Grave Ghost

by Tia Reed

  The boy stared. Matisse gave a last instruction to the loitering groom and led his horse towards the hedge. She had not expected Timak to trot after him.

  “Take me with you.”

  “Take me with you, my lord,” a guard educated, frowning. He was one of four men who had jogged up, bedrolls and saddle packs in their arms. It seemed Matisse had informed them they were to leave before he entered Ordo’s study.

  Drucilamere shot Santesh a cautionary look. The shy, young mage had secured his pack and donned his green cloak with its porrin leaf etched on the gold clasp. The soldiers were checking their horses’ tack, and servants were dashing in every direction to load the horses with provisions.

  “My lord, if you rush headlong into Verdaan, you are doomed to failure,” Drucilamere said. He grabbed a fistful of hair from the top of his head. His brow was as deeply furrowed as Ordosteen’s.

  “Then I will fail with my honour intact.”

  “That is something you should have thought of before you took the princess to your bed,” Ordosteen snapped.

  “Wrong, Uncle. You should have thought through the consequences before you betrayed her.”

  “You are close to treason, nephew.”

  “Then I say again, lock me up.”

  Matisse and Ordosteen glared at each other, their expressions dark under the bright sun.

  “They have a mahktashaan with them,” Drucilamere pointed out, a taut but reasonable voice in the heated debate. “Even with a mage, you cannot hope to win Princess Kordahla in a raid.”

  Matisse mounted. “How do you propose we proceed? Or are you suggesting we leave her to Ahkdul’s poisonous attentions?”

  Jordayne shook her head. The approach, if not its implementation, was obvious. “Verdaani smugglers have been evading our border guards for years. To succeed we need someone with good knowledge of the lay of the land.” She dropped a pointed look on Timak.

  “Come here, Timak.” Drucilamere held out his arms and Timak, dutiful as ever, went to him. “Where might we find your parents?”

  “My mother lives in Teqrin.”

  “And your father.”

  The boy turned white. “You can’t take me there.”

  “Where is there, lad?”

  “He’ll find me there.”

  And now at last Matisse turned his head in interest. “Where boy? Lord Hudassan’s palace? Spit it out before I wallop it out of you.” He trotted the horse towards the boy, the big bully. She would have a stern word with him about intimidating traumatised boys once he had expended his frustration in another raid or two.

  “The third watchtower,” the boy whispered.

  “The watchtower, you say?” Matisse froze on his way into the saddle. Timak stared. Realising how unattractive his position was, Matisse sat. Jordayne could see his mind mulling over that snippet.

  “Do you begin to see, brother, that a more covert approach might bear greater fruit here?

  Matisse, tense enough for the lines of his muscles to show, calmed.

  “There is a certain risk involved,” she continued, making sure they caught her glance at Timak. They must take her meaning but she did not want the boy to nurture false hope. “But an ally promised asylum may help.”

  “Through Terlaan?” Kaztyne asked. He was patting Santesh’s horse.

  “Neither the Verdaanis nor the Terlaanis would be expecting it.”

  “Let Raj make contact,” Drucilamere said, relaxing a smidgeon. “He is indebted to us.”

  Jordayne raised an approving eyebrow. That was the most sensible suggestion yet. Under threat of the noose, the smuggler had let slip he had experience in smuggling people as well as porrin.

  Ordosteen cleared his throat.

  “I do not trust him,” Matisse said, ignoring the clear indication their dear Uncle disapproved.

  “We court a war either way, Uncle,” Jordayne said.

  “My lord, send a few of your men. But you compromise our Realm if you go,” Druce said.

  “I will grant you this,” Ordosteen said, though he had no real choice, “but you will remain in Myklaan.”

  “And what of the scumbag apprentice?” Matisse asked of Drucilamere.

  “It was never my request that you lead this expedition. Santesh is more than capable of scrying Brailen’s location, and if the traitor remains in Verdaan, this party can scout the dividing hills in preparation for an invasion.”

  Matisse gripped the reins too tight. His horse snorted. “And what of our citizens, Uncle? Do you deign to leave them to Lord Kamir’s mercy while you celebrate with wine and pastries?”

  “There will be a reckoning, but at present Myklaan needs every able man here.”

  The horse pranced. Matisse looked to the gate. “Very well. But if she is not safe come the war, the prerogative is mine.” Kicking the horse into a canter, he dashed from the palace.

  Chapter 27

  RONDEL DEQ OAKSON caught his wife as she fainted, and gathered her into his arms. She was little more than skin and bone, fated to waste away before his eyes.

  The lean, greying physic had seen her right enough, though he had closed his eyes and swayed at the door when the young boy summoned him. Hamid deq Lamont had appeared so haggard, that almost, despite the brutal indifference they had last suffered here, almost Rondel agreed to see someone else. He had seen enough men worked to exhaustion to understand that consuming depression. But poor as they were, Maya deserved dignified care, and Rondel was glad he had insisted on deq Lamont. As the physic shuffled about a thorough examination, he tensed tight as a puffer’s tongue, for Lady Jordayne had spoken true last night: this man cared.

  After the physic had sniffed his wife’s sweet pee, he drew Rondel aside. “Her body gains no nourishment from food. There is little that can be done.” Physic Hamid deq Lamont had detailed a diet that would help stave off the end, and pressed a pot of salve for her bedsores into Rondel’s hand with a sympathetic clasp of his hand and more wrinkles on his brow than could be attributed to age.

  Rondel had fought back an exasperated tear. His morning visit to the temple had wasted time he could have used to search for work. Vae’oenka had not heeded a poor man’s prayer, but why should the proud goddess care when he all he could offer her was a single dandelion plucked from the side of the road.

  A half hour later, they had made it to the hospice gate. Maya had insisted on walking through the gardens, though she clutched Rondel as she might a crutch. The fresh air had brought a tinge of pink to her delicate cheeks, and the riotous blooms a serene glow to her face. Several invalids sat on the low walls or plodded along the meandering paths, as rapt in the fresh beauty as his sick wife.

  “They bloom in celebration of our love,” Maya said, reaching to touch a red hibiscus. His resentment at Lady Jordayne for spending so much coin on this frivolity when there were common men without the means to buy a crust dispelled. He saw it now. The gravely ill deserved a place to soothe away their cares. He plucked the flower, and tucked it into her black hair. Her smile as she traced the rugged line of his square jaw was worth the scowl from a guard. He planted a gentle kiss on his wife’s soft lips.

  With her safe in his arms, he strode towards home. He lacked the coin for a cart, and no one in this crumbling city was about to offer a lift. They lived in a hovel, surrounded by addicts who sprawled across dark doorways or knocked down shutters to pilfer any trinket they could sell for a taste of the drug. A few moons ago the destitute would not have ventured into the leafy avenues and public squares. Or be dressed in fancy silks that would fetch coin enough for a lick of porrin if sold. The well-off were succumbing, and not to the blissful oblivion of infrequent use. This city was falling. Coming here had been the worst mistake of his life.

  Rondel frowned. An incongruity niggled in his murky thoughts. These tired streets were almost bare of addicts despite a dusk hastened by grey clouds scudding in from the west. Disturbing rumours had spun along cobble and up drainpipe in the morning’s br
eeze. In his haste to get Maya to the physic, he had paid them no heed. Curse those double-dealing royals. Hypocrites. Damned, scum-sucking, hypocrites, to slaughter the poor and shelter the rich. One ravaging drug, two rules.

  Deep in his brooding, Rondel walked right past the fluid tumble of smoke. It registered, though, when the scrawny black cat walking the rotting walls of the hovels arched its back, raised its hackles, and screeched. Curiosity got the better of him before common sense kicked in. The cat jumped onto the roof and ran like a pack of dogs pursued, but he backed up and looked down the unkempt dirt lane. Winter’s frost had settled on the weeds, though leaves of red and orange yet clung to the oaks and poplars prettying this decaying city. Just beyond the entrance, above a slick of ice, a funnel of smoke was roiling. Indigo smoke. He jigged Maya higher in his arms. Her cheeks had lost their rouge and goosebumps rippled along her arms. His gut warned him to leave, to keep walking and never look back.

  His heart begged him to stay.

  He looked at his wife, unconscious in his arms. “I will be forever yours,” he murmured. When he looked up, the djinn loomed, a towering indigo monstrosity with vermillion eyes that flashed their evil as bright as the crystals in its joints. It crossed its arms and ankles as it floated above the filthy ground and regarded him as he might a biting ant. Rondel clenched his chattering teeth. His galloping heart would have to race away. He could do nothing to still it in the face of a djinn.

  “I’ll deal, if my end of the bargain concerns me alone,” he snarled, and clamped his mouth shut. The tales could warn the warm, the well-fed and the healthy. A desperate man would take whatever meagre scrap was thrown at him. If the rotting morsel poisoned his blood, he lost nothing if he would have starved anyway.

  The djinn bowed its head until Rondel could feel the coarse hairs on its nose tickle his own. “Will you just?”

  Its fishy breath made breathing a labour. “I’m not of a mind to linger, djinn. State your business or let me be.”

  Twisting into a smokey whirlwind, the djinn spun into the sky and down again until he reformed, a loafer reclining between decrepit wooden buildings that would shelter lowlifes eager to sell their wives for a wish. The djinn yawned, patting his mouth in a gesture that concealed yellow teeth.

  A commonality ran through the tales, and Rondel knew them as well as any Realm-born man. All foolish mortals yearned for wealth, long life, or fame, but few were blighted with a visit from a djinn. The creatures demanded a favour in turn, and oft none but the one they haunted was capable of the deed. It took a mountainous effort of will for Rondel to turn and walk the slick, lane. His pride could smoulder to ash; he would run back and fall to his knees begging if his ruse failed.

  Vae’oenka be praised smoke shimmied before him, though dread froze him to the spot. He kissed Maya on the forehead, and waited.

  “Out of my way, djinn,” he said, when the creature deigned to form.

  Footsteps fled the scene. Others approached. He gritted his teeth. This was his wish; he would fight to the death to secure it.

  “Puny speck of dirt beneath my shoe, show respect.”

  Rondel held Maya tight. With her in his arms, there was little he could do. Nor would he bow before a conniving creature of the air. The creature twirled. Wind whirled from it, blowing up a gale. Rondel staggered. The frosty weeds uprooted and whipped into him, tangling in Maya’s hair. He knelt so he might hold Maya tighter, but the gale ripped her from his arms. He lurched after her. The wind tossed him off his feet and spun him around the djinn. He spun until his head was ready to fly off his shoulders.

  The wind dropped. He landed on hands and knees, fighting the urge to be sick. A door slammed shut. A cat yowled. Maya groaned. She was shored against a wall, her head askew, blood trickling from her temple, the bruised hibiscus by her pale hand. He crawled to her, cradled her in his arms. She was breathing, thank the Vae.

  “Your life, flea. I’ll trade you your life.”

  “My life is meaningless. My wife. If you can cure my wife, demand what you will.”

  The vermillion eyes narrowed. “Pathetic fool. You could demand unending riches, a satrapy, forty virgins, yet you choose to save this ragged piece of flesh over your own worthless skin.”

  Maya moaned. Rondel smoothed the hair from her clammy forehead. He had found her when outlaws had robbed him of his meagre savings, and river pirates had wrecked his captain’s boat. When his father’s lord had claimed the family home after a frugal year without work in which they had racked up insurmountable debt. She had seen him for the man he was, and not the destitute squatter sharing a rundown building no one had yet bothered to claim. “My wife’s health, or I’ll not deal.”

  The djinn crossed his arms. The glowing crystals in elbow, wrist and knuckle glinted in the sun. “The boy at the temple. Bring me the quartz he wears and I’ll spare her life.”

  Rondel laid Maya on the uneven ground. A brave man Lady Jordayne had called him. It was not a quality he had cultivated by choice. Bravery and honour were all that were left to a destitute man and a fugitive. He stood. “I’ll not hurt a child.”

  “How you manage it is not my concern.”

  His heart was threatening to burst from his chest. One word would bring an irrevocable change in his life, in his wife’s. Lasting good never came of a pact with a djinn, but one word was that tiny scrap of refuse that might ease the gnawing until a fuller meal could be scrounged.

  “Deal.”

  The djinn was gone in a puff of smoke, the echoes of his laughter rattling the walls of the huts.

  Maya’s moan returned him to reality, shivering, jittery and devoid of the nerve that had been his proudest asset. Her eyelids fluttered open. She reached an arm to him. He squatted to scoop her up, but she leaned on his shoulder and pulled herself to her feet.

  “What tonic did the physic give? I feel so much stronger.”

  He closed his eyes and pulled her to him, declaring his love with a forbidden kiss, right there in the open street, the hibiscus flower bright at their feet.

  Chapter 28

  THE CRY WENT up in black night, shouts and screams and a call for hunters to pick up their spears.

  “Out of here,” Erok said, pulling Sian from her pallet in the cave.

  “Ishoa,” she murmured through the fuzz of sleep. She tugged out of his grasp and scampered to the soothsayer where she lay on her furs. Ishoa was moaning. The soothsayer did not respond to her touch. Erok needed to find herbs for a poultice to take down the swellings, and to steep into a soothing brew.

  “Up. NOW.” Erok dragged her towards the mouth of the cave.

  “But Ishoa.”

  “Is safer here.”

  It wasn’t true. She struggled, he tugged. She was never going to break free of his strong grip but she stumbled when she saw Gor, trussed by the fire, his hairs singed by the flames. The man-ogre’s cunning eyes followed her with a promise she didn’t want to face. Erok saw it too, and shoved her away. She whimpered, because his roughness was scaring her more than Gor. She pressed her fists to her mouth as he raised his spear, aiming for the ogre’s heart.

  “Yaaah!” He drove the spear down with both hands.

  “Gor must live.” Ishoa’s hoarse words cut through the panicked buzz from the village.

  Erok deflected the spear tip a finger-width from Gor’s heart. The man-ogre yelped as the point bit through his arm. Clenching his jaw, Erok jerked his spear free. Gor bared his pointed teeth.

  Sian crept to Ishoa.

  The soothsayer’s unseeing eyes were open. She reached out and clutched Sian’s arm. “Take the bones.” Her eyes fluttered closed and her head lolled.

  “Ishoa?” Sian clasped the soothsayer’s shoulder. She didn’t rouse.

  Erok kicked the dirt. “What does a soothsayer know of battle?” he muttered, jabbing his spear through the air at some invisible enemy. He saw her kneeling next to Ishoa, holding her hand, staring at him with wide, fearful eyes, and pretended to calm himself.


  “Out. Now.”

  Sian scooped up the box Draykan had presented her. Erok’s hand twisted around her arm, burning it as he pushed her under dried bundles of sage and out of the cave. He ducked back in, and came out with four fiery torches. She struggled to keep her balance as he herded her down the slope towards the hollow bole. Her feet skidded on pebbles, as uncertain about walking the path as she had been before travelling the hills to Myklaan.

  Erok planted the torches around the trunk of the hollow bole. “Get on my shoulders.” He hoisted her towards the lowest branch, well over the head of any man. She took hold and pulled herself up, rattling the yellowing leaves on the twigs sticking out in every direction. “Climb. As high as you can go. And don’t get down until I come for you.”

  “Ishoa.” She was trapped in the cave. They couldn’t just leave her.

  “UP.”

  Sian tucked the box into a fork to leave her hands free. Erok waited until she had struggled into the higher branches before he ran towards the village. The screams and crashes and cracks made her shiver. The forest was glowing orange. Sparks flickered against the rising smoke. Sian climbed one branch down. She twisted so she could drop to the next one. Hoots and yowls turned her blood cold. She huddled against the trunk. Three misshapen figures were rooting around the tree, edging forward, moving around when the heat of the flames tickled their skin.

  “O-gir.” They looked up at Gor’s call. “O-gir.” Snuffling, they scampered up the track to the cave, silhouettes outlined against the ridge.

  Ishoa, Ishoa, Ishoa. She was coward to hide up here, but her body wouldn’t move.

  “Sian.”

  People were screaming, ogres yowling. She whimpered.

  “Sian!”

  “Erok?” It would be all right now.

  “Quiet,” he hissed. “Come down.”

  She clambered down, dropping into his arms from the last branch as she collected the box of bones. Erok stared at the roaring fire devouring their village. Blood was splattered all over his face and arms. At his side, Soothsayer Orin of the Pa’akerin looked up to the cave.