Ghosts of Sanctuary

by Robert J. Crane

  Whoever was at the door took that as an opportunity to enter, and she jumped slightly, worried about propriety.

  It was Alaric, and he was in before she’d even had a chance to sit upright. Shirri felt an edge of panic, and started to clap her hands about her person. “Wait—I’m not decent—” She said, before looking down and realizing she’d gone to bed in her clothes. She was perfectly decent.

  Alaric paused, hand on the door. His helm was under one arm, clutched there, and a puzzled expression came over his face. “I think I would find it curious to know what your definition of ‘decent’ entails, if it does not include being fully clothed.”

  “Sorry …” She blinked back the drowse, pushing away the urge to dive back into the pillow. “I was sleeping. Didn’t realize what I was saying until—never mind. What are you doing here, Alaric?”

  “We were about to leave,” Alaric said, “Cyrus, Vara—all of us—to head to the square. I came to offer you the chance to stand with us. If you don’t wish to—”

  Shirri tried to suppress her yawn and failed. “I—I wish to, but—”

  Alaric let a coy smile slip across his lips. “But you wish to sleep as well?”

  Shirri felt a little dumbstruck by that, but matched his smile with a slightly guilty one of her own. “Yes, please.”

  “That is perfectly fine,” Alaric said, starting to close the door. “I haven’t seen your mother yet this morning, either. Perhaps I’ll let her sleep rather than wake her to ask.”

  “Please,” Shirri said. “She went through a lot in the Machine’s dungeon, I think. She could use some rest.”

  “Very well,” Alaric said, and he started to withdraw, closing the door behind him.

  “Alaric, wait,” Shirri said, and he paused, cocking his head. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “No one else in Reikonos would have helped me the way you lot did,” Shirri said. “And I have a feeling … you’re going to help a lot more people before this is over.”

  “We … are going to help a lot more people,” Alaric amended with that same smile. So reassuring.

  “We, then,” Shirri said, and a powerful yawn came over her.

  “We’ll see you when we get back,” Alaric said. “There’s food on the table in the Great Hall if you wake hungry.”

  “I expect I will,” Shirri said, already on her way back down to the pillow by the time he shut the door. Sleep claimed her moments later, a content one, filled with hope and rest, free from worry; a sleep such as she could not recall since childhood.

  63.

  Cyrus

  Reikonos Square was abuzz, wild and full of people. There was an aura of excitement in the air, reminding him of a war rally of old and the madness those entailed. The difference was the hint of uncertainty; people were waiting for something they weren’t sure was coming.

  “Well,” Cyrus muttered, “it’s here now.”

  “What’s here now?” Curatio asked. “Madness?”

  Cyrus felt a very slight smile creep onto his face. “Hope.”

  Curatio looked at him sideways. A few of the others were listening in.

  “Shirri kept saying there was no hope left in Reikonos,” Cyrus said, and nodded at the crowd before them. They hadn’t caught sight of Cyrus yet; he was at the edge, about to plunge through toward the fountain, leap up on the edge and use it as a dais to speak. “What is this, if not hope?”

  “There is always hope,” Alaric said, coming up beside him. Hiressam was just a little past him, Vara lingering at the edge of their small group. Vaste and Birissa were under cloaks, but towering over the crowd even here at the edges. And Dugras was somewhere in Vaste’s shadow, using him as cover and following the troll closely. “Even Shirri had it all along, though I doubt she realized it.” The Ghost’s eyes danced. “Hope is the most resilient of human qualities, and its loss, though felt acutely, is almost always an overreaction. Smother it—kill it, even—it rises again. Truly, I have met none whose hope could not be returned through a most modest set of circumstances. It may lie dormant for years, but it beats, always, in the breast, ready to return with but a little breath to revive it.”

  “I don’t know about a little breath,” Vaste said. “Seems to me this city needed a resurrection spell of hope.”

  “A shame that magic is lacking, then,” Curatio said.

  “I don’t think so, Vaste,” Cyrus said. “Look at this. Look at these people.” And he threw a hand up. “Their faces are pinched with worry, sure—but they’re waiting with anticipation for something to happen. Something that will change their lives forever.”

  “And you think seeing your long arse is it, then?” Vaste cracked, deadpan. “Well, best get on out there and show your arse.”

  “I can always count on you for exactly the support I need,” Cyrus said, shooting him a smile. And then he began to make his way through the crowd.

  “Hope is not so fragile a thing as most believe,” Alaric said, at his side, as Cyrus started to brush past people. He was getting looks; no one as tall as he could possibly make their way through a thick-packed crowd without doing so. He heard a gasp. Someone tried to grab his cloak, but he brushed them aside, then took it off and tossed it to Vaste.

  “What the hell …?” The troll said, catching it easily. “Am I now to be your clothier?”

  “Yes,” Cyrus said, without looking back, “now that you’ve got little in the way of magic, I find I have need of you as more than a skull crusher. Hold my cloak.”

  “I’m going to give it away to one of these poor unfortunates in the crowd,” Vaste called back at him. “Look at them, these beleaguered. They could use a good cloak. Or at least a slightly above-average one such as this.” A pause. “You know, this is actually pretty good. Is this elven tailoring?”

  “Hell if I know,” Cyrus said, “I took it off a particularly tall corpse after I left the Society of Arms, and it’s been with me ever since.” He looked back to find Vaste now holding it at arm’s length. “Kidding. I bought it from a tailor here in Reikonos after Sanctuary started making good gold.”

  He made his way through the crowd, which was now starting to surge around him, his movement catching eyes. “Move back,” Vara said, coming along beside him and shoving a man away when he started to make a movement toward Cyrus. “Give him some room.” Then, to Cyrus, she said. “I would swear I’ve seen the cloak you came to Sanctuary in still hanging in our closet.”

  “I do still have that corpse-robbed cloak,” Cyrus agreed. “It’s not half bad. I keep it to remind me of how far I’ve come.”

  Vara smiled impishly as she gently turned aside a screaming woman about to heave herself at Cyrus. “I assumed my presence would be enough for you. From bottom of the barrel warrior to …” She looked around them. “Well … this.” The crowd was going mad, shouts being issued in all directions, some crazed relief as people started to realize …

  Cyrus Davidon might actually be back.

  They reached the edge of the fountain, and Cyrus stepped up without further delay, rising up to stand on the edge and looking over the crowd from an even more towering height than he normally commanded. Vara slipped away a step below him, giving him a last, reassuring smile before turning to deal with the crowd, which was beginning to grow truly wild. Alaric and the others formed a perimeter around him and stood there, blocking people from getting too close as Cyrus cleared his throat, and a silence fell.

  The crowd spread to the edges of the square and beyond. He had seen them crowding the avenues and thoroughfares on his approach, and tried not to think about how many people were crowding around here, waiting to hear him speak, instead focusing on what he needed to say.

  Hope.

  “Hello, Reikonos,” he let his voice boom out. “It’s been a long time.”

  A rush of uncertainty ran through the crowd, and he tried to think—what would they want to hear?

  What did he need to tell them?

  “For a t
housand years I’ve been gone,” Cyrus said. “I left this world thinking that I’d cured its ills. The gods of old were dead. Men were in charge of their own destiny. Little did I know that after I left, other forces would sweep in. In my days …” He coughed as Vaste shot him a look of glee; Cyrus sighed, thinking the same thing the troll probably was, that his last words made him sound like a curmudgeonly old man, “… humanity had a Confederation that allowed us to spread from the River Perda in the west to the Sea of Carmas in the east; from the shores of the Torrid Sea here in Reikonos to the Bay of Lost Souls in the South and beyond. It was an imperfect government, and we were imperfect people—but we were free. You could walk out the gates of Reikonos, if you were so possessed, and go anywhere else. Even the poor here were free. Now, though …”

  A grumble of agreement ran through the crowd. Cyrus felt it; he was getting through, harmonizing with them.

  “Now, I see people in chains,” Cyrus said, “prisoners to fear. A Machine that crushes the people under its weight,” he added, running his eyes along the edge of the crowd, where black coats were creeping in, their white armbands like beacons that shone in the midday sun. There were dozens of them, a hundred of them, more maybe, pushing their way through the masses, their eyes fixed on him. He knew predators when he saw them, and these were animals on the hunt, stalking through the crowd. “I walk these streets and I see freedom give way to fear. I see a laughing, victorious army of bandits that know that they are unchallenged,” Cyrus said, locking eyes on the Machine thug nearest him. Vara was watching, too, and elbowed Alaric, murmuring something to him, then pointing out the trouble coming. Vaste was already fixed on two more that were threading their way through the crowd toward him. Their goal was clear—get to Cyrus.

  “Hope,” Cyrus said, and the crowd grew quiet, “is fleeting. You walk these streets … you live in these places … you raise your families here … and there is nothing to look forward to. All belief that your children will see a better tomorrow has fled. You are captives in this city, with only the smallest chance to escape it.

  “I will say this to you—words that have echoed in my life, over and over—do not be afraid,” Cyrus said, looking over them all. “Fear will make you its prisoner—”

  “Fear will make you its bitch,” Vaste said.

  “—and you will always be subservient to it, if you let it rule you,” Cyrus said, ignoring the troll. “And you will not live. Not truly. This place, this city—there are things to fear here.” And he looked at the Machine thug easing up on him. “But one thing you will not fear much longer … is the godsdamned Machine.” He stared at the man easing through the crowd at him, and the thug froze, finally realizing that Cyrus was looking at him. “Last night, my comrades and I destroyed the Machine’s headquarters. Yesterday, we ransacked one of their mills … and a coal yard … and a candlemaker’s shop. All Machine outposts, and every last one of their people within … we dealt with in the manner that the Machine can expect from me.” He stared at the man in the crowd. “I have no mercy in my heart for those who would terrorize and oppress the people of Reikonos simply to enrich themselves, and I will show how I feel about you … scum … you villains …” Cyrus glared down at the nearest Machine thug, pale and poxy, sores on his face, and the man seemed taken aback, his forward motion halted by the attention he was getting, “… every chance I get. So …” And here he looked up again, at the next nearest Machine thug, and the next after that, “… give me a chance, Machine … if you’d like to be broken.”

  “Terrible,” Vaste pronounced. “I see what you were going for there—‘breaking,’ ‘machine,’ because machines break, but—no. It’s a very overused metaphor in these days, I would think.”

  “I suspect it will connect well with the audience, though,” Hiressam said. “It’s very easy to understand as an analogy.”

  “Works for me,” Dugras tossed in.

  “Could we perhaps save the critique for some other time?” Vara asked. “When we’re not being closed in on by Machine thugs in an already unruly crowd?”

  “Wait, there are Machine thugs closing in on us? Damn my height, damn this crowd,” Dugras said.

  “If I waited until I was out of danger to offer critiques, I would never offer critiques,” Vaste said. “I mean, what do you expect me to do? Remember them all and spew them in the five seconds per year we’re not in peril? I’d be forever writing them down, lest I forget. And they’d lose at least ninety percent of their humor, what with the context having long passed. They’d land with a thud, all amusement stripped from them.”

  “That would be a merry occasion,” Curatio muttered. “Vaste, with all his humor removed.”

  “It’d be the opposite of merry, actually,” Vaste said. “It’d be joyless. Like you, old man.”

  Cyrus stared down at the poxy Machine goon who was closest, and the goon stared back, suddenly looking rather like a hare frozen in place by the sight of a falcon flying above him. Cyrus did not relent, and the man began to melt back into the crowd. Unable to move very fast, he kept his eyes locked on Cyrus, and reached up for his white armband with the strange symbol on it. Sliding it off, he raised it up between himself and Cyrus, then let it drop. It fluttered, disappearing into the crowd. He swallowed visibly, almost comically, waiting.

  Cyrus nodded, once, and the man seemed to breathe for the first time in ages. He shoved through the throngs of people, making his escape. Others of the Machine’s servants seemed to take their hint from him, pushing their way back where once they were shoving forward. It was a retreat, and an obvious one. The crowd shouted at them, shoving them as they tried to push through.

  “The day of the Machine is over,” Cyrus said, “and whatever is left of them … will topple soon.” He drew breath, watching the remainder snaking their way through the crowd, their courage broken. “These are the last of their days, and soon enough, you will no longer fear to walk these streets.”

  A ragged cheer came from the crowd, and Cyrus could feel the relief, the hope, surging through them. They were more than unruly; so long had they been pushed down that he suspected a backlash brewing. There was an anger that ran like lightning in this square. Point it in the wrong direction and something would surely be destroyed.

  Cyrus drew a long breath and began to say something else, but a martial shout in the distance caused a hush to fall over the assemblage. At the edge of the square there was movement, wild shoving as something happened, and he turned his attention to look.

  A double line of guards marched their way into the square, wearing the white livery of the city watch. They carried rifles in hand, more dressed for battle than the formal guards Cyrus had seen very occasionally thus far in Reikonos. They marched, and the people gave way for them as they headed straight for him upon the fountain, in formation and very serious. There were a hundred or so, and tension filled the crowd. This sort of raw show of force did, after all, suggest a very specific goal, and Cyrus could feel it in the air as they marched up and the crowd continued to give way until the front of the line had nearly reached Vaste and Hiressam, and someone within their rank shouted, “Company! Halt!” and they stopped.

  Cyrus looked down at them with a wary eye, hand resting on Rodanthar’s hilt. There came a moment of silence as the captain of their number moved up from the back of their rank, sliding in between the armored forms like a mouse bulging within a snake as he passed through their double-file line.

  When he reached the head, he found himself staring up at Vaste, and past him, to Cyrus. The man looked warily at the troll, and Vaste grinned back down at him.

  “Hihi,” Vaste said. “You have a message?”

  The guard captain cleared his throat uncertainly, and the tension hung thick in the air. Cyrus wanted no trouble with Longwell’s guards, but he had a bad feeling about what was to come. If it was an order to dissolve the crowd, Cyrus had a plan for dealing with that but suspected it would come to no good end.

  Another wild
murmur ran through the crowd. Someone shouted, “Hang them!” and a roar commenced as Cyrus threw up his hands to stay their madness. There was that quicksilver sentiment he’d detected; the rush of anger that would turn this crowd into a mob and then into a mad riot that would burn the city with its rage.

  “No,” Cyrus said, as emphatically as he could. The guards were eyeing the crowd nervously; they could feel the tension in the air. Cyrus watched the guard captain; what came next would hinge upon his words. If it was an order to disperse …

  Well, there would be only so much Cyrus could do to quell a crowd gone mad.

  The guard captain unfurled a long scroll of parchment, and cleared his throat. His ruddy face nearly buried beneath his helm, he glanced up at Cyrus and began reading his missive.

  “General Davidon,” the guard captain said, and Cyrus felt a strange prickle of relief at the mere effort—the olive branch, really—offered by addressing him by his own title, “the Lord Protector has heard of your return and sends his compliments. He wishes to speak with you immediately, if possible.” The guard captain paused. “If you are amenable, I am to escort you to him presently. If, on the other hand, you need some time to, uh …” The guard captain looked at the crowd, briefly, and returned to his scroll. “… In any event, the Lord Protector calls upon your long friendship and seeks your aid. He would like to discuss with you … a, uh … a peaceful resolution to the problems plaguing the city.”

  Cyrus frowned. “Would he?”

  The guard captain swallowed heavily. “He would. My lord.” And he bowed at the waist.

  “It seems the Lord Protector would like a word about solving the problems of Reikonos,” Cyrus announced, and there was a lusty cheer from the crowd.

  “You don’t suppose this is some sort of trap, do you?” Vara asked, moving to his side as Cyrus stepped down. The guard captain, at least a foot shorter than Cyrus, twitched as he moved forward.