Living With Ghosts

by Kari Sperring

  More infantry, and from a provincial levy . . . Ideal material to take orders from a worn-out cavalry staff lieutenant with a headache and a sensation of being exploited. Joyain had sighed, saluted, and said, “Yes, sir.”

  It had been the only reply he could think of that wouldn’t land him in the military prison. Now he poked at the dirt on the warehouse steps with a booted foot and tried his hardest not to be aware of the honeysuckle smell clinging everywhere.

  “Lieutenant, sir!” The call came from inside the warehouse, and apparently upstairs. One of his party of searchers had found something.

  Joyain put his hat back on and called back, “Yes?” “I’ve got something, sir, if you’ll come up.”

  “On my way.” Rubbing his soiled toe cap on the back of his calf, Joyain tugged at his cassock and straightened his shoulders. The reek inside the building was far worse than he’d imagined. He wanted to throw open all the windows and gulp what passed for fresh air. The stone floor was wet. All the fires were dead. The makeshift grates looked as if they’d been put out with buckets of water. The temperature was at least ten degrees too high to be compatible with the lack of fire and the weather outside. Against his will he recalled bitter man-forms in a night-mist and shivered.

  The soldier who had summoned him was waiting on a second-floor landing. Peering into rooms on his way up, Joyain had seen no life beyond his own unit; no sign of anything other than chilly abandonment. The soldier saluted him and said, “In there, sir.”

  He indicated a narrow door made out of cheap deal, standing ajar. There was something wrong with his face . . . Joyain looked at him curiously, awaiting further explanation. He received none. After a moment, he shrugged, and said, “Right. You carry on, then.” It would help if he had the least notion of the names of any of this unit . . .

  The soldier made no effort to accompany him. Joyain pushed the door open and understood why.

  Originally, he supposed, it had been a clerk’s office. A crook-backed slip of a room crushed under the eaves and lit by a single unglazed window. The army had imported a cot and dragged the desk away from the window. The scuff marks were still barely visible on the floor through the overlay of mud and bloody vomit and water. There were no words adequate to describe the smell. Something that Joyain did not intend to investigate too closely lay half behind the desk. It might once have been a man. If he had looked—but he wasn’t going to look—he might have been able to theorize about the cause of death. (Obviously, it was dead. No one could live in that many pieces. He was not even going to begin to imagine what might have come to chew and tear limbs after that fashion. Half the gut must be missing, apart from what had fallen across the floor.) Joyain found he was rubbing his hands up and down his thighs convulsively. Drawing in a long breath, he forced himself to stop and clamped one hand around the hilt of his saber instead. That was nearly reassuring.

  Then he looked up. Something in the pit of his stomach protested dimly, while through his mind rattled a dry military tally of the room and its contents. Bed, one; chair, one; body, one . . . no, two, another shape hidden beyond the desk in the unlit corner of the room, a disjointed bundle of a man dropped from too high, and left to lie in a congealing puddle of his own fluids. Unrecognizable, ofcourse, said that same dry voice in Joyain’s mind, even the uniform too marred and mangled to lend any identity; skin blackened and discolored, flesh torn and seared, some wounds still weeping light thick fluid into the mess on the floor . . . Scanning upward past the wrecked chest, past the pitiful ends of rib protruding from the broken skin, past the crushed forearm flung out as if it would protect the head, look up, look up, and look away quickly . . . On one side, the skin had been ripped clean away from the throat and jaw, exposing teeth which were still strong and good; and, on the upper right-hand side, the face was also torn off, no cheek, no brow, no eye. Joyain was shaking, he could barely breathe, he was trying so hard to look away anywhere but down; his loins were cold and unmanned, he was—river rot it—shaking! He was . . .

  The ruined jaw moved, and Joyain started back, banging his thigh against a corner of the desk. Under the blood and the knotted, matted hair, a single eye opened and looked straight at him. He could see the effort in the bared muscles, the convulsive swallowing in the gullet. Sweat ran down his own neck, and he breathed fast through his mouth.

  A voice he did not want to recognize said, “Hello, Jean.”

  “No,” Joyain said. He could no longer stand. Sinking back, he leaned on the desk, gasping.

  “Sorry . . . about the mess.” Leladrien’s lips were partly gone. The muscular rictus where they should have been was a vicious parody of a smile. “Things you . . . should know.” Joyain knew he should do something, say something, summon help, anything. He could not move at all. He wanted to cry. He had forgotten how. Leladrien said, “We were . . . mostly dead, before they came. The . . . things. Look in the cellar. It’s a sickness. But the things . . . are real. Not phantasms.” His voice was ghastly, a sobbing thread caught up perpetually on the angles and floods of its own pain. Black fluid dribbled from the edges of his mouth and between his teeth. “Burn this place. Promise me.”

  “I . . .” Joyain said, and swallowed bile. “Lelien.”

  “Promise, Jean.” Joyain was afraid to speak. He nodded, chill, wan. Leladrien said, “Good.” And then, “Other matters . . . Don’t touch anything. Not without gloves. You still there, Jean?”

  “Yes,” Joyain whispered, eyes tight shut, hand hard on his sword.

  “Jean, listen. You must . . . You must shoot your deserters . . . Hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “If they go into the city . . . they’ll spread it.”

  It made grim sense. Although it was surely too late . . . How many of the watch and the city garrison lived in the Artisans’ quarter, or the low city, or over the shops in the business district outside the wall? Joyain swallowed again and said, “Yes, Lelien.”

  “Good man. Good thing they sent you. Thought so, last night, before the things came . . . Jean will be down for us, sooner or later.” Leladrien’s single eye was no longer seeing Joyain. He coughed, or tried to, and nausea knotted in Joyain’s stomach.

  Joyain said, “What are the things?”

  Leladrien ignored him. “I watched the lights . . . on the hill. You can see so much, when the sickness has you . . . They were dancing last night in the palace . . . Couldn’t even see the fires in the streets from up there . . . Laughing, I suppose. Loud enough to drown the cries . . . It won’t rise so high, the river, to drown them too . . . D’you see it, Jean?”

  His mind was wandering . . . No surprise. Through set teeth, Joyain said, “No,” denying the memory of late torchlight on the cliff top. Leladrien made a sound that might, perhaps, have been meant for a laugh.

  “They’ll learn, our aristos.” Leladrien paused. Then, “Last thing, Jean.”

  “Yes,” Joyain said, “anything.” There was a pounding in his ears. Dully, he realized it was his heart. Oh, river bless.

  “Jean,” said Leladrien, “shoot me.”

  Stone buildings were hard to burn, harder still in pouring rain. In the end, Joyain had to commandeer a wagon-load of oil from a tavern, and even then the fire was difficult to set. Knowing that he might not fairly ask one of his men to face what lay in the cellar, Joyain took upon himself the task of soaking and torching the bodies. It was worse, almost, than the eaves room, between the smell and the shadows and the overpowering heat. Too many men made inhuman by plague and death. He reemerged pale and trembling, and his tone with his unit was savage with misery.

  He could not bear to think of Leladrien or of what he had done in that narrow attic room. Nail down the knowledge, seal it, and concentrate only on the now, the necessary.

  He had thought there could be nothing worse than the odor in the house. Mingled with wood ash and charring, spoiled flesh, it proved him wrong. He was not the only one to stagger back from the warehouse, choking, although unlike som
e of his men he managed to control his nausea.

  It was only the acrid smoke which caused his eyes to water and sting.

  He was dimly aware that this conflagration constituted a second court-martial offense to his credit. He shied away from that thought, too, from the memory of a much wanted, illegal coup de grâce. It could not go unreported. He had no choice, caught up by duty and necessity. By awareness of how loudly a pistol shot could echo in a largely empty building.

  The unit sergeant was at his elbow. Joyain pulled his distracted attention away from the fire and looked at him.

  “What next, sir?”

  The flames had attracted few onlookers. Joyain suspected that sickness and violence had driven most of the local residents away. He supposed he would have to check the surrounding building for further evidence of the destruction suffered by Leladrien’s garrison. More silent houses. More blackened, mangled, and decomposing people—people, not bodies. He felt himself pale, fought vertigo. He must not show any part of his distress in front of his unit. He said, “Clear the crowd and get any statements you can about what’s been happening down here. Have some of the men go through local houses and check for further casualties. I’ll need the details for HQ.”

  “Very good, sir.” The sergeant moved off and began to pass on the order. Joyain sat down on a nearby mounting block and struggled to collect his thoughts.

  Things from the river—mist-born, night-bound death. Iareth Yscoithi had been calm in the face of that strangeness; and Gracielis de Varnaq (who knew too much) had warned Amalie to leave Merafi, as if he had known what might be coming. Neither of them were native, neither of them had much reason to care about the city’s fate. Joyain shook his head and tried to settle his information together.

  A warning of old things, stirred impossibly from the past to haunt and delude the present. Find a Tarnaroqui, old Banvier had said. Or ask a priest . . . He should go to a temple and pay for prayers for Leladrien, slain by water, consumed by fire . . . Enough, perhaps, to burn away the taint that had destroyed him, if it was true that these . . . whatever . . . feared fire.

  It was ridiculous. He was ordering his intentions along a course of superstition and legend. Plagues happened, in docklands. Street gangs used night and fog to cloak their actions. A dying man might easily come, through delirium, to believe his death was caused by more than just sickness.

  No illness known to Joyain came equipped with teeth sharp and strong enough to disembowel and half-flay a man.

  There had to be some reasonable explanation. There must be. He must disbelieve the testimony of his own eyes and look for a rational solution. There could not be danger on the scale hinted at by Leladrien and old Banvier. The queen and her council had issued no special orders. The nobility were content to continue their pleasures. There was, then, no cause for alarm.

  Shoot your deserters.How many men and women had been in and out of this area in the last twelve hours? How infectious was this plague, anyway? Touch nothing without gloves.He must report back, yet he might already be a walking contagion despite having handled nothing directly, if the air itself was contaminated and the water as well. He sighed, temples pounding. It was beyond him. He was not made for this kind of thing.

  The sergeant returned. Joyain said, “Yes?”

  “We’ve finished searching, sir.”

  “Good. And?”

  “Sixteen dead, sir, and two or three close to death, all in houses within thirty feet of the river. No one admits to having seen anything unusual in connection with Lieutenant DuResne’s unit.”

  “Anyone seen anything odd on their own behalf?”

  “Not that they’re telling us, sir.” The sergeant hesitated, “At least . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “One woman—who used to work at the inn that was burned two or three nights back—swears blind she’s seen an aristo hanging about the remains.”

  “So? Who is it?”

  “According to her—not that she looks too reliable to me, sir—it’s the Lord of the Far Blays.”

  Thiercelin duLaurier. Joyain suppressed a sigh. “The councillor’s husband? Well, that might not be such a bad thing. Bring it home to them what’s happening down here.”

  The sergeant looked uncomfortable. He said, “Not that lord, sir—the last one. Valdarrien d’Illandre. And what’s more,” and his voice swooped up as the annoyance of a sensible man forced to report nonsense broke through, “she says she can only see him when it’s raining!”

  It was cold. That was the only possible reason Joyain could have for shivering. He looked at the outraged sergeant and said, “Did you check her breath?”

  “Yes sir. You could have lit a torch from it.”

  “Well, there you are, then.” Joyain made himself smile. “Anything else of that type?”

  “Not really . . . A child talked about seeing a dead grandparent, but the father tells me it’s the fever.”

  “Nothing regarding street attacks?”

  “Nothing new, sir.” Joyain glanced at the man.

  “You’ll have heard some of the stories the watch have been spreading? Lot of rubbish designed to cover up their own shortcomings, I’d say.”

  “No. I’ve been on detached duty.” Joyain forced himself to keep his tone light. “You’d better tell me.”

  “Very good, sir. Some of their patrols are claiming that the deaths in the low city aren’t to do with the gangs, after all. Say they’ve seen creatures that creep about in the fog and attack people. That are conveniently impossible to catch or kill, I might add. Trying to get themselves off the hook, if you ask me.”

  “Sounds likely,” Joyain said, distracted. Barracks talk, filtered by skepticism and expedience before it reached the officers, the high command, and, presumably, the royal council. “Thank you, Sergeant. Carry on.” Joyain rose. “I’m going up to HQ to report. Make sure that fire is watched and doesn’t spread.”

  “Right, sir.” The sergeant saluted, and turned to go. Joyain watched him, frowning, then headed into the city.

  He needed a drink. Stopping at a favorite tavern in the middle of the old town, he had two as a species of valediction. Then he called for pen, ink, and paper, and set himself to write a suitable account of the fate of Leladrien’s unit, and of his own actions in respect of this. It was easier than he had expected. He included everything, including his conversation with Banvier, the fight he and Iareth had had with the mist creatures, Leladrien’s testimony, and the stories picked up by his sergeant. He ended with a stark admission of his offenses against military law, and an offer to resign his commission and present himself before an appropriate disciplinary board. A half-livre to the potboy ensured that it would be delivered safely. After that, he had another drink. Then he took a fresh piece of paper, addressed it to Amalie, and wrote on it, quite simply “Leave Merafi” and his name. The potboy would take that, too. Joyain added a further half-livre to the fee and finished by buying himself another drink.

  He had a superstition about doing anything in even numbers. That suggested to him a fifth drink. After downing it, he rose and went out into the street.

  It had been years since he last visited a temple, save on official occasions. Something, some sense of what was appropriate, directed him toward the small chapel set two streets away from where Leladrien lodged. Had lodged. There was only one priest in attendance, and the floor had not been swept. Joyain bowed to the flame and dipped a nervous hand into the well, before finding himself a seat. He was out of the habit of prayer. It seemed needful, yet at the same time it was hard to assimilate. Perhaps his dilemma showed in his face, for the priest came to stand beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  Joyain looked up. The priest was surprisingly young; a reason, perhaps, for his service in this minor shrine. Joyain said, “Did Lieutenant DuResne ever come here?”

  “From the tenement above the chandlers’?” Joyain nodded. The priest said, “No.”

  “Well, he never will, now. H
e’s gone to the flame.” The priest was silent. His expression did not change. Joyain said, “How many have turned up dead, near here, these past few days?”

  “Enough.”

  “Naturally dead or murdered?” Again, that silence. Joyain twisted his hands together. His knuckles were dirty with soot and ink. He looked at them, square and familiar. He said, “No one asks questions. No one bothers so long as it touches nothing important.” The priest was motionless. Joyain was cold despite the ale he’d drunk. “Does that mean that it doesn’t matter? That death doesn’t matter?”

  The priest said, “I don’t know.”

  Joyain turned to look at him. “Who does, then?” There were too few candles burning in the chapel, and the narrow, high windows gave little extra light. Shadows ran away into the corners, mocking. The air was full of waiting. Joyain had never felt so alone. He said, “The evidence is everywhere; but no one does anything.” The priest watched him. “No one talks about it, or acts. No one ever will. Do you understand me?” The priest was still silent. Joyain stood, and stepped away from him, shaking. His voice was no longer under his control. “Do you?” The priest made a gesture of pacification. “It’s all over, d’you hear? The streets are full of death. The living are dying, and the dead are coming back.”

  The priest looked down. Then he sighed, and said, “What of it? What cannot be changed must simply be accepted.”

  Joyain said, “There has to be another way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . I don’t know . . . We can’t just let ourselves die, surely? We have to fight back.”

  The priest gestured at Joyain’s uniform. “That is the choice of your life. It is for you to decide whether it makes any difference.” His tone was gentle but his eyes were bleak. Behind him, shadows stirred.

  Joyain said again, “How many dead?” And then, “Don’t you care?”