Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

“You are right to be suspicious,” said Franka. “I would be.”

  “Then how can we trust you?”

  “Because of this.”

  Franka held up a package that was neatly wrapped in black velvet and tied with silver cord.

  “And what is that?”

  “Constantin Hapsgalt.”

  Sloot gasped. Even after all the time he’d spent as a ghost, being this close to a dead body gave him the creeps.

  "Vicked," said Bartleby. A nicely wrapped pile of human remains was just the sort of thing he'd go in for. He also seemed very excited about Vlad's throne room, with all of its fiery braziers and looming gargoyles. His enthusiasm wasn't dampened in the slightest by the oozing wound on the back of his head.

  "It's a lovely gesture," said Sloot, "though I'm not sure what it's got to do with trust."

  "Everything," said Nicoleta. "The remains of a Soul of the Serpent are powerful artifacts! We can use them to foil the Serpents."

  "How?"

  "I'm not sure yet. Bartleby, take that and come with me. We're going to the tower!" Nicoleta squealed with glee, like she and her girlfriends were going to try on prom dresses, or some other equally sexist comparison that has no place in modern social commentary. "Come on, there's no time to lose!"

  Bartleby cautiously approached Franka and took the package from her, watching her with a wary expression in case she was only kidding about being trustworthy.

  "No harm shall come to them," said Franka, "or I'll visit the same upon you. Understand?"

  Bartleby nodded. He took the package and scampered away after Nicoleta.

  "Is that proof enough?" asked Franka.

  "For now," said Myrtle. "But if I may ask, why are you here?"

  "That was my idea," said Roman. "She needs to keep her gruesome charges away from Mrs. Knife, right? Where would they be further from her reach than outside the Old Country?"

  "I see," said Myrtle. "Clever."

  "It looks like you have everything in hand here, spymaster," said Vlad. "I should go."

  "Where are you going?" asked Myrtle. "Er, Your Dominance?"

  "To Stagralla."

  "Wait, you're not—"

  "I am."

  She was going to kidnap the Domnitor!

  "Wait!" cried Sloot. "Er, if it pleases Your Dominance?"

  "Why?"

  "It's a ruse," said Sloot, suddenly connecting several seemingly incongruous dots. "It has to be! Mrs. Knife doesn't care about ruling the Old Country, she told me herself! She's just trying to throw us off her scent so she can put her constellation in the sky. If Nicoleta was right, she can use it to march all the way to Svartalfheim without your invitation across the border!"

  "Nicoleta is working on that now," said Vlad. "She will stop it. In the meantime, I still need to ransom Greta back."

  "Your fastest ship awaits, Your Dominance," said Roman. "Swift winds at your back, blood and honor!"

  "Blood and honor," said Vlad. Her fist punched the air, and she turned again to walk away.

  "But what if they do the thing with the stars before you return?" Sloot pleaded. "What if we can't stop it? We need your help!"

  Vlad stopped in her tracks, wheeled on Sloot and marched toward him with all the fervor of a butcher with one more cow to process before he goes on holiday.

  "You will not fail," said Vlad, her finger literally in Sloot's face. Then, without another word, she left.

  “Well,” said Roman, “you heard Her Dominance.”

  “I did,” said Sloot. “She’s got a lot of confidence in us, though I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect that we can—”

  “It was an order, Peril, not a vote of confidence!”

  “Oh,” said Sloot. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. Starting with Vasily Pritygud’s disastrous report crossing his desk, his life—and subsequent lack thereof—had been a never-ending sequence of impossible tasks set before him, each more capable than the last of skewering him with dreadful consequences. Why should this be any different?

  “What happens if the goblins make it into Carpathia?” asked Myrtle. “Even Vlad can only slaughter so many of them on her own.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” said Roman. He rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Peril, you’re being promoted.”

  “Promoted?” All of the excitement that should have been evident in Sloot’s voice yielded the floor to despair, no doubt saving its strength for some really bad news which, statistically speaking, should be just around the corner.

  “Try not to sound so excited,” said Roman caustically.

  “The last time I was promoted, they made me Willie’s financier.”

  “Which led to a life of adventure!”

  “Exactly.” Sloot was sure there was a word for two people making the same point to opposite ends, but he was far too invested in lamenting his condition to try and remember what it might have been.

  “Fine, then you’ll have to suck it up. I need you to go and talk to the fairies.”

  “You said they were dangerous!” If there was one thing Sloot could remember at will, it was things he had been warned to avoid. He was still fairly certain that all fruit was covered in poison until rinsed.

  On their first trip to Carpathia, they’d snuck through a garden, and Roman had warned him: Be quiet through the garden. Fairies live in nearly all of the gardens in the city, and they can be more dangerous than the goblins in Salzstadt.

  “You’d do well to listen to me on that one,” said Roman.

  “I don’t mind if I do.”

  “Oh, not now! You’re already dead, they can’t do anything to you. Sloot Peril, you are hereby promoted to Agent Third Class and authorized to undertake clandestine conversations with would-be allies of the realm.”

  “I don’t suppose Agents Third Class receive a salary?”

  “They do not,” said Roman. “Now, I imagine you can find a garden somewhere in Ulfhaven without assistance?”

  “Yes.” Sloot sighed. “What would you have me do?”

  “Go and find a fairy,” said Roman. “Tell them you want to speak with their fairest flower.”

  “And then what?”

  “Rally them to our banners! Honestly, Sloot, you’re going to need to start making more of an effort if you ever want another promotion.”

  “I didn’t want—”

  Myrtle gasped. She stared at Roman in bewilderment.

  “What?” asked Roman, responding to Myrtle’s look with a surprised one of his own.

  Realization crept into Myrtle’s expression, but the bewilderment wouldn’t be unseated so easily. They made a hasty peace and lived together in harmony for a moment, until she shook her head and turned to Sloot.

  “You go on,” she said to him.

  “What? You don’t mean that I should—”

  “It will turn out fine,” said Myrtle. “In fact, it will be better than fine. We really need you to do this. Do you trust me?”

  He did. He really, really did. Somewhere within him was a voice that was screaming at him that you couldn’t trust a demon, but it was sure to be stuffed into a locker and told to shut up by a roaming gang of teenagers any minute now. Besides, it was probably living people who shouldn’t trust demons. Being dead blurred the lines, not to mention the fact that this particular demon was his girlfriend, a fact that he gleefully pointed out at every opportunity.

  He nodded.

  “Off you go then,” said Myrtle with a smile and a wink. “I’m going to have a very serious chat with Roman while you’re at it.”

  Abattoir Park

  The gardens of Carpathia were as lush and verdant as any that one might find elsewhere in the world. They were also terrifying. There were more plants in an average Carpathian garden that could kill you than those that couldn’t, and only a few of them required that you eat, smell, or even look at them to do so. The Reticulated Stranglethorn, for example, had a collection of barbed roots that would grapple around anything that moved w
ithin a few feet of it. The Murmuring Thistle constantly emitted a note so low that anyone within hearing distance would spontaneously start bleeding from the ears and eyes.

  The Malignant Blossom was harmless in its own right, but it was well-connected in the criminal underworld and extremely paranoid. Its victims were innumerable because it was very good at covering its tracks.

  “I’m already dead,” Sloot repeated to himself as he floated through the obviously deadly but strangely beautiful gardens in Abattoir Park. He tried fathoming why anyone would leave a place like this lying around in the middle of a city, where anyone could stumble into it and casually mingle with their own grisly death, but quickly gave up. Why bother fathoming why Carpathians do anything? Best just to steer clear of cannibals, if you don’t want to get eaten.

  Before he was able to return his focus to the terrifying flora that would love nothing more than to eviscerate the corporeal form he’d neglected to bring along, Sloot was filled with an altogether different sense of lurking dread. It was the quiescent knowledge, with no proof but the undeniable feeling, that he was being watched.

  These things tend to go one of two ways: either the feeling passes without incident, leaving the afflicted to go on about their business feeling slightly rattled; or it is proven valid when the watcher decides that he—or she, or it—has lurked long enough, and that the time for assailing victims with unequivocal malevolence is at hand.

  It should come as no surprise that Sloot, being one of the single least fortunate persons ever to have lived, died, and been forced to keep going to work nonetheless, has never had a feeling of being watched end in the former, more mundane fashion; therefore, said lack of surprise should apply by extension to what happened next.

  “Halt!” cried a tiny voice.

  “Don’t kill me!” Sloot’s eyes slammed shut, and his limbs contorted into the classic Craven Bulwark position, which seemingly everyone who’s never been in a fight believes—wrongly—is capable of guarding them against harm.

  “You’re already dead,” said the tiny voice.

  Sloot opened his eyes so he could use them to assess the situation, which was smart. Smart and terrifying, because he was surrounded. Well, sort of.

  “What business do you have in the forest, please?” said one of several dozen roughly ankle-high people, who were not so much menacing him with spears as leaning against walking sticks and staring at him with rapt curiosity, but it was all the same to Sloot.

  “I’ve come to talk to the fairies,” said Sloot. “Er, specifically, to your fairest flower.”

  “Have you?” asked the tiny and particularly hairy man, whose gossamer wings fluttered in agitation. “And why do you get to do that, please?”

  Sloot hadn’t been prepared for that. If he were being completely honest, he hadn’t prepared for anything at all, so it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In fact, his entire death up to that point had been a long series of events forcing him into action without the opportunity to prepare. Very different from the greater part of his life, during which he’d maintained solid financial projections well into his doddering octogenarian years, though those were now moot. He made a mental note to spend some time seriously lamenting the fact that he’d never get to update those again, as soon as the opportunity for some deep and painful brooding presented itself.

  “I,” said Sloot, hoping something eloquent would fall from his mouth if he gave it a gentle push. It didn’t. “Er, please?”

  “That’s better,” said the tiny man. “But please what, please?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Please forgive me,” said Sloot, feeling infinitesimally more confident now that he was on his own self-abasing turf, “but I really don’t understand.”

  “I forgive you,” said the tiny man with all the pomposity that one generally reserves for receiving awards, despite his lack of tuxedo. “It is to say that ghosts do not ever visit the fairies, so why is it that you get to do it? Please.”

  “Er, I don’t know,” said Sloot. “I can’t really speak for other ghosts. We’re not unionized or anything. I just want to speak with your fairest flower on this occasion in particular.” He paused, then seeing a scowl start to form on the tiny man’s face, hastened to add “Please?”

  The tiny man’s face narrowly managed the turn-off, and relaxed. “I just don’t see how it would be fair, if you please.”

  Fairies. Sloot generally avoided picking up on things too quickly, preferring to wait and see if it caused problems for more reckless people before he followed suit. He decided to make an exception this time.

  “Well, it would be,” Sloot replied, “provided that every ghost who asked to speak with the fairies was permitted to do so. If you please.”

  The tiny man appeared to consider this from within his obscene wealth of body hair, which he could have obscured with more than a simple loincloth like all of the other—surprisingly sartorial—fairies. Then again, the phrase “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” wasn’t coined so it could gather dust.

  “You make an interesting point,” he said at last. “Would you excuse us for a moment, please?”

  “I’d be happy to,” said Sloot, who was more than a bit relieved to quit the center of their attention. They gathered in a tiny huddle which, as huddles are wont to do, erupted into a tiny sussurus.

  The reprieve gave Sloot a moment to shrink in terror from the Caliginous Palm, which was leaning precariously close to him and ... sniffing.

  “It’s just trying to work out whether you’d make a decent meal,” said the tiny, hairy spokesman of the fairies, as though that were no cause for alarm.

  “Would you mind telling it that I wouldn’t, please?”

  “Sorry, but unfortunately, I would make a decent meal, so I can’t get that close. It will figure it out shortly, so just try to ignore it until then, please.”

  “Oh. Er, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Anyway, we’ve taken a vote, and we’ve decided that it would be fair to grant you an audience.”

  “There were dissenting opinions!” shouted a fairy who was obviously in his tailor’s good favor.

  “Duly noted,” said the tiny hairy man, who introduced himself as Lilacs. He went on to explain, in fairness to the dissenters, that there was some concern among the fairies that the ruling would open up the veritable floodgates to hordes of ghosts who’d been biding their time, and suddenly the fairies would have to spend all day talking to ghosts.

  “It’s not that we dislike ghosts or anything,” said Lilacs, “but we’ve got other things to be getting on with in our day, if you please.”

  “Of course,” said Sloot, who knew all too well what it was like to be summoned away by one wizard or another, mid-conversation and without asking whether it was convenient just then. “If it helps, I only know a few ghosts, and I’d be happy to refrain from talking about this with them.”

  “There’s a good lad,” said Lilacs with a wink. “Now then, what would you like to talk about, please?”

  “Thank you for asking,” said Sloot, figuring that it couldn’t hurt. “Well, er, there’s some trouble brewing in the Old Country, and—”

  “Oh, the Old Country,” said Lilacs, who had apparently just come into enough haughtiness to qualify as a fortune, and was keen on spending it. “Poor sods down there. It really isn’t fair, the way they’re the only ones who have to put up with the goblins, you know.”

  “It’s funny you should mention that,” said Sloot. He explained the looming threat from the south to Lilacs, who was none too pleased about the idea of goblins in Carpathia, but grudgingly admitted that it would make things fair. He simply preferred the sort of fairness that sent all of the goblins back to the Dark so no one had to deal with them, and the goblins got the whole Dark to themselves. That just seemed fair all around.

  There was another tiny huddle, another tiny sussurus.

  “We’re going to have
to talk to Dandelion,” said Lilacs, once they’d come to an agreement by show of tiny hands.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,” said Sloot.

  “Well, you didn’t know who I was,” said Lilacs, with warbling incredulity, “I don’t imagine you’d know the General either, would you? That wouldn’t be fair, if you please.”

  “Of course,” said Sloot. “And where is Dandelion? Er, please?”

  “He’s on his way, thank you.”

  “Oh, that’s nice of him,” said Sloot, who wasn’t altogether comfortable with the idea of people coming to him. It usually worked the other way around, in his experience.

  “It’s only fair,” said Lilacs. “After all, you came all the way here, didn’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Besides, this garden has much better acoustics for a public hearing, if you please.”

  “A public hearing?”

  “A public hearing!” shouted the chorus of fairies in unison, causing Sloot to fear for a moment that he’d accidentally wandered into a musical number. He tolerated musical numbers to the degree that the Salzstadt Ministry of the Arts deemed appropriate, he just didn’t know any of his lines. This was a lot less common than his dream about being naked in the counting house, which made it slightly more disconcerting.

  “We can’t be expected to make any decisions about a pending goblin menace without having a public hearing,” said Lilacs. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “No,” said Sloot, “I don’t suppose it would.”

  The fairies all worked together to coax some of the less horrifically deadly vines and creepers into a sort of arena for the hearing. The whole thing was about the size of Sloot’s first apartment, or the foyer to Willie’s last closet. It was ample for the fairies, and nearly long enough in one direction for Sloot to lie down. They left the roof off so Sloot could watch from outside. Most of the carnivorous vegetation had figured out that he wasn’t edible by the time Dandelion arrived.

  “The assembly will come to order, please!” shouted a tall-for-a-fairy fairy in a frock coat that didn’t skimp on the shoulder pads. “Pray attend as his majesty, King Lilacs, welcomes General Dandelion to the Western Gardens!”