The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

“What if he decided something you knew was stupid?” Kel asked, turning his head so his voice wasn’t muffled in the heavy cloth of the coverlet. “Would you just go along with it anyway?”

  “I am an old man, my lord, much older than your father. I may have strength and health for my age, but I was never trained in arms like His Grace was, and I have no soldiers to call my own. If I disapproved, how would I stop him? Do you wish me to cling to his arm like a child, making him drag me around after him wherever he goes? I doubt even you would go so far, as angry as you may be.”

  “I wouldn’t keep insisting if it weren’t worth it,” Kel said. “I don’t stay angry about everything; you know I don’t. But this is Lessa we’re talking about! We hardly know anything about why she gets sick, but if she nearly chokes on dust, on air, what’ll happen to her in a sandstorm? Father says we’re all in danger, but the only one he’s gambling on is her. It isn’t fair.”

  “His Grace has shown nothing but kindness to Alessa all her life,” Eirnwin said. “He might have—”

  If Kel’s crutches weren’t out of reach on the floor, he would have thrown them across the room. “Why does everyone always say that? Oh, Father’s so wonderful and kind just because he didn’t kill Lessa when she was born! What Mother did wasn’t Lessa’s fault, and it wasn’t mine! And yet all everyone says is that we should never have been born—Father should’ve killed her to preserve his honor, and I—” He gritted his teeth. “It would have been kinder if I had never existed at all, just because my legs don’t work like everyone else’s! What if I don’t care about my stupid legs?”

  Eirnwin sat back in his chair, threading his fingers together. “I have never said such things, I am sure, and I am certainly part of everyone.”

  Kel knew he was sulking, but he was too angry to think up an answer.

  “When you were three years old,” Eirnwin said, “I told your father myself that you would never walk, not as long as you lived. And I believed every word I said. His Grace raged and grieved at my words, but he believed them too. Only Alessa shook her head at them, and said she was sure you would walk one day. When we asked her why, she said it was because you had told her you would.”

  Kel frowned. “I don’t remember that. You never told me that.”

  “I know that, my lord. I am telling you now.” Eirnwin looked down at his clasped hands, then back to Kel’s face. “By the time you were five, you had already proven me wrong. The first time I ever saw you hobbling about your chambers, I thought the shock would hobble me.” He chuckled faintly. “Your joints swelled so badly from that little excursion that you couldn’t get out of bed for three days. But you’d made your point, and I had work started on your crutches immediately. And I swore to myself that I would never again presume to tell you what you could and could not do.”

  Eirnwin leaned forward again, his hands tightening in his lap. “I have given all the counsel I know how, my lord, and your father has expressed no desire to discuss the matter further. Alessa herself has acquiesced to the king’s proposal. If there is another way to be found, I am afraid you must find it yourself.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The first time Lucius had talked about being a shinrian had been in the dead of winter—only Seth’s second with Morgan, but she’d already taught him to stop calling her miss. It was after the fall of Lanvaldis, so there was no snow, but that didn’t stop the cold from creeping in, threatening to swallow the Dragon’s Head whole.

  They were accustomed, by that point, to being just the six of them—Seth still wasn’t brave enough to start a conversation with Braddock of his own volition, and he hadn’t quite learned to trust Roger with much more than a smile, but he didn’t find the grouping odd or out of place. Braddock was staring out the window, and Morgan was behind the bar, and Seth was sprawled near the fire with Roger and Deinol, basking in the heat of the flames. Lucius was sitting back a bit, in a chair some feet away; Roger had invited him closer several times, but Lucius just said he was plenty warm enough, and stayed put.

  Seth was half asleep by the time Roger’s story touched on Aurnis, but he knew enough to follow along. Aurnis had been the country far to the north, that stretched all the way up past the Howling Gate to the shores of the White Waste. The Aurnians had come from across the sea a hundred years ago, before the northern waters had become blocked by ice year-round, and they had carved out a home for themselves up there, pushing the Hallerns and Lanvalds away to the south and building their city of Kaiferi upon the frozen plains. The Aurnians were relatively few in number, but the warriors they called shinrian were said to be among the greatest swordsmen in the world—worth ten of any normal man, the Aurnians boasted. Every heir to the Aurnian throne chose five of them for his personal guard, and these, his kaishinrian, were the most lauded of all, their names and deeds given to immortality. Yet Aurnis was the first country Elgar had attacked, and it fell before Seth had even arrived in Valyanrend. The kaishinrian had all perished defending their liege, and Elgar had executed every shinrian he could find, to keep them from seeking revenge for the fall of their country.

  “My great-uncle Bosric always said he ran jobs with a shinrian, back in the day,” Roger had said, off on another of his interminable digressions. “There were a good sight more of them back then, of course, but the Aurnians were never very fond of leaving Aurnis, so you hardly ever saw one this far south. The fellow sounded like a proper drunkard, though—just another down-on-his-luck swordsman who happened to know which end of a blade was up, not some great man.”

  Lucius bestirred himself at that, throwing an arm over the back of his chair. “To be called shinrian is a designation of skill—not rank or distinction, and certainly not greatness,” he said. “To earn it, all you have to do is learn to wield the proper blade, then win one match against one who already carries the title—in the sight of judges, of course, so you can’t slit a shinrian’s throat in his sleep and claim you dueled him in some back alley. But once you win, you’re shinrian for life; nothing you do afterward can erase it, no matter how cowardly or cruel. Even if you lost half a hundred battles to orphan boys wielding sticks, the title remains.” He reached for his drink. “Of course, in practice, those shinrian who cared overmuch about the honor of the order often tried to track and kill the members who had become particularly disgraceful, but they weren’t always successful.”

  The rest of them had regarded Lucius with surprise; it was rare indeed to hear him speak about anything to do with Aurnis. “Were there a lot of shinrian, then?” Seth asked, when it seemed as if the others weren’t going to speak.

  Lucius laughed shortly. “Not so many as you might think. Shinrian tend to like to lose even less than ordinary warriors—losing means making your opponent a shinrian, and the more you let in, the less special you are. So many of them refused to duel unless they were sure they’d win. More than one aspiring shinrian found himself—or especially herself—without anyone to fight, or else with only a choice of the best warriors in all of Aurnis. No one remembers this now, but the prince himself was a shinrian, and that was quite a bother—no one wanted to lose to him, but no one wanted to risk doing him harm, either. In the end, he defeated one of his own kaishinrian to win the title.” He tilted his head back as he drank, frowning vaguely at the tankard when he’d finished. “Perhaps that should’ve shown him he needed more than five swordsmen to defend him, no matter how skilled.” He reached for his sword, flicking his thumb against the hilt so it popped half an inch out of the sheath, then sliding it back in again. “I happened to be a shinrian too. Don’t think I ever mentioned it, but … there you are.” When no one said anything, he looked up, frowning at them all. “You don’t look overly surprised.”

  “Well,” Roger said sheepishly, brushing the back of his neck, “truth is, we always figured you for a shinrian.”

  They had just a second to watch the surprise flicker across Lucius’s face before he veiled it, smoothing his features before he addressed them. “Did you? W
hat gave me away?”

  Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Gave you away? Your skill did that well enough. You’re not exactly a common swordsman, Lucius.”

  “And that sword did the rest,” Braddock spoke up. “Don’t find many of them this far south, but I know a tsunshin when I see one.”

  Lucius looked down at it again, as if pondering it. “Deinol, you guessed as well?”

  Deinol laughed. “Well, it’s like you said: not everybody who deserves to be a shinrian ends up becoming one. But even though you’re easygoing enough, I can’t see you being satisfied before you were the best at something you’d decided to do. So I was … moderately sure.”

  Lucius smiled. “It seems you’ve all found me out. And here I thought I was being so mysterious.”

  “Oh, there’s still mystery enough,” Roger said. “Just because we know your title doesn’t mean we know anything about the rest of it.” He cocked his head. “Don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten us, eh?”

  Lucius shook his head. “There’s nothing much to say—certainly nothing I’m particularly proud of.”

  “How did you become a shinrian?” Seth asked, so quietly he almost wondered if it had been audible, but they all turned to look. “Who did you fight?”

  Lucius laughed. “You still think there’s something in that, even after everything I’ve said about it?” He looked at his sword again. “For a while I thought I’d never earn the title—a man much greater than I was the first to accept a duel with me. The way I remember it, he defeated me handily, but the onlookers seemed to think I held up well against him, and after that no one else wanted to challenge me. But I had a second match eventually, and that was that.” He shrugged. “I spent so much time training, trying to win that title.… Back then, it was everything to me. I thought that if I could win it, I’d have proven something—I’d be worthy of something. And everything I’d ever known seemed to bear me out. And then to rise higher than I’d ever dreamed … even now I can hardly imagine it. I thought I had come so unfathomably far.” He raised his eyes to the flames. “But then Elgar attacked my home, and I ran. So it seems I was wrong about that, after all.”

  * * *

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” Roger said—uncharacteristically few words, coming from him.

  “Neither are you, without Morgan,” Marceline said. “It’s her I want to see, not you. So where is she?”

  “Not here.” Had Roger ever answered a question with two words in his life? Something was definitely afoot. “Won’t be back for a while, perhaps. I’m looking after the place in the meantime, but I can’t possibly run it at the moment. So it’s closed. And it’ll be closed until Morgan decides otherwise, no matter how long you spend banging at the door.”

  “You can’t just close it,” Marceline said. “It’s a tavern—what about the lodgers?”

  Roger leaned one elbow on the bar. “The only close to regular lodgers we have are Lucius and Braddock, and they’re both gone too. Any new arrivals will have to sleep somewhere else.” He pulled a morose face. “I don’t like it any better than you do, monkey, but there you have it.”

  “What about Seth?”

  “Also out.”

  Two words again. “Well, where’s everybody got to, then? It’s hardly like them to just up and leave.”

  Roger tapped the bar. “I expect that’s their business, not mine or yours.”

  “Oh, come on, Roger. You think everyone’s business is your business. If you really didn’t know where they’d gone, you’d be doing everything you could to find out.”

  “I never said I didn’t know where they’d gone.” He leaned on his arms, releasing a heavy, put-upon sigh that was almost like one of Cerise’s. “It’s too early in the morning for this, monkey, don’t you know that?”

  “And it’ll be all over Sheath before midday, whatever it is, so you might as well—”

  “I sincerely doubt that.” He pulled another face at her, but it looked like his heart wasn’t in this one. “What’d you want with Morgan, anyway? If it’s just liquor for Tom, it’s easy enough to get that elsewhere.”

  “It isn’t that.” As if she were just Tom’s serving wench. “I just wanted to see if she’d found Seth all right.”

  “She found him.” But Roger’s face was about as grim as it ever got, so she doubted it had been as simple as he made it sound.

  She hesitated, but finally asked, “He isn’t … dead or something, is he?”

  Roger drew back as if she’d hit him. “Gods, of course not. What are you thinking?”

  “Well, something must have happened! He goes missing one morning, and the next the whole tavern’s practically been cleaned out!” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Does this have anything to do with that business about deserters?”

  Roger snorted. “Who do you think’s a deserter? Morgan? Seth?”

  She had to admit it was unlikely. It wasn’t as if people knew everything there was to know about Morgan, but she’d been a fixture in Sheath for many years, even before she’d taken over the Dragon’s Head. And she couldn’t picture Seth wielding any weapon more lethal than a broom. “It must be something about what happened in the Night Market, then.”

  His lips twitched slightly. “Why must it?”

  Damn it, but he could be so annoying. “Fine, it mustn’t, then. But whatever happened to Seth is obviously still happening to him, and it seems like whatever happened at the Night Market isn’t over, either.”

  Roger’s amusement abruptly faded. “Wait, there’s more to this Night Market business, too? What happened?”

  Marceline tried to make her shrug every bit as irritating as one of his smirks.

  He just sighed. “No need to get in a snit about it. Just tell me already, and I’ll play with you some other time.”

  Marceline resisted the urge to stamp her feet—Cerise was always saying it was childish, and perhaps Cerise was right about this one thing. “You never want to tell me even the slightest bit of news, and yet you act like I’ll tell you anything you like just because you ask for it.” She sniffed. “Well, fair is fair. You’ll get nothing out of me.”

  He laughed, undeterred. “Come on, monkey. You can hardly blame me if I don’t want Tom catching wind of this or that.”

  “And you can hardly blame me if he feels the same way about you, can you?”

  “That’s why I’m not asking after something Tom knows; I’m asking after something you know.” She must have looked unconvinced, because he sighed again, running a hand through his hair. “Listen, monkey, this is more than idle curiosity. If you know something about Seth, I want to hear it.”

  Marceline scowled. “What do you always care so much about him for?”

  “Ah, it’s jealousy now, is it?”

  She should’ve kept her mouth shut, but she couldn’t help it. “If you’re thinking of making him your apprentice, you’re daft.”

  “Because you’d be so very much better, you mean?”

  “Better than him!” Marceline snapped. “And better than anyone you know, I bet. Seth isn’t even a thief, and if he were, he’d be terrible. But I have the talent, whether you want to admit it or not.”

  “And so modest,” Roger said.

  “Please. Are you going to tell me you value modesty?”

  He laughed. “I’ve gotten men to trust things you wouldn’t believe, but even I’d have trouble with that one, I admit it.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar. “I’ll tell you this for nothing, monkey, since you care so much: I wasn’t ever thinking of taking Seth as an apprentice. He isn’t above you, and neither is anyone else, for the simple reason that I don’t want anyone as an apprentice, and I doubt I ever will.”

  It was rare for him to be so direct with her, and she tried not to let her disappointment show on her face. “But why?”

  “Why don’t you ask your old man the same question? He never took an apprentice either, and unlike me, he’s about out of time to do it.”


  Marceline shrugged again, because she didn’t like talking about Tom’s affairs with Roger.

  He just kept on laughing. “Well, then don’t bother me about it, either. I’m surprised you’d even want to apprentice with someone he hates so much.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Marceline said. “You’re just annoying.”

  “And you’re not the first one to say so, either.” He stood up, brushing his hands off on his trousers. “So. This business at the Night Market. You didn’t think I’d forgotten it, did you?”

  She hadn’t. “I’ll tell you when I know for sure,” she said, and paused. “Maybe.”

  Roger clapped a hand to his heart in mock resignation. “It’s about as generous an offer as I should expect from a monkey, I suppose.”

  * * *

  Roger talked a good game about adventure, once he was tucked into a barstool, a tankard of ale in front of him. But Roger wasn’t here now, to see how the pristine wilds of his tales were choked with blood-colored nettles and infuriatingly vibrant weeds, how pathless forests were more of an annoyance than a wonder when you actually had somewhere to go. Deinol stumbled onto a rosebush—no flowers, all thorns, naturally—and swore, longing for nothing so much as a return to the grimy back alleys he knew so well.

  He’d announced his intention to cover the rear in hopes of obscuring the fact that he was falling behind. Seth, who as the frailest of them had every right to be the slowest, was holding up surprisingly well. He seemed to have two distinct advantages: his ability to slip by brambles and between trees and his desire to keep pace with Seren Almasy, who forged mercilessly ahead as if all terrain were the same to her. Lucius hung about in the middle; even though it was his turn to shoulder the pack, Deinol was sure he could have stayed abreast of the other two if he’d wanted, but no doubt he was showing some measure of solidarity.

  Sure enough, once Deinol made an effort to close the gap between them, Lucius dropped back, falling into step with him. He didn’t speak, just kept a companionable distance away, not quite shoulder to shoulder with him.