The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  Braddock shook his head. “Those damned signs have helped us out so far. We may as well follow this one too.”

  So they went to the right, following that path for another indeterminable amount of time until they reached the second split. There was another etching on the right wall again, just the same as the last one they’d found, and again they followed it. When they stumbled upon a third one, with the same symbol on the right wall as before, Braddock turned to her uneasily. “We can’t be going around in circles, can we?”

  “That’s not possible,” Morgan said firmly. “There’s no room to get turned around—there’s only been one path so far.”

  “If you say so.” He looked dubiously at the mark, then peered down the hall. “Right again?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Why not?”

  This time the path went on straight for so long that Morgan was sure they’d come out again at the Howling Gate, but finally Braddock said, “It’s a bit lighter, don’t you think?”

  “Hmm,” Morgan said as they turned a corner. “I think—” And then she stopped, because they were in front of a wall with a hole in the center that looked large enough to crawl through. She handed the torch to Braddock. “Hold this.”

  “Are you sure you should—” But Morgan was already halfway through the hole, and once she’d reached the other side, she turned to murmur back to him.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “But put out the torch; you won’t need it.”

  She didn’t stand up until Braddock joined her, and then they stood there together, as if frozen in place. The moon was shining down on them, and beneath their feet was grass. “We’re outside the city,” Morgan realized.

  “Just,” Braddock agreed. “Look there.”

  They’d come out of the side of a hill, with a riverbank within reach and surrounded by clumps of scraggly trees. Perhaps a hundred and a quarter yards away lay the towering city walls, casting hardly any shadow by moonlight. Morgan looked up at them in disbelief. “That’s one way to escape, I suppose,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Roger sat slumped behind the bar in the empty Dragon’s Head, spinning the ruby between his fingers on the counter top. He’d had to be careful making inquiries about it—a prize this valuable would only attract the worst sort of attention—but he hadn’t turned up a single thread to follow. Even Tom’s information had been woefully sparse on ancient jewel thefts, and if he didn’t know, it was doubtful anyone would. How many hundreds of years had the thing been sitting in its hiding place, anyway? It might’ve been there as long as the statues themselves, or been put there generations later—there was no way for him to tell.

  Seth’s pendant, at least, he could be freer with, since it was practically worthless—a judgment that was only confirmed when he had it appraised. “The stone’s a real emerald, small as it is,” the man had said, “but the setting is clumsily done, far more amateurish than it deserves. If you ask me, it looks like an apprentice’s vanity piece, something to cut your teeth on. There’s no worth in the thing beyond the materials themselves.”

  But that couldn’t be true, or why would Elgar have cared that it was stolen? It couldn’t just be the principle of the bloody thing. He wished he knew more about the pendant’s original owner—“a boy who won’t be needing this anymore,” according to what Seth had remembered, but that was far too narrow even for him to chase.

  He groaned, setting the ruby to spinning again. Most thieves would puff themselves up at merely having found a treasure like this, and wouldn’t give another thought to where it had come from. But Roger had far more ambition than that, just as Gran had had. She was the one who had told him about Valyanrend’s secret past, the things hidden underneath that even the scholars had forgotten. It all went back to the Ninists, she always said, but it hadn’t started there; it was the Ninists who had put an end to what came before, in order to build their vestries and spread their teachings. There had been some older, stranger religion, some secret sect, that the Ninists had taken over and destroyed, obliterating it so utterly that even their own faithful eventually forgot the truth. It was only their people, the thieves and swindlers, who took pains to remember, Gran had said, because they remembered that secrets held power, and that it was very dangerous to lie when you didn’t know the truth. Someone ought to have told the Ninists that.

  That was how he was going to make his name—by finding those secrets, and making them his own. He was as fine a swindler and schemer as Sheath had ever seen; there was no point in honing those skills any further. But stealing whatever truth his city had kept hidden for so many centuries—that was what would make him a thief of legend, worthy of the Halfen name. Gran had known he could do it, too; he was sure of it. “Roger,” she’d always said, “you’re the cleverest Halfen among us, and don’t you forget it.” But then she inevitably paused, and added, “Except for your cousin Len, but that boy’s no true Halfen, and an awful prig besides.”

  But Len, Roger thought, spinning the ruby savagely, had hated being a Halfen, and had hated living in Sheath, and had hated what he called Gran’s silly stories. Len had left Valyanrend to make his fortune honestly—anathema to any true Halfen—and that meant Roger was his family’s only chance. He had to figure out Valyanrend’s secrets, for their legacy as much as for his own. What had been so dangerous about this city that the Ninists didn’t even want their own faithful to discover it, and yet so vital that others sought any means to preserve the knowledge of it?

  He watched the ruby as it slowed its spin, trembling toward where the pendant lay flat on the counter top. He wasn’t expecting anything more remarkable than the sight of the ruby wobbling as it struck the pendant. But as the two objects crashed into each other, in the moment before the ruby spun away, he thought he saw it catch the light in an odd way, reflecting a flash from no source that he could see.

  Roger sat up straighter, stilling the ruby with one hand and snatching up the pendant in the other. He let it dangle from its chain, then swung it like a pendulum at the ruby in his other hand.

  The first time it struck the ruby, the flash, if there truly was one, was too faint for him to be certain of it. But the second time there could be no mistaking it—it glowed, just for a moment, when the pendant hit it.

  Next, Roger pinched the pendant between thumb and forefinger, pressing it against the ruby directly. Again, the reaction was so slight, he couldn’t truly tell if he was imagining it, but then a thought struck him: he was pressing the edge of the pendant’s setting to the ruby, not the emerald in its center. He shifted his grip on it and tried again, this time pressing the two gems directly together. And there was the flash again, momentary but unmistakable.

  Now that he knew the trick of it, he found he could reproduce the same results endlessly: every time he touched emerald and ruby together, the ruby gave off that flash, and the pendant failed to change or react in any way he could see. When he’d exhausted his attempts at further experimentation, he laid both objects on the bar, staring at them in bewilderment. This was certainly a secret, but what did it mean? Was it the ruby that was exceptional, or the pendant, or both? Were they connected somehow? Had they been—

  “Roger!” Morgan whispered from somewhere above him, and he nearly fell over the bar.

  “What the hell?” He peered up the stairs, but it was undoubtedly her, albeit clad in chains and a lot more grime than he was used to seeing on her. She didn’t seem to have seen what he was doing, and he quickly swept both objects off the bar, setting each in a separate pocket for good measure. “Morgan, what are you doing here?”

  “It’s my tavern, isn’t it? Now fetch a pick and help us get these chains off.”

  “You escaped, then?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, they decided to let us go for a song, but we kept the chains out of sentiment. Will you fetch a pick or won’t you?”

  “What kind of thief needs to fetch a lockpick?” Roger asked, rolling his own eyes. “Come here into t
he light. Is Braddock upstairs?”

  Morgan nodded. “Sleeping. We figured you’d probably come by.”

  “Aye, told Lucius and them I’d see to it—and you, before.”

  “I owe you for it,” Morgan said, “and I’m not like to forget it. The pick?”

  Roger wasn’t some trembly fingered novice, so he had Morgan and Braddock freed before you could tell the story of Cousin Ayne and the fishwife—though he tried. Then, once he’d given them time to rub at their wrists and Braddock had poured a tankard high with ale, he asked, “You won’t be insulted, I hope, if I ask how in all the hells you managed to get out?”

  Morgan smiled. “You got in, didn’t you? Why is it so hard to imagine someone else could get out?”

  “Because someone else isn’t me,” Roger said, “and you and Braddock, no offense meant, are definitely not me. You yourself are always trumpeting your own honesty, and I’m sure you’re right, but honest people tend to be terrible at escaping prisons.”

  “Well,” Morgan said, “we had … help, of a sort. Someone else figured it out first, I think, and we just … followed along.”

  “It’s going to sound crazy,” Braddock added, nursing his ale, “and if we weren’t standing here now, I’d swear we were crazy. But somebody cracked that dungeon even better than you, swindler.”

  “Maybe not better,” Morgan objected, and Roger had to smile. “What would we have done if they’d put us in a different cell?”

  Braddock shrugged. “For all we know, there are passages all over the damn place. Maybe there was one three cells over that came out right under where I’m standing.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Morgan said.

  Roger tried to contain his impatience, and failed. “So you found a passage? To where? From where?”

  “From our cell,” Morgan said, “and … well, it goes a lot of places.”

  Roger knew he must’ve looked bright-eyed by then, feverishly eager, struggling to keep still. “How many other places?”

  Braddock laughed. “Look at him, would you? We’ve beaten him at his own game. Bet with all your searching you never found a place like this.”

  Morgan was more solemn. “Roger, listen. The tunnels are very old—far older than the one you took us through under the vestry. We think they’re dangerous. So I’ll tell you, if you like, but don’t go poking around too much down there. Besides, we tried to hide our escape, but we can’t say whether the guards won’t find it and come after us.”

  “Yes, yes, all right, just tell me, will you?”

  She sighed. “It forks enough to make me dizzy, but we discovered three ways out. The first one we tried took us outside the city, but that was no good—how were we supposed to make it through the gates with these chains on? So we went back in. The next one came out in the upper Bowels, right next to Rat’s Tail, but that’s bad territory to be in, so we thought we’d see if the next one was closer. And the next one…” Morgan hesitated. “The next one was right where Sheath runs into the Fades, at the end of that alley down a ways from where that uncle of yours used to live, across from where they had that fire however many years ago.”

  “My Halfen uncle or my Varsten uncle?” Roger asked.

  Morgan blinked at him. “Eh?”

  Roger tried again. “I’m not sure which uncle you’re talking about. My father only had one brother, so he’s my Halfen uncle. The other was my aunt’s husband, and his name was Varsten—Irius Varsten. Gran was always skeptical of that one, because he—”

  “All right, I understand,” Morgan said. “It wasn’t Irius, so it must’ve been the other one.”

  “Uncle Tarben?”

  “Hmm … no.”

  “Maybe you mean one of my cousins,” Roger said. “Haften? Nall?”

  Morgan snapped her fingers. “Darry. Darry Halfen, that was it.”

  “Oh him,” Roger said. “Aye, he was a cousin—distant, Gran liked to say, because he was a terrible thief, and with all that Gerrin blood—”

  “Yes, Roger, that’s lovely. Anyway, it was down from where he used to live, back when Irius was alive.”

  “Aye, I think I know the spot.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t go looking, though, Roger. Things are about to get a sight more dangerous around here, I’m afraid.”

  Roger nodded. “If Elgar was really keeping you two as hostages in exchange for whatever it is he’s after, they won’t just let you go. Normally this city is large enough to allow people to disappear, but if they offer coin … Sheath takes care of its own, but only up to a point. We are largely thieves and swindlers here, after all.”

  “There’s no way of knowing if anyone saw us make our way here,” Morgan added. “It wasn’t far, but chains are fairly remarkable, I’d say. Braddock and I’ll have to leave the city; I don’t see any other way.”

  “What about the rest of them?” Braddock asked. “Shouldn’t we go fetch them back? There’s no need for them to do any favors for Elgar now.”

  Roger shook his head. “They may already be at Hornoak by now; you’d probably just pass each other by on the way. No, I can’t imagine they’ll report to Elgar’s men without coming to me first, and I can tell them what happened. Who knows? If they manage to get their hands on the thing, it might be we can turn it into a profit, or at least make use of it ourselves.”

  “I’ll be pleased enough if they all get back safe,” Morgan said. “Where do you think we should go? Esthrades?”

  Roger considered it. “Esthrades is generally safe these days, but Reglay isn’t, and going around will take you too long. No, I’d head south, near the Issamiri border. Wherever you settle, try to get word to me, and I’ll try to get it back to you once this thing’s blown over—and I’m sure it will. Then you can come back and have the rest of us waiting for you, and we’ll be able to get drunk and tell tales about this whole thing.”

  Morgan glanced around the room; he couldn’t tell if she believed him. He couldn’t tell if he believed it himself. “We’ll see,” she said.

  * * *

  Their first sight of Hornoak consisted of a couple of sagging huts with wispy thatched roofs. There was an older man leaning on a pitchfork in front of one of them, and Lucius waved to him. Seth couldn’t help tensing up a little, and he saw Deinol frown. “Is that wise?”

  “Trust me,” Lucius said, and even if they hadn’t, it was too late: the man was already walking toward them.

  He was callused and squinty-eyed, but his mouth was mild. “If it’s an inn you want,” he said, his voice low and scratchy, “you’ll not find one. Used to be travelers could kit up in the old shrine, but no more.”

  “Is that so?” Lucius said smoothly, raising his eyebrows. “May I ask why?”

  The man shrugged. “Sure, what’s it to me? We had a pack of fellows come in—acquaintances of Bergen’s, I think, or at least they were up to something at his place. But it’s no bigger than mine, so he had Marten house ’em in the shrine for some days. Nobody much liked them, but they kept to themselves, and we’ve seen worse.” He frowned, staring back off into the village. “Then all of a sudden they decided they wanted Marten’s altar stone.”

  “They wanted whose what?” Lucius asked.

  “Marten, he’s the closest thing to a priest we’ve got here, takes care of the shrine with that boy of his. ‘Altar stone’ is what he calls this hunk of rubbish that he found in the shrine somewhere—he’s convinced the thing’s some kind of talisman, but I can assure you it’s a bloody rock. Either way, these fellows must’ve heard Marten babbling about it, and they decided they had to have the thing, and they somehow convinced Bergen that he had to have it too, even though he’s no stranger to it. Anyone else would’ve let them have the damned rock, but Marten was ready to defend his altar stone with his life. Lucky for him, Bergen convinced the others to just beat him and run him off—I bet they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him, and they’ve been shaking their damn swords at anyone who comes near the shrine ever since. No o
ne knows why they haven’t just cleared out with the thing, but they don’t leave—don’t even come out of the shrine unless they’re sending somebody to fetch food. It’s right odd, to be sure, but I don’t know how we’re supposed to get to the bottom of it.”

  Lucius fiddled with the hilt of his sword. “Say we were searching for a place to sleep and wouldn’t mind a fight, either. Would that ruffle any feathers?”

  The man shrugged again. “Bergen’s got no other kin that we know of, and those others have been nothing but trouble since they showed up. I hope you’re not expecting a reward for clearing them out, but I imagine most folks’ll be glad of it, if you can manage it.”

  “I see,” Lucius said. “Perhaps we’ll head toward this shrine, then.”

  The man leaned heavily on his pitchfork, pointing with his free arm. “It’s over that way, to the northeast. Big thing on the hill—tallest building around by far. You’ll see it.”

  “Thanks,” Lucius said. When the man nodded and went back to pitching hay, the rest of them moved on, though they didn’t continue up the hill toward Hornoak. Instead, as if by unspoken agreement, they moved off to one side, into the trees.

  “We’ll have to leave as soon as we get our hands on it,” Seren muttered.

  Lucius nodded. “This Marten’ll be wanting his altar stone back, and we don’t want to explain why we won’t be giving it to him. The fact that we want it at all might make us as bad as these brigands in the villagers’ eyes.”

  “The sun’s almost set—maybe we should wait for dark before we move,” Deinol suggested. “With any luck, the rest of the village needn’t know we were ever here.”

  “That would be best,” Lucius agreed. He looked over at Seren and Seth. “If you have any preparations to make, now would be the time.”

  Seth didn’t, so he just fidgeted and watched the others. He wasn’t sure how long they all stood there until Seren finally wandered away, drifting off between the trees. Deinol shot an anxious glance after her, but Lucius shook his head before reaching into the pack he carried, probably in search of food. He didn’t react when Seth moved to follow her, though, so he figured that was all right.