The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  So would I, Varalen thought. Out loud, he said, “What does this mean for your plans for Reglay?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Varalen took a deep breath, choosing his words as painstakingly as he could. It would make sense for a man to be willing to share his plans with his strategist, but Elgar was absurdly secretive about more than just his meetings with Shinsei; sometimes he remained tight-lipped even about things that had already happened. Whether or not he had, as Varalen suspected, been the one to hire the assassin who killed King Kelken and failed to kill his son, Elgar might still take offense to Varalen’s suggesting so. “If … if both Kelkens had died, the throne of Reglay would have no clear successor, and it would be … a near-perfect opportunity for us. But since that does not seem to be what happened … how do you wish me to proceed?”

  “How indeed.” Elgar sighed. “If you still insist that Arianrod Margraine will stay put if we move into Reglay, I see no reason why we shouldn’t move. I will give the order as soon as Shinsei returns.”

  But that was the question: When would Shinsei return? Varalen had known him to disappear on Elgar’s orders once or twice before, but not often, and certainly not for this long. Where on earth had he gone, and what was he doing? Varalen didn’t imagine that someone as obviously troubled as Shinsei could avoid notice for long, even among people who did not know him by sight, and yet the common folk spread no rumors of him—most did not even seem to know Shinsei had left the capital. Had Elgar sent him very far away? Why would he do that, with such an important battle looming on the horizon?

  “Do you … have an inkling of when that might be, my lord?” he asked.

  “He will return when he returns,” Elgar snapped, his composure suddenly gone. “You will be informed of it then, and not before. Now, shall we move on to the subject of your newest catastrophe?” He paused, seeming to remember just then that Wyles was still there. “You’re dismissed, Nathaniel.”

  The captain hesitated, and for a moment Varalen thought he was hoping to hear more about the failure Elgar had alluded to, no doubt so he could gloat. But instead he said, “Your Eminence, I thought you intended to discuss—”

  “I do intend to discuss it,” Elgar said quickly, “but not at this time. You’re dismissed.”

  Wyles stared at him another moment, then shrugged easily and bowed, showing himself out with his usual calm. Varalen himself was hardly calm about it, however. What had the two of them been plotting, that Elgar clearly wasn’t prepared for Varalen to know about?

  He started out of his reverie when he felt Elgar’s eyes on him. “Now, where were we? Your various inadequacies, I believe?”

  Varalen winced, but he was not so frightened as he might have been. No matter what Elgar said, his failure with the stone was hardly new, and had it been enough to damn him, he didn’t doubt both he and Ryam would already be dead. Since they were not, Elgar must have decided he was worth keeping around, whether or not he was prepared to admit that right away. “I … I can only apologize. But you did, ah, agree with me right up until the end, and if those two in the dungeons hadn’t gotten free—”

  “Another disaster on your part—”

  “With respect, my lord, that was a disaster on your guards’ part. The safeguarding of prisoners is not among my responsibilities.” He shot a significant look at the door Wyles had just left through, in case Elgar had forgotten whose responsibility it actually was.

  “Let’s thank the gods for that,” Elgar said. He didn’t even look peeved, just distracted, one hand moving up to stroke his beard. “However they learned of their friends’ escape, they must have learned of it—I’m certain they would have returned otherwise.”

  “They might’ve returned, only—”

  “Hmm.” Elgar’s fingers kept probing his chin. “Only neglected to inform us, eh? Perhaps they never even found the stone to begin with.”

  Why did he seem so oddly nonchalant about that possibility? “Could someone else have taken it first?”

  Elgar tilted his head to the side, his lips pursing faintly. “It’s possible, of course. I wonder what such a thief would have wanted with it.”

  What do you want with it? Varalen thought. “You did say it wasn’t valuable.”

  “I said it was only valuable to me, which was only half a lie. To you, Varalen, I expect it would be entirely useless.”

  “Why to me in particular?”

  “Because you believe in less than any man I know,” Elgar said.

  Varalen tried not to roll his eyes. “Ah, so it’s a magic stone.”

  Of all things, Elgar laughed. “To think you consider yourself so clever. If I didn’t need your battle strategies, I could dress you in motley and hardly notice a difference.”

  * * *

  Stepstone was the fourth town they passed through, and only the third one they stopped at; Eirnwin preferred to lead them away from crowds when he could, and Kel didn’t blame him, despite the attentions his legs required. They could not march to Mist’s Edge with an army: there would be no way to keep such a thing secret, and if Elgar heard, he’d simply send his own men to block them, superstitious or not. Their only chance was to get Kel into the castle before Elgar got wind of anything—sending an army to kill the heir to Mist’s Edge in his own ancestral hall, once he’d claimed it in the very names of those so long dead, was quite another matter, and one they had every reason to believe Elgar would balk at. So the fewer people who even knew he’d left Second Hearth, the better.

  He needed Eirnwin with him at Mist’s Edge—what good was an advisor when he was in another castle?—and Lessa had wanted to be left behind even less than he wanted to leave her. It might not have been her ancestral home, but she was his family, and if she wanted to see this through at his side, that was her right. Eirnwin still clung to the suspicion that a traitor might have let the assassin in, so they’d brought only the three guardsmen Eirnwin trusted most, and dressed them as sellswords. Grizzled Herren had served at Second Hearth for twenty years, and had been a favorite of Kel’s father; the other two deferred to him as if by some unspoken agreement. Dark-haired Hayne had failed to catch anyone’s notice until the only other time an assassin had infiltrated Second Hearth, an attempt on the royal children during a banquet when Kel was five. The long scar on her arm was covered up by her clothing, but it marked a blow that had been intended for him. And Dirk was the youngest of the three; he had been assigned to Kel for the past two years, and if Eirnwin had frowned at the familiar tone he took with Kel sometimes, he never had cause to complain of Dirk’s dedication to his duty. As for the rest of them, Eirnwin played the part of a trader, and Kel and Lessa were his children. If the new King Kelken was known to be a cripple, well, so were many boys, though they still tried to draw as little attention as they could. Kel was doubly glad, now, that he’d insisted on making his crutches so plain; he could leave the rest of his finery behind, but those he could hardly do without.

  A healthy boy his age might have made it to Mist’s Edge in three days, even less if he knew how to ride. But Kel had tried both horse and cart before, and the pain all the bumping and jostling caused his legs was so great he couldn’t endure it for any length of time. So he walked for as long as he could walk, and when the exhaustion and the swelling became too much, he took to the cart, and when he couldn’t abide that any longer, it was time to stop for the night.

  Eirnwin said if he could be strong tomorrow, they might reach Mist’s Edge by nightfall, or early the following morning. Kel wanted to think he had that well in hand, but he had to admit he wasn’t used to distances like this, to the uneven ground and the endlessly jostling cart. But he had made it this far, hadn’t he? He had walked like this for so many years, when no one had thought he’d be able to walk at all.

  Nevertheless, he couldn’t suppress his relief at the thought of any kind of bed. None of them had ever been to Stepstone, but a villager pointed out an inn to Eirnwin easily enough. Hayne and Dirk took
the cart around to the stables to feed the horses, and Herren went with the three of them into the inn.

  The room they entered was dim and spare, with roughhewn tables and a roughhewn woman behind the counter pouring the ale. Kel squinted toward the back of the room, but he could barely make out more than the outlines of people. Eirnwin approached the woman while Kel hung back with Lessa.

  “I’d like two rooms for the night, if you please,” Eirnwin said. “One will serve for me and my children, with another for my hired hands.”

  “Sounds cramped,” someone said—the voice felt like it was right at Kel’s elbow. “Don’t worry, old man, your children can kit up with me. Well, the girl can, anyway—might even let the cripple watch, if he behaves himself.”

  If he heard, Eirnwin gave no indication of it, but Herren’s fingers inched toward the hilt of his sword. Lessa was looking firmly at the floor, her lips pale and pressed together. Kel turned toward the voice, but the nearest table seated three grinning men, and he couldn’t tell which one had spoken; it half seemed as if the words had come out of the air above them. The woman behind the counter barely blinked. “Upstairs, back end of the hall,” she said. “You want food as well?”

  “Certainly—just name your price. And we’ll need hay for the horses.”

  The woman jerked her thumb out the door. “As for that, you’ve got to talk with my boy out by the stables.”

  Eirnwin frowned. “I didn’t give Dirk and Hayne any coin,” he said to Kel. He looked at Herren, then at the group of men around the table, and hesitated. “I’d better go myself,” he said at last. “Herren, you stay here.” Herren gave a barely perceptible nod, and Eirnwin left.

  Kel fidgeted, trying to resist the urge to inch closer to Herren; Lessa was still looking at the floor. Herren shifted from one foot to the other, keeping his eyes on the three men at the table. The woman behind the counter was looking ahead and slightly down, her eyes focusing on nothing.

  Then, so suddenly that Kel nearly lost his balance, the voice spoke again. “You look mighty cold over there, sweetling,” it said, and this time Kel looked over quickly enough to see the speaker, the man in the center. “I’d be happy to warm you up, if you’d like. Better than sharing a room with the old man, surely.”

  Lessa didn’t move, but Herren hissed low in his throat, and the man’s head snapped in his direction. “And what do you think you’re growling at, dog? Bet you’d do the same if you had the balls. Or are you trying to lay claim to her?”

  Herren took a step forward, his sword half out. Lessa choked back her gasp, but Kel said, “Herren, stop,” before he really knew what he was saying. They couldn’t draw attention to themselves. They couldn’t cause any trouble. There were too many men at that table, let alone in the room.

  Otherwise, he’d never let anyone talk to Lessa like that. He wouldn’t.

  The man in the center laughed, his lips stretching wide. “Aye, listen to the cripple, dog. You’d be worse off than him after crossing blades with me.”

  Herren’s eyes darkened, but he sheathed his sword again, keeping his eyes on the far wall.

  Then the man in the center got to his feet, and Kel’s blood ran cold. He took a step around the table, and then Herren was right in his way. The man spat at the floor. “Move aside, dog, I just want to talk to the lady. We can’t see each other so fine from all that distance away.”

  “You have no business with her,” Herren said, his hand on his sword hilt again. “Keep your distance.”

  “I think I’ll say who I do and don’t have business with, thanks. I certainly don’t have business with you, though, so you can get well enough away from me.”

  Herren took two steps back. Then he drew his sword.

  The other two men were up in a heartbeat, and suddenly there were four swords out, the steel glinting in the dim light. The man near Herren smiled, and his teeth glinted too.

  Kel tightened his grip on his crutches, hoisting himself up to his full height. “Herren—”

  The man in front of Herren took a step forward, as if he meant to shove him with his shoulder, and Herren turned and lunged, his blade sliding just wide of the man’s neck. Before he could retreat, one of the other two stabbed him in the side, and the third’s sword went right through his thigh. Faster than Kel could think, the man in the center stabbed Herren in the chest, twisting the blade with a grin before drawing it out. Herren slumped to the floor, bleeding so heavily that Kel took an involuntary step back, and the man stabbed him again. This time he didn’t remove his blade until Herren had stopped moving altogether. Out of the corner of his eye, Kel saw Lessa bite her lip, but she didn’t gasp, and she didn’t cry out.

  Kel waited for anyone else in the tavern to do something, but no one did. All the other drinkers just kept drinking, and the woman behind the counter kept looking at nothing with her pale distant eyes. “You killed him,” Kel said, because someone had to say something.

  The man stepped toward them, his eyes sliding from Kel to Lessa and back again. “Eh, there are plenty of dogs in this world, boy. I’m sure your father’ll buy you another one.” There was still blood on his sword. It was dripping.

  My father is dead, Kel thought, and then, I wish I could kill you. Out loud he said, “Go away,” and his voice was a frightened boy’s.

  The man heard it, and laughed. “Don’t worry, little bit, I don’t care about you. Just quiet down so your sister and me can have some words, eh?”

  “No,” Kel said.

  The man looked unconcerned. “No?”

  Kel’s legs were screaming at him from all the walking, but he still pushed himself forward, moving in front of Lessa. He shifted his weight carefully to one leg, preparing the other crutch. “No. She doesn’t want to talk to you. Leave us alone.”

  Lessa laid a hand on his arm, but it was the one he was leaning on, not the one he was keeping free. “Kel, maybe we should—”

  Kel shook his head. “He’s not going to have his way.”

  The man grinned. “And if I say I shall?”

  Kel lifted his crutch and hit him.

  The man didn’t quite try to dodge; he probably thought he’d just shrug off the blow to show how weak Kel was. But Kel’s arms were stronger than they looked, because they’d spent so much time supporting his weight, and his crutch fell across the man’s chest with a satisfying thud, making him stagger backward with a curse.

  The man behind him giggled. “The little cripple hit you.”

  The one who’d killed Herren was no longer grinning, his face dark and grim instead. “You’re not going to want to try that again, boy.”

  “I will,” Kel insisted. “If you don’t go away, I’ll—I’ll—” His voice kept skidding higher and higher, as if about to break, but he stayed where he was. He’d run before, and Lessa had stayed. He might sound frightened—he might be frightened—but his legs weren’t shaking, and he wasn’t going to run. Not because he was a cripple who couldn’t run, but because he was going to stand here, and look at the man who’d killed Herren.

  The man lifted his sword, and one last drop of blood fell from it to splatter onto the floor. He held it in front of Kel’s face, keeping the point right between his eyes. Kel swallowed hard, but he didn’t step back, and he didn’t tremble, and he raised his crutch again, laying it against the man’s blade as if they were crossing swords.

  The man’s scowl deepened, but before he could speak, a hand tightened on his shoulder, dragging him backward. Kel sighed in relief, expecting Hayne or Dirk, but the interloper was a man he did not know. “That’s enough out of you,” he said to the one who’d killed Herren. “I don’t make a habit of interfering in other people’s business, but you’ve defied all my attempts to ignore you. You’re irritating me.”

  The man spun away and raised his sword again, pointing it at the stranger this time. “Easy enough to settle that.” Then he lunged.

  The stranger sidestepped easily, drawing his sword as if he had all day to do
it. It was a one-and-a-half-hander, the steel gleaming and immaculate, and he swung it in a smooth, beautiful arc, beheading his opponent in one clean stroke. His lips pressed together where another person might have smiled. “Yes,” he said. “It certainly was.”

  Kel gaped at him. So did the other two men, who flinched back when the stranger turned to them. “I don’t have any particular desire to kill you,” he said, “so if you’d like to live, sit down and stay there.” They couldn’t follow his advice fast enough.

  The stranger nodded to Lessa and Kel, and turned to walk back into the shadows of the room.

  Kel was about to start after him, but Lessa’s grip tightened on his arm. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to find Eirnwin and the others before anything else happens.”

  Kel followed her out to the stables, where they found Eirnwin and Hayne in furious conversation with a young man who must have been the boy the innkeeper mentioned. Dirk was leaning against a wooden post, but he stood upright when he saw Kel and Lessa, walking over to them. “Damned boy can’t open his mouth without telling a bloody lie,” he muttered. “If our cart broke that pissing gate, I’m Elgar’s handmaiden. Er, begging your pardons.” He squinted at them. “Is everything all right?”

  “No,” Kel said. He thought of Herren, and his throat closed up. “Is—I—when will Eirnwin be finished? We need to—tell him something.”

  Dirk frowned. “Eirnwin,” he called, “can you get away?”

  Eirnwin sighed, half turning, but then he saw Kel and Lessa and hurried over. “Dirk, help Hayne get some sense into that boy for me, will you? And you two—what’s happened? Where’s Herren?”

  Kel swallowed, but Lessa spoke up. “Herren’s been slain, Eirnwin,” she said, and her hands shook, but her voice was steady—the opposite of the way Kel had been, inside. “There was a fight in the tavern—Kel might’ve been hurt too, but a stranger stepped in and saved us.”

  Eirnwin paled. “Your Grace, I should never have left you for so—”

  “Don’t call me that out here,” Kel said, “and don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have stopped him even if you’d been there.” At least the man was dead, he thought to himself, and then wondered if it was all right to think that.