Ghost of the Wall

by Jeff Mariotte

  Pinned to the bunk, Vincius gurgled his last, wet breath.

  Kral listened at the door, this time trying to determine if anyone outside had heard the struggle. There were no immediate sounds of alarm, so he opened the door a crack and looked out.

  All was quiet and dark. The guards continued their watches, looking out toward the Black River, no doubt wondering when the ghost would appear.

  But he was already inside. And, at last, he knew something he hadn’t a few minutes before.

  A name.

  Lupinius.

  17

  LUPINIUS COULDN’T SLEEP.

  Just a couple of days before, everything had been going so well. Now it had turned bad, all of it. The wall project was doomed, and when Sharzen figured that out it would be the end of Lupinius’s control over him. Koronaka would likely be bankrupted by then, or the governor would have raised taxes so high that the citizens would revolt. Either scenario could end with a noose around Lupinius’s neck.

  Sitting in his office, he touched that neck with his fingers. He liked it the shape it was, not stretched.

  Regardless of the wall project, his own fortune was dangerously depleted. Without an influx of some kind, he would have to let the Rangers go, reduce the household staff. He had used his special relationship with Sharzen to avoid paying taxes at all. But if that relationship was threatened, he could be facing serious difficulties there as well. He had hoped the so-called Pictish Hoard would help with that situation, though all it had done was to make him increasingly nervous.

  He had stored the ugly thing in a wooden box in his bedroom, but he still knew nothing about it. Every time he dared ask someone with more experience of things Pictish than he had, he was met with blank stares. Worse, he couldn’t help believing that with every subtle attempt at gathering information, he was only letting on that he had the thing and believed it to be of some value. Those few Rangers who had seen it had believed it to be simply an object of curiosity. He didn’t want it known that magical forces seemed to swirl around it.

  He had nearly decided that it was back in Aquilonia, not here on the border, that he would be able to find answers. There, he knew people who studied such things. People who were worldly, educated. The provincials on the border couldn’t be trusted.

  Leaving Koronaka would mean giving up his home here, his power over Sharzen. But back in Tarantia, his brother’s estate sat empty. No matter what condition it had fallen into, it would serve as a place to find shelter while he researched the crown. And if it had been well kept, it would be more than that—perhaps even the foundation a new fortune.

  He stood and paced, listening at the open window every now and then, although he didn’t know for what. The household was asleep; it seemed the whole town was.

  He was about to give up and try going to sleep again—fruitless though he suspected it would be—when he heard the rush of feet slapping the flagstones outside. The last time a rider had come to the house, it had been Sharzen with more bad news. He hoped that wasn’t the case with this runner.

  Since the staff was already asleep, he went to the door himself. A soldier stood outside, breathing heavily, a sheen of sweat gleaming in the light from the lanterns.

  “What is it?” Lupinius wanted to know.

  “Sir,” the soldier said. He paused to gulp in a huge swallow of air, and continued. “A soldier named Narth has been attacked by the Ghost of the Wall, but lived to tell of it. Barely, I’m afraid. If he sees the sun rise, I’ll be surprised.”

  Lupinius was rapidly losing patience. “It’s late, man. Has this anything to do with me?”

  “Yes,” the soldier said, his face reddening even more with chagrin than it had with the effort of his run. “This soldier, Narth. He said that when the Ghost attacked—they were sleeping, in their barracks—that another soldier, a young one with little experience or wisdom, accidentally mentioned your name. The Ghost was specifically asking about you, and the other one, Vincius—the Ghost killed him, and one other, as well—revealed your name before he was awake enough to understand what was going on. Narth can barely breathe, is in incredible pain, but he wanted to be sure you were warned. We’ll post a guard around your house. Soldiers are on the way now.”

  “Very well,” Lupinius said, his mind already beginning to churn over the possible consequences of this report. He didn’t wait for the soldier to answer but simply closed his door.

  He had been right, unfortunately. More bad news.

  But on top of the rest of it, perhaps news that pushed him over the edge of the decision cliff he had been standing near.

  There seemed only one course of action remaining open to him. He just had to be brave enough to take it.

  ALANYA THOUGHT SHE heard noises elsewhere in the house, but she was deep in slumber, dreaming that she sat in a golden meadow with her mother and father, eating velvety fruits. Before she could rouse herself enough to investigate she had fallen asleep again. The second time a noise intruded on her rest, however, she snapped awake as suddenly as if sleep was a door that had been thrown open.

  Instantly alert, she turned and put her bare feet on the cold stone floor of her room. She sat still for a long while, listening intently. A house had a particular quality of sound, she had often felt, when it was empty, and another sound, almost like deep breathing, when it had people asleep inside.

  Just now, though, there was a third sensation, a different quality. Alanya wasn’t sure how to interpret it. She couldn’t hear anything specific, nothing she could put a name to, anyway. She just felt some indefinable sensation of difference .

  As quietly as she could, Alanya crossed to her door and eased it open. She stopped just inside, peering into the dark house and listening for anything. For a moment she considered retrieving her shielded lantern from the bureau, but then decided against it. Hearing nothing out of the ordinary, she continued into the hall.

  And then she heard it again—a soft, barely perceptible click, as of a door closing.

  She froze where she was, trying to ascertain where the sound might have originated. After a few seconds, she heard something else, something that might have been a cautious exhalation. So someone was awake in the quiet house. But who?

  Probably Uncle Lupinius, she decided. He hadn’t been sleeping well the last several nights. As much as she sometimes disliked him, she didn’t wish him any harm. She made her way toward his office to see if he was in there.

  But before she reached it, a form came into view in the open doorway, silhouetted against the dark office, black on black. The person’s sudden appearance startled her. Her breath caught, and then held, because the person was too short to be Lupinius, too tall for Donial, and too muscular—and nearly naked—for the rest of the staff.

  She recognized his build and the general shape before she could make out his features. Even so, her heart leapt as she realized who stood before her.

  “Kral!” she said, her voice a loud whisper.

  He took a few quick strides toward her, holding his right hand out in a warning gesture. “Quiet, Alanya,” he said. “If I am discovered here . . .”

  At first, she thought he must have come to find her. She could hardly believe he was alive, much less right in front of her. She closed the rest of the gap and threw her arms around him, drawing him toward her in a furious embrace. “Oh, Kral,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

  “As am I,” Kral replied. Even as he spoke, a strong metallic smell reached her, and she drew back.

  “Is that . . . Kral, you’re covered in blood!”

  Kral held her gaze, his eyes glittering darkly in the shadowed space. “I . . . I am not the same person you knew before,” he admitted. She saw that he was not only drenched in blood but had painted much of his face and chest with some kind of blue coloring, whether as a war paint or to make him blend into the shadows she had no idea. “I have seen too much, done too much. I should not even be talking to you now.”

  “
What do you mean, Kral?” Alanya wanted to know. “Come, in my room we will have more privacy.”

  Kral stood his ground. “I have much to do, and it is dangerous for me to be here,” he said.

  “Dangerous . . . ?” Gradually, like the sun rising at dawn, understanding came to her. Kral, blood-soaked and sneaking through the house in the night. A Pict, avenging his clan. The Ghost of the Wall everyone was talking about. “Kral, are you . . . ?”

  He seemed to understand the words she was hesitant to say. Now he did look away from her, as if unable to continue looking into her eyes. “They call me a ghost,” he said.

  “But . . . why did you come here?”

  “I am looking for one called Lupinius,” he said. “I was told that this is his house. He is not much loved among the soldiers, else they would have worked harder to hide him from me.”

  “It is his house,” Alanya said, her voice catching with emotion. “He . . . he is my uncle. My brother and I live here, since . . . since my father was killed in the attack on your village.”

  “As was mine,” Kral said quietly.

  “Why do you seek him?’

  “He took something that belongs to my people,” Kral said. Alanya could tell that he was uncomfortable talking here in the open. But he had declined her invitation to go into her room. He wanted to conclude his business and get away, and she was delaying him. From the stories she had heard, she was lucky he hadn’t simply killed her as soon as he saw her.

  But whatever had happened, whatever he had done, he was still Kral. He would not hurt her, she was certain. “What is it?”

  “A crown. Have you seen it? It is made of bones, and huge bear teeth.”

  She had heard something like that mentioned in passing, since the raid, but had not seen it for herself. “No,” she answered. “You did not find it in his office?”

  “It is not there,” Kral declared.

  “His bedroom, then,” Alanya suggested. Suddenly realizing what would likely occur if Kral met Lupinius there, her hand shot to her mouth. “But do not—”

  “The Teeth is the most sacred object of our people and my responsibility to bring back,” Kral told her. “No matter what the price, I must find it.”

  “But . . . he is my uncle.”

  Kral’s face betrayed no emotion. “Everyone I knew, all of my family, was slaughtered by the raid on my village, Alanya. Your uncle killed a holy man and stole a sacred object. If I need to kill him, I will, but I must have that crown.”

  Alanya knew that she could not appeal to reason, for his argument was impossible to counter. And she couldn’t appeal to emotion because her loss, horrible as it had been, was nothing compared to his.

  “Let me look,” she suggested. “If he wakes, I can just say I was looking for something else. It will be awkward, but no one has to be hurt.”

  Kral hesitated, then agreed. He held his hands out, indicating a circle that was about head-sized. “This is how large it is,” he said. “Bones and teeth—you cannot mistake it for anything. I’ll be listening outside the door. You must search the entire room, and if things turn bad, I will go in. And I will kill him for what he did to my clan.”

  Alanya felt a chill, as Kral’s words sank into her bones. She was the only thing that stood between her uncle—the man as responsible as any, she believed, for the death of her father—and Kral, a Pict, an enemy of her people. Whom she had known for only a matter of days, really.

  And yet, if it came to conflict between them, she wasn’t sure what outcome she would prefer.

  With Kral close behind, she went to the door of Lupinius’s room. He had not been sleeping well, so she was afraid he would be awake inside, or at least sleeping only lightly. But there was nothing for it. She had to go in.

  She opened his door as quietly as she could and stepped inside. The room was dark, but she knew immediately that it was empty. There was no sound of steady breathing, none of her uncle’s masculine scent.

  To make sure, she went to his bed. Nothing.

  She turned back to Kral. “He is not here.”

  “Have you a lantern?” Kral asked. “If he is away, we can search his room better with some light.”

  She told him to wait there and hurried to her own room to fetch hers. She kept it on a bureau in her room, along with a few prized possessions she had brought in from her father’s house: a silver comb, her mother’s bejeweled mirror, the copper armband that Kral had given her.

  But when she turned up the flame slightly, she realized that the mirror was gone.

  She gasped audibly, almost dropping the lantern.

  Where could it have gone, she wondered? The only time she had taken it anywhere was the one time she had shown it to Kral. She was already staying in this house by then, because her father was away on his mission. She had brought it back here and never taken it away since. And she remembered having glanced at it before going to bed.

  Had Kral come into her room while she slept?

  She turned, and he was already in her doorway. “I heard a noise,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

  She fixed him with a steady, stern gaze. “Did you come in here, before I woke up?” she asked.

  “No. The room you found me in was the first one I searched. I entered through a window there.”

  “My mirror is missing,” she revealed. “The one I showed you, remember?”

  “Yes,” Kral said immediately. “And you did not put it somewhere else?”

  “I left it next to the lantern, before bed.”

  He looked on the bureau, then squatted and looked behind it, between the massive chest and the wall. Seeing nothing, he turned and checked under and around the bed.

  “It’s just gone,” she said.

  Kral shrugged. “Bring the lantern,” he suggested. “We can search your uncle’s room.”

  Alanya felt unsettled by the discovery—by everything that had happened in the last several minutes, she realized. Finding him in her house, alive and unharmed, learning that he was the Ghost of the Wall, the killer so many feared. Then finding her uncle missing from his bed and her mirror from its place in her room.

  She didn’t put a lot of stock in portents, but something was very wrong.

  She handed Kral the lantern and followed him back to Lupinius’s room. He held it high when they arrived there, and scanned the whole room quickly.

  It only took Alanya a moment to realize that things had changed, though.

  “He is gone,” she announced.

  “Gone? What do you mean?”

  She pointed out things usually in place that were now missing. “He always keeps his sword and his boots by his bed at night,” she said.

  “Perhaps he is out at the wall.”

  “He could be,” she agreed. “But then, why would the trunk on which they rest be gone as well?”

  “He took a trunk?” Kral asked.

  She quickly looked around the room for other signs. Some of his clothing was gone from his wardrobe, and though he usually kept an assortment of weapons close at hand, none were visible.

  “He’s gone,” she stated flatly. “Not gone from the house—gone. From Koronaka.”

  “He cannot be,” Kral argued.

  “He is. He packed up his most important things in his trunk, and took them.”

  “And the Teeth?”

  “Your crown?” Alanya asked. “I don’t see it.”

  “Could he have taken your mirror?” Kral asked.

  The thought had not occurred to her, but now she realized that he was right. Lupinius was well aware of the mirror, having admired it—and commented on the probable value of its gemstones—several times since she had brought it into his house. “He might have.”

  She was about to say more when a movement from outside the room captured her attention. Kral’s hand dropped to his waist and came up with a knife in it, but Alanya stayed his arm.

  “What’s going on?” Donial asked. He wore a light gray nightshirt, an
d his dark hair stuck up at every angle. His eyes were puffy with sleep. “Why are you in here—and you,” he said to the Pict. At the sight of Kral his eyes widened, alertness flooding into him. His body coiled, ready to run or strike. “What are you doing here? I’ll call the Rangers.”

  “No!” Alanya said firmly. “This is Kral, my friend. And look—Uncle Lupinius is gone! He has slipped away, like a thief. More than like one—he stole the mirror that belonged to our mother.”

  “I do not believe it,” Donial said. “Let me wake Calvert. He’ll know.”

  “It is true, Donial,” Alanya insisted. “Look for yourself. His trunk is gone, his favorite clothing, his gear.”

  “How do you know your ‘friend’ did not murder him?” Donial challenged. “That looks like blood on him.”

  “I would have, but I never had the chance,” Kral countered. “He was gone when I arrived.”

  “Why would he . . . why would he leave us?” Donial asked. Alanya felt sorry for her brother, as the weight of her revelation began to impact him. “Does he not—?”

  “What?” Alanya asked. “Does he not love us? He never did. Does he trust us? Not a bit. He got our father killed, remember, with his foolish expedition. He took us in reluctantly. I don’t believe he would hesitate for a moment to leave us far behind.”

  “But he . . . he is our father’s brother,” Donial said. He can’t bring himself to admit the truth, Alanya thought. She and her brother were nothing but burdens to Lupinius. Burdens he had never asked for and didn’t want.

  “Donial,” Alanya said seriously, “you must trust me. Lupinius is gone. Kral did nothing to him. But we are alone now, and Lupinius has stolen from us—”

  “And from me,” Kral interjected. “From my people.”

  “So we are on our own, brother. Like it or not, we are alone now.”

  18

  THE THREE OF them had moved into Lupinius’s office, so Kral could close the window by which he had entered. He had spotted guards outside, but had easily eluded them. He’d been doing that most of the night, since leaving the barracks in which he had learned Lupinius’s name. He had chosen a couple of other victims, closer to the town, and from one had learned—after some less-than-gentle persuasion—where the man named Lupinius was and that he had been both a prime instigator as well as the military commander of the invasion of the Bear Clan village.