The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  Elgar almost looked as if he were enjoying this. What had gotten into him these past few weeks? “You needn’t worry so about it,” he said. “It was an excellent strategy, and it ought to have worked under any normal circumstances. It’s just a pity we couldn’t use it at Mist’s Edge or in Issamira.”

  He was right about that—Stonespire Hall had only ever been intended to be the seat of a minor lord, but Mist’s Edge and Eldren Cael were military fortresses, even though a city had sprung up about the walls of the latter. The only way to get that many men inside them would be to pass them off as soldiers or servants, and that many traitors in close quarters were bound to raise suspicion. “Well, then.” He sighed. “What will you have of me now? Is it time to turn to Reglay?”

  “You’re giving up so easily?”

  Was Elgar baiting him? He had to be. “Nothing about this is easy, my lord, but this was my best plan, and I truly think—”

  Elgar waved a hand at him. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re right, of course; Reglay should be easy enough to snap up. I should even be able to give you the command without much worry.”

  Varalen pressed his knuckles into his forehead, hard enough to hurt. “If you are not pleased with my service, my lord, you are entirely at liberty to cut me loose.”

  Elgar smiled. “Oh, you don’t want me to do that.”

  “Don’t I?”

  Elgar said nothing to that. He just waited, expectant, for the rest.

  “At this point,” Varalen said at last, “I am rather tired of being a constant disappointment. I am … rather tired in general. This may be as far as I can go. If it is not enough for you … well, you may do as you will, and perhaps I will prove to be too weary even to complain.”

  Elgar raised an eyebrow, his lips pursing slightly. “And what of your son? Can you go no further on his behalf, either?”

  Varalen balled his hands into fists, tried to keep them steady atop his knees. “My son…” He could not allow himself to think of Ryam’s face. “You know my son’s condition. I have not tried to hide it from you, and I probably could not have done so even if I’d wished to. Whether you decide to show him mercy or not, he … he will not live long. He cannot live long, no matter what I do.” He swallowed hard, trying ineffectually to dislodge the lump in his throat. “I believed that it was my duty as his father to lengthen his life as much as I could, whatever the cost. But for the sake of another fortnight, or a few more months … shall I surrender everything? Is it truly right to do so?” He laughed. “You don’t care about my moral struggles, I’m sure; you only want to know if you can depend on me or not. The answer is I don’t believe you can. I believe that I have had my fill of all this, and you must do whatever you will do about it.”

  Elgar still did not fly into a rage; he merely kept sitting there, and he almost smiled. “Normally,” he said, “that would be acceptable, and I could give you the rest you seem to crave. But for now I am afraid I need you to go somewhat further. I am”—he did smile then—“somewhat hard on you, I know, but really you’ve served me quite well, and in the days ahead I must make full use of whatever resources I have at my disposal. That means I’ll need you to keep working, and even to stretch your plans to loftier heights.”

  “Did you not hear me? I cannot continue, Elgar. I will not.”

  “Mm,” Elgar said. “I have heard that before.”

  “And you’ll hear it again, until it sticks.”

  “No doubt.” He raised one hand, examining his palm. “Your plan for Stonespire truly wasn’t a complete waste, you know.”

  Varalen sighed. “I know. You learned something.”

  “I did,” Elgar said calmly. “I learned that, despite her vanity, Arianrod Margraine does quite well for herself when backed into a corner. And I learned I don’t have to fear her as much as I’d … well, feared.”

  That brought Varalen up short. “You don’t have to? Didn’t you just say she’d exceeded your expectations?”

  “Oh, I’d always allowed for the possibility of your plan’s failure,” Elgar said. “But you yourself told me that the marquise seems to have taken ill right around that time, didn’t you? Or at least that’s what your little rumormongers called it.”

  “That’s … true,” Varalen allowed, “but why does it matter?”

  “I always suspected the extent of her abilities,” Elgar said, “but I rather worried she’d outstripped me somehow—that she’d found a way around it, or perhaps never even had to live with it in the first place. But that isn’t true. She is limited just as I am—no matter what, we have that in common.”

  Varalen looked at him blankly. “You have what in common?”

  Elgar smiled, further lifting his raised hand, fingers spread and palm facing outward. “Why, this, of course.”

  At first a vague halo of light shimmered into existence around his fingers, and then it was flame, wrapped around his hand but not burning it, just hanging there, suspended.

  “Gods preserve me,” Varalen gasped, throwing himself so far backward that he upended his chair and spilled himself onto the floor. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, and he lay there in a heap, gaping senselessly at the light that had enveloped Elgar’s fingers.

  Elgar laughed. “What, no rebuttal? No jokes for that, eh? I’m almost disappointed.” When Varalen’s mouth opened and closed again without any sound, Elgar lowered his hand, and the flames dispersed, dying down as if they had never been. “I rather thought you’d continue to assure me that such things don’t exist.”

  Varalen raised himself onto one elbow; his other limbs were still a bit too shaken from his fall. “How did you—how—”

  “Hmm,” Elgar said. “Well, there’s no such thing as magic, so I suppose it must have been some charlatan’s trick. Perhaps I simply hid a flint up my sleeve and … No, that wouldn’t work, would it? I wonder.”

  “You—you—” He coughed, finally managing to sit up. “You could always—do that?”

  “Of course,” Elgar said. “Since I was a boy.”

  “So you—you knew,” Varalen said. “You knew about—about”—the word, which had always come so easily to him before, stuck in his throat now—“about magic, and you just let me think—”

  “I always told you I knew magic existed,” Elgar said. “You simply never believed me before.”

  “Damn right I didn’t, because you never—”

  “Because you thought I was a superstitious fool, and I knew you were a contemptuous one. I endured your scorn, Varalen, and your conceit, and your little moments of preening, because you were talented, and because I had no need for you to know the truth. But now, I think, some humility is called for.”

  Varalen’s throat was dry, but he managed to steady himself. “Be all that as it may, I have just said I do not care what you do with me. What difference does it make whether you cut my head off with a sword or with some strange power? The result is the same, and the torments that can be visited on a man are finite.”

  “They are not,” Elgar said, “but you mistake my meaning. We were speaking of your son, I believe?”

  “And I have said—”

  Elgar held up a hand, and Varalen flinched from it reflexively, even though the flames didn’t return. “Yes, yes, I know what you said. Stop talking for once, Varalen, and listen. I will use short sentences. Your son is very ill, yes? Yes, deathly ill. And magic can be used for many things.” He drew his dagger, the one Varalen had never seen out of its sheath, and closed the fingers of his free hand around Varalen’s wrist. The cut he made was shallow, a diagonal line across Varalen’s palm. Varalen barely felt it, but then Elgar pressed his thumb along the length of the wound. For a moment the pain was sharp, and then he felt nothing. And then Elgar drew his hand away, and he saw there was no cut—no blood on Elgar’s fingers at all.

  “Magic,” Elgar said, “can do that as well.”

  And Varalen felt a fear he hadn’t before—the fear of hoping for too much, for things
that were impossible.

  “I’ll make you a deal, Varalen,” Elgar said, leaning back in his chair. “So long as you remain in my service, I will keep your son alive. And on the day all my enemies are gone, and Elesthene is mine once more, your son’s disease will disappear as well.”

  Varalen had just managed to recover his breath, only to lose it again. “You … you can do that?”

  “I can.” He crossed one leg over the other, brushing his fingers against the edge of the nearest map. “So. Do we have a deal?”

  Varalen swallowed hard, and then again, searching for his voice. “Yes.”

  Elgar’s eyes were fastened on his. “Yes what?”

  He curled his fingers into a fist, then released it, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Yes, Your Eminence.”

  * * *

  The letter was written in a crabbed, clumsy hand, the parchment full of inkblots and an occasional crossed-out word or phrase. “Kelken,” Kel read, “you quivering jelly, you assume all men share your lack of spine. Just because you cringe and snivel at the thought of Eira, it does not hold that I must therefore bend the knee to him. As for Jotun, I have no great love for him, and my daughter could rule more com—competently in her sleep than that precious heir of his, but the boy may have the right of it in this. If these wardrenfell”—the word was crossed out three times before he’d managed to spell it correctly—“are really as powerful as Eira says, we’re much better off making sure that sack of bilgewater doesn’t get his hands on any to start with, rather than hoping he’ll only use them against Elgar. You hope that cooperating with him will earn you his favor, but just because you lick his asshole now, it doesn’t mean he won’t shove a sword up yours later. Do as you like, you tit, but don’t expect me to change my plans on your account.”

  Kel’s face had grown a bit pink from reading all that aloud, and when he looked up, he saw that Lessa’s had too. “So that’s what her father was like.”

  Lessa tilted her head. “I’d say they couldn’t be more different, but … well, they’re both stubborn, aren’t they? And they both have what I suppose you’d call a way with words. Just a … very different way.”

  Kel looked back down at the letter. “I’d love to call someone a sack of bilgewater.”

  “I’m sure you would, but I doubt it would do you any favors. And you’re quite a bit less threatening than Caius Margraine, you know.” She grinned at him, then turned back to the pile. “Are there any from her in there? There must be. It’s been three years since her father died.”

  It was somehow odd to think of Arianrod Margraine corresponding with his father, but Lessa was right—if his father had kept letters from the time Lord Caius was still alive, he must’ve kept hers as well. He didn’t seem to have put them in any sort of order, though, so Kel was just left to sift through stacks and stacks of paper. He chose a pile and started rifling through the letters it contained, looking for some handwriting quirk or turn of phrase that recalled Lady Margraine. The one he finally found caught his attention first for its brevity, and only second for her signature at the bottom. I have found, Kelken, she had written, in handwriting that was elegant but a bit irregular, each letter curling and looping into the next, that it is never better not to know something. But since that is your answer, I have nothing to tell you either.

  “Hmm,” Lessa said, when he read it to her. “I wonder what she wanted to know?”

  “About the wardrenfell, probably,” Kel said. “It seems like that’s what they were all talking about. Too bad we’re not any closer to knowing what it is, or even if they ever found it.”

  Lessa was staring at the letters. “Do you think she’d be surprised if she could see what he wrote about her?”

  “Eh?”

  She smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I meant what Caius Margraine wrote about his daughter in that letter—something about her being more competent than Prince Landon?”

  Kel picked up the letter again. “My daughter could rule more competently in her sleep than that precious heir of his—is that what you mean?”

  “Right, exactly. It just surprised me, that’s all. Didn’t she seem to think he never thought much of her?”

  “She said he never listened to her,” Kel said, “but maybe that’s not the same thing.” His father had never listened to him, either, but he hadn’t been any less determined to have Kel rule because of that.

  “Oh, is that what she said? Maybe you’re right.” Lessa shrugged. “I just wondered what she’d think if she could read it.”

  “Well, we could send it to her, I suppose—aren’t these the ones she asked for anyway?” Kel frowned at the pile. “They’re not proving to be very useful, though.”

  Lessa followed his gaze. “Didn’t they say Eira was the one most likely to get his hands on … I’m not sure if I should say the wardrenfell or a wardrenfell? Either way, if that’s so, perhaps you should look for letters from Eira.”

  Kel did, and finally found one, a single sheet of parchment covered in thin, spidery script, cultured but somehow forbidding. The letters were thin and faded, as if the writer hadn’t used enough ink. “Kelken,” he read, “I must confess that matters have not progressed as I had wished. The soldier I sent to investigate reports of a wardrenfell near the border was one of my best, a man in whom I had every confidence. He returned, but worse than empty-handed. It seems the wardrenfell has inflicted upon him a most curious wound, one that has confounded every healer I sent to tend to him. The wound itself should not be mortal, but it will not heal, no matter how much time passes. I do not mean it has become infected—indeed, the healers say it is the cleanest wound they have ever seen. But stitch and bandage it as they may, it inevitably splits itself open anew, as fresh as the moment it was made. He has lost quite a bit of blood already, and at this rate he will surely die.

  “He told me what he could—it was meager and confused, but it was enough. Mark me, Kelken: though we sought to use the power of the wardrenfell to defeat Elgar, I now believe that the danger posed by her is greater than any other we currently face—”

  Kel broke off, reading the last few lines again, then looked up at Lessa. Her startled face must have been a mirror image of his own. “Did he say—”

  “Her,” Lessa repeated. “The danger posed by her. Not it.”

  Kel sat back in his chair, letting the parchment flutter unimpeded to the desk. “A wardrenfell is a person,” he said.

  * * *

  The other soldiers made quite a commotion when they saw him, but Shinsei had expected that. He kept his fingers tightly wrapped around the hilt of his sword, and gritted his teeth against the noise. “Tell my master I have returned,” he said, in response to all their questions, “and ask him what he wishes of me.” His master would not be pleased with him, he knew, and he had wondered many times if he even ought to return at all. But where else would he go? His master had always been patient with him, and Shinsei could only hope he would be so again.

  He did not have to wait long before he was told his master would see him in his chambers. That was right—the others were all afraid of him, but his master was different. That made him feel a little better, and he climbed the steps without faltering.

  His master was seated when Shinsei entered, as if in the middle of some task, though his hands were empty. He looked up, and though his face changed slightly, Shinsei could not read it. “Well,” he said, with a quizzical lift of his eyebrows. “You took your time returning, didn’t you?”

  Shinsei bowed his head. “Forgive me. I … Things became more difficult than I could have guessed.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” But there was no sharpness in his tone. He leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other. “Tell me what happened, Shinsei.”

  “What happened.” At first he could only repeat the words, but then he drew himself together, tried to put his memories in some semblance of order. “I went to the castle. To Second Hearth. I found the king, just like you told me to.�
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  “And killed him, it seems,” his master said. “But I told you to take care of the boy as well, did I not?”

  “You did. But I—” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “The king tried to grapple with me, and told the boy to run. The boy’s legs were bad, though, and I caught him. I—I would have killed him, but there was—” He shut his eyes, seeing it again. “There was this girl, and she—she had—”

  His master caught his breath, and understanding dawned upon his face. “A girl with golden hair—the queen’s bastard. Yes, I saw her.” He sighed. “And this girl recalled the other in some way, did she?”

  “The other.” The girl in the snow, with her slender sword and clear, carrying voice. The girl who had called him a coward. And that was what he had seen in the eyes of the girl at Second Hearth. She had not spoken, not to him, but she had met his eyes. The reproach he had seen in hers was an echo of the anger he had seen in the other, anger that had burned so bright he wanted to cover his eyes, to crawl away to some dark place. “Why is it,” he asked, as he had asked himself so many times, “that I am a coward?”

  His master sighed again. “You are not a coward, Shinsei. You simply pay too much heed to the arguments of children.”

  His master was right, of course. His master was so much cleverer than he was. Shinsei hunched his shoulders, looking at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me what happened after that. Why did it take you so long to return?”

  That was harder to remember. “I … After I saw that girl, I … wandered about. I don’t think I properly knew myself. There was a man I killed—no, two men—or maybe…” He winced. “Maybe more than that.”