Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology

by Douglas Seacat

  She pointed at the members of the city watch standing outside with the tavern’s patrons. “Why hasn’t the watch intervened, at least to try to get people to safety?”

  He sniffed imperiously. “Cowards, the lot of them. They won’t set foot in the place.”

  “You understand I can’t forcibly remove them.” She had no ready means to extract the spirits within the tavern. She also felt some sympathy for them—they weren’t intentionally trying to scare or harm anyone. “Not only is that not my role, I don’t have the gear or expertise. No one has ever successfully dispersed spirits from the March of the Dead.”

  “What?” Dunsbury said. “What good are you, then? They’re ruining my business, just like they did with that Khadoran hostler and poor Sergeant Riggs’ gunwerks.”

  “I’m very much aware,” Jana said. “And I’ve sent word to our headquarters in Ceryl. I’m a researcher. An academician, not a ghost wrangler. I’ve been told our best team is en route. Hopefully, they can deal with these manifestations.” That worried her a bit; the Ceryl team had been quite…active of late. She had heard a rumor of some sort of ugly business in Caspia. She hoped they were up to this.

  “That doesn’t help me at all right now,” Dunsbury said and walked away in a huff. Another blast of spectral gunfire roared from inside the tavern, and Jana could hear voices shouting in Rynnish, the foundational tongue for modern Llaelese. This was also unusual—the March of the Dead had always been silent. More signs of escalated manifestation. She needed to get inside quickly, in case this echo was a short-lived one. They’d been longer of late—the first unusual appearances had lasted mere minutes—now they were more often enduring as long as an hour, though this was impossible to predict. They were also coming at more frequent intervals.

  She quickly checked her kit. The most important piece of gear was her lumitype, both so she could create spectragraphs recording events as well as use its Strangelight projector to better focus on them. The Elsinberg ghosts were generally visible to the naked eye, unlike less tangible ones haunting other places, but this was not always the case. Sometimes, when an echo lost its strength and faded, the spirits lingered on, visible only to the Strangelight until flickering away. The portable lumitype she carried was smaller than many employed by the Workshop, but it was still cumbersome. She wore it slung over her left shoulder, careful not to damage it by jostling it against anything. In her bag, she carried a collection of alchemical ingredients necessary to develop spectragraph exposures and numerous more mundane investigative tools. Her last bit of equipment was a heavy pistol holstered on her right hip.

  She hated the gun, but it was vital, especially when there was the possibility of violent spectral activity. It was loaded with ghost-chaser rounds, bullets that had been treated with an alchemical solution called Ashes of Urcaen to affect specters and other incorporeal entities. Technically, she could use it to disperse a manifested spirit, at least temporarily. She was prepared to do so in an emergency, but she had a limited quantity of special ammunition. She theorized any such action was more likely to provoke the ghosts of Elsinberg than to serve as a deterrent. And the last thing she wanted to do was give the already alarmed witnesses reason to think she possessed a useful weapon against the spirits.

  She pushed through the crowd, and it parted out of her way. Mutters and curses followed in her wake; many blamed her for the strange turn in the behavior of Elsinberg’s ghosts, some even outright accusing her of angering them with her studies.

  The spectators had kept a healthy distance from the haunted tavern—all except one.

  He was tall, dressed in a long, leather greatcoat and a wide-brimmed hat. The face that looked out from beneath was cold and angular, both alluring and intimidating at the same time. He was heavily armed, with a broad-bladed Caspian-style sword scabbarded at one hip and a massive quad-iron pistol holstered on the other, and Jana spied the glint of chainmail beneath his coat. When he saw her approaching, he turned to face her, and she caught sight of the Morrowan Sunburst on a chain around his neck, together with a dagger wreathed in flame symbol she easily identified.

  Terror gripped her. The symbols, the weapons, his very presence here defined him: the Order of Illumination.

  “You are Doctor Jana Goodman,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, I’m she,” she said, taking a step back and trying to control the wavering in her voice. The Order of Illumination was a group of devout Morrowans who devoted their lives to rooting out supernatural evil. The Strangelight Workshop crossed paths with them from time to time but generally avoided them whenever possible. The Order was made up of zealots who often operated under a shoot-or-persecute-first doctrine.

  “I am Harlan Versh.”

  Now Jana was well and truly terrified. Not just the Order of Illumination, but one of their dangerous renegades. She had never met him, but she knew from reputation that Versh was a man whose methods had been deemed too extreme even for his own Order. They had disavowed him, yet this had not stopped him from continuing to operate in their name, essentially become a vigilante freelancer. Harlan Versh was as close as they had to a boogeyman among Strangelight investigators.

  “I…I know of you,” she said. “Please don’t hurt them.”

  “Hurt who?” Versh said.

  “The spirits. They don’t mean to cause harm. Something is very wrong, and it’s not their fault. They need help.”

  “I agree,” Versh said. He turned to the crowd and pointed to one of the city watchmen, a man with the chevrons of a sergeant on his sleeves. “You there. Disperse this crowd at once.”

  The watchman’s eyes narrowed. He frowned. “On whose bloody authority?”

  Versh stalked up the man, and the crowd parted before him like water before a steaming ship.

  He held up the Sunburst of Morrow and Order of Illumination symbols. His features were flat with the assumption of authority, and when he spoke, it was with a deliberate monotone made more fearsome by his lack of emotion. “My authority derives from a higher power.”

  The watchman’s face paled. It was rare for them to exercise it, but it was well known the Order of Illumination had authority over black magic. They looked into matters most watchmen would just as soon not deal with.

  “My apologies,” the watchman said. “I’ll see to it.”

  He turned to shout orders at the other watchmen in the crowd, and they began directing people away from the tavern and down the street. Soon the area in front of the tavern was cleared.

  Versh returned to Jana. “I will accompany you inside, Doctor Goodman.”

  She’d found her courage after the initial shock of his presence. “Why would you want to do that? What do you want in Elsinberg? And how do you know my name?”

  “I’m well aware of your studies, Doctor. And because of that, you more than anyone know how erratically the normally benign spirits of Elsinberg have been behaving over the last month.”

  “Of course. I know everything about them.”

  “Not everything,” he said. “That’s why I am here.”

  “I hope we understand one another when I say I cannot allow you to harm these spirits.” It took an act of courage to say the words confidently, but there was no one else here to stand up for the dead.

  Versh’s shook his head. “The Church long ago sanctified this March. I admire your devotion to these poor souls, Doctor, and rest assured, it is not my intention to harm them, if that’s even possible at this point. I intend to learn why they are acting so strangely. I expect the change is rooted in some malign influence.”

  “Such as?” she asked.

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to come here, would I?” he said. A sudden blast of rifle fire sounded from inside the tavern. Versh’s hand fell to the butt of his pistol. While a normal firearm couldn’t harm the spirits, Jana knew Illuminated Ones had consecrated weapons at least as effective as her own augmented bullets. “We can discuss the necessity of my presence another
time. Right now, I want to see with my own eyes what’s happening with the spirits in Elsinberg.”

  “Fine, but I want your word you won’t shoot them,” Jana said. “Antagonizing them might make the situation worse.”

  Versh frowned, but he took his hand off his pistol.

  “Good.” She pushed open the heavy door of the tavern and stepped inside. Versh followed.

  The taproom of the Brookside was in shambles. Tables and chairs had been overturned as patrons dove behind them for cover while shattered glass and ceramic littered the floor. Six spectral soldiers had hunkered down on the far side, each armed with an archaic rifle or a long, slashing sword. Their faces were pinched with terror, and they acted as though they were holding off some invisible enemy that outnumbered them. One of them fired, and a blurry streak moved through the air with a glowing shimmer—slower than a real bullet but still exploding into the mirror behind the counter with tangible force, punching a hole and creating a web of cracks through the glass.

  Jana had seen hundreds of spectral soldiers over the years, but two of these were very different: they had faint glowing blotches of yellow on their incorporeal forms. These blemishes appeared sunken in, as if they were eating into the ghost. Her first thought was that it represented some sort of ectoplasmic tumor. She’d never seen anything like it.

  Hold your fire, one of the specters silently mouthed, unable to actually muster the sound. His expression suggested he had tried to scream it loudly. He had a captain’s bars on his helmet and stood in the middle of the soldiers, his pistol and saber in hand. She recognized him—Captain Armand di Galle was the only son of a minor noble family whose line was extinguished when he disappeared over four centuries ago. He had been a brave soldier and a good leader, and it was men like him who kept her at her research, trying to find a way to help him and the others pass safely to their reward in Urcaen.

  She felt Versh tense.

  “Don’t do anything,” she advised him. “We need to see what happens.”

  Hold! Captain di Galle mouthed again and pointed his saber in their direction. Fire!

  The soldiers’ rifles discharged in a plume of ethereal smoke. Jana flinched, though she hoped the bullets would not harm her. The memory of one impacting the mirror was quite fresh in her mind. Beside her, Versh was a statue of leather and steel. There was a slight sensation of cold, but the bullets did not tear their flesh. Whatever their state of manifestation, it was clearly unstable.

  The spectral soldiers threw down their rifles and drew their swords. They swung wildly at unseen attackers and suffered ghastly wounds in return. Jana watched as Captain di Galle was slashed from collarbone to waist by an invisible blade. His blood drenched his soldiers. True panic washed over them. It was like watching events viewed through a smoky haze, like shadows reflected on a wall. She wondered if this was a real battle from the past, as their March had been. It seemed possible that whatever had disrupted their routine might have revealed some new glimmer of their history.

  She raised her lumitype to cast its violet Strangelight across the scene. Her hands shook slightly, and she fought to steady herself as she captured an exposure. She opened the back of the lumitype with practiced ease, removing the thin metal plate, stowing it, then replaced with a fresh one, all the while keeping her attention on the spirits.

  Four more soldiers were cut down by enemy blades, but the last died in a manner more horrific than anything she’d seen. He was a young man, no older than twenty, and his flesh seemed to draw in on itself, shriveling as his face twisted in pain. His limbs twisted as his flesh withered and his arms and legs bent and jerked unnaturally, as if some capricious force were shattering all of his bones. She wanted to turn away, but the scientist in her insisted she see it all. When death finally claimed the soldier, he looked to be little more than a dried husk inside his uniform.

  Mercifully, the deaths of these poor men ended the manifestation, and they faded from sight, leaving the tavern quiet and cold. Even in the Strangelight cast by her lumitype, only fading afterimages were visible. She took another exposure just in case there were residual energy markings.

  “Interesting,” Versh said, breaking the silence and giving her a start.

  She swallowed but nodded. “It fits with the other recent manifestations I’ve recorded. They’re firing wildly, trying to mount some kind of defense. The echoes usually end before they die, however.”

  “Echoes?” Versh said over his shoulder as he moved across the taproom toward where the soldiers had been.

  “Yes, I call them echoes. Those spirits will appear again, to act out some other piece of whatever happened to them. In hauntings like this, the spirits are stuck repeating a span of their past lives, acting it out over and over again. For the last century, once a year, these soldiers have only been repeating their march through Elsinberg. I believe we’re now seeing the battle where they died.”

  Versh nodded. “Poor devils. Bad enough to be trapped forever on Caen without also reliving a horrific end. That last one was almost certainly killed by black magic.”

  “That makes sense. They went missing after marching to reinforce the fortress that is now Ravensgard against an attacking Orgoth force during the Rebellion. Their war witches practiced fell magic.”

  “Yes. Many of the horrors practiced by Cryx now originate with them.” Versh knelt down where the specters had repeated their deaths. “It’s very cold here.”

  “Spectral chill. Not uncommon, especially with more agitated spirits. It will pass in a few hours.”

  He nodded and said, “I have encountered it before. Such a chill often accompanies necromancy, infernals, and other dark magic rites.”

  She was hesitant to mention the strange blotches. It was possible the Illuminated One hadn’t seen them, but they frightened her, and he might actually know something useful he might share with her. “I did see something. Two of the ghosts had blemishes, yellow marks on their spectral forms—I’m familiar with these spirits, and I’ve never seen this on them before. I’ve never read any reports of similar markings, either. It looked like—I don’t know, a sickness of some kind. I know that’s ridiculous, but…”

  “No, not ridiculous. Evil always leaves a mark, even on the dead.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like that?” Jana asked.

  He shook his head. “No. But I have not studied ghosts as closely as you have. Generally, those I encounter are swiftly eliminated.” He touched his pistol grip again. “It must be an outside influence. I do not know from what.”

  “Well, perhaps it left a residue I can detect.”

  “How?” Versh asked as he moved to stand before her.

  “With this,” she said and held up the lumitype.

  “One of your ‘Strangelight’ devices?” His disdain was evident in his tone. “What does it do?”

  “It records images. And more. I took exposures already, during the manifestation. Including one after.” She extracted the metal plates from the cloth bag where she had placed them for later examination and set them on a nearby counter. She took the most recent one—taken after the ghosts had “died”—and drew several jars of alchemical liquids. She then carefully applied them across its gleaming surface, using a clean piece of cloth to rub the liquids into the plate. After several seconds, an image began to form, one identifiable as the backdrop of the tavern where the spirits had performed their last stand. There were several glowing marks where the ghosts had been.

  “Can you see that?” she said. “That’s spiritual residue. A reaction to ectoplasm—the insubstantial material that comprises a spirit’s form.”

  Versh said, “I see it. It doesn’t look like much.”

  “Sometimes the color is significant, or it simply indicates energy of some sort. There are ways we can try to look for more.”

  She set a new metal plate inside the machine and retrieved a special filter from her bag. She fitted the filter across the lumitype’s primary lens and made certain ot
her adjustments to its dials and switches, setting it for a longer exposure. “Okay, this helps filter for more unusual energy emanations, ones we shouldn’t expect to see in a typical haunting, especially with the Elsinberg spirits.”

  “What creates such energies?”

  “A variety of things,” Jana said, well aware she was speaking to a fanatic and one who had a dubious opinion of the Workshop. “It’s complicated. You know how magic comes in different forms? Supernatural beings use energy in different ways and sometimes that leaves traces we can identify.”

  “Proceed,” he said, and his hand fell to the butt of his pistol again. His face had become an impassive mask, and he stared ahead fixedly. He was preparing for something, and his body language told her it was something even he feared.

  She took another exposure, letting the violet light wash across the room. She felt a gnawing dread as she went through the process of exposing this plate. Versh’s tension was almost infectious. As she rubbed a different set of alchemical liquids into the plate she said, “We’re looking for different marks. Especially anything that comes up black, almost like tar. That’s bad.”

  They both waited as the image developed. She offered a silent prayer to Morrow she would find nothing. After ten minutes of searching, her prayer was answered. There were no unusual marks.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Versh seemed to relax, and he took his hand off his gun.

  She asked him, “What do you plan to do?”

  “I’m going to hire you to help me investigate these activities, and then we will determine the source of these disturbances.”

  His comment caught her off-guard completely. She had expected him to simply force compliance as he had with the town watch. A business transaction was the last thing she expected. It wasn’t a completely abhorrent idea, either. She could always use more capital to fund her research, and, truth be told, having the fearsome Harlan Versh by her side while she investigated the increasingly violent manifestations might not—