Old Man's Ghosts

by Tom Lloyd

  Prince Kashte inclined his head cordially to the nobleman. ‘My Lord Vanden Wyvern, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Prince Kashte.’

  ‘I, ah, you honour me, Prince Kashte.’

  ‘Please?’ Kashte gestured for Lord Vanden to come closer so they were not speaking at a formal distance. ‘I bring a message from a relation who would be keen to make your acquaintance.’

  Lord Vanden’s brown cheeks flushed. ‘Ah, relation?’ he croaked, barely loud enough for Kesh to hear.

  Kashte’s welcoming smile turned patronising to Kesh’s eye. ‘Not my most illustrious of relations,’ he assured Vanden, ‘but a man of standing nonetheless. He begs you attend on him this afternoon, at the Glass Tower.’

  ‘This afternoon?’ Vanden coughed. ‘Prince Kashte, I am yet to reach my own home, where my wife just a few days past gave birth. Might the matter not wait?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is somewhat pressing. It involves some business your wife’s family are engaged in. My relation has been asked to intervene in a business transaction and does urgently need to speak to you.’

  ‘My wife’s family,’ Vanden stammered, paling. ‘I was, ah, unaware any of her relations were in the city. I cannot imagine what involvement of mine there could be.’

  ‘I am ignorant of the details, my Lord Wyvern,’ Kashte said apologetically. ‘However I had gathered the impression you were a wronged party and deserving of redress. I can say no more on the matter, but my relation was most eager you might spare him your time today rather than let matters worsen.’

  ‘Worsen?’

  ‘I am afraid so. I believe the situation is coming to a head soon unless we can prevent it.’

  Lord Vanden did not speak for a few moments, lips pursed as he tried to puzzle through the involvement of an Imperial broker, as would be obvious by Kashte’s presence.

  ‘The Glass Tower?’ Vanden croaked at last.

  ‘Indeed, my Lord Wyvern. The furthest of the palace towers I realise, but one that does ensure privacy for delicate matters.’

  ‘I will be there.’ He coughed. ‘I mean, I shall be honoured to attend upon a member of the House of the Sun.’

  ‘I thank you,’ Kashte said, with a small bow that would do much for Vanden’s reputation among those watching. ‘Now, I would not wish to delay you further. As you said, there is great excitement awaiting you at your palazzo.’

  The rather-stunned Lord Vanden allowed himself to be ushered back to the carriage, his bodyguard stepping forward to assist his master up the step, and the procession carried on as soon as Kashte had withdrawn. Kesh was glad to see the young prince kept his expression entirely level until the last soldiers had left the plaza, only then nodding back towards the way they had come earlier. With a sigh Kesh fell in behind him and they started the walk back across the district towards the nearest ferry station.

  It was a while before Kashte broke the silence and dismissed her, leaving Kesh to her own boat and the longer journey around the Imperial Island towards the Tale Warrant. Given she had to accurately remember Enchei’s instructions on how to access his secret rooms or risk a swift and unpleasant death, the lack of distraction was a welcome thing.

  From the relative anonymity of an upper walkway on the bustling Dawn Tor, Enchei considered his problem. Just half a day before, he had effectively been chased from this part of the city by hellhound-possessed soldiers. He remained unsure exactly how he’d escaped them, that second one just vanishing when it had a perfect opportunity to attack, but he doubted he’d get so lucky again.

  Now he had to expect there would be more possessed sniffing every lamp-post in the district, in addition to a wide net of Astaren agents watching for the intruders. Somehow he would have to slip past both threats and get close enough for a conversation with a man he hoped wasn’t actively trying to kill him.

  But one of us has to take that first risky step, Enchei reflected. ‘And by one of us, I mean me,’ he added under his breath. Let’s go get a sight of the house then, see if he’s put out the welcome mat.

  He descended and skirted the streets until he found a dark corner with a view of the importation house. The upper floor remained closed up, a long bank of shutters covering the windows all along the front, but now the door below was also firmly closed. Even at that distance Enchei could read the short announcement that urgent repairs required all business to use the rear door. Following the instructions – in a fashion – left Enchei with limited options. The rear door led onto an alley, only one end of which was open. Enchei knew the layout of streets well enough to not need to see it for himself, but if the notice was in fact a message for him that alley would be just a signpost.

  It didn’t take him long to discover he was correct. There was a single good vantage point from which to observe the alley, one that he knew already, so his concern was watching for traps both arcane and mundane before heading there. Despite his old instincts screaming a warning with every beat of his heart, Enchei could find nothing to indicate danger despite half an hour of searching.

  Instead, he sensed a whole range of makeshift demon wards scattered liberally around the neighbouring streets and recognised that if any possessed had done the same, the patrolling Astaren would know about it immediately. With a once-familiar frisson of nerves running down his spine, Enchei walked up a short flight of steps to a narrow section of walkway that would command the only hidden vantage point.

  He glanced towards the rear door to confirm his location then cast around for the next breadcrumb. It appeared in the form of a scrap of parchment wedged into a gap in the beam directly above his head. With one final check around he opened it and forced himself to stifle a laugh. In a neat copperplate script were a few nonsensical lines, but they were enough to ease the fears in his aging heart. The handwriting he recognised from decades past and the words echoed through his memory in the same clear voice he’d heard the previous night.

  The offer of Lady Healer’s greatest gift, Lord Shapeshifter’s blessing on your greatest disguise, Lady Chance guide you through, Lord Monk greet you.

  It was directions of a sort, Enchei realised. He cast his mind back to the friend he’d once served alongside, the man who had composed the words. With a nod of understanding, Enchei walked back down the way he’d come, remembering there was a high-end tavern facing it.

  You always called whisky Lady Healer’s greatest gift, Enchei thought, so that’s an offer of friendship. Now where’s my greatest disguise?

  The tavern had an alley running down the side and with a jolt Enchei saw a washhouse with workers outside. There we are. Wasn’t quite the finest disguise we ever managed, but you almost pissed yourself laughing at the idea of pretending to be washerwomen back from the river.

  He set off, avoiding the traffic on the street and walking briskly down the narrow alley. ‘Lady Chance guide you’ was a common refrain among soldiers when a risk was unavoidable. One man of violence simply saying to another ‘here you must trust me’ – a gesture of sympathy more than anything else, but one Enchei appreciated still. Lord Monk referred simply to the fact the Ascendant God had once been a religious caste of House Ghost. Within the pantheon, his would be the most familiar face to Enchei.

  CHAPTER 21

  ‘Weapons,’ growled a man standing in the dim back room of the washhouse.

  ‘How about you fuck off?’ Enchei advised him, scanning the room as he spoke.

  ‘Drop your weapons, now,’ said the man as he slipped his hands out of the pockets of his dark greatcoat. His hands were empty, but that was little reassurance to Enchei.

  The room contained a pair of stools, stacked rectangular boxes with linens spilling out of the topmost, and a pair of doorways leading off left and right. The veteran paused, ready to kill in a heartbeat, and each stared at the other. The young man from Ghost was in his middle-twenties, Enchei gauged, with long dark hair that spilled down over his stiffened collar. He was dressed as a merchant caste in expensive and well-fi
tted clothes, a rapier on his hip.

  Astaren would pick whichever caste was most convenient for the time and Enchei noted that his friend’s bodyguard was deliberately not warrior caste – or any that would allow him to carry a pistol. That tended to be a pretence worth using, so if they weren’t it spoke volumes for how much the bodyguard had been altered by the mage-priests of Ghost.

  Enchei took a breath. No point pretending this wasn’t a gamble already.

  ‘How about you,’ he said slowly and deliberately, ‘fuck off and fetch me a drink?’

  ‘Dak!’ called a voice from behind the left-hand door, ‘you can retire.’

  The bodyguard’s face tightened and he headed for the other door. Grainy daylight spilled through when he opened it, illuminating a look of grim dislike for Enchei, and then he was gone, with the door closing noiselessly behind him.

  ‘Got yourself a pet, then,’ Enchei said as the other door opened. ‘Stars above! You got fat too.’

  The other man chuckled and brushed down his jacket with an affected self-consciousness. ‘I am a man of import now; one must maintain the correct image.’

  His landowner-caste clothes were the height of fashion and beautifully tailored; a grey double-breasted jacket with a dozen gold buttons. While he was larger than Enchei, he was hardly fat by the standards of most men their age, but quite a difference to the lean young men of war they’d been.

  ‘What image is that?’

  The Astaren shrugged. ‘Would you ever trust a whip-thin lord who looks like he lives on bread and water alone? If you ask me that’s the sign of a fanatic who should be shot in the head first chance you get.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Enchei said in a neutral voice. ‘So – here we are.’

  ‘Here we are,’ his former comrade confirmed, ‘and before we get down to reminiscing, I should make a few things clear.’

  Enchei’s hand tightened. ‘Oh?’

  ‘We’re not equals, not any more,’ the other said. ‘We’ve taken separate paths and mine involves not having my real name spoken aloud. Understand?’

  ‘Aye. I’d prefer the same here too. Anything more?’

  ‘Yes, in fact.’ He cocked his head at Enchei. ‘Best we acknowledge this early – we go way back and I know all about you. All about you. I’m here as a friend who owes you, but let’s not act like children. You’re in my power and were before you stepped into this room.’

  ‘Might be that’s the case.’

  The man broke into a welcoming smile. ‘Good. So when I embrace you as a brother and offer you that drink, let’s dispense with the excessive caution, eh? There’s nothing I can put in your drink that gives me greater hold over you than I’ve already got. I deal with half-truths and agendas every damn day of my life so when I share a drink with a brother I’d like not to dance around needlessly. Frankly, if I gave the order you’d likely kill yourself right here in front of me.’

  ‘Do we have to test the theory?’ Enchei said, fighting to keep his hands from clenching into fists even as he realised the truth in the man’s words.

  ‘Not at all.’ The Astaren stepped forward and embraced Enchei with a near-bone-crushing force. ‘It’s good to see you, brother.’

  It took Enchei a moment longer, but at last he relaxed and pulled the man close. ‘Aye, you too. It’s been too damn long.’

  The Astaren stepped back. ‘Too damn long? Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself?’

  ‘Eh? Well, ah,’ Enchei coughed. ‘Sure, sorry about the whole faking-my-own-death thing. Can’t say it was a choice I enjoyed.’

  ‘You had reason enough.’

  Enchei hesitated. ‘You know about that?’

  ‘We were brothers,’ the Astaren said gently, ‘I was never going to abandon my brother’s family now, was I? Quite aside from letting anyone try and recruit those girls through memories of their father, I made it clear they were as good as my own and that’s kept the jackals clear.’

  ‘How … how are they?’

  The man’s smile fell. ‘Your girls are good, last time I saw them. Both grown up strong and beautiful. No children of their own, but they were never likely to live the most normal lives now, were they?’

  ‘And …’ Enchei couldn’t finish the sentence but his friend sighed all the same.

  ‘I’m sorry, my friend.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A tumour. There would’ve been nothing we could do even if … well. You know the rules.’

  Enchei nodded. ‘When?’ he asked, throat suddenly dry and tight.

  He felt stupid but couldn’t fight the hollow sense of loss at the words. He had abandoned his wife decades ago, he had been dead to her, but to hear she was truly gone remained a blow. Some small spark in him had hoped she’d found happiness, living with grandchildren to cluck over and a man to treat her right. Treat her better than he had anyway – Enchei had loved his wife, but he’d spend months or years away and then he’d made her believe he was dead.

  A poor excuse for a man he seemed, in that light. Any Astaren knew how to kill and dominate others. Enchei had no notions of martial manliness, not when the mage-priests could make anyone super-human. Whatever the cause, he’d failed in his duty of simply being there for Salay. Hearing of her death, though he had half-expected it, twisted and withered something inside him.

  ‘Almost a decade now. She went peacefully, that I promise you. There was no pain.’

  Enchei bowed his head. ‘Thank you. Did she ever know?’

  ‘About the girls? No, they didn’t want to burden her with it. She worried enough about them, with you dead. Never gave up and she kept on the estate so they were always well-looked-after, but she worried all the same.’

  ‘Aye, well, she would have.’ Enchei sighed and bowed his head. ‘Strange. I knew I could never go home again, but I always felt something like a thread, running straight the way back there. A ley line pointing that way – pointing towards her. Some days we walked in opposite directions and I felt it tug on my heart, on others we were in step like we were arm in arm again, walking through the woods back home.’

  ‘You were,’ his friend said quietly. ‘Every dawn she’d walk those hounds of yours round the woods. It gave her time to be with you, she said.’

  That brought a small smile to Enchei’s face, but it faded like a whisper on the breeze. ‘And now you’re here,’ he stated, ‘with power over my life. Think I’ll be needing that drink now.’

  The Astaren reached into the half-open box and pulled a clear glass bottle from it. As he unstoppered it, Enchei caught the sweet smoky scent of the finest whisky.

  ‘This should chase the cold away,’ his friend announced, drinking before he offered it to Enchei.

  ‘Thanks.’ Enchei took a swallow, savouring the taste as he stared at the bottle in his hand. ‘Been a while since we’ve done this,’ he commented eventually. He looked up. ‘Still can’t quite believe we are. How long have you known?’

  ‘About the girls? Since before their mother died, maybe five years after you left?’

  ‘And you were never tempted?’

  The Astaren snorted. ‘Tempted? No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  His friend gestured toward the other door where his bodyguard had gone. ‘He’s here because he’s bound to me. Of all those in the city he’s the only one I can trust, because his mind will fold in on itself before he betrays me. You’d be surprised how many volunteers there are for that – more than I realised, men and women who work out they’re never going to reach the top based on their own merits.’

  ‘I realised it myself,’ Enchei said. ‘Doesn’t mean I ever wanted my mind bound to another.’

  ‘But power never meant much to you. Even with your promotions, you only ever saw power as a burden.’

  ‘Is that your answer?’ Enchei asked. ‘You were so confident of reaching the top on your own merits you ignored such a huge windfall?’

  ‘I am one of the Five,’ his friend replied with a hint of r
eproach. ‘Is it arrogance if you turn out to be right? As for the girls – when I found out, I was marked for command already. I knew the path I had ahead and …’ He shrugged. ‘Well. If you’re the sort who’s willing to betray family, you’re not the sort to be chosen in the first place. Before anything else though, before all loyalty and anything else you might hear with a cynical heart, I don’t want to die knowing I’m the bastard who maybe started the biggest war in history.’

  He shook his head and reached for a drink. ‘Even if your girls were treated right rather than just as brood mares, I suspect the others of the Five would agree with me. There’s a balance of power in the Empire and we like it that way. Children inheriting Astaren abilities from their parents? That way chaos lies – chaos and millions of dead. Best thing you could’ve done is hide it from us all those years. You did a good job there and I for one am glad to be duped.’

  ‘Hide it?’ Enchei spluttered. ‘I didn’t know anything had been done to me for years. Not until I heard my daughters talking to each other in my mind!’

  That brought the man up short. ‘Honestly?’ he said, an eyebrow raised sceptically. ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Not a damn clue. I guess you know when it happened? Or worked it out, at least?’

  The grim look on his friend’s face told Enchei the man knew it all too well, and remembered the reports of Enchei’s impetuousness leading to the death of his comrades.

  ‘Aye, that’s it, the Lady of Mists. When I fell in that temple vault and cracked my skull, I only knew she healed me. She … she and her kin left me to carry a warning back across the mountains. Didn’t occur to me she’d changed something inside me. I found that bit out the hard way.’

  The Astaren snorted, some sort of cold amusement at the absurdity of all they had lived through. ‘You led a charmed life, my friend. Most of us never meet a god or high demon once in our lives, but you …’