Three Stories About Ghosts

by Matthew Marchitto

  One such glance caught my eye—mine, not Grandfather’s—and made the hairs rise on the nape of my neck. My cheeks flushed for a second before I was able to pack the strange feeling away. In the long winter that followed I would take out the feeling and turn it over in my mind when I lay alone at night, the mask safely on the stand beside my bed. I knew in that glance that the young boy wearing Antonos was looking at me. We have ways to tell, though we may be behind the mask. The Untrusted have learned to read each other.

  The Judge mediated between the two Houses, adding conditions and formalities to their interactions. The intention was to reduce our dealings to the most formal manner possible, to avoid a repeat of the Blood Summer. We would have no more of the treachery, as we put it, of the Verocci, nor even the just but brutal retaliation of the Vetruvi for the deaths of our kin. Grandfather-Looking-Out thought our actions the more noble—at least by his standards. While the Verocci had used paid killers and their empty-eyed slaves to bring low our people, we had taken revenge ourselves, and been unafraid to get our hands dirty. As the Judge spoke, Per’Secosa’s voice crowed inside my head, reliving the deaths of Verocci scions he had been pleased to cause himself in the days before he had been bonded with one so small and slight as myself. The sensation of my own hands around a man’s throat crawled through my fingers, and I fought back a wave of nausea.

  “A ball.” The words cut across Per’Secosa’s murderous daydreams, and he looked over to where Antonos’ muffled voice echoed out across the court. “Why not a ball?”

  Grandfather-Looking-Out sniffed. I felt the muscles of my back knot and tighten as my lips curled in a sneer.

  Antonos spread his hands wide in a fashion that reminded me of the marionettes dancing for street puppeteers. “A ball, every year, at the Royal Court. The expense to be shared equally by both families.” It was hard to tell how Antonos thought or felt. The old man’s expressionless voice rose from the throat of young Perro Verocci, a dreamer in a trance.

  “Why?” My voice had the snap of Per’Secosa’s authority to it. It pleased him to see the Verocci guards jerk reflexively forward, hands gripping sword-hilts, at the implication of threat in his word.

  “Because we are friends now. We have put the terrible events of our past behind us and must go into the years ahead of us as amicably as possible.” Antonos tilted his masked head slowly to one side. As he stepped forward, a trick of the light made the threads of his doublet seem older and more worn than they were. A sheen of scuffed fabric rose from the elbows, and frayed threads danced like ghosts around the buttons. He looked tired.

  “Withdraw your Claim, then!” I snapped in retort; Per’Secosa was always ready to twist an imaginary advantage into something with a legal backing.

  The Judge raised a black-gloved hand, palm out, to silence us. “The Claim is not under discussion, Per’Secosa Vetruvi. These proceedings are convened to bring an end to undeclared hostilities between the Verocci and Vetruvi clans.” His voice was flat, mechanical. Centuries spent studying the law had washed all uncertainty away from him, wearing the rough edges of the Judge smooth and featureless and paring away his doubts. Where others might hesitate over a word, the spirit driving the Judge had no doubts about the legal weight of his every utterance. His every motion was calculated, minimal, measured. Impatience burned in me at such a dismissal.

  My fist crashed into the wood of the pulpit. “Yet you allow this to be a fit subject for our discussion? A ball? To what end? That we hold hands and dance? Gossip and eat dainties like womenfolk? Do I need to remind you of my station?”

  Perro—Antonos—stood straighter. “I need no more be reminded of your station than of my own. My end, as you put it, is that our children learn to resolve their differences without bloodshed, Per’Secosa. My end is that one day our families will live as friends.”

  Grandfather-Looking-Out crossed my arms and gave a chilling, mirthless laugh. “You’ve changed, Antonos. Remember that you killed my son.”

  “As you killed mine.” Antonos drew himself up to his full height. I noticed one hand pressing hard against the carved wooden railing that separated his family’s booth from ours. Perro’s knuckles were white against the wood. “Yet more killing will not make it better. Let it end here, today, with us.”

  “I remind you both that you stand in formal Court. This is not the place to openly discuss your vendetta.” The Judge shifted in his seat, heavy black robes whispering as he moved. “In the spirit of friendship I will disregard your previous statements. They will be struck from the record.” He held up his hand again, and the scraping of a razor across parchment filled the air. “Per’Secosa, Antonos, please. We are old friends. We know each other well. There are more years in us than in all the Untrusted in this court.” The Judge stretched out his arms and I saw the pale ancient skin beneath, so totally at odds with his deep, sonorous voice. “Put away your knives, and let the Court attend to the Claim in its course, as the law decrees.”

  Both men raised their bearers’ chins at that—they both knew how easy it was to bribe Arbiters, and how little their work in the Courts had achieved. The Claim was as old as Secosa Vetruvi himself—older yet, and never had the Courts handed Per’Secosa his prize. I could feel the old man’s thoughts, angry and implacable, grind their way through my mind. Per’Secosa reached a conclusion that allowed him to twitch my lips up in the ghost of a smile. My hand rose up to stroke and smooth the polished and lacquered moustaches of his mask.

  “Very well, Antonos. I accept your terms. Let there be a grand ball, and let us carry the expense between us. Let the King see that we can be as brothers to each other, and that we are second to none in generosity.”

  Antonos’ featureless mask inclined towards me, and I could feel Perro’s eyes on me once more. “Nothing would bring me greater joy, Per’Secosa of the Vetruvi.”

  The advantage of the Truce Dances, as they became known, lay in the simple fact of the splitting of their expense. In theory, this was meant to accustom the two families to working together, to co-operate in hosting the ball without throwing themselves into debtor’s prison. In practice this meant that the organisation of the Dance became another weapon in their age-old war, with both Vetruvi and Verocci laying on ever more sumptuous and extravagant affairs with the hope of humiliating or beggaring their enemies. This was something that the old men—the stewards and treasurers of the Estates—complained bitterly of, though it delighted the young Untrusted who were eager to dance and drink and eat well and flirt dangerously with their peers.

  The Truce Dances were masked balls, of course—even the Cadet branches and Lesser Families came in masks, though theirs were simple wood and porcelain and gauze rather than the heavy dirgewood worn by the Noble Houses and the King himself. I sometimes envied them their breezy masks and light, revealing clothes as I stood at the Grand Dais sweating in my buttoned collar and ostentatious dress, knowing that in hours my neck would be stiff and sore when feeling returned to my limbs and I was once more myself.

  Aside from everything else the Truce Dances allowed us a brief chance to be ourselves. For a moment the masks were laid aside and the young scions of the Families—the Untrusted—could dance together as themselves. Though I was always careful to hide my excitement from Grandfather, it was the highest point of my year. I was little involved in family feast days and festivals, and the holy days of the High Gods were attended, of course, by Per’Secosa. Any day worth honouring required the Claimant’s presence. If there was feasting to be done, I would only taste the memory of the food. At the Dances, however, I could run. I could swing my arms. I could walk on my own in public, unmasked and Untrusted. Once a year, before the eyes of all the Court, I could be free to be simply Carra Vetruvi. For a moment, I could forget what that name entailed. I could enjoy the candlelight and the music until the moment my eyes turned to the Grand Dais and the mask sitting nestled in its velvet-lined case. The candles revealed the watchful eyes and wickedly sharp swords of the Kin
g’s Guard. Behind them, on the highest level, the King watched from behind his elegant, gleaming golden mask, always silent and all but motionless.

  Each year I danced with Perro—never the same dance, and never at the same time. We danced the zarabanda, the musette, the walse—elaborate folies and pavanes that Per’Secosa despised. Perro and I did not formalise our meetings, at least not before the Court. We danced as was polite, and after a while we became old enough to recognise what we meant to each other and bold enough to whisper those words as we spun, hiding them beneath the delicate strains of the music. On the night of the fourth Truce Dance we each excused ourselves separately from the festivities and walked away, eluding our guardians until we came together in a dark, forgotten corner of the Palace.

  I was shaking when I pushed open a dusty door and came face-to-face with Perro: of course, Per’Secosa and Antonos had met many times, but Carra and Perro had never spoken privately to one another before. I had no way of knowing if he was being honest, or if his invitation to me was a pretext to kidnap the young and sheltered bearer of Per’Secosa Vetruvi.

  The room was dark. A single shaft of moonlight made its way into the chamber, split into jagged arrows by thin and frayed curtains. The furniture, all piled into one corner, was decades or centuries out of fashion.

  “Hello?” Ever since I was young—since I took on the mask—my own voice, heard out loud, has seemed strange to me. Whenever I speak my own words, I feel as if I am letting the world hear some great secret that is for me alone. The room echoed with my improper voice. I swallowed, fearing I had been betrayed and angry at myself for slipping too easily into the suspicion that guides every action of my family.

  I heard the quiet scuff of a slipper’s sole on the bare boards behind me. I spun around, eyes wide. I had not brought a dagger with me—even in the concealed sheath within my bodice that usually held one of the long, slender knives our women habitually carry. There was movement in the darkness. An arm circled my waist, held me gently but tightly. I felt breath on my neck.

  “You’re trembling.”

  I closed my eyes and swallowed, willing my childish fear to leave my body. I leaned back against him, feeling the pressure of his arms around me. My hand traced his cuff, slipping beneath the kidskin of his glove to stroke the back of his wrist. I noticed his skin was cold, his body shaking. “So are you.”

  He laughed at that, a hushed expression of genuine amusement so different to the barks of the centuries-old masks Per’Secosa spent his days talking with. I turned in his arms, the rustle of my skirts sounding unbearably loud amid the dust and greying wood of the small room.

  “I didn’t think you would come.”

  I decided to be honest with him. “I feared you would not come alone.”

  He sagged with relief. “I feared that too.” He held out his hand. “Perro.”

  I smiled. The moonlight turned his dark curls to silver. “Carra.”

  “Carra.” My own name on the lips of another. I turned my chin up to catch his mouth with my own.

  “Perro,” I murmured as he pulled me close. My eyelids fluttered as his lips traced their way up the bare skin of my arm to my wrist.

  We tumbled to the floor together, spluttering in the cloud of dust that our fall brought up. Apologising through covered mouths and in between harsh coughs, we laughed in the dust and then we were silent for a moment, each studying the other intently. I was remembering all the little motions that were his—his and not of the mask—as he was drinking in all that made me Carra and not simply the current bearer of Per’Secosa.

  We shuffled across the floor, scraping a path through the dust as we made our way over to an ancient chest decorated in sea-nymphs that were unfashionable even before Antonos Verocci was born. Leaning back against it, we held each other and spoke. We spoke with unfettered honesty and the wild drunken urgency of those long silent. We bared our souls to each other on that night before beating the dust from each other’s clothes and heading back along separate darkened corridors to the clamour and heat and light of the Truce Dance.

  We met up at the next dance, and at the one after that—though it was on that first night together that Perro and I fell in love.

  Chapter Three

  YEARS LATER WE lay together on the floor of the Vetruvi family Claimant’s office, limbs tangled beneath the great window that looked out over the Grand Canal. I allowed myself a smile, drawing lazy shapes on Perro’s chest with my fingertip and feeling the warm sunlight as it traced its way over my feet.

  “This is dangerous,” I whispered. Beneath the excitement and joy of seeing him once more, of being with him again, was the knowledge that the dark-lacquered mask still sat heavy on the desk above us. In the few nights we had taken together—in all the precious little time that we had—we had never discussed our Duties. Yet, for all we did to live in those moments when we were together and unmasked, I could never shake the feeling of those cold empty eyes fixed on me—on us. They were eyes that could not see without stealing my own sight, home to a soul that would have me cut from the family if I allowed myself a moment of weakness and let him see a memory, or even so much as a daydream, of Perro.

  “I know.” I curled tighter around Perro as his chest rose and fell with a sigh. “Meeting like this, here...” He encompassed the austere, dark walls of the office with a half-hearted flourish of one hand. Musty shadows gathered in the corners, made darker at each tick of the clock and the glow of the sunlight on our skin.

  “No.” I cupped his cheek, chiding him gently. “It is dangerous that we meet at all. We know who they are—who we are. They cannot tolerate this.” I shifted on the floor, my discomfort making a cold knot in my belly. “They will not.”

  Perro was silent for a long moment. His eyes went to the edge of the desk above us. “Maybe they won’t need to tolerate us, Carra. That’s why I came. What I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I thought you came for me.” I almost laughed, despite the gathering sorrow in the room. Even the sunbeams, cut into little columns by the window’s frame, grew cold.

  “I did.” He cleared his throat. “I had something to ask you, Carra—something to say.” His tongue darted out to lick at his lips. It struck me that I didn’t know Perro well enough to tell if that movement meant he was nervous, and I wondered whether or not even Perro knew.

  I became still, like a startled animal unsure whether to bolt or hide. I could feel the words before he said them. I had felt them gather around us for years. I knew they were coming. We had both known, ever since our first dance. I had never figured out whether saying them would be bravery or cowardice.

  “Run away with me.”

  I still gasped. Waiting for years, and it somehow managed to shock me.

  “I mean it,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder and cupping my chin. “Carra, my heart... I see you for one night a year, and hardly even that. I see you through his eyes so often. I feel my heart break when I look on you, when I see your face bent in one of his scowls, or see his curses tumble from your lips. Run away with me, Carra. Come with me to Akasria, or Essenbahr. Somewhere dirgewood doesn’t grow, where the King has no power, and where our families will never reach us.”

  I could feel a tear sting the corner of my eye. I turned away from him. “They’ll reach us. Nobody turns against the family—not a bearer, and certainly not the Claimant’s bearer. You know there’s no way they can allow us to get away. They can’t show that kind of weakness. We never have.”

  Perro slumped back in disgust. “They treat us like a suit of clothes, Carra. We are Untrusted. We mean nothing to them.” He pushed himself upright, gathering his clothes and dressing himself as he perched casually on the edge of the desk. “They’ll find other bearers if anything happens to us. We don’t matter.” He turned, pulling his tunic down over his head, and glared down at Per’Secosa’s mask. “Carra, without us they’re nothing. Without them, we can live.”

  Scrambling up from the flo
or, I covered my mouth at his words. My eyes flicked anxiously to the mask sitting in the afternoon Sun.

  “He can’t hear us,” I said, though I all but whispered it. “They are clever, Perro. You know how they think.” I folded my hands together, studying them intently. One, smooth and clean, the hand of a young woman of exemplary station, and the other twisted and scarred by flame, marked by my family’s legacy. “They will come for us. They know how. They have lived for so long—they have wisdom we don’t.”

  Perro finished fastening his breeches and straightened his stockings. One hand scooped up a neat slipper of the type fashionable among the merchant families of Valtua. “Wisdom?” He uttered a short bark of laughter. “Antonos can barely remember how to walk. If they’re so wise, then why have they been killing all of their children for the past three hundred years?”

  I couldn’t shift my gaze—couldn’t look away from my hands. The mottled fingers of my right adjusted the gold chain looped loosely about my left wrist. In my heart I knew it was so—death was all the Families knew, death and the fear of it. Perro saw the Dispute as it was. Two families—two men, in truth—so driven by hatred that even their deaths had not stopped their vendetta. That hate had changed my family, and Perro’s. It had changed the world.

  “I cannot leave with you now,” I whispered. I gathered up my shift and slipped it over my head, fiddling with the knots as I met Perro’s gaze. “The guards would never let me away from here bare-faced. They have their orders.” I almost smiled. Even now, dishevelled and in a state of undress, I felt safer and more clothed than I ever did while I wore the mask.

  “I know.” He tilted his head to one side. His dark, mischievous eyes watched me with mournful joy. “I miss you, Carra.”