The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  “He’s rather smitten, isn’t he?” Deinol asked at last, jerking his chin in Seth’s direction.

  Lucius chuckled. “No need to be jealous. He’s just impressed; you have to admit she’s something of a novelty.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Deinol said, aiming a glare at the back of Almasy’s neck. “What do you make of her?”

  Lucius shifted evasively. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you trust her?” Deinol pursued.

  Lucius hesitated. “I want to,” he said at last, “and perhaps that means I shouldn’t. It clouds my judgment, in any case.” He grinned. “She’d make a hell of an ally, though, eh? I’d love to have someone like her at my back.”

  “Why, so she can stick a knife in it? No thanks.” He turned his eyes back to Almasy, watched the way she moved. He still hadn’t managed to figure out precisely how many weapons she carried; that protrusion at her back as she turned could be the shift of her shoulder blade or the edge of something much deadlier.

  “What makes you think she’s so impressive, anyway?” he asked Lucius. “So she can hide a knife or three, and she’s traveled a bit. We’ve never seen her fight.”

  “You can already tell she’s quick on her feet,” Lucius said, “and the way the world is now, you won’t get very far traveling if you can’t defend yourself. But that’s not what intrigues me most.”

  “Are you going to tell me what does?” Deinol asked when Lucius fell silent again.

  He nodded at Almasy’s back. “Look at the way she’s dressed.”

  Deinol looked, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen clothing more nondescript in his life. It was all simple and sturdy, layers of cloth and leather in various shades of brown and gray. “I don’t think I’m seeing whatever you’re seeing,” he said at last.

  Lucius smiled. “Do you see any holes? Any tears, any patches, any irregular seams? Look at her boots. Do they seem worn out to you, or fresh and fine? When you and I wear through our boots, we have them patched. When she wears through hers, it appears she buys new boots.”

  Deinol began to see. “So either her father’s a cobbler, or…”

  “Or she has coin to spare.” He squinted at the back of Almasy’s head. “So either someone is paying her very well, she has a decent fortune to call her own, or she’s even better at divesting others of their fortunes than we are. No matter which theory proves true, they all raise a few more interesting questions of their own, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would.” He followed Lucius’s gaze, staring at her profile as she turned. She seemed not to mind Seth’s presence, nor the constant stream of questions he asked. The thought made Deinol smile—that was his boy for you, sweet enough to melt even the hardest heart. Not that he thought Almasy especially hard—just ruthlessly pragmatic, which, in its way, was even worse.

  “Watch her,” he said, not harshly. “All right?”

  Lucius nodded. “Of course.”

  Deinol was just as glad to let Almasy lead; he could read, but he’d never been one for maps, and the one Oswhent had given them only confused him. He knew Lucius must’ve had quite the journey from Aurnis, but he hadn’t left the city since he arrived, and he winced at the sight of the map just as surely as Deinol did. Even if they couldn’t trust her, he figured she wouldn’t waste any of her supposedly precious time leading them in the wrong direction; if she’d wanted to lose them, she needn’t have agreed to come along in the first place.

  As soon as they crossed a stream deep enough for her to bury her hands in, Almasy stopped to drink, and Deinol drew abreast of her, trying not to reveal how out of breath he was. “What kind of resistance do you think we’ll have to face?” he asked her. “Elgar didn’t mention anything of note, but he might have been hiding something.”

  Almasy shook her head. “He does want us to succeed in this, so I doubt he’d have neglected to mention anything that could help us prepare. It’s the nature of the prize itself I wonder about—he lied about that if he lied about anything.”

  That earned her a quizzical stare from Lucius. “What makes you say that?”

  “The most curious piece of it,” Almasy said, “was Elgar’s reluctance to send his own soldiers. It has nothing to do with not wanting to draw attention to himself—strip half a dozen of your best men of their uniforms and send them off, and who’d be the wiser? No, he doesn’t want to send his soldiers—not one, not a hundred—because there’s no one he trusts enough not to run off with the thing instead of bringing it back. And that means it must look so obviously valuable that there’s no way he could try to hide it, no way to convince the men they’re handling something routine instead of something precious. But you say he told you it was just some rock, and that can’t be. Either he lied outright, or there’s something he’s leaving out.”

  Lucius was staring at the water; when he finally spoke, it was as if he had to drag the words out. “He seemed to think … He said that it would turn the tide of all his wars, though what he meant by that, I couldn’t say. But he also said that to me—to us—it would be worthless.” He frowned. “Or I suppose he said perhaps it would be worthless. What could that mean?”

  “Too many things,” Almasy said, wiping her mouth. “Depending on what it really is, he could derive all manner of things from it: knowledge, influence … some arcane power, if you believe in that sort of thing.”

  “Do you?” Lucius asked.

  She shrugged, but she looked uncomfortable. “We know Elgar does. Perhaps … perhaps it’s something that held power in the past, when magic thrived in this world. If Elgar believes that studying it could help him bring magic back—that he could possess it—might that not be enough to win his wars?”

  “But even if magic really did exist once, that was hundreds and hundreds of years ago,” Lucius said. “Bringing it back couldn’t possibly be that easy.”

  “Perhaps Elgar thinks it is.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Almasy leaned down to take another drink. “Nothing. I’m speculating, that’s all.”

  “Might you speculate on how much farther we have to go today?” Deinol asked, drying his hands on his shirt.

  One side of her mouth twitched, curving ever so slightly upward. “Yes, I noticed you struggling back there. It all depends on how quickly you want to reach Hornoak—no matter how much ground we cover, we’re not going to reach a safe haven tonight, and I suppose one clearing’s as good as another.”

  “I wasn’t struggling—” Deinol started, but Lucius waved a hand to cut him off. He tried again. “Are there really no towns anywhere in the area?”

  “Not safe ones, and not that we’ll reach tonight,” Almasy said. “If you don’t mind that there’s no inn, and you’re in the mood to have your throat cut and your belongings stolen, Swine’s End is another hour to the southeast—out of our way, but have it as you like.”

  “Swine’s End?” Deinol asked. “There’s really a town called Swine’s End?”

  “I found it an accurate enough name,” Almasy replied. “Shall we go?”

  “Sure, sure, I just … would’ve thought the road out of the capital would be more populated, that’s all.” It would make it the second night they’d spent sleeping in the open, but they hadn’t traveled very far the first day, and he’d assumed inns would be more frequent once they were out of the shadow of Valyanrend’s walls.

  “We’re not on the road,” Almasy reminded him, “though that’s about what I’d expect to hear from someone who’s spent his whole life in the capital. You can’t blame people if they don’t want to settle down around here—as I understand it, the best harvests in Hallarnon are found everywhere else.”

  “It’s true,” Seth piped up. “The most fertile farms are to the south, though you can find some in every other direction, as long as you go far enough. But the land right around Valyanrend’s been stinting with its harvest for as long as anyone I knew could remember.”

  Deinol frowned. “Th
e trees seem to grow well enough.”

  “Trees are stubborn, especially this sort—beggar-elms, we used to call them. Corn and wheat are less so. My mother always said it’s the weeds you don’t want that’ll follow you anywhere.” He shook his head. “I sure didn’t miss seeing this area again.”

  “It’s not a place I like to linger,” Almasy said, and looked almost as if she would touch his hair. “Come on.”

  Deinol let her take the lead again, with Seth scrambling to keep up. Then he exchanged a look with Lucius, who nodded slowly, his eyes grimly fixed on Almasy’s back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was the third time they’d changed cells in what was probably as many days. Once again they examined it as best they could once the guards were out of earshot—Morgan even leaned on the wall for good measure just as in some silly story—but once again they found nothing. If there really were more false walls than true ones down here, as Roger had claimed, they were faking it very convincingly.

  The cell they were in now was, as far as they could tell, on the lowest floor of the dungeons, and it looked more like a cave than anything. The ceiling, the back wall, and the one to their left were made of stone blocks and mortar, but the other wall was solid rock, and some of the cells across from them were natural on all three sides, as if the builders had only had to add bars. At first the guards had always taken all the torches with them when they left, no doubt to try to frighten their prisoners, but then they’d inevitably grown suspicious, scurrying back to light up the cell after too long without hearing any noise from within. Now they left one torch burning in the sconce on the opposite wall, though Morgan wasn’t sure what they thought it would help them see. She was no hand with a lockpick, and Braddock was much more likely to knock a door down than tease it open.

  “We should start keeping a tally, like in one of Roger’s gran’s tales,” she muttered to him, trying not to think about what she’d give to be able to rub her wrists.

  “Of what, the days? How would we tell down here?”

  She shook her head. “Not the days. Say … the number of times the guards have been annoying.”

  That made him laugh. “It’d fill half the wall already.”

  It wasn’t only the matter of where to put them or how much light to give them—the guards couldn’t even seem to figure out the proper way to restrain them. At first they’d simply chained them to the back wall, but they quickly realized that meant either unchaining them every time they ate or sticking the food directly in their mouths. Next they’d tried chaining one of each of their legs to the bars, but then one of their jailers had almost tripped on the chain. (He’d blamed Braddock, though Braddock had been half asleep at the time.) So now they were stuck with the traditional two chains apiece, ankle to ankle and wrist to wrist. It was certainly more comfortable than the wall, but the chains were heavy enough to discourage standing up.

  Morgan leaned back, resting her hands between her knees. “I expected to be more … impressed by Elgar’s men. Isn’t he supposed to have the greatest fighting force on the continent?”

  “He has the biggest fighting force on the continent,” Braddock corrected her. “Which is the kind of thing that means just enough to make people complacent.”

  “Elgar, complacent? I can’t picture it.”

  Braddock shook his head. “Not him. His soldiers.”

  “Maybe he just stashed all the half-wits in the dungeons because there’s hardly anybody down here,” Morgan suggested.

  “Hmm … he isn’t known for keeping many prisoners. Maybe they’re just not used to having actual work to do.”

  He lapsed into silence after that, but Morgan couldn’t help pressing him on one thing. “You haven’t grumbled at me for deciding to stay behind yet.”

  Braddock scratched his cheek, the chains making the movement slow and ungainly. “I figure you know how foolhardy it was without me telling you. Besides, I stayed too, didn’t I? Couldn’t very well grumble at you without giving myself the same treatment, and I’ve got enough people to be angry at as it is.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t, I’d probably be in here with … whoever that strange woman was.” She didn’t precisely want to tell him how much better it was to endure this with him rather than a stranger, but she thought he probably knew.

  “Mm,” Braddock mumbled. “I hope she’s feeling properly grateful to me, wherever she is.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Morgan said.

  “I wouldn’t either.” He gave a low chuckle. “Could you ever have imagined it? You and me in here while those two bandits have their freedom?”

  “Gods, and my tavern. If Roger’s neglecting it, I swear…”

  “Oh, the little swindler wouldn’t dare. A man may be dishonest, but you can always trust a coward to act like a coward.”

  Morgan shifted awkwardly backward, wriggling up to the wall so she could lean against it. It was rough and cold against her back, but at least she could stretch her neck out some. “I can’t decide whether I wish I’d listened to him or not. It’s not clear whether we’re in a better or worse position now than we were before we ventured here.” She stretched her arms out next, wincing as the chains chafed her wrists again. “Have you ever been in a prison before?”

  “What kind of question is that?” He laughed. “Not exactly—not a proper prison, anyway. Had a couple captains administer what they thought was discipline once or twice, but I don’t suppose that really counts.” He brushed a hand against her arm. “It’ll work out, Morgan. Between Lucius’s skill and the swindler’s cunning, they’ll get us out of here however they have to, no matter what Elgar decides. They won’t give up until they do.”

  “I’d like to believe that, but…” She trailed off only as long as it took her to squint at the wall near the far corner, and then she finished—for the guards’ sake, on the small chance any were listening—“we can’t be sure of anything, I suppose.” With that done, and before Braddock could start another sentence she’d have to answer, she jerked her head sideways, hoping he could read in the urgency a need for discretion.

  He nodded slightly, then scuttled over to her, his voice as soft as she’d ever heard it. “What is it?”

  Morgan’s pointing wasn’t very precise with the manacles on, so she stared at the spot as well, hoping he could follow her gaze. She kept her voice a whisper too: “What do you think that is?”

  * * *

  “Shit,” Almasy muttered, tugging at her sleeve absently.

  Lucius, naturally, had tensed before she’d even spoken. “Well, at least we spotted them before they could do the same.”

  She snorted. “They aren’t exactly making it difficult.”

  “What about this one, eh?” one of the men in the clearing practically yelled. “That’s an emerald at least!”

  “It’s a bit of colored glass, idiot,” another called back to him. “Not worth the effort to foist it off—better give it to some dim-witted girl for a favor.”

  “Like you got anything better.”

  “Shows how much you know—that farmer had more tucked away than he let on. Have a look.”

  Deinol looked at Lucius. “Three?”

  “Four,” Lucius whispered back, nodding at a skinny, silent man brooding near the far edge of the clearing. He had a knife out, and he was idly carving into a piece of wood while his companions babbled. The other three carried a spear, a saber, and a two-handed ax, but they were preoccupied in stripping the corpses that littered the clearing. If the fresh blood bothered them, they didn’t show it, though Deinol supposed they bore enough of it on their blades and clothes already.

  Almasy shrugged. “Irritating, but easily dealt with. If we’re lucky, we’ll have it over with before they even realize we’re here.”

  Lucius hesitated. “You want to kill them?”

  She rolled her eyes. “They’re looters, and they’re in our way.” Deinol had a sinking feeling that the second reason was really all she needed.
/>
  “We can go around them,” Lucius persisted.

  “Did they go around those farmers?” She jerked her chin at Seth. “They certainly won’t go around your boy, if they catch sight of him. They’ll kill him first.”

  Seth looked absurdly guilty, as if this were all somehow his fault. Lucius glanced back at him, paused a moment more, fingers against his sword hilt, and then nodded. “Fine. Strategy?”

  She gestured at the one on the far side, who’d dropped the wood and was now sharpening his knife against a whetstone. “Can you take care of that one? The rest should be easy enough.”

  Lucius nodded again. “Done. Deinol, try for the big one. Seth, stay back.” He laid his hands on his sword—not pulling it from its sheath, just gripping the hilt with one hand and the sheath with the other. Deinol reached for the hilt of his two-hander, easing it carefully free so he didn’t strike a branch or rustle a leaf. Seth drew back into the trees as ordered, but Almasy didn’t unsheathe her sword as he’d expected. Instead she drew the fingers of one hand along the opposite wrist, and Deinol understood—she was going for the knife she had up her sleeve.

  Almasy looked to Lucius. “You should move first.” He nodded once more, then glanced back out at the men. They were still scavenging their prey, and even the man with the knife wasn’t looking their way. Lucius gathered himself and leaped into the clearing.

  He was as good as his word, making straight for the man Almasy had pointed out, who tossed away his whetstone and had his knife up in an instant. Deinol charged the big man with the ax; he was slower than his companion, but he still spun away at the last moment, slipping back with only a minor slash to his arm. Deinol turned to chase him, but before he could close, another man stepped in his way—the one with the saber. The big one had his ax in position by then, and Deinol hesitated, unsure which to strike at first. He risked a look at Lucius, but the man with the knife kept dodging away from his strikes, no doubt hoping he could hold Lucius off until one of his friends could assist him. Since Lucius couldn’t help him out, Deinol blocked a sword stroke, spun away from a swing of the ax that set the air singing, and then looked the other way, at Almasy.