on other occasions find intellectual evolutions taking place so swiftly that we are hard put to acknowledge these evolutions as the product of conscious thought?
        This then was what Lupus wondered about. And to understand Lupus we must appreciate the fact that