Firebrand
an excerpt

Rjoran preferred to conduct burnings at sunset. It was the only time of day that he could regard the fires that he built as something beautiful. The flames at their peak would rise twenty five hands into the air against the backdrop of a heaven equally aflame. The sheer beauty of it all was enough to overwhelm the sense of guilt he felt over the business at hand. Only at sunset did he ever feel any sense of real dignity in the burning a dead body. At all other hours, he could only concentrate on the smell. For hours afterwards the chalky stench of burned hair and scorched human fat would linger on his person. Even days later he might smell it on his pillow, or beneath his nails. Then again perhaps it was all just paranoia.
The cold wind nipped at Rjoran's long exposed ears. Men and women in his profession tended to keep their hair shorn close to the scalp for cleanliness sake. The Elphin had always been a fastidious people but for members of his profession it was a matter of survival. No one could claim to have families outside of siring a bastard here or there. What sane man or woman would willingly accept a mate marked to die at a very young age? Typically, no one in Rjoran’s line of work was as fortunate as his current charge. The Body had been a man of ninety-eight years, seventy-two of those a dye merchant. Elphin would live far longer than a mortal man, unless stricken by illness or physical harm. In the last five hundred years, Elphin were considered blessed if the died from the later.
The Plague was not a kind way to die.