The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  Alessa hid a smile behind her hand, and even Lord Oswhent let out a rueful chuckle. But Seren and Captain Ingret were still staring hard at Elgar, and he forged ahead as determinedly as ever, his words still quiet and slow, but ever relentless. “No,” he said. “No, that’s quite a story, Your Grace, but it’s not the one I was thinking of. You must forgive me if it’s inaccurate—Hallarnon is rather a ways from Esthrades, after all, and funny things can happen to information when it travels long distances. But they say that you were quite a difficult child to handle, even when you were very young. They say, indeed, that your lord father used to whip you for your disobedience—that you bear his scars on your back to this day. Is that true?”

  The smile was wiped from the marquise’s face as quickly and completely as mist from a pane of glass, and it was only then that Kel realized he’d never seen what she looked like without it. He understood, then, why her smile seemed beautiful but never pleasant: it might have been genuine, but there was nothing of warmth or gentleness in her eyes, only cold amusement. Without her smile, only her coldness remained, suddenly sharp and oppressive. She did not gape or stammer at Elgar; she merely looked at him, and if she were angry—she must have been angry—she did not give off any heat, only that persistent coldness, implacable enough to cut through stone.

  Captain Ingret had shifted when Elgar spoke, dropping his hand to his sword; Seren had tensed, as if readying herself for something, but otherwise had not moved. Elgar ran his eyes over the three of them, taking his time in the growing silence, and what might have been a smile slipped across his mouth and disappeared. “It seems I’ve upset you,” he said. “My apologies. By all means, forget I ever mentioned it.”

  “No,” the marquise said, softly but distinctly, and if her eyes had been cold, her voice sent a chill up Kel’s spine. “One ought never to waste a good question—isn’t that right? So I will answer it.” She drew her next breath in slowly, but she never took her eyes from Elgar’s face. “My father did whip me, yes.” Her fingers curled around the edge of the table, tightening against the wood. “But only once.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Is that all?” Elgar asked, folding his hands over his crossed knees.

  That’s not enough? Varalen didn’t say. “Yes, my lord.”

  Elgar pursed his lips, then relaxed them, then pursed them again. This was not precisely what Varalen had expected. To be sure, Elgar had never been especially demonstrative in his anger—he was not one to scream or throw things or fire off a slew of orders he would later regret—but he was a tyrant, and he usually acted like one. Failure was simply unacceptable, and if letting this Seren deliver that stone to Lady Margraine wasn’t a failure, Varalen didn’t know what was.

  Elgar finally looked up almost mildly. “I’m half surprised you told me at all.”

  Varalen winced. “Yes, well, I thought it was preferable to what might happen if I didn’t.”

  “And you’re sure it was the same woman?”

  “Oh, without a doubt. I’m not like to forget her.”

  Elgar raised his hands, tapped the fingertips together, folded them again. “Well,” he said at last, “I don’t suppose there’s anything we need to do about it.”

  It was all Varalen could do not to gape like an idiot. “This isn’t … er, a problem?”

  “In some ways,” Elgar said, “it’s almost the reverse.” And that was right, Varalen thought, because when he’d first confessed, he’d seen a flicker of what seemed like relief in Elgar’s eyes, and he still couldn’t imagine what it had been doing there.

  “So it’s … what, a benefit?”

  “Not a benefit, but … it’s one less thing to worry about, I suppose.”

  “But—” Varalen broke off, trying not to fidget, and collected his thoughts. “I thought you said that this stone you wanted had some sort of value or power or something. Wouldn’t allowing Lady Margraine to have it be the very definition of a problem?”

  Elgar nodded slowly. “Certainly, yes, because then she would be able to use it. But she hasn’t used it, has she?”

  “Has she?” Varalen asked. “How would we know?”

  Elgar’s laugh was grim. “Oh, we’d know.” One hand curled into a fist, and he wrapped the fingers of the other hand around it. “Since she has not used it, I can conclude one of several things: it does not have the power I thought it did, or else she cannot figure out how to use it, or else she is unable to use it, or else she will not use it. No matter the specific reason, the result is the same. And without it to tip the scales, the balance of power is still in my favor. Much better to know where it is than to fear where it might be.”

  The stone was almost certainly of no value whatsoever, of course, but the idea that someone as clearly intelligent and practical as Lady Margraine concerned herself with it at all was troubling. “So you really want to do nothing?” Please say yes, he thought. Say yes, and let’s forget about it until your next superstition comes up.

  “I can’t exactly steal it from her as things stand,” Elgar said, “so yes, I plan to do nothing. But I do wonder what that strange servant of hers was doing in our dungeons—or in Valyanrend at all, for that matter. Perhaps the marquise merely knew I was searching for it, and sent her retainer to steal the information from me.”

  Was the damned thing truly that important? “I wish I knew that myself, my lord.”

  Elgar stroked his beard. “What’s more, your information was good after all, wasn’t it? That story was true—and how worth the telling.”

  Varalen picked at his nails, uncomfortable once more. “Well, we don’t really know how much of it was true.” He’d been the one who had first told Elgar that story. It was a strangely persistent rumor that had been floating around Esthrades for years, and more than one of his sources had passed some version of the tale on to him. There were few details that remained consistent across every version, but all the stories agreed that it had occurred on or around the marquise’s tenth birthday.

  On that day, so the story went, Arianrod Margraine, who had made a calling out of disobeying and exasperating her father, had angered him beyond all measure, beyond anything she had ever done before. None of the stories could agree on what it was, however: some said she had slandered him while he sat in judgment, others that she had turned the prisoners loose from his dungeons, still others that she had tried to sell the famed blood apples under his nose. But whatever it was, it had driven Caius Margraine into a fury not seen since his wife had died ten years before. (There were those who said, too, that his lordship was always in a foul mood on his daughter’s birthdays, marking as they did the anniversary of his loss.) The young Arianrod was banished from her own festivities—that everyone could well remember, as there were many who had been there—and forced to await her father’s judgment.

  There were those who said he had called for his whip immediately, and others who claimed he had waited until the following morning, or even several days later, though that last seemed unlikely. But either way he had taken up the whip, and he had beaten his daughter so severely with it that she’d lain abed for almost a week while the servants fluttered about, wondering if she was going to die. She had pulled through in the end, but the wounds he had inflicted left scars that still remained—though Varalen wasn’t sure how any of his sources knew that, as he was quite certain none of them had the ability to check.

  But something still stranger had happened on the night he beat her, so the stories claimed. Caius Margraine would have whipped his daughter to death, but he had stopped—or, more precisely, she had stopped him. The idea had seemed strange to Varalen from the beginning, but everyone had agreed on that part, just as they had agreed, in the most basic sense, on how. She was normally careful, they said, but the ferocity of his assault had made her fear for her life. So when she could withstand the pain no more, she had used her magic on her father.

  The most popular story held that when the whip touched her back, it had turned
into a giant tongue of flame, burning its way back up to Caius Margraine’s fingers; another story transfigured it into a giant serpent, recoiling on the man who held it with its dripping fangs bared—only his diet of blood apples had saved him from its poison. Still others insisted that the whip had turned itself on him directly, wrapping itself around his throat and choking him within an inch of his life while his daughter looked on with that cold smile.

  Whatever she had done, the story always concluded, Caius Margraine never took a whip to his daughter again. He never dared. And that was the final blow they dealt each other, the blow that sundered their household irrevocably: her vanity could not bear the sight of such ugly scars, and his pride could not forgive the indignity of having to fear a little girl.

  Varalen propped his forehead against one finger, letting just the edge of the nail dig into his skin. “It was true enough to bother her, at the least. But you should be careful not to … set too much store by it.”

  “I wasn’t aware I was setting any store by it,” Elgar said, and laughed. “I’d thought I might score a hit with that stroke, but even I never thought she’d get so angry as all that. I’d scarcely have believed it—so much grief over an injury from so long ago, just because it marred her beauty.” He rested his cheek on his knuckles. “I wish I knew what the scars looked like. They must be unsightly indeed, to wipe that persistent smirk off her face.”

  Varalen kept focusing on the point of his nail. “We don’t know if there are any scars at all,” he said, “and we don’t know—”

  “What, about the magic?” Elgar laughed again, softer. “I knew you’d say that.”

  “To be certain of such a thing just because of some peasants’ story … You heard her at dinner: those people will believe anything. I can’t even imagine what they whisper about you.”

  “Mm?” Elgar murmured, extending one long finger so it lay against his cheek. “And how do you know any of that isn’t true, either?”

  There was no dealing with him when he got into one of these moods. “Very well, my lord, but we can’t just entertain any and all possibilities. As I have said, proceeding in fear of her supposed magic is giving her a gift we can ill afford. And I certainly hope that you didn’t prod her like that just to try to get proof of that magic, because we didn’t get any.”

  Elgar stood up smoothly, pacing the length of the table. “I assure you, Varalen, I prodded her just to see if it was possible to make her angry—nothing more. As for her magic … I will not fear, but I will wait. You will have to be content with that.”

  * * *

  Seren couldn’t deny the slender thread of unease that worked its way through her, but she did her best to meet Gravis’s gaze. “No one will pass through this door,” she tried to assure him. “I can do my job well enough from here.”

  He frowned. “This castle is strange to us. She should not be in that room alone—she should not be in any of these rooms alone for any length of time.”

  He was right, of course, but there was nothing for it. “She ordered that we leave her alone,” Seren said. “Even I was not to enter until she called.”

  “That does not mean we should—”

  “It does,” Seren said. “Should you enter, I am sure she would be more than simply displeased.”

  Gravis scowled at her, weighing her words, and finally turned on his heel. “I’m going to check the corridor. You stay here.” As if she would do otherwise. If she was not to be permitted to defend Arianrod properly, the least she could do was stay here.

  The moonlight filtered unevenly through the corridor. King Kelken had given them to understand that any amount of moonlight was unusual; Mist’s Edge usually lived up to its name, and sometimes the fog would even drift in through the windows. The mist was thin tonight, though, and the moon had turned it a gentle silver, though that didn’t ease the air of tension in the fortress in the slightest.

  Arianrod had confined herself to her room immediately following dinner, and perhaps that was understandable, though Seren was uncomfortable with the idea. She had scarcely ever seen Arianrod as angry as that, but did she really want the room to herself just so she could rage? That seemed doubtful. Perhaps she only wanted some moments to compose herself, and then she would emerge, restored to her usual detached self again. So Seren tried to tell herself, anyway.

  She peered down the corridor, trying to see where Gravis had got to. He seemed to have disappeared around the far corner; she couldn’t even hear his footsteps anymore, or perhaps he was standing still. There was a vague chill in the air, not a breeze but a damp and persistent heaviness that somehow seeped through her clothes and made her arms prickle. She leaned just a little against the door, grateful to have wood at her back and not that cold, ancient stone. She could hear nothing from Arianrod’s room, but that did more to unnerve than comfort her. A person in a room alone had no real cause to make noise, of course, but if she had just been allowed to stay with her …

  She could not have said how long it was before she heard Gravis’s slow footsteps returning, but it struck her that it had been too long. His face, once he’d rounded the corner again, was settled and still, but his brow was furrowed and his eyes determined.

  He did not speak until he had drawn right up alongside her, and Seren did not ask him to. But when there were barely two inches of space between them, he murmured, “Switch places with me?”

  “What?” She did not know why he was whispering, but it seemed wise to follow suit.

  “Leave this to me, and go out into the hall—around the corner and along the corridor, where I was.”

  “What on earth for?”

  He shook his head. “Just do it.”

  “Gravis—”

  “Lady Margraine didn’t say that you had to stay, did she? Just that her room had to be guarded. Well, I’ll guard it. Go out into the far corridor.” She frowned at him, but he just kept looking at her earnestly. “I can’t,” he said, in an even softer voice. “You’ll do better than I will. Be on your guard, but go.”

  Gravis was not one for jokes or idle chatter, and he was not one to recommend risky or unnecessary actions. Seren drew her hand along her arm reflexively, feeling for her knife, but she finally peeled away from the door and allowed Gravis to take up his position in her place. “Only until I get back,” she muttered.

  He nodded, and she stepped away, walking as casually as she could down the corridor. She hadn’t quite reached the intersection when she sensed another presence, and she moved more warily, preparing to dodge an incoming blow. But when she turned the corner, King Kelken’s retainer had his sword sheathed, his hands resting calmly at his sides. It was the one with the handsome face and the sullen expression, the scar on his forehead clearly visible even in the low light.

  “Sorry for being so abrupt,” he said, in an even quieter voice than Gravis had used. “The captain suggested that you would be better at moving silently, and we’ll need to.”

  It wasn’t hard to move more silently than Gravis, who insisted on wearing full plate nearly everywhere he went, but it was admittedly one of Seren’s talents. “Just where is it that we’re going?” she asked.

  His expression revealed nothing. “You’ll see.”

  The man must have said something of significance to get Gravis to trust him, so Seren decided not to argue the point any further. “Lead the way.”

  Mist’s Edge seemed even larger on the inside than it had looked from the outside, and it was all Seren could do to keep count of the turns they made. After leading her down more corridors than she would have thought possible, the man finally arrived at a ladder in an otherwise empty room, and she followed him up through a door in the ceiling. When he shut it behind her, she realized they were on the top floor of one of the smaller towers, with a low roof above their heads and a single window to her left. The view would surely have been impressive if it hadn’t been choked by the mist, but she could see enough to tell that all the nearby ramparts were deserted.


  “Care to explain why we’re up here?” she asked him.

  “Elgar doesn’t want your mistress talking to the king,” he said calmly. “I can understand why, but Kelken does want to talk to her, so we devoted ourselves to finding a way to get out of sight. Elgar might have his men darting about the halls, but he won’t be able to get them anywhere near this tower.”

  “Does he really have them patrolling the halls?”

  He nodded. “We’ve spotted a few. We can try to send them away, but they’ll just keep creeping about as soon as we take our eyes off them.”

  Seren sighed. “Well, I suppose I can’t blame him for not wanting his enemies to be alone together. What is it that King Kelken wishes for?”

  “From your lady, nothing more than an hour or two of her time. He did promise her a look at the library, and he intends to make good on that promise—but he doesn’t wish to have to show it off to Elgar as well.”

  That was probably wise, Seren thought. Either way, Arianrod would do much to spend time with those books, however briefly, and any potential danger would be no object to her. “When?” she asked.

  The man leaned against the far wall. “Tomorrow night, we thought. We should be able to sneak you away from any prying glances, and the library’s well guarded. I am confident we will be able to grant her some significant amount of time with the tomes.”

  “And will she be watched while she is there?”

  “Of course. His Grace can’t be too careful, I suppose.”

  What was he worried about, that Arianrod would try to steal one of his books? Well, Seren reflected, perhaps she would, but it wasn’t as if he’d especially miss it. “I am sure she will agree to that,” she told the scarred man. “Will you come to fetch us again?”