Three Stories About Ghosts

  The hotel’s owners, as it passed down through generation after generation and its status rose from grubby to questionable to necessary to respected, maintained a reputation for discretion. Their particular gift was for ensuring that a deal made on the Roscovi’s premises was respected, and that even rivals had cause to meet in its cosy, well-appointed rooms. Deals had been made between Vetruvi and Verocci at tables laid with dainties first made fashionable centuries ago, and no blood had been shed on its floors. To both families—to all of the monied dead of Terazzio—the Roscovi was considered sacrosanct. Better, it was useful.

  It has not remained as bold and vivid as once it was, of course—the masks like things to be as they were, and unfamiliar music and strange food unsettle them, for they have no place in their wooden memories. The vibrant, striking façade of the Roscovi became no place for innovation—as less fashionable establishments aped its style to attract its clients, it faded into the city’s landscape, cementing its place by being first and grandest among its peers. So the Roscovi has become the place where quartets ply their trade, and is recognised as the finest establishment in the Duchy for a talented musician with a knack for breathing new life into treasured pieces like Alca’ir’s Shivernacht or Demerek’s Fifth. Calimbe’s players had been in residence at the Roscovi for a year—a feat almost unheard of within the memory of the living. As neutral ground, I had visited it on many an occasion. Even Per’Secosa, less given to sentiment than was usual among the dead and with little taste for music, was known to dally in the chamber when Calimbe took up her viol.

  I watched the grand entrance, propped up against a streetlamp on the other side of the street, my cloak and hat painted with its greasy yellow light. The Roscovi fronted the Boulevard—the street had never needed another name, for it was the only one wide enough in the city for a wagon to pass down unhindered. The strains of one of the lesser-known of Velmet’s pieces were barely audible over the rumble of iron-shod wheels on the cobbled road. I frowned and tapped the toe of my boot against the iron base of the lamp.

  There were two keys that would open the doors to the Roscovi for me—my coin, and my name. My coin was behind me, already being spent by either one or both of my assailants. I did not regret scattering it, and was not angry at myself, but I was not fool enough to think that my plan for the evening had not been complicated by its loss. My name, unfortunately, was even more lost to me than the money I had tossed at my feet. All I had to do was slip the locket out from beneath my scarf and I would once more be Carra Vetruvi. Doing so, I could easily breeze through the great archway of the Roscovi to be met by the building’s illustrious proprietor, who would bow before me and escort me to their finest table and gift me a bottle of their finest wine—all for the honour of having me walk through their door. I could sit at the heart of the establishment, with a fine view of the performers and my head held high as one of the City’s most prominent figures.

  Of course, there would be some supposition as to why I was there without escort. There would also be curiosity as to why I was dressed in man’s clothes. Indeed, gossips would be unable to do anything but consider, on top of all the other outlandish aspects of my presence, why my face was bare—why I was there as the social unknown Carra Vetruvi rather than as the Claimant and Patriarch of the Vetruvi Clan, honoured Per’Secosa.

  It would have been at least moderately beneficial to the Verocci to make sure I met with an accident—either just outside the Roscovi’s doors, or at some point on my way back to the Vetruvi Estate. That same Estate, of course, was where my family and Per’Secosa’s retainers currently supposed me to be held, resting before the mask took me up again at sunrise tomorrow.

  So I could not pay for a table—nor even for a glass at the long lacquered bar—and I could not trade on my reputation. The night was mild and starry, and the taste of apples and spiced wine had long since curdled on my tongue. In truth, I was not sure whether I could go on and look for Perro in the Roscovi, or if I even had courage enough to turn back and slink away to my cold, dark room above the rambling vines. So I sat across the Boulevard with my hat pulled down low over my eyes and watched the carriages come and go while I fought against my own nerves and waited for fate to make my decision for me.

  After five minutes or so by the hotel’s lamplit clock, I cursed quietly under my breath, furious at my own timidity. Tugging my cloak close around my shoulders I swept over the Boulevard, weaving between revellers and carriages as I slipped around the side of the Roscovi and into the tangled alleys that piled up behind it.

  My nose led me to the kitchen door—the sharp-sweet smell of mouldering rubbish mixed with the warm aroma of vanilla-laced cakes baking. I stepped gingerly through low mounds of rotting grey waste, navigating the vermin that were too bold or too hungry to flee at my presence. Pausing as I raised a hand to rap on the door, I considered whether it would be better to charm my way past the cooks or to gain entry by arousing their sympathy. I rapped weakly on the door, drew my cloak up around my throat and hunched my shoulders, affecting a wide-eyed desperation as I shivered amid the establishment’s trash. Sympathy, I figured, would get me substantially further than charm.

  I had no illusions about my skill as a lothario. My life is more sheltered than a Veldrish priest’s—the sect who spend their every waking moment copying out a mad god’s sing-song prophecies, only to stack them dusty and unread in their Great Library. I did not seriously entertain, despite my courtship with Perro, that I would be able to charm a kitchen-servant into letting me warm myself by their fire.

  The door swung open and I was confronted by a woman not much older than I; harried and grey-faced, with a sheen of sweat and untidy dark hair crammed under a tight-fitting cloth cap. She looked askance at me as I coughed and shivered in the night.

  “Please, miss—madam.” I remembered my place and touched the peak of my hat. “I heard music. May I sit by your fire a moment and rest?”

  The kitchen maid drew back. As she stepped into full view I caught sight of a heavy thick-bladed knife in her hand, but her eyes were not hard. She gave the faint ghost of a smile. “Have you found some bad luck, lad?”

  “You might say that.” I nodded miserably, feeling an angry shame curdle inside me. After my masquerade tonight, I would return to my home and sleep in clean sheets and eat well. She would go home to cold and hunger.

  I reached up and my fingers brushed against my own skin. She would be cold and hungry, but she would never know the weight of dirgewood on her brow. She would never understand what it was to be pushed into darkness and silence by those who had died long years ago.

  Perhaps my lot was not so much better than hers.

  “May I come in?” I dared to sound hopeful.

  She gave her assent and drew back. “Come on. I’ll get you a hot drink.” I slipped past her into the narrow unpainted hall and she closed the door behind me. “You’re lucky I was passing,” she said. “I hardly heard you.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I should knock.”

  She thought for a moment. “Probably not. This is a respectable place—the quality come here.” She jerked a thumb up at the low ceiling. “Three masks in tonight. Four if you count the one who brought his in a bag.” She raised her eyebrows.

  “He wasn’t wearing it?” I sounded scandalised.

  “It would be a crime if he did. He’s a handsome-looking man.” She shook her head ruefully for a moment before remembering she was speaking to a stranger—a stranger, further, who was incapable of hiding how pleased he was to hear of a handsome man staying at the Roscovi with a mask he did not wear. The servant clapped her hand over her mouth. “I misspoke. Your pardon.”

  I held up a hand and coughed, using the excuse to try to regain my composure. “I heard nothing,” I said.

  The woman looked at me uncertainly. For a moment she seemed to remember the heavy kitchen knife she held. “I’m Serra.” She held out a hand uncertainly.

  I bowed low. “Carrym.” My coachma
n’s name—I had used it before, and it came easily to me. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  Serra smiled as I took her hand and held it for a brief, formal second. “Let’s get you something to eat. I’ll ask Kellyk. Maybe there’s work.”

  I glanced down uncertainly at my tunic, still clean despite the night’s misfortune. “I owe you much,” I said with a nervous grin as I rubbed my hands together.

  Within a few minutes I sat on a creaking wooden stool by the heat of the Roscovi’s great stove, a comically dainty cup of warm milk in my grubby hand. I held it gingerly and watched Serra, the cooks, and the serving staff come and go in a loud, chaotic whirl of sound and scents. My stomach grumbled as I remembered how little Per’Secosa had taken for his dinner—and how bland his meal was. I had done little more than look for treats; nothing I had taken had really filled my belly. The kitchens at the Roscovi were a dark, fire-red labyrinth of spices and roasting meat by comparison with Per’Secosa’s austere diet. I gave serious consideration to putting a heavy, satisfying dinner on my family’s account at the establishment.

  Instead I sipped my milk quietly and watched and waited until I had become just a bedraggled, quiet feature of the corner of the room. Serra forgot about me in time, and I heard her laugh loudly, joking with her friends about the foibles and demands of the nobility. One of the footmen had her doubled over in gales of laughter, wiping tears from her cheeks, as he mimicked Pater Achenaris’s laboured nasal style. Achenaris was three generations past his prime, his mask bearing signs of worm-rot, and utterly lacked the moral fibre his fortune was based on chastising his flock about. He had had several meetings with Per’Secosa to solicit funds, despite the Vetruvi having no interest in his faith or his help. I hated the way he leered at me.

  I enjoyed the footman’s mockery of the stumbling old lecher. Were it not likely to result in his public strangulation, the man could have taken it to the stage. It was all I could do to bite my lip and let it wash over me, to not laugh and draw attention to myself as I wished them to forget me.

  I took a sip of warm milk and wondered if anyone had a similarly cutting impression of Per’Secosa. I wondered how he would be seen and mocked by the people he saw as beneath his notice—not even Untrusted, but rather invisible. I doubted that anyone would want or be able to impersonate Carra Vetruvi.

  Time passed, and the fire burned low. My heart raced—I could feel the minutes cutting into my precious time. Were I to be discovered abroad in the city, the family might feel it would be safer to have me kept under house arrest when I was unmasked. Per’Secosa would certainly have preferred it. I peeked out from under the brim of my hat. Serra was gone—only one member of the house’s staff remained in that dim corner of the kitchens, absorbed entirely in polishing the thin-stemmed crystal bowls from which the sharp tongue-biting liqueurs of Varkos were drunk. I stood slowly and slipped off my cloak, hanging it on a peg behind the stool. I left the hat behind, smoothing my wig into place. By the kitchen’s light, I judged it adequate—I had no idea how well it would look under the Roscovi’s lamps. The hat, on the other hand, would see me ejected immediately for disrespect. With quiet steps I drifted through the Roscovi’s narrow servants’ passageways until light and music led me from dusty grey to brilliant gold. Quietly pushing wide one of the green-grey servants’ doors, I shielded my eyes against the glare of gaslight on crystal and staggered under the hubbub of music and the slippery weight of a thousand conversations.

  The great hall was thronged with masked faces, most of them made of fashionable silk and porcelain, leather and lace rather than the formal dirgewood of the city’s forefathers. Even those few daring enough to imitate dirgewood made sure to brightly colour and decorate their masks of Torranto pine, setting them apart from and far beneath the city’s masters.

  I bit my lip as I passed them. They would never know what the masks entailed—all that they brought with them as they stifled their bearers, filling them with lives and memories not their own. I had heard them speak, in days past, in hushed and excited tones of what it would be like to be a noble of the Duchy—to have the right to a grave beneath dirgewood, to rise again from death’s dreams and walk among the living.

  They dream of a deathless life, the aspirants and hangers-on. They dream because they do not know. It took all my will not to spit the sour, curdled taste from my mouth. I kept my head down, mouth twisted into a nauseous grimace.

  I made my way to the staircase that swept like a waterfall in dark red carpet from the hotel’s upper floors and cast around, straining to catch sight of Perro’s dark curly head among the crowds. I pushed through a sea of masked faces, unrecognisable and unrecognised even by those of the Vetruvi in the Hotel that night, until I climbed up and through to the landing beyond.

  I sighed with relief to breathe in air a little less thick with perfume, smoke, and sweat. I was dizzy, head pounding and mouth dry. On my own, unmasked, among the lights and sounds and tastes and scents of Terazzio’s night, with empty pockets and the risk of discovery always at my back. I was halfway between retching and bursting out laughing, my hand on the warm dark oak of the sweeping bannister.

  “Rough night, boy?” A lean, thin-faced man straightened up from the opposite wall. He tucked a slim volume of poetry beneath his arm.

  I forced a wavering smile. “You could say that, sir,” I said. I took him in—he was sharp-eyed and unmasked, entirely absorbed in studying me.

  “Are you well?” His eyes narrowed as he took me in from wig to boots. “Were you announced at the door, lad?” I pulled up my collar, wished him the best of the evening and slipped past him along the hallway. Daring a glance back at the man, I could already see him summoning one of the Roscovi’s white-jacketed waiters with an impatient gesture.

  I was not welcome in the Roscovi, even among those who wore no mask. I ducked around the corner and made for the back stairs, angry at myself for being stupid enough to dare a walk through the great hall.

  The servants’ stairs were dimly lit, ill-smelling, and coated with rough slashes of peeling, sickly green paint. The higher I went, the dustier and more neglected the staircase became. Climbing the stairs made my head ache, much like the experience of stumbling across a rotting memory—one that the ghost in the dirgewood had shunned for too long, one that had been reduced to reed-thin strings of recollection. Nervous and shaking I clambered up the narrow staircase, hand tight on the rough ship’s rope that hung down in place of a handrail. I closed my eyes for a moment, listening to the distant buzz of the hotel. The staff weren’t after me—at least not yet. It was my guess, informed by Per’Secosa’s knowledge of Antonos and of the Roscovi, that Perro would be staying in the suite of rooms that occupied the hotel’s topmost floor, far above the stink of the city and with a commanding view of the canals that I knew the masks loved.

  They may not have called themselves gods, but they nonetheless enjoyed looking down on their domains from on high.

  I slipped silently through the door, careful not to let the tread of my boot echo in the upper floor’s deserted hall. I heard laughter in the distance—a small group of men, their voices raised in drunk and brash praise of themselves, puffed with bravado and wine. I held my breath as I walked, feeling foolish for doing so. One hand steadied me against the wall as I approached the voices. Laughter sounded like the bursts of a ship’s guns, the full-bellied, red-cheeked roaring of men pleased with who they are. I heard little else—high above the streets, even the sounds of the quartet playing below were muted by the thick floors that lay between us.

  I realised then that Perro would not be alone. He would be flanked by blank-faced Cousins, and surrounded by Antonos’ retainers. In all likelihood, he would be Antonos. Sweat ran cold down my back at the thought that I had risked too much—that I had placed myself into the hands of my family’s enemies. A life lived in silence was all that kept me from cursing loudly at my own recklessness. As I stood in the stuffy quiet of the Roscovi’s upper floors, I felt t
he familiar chill of disgust at myself settle like an uneven lump of carved ice in the pit of my stomach.

  I balled my hands into fists and crept forward, exhaling silently as I stepped out and around the corner, drawn by the sound of voices. All but hugging the wall as I crept, like a child playing hunt-the-mask, I spied a shaft of heavy honey-dark light spilling across the quiet polished boards of the hallway. Warmth followed it, seeping into the cold and gloom where I waited. I crept closer only to stop at every burst of laughter, every muscle in my body as tense as a viol’s strings. A pool of absolute cold settled in the pit of my stomach, and the icy memory of Per’Secosa’s voice bled into my bones, chiding me for the mistake of rebelling against my family—of coming to this place.

  I shivered, trying to draw a breath and calm myself against the exhaustion I could feel creeping through my body. I had been on edge for too long—the conversation at the docks, the flight from the footpads, the dread of discovery in the Roscovi. I reflexively bit at the inside of my cheek, the motion rooted in the same angry spite as it was when Per’Secosa did it. I chided myself—child, foolish child—the words forming themselves into the mask’s angry, contemptuous growl within my head.

  I drew closer to the light and the open door, stilling myself to listen so as to unpick the knot of voices. One stood out from the hubbub—Perro, a little loud and a little drunk, laughing at his own remarks. I staggered back against the wall, hugging the corridor’s shadows in the silent world beyond the warm bright room where my Perro laughed.

  Perro, not Antonos.He was unmasked and in company.

  “I swear it’s true. No, really.” He paused, sighing to himself with amusement. His voice was animated, giddy—cruel and childish. I had never heard him speak that way.