by Mike Truk
“Let’s not tempt Fortuna further. Best you stay away from him while he’s in town.”
“Very well. But something tells me we’ll not be rutting our brains out tonight.”
“No,” said Hugh. “Alas. I’ve a date with a much, much less attractive woman.”
“The Fate Maker forbade you.”
“The Fate Maker can sit on a rusted sword and spin. I’ll not wait a year to begin work on that fort. And what if Jarmoc is in league with Aleksandr? He’s taking the man’s gold. What if his delay is to prevent the smuggler from being threatened? No. We’ll head up there tonight and face the ghost when it’s at its weakest.”
“I’m not sure that’s wise,” said Elena, voice low.
“I never claimed it was. But between you, Anastasia, Morwyn and myself, we should be able to deal with a paltry ghost.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So it’s a paltry ghost, now?”
“Compared to our combined talents, it is.”
“And how will we fight this specter, knowing nothing about it?”
“I’m going to ask an old friend,” said Hugh, the idea coming to him as he said the words. The words, in turn, caused his gut to clench. “Someone who knows all about this kind of stuff.”
Elena narrowed her eyes. “One of your Lost Reavers.”
“Aye,” said Hugh. “Birandillo. I’ve never tried summoning one to talk with before, but Birandillo could charm a troll out from under his bridge. I’m sure he’ll find it within his heart to speak with me.”
“You’re serious. You mean to visit the fort at dusk. The four of us.”
“Yes,” said Hugh. “I know it’s risky. But if Birandillo gives me the information I need, I’ll not squander the opportunity. We can’t wait a year to fortify the pass. Not with Aleksandr and Baron Niestor breathing down our necks. We’ll drive out this haunt, cleanse the fortress, and set to rebuilding with Branka’s ill-gotten gains.”
“By the Moon and Stars,” said Elena, covering her face with her hand. “And to think Subrogation used to be my favorite human holiday.”
Chapter Fourteen
Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the slats in his bedroom’s shutters, catching motes of dust as they danced and causing them to blaze like miniature filaments of lightning. Hugh rubbed the palms of his hands against his hips, paced, reached the wall, turned, and glanced at where Anastasia and Elena sat, watching him in turn.
He scowled, looked away, and paced back across the room.
Nobody spoke. The only sound was the creak of the floorboards beneath his boots. He’d been walking in such manner for five minutes, striving to summon the nerve, to execute his own plan.
And yet.
“Enough,” he growled, and forced himself to stop. Closed his eyes. Fought to calm his breathing, to still his racing heart. Failing in that, he reached out, in that strange, ephemeral manner, and summoned his old companion.
Birandillo.
There was a sense of movement, of someone who had followed behind him at every step moving into his field of vision – but, of course, there was nobody there. Instead, he felt his hands grow steadier, his resolve harden, and a new lightness of step enter his frame.
Birandillo rode within him, just below the skin. The weakest of their old group, he didn’t suffuse Hugh with power as Dragoslav might, but still he augmented Hugh’s skills, made his fingers nimbler, his eye quicker, his mind more mercurial.
And then, for the first time ever, Hugh exhaled and relinquished that fusion.
He opened his eyes.
And Birandillo was there, before him, lute slung over his shoulder, foppish hat pushed back on his brow so that his chestnut curls spilled forth, looking surprised and confused both.
They studied each other for a moment, and then Birandillo strummed the cords of his lute, sending forth a liquid ripple of music without form but beautiful all the same.
My Lord Hugh of Stasiek.
“Is he summoned?” asked Anastasia, rising to her feet, Hugh’s expression tipping her off.
“I… something is there,” murmured Elena, stretching forth her hand, brow furrowed. “I sense… oh, but it is subtle.”
Are we to have an audience, then? Birandillo’s expression hardened. Am I to perform for the deaf and blind?
Anastasia drew her wand. Eyes narrowed, biting her lower lip, she held it before her like a piece of chalk before a board. “I can’t… I mean, I felt something, the merest brush of a breeze, a fluctuating of magic, but nothing now. Elena?”
The lisica closed her eyes and stretched forth her palms. “Yes. There it is. Oh. This is… indeed magothélisi. It has been so long since I touched such a weft…”
Birandillo raised an eyebrow. The fox-girl is going to help us?
Hugh shrugged. “Here’s hoping.”
Elena moved forward and began what seemed a slow dance, turning here, rising and falling from the balls of her feet, turning, pausing.
Nobody spoke.
Finally, she stumbled to a stop. “The weft is beyond me. Far, far beyond me. I can only glimpse the merest fragment. My magic is innate; this is externalized casting, a crafting of the world, a deliberate molding of reality to suit the dreams of the dreamer. I… I am sorry.”
Hugh fought not to show his disappointment. Nodded grimly instead. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Nor I,” said Elena. “But I shall contemplate what I have glimpsed here. Perhaps… there may be other ways to enter the dream. It is like a wall of wind before me, permeable but at great risk to myself. But perhaps I can find another means of entering… I will meditate on it.”
Well, that was both short-lived and a disappointment, as the actress said to the Fate Maker.
“Agreed,” said Hugh. “Ladies? If you cannot help, could I have a moment alone with my old friend?”
A snort from the specter.
“Of course,” said Anastasia, wrestling with her obvious frustration. “My pardon, my lord.”
Elena but nodded, and together both women left the room.
So, said Birandillo his voice containing a plethora of insinuations: mockery, respect, surprise, resentment and anger, and perhaps a modicum of curiosity. To what do I have this most dubious honor? The wenches are gone, I see no foes in need of decapitation. Or perhaps you wish to hear a song to while away the hour, making the most of my slavery by turning me into a songbird within your cage?
“No, old friend.” Hugh forced himself to step back and sit in an old leather chair. “I… I have questions for you.”
And thought me more agreeable than Dragoslav or Black Evec. Most wise, if wisdom can yet be attributed. I’ve questions for you in turn. Perhaps we should play a game. Take turns in interrogating each other.
“If you wish.” Hugh’s throat was dry. Why hadn’t he thought of bringing some wine? “I’ll go first.” And just like that, he couldn’t think of what to ask. So immense the subject, so wide ranging the problem, that words failed him.
Birandillo hopped up onto the dresser, raised one knee and let the other leg swing back and forth as he plucked a series of chords, waiting, eyebrow raised.
“Do any of you know what… happened?” Hugh asked at last, voice little more than a rasp. “Why you are all trapped in this manner?”
Birandillo’s idle playing turned discordant, a plangent, violent sound, which he stilled immediately with the flat of his hand against the strings. No. Oh, we’ve spent time discussing it, believe you me. Theories abound. Are we being punished by the Fate Maker? Do we labor under a fae curse? If so, how could it be alleviated? Has the Hanged God himself rejected us from his Ashen Garden for being too beautiful, too precious to steal from this world? I fancy that may be the case for me, but when you consider the likes of Dragoslav or Foughtash, the theory falls apart.
Hugh forced himself to slow his breathing. To relax his shoulders. His heart was pumping mightily, as if in preparation for battle. He couldn’t make out the rest of the room,
only Birandillo’s aristocratic features. Disappointment washed over him, profound and wretched. He’d not thought to speak directly with the shades out of terror and self-loathing, but, having made the decision, had suddenly felt a bright and shining hope that a solution could be uncovered.
Alas.
My turn. You harbor the thirty of us within your soul. In effect, you keep us in perpetual darkness and torment. Do you not think it right to end your life, and in doing so set us all free?
Hugh forced a dry swallow. “I never claimed to be a moral man.”
So you agree that you should, but admit that you won’t. Honesty, at least, despicable as it might be.
“My turn.” Had he thought this would be easy? To gaze upon the visage of an old friend and be tormented? “In what state do you all exist while I don’t summon you?”
Ah, you wish to be regaled with tales of our woe? Very well. In darkness, Hugh of Stasiek. We exist in stasis, without notion of time or geography, like stars hanging in the void, with only each other to regard. Has a year passed since you summoned me last, or a minute? I could not say. Time is strange, in the depths. Our thoughts spiral endlessly, leading us to madness. Our conversation, fruitless, drives each other to rage. We have solved this purgatory by turning away from each other, closing our eyes, and seeking, as best we may, a form of death. Stilling our thoughts and seeking to become as animate as stones. It doesn’t work, but it’s better than our infinite torment. There. Does that please you?
“No, of course not. I didn’t want this, Birandillo. None of this.”
You think that salves our pain? We didn’t want it either, but while you romp and play, we suffer. Think on that, the next time you slide your blade into that lisica’s scabbard.
“If you exist in darkness, then how do you know what I do?”
As I said, we seek to emulate death. And those of us who can achieve that state best - Natusia, Nevkha, Kuryan - they are afforded glimpses of your waking world. Like dreams, they say, deprived of logic but rife with imagery and emotion. They’ve caught glimpses of your adventures these past few years. I will admit that I at least am glad you’ve quit the Rusałka. How dull your escapades there were becoming, endlessly repetitive and unimaginative in your pursuits…
Hugh felt his face flush. Thought of Nastusia, with her elfin face, her bright eyes, her propensity for exaltation and mania followed by her terrible lows and dark depressions. Of Nevkha, earnest and forthright, yet capable of losing herself in visions and dreams for days on end, as if she had one foot planted in the land of the fae, and with but a tug could send her mind sailing off into those uncharted waters. Kuryan, the anxious former playwright, whose creations had verged on the heretical and were filled with prophetic utterances whose fulfillment had seen him nearly burned alive until he’d been recruited into their company. Thought of all three catching glimpses of him fucking Zarja, or Morwyn, or any number of women back at the Rusałka.
Hugh passed a hand over his face.
Galling, but they say you perform admirably. That indeed, you go for hours on end without surcease, like some mindless bull, rutting without thought or creativity, bellowing and bellowing into the night as you seek an oblivion that escapes you. Me, I say you should take advantage of a greased knothole if that’s all you desire, for well I remember the artistry with which I used to ply my ladies, treating their bodies like canvases upon which I’d paint the most -
“You going to ask a question?” asked Hugh.
Very well. Most of what comes to mind are insults. I’ve had time, you see, to compile an incredible list. But, a question. Ah, yes. This one is from our esteemed leader. She wants to know what it will take for you to agree to suicide. Or are you simply persisting out of wretched stubbornness, without goal or ambition?
Hugh bit his lower lip, frowning as he mulled the question over. What did he want? Why was he still alive? Was it in truth little more than some bestial insistence of seeing one more dawn?
No. There was something more. But how to put it into words?
“I don’t expect you to understand. But I feel as if my life is not my own to take. I haven’t understood this until recently, but in speaking with Zarja - the lisica - I’ve come to understand that… there’s more at play here than I thought possible. Zarja says I’ve some role in important events to come. And seeing what’s at stake here in Erro – the salt smuggler, the future of Stasiek, and perhaps even the fae in the mountains - I owe it to Fortuna, or something, to remain alive. So that when the time comes, I can make a difference. It’s a feeling. A presentiment. But the lisica agreed. Most the time I just want to run away, but beneath that it’s as if the fucking Fate Maker himself has placed a hand on my shoulder. And for all the pain it’s causing you and everyone else, I can’t… I can’t just slit my own throat with that in the balance.”
Birandillo studied him, brows lowered, lips pouting. Then he sighed and strummed his lute, a dark sequence of notes. Sufficiently vague and portentous that I can anticipate the reaction of the others. But I, at least, have always been a sucker for such vagaries. The pull of Fate, the reluctant hero, and so forth. It sounds like an amateur raconteur’s attempt at an epic. But of all the Lost Reavers, I am the most predisposed to applaud of such motivations. Very well. I shall relay your words, and they shall, at least, add a little more grist to our conversation mill. Not, mind you, that it will still our calls for your immediate death. We’ve lost all interest in fate and the happenings of the waking world. We wish surcease from torment, Hugh.
At this Birandillo slid off the dresser to stand erect and gaze upon him, eyes terrible, near lurid with their own inner light.
You have it within you to set free thirty souls from pain. Not all of us are worthy of such consideration, but there are amongst our number those who do not deserve such agony. Chavaun, your old friend. Innocent Dziec. Acipa and Terey. Blind Igocha, Sidorko with his impossible ideals, Orefa with her heart of gold. Think on their faces, Hugh, and ask yourself how you have it within you to torture them even as you chase after some nebulous fate. How can you do it? How?
Hugh lowered his face, pulse pounding in his ears. He didn’t want to think about them. Summon their faces. Didn’t want to consider that right now they hung in the void, suffered, so that he could go about his brother’s business.
But no. It was more than that.
He didn’t cling to life for Annaro.
“I told you the truth. There’s something greater out there, awaiting me. I don’t know what it is. But what if what happened to us is part of it? What if this is all leading up to something - I don’t know - important? More important than our thirty-one souls? I promise you this, Birandillo. I swear it on Fortuna’s fickle smile: I’ll do everything I can to find out what, and if I’m mistaken, I’ll slide a blade into my heart there and then.”
Hmm. Dramatic, but specious. Such a quest could take a lifetime.
“Then - a year.” Hugh felt almost sick. “Give me a year. If on this date next autumn I’ve not discovered this purpose of which I speak, I’ll summon you all, all thirty of you, and kill myself. I swear that on Fortuna, too.”
Better, said Birandillo, expression grave. And I sense the earnestness of your vow. Very well, I shall convey those terms to our leader. Not that we have any say in the matter, but, at the very least, it shall give us something to look forward to, like children awaiting Subrogation all summer long.
“It’s Subrogation tonight,” said Hugh with bitter amusement.
It is? Confound this sleeping world! And I, here, trapped in your bully breast, prevented from stealing kisses and teasing the lasses, from indulging in honey cake and honey mead, unable to set the people to prancing with my skirling songs and to drink deep of their merriment and joy! Curse your noble head, Hugh. Curse it a thousand times over, and curse the day you joined our band, joined our ranks, and doomed us all to this waking slumber.
He turned away then, shoulders hunched, head lowered.
&nbs
p; Hugh felt a dagger of ice slide into his chest, so horrified was he by the other man’s pain.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, knowing the words meant nothing. “One last question before I let you go. We seek to destroy a ghost that resides in a ruined fort. Do you know how we can best do so?”
Ghosts are tethered to this world by injustice. Birandillo didn’t turn to look at him. Their essence trapped by tangible objects that personify the horrors that laid them low. Seek to learn this ghost’s tale, to understand what it is that binds it to this world, and then destroy those tethers and in so doing set it free.
Birandillo turned, eyes gleaming like dark stars, to glare at Hugh. And I swear by Fortuna’s bellicose breasts that were I yet amongst the living I would stop at nothing to stop your breath and still your heart, Hugh of Stasiek. At nothing.
And then, just like the ghost, he was gone.
Hugh sank back into his chair, chest cramped as if bonds of iron were tightened around it. Such hatred on his old friend’s face. Such withering despair. He closed his eyes and passed a hand over his sweaty brow.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
* * *
“Well, that should be easy to uncover,” said Morwyn, sitting on the kitchen counter and slowly twirling one of her throwing knives about her finger by its circular pommel. “You said on our journey here that the fort was built by your great grandfather. That means it can’t be more than a century old. Someone around here will have a memory about what happened.”
Hugh leaned against the wall, arms crossed. Anastasia and Elena sat at the dining table, working on the dinner he’d tried to cook up for them. Part of his diplomatic overture attempt: blackened chicken over a bed of fried potato slices and onion. From the studiously neutral expressions on their faces, it was clear they loved it.
“The War of Seven Farthings,” he said. “Old history. I remember not paying much attention when they lectured me about it. Only lasted a few months, some financial dispute that was used as a pretext for territorial aggression. But no mention of when or why the fort was abandoned.”
