The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  “She won’t give her name,” Palla muttered, and now she looked almost sulky.

  Varalen laughed. “That’s insolence, not secrecy. If she really didn’t want us to know, she’d just make up a name—how would we know the difference?” He tapped his chin, looking down at the parchment again. “Where the boy’s concerned, though, I’m told you know more?” That was Problem the Second, and he marked it down as such: the Boy Prisoner.

  “Aye,” Palla said. “I was at Westcross with him, more than three years ago now. He’s a tick or two bigger, but it’s the same boy—and he knew me on sight, no doubt of that.”

  He nodded. “But he was never actually a soldier, isn’t that right? So he can’t be a deserter, either.”

  She shook her head. “He ran off, to be sure, but that’s not why I took him in.” She hesitated. “This all happened before you came here, milord.…”

  Would they really insist on calling him that? “That’s all right,” Varalen said. “I’ll do my best to follow it regardless.”

  She fidgeted, tugging at her glove. “Well, there was a soldier at Westcross, Ben Ginn, who ended up running afoul of His Eminence right after the boy ran off. Seems Ben swiped some bit of jewelry off a prisoner bound for the capital, and His Eminence heard of it and wanted it back. But Ben could never turn it up, and he always swore it was the boy who took it. So I thought—”

  “I see.” Why on earth had Elgar cared whether his guards stole from their captives or not? “Has the boy been able to produce this trinket?”

  She shuffled her feet. “He claims he sold it.”

  “An entirely likely course of action, given how many years have passed.” He dipped the quill in the inkwell again. “Is there anything else?”

  Palla bit her lip. “I think they know each other.”

  “You think that who know each other?”

  “Her and the boy. The ones we brought in.” She still fidgeted a little, but she met his eyes. “I … had an idea, milord. I thought it was funny, picking up two people an hour apart in nearly the same spot—I thought I saw the boy talking to Peck too, but he ran for it as soon as he laid eyes on me. So I put him in the same cell with her, just to see what they’d do. Prisoners aren’t usually ones for talking, but I keep hearing those two whispering to each other, and they clap their mouths right shut whenever I get near. Might be they meant to be at the Night Market at the same time—might be they were up to something there.”

  And by something she undoubtedly meant resistance business. Varalen left the quill in the inkwell while he thought it over. “Well, it’s not impossible, especially if they frequent the same areas. But even if they do know each other, that’s not necessarily significant. I grew up in the capital myself—not too far from Draven’s Square, actually—and I can assure you that big cities often feel smaller than they have any right to.” That wasn’t the answer she needed, though, and he sighed. “Leave them where they are for now. If you happen to overhear anything of interest pass between them, be sure to report it.”

  She bowed. “Milord.”

  Varalen waited for the door to shut behind her before he let himself slump forward over the table, but a moment later he was reaching for his quill again. Problem the Third: the Resistance, he wrote. If the soldiers had indeed apprehended the wrong woman, as he was almost certain they had, that meant there was a real member of the resistance out there somewhere—well, assuming their little weasel had told the truth. Varalen didn’t doubt a resistance movement existed in some form—there were always resistance movements, no matter who ruled. The question was, did it have any substance after its members had left the tavern and sobered up? Elgar certainly thought so, but Elgar gave as much weight to ancient legends as scouting reports, so perhaps his opinion wasn’t the most reliable. Either way, Varalen had no idea how they were supposed to go about finding this woman now; if she had the slightest pinch of sense, she’d stay far away from Six-Fingered Peck in the future, and he’d been all they had.

  Problem the Fourth, possibly his least favorite of the lot, was Hornoak. It was like a bad joke, or some sort of demented riddle game: What did it mean to find someone who couldn’t be tempted? Elgar was no more naïve about human nature than Varalen was himself, and yet he had demanded such an impossible creature in all seriousness, as if he felt Varalen ought to have it sorted out in an evening. He’d finally offered to go himself, but Elgar refused to allow it; he’d suggested Elgar go himself, but the imperator would have none of that, either: “If there’s danger in it,” he’d said, “I’ll not be the one to suffer it.” Asked what sort of danger he meant, of course, he’d refused to answer.

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, Varalen finished his list: Problem the Fifth: the War. As to that, the lines of his maps were starting to blur before his eyes, and he still didn’t feel as if he’d made any progress.

  An easy victory against the Esthradian army used to be the one thing he could count on. He’d made his name in the east, helping the Lanvaldian army drive Caius Margraine’s men back across the border when the marquis had decided he’d like to have some more territory. Caius Margraine was built like a bull, all tough muscle and hard head; he led the van of every brigade he ever commanded, ever since he was a boy, yet he bore surprisingly few scars—easy to spot but damned hard to kill, as his men liked to boast. They loved him for his bravery, and perhaps he deserved it, but as a strategist, he was worse than useless—the only order he seemed to know was charge. And charge he did, over and over and over. Varalen broke him every single time, so easily that by the end he fiddled with his strategies solely for variety’s sake.

  He’d viewed those battles as a necessary annoyance, a stepping-stone on the road to his larger ambitions. But now they seemed positively idyllic—now that Caius Margraine was dead and Varalen’s talents had served only to catch the eye of a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  After he’d conquered Lanvaldis, Elgar had been able to pick at the Esthradian forces near the border, under the pretense of continuing the territorial dispute the former marquis had started. But these skirmishes were nothing like the old ones. Lord Margraine had died just after the fall of Lanvaldis, of an illness that had run approximately six weeks. It was a long time to die, certainly, but precious little time to organize an army when your father had never let you command so much as a single soldier before, and such was the position Arianrod Margraine found herself in after assuming her father’s throne. Perhaps if, as he had advised, Elgar had attacked Esthrades immediately, they might still have caught her half prepared. But Elgar was displeased with the unexpected difficulty with which his army had taken Lanvaldis, and refused to so much as consider another campaign until he had reorganized and retested his soldiers in every conceivable fashion. By the time he finally agreed to send them to Esthrades, it was too late.

  If Caius Margraine had been a charging bull, his daughter was a silken noose; she slipped around and around Varalen’s men, and by the time she tightened her grip, it was too late to escape. She sent her soldiers to seek him across mountains and through forests, while Varalen’s own swore the cliffs were sheer and every tree looked the same. He knew it was no magic, as Elgar feared—the woman was simply a formidable intellect, and that, to him, was far more threatening. Magic, he supposed, could be overcome by superior skill just like any other military advantage, but if she was actually smarter than he was … that was not something he liked to think about.

  He massaged his temples, tracing the lines of the map again. He could win this, he knew he could. Issamira was as good as paralyzed until the succession was sorted out, Reglay was toothless and had been so for years, and Hallarnon’s own borders were secure. He had run every scenario he could think of through his head, and the conclusion he came to was always the same: Esthrades’s marquise might hold them off for some time yet, but without Issamira at her back, she simply could not hope to mount a counteroffensive. And if that were true, which it was, then his best course of action,
and Elgar’s, would be to snap Reglay up quickly and attack Esthrades from two sides, leaving her trapped between them, the eastern sea, and the Gods’ Curse to the south. Even she couldn’t hope to withstand that.

  But if he’d already decided, why was he still poring over his maps at this time of night? Why couldn’t he seem to sleep?

  He reached for his quill again, even though he hardly knew what he meant to write, but the door opened so abruptly, he nearly knocked over his inkwell. He was half expecting Palla again, but it was Quentin Gardener he saw, his face gone pale behind his long side-whiskers. “My lord,” he said, head still respectfully bowed despite his agitation, “if it’s not too much of an imposition, please remain here for the present. You may want to lock your door. The commander’s having a bad night.”

  Elgar had many commanders, but there was no need to ask which one the captain meant. “I see,” he said, trying to imitate Quentin’s steadfastness. “I think I will lock my door, thank you.”

  Quentin nodded and hurried out, and, true to his word, Varalen got up to close the latch. He stood aimlessly before the door, wondering if he shouldn’t add Problem the Sixth: Shinsei to his list. Whatever Elgar said, whatever any of the other officers or soldiers said, the commander was clearly mad, and had been for some time, if not from birth. He had been years in Elgar’s service before Varalen ever met him, but rumor had it that Shinsei had been different, once: still quiet and removed, still shrinking from all company save Elgar’s, but … composed, or at least restrained. Now he skulked through his quarters like a man who saw ghosts. One moment he seemed to sleepwalk; the next, he’d be too full of nerves to speak. Varalen could not stay more than several minutes in his company without feeling the hairs rise on the back of his neck, and he did not understand how someone as cautious as Elgar could put such absolute trust in a man who seemed as if he might come unhinged at any moment.

  It was Lanvaldis, men whispered, that had changed the commander so; something had happened in the final battle, some unhappy accident that festered in his mind, and Shinsei had never been the same since. But Lanvaldis had been before Varalen’s time, and no one he asked was willing or able to enlighten him further.

  If Shinsei was, as it seemed, in another of his moods, he’d have to be forcibly removed to his own chambers; this generally required at least half a dozen men, if they were lucky and he kept his sword sheathed. Yet Elgar always spoke with him alone, with no more nervousness than he might have shown before an interview with his own reflection. How could he be so unyieldingly particular about some things and so nonchalant about others?

  Varalen finally returned to his seat, and glanced at the map again. This time, he planted his index finger squarely on Hornoak. He’d suggested sending Shinsei as well—there was no one Elgar seemed to trust more—but Elgar had refused that idea more stridently than any of the others. And that left Varalen here, with nothing but a list of problems, and no answers in sight.

  It was Ryam’s life that swung tremulously behind his eyes whenever he closed them; if not for that, he could almost be at peace with the idea of his own execution. There were days when he began to think a quick death preferable to the interminable sentence of serving a man he could not respect, who challenged him only with trivialities.

  * * *

  It was soft, but Seth could hear the commotion clearly—the clatter of metal on stone, the ghost of a shout. He looked down at the woman, thinking to warn her, but she already had her head cocked toward the noise, her eyes contemplative slits.

  “Well,” she muttered at last, turning to him, “I suppose this is as good a time as any.”

  Seth tried not to shiver. “Do you … What do you think that is?”

  “Does it matter? It’s a distraction, and we’re not like to get another. Are you coming or not?”

  He didn’t have to think about that one. “I’m with you.”

  “Good.” He tried to watch her carefully, but he couldn’t seem to follow the movements of her wrists, the way she managed to draw the pick from her sleeve and turn it so it slid into place. She did it as smoothly as if she broke out of prison every day of her life, the click as the manacles released her so soft he might almost have dreamed it. Then she stood, or as near to it as she could get with the ceiling so low, and went over to him.

  He hadn’t realized how much the shackles had been holding him up, and when she unlocked them he staggered suddenly forward, nearly falling into her arms. She caught him easily, holding him by the shoulders and easing him back onto his feet. She held his gaze, and he knew it was the same question again: Could he do this quietly? He nodded.

  It took her a bit longer to get the cell door open; she crouched in front of it for more than a minute, twisting the pick back and forth until she found the right angle. She caught the door before it could creak open, sliding it slowly inch by inch until she could slip by, then nodded to him. He followed her out into the corridor, hoping he didn’t look as petrified as he felt.

  The hallway looked the same to him in either direction, a long unbroken line of cells stretching endlessly into the darkness. The guards had lit a torch in the brazier before his own cell, but beyond that there were only a handful of torches visible along the entire corridor. He hadn’t the slightest idea which way to go, but the woman started striding to the left as confidently as Roger walked through Sheath, and Seth had to hurry to catch up.

  In the dim light he couldn’t always tell which cells held prisoners and which didn’t, or if those prisoners were awake. If they were spotted, mightn’t some of the others rouse the guards? He took hold of the woman’s sleeve, trying to question her as discreetly as possible, but she turned about immediately and grabbed his wrist, fixing him with a look so fierce that any inquiry died in his throat. She loosened her grip a little, then, but still kept hold of him, so he had to shuffle along twice as fast to keep pace.

  The passage grew dimmer the farther they walked, and eventually the woman put her free hand before her, feeling along the wall so she didn’t lose her way. A queasy feeling started up in the pit of Seth’s stomach, and he wondered if she wasn’t just making it up as she went along after all, but then he realized the corridor was getting lighter again. He soon discovered why: a couple dozen steps more and they were around a corner, a flight of steps ahead of them, another torch flickering halfway up. The woman kept climbing past the first landing, but when she reached the second, there were no more stairs, so they had to walk down another hallway. There were still cells lining this one, but the only other torch Seth could see was all the way at the other end of the corridor, leaving heavy shadow in between. The woman tugged on Seth’s wrist, pressed one finger to her lips, and starting creeping down the hall more silently than Seth could ever have managed. He did the best he could, wincing every time his feet made a scuffling noise against the stone.

  It seemed to take forever to reach the far end of the hall, but when they turned the corner, there were no stairs, just another corridor running perpendicular to the first. There were no cells here, though, and he supposed that was something. The woman seemed encouraged too—she walked with more purpose now, as if her goal were in sight. They were about halfway down when she stiffened and paused, her fingers pressing sharply into the back of Seth’s hand. She kept motionless like that for less than an instant, then released him altogether. She ran the fingers of her right hand along her left wrist—smoothly, as if she’d made the movement a hundred times before. And then she caught her breath and leaped backward, just as an indistinct figure flung itself at her from the other side of a shadowy archway Seth hadn’t even seen, missing her by inches.

  The other person hit the floor hard, grunting softly at the impact before rising to his knees. The woman didn’t give him the chance to recover further, kicking him in the gut and then in the side when he doubled over. She aimed the third kick at his head, but he grabbed her leg and pulled her down. They scuffled on the floor, and Seth backed up so they wouldn’t knock hi
m over too. He wanted to help her, somehow, but he didn’t know how to hit the other person without hitting her.

  Then there was yet another figure, taller and slimmer, appearing as if out of nowhere; it grabbed the first interloper by the back of the neck, hauling him off the woman, who jumped immediately to her feet. “Wait,” the new figure whispered, and Seth started, because he knew that voice.

  “Lucius?” he asked.

  The man in question released his companion in favor of brushing his long hair back from his face, then smiled calmly. “Evening, Seth. Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Then—wait, Deinol?”

  “The very same,” Deinol agreed, wincing. “I’m not acquainted with your lovely friend there, though—just know I’d rather wrestle with a wildcat. Gods, my face.”

  “It’s no more than you deserved,” the woman muttered, leaning against the wall. “What did you think you were doing?”

  Deinol ignored her, turning back to Seth. “We heard it was a woman with the guard who brought you in—thought this was her.”

  “Does everyone here think there’s only one woman in the whole damned city?” the woman asked, rolling her eyes. “Am I dressed like a guard to you?”

  “Is she your friend, then?” Lucius asked Seth, still smiling faintly.

  Seth nodded. “Close enough.”

  The woman seemed to regard Deinol as lacking the intelligence necessary for conversation, so she directed her next words at Lucius. “Did any guards see you?”

  “Only one,” Lucius said. “We knocked him out—stole his keys just in case, though Deinol’s decent with a lockpick.”

  “And do you know how you’ll get out?”

  He nodded, pointing down the hall. “Up the stairs at the end there, and then through the kitchen stores, right nearby.”