Servants · Arcane working · Artifice and Clockwork
Mortuary Attendant
Washer and Registrar of the Dead
Municipal mortuaries, burial offices and hospital dead-rooms
A tall, narrow construct of iron and wood with a stained porcelain face and long arms, made to wash the dead, register them and lay them out for the examiner. It does the work no hand wants and keeps the book no clerk keeps well.
In the busy dead-rooms of London and Sarrum a mortuary attendant washes each body that comes in, notes what it finds on a printed form, enters the name and the hour in the register, and lays the body out for the burial examiner. It works without hurry or disgust, through the night, and its forms are the cleanest records the burial offices hold. Its arms are channelled to drain and its garments are made to be scrubbed.
The examiners trust its forms more than they trust most clerks, which has made it a witness. An attendant records what it was made to record, which includes marks on the body and the state of the hands, and twice in the last decade its forms have hanged a man. The burial offices prize them. The men who bring bodies to them have learned to be careful.
As witnesses describe it
A tall, thin figure of iron and dark wood with a stained porcelain face and long jointed arms, in a washable apron and dark workcoat. Channels run along its forearms. It stands at a washing table with a basin and cloth, or at a ledger desk, and its light is a cold, low blue.
