The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  Eirnwin pressed a hand to his mouth, as if keeping something in. “We’ll have to … see to him. We’ll have to bury him.”

  “That man?” Kel asked. “What for?”

  “No, Your Gr—I meant Herren.”

  “Oh.” He shuddered. “Of course. Should we sleep somewhere else?”

  Eirnwin shook his head. “There is nowhere else. Not in Stepstone, anyway, and the next village is too far away. Besides, we’ve already paid for the horses. The best thing would be to go back inside, if you can.”

  Kel nodded. It was better that way; there was something he wanted to do.

  He peered once more into the depths of the room when they all walked in, after Hayne and Dirk finally got the stableboy to cease his accusations. The stranger was still there, drinking alone in the back corner, but the dead man’s two companions had left, and their table was still empty.

  “Wait here,” Kel said to the others, and headed toward the back of the room. They hurried after him anyway, of course, but he was too tired to try to stop them.

  The stranger looked up when he heard the creak of Kel’s crutches, but just barely. He did not say anything, just waited to see if Kel would speak.

  The light was even dimmer this far back in the room, but Kel could easily see that he was handsome, with glossy brown hair, a smooth, clean-shaven face, and eyes a pure, pale blue. His nose was straight, his brow unfurrowed, his cheekbones elegantly defined. There was only one flaw in his face: a long slender scar, starting in the middle of his forehead, almost at his hairline, and running halfway down the bridge of his nose. Even that was oddly perfect, so smooth and straight that Kel could only imagine the sharpness of the blade that had made it, or the skill of the hand that had held the blade.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Kel said. “Um. Sir. For helping us.”

  “You don’t have to call me that,” the man said, leaning back in his chair. “I’m no sir by anyone’s reckoning. And you don’t have to thank me.”

  “Well,” Kel said, “maybe not, but … I wanted to.”

  The man nodded, then took a long sip of his drink.

  From behind Kel, Alessa said, “I—I should thank you as well.”

  The stranger looked over at her, and though he stared for a moment, it was only for a moment, and whatever he saw only seemed to make him sad. By the time he spoke again, his gaze had already slid back to Kel. “You’re welcome.”

  Kel knew he should walk away, but he wanted an indefinable something more from the man, some confidence or concession he could name. “Why did you help us?” he asked at last; perhaps it was impolite, but it was all he could think of to say. “You didn’t get up when Herren was killed, but you helped me.”

  “People get killed all the time,” the stranger said. “I usually leave them to it—it’s none of my business, and I’m usually better at killing people than saving them anyway. But with you…” He looked at Lessa again. “She’s your sister?”

  “Yes,” Kel said. There wasn’t much he could say of himself that was true, not out here. But that, at least, wasn’t a lie.

  “I had a sister once,” the stranger said. “I wasn’t any good at saving her, either. You were doing a better job of protecting yours than I ever did with mine, so I helped you out. That’s why.”

  “Oh,” Kel said. Did that mean the man’s sister had died?

  Eirnwin cleared his throat, and the man raised an eyebrow at him. “And who are you?”

  “I would thank you for saving my children,” Eirnwin said—a lie that couldn’t be helped, Kel reminded himself—“but I seem to be out a sellsword.” Another lie—Herren had been a royal guard. “I wonder if we might ask for your help a little longer.”

  “I’m not a sellsword,” the man said flatly.

  “Yes,” Eirnwin said, “but you don’t need to be one to come to an arrangement with me. Our destination is near Mist’s Edge—not far at all now, and I’m willing to pay you whatever you deem fair. It might not even be out of your way.”

  The man scratched his neck. “I don’t know if it’s out of my way. I haven’t figured out where I’m going yet.” But that wasn’t no, and Kel waited. The man seemed to struggle with himself, but he finally said, “I suppose a couple days’ march west won’t take me any farther from where I need to be. All right, I’ll make sure you and your children get where you’re going, and you can pay me whatever you were going to give the dead man.” He looked down at the table. “Now let me finish my drink.”

  “Wait,” Kel said. “What’s your name?” When the man hesitated, he added, “I’m Kel.”

  The man wrinkled his nose, then ran one finger down his scar. “You can call me Cadfael,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Almasy was bloodstained, which in itself was anything but unusual. A swath of it had dried on her cheek, and the cloth at her hip was soaked with red; her fingers bore haphazard stains. He doubted any of it was hers.

  “Your hunting went well, I trust,” Gravis said.

  She regarded him coolly. “I have returned. That should tell you all you need to know.”

  Indeed it did. “Lady Margraine is still upstairs—I don’t suppose you’ll clean up before you see her?”

  Almasy shrugged. “I have never known her to care about such things.” That was true enough; if the marquise were capable of squeamishness in anything, Gravis had never seen it. Perhaps it even amused her to see Almasy in all that blood. He wouldn’t be surprised.

  He was going to let her go, but then it occurred to him to ask, “Why did she require them killed?”

  “It is not for me to question her,” Almasy said.

  “So you’re just a dog to be kept on a leash? I thought you of all people wouldn’t accept that.”

  Some of the men had taken to calling her Lady Margraine’s dog—sometimes even to her face—but Gravis had never been among them. It was enough to make her pause, if not, it seemed, to rattle her. “We’re both dogs, Gravis, but you’re the only one on a leash. And just because I come when I’m called and you have to be dragged, you think you’re the free one.”

  She walked past him. He wished he could think of something, even just a taunt, to detain her, but his mind was blank, and soon she vanished up the stairs.

  How could someone who claimed to value her independence so highly be as content to follow orders as Almasy was? Gravis had been beholden to one master or another nearly his entire life, and even he choked on a command every now and then. Yet if Almasy had ever refused a task Lady Margraine had set for her, Gravis did not know of it.

  With him there was no mystery. He had sworn an oath years and years ago to serve Lord Caius and his heirs for as long as he should live, and he did not intend to break it, no matter how infuriating Caius’s actual heir had turned out to be. But what had Almasy sworn, or what had she been offered? He could not make it out.

  Lady Margraine had made it clear from the beginning that Almasy was to receive anything she asked for, that her commands were to be followed as if they were the marquise’s own. But Almasy asked for nothing, ordered nothing and no one; she accepted coin when she needed a blade sharpened or an article of clothing replaced, and she took her meals at the hall when she had not been ordered elsewhere, but that was the extent of her demands. And so she was both the most exalted member of the marquise’s guard and the least—possessed of great power in theory, but only in theory. Indeed, the more Gravis pondered it, the more certain he became that Lady Margraine had bestowed that power only for the sake of her own amusement, because she knew Almasy would never make use of it.

  He had no ideas about the blood apples, either. It was against every tradition for anyone but a Margraine to eat them regularly, and even though Lady Margraine laughed as easily at most traditions as she did at everything else, she’d seemed content enough to keep that one until Almasy came along. He’d asked Almasy once if they were her reward, but she denied it. “She believes it will be some irony against her father if
I eat them,” she said, and nothing more.

  Lady Margraine could never resist an opportunity to slight her father, it seemed. Why didn’t she just retrieve Lord Caius’s corpse and spit on it? Gravis wondered.

  He found the man he’d hoped to see idling outside the kitchens. Denton Halley had just taken an enormous bite of his bread and butter, but he swallowed it quickly when Gravis caught his eye. “Gods, you look sour. Something I can do for you?”

  Gravis might have responded that there was hardly any reason to be cheerful, but Dent never seemed to need one. “Almasy,” he said.

  “What, again?”

  “I’m not going to stop thinking on it until I’m satisfied, Dent.”

  “Aye, but there’s only so much you can ask me that you haven’t asked before. I knew her, what, a day before you did? Two?”

  Gravis had been on an errand south of Stonespire when Almasy first arrived there; it seemed an unfortunate tradition that he should find himself away from the hall on the days he could most have wished he were present. But Dent had been there, and Gravis knew he hardly gave him any peace because of it. “I didn’t intend to ask you about that.” He wished he could have, but Dent was right—every potential question that flickered through his mind was one he had asked countless times before. “I only meant that I wonder if we should let this continue.”

  “This? You mean Seren?” Dent laughed. “Gravis, I hope she does stay here. I don’t think her ladyship’s ever been so safe as she is with that woman prowling about her chambers.”

  “Does that mean you trust her?”

  Dent took another bite of bread, chewing this one more thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t trust Seren with my life, but I’d certainly trust her with her ladyship’s. I think she’s proven that well enough.”

  “How has she proven it?”

  “You really have to ask that? Gods, Gravis, she’s been here long enough, and served as well as you or I ever did. If she wanted to play us false, she could’ve done so a year ago with no greater trouble.” He tapped his chin. “More than that—I’ve known her ladyship as long as you, which is longer than she’s known herself, and the day she trusts someone without cause is the day I sprout wings and fly across the sea. Whatever it is she knows about Seren, it’s enough.”

  But what did she know about Almasy? What did she know that they didn’t? Gravis shook his head; he’d followed these thoughts countless times before, with no results. “There’s another thing—I thought she looked a bit ill the other day.”

  That drew Dent’s concern. “Her ladyship did? You mean … as in the old days?”

  “No…” Gravis started, but then he paused. Was he sure of that? Despite general good health, as a child Lady Margraine had occasionally been plagued by the oddest symptoms. She would grow pale and exhausted all of a sudden, or fall short of breath after no activity more strenuous than reading, or find herself unable to eat though she claimed to be starving. Once Verrane had found her in a dead faint on the floor of her room, and no one could get her to say how it had happened or what she had been doing beforehand. No healer they consulted could find a satisfactory reason; the prevailing theory was that her blood was thin. The symptoms seemed to lessen as she grew older, so in time they all let the matter drop; Lady Margraine herself, who ought to have been the most concerned about it of anyone, simply waved it away, saying she disliked being fussed over.

  Gravis had his own theories, of course. He’d heard about how contracts were struck, how demons and spirits would take blood and bone in trade, sometimes even the years off a man’s life. She’d been a child, certainly, but a precocious child; everyone had said so. He wouldn’t have put it past her to come across some dark ritual somewhere in all those books she read. There was very little he would have put past Lady Margraine, in fact. “Perhaps I’d better keep a closer eye on her,” he said, without thinking.

  Dent sighed—had he been so transparent? “Gravis, these superstitions would befit Verrane much more than you, and even she doesn’t entertain them. It would better suit you to be concerned for her ladyship’s health, not … whatever strange doings you suspect her of.”

  Dent and Verrane, for reasons Gravis could not fathom, persisted in taking Lady Margraine’s side, and had done so since she was a child. Verrane possessed a mother’s affection for her, perhaps, but Dent was harder to understand. It was true that he and Lord Caius had often clashed, but that in itself wasn’t enough of a reason, was it? Sometimes Gravis tried to let the knowledge comfort him, that someone he trusted as much as Dent had such faith in her. Yet he knew, despite what anyone else said, that there was something out of the ordinary about Lady Margraine. You could feel it, sometimes, in the rare moments she allowed anger to grip her—Gravis had seen it only a handful of times in all the years he had lived with her, but it was enough. Her looks came all from her mother, with none of her father’s size or strength; she was slender and soft, not even lean and toned like Almasy. And yet when she turned on someone in anger, there was this intimidation she made you feel, as if there were something immensely powerful lurking beneath her skin. Even her father had shrunk from it, who’d never shied from a fight any day of his life.

  “That’s what I meant,” he lied. “If she is ill, we ought to know.”

  Dent nodded slowly, but his usual cheer had gone.

  * * *

  “And they wouldn’t admit that Eurig had paid them?”

  Seren wondered at the most accurate way to answer that. “Well, they did admit it, but … only to tell me they never would. I couldn’t prove it, they said, and the common people would never believe it, and so forth. I didn’t see the value in discussing it further.”

  Arianrod ran a hand through her hair, drawing it back from her face. “That’s because there wasn’t any—I never required you to talk to them to begin with. It would’ve been especially convenient if I’d been able to sully his reputation a bit, though.”

  “I could just kill him,” Seren offered.

  Arianrod smiled. “You could, but Eurig is a coward who thinks he’s twice as smart as he is, and those are exactly the people one wants in his position. He’s been even easier to handle than Dutton, who got about a day’s ride from Pigshit Castle before he was apprehended. By peasants!” She laughed, striking the edge of the desk for emphasis. “I do wish I could have overseen his execution myself, but there simply wasn’t time. Besides, those peasants had to put up with him far more than I ever did; I suppose it would’ve been wrong to deprive them of the enjoyment of watching him brought low.”

  “What does that mean for this guild of merchants he’s been trying to form?”

  “Oh, rich men in Esthrades will be trying to form one of those until the end of time,” Arianrod said, rolling her eyes. “They want so desperately to be nobility that they’ll never stop trying to approximate it, no matter how harshly the throne punishes them for the attempt.” She smiled. “But that’s not what you really want to ask me, is it? Go on.”

  Seren shuffled her feet. It had been bothering her, even after she’d left Stonespire, and her unease hadn’t lessened now that she’d returned. “The stone—the … wardrenholt, you called it? Did you move it somehow? Did you … Is it gone?”

  “It can’t return to the way it was,” Arianrod said, “so I suppose in that sense it’s gone, yes.”

  “But then where did it go?”

  “Destroying it would have been easy,” Arianrod started, but then she caught herself. “Well, perhaps it would have been easy. Perhaps if I’d inscribed destroy yourself on it instead, it would have taken me with it and gotten its revenge that way. It’s hard to say.” She sighed. “It’s a pity I couldn’t have studied it more, but in the end it simply wasn’t worth the risk.”

  “You never intended to use it? Then why have me—”

  “Well, I couldn’t let anyone else use it, could I? Especially not Elgar.”

  The mention of Elgar made Seren hesitate, fiddling with her sleeve. She’d alre
ady told Arianrod about her brief time in the Citadel dungeons, but the memory of it still rankled. “Speaking of Elgar … are you sure it doesn’t matter that this Oswhent fellow saw me?”

  “Why should it?” Arianrod asked. “Even if he finds out who you are—even if he guesses you brought me the stone—there’s no way he or Elgar can steal it from me now. Why should I care if they know I have it?”

  “I may not be able to move anonymously in Valyanrend anymore,” Seren pointed out.

  Arianrod frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps. It’s a big city, though, and you’d hardly be the first person to roam it freely against the wishes of those in the Citadel.”

  Seren knew it would still bother her; she wasn’t used to making mistakes, even if this one had probably turned out for the best. After all, if she hadn’t been caught, it might have taken her much longer to learn where the stone was hidden. But that put her in mind of another question: “Do you have any idea what Elgar planned to do with it?”

  “Nothing good, I’m sure.” But she wasn’t smiling; she passed a hand through her hair again, twirled a lock of it around one finger. “I can guess why he wanted it, but does it matter? The thing held pure power in it, pure potential. He could have done whatever he pleased with it—until the magic ran dry, anyway.”

  “But you didn’t want to do the same,” Seren said.

  “Of course I wanted to use it,” Arianrod said. “That’s why I didn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I told you, didn’t I? Those things were made by failed mages—the worst of the lot, the greatest incompetents of their age. Many people would still gladly accept one, because it’s as close to magic as they’ll ever come. Even I—even I couldn’t help but imagine things when I touched it, things I’d dreamed of as a child and banished from my mind as impossibilities. But why should I put my trust in something I know was made by a talentless fool? I wish to rule, not to be ruled—not by Elgar, and certainly not by a stone.” She didn’t lift her hand from the edge of the table, but her fingers curled absently into a fist. “I knew two things for certain: that I could not possibly use it, and that I could not keep it here and resist the temptation to do so. So I had to put it beyond everyone’s reach, including my own.”