Three Stories About Ghosts

  “Hole?” I squinted over at the silhouette of Perro’s family ship, noting the intricate tangle of rope and wood that held her in place.

  “Run her ragged up the Coast, they did.” Another man spoke up, shaking his shaggy head in disbelief. “One storm and they’d be on the bottom.”

  “And we wouldn’t be drinking their whiskey.” A third joined in, raising a bottle. “Or whatever this is.”

  I cleared my throat. “It’s not whiskey.”

  “We bow to your palate, Patriciar.”

  “Don’t defer to me—I don’t know what it is.” I laughed with them that time, and the drink—whatever it was—unwound the strings that were stitched through me, muscle and bone. “Listen—did they say where she was torn?”

  “Torn?”

  I looked down. “Holed.” Holed—that’s what they say now.Nobody speaks of a ship’s tearing anymore.

  “Close to here, from the looks of her—no further than La Migna, the rocks there.” He eyed me, shrewdly. “Why—looking to get trade gossip? We’ve taken their liquor, we can’t spill a word on their cargo.”

  I held up my hands, the crooked fingers of my right itching inside the glove. “No—nothing like that. I’m just taking to sea in a few days, and it would be good if I knew where I might be in trouble running a light ship.”

  “Light?” The first man—the one who called me over—snorted. “Who said it was light? Hours we sweated over that ship.”

  “It was…” I caught myself before I repeated it, before I said something stupid. The ship’s master himself had told me he was only running a small cargo of Calveros. “It was just a guess.” I held up a hand, passing the bottle along. “I’m not trying to draw it out of you—just idle talk. I thought—if she was running the coast by La Migna…”

  “You thought her a smuggler? Her? The Holy Light?” A long, drawn-out whistle. “Gods, you’re far from your home, sir. What’s your trade? Clericus? I bet there’s nothing but ink under those gloves.”

  The Holy Light. Ancient as Antonos Verocci, and revered among his clan. Why would I think Perro would be voyaging in any less a vessel? Why did it unsettle me that Antonos’ ship lay in our harbour? I nodded, accepting the bottle back and bracing myself for a drink. “You have me. I’m a child of the counting-house.” I winced, grimacing as the burning liquor traced its way down my throat. “I’m out for adventure tonight.” That much, at least, was true.

  In the distance I heard Chapel bells chime, taking up their tune from the Civic Carillon. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve—a motion remembered rather than studied—and passed the bottle back. “Gentlemen, you have been hospitable, and I thank you for that, but I have somewhere I need to be.” I produced a stack of jealously hoarded silver coins from my purse—eight, piled neatly one atop another—and held them out. “I return a gift, to thank you for your fire and your good company.”

  The porters bowed slightly. “Your company and your gift are welcome to us.” They murmured the phrase like a prayer, in quiet unison. I weighed the purse in my hand, ensuring that I would have enough for the customary drink of simmering heated wine on top of the gratuity paid out to the hotel’s doorman to gain entry, and took my leave of them with a light step, building a path in my memory that would lead me to the warm doors of the Roscovi.

  I was scarcely three streets from the Roscovi’s doors when I was accosted.

  The first fear that anyone of Birth has when travelling incognito is that they have been recognised—prior to the dirgewood, we wore masks in public to ensure that our enemies would not know who we were when we walked abroad on the family’s more discreet business. When we travel in disguise we are alone, and we are vulnerable. We do not have the strength and expertise the masks lend us in order to fight for their lives, and we do not have the protection of our guards and servants. All I had was a long-bladed dagger I kept belted at my hip. Should I be attacked, it would not be enough.

  I turned a corner, slipping between the crumbling wall of a warehouse and the narrow stem of a guttering street lamp that hissed noisily, like an angry cat. As I walked I heard a sound behind me, hidden beneath the drone of the broken lamp—a sharp rasp of drawn steel cut across the hubbub of the night. Ahead, I could almost make out the strains of the quartet at the Roscovi.

  “Fair night.” The voice behind me was ragged and deep, an uneven growl that had spent too many years enjoying pipes of ersatz tabac and heavy liquors valued more for their strength than their quality. I sketched a thin, tight smile in place on my lips and turned slowly, my arms at my sides.

  “Fair night indeed,” I said affably as I turned to take in the two men who stood in the shadows of a nearby alley. Two lengths of sharp iron glinted in their hands, outlined by the weak and stuttering light of the lamp. “Gentlemen.” I tugged at the brim of my hat, subconsciously deepening my own voice much as the mask did when it spoke through me.

  The shorter of the two stepped forward. He wore a ragged dark scarf bound around the lower part of his face, leaving only his eyes—bruise-dark, worn and desperate—glaring over it at me. “Might be you can make it fairer, lad.” His accent was provincial, and his eyes were too much like the taller man’s to be coincidental. Brothers, I guessed, and from the hinterland, come to Terazzio to seek their fortune only to crawl inside a glass when they found there was no fortune here to be had. Not for them, nor for any living. All the city’s wealth, pouring in and out of the canals and docks and warehouses and counting-houses day and night, was guarded, directed, and ruled by the dead.

  Despite the sweat on my gloved palms and the panicked racing of my heart, I almost laughed. Masks alone made money in Terazzio; the footpads’ crude scarves hid their features, and they might be their only avenue of income. Masks make money. As above, so below.

  I held up my hands. “Peace, friends. I want no trouble.”

  The tall man shifted, exposing to the lamplight the blade of the old and clumsy-looking sword he carried. It was of poor quality—Per’Secosa would have been outraged to see a length of iron so poorly worked—but it was, above all, long. Long enough to reach me if I bolted.

  The little man gestured to my belt. “If you want no trouble you’ll hand over any coin you’re carrying.” He sniffed loudly and raised his own narrow sword. “No notes, no papers.”

  I held up my hands, keeping them tucked in at my sides. “Of course.” I reached over slowly and undid the drawstrings of my purse before drawing it out of the inner pocket of my tunic. I held it up, making sure my hand trembled so that the coins clinked and rattled against each other inside the little anonymous bag of dark kid leather. I held the purse out, trying to make the shaking of my hand appear natural as I looked up and made sure both men were watching it.

  “There, look,” I said, quietly, as I teased the purse open and let the streetlamp reflect on the thick, old gold coins that lay within. As I spoke the two men edged closer, the points of their swords dropping slightly as they relaxed their guard. I was young, I was obviously frightened, I was compliant. They had no need to fear me. “Here—there’s ten of gold and at least twice that much in silver.” I licked my lips nervously. “More than enough for you to share.” As Per’Secosa had in so many discussions and negotiations through the centuries, I took care to weight my words so my meaning was clear. They both saw the gold, both heard the word ‘share’. Both, if my thinking was right, would enjoy sharing such a haul as little as a merchant of my own family would enjoy dividing the profits from a voyage with a partner of upstart or Untrusted status.

  The big man punched his comrade in the shoulder. “Told you he was rich.”

  The little man narrowed his eyes. “Little enough for one dressed finely.”

  I smiled. “Please.” My voice was carefully measured—plaintive, fearful, but not pitched so that my assailants would find it contemptible. Just enough for them to dismiss me. “Please, it’s all I have.” In truth, I was still wearing a locket around my neck that concealed a miniature p
ortrait of my mother—two facing illustrations, masked and barefaced. Were it to be taken from me, it would mark me out as a Vetruvi and as a woman.

  I did not know which fact, if revealed, would put me in greatest peril.

  The little man gritted his teeth and swore. I saw his knuckles whiten on the hilt of his sword. I took that moment to relax my grip, and the purse spilled onto the hard cobbles of the street. Gold and silver rang out and flashed as it scattered its load into puddles, mud, and cracks. As the footpads’ eyes followed my purse down I didn’t waste a moment. I took to my heels and fled down narrow alleys and the unguarded hallways of damp tenements, hoping to wind my way back to the main thoroughfare without being caught. Behind me, I heard muffled curses punctuated with the sound of a single meaty-sounding punch being thrown.

  I did not dare to stop, to turn and look. I simply chalked up the loss of my squirrelled funds to bad luck and ran, cloak flapping and lungs burning, until I reached the Roscovi.

  Interlude

  Cassamaura

  I OFTEN DREAM of sand, of the harsh Sun, or the grey ocean, or winds that tear at my eyes and throat. I can feel the wind, smell the cook-fires of peoples long vanished; I can squint against a Sun that never blinded me. To me—to Carra Vetruvi—these places do not exist, and all I can remember of their textures and sounds and smells in my own right is the smooth, age-worn lacquer of the lopsided globe that sat on the heavy oak desk in the scholars’ room at the Villa Anora against a child’s fingertips. Yet still I dream, even bare-faced and at night, of places where I have never been, of memories that are precious to Per’Secosa Vetruvi and which sit heavy and sour and cherished within my soul.

  I came of age after the Blood Summer, living a life under guard. As bearer of the Claimant, I have left Terazzio’s jurisdiction only twice. I have journeyed to the Palace to pay tribute to the King on the passing of a bearer, and spent three nights within the narrow confines of its lightless, sepulchral passages. The screams that herald the coronation are terrible to hear, and they echo for hours through Palace, reaching even the Visitors’ towers.

  My other trip beyond the marches of the City was to the Silvia Torranto, when Per’Secosa took it upon himself to attempt a hunting expedition. Being by inclination right-handed and by nature disinterested in the tall pines of the Torranto, the Grandfather-Looking-Out had little success as a huntsman in my body, and allowed me some time to walk the woods while flanked at a discreet distance by a number of the Vetruvi huntsmen in their red brocade coats. I think fondly of the woods, of coming unexpectedly upon a stream and wading barefoot into it—I remember the feel of the smooth stones against the soles of my feet, and the cold spring breeze against my cheek. The scent of the pines was sharp in the air, strong enough to ward away the more familiar tang of gunpowder and blood. There was sunlight, and for a moment I could almost forget everything.

  Yet it is not the Torranto’s pines my soul walks among in dreams, nor is it the deck of the Cavalleri, the family’s treasured flagship. When I sleep, I dream of Cassamaura, its houses white and smooth as pearls strung out along the Southern Cape. I can see the tall pillars, representations of the Cassari gods carved along their length, that guard the sharp rocks pulled tight around the harbour mouth. At the Arch of the Honest Man, by a cramped little booth hunched at its roots where a single monk sits and passes out a spoonful of salt to visitors, I rub my hands together and feel the grains against skin that has never been my own. As I step into the city proper and away from the harbour, the scent of salt and fish and wood is swept away by the smells of the city—of beasts, such as camels and horses, rarely seen in Terazzio, of roasting meat and fresh fruit, of perfume and sweat and life—life unseen among the children of the Great Houses. Sunlight on walls of white stone and the far-off chimes of temple bells.

  If I am lucky, that is the extent of my dream. If it is my own soul that walks Cassamaura’s streets, that climbs moss-lined stairs to stand on the roof of a trading-house and calls out to the sunset, I see no more.

  The ghost hates Cassamaura, more than he hates any other city. He hates the Whispering Bowls that sit by the wells in each District of the city—carved drums of smooth black stone where Cassamaura’s ghosts come to counsel anyone who can spare them a drop of blood. Per’Secosa, if he scents Cassamaura in my thoughts, will turn his remembered steps away from the Sun and the scents I find too enticing and bring our shared mind to darker places—to courtesans bedded for sport, to drunken fights and punches thrown as a young sailor on the saffron streets. Often he thinks back to the Moon on the waters of the Eternal Bay.

  It was a night, some hundreds of years ago, when Per’Secosa was dirgewood but his memories have muddied and lost the face on which he perched, and the old man sat hunched over a rough wooden chest. Around him, Cassamaura slept—the inhabitants fasted, and prayers were being said for the procession that would begin at sunrise. A dagger gleamed in Per’Secosa’s hand, and two Cousins stood silent beside him, the moonlight glinting from the stylised noses and mouthless shovel-wide jaws of the masks that drove their stiff limbs. Per’Secosa’s blood was high—it was a good night for murder. He had lost face in the market of Cassamaura that morning—had to withdraw from a bargain, been painted a liar and a cheat, red-faced and with his nose to the ground.

  In the chest, held uncomplaining and low to the ground by the two straining Cousins, lay a Vetruvi’s revenge.

  “Well met,” said Per’Secosa—in his memory his voice is his own, as it was in his life in the flesh. Whoever bore him in those days was long gone, washed away by the dirgewood’s heart. As, no doubt, would be my fate.

  He levered the chest open. Within lay a single stone bowl, carved without a single chisel-mark and smooth as a river-pebble. It seemed to drink the moonlight. The dagger gleamed silver above it, yet the shadows only grew thicker around the bowl. Per’Secosa drew out a purse from his belt; I can feel the simple felt of it, stiff and wet against his fingers and heavy with its smell of iron. On that night, when the people of a far-off city fasted and prayed, Per’Secosa Vetruvi took a severed finger from the purse—a human finger, paler than it had ever been in life, its end dark as sealing-wax, a bone pink and splintered jutting from the ragged edge. With a careless flick of his wrist, he ran the finger around the lip of the bowl, daubing the stone with clotting, dark blood, and hunched low over the Whispering Bowl as it hissed and murmured to life.

  The bowl spoke Cassari—they all did, keeping only to their own kin much as our own Masks do—and the susurrating words were lost against the tide. Per’Secosa grinned, the blade of his dagger tapping against the black stone.

  “I know your tongue, spirit. You blackened my name in public. You put the name of Vetruvi beneath a cloud. The Vetruvi name—my name—does not go unavenged.” He spat over the side of the jetty, a silent jet of thick, blood-tinged phlegm. Wiping his lips on his sleeve, he turned back to the chest and scraped an insolent furrow along the sacred untouched inner surface of the Whispering Bowl.

  “This is how you choose to revere your dead—with offerings of blood and muttering stone. Helpless to do anything but whisper at your Untrusted. How was it that this place was once thought great?”

  The bowl spoke, its words little above the moan of a breeze over open water. Per’Secosa laughed, shifting to place his weight on one boot and lean heavily over the bowl. “We are blessed, spirit. We walk, we think, we live again and again.” He punctuated his sentence with well-timed heavy stamps on the rim of the bowl. “I can see things, sad creature, that you cannot. Do you know what we Vetruvi believe?” He brandished the dagger as if it were evidence in court, rather than a threat. “We believe in the blade. But what good would the blade do against you? All the blade can do is open the skin of the living to feed you.”

  Per’Secosa tossed the severed finger carelessly into the bowl, where it was swallowed by the deep shadows gathering in the heart of the cold stone. “But there is more than one blade, creature. We believe in the bla
de because the blade is cruel. All that will protect our family—our Claim—is cruelty. So think on that, whisperer. Think hard on it, for you will have a long time to consider my words.”

  He stepped back, his flesh face as impassive as the dirgewood perched upon it. In Per’Secosa’s memories—in my dreams—it is the cold satisfaction of this moment that brings bile to the back of my throat. The old man turned to the two Cousins flanking the chest. “Row this out beyond the rocks, and let the sea have it.” Removing a glove, he placed his hand palm-up on the forehead of each attendant’s mask in turn. “I am understood.”

  “Yes.” The Cousins’ voices were dry as reeds.

  In my dreams, Per’Secosa doesn’t watch as they take their leave, dragging the heavy stone bowl with them, wreathed in its chill and whispers that push away the promise of summer in the night air. He looks back over Cassamaura and feels a sadness—a regret that the voice which insulted his House and his Name cannot beg or cry out for a mercy he never cares to give.

  Per’Secosa has made the House of Vetruvi strong. But out beyond the harbour rocks at Cassamaura, in the cold depths of the ocean, a bowl of smooth black stone is being worn slowly away by sand and tide, and I know that it feels fear.

  Chapter Four

  THE ROSCOVI HOTEL is considered one of the finest establishments in Terazzio; perched advantageously close to one of the oldest and most prestigious docks in the city, the Roscovi began life as a clearing-house for smugglers operating along the coast. When Per’Secosa drew breath, traders from other countries frequently mistook it for the harbour offices—indeed, it was said that more trade was conducted in the Roscovi’s dining rooms than in the harbourmaster’s chambers. Eventually it became too prominent, too much of a feature of city life, to exist as home for a collective of fences and suppliers and it became respectable. The hotel’s owners had gold enough to make it tasteful and were more than daring enough to make it fashionable.