Old Man's Ghosts

by Tom Lloyd

  ‘I’m glad I brought it up, then. My question’s this: who should I tell?’

  ‘Who? I don’t understand.’

  Cailer had a pained look on her face. ‘Lord ald Har was most grieved by the losses the Lawbringers took as they assaulted the goshe island. He’s wary of another such confrontation – quite aside from how House Dragon might act were we to impede them in asserting their authority a second time. Lawbringer Rhe, on the other hand, fears no conflict of any form and is something of a zealot in matters of what constitutes the Lawbringers’ purview.’

  ‘So you’re asking who I’d take this information to?’

  ‘Indeed. It’s far from normal to take any such information to the Lord Martial, but I wonder if this is not an instance where protocol should be ignored? It goes against the grain for me to do so and I’d appreciate your opinion here, given you’re unlikely to be involved either way.’

  Narin was quiet for a long while, trying to weigh the two options. Rhe would indeed want to deal with it himself, but the Lawbringers and Investigators he drafted in could be bolstered by Prince Kashte’s band of Imperial warriors, at least. If House Dragon got involved, they might have the greater power to bring, but Enchei would certainly have to keep clear and Narin suspected he wanted to be part of it if he could. Not only to be sure it was over with, but to know no prisoners would be taken to be interrogated by Dragon’s Astaren.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘It’s a risk to our brothers and sisters, but I dislike hiding behind the skirts of House Dragon.’

  ‘As do I,’ Cailer said. ‘If it was just a choice between the death of Lawbringers or the hardened killers of the Astaren, it would be simple.’

  ‘Tell Rhe,’ Narin said, finally deciding.

  A fog of guilt seemed to fill his heart as he said it, but he knew Rhe would at least be careful in who he recruited to the cause. The criminals of the Imperial City were hardly a gentle crowd, so every Lawbringer knew the risks of their oaths.

  ‘The choice should be his. He knows what forces he can bring to bear and he won’t risk their lives if he doesn’t believe it’ll work. There are Dragon emissaries hounding him already; he’ll always have the option to turn it over to them.’

  ‘Do you think he will?’ Cailer asked sceptically.

  Narin shook his head. ‘I think he’ll find a way to do it under Lawbringer auspices. He’s not one to accept any plan until he’s certain of it.’

  ‘And not just because he’s House Brightlance originally?’

  ‘He’s House of the Sun now, as to-the-bone as you or I.’ And he’s made a new friend in Prince Sorote too, perhaps.

  Lawbringer Cailer nodded and Narin guessed from the look on her face that her own thoughts had been along the same lines. ‘Thank you, Investigator. Now get yourself to the shrine and meditate on your new life.’

  She turned and eased her way back down the stairs where already there were Investigators waiting to speak to her. Narin watched her go then caught the bright eyes of Rhe’s favourite novice, Tesk, beside the slate.

  Will she be glad to see me back under Rhe’s charge? I suppose so, better that way than he takes on another, younger, Investigator and she misses her chance while my replacement’s being trained. Once I’ve served my penance I’m either back to Lawbringer or I spend my days as a senior Investigator, training others myself.

  Narin shook his head. ‘Getting ahead of yourself there,’ he said quietly as he headed back up to the shrine of Lord Lawbringer where large stone tablets, positioned as the stars of the Ascendant God’s constellation, bore the oaths of his order. ‘Stay alive these coming days, that’s the only plan right now.’

  Lawbringer Cailer was right and also wrong, he realised as he crossed through the shrine and sat on the far side, at the narrow windows where the low sill served as a long stone bench. The reverential quiet was preferable there and he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed other than by his handful of friends, but he felt every eye on him. There was nowhere to hide in the shrine and a constant stream of Lawbringers and Investigators passed on the other side. Enough would spot him sitting there like a child sent to the corner as punishment and the tongues would wag all the faster.

  ‘Protect the innocent’ Narin read from the first of the tablets. Everything else is just words. Bring me your most hurtful words, he thought, staring back at some of the curious looks. My armour is made of a woman’s smile and a baby’s cry. Your hot air cannot hurt me, so try as you will.

  He closed his eyes and imagined his life as it was now to be. A smile soon appeared on his face and never left it until the Moon youth, Danshuer, returned with the grey clothing of his old life.

  Enchei stood in the cluttered bedroom of his friend Pirish and stared into nothing. The debris of a life was scattered all around him, Pirish having lived half a century in the smokehouse, but his thoughts were on a more distant place. The two little girls he’d left behind, crying with their mother at the estate gate, and all that had been thrust upon them.

  ‘Tell us how – before anything else I want to know that.’

  Their conversation the previous day had been fraught – filled mostly with silences while Kesh kept a respectful distance. They were strangers, fumbling at threads he’d cut twenty years ago.

  ‘How? How this happened to me – to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Enchei had been quiet a long while, forced back into uncomfortable memories. ‘I was on a mission a few years before you two were born, far to the east.’

  ‘In Shadowrain Forest?’

  He’d shaken his head at that. For most the thousand-mile-barrier of Shadowrain Forest, beyond the House Raven hegemony, was simply the furthest edge of the world – not just of the Empire.

  ‘Beyond Shadowrain. We crossed the great north mountains and skirted the forest where it met the snow-line. We knew of the kingdoms beyond the mountains, beautiful places but too remote to attempt to conquer.

  Beyond them, though, there was talk of a great inland sea and civilisation on the far shore – in the kingdoms we knew they called it the garden of the world. Most beloved of the old Gods, we were told, granted a paradise to live in and knowing only peace.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There were guardians chosen from each generation, guardians given the power of Gods. We discovered inherited traits like the ones you have were in these blessed bloodlines – their rituals of adulthood involved relinquishing their powers to the priesthood who kept great repositories for the guardians to draw on.’

  ‘And you broke into one?’

  ‘I did. We were outmatched and I took a risk. I was assigned to watch the unit’s back, but we had evaded our pursuit and I saw an opportunity. I broke into a temple while the priests were elsewhere, but it was ancient. A walkway crumbled underneath me and I fell. I lay there half-dead, roused only by the screams of my unit in my ears as they were ambushed and slaughtered a few miles away.’

  ‘So you contracted it like a virus?’

  ‘Not quite. A guardian found me, the newest of their number. Just a girl, really, her name was Sarra – or rather it had been. The Lady of Mists was what she’d become. Whatever happened to me in the temple, it would have killed me had she not done something. I don’t know how, but she healed me and changed me at the same time, sent me back alone to tell the tale of how the rest had been killed.

  ‘Sarra didn’t want a second, stronger expedition to be sent after us, but she warned me to keep my fall in the temple a secret even as I reported how dangerous the guardians were. She wanted me to glimpse the burden the guardians carried, how it turned each of them insane as the years passed. I didn’t understand what she meant at the time, didn’t know what secret she warned me to keep. I only knew that I believed her, that it would be the end of me and all I loved if my masters knew what had happened that day.’

  ‘She gave you their greatest weapon and then warned you to keep away?’

  ‘She gave me the secret of how they p
assed their weapons on through the generations, but no weapon of theirs. Each guardian was powerful enough to destroy an army – they had done so many times in their history before invaders learned they were invincible by any mortal standards.

  ‘The changes made to my body – the blades, the mage-sight, the hardened bones, each of the hundred-odd adjustments the mage-priests made when I was younger – they didn’t add up to enough to threaten the guardians, no matter how many of us there were. But Sarra used them as a warning and a punishment – she knew others within the Astaren would turn on me for personal gain just as she knew I wanted a family before I died. She twisted things inside me so those changes became inherited traits rather than just the tinkering of mage-priests. She cursed me with the prize we’d sought there, knowing what any army would do to its own to get their hands on such an advantage.’

  ‘And so she tied your future and ours in a neat little bow. Once you had children, they would be always under threat from your own comrades.’

  Enchei bowed his head, heart as heavy as lead.

  ‘And then you abandoned us – walked away and told the world you were dead rather than face the consequences of what you had done.’

  ‘Enchei?’ called a voice.

  He looked up, startled for a moment, before getting his bearings. ‘Pirish? I thought you’d gone.’

  The tiny old woman stood in the doorway, looking so hard at him he felt her gaze on his soul. She remained spry despite her age and a husband buried longer than Enchei’s girls had been alive; the ravages of the years were visible on her face but didn’t affect her mind.

  ‘This is my house,’ she snapped, ‘I’ll go when I’m good and ready.’

  Enchei sighed. For all their differences there was a fierceness in Pirish that reminded him of the Lady of Mists – a bloody-mindedness and independence that could never be swayed. ‘I need to get on here.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ she said, advancing into the room and settling into a wicker chair so filled with cushions only someone of Pirish’s size could fit in the remaining space. ‘You need a friend to talk to. I’ve never seen you like that before; like the starlight just marked out your grave in front o’ you.’

  He shook his head. ‘Maybe the opposite, actually. Feels like I’ve got part of my life back again, one I thought I’d lost forever.’

  ‘Then why’ve you got a face like that on ya?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Knight’s balls “it’s complicated”. Folk always say that when they’ve dug ’emselves a hole, but it’s rarely so complex.’

  ‘You’ve no idea.’

  ‘So tell me,’ she said, shifting slightly in her seat to get more comfortable. ‘I’ve no stake in this, not like your Lawbringer friend.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Enchei said in a hollow voice. ‘I need people to forgive me and it doesn’t matter what’s right or wrong, true or false. I need ’em to forgive me in their hearts, not just say the words, and there’s nothing I can do to help it.’

  ‘Must be family then,’ Pirish concluded, a smug look on her face. ‘Nothing messes a man’s head up more’n family. I thought you’d left yours a long while back, some scandal or the like?’

  Enchei hesitated. He’d known Pirish for a few years now, longer than Narin, but had never told her his secrets and she’d been careful not to ask. Intimations of an insalubrious past were enough for Pirish – from how they’d met, Enchei guessed she’d known more than a few men like that and would be fazed by little. But she was content not to pry and he had always been glad of it.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said after a pause that was long enough for Pirish to notice. ‘Left them a long time back, but they tracked me down.’

  ‘A man can never apologise enough,’ Pirish declared. ‘For what he said, for what he didn’t say – hells, sometimes just for bein’ himself or having the face he does. Say you’re sorry and say it again. Say it till you’ve run out of breath then bloody write it down instead.’

  ‘Never been good at sorry.’

  ‘Aye, doubt you’ve had much practice,’ she said darkly, ‘but mebbe you try and mean it this time, eh? My first husband never could sound sorry – arrogant bastard he was, always wearin’ a grin like the Emperor himself would forgive whatever he’d done.’

  ‘First husband? What did you do to him?’

  ‘Hah, don’t think I weren’t tempted once or twice. As you’re mebbe plannin’, you shut a man in that pitch-dark smokehouse for five minutes and he’s dead all accidental like.’ She sighed. ‘But though the Emperor might’ve forgiven him, turns out an Eagle warrior caste wasn’t so accommodatin’. Never found out what he’d said to the man, only that the little sod was coming half-nekked out some floozy’s house at the time. The Eagle put a bullet between his eyes and just kept on walkin’ like nothin’ had ever happened.’

  Before Enchei could find the words to reply, there came the thump of feet on the stairs and Kesh’s face appeared at the doorway.

  ‘If you old buggers have finished your tea party, we’ve got work to do, remember?’

  ‘Aye, I remember,’ Enchei scowled. ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘Really? Because I thought you were going to nail planks across the inside of those shutters?’ Kesh said, pointing to the wide window ahead of him.

  ‘You filled all the buckets with water?’

  ‘Just getting the last few now. There’s six downstairs already. Pirish, I know there’s a smokehouse downstairs, but why so many buckets?’

  The old woman cackled. ‘Can never have too many,’ she said, ‘not when you’ve got fires smoking day an’ night.’

  ‘They won’t burn the place,’ Enchei said, pushing thoughts of his daughters from his mind. ‘They’re warrior caste on a blood feud; they’ll barge their way in and want us to see their faces as they kill us.’

  ‘You sure they’ll come in the other bedroom?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s an easy hop up on to the smokehouse roof. We leave a lamp burning in this room and the other dark; it’ll be the obvious entry point.’

  ‘Unless they kick in my front door,’ Pirish pointed out.

  ‘They’ll do that too, come at us from both directions. I’ll set up a surprise for anyone getting through that door. My money’s on the leaders coming up here, though – let the noise down below lure folk downstairs and give time for a little family reunion.’

  ‘But they get that boy with the demons in his head instead?’ Pirish asked. ‘Tough you may be, Enchei, but you’re no warrior caste.’

  ‘There’ll be no straight fight up here either,’ Enchei said firmly. ‘We’re taking no risks today.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’ Pirish hauled herself up out of the chair. ‘So like the lady said, you’ve got work to do, which means I’m to the pub. Fetch me when it’s all over an’ it’s my house again.’

  ‘Thank you, Pirish.’

  She waved it away as she headed down the stairs, calling over her shoulder, ‘Just you keep my house from burnin’ down, you hear?’ She cackled again. ‘And remember I’m always lookin’ out for a fourth husband before I die!’

  CHAPTER 27

  Shonrey ground to a halt and watched the urchin trudge past the tavern up ahead. The light had been failing steadily and now dusk was upon them. The lamp that hung over the tavern door was lit, creating a bubble of warmth in the fog. He could just about read the tavern’s name, the Broken Field, as the urchin passed it, eyes downcast but turned just slightly to the left.

  They had taken an oblique route to get here, but Shonrey felt a quickening in his gut that told him finally they were where the Gods willed them to be. The Lawbringer had been demoted, Shonrey saw, but not stripped of his rank entirely. Another example of the weakness within the Lawbringers, the cheap blood that flowed in their veins. Either they were too cowardly to fully acknowledge their mistakes or they were so venal that they did not consider his crimes serious.

  Shonrey ground his teeth in anger,
feeling his hand tighten into a fist. He would show them what punishment was appropriate to one who betrayed her husband, her family, her caste. This Investigator and his whore, both would learn the wrath of the Wyverns before the night was out.

  Investigator Narin was a grey phantom in the fog as he moved in bursts and constantly turned to check behind, but Shonrey had learned from their mistakes of days past.

  Their missing kin, their failures in following the Lawbringer to his whore’s lair – all solved by a single coin and a grubby low-caste boy with no honour. He was a local, no more than fourteen years old, and interested only in the silver coin he’d been promised.

  Growing up penniless on those streets, the boy called Virin hadn’t cared why he was to follow a Lawbringer, but even in this one day he had proved his worth at it. The man was watching for dark faces following him and it seemed he had not even noticed just another poor, white face walking behind. How the Investigator and his associates had managed to ambush his previous pursuers not once but twice remained a mystery, but it no longer mattered. Now he was undone by his own grasping, low-born kind.

  The sound of boots on cobbles heralded Shonrey’s youngest cousin, Toher, a gangly youth whose questions had been a constant irritant over the days they had spent in the Imperial City. They both wore dark blue cloaks over their clothes, enough to hide everything but their faces. Up ahead, the urchin in the ragged clothes had stopped past the tavern and turned to face them.

  ‘Has he found it?’ Toher asked, clouds of breath betraying the anxiety of one so young he had never been in battle.

  But you’re lucky, cousin, Shonrey thought, you will survive your first fight. Perhaps you’ll learn the sense to survive battle-proper. House Eagle’s armies will prove more dangerous than this Investigator when the warhorns finally sound, and it’s my duty to see you safe until then.

  He did not answer the youth for a long while, instead watching the urchin keenly. Virin waited a moment then retraced his steps, heading towards them with head again low. It afforded him one final glance at the side-street the Investigator had disappeared down.