The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  He found her leaning against a tree not far away, eating with slow, methodical bites what looked like slices of dried apple. She nodded at him as he approached, but didn’t say anything.

  “Are you nervous?” Seth asked.

  She took another bite, and he felt a little envious; there had been no fruit to be had at the last village Seren had let them pass through. She must have had it with her since before they met in Valyanrend. Seth supposed she traveled often, so no doubt she was used to stocking up for long journeys. “Say wary, rather,” she said. “It’s only natural when you approach an uncertain situation.”

  “Do you think something bad’s going to happen with those men at the shrine?”

  Seren regarded the next slice of apple before taking a bite. “I think we’re going to have to kill them. Whether you think of that as something bad is up to you.”

  Seth didn’t know what he thought of it. Those men had already done bad enough things themselves, if the farmer could be believed. No, he was worried about something bad happening to one of them, not at the thought of anyone they might have to face.

  “I wish I could help fight,” he said, and Seren smiled.

  “I understand that well enough, boy, but those friends of yours are talented—the one more than the other, of course, but they’re both good enough, and they’re used to fighting together. I think we’ll be all right.”

  “This must be more than you bargained for,” Seth said. “You agreed to help us fetch something, not to risk your life—or fight anyone.”

  Seren shook her head. “From the moment I first heard about that stone, I knew there’d be blood in the getting of it. It’s not the first time I’ve done something like this, either. Don’t worry about me.”

  Seth watched her take another bite of apple, and then he asked, “Could I have a piece of that?”

  She smiled again—wider, but still the same dry, one-sided expression. “You won’t like it,” she said, but she handed him a piece anyway.

  He studied it, wondering what she’d meant. It looked just like an ordinary piece of dried apple, slightly browned but still with a deep red rind. He shrugged and took a bite—and then he understood. It was tart—so tart he almost choked. It tasted more like a green apple, or one that wasn’t quite ripe, with none of the sweetness he’d come to expect from red ones.

  Seren watched with vague amusement as he spluttered. “I told you. Not quite as sweet as you thought, eh?”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Seth said. “What sort of apple was that?”

  “I don’t think anyone likes it at the first taste,” Seren said. “It’s like particularly potent spirits—you choke on them at first, until you get used to them. Now I find other apples too sweet, so I don’t much care for them.” She glanced at the piece still left in Seth’s hand. “If you’re not going to eat that, then give it back.”

  But Seth took another stubborn bite, and managed to swallow it without any fuss this time. He finished the last bite as well, and looked up at Seren with a sheepish grin.

  She shook her head at him. “I don’t know why you’re looking so pleased with yourself. You don’t get any reward for finishing it.”

  She almost looked as if she might ruffle his hair, the way Deinol did so often and so unconsciously, but then Deinol himself called to them, making his way through the trees. “Seth, tell the assassin it’s time we were off.”

  Seren rolled her eyes, retreating into herself again. “Sweet gods, I am not an assassin. How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Come off it, Deinol,” Lucius agreed, and Seth nearly jumped—where had he come from?

  “Oh, you come off it—like hell she isn’t. How many people do you know who can kill like that?” Lucius opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Deinol continued, “And don’t talk to me about talent; gods know you’re as talented as she is, but the way she fights…”

  “The point of fighting is to kill people as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Seren snapped. “If you’ve forgotten that in the course of all your petty looting and ridiculous duels, that isn’t my fault.”

  “See, that’s something an assassin would say.”

  Seren threw up her hands. “If by assassin you just mean murderer, I expect we’re all that, except for the boy. And if you mean someone who kills for coin, well, I don’t, and I never have. So you’re wrong either way.”

  “I believe you,” Lucius said, and Deinol sulked.

  “I don’t much care,” Seren replied, “but thanks, I suppose.”

  Deinol had been right about one thing—the sun had all but set, and it was time to make for the shrine. As they moved off out of the trees, Lucius asked, “So after we get through this … that’s when you’ll tell us what job it is we owe you?”

  “If I still think it’s worth it after that,” Seren said, “then yes. But I imagine at this point I might as well follow things through—I came this far with you, after all.”

  Deinol cocked his head at her. “You’re not worried you’ll be … late, was it? Your precious time and all that?”

  Seren hesitated. “It isn’t actually like that—nothing bad will happen if I’m late, I’ll just be late. And that irks me, so I try to avoid it when I can. That’s all.” She jerked her chin forward. “See there? That’ll be the shrine.”

  They got a few more curious looks as they passed through the village, but it was small, and most people were already inside now that night had fallen. The shrine was still clearly visible, though. A squatter building than most Ninist vestries, without the high pointed spire that always marked them out, it was still tall and long, with an arched roof and two heavy wooden doors.

  Lucius stopped first. “Seth,” he said.

  “What is it?” Seth asked, though he could guess what he was about to hear.

  “You can’t do any fighting,” Lucius said. “Go on past the shrine, and stay out of sight. We’ll fetch you on our way out.”

  “But—”

  “We won’t fight as well if we have to keep an eye on you,” Lucius said, “and we haven’t time to argue. Do it.”

  Seth nodded. “All right.” But he stayed a moment longer. “Good luck in there.”

  Lucius smiled. “Oh, I expect we won’t need too much of that. But thanks, all the same.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The shrine’s windows were long and narrow, made of dirty, blue-stained glass. It was hardly picturesque, but Deinol hoped the grime would be thick enough to keep anyone from noticing what was going on inside. They’d killed all the men there easily enough—Almasy had been especially helpful, he had to admit—but the last one got in a lucky slice to Lucius’s forearm, and he wanted to wrap it up before they set out.

  Deinol caught his eye, and he grinned weakly. “All right?”

  “I should be asking you that,” Deinol said. “Are you badly hurt?”

  Lucius shook his head. “Eh, it’s a scratch. Wash and dress it and I’ll be fine. I’m embarrassed more than anything; that lout didn’t have half my skill.”

  “He was a better swordsman than he looked,” Almasy said from farther away. “And even the best of us make mistakes now and then.” Deinol followed her voice, and found her at the far end of the shrine, plucking something from atop the altar. “And this is it, I assume.” She squinted at whatever was in her hand. “How odd.”

  “What is it?” Deinol asked.

  She tossed it to him. “I think there’s something written on it? It’s not anything I can read, but the marks don’t seem random.”

  The stone itself wasn’t what Deinol had expected—it was glossy, slightly transparent, its surface covered in etchings that followed a spiral pattern. Almasy was right: they did look somewhat uniform, like they could be letters, but there was nothing there he could understand. “You were wrong, you know,” he said to her, hefting the stone in one hand. It was much lighter than he would have guessed, given its size, and he wondered what it was made of—n
o common rock had that weight and texture.

  She blinked. “What?”

  “What you said when we left the city—that Elgar didn’t send his guards because whatever he was after was too obviously valuable. There’s nothing valuable about this that I can see—I’m not even sure I would pick it up if I saw it lying in the street.”

  “You’re right,” Almasy said, and frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense. If this is all it is, what was the harm of sending soldiers?”

  Lucius nodded at the bodies around them. “Maybe the soldiers might’ve become like this lot—heard the priest’s ravings and gotten convinced there was something to the stone.”

  Almasy shrugged. “Maybe he was right, for all we know.”

  Lucius grimaced at that. “Gods, this is going to bother me just enough to make me uneasy, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a long enough journey back to the capital,” Deinol said. “If the thing has aught extraordinary about it, we’ll have plenty of time to find it.”

  “But we’re not going back yet,” Lucius reminded him. He looked at Almasy. “You helped us, like we agreed, and I do try to keep my word when I can help it. What is it we can do for you?”

  But Almasy shook her head. “Not now. Let’s take care of it tomorrow; it’s too late to travel much farther anyway.”

  “As you like,” Lucius said. “We should get clear of the village, at least.”

  “And hope Seth’s where he told us he would be,” Deinol added. “I’m surprised the boy didn’t follow us into the shrine.”

  * * *

  Seth supposed they didn’t exactly have a direction—away from the village was good enough—but Seren walked confidently ahead, and as she was the only one who knew where they were going next, he was content to follow her. He was glad when they finally decided it was safe to stop for the night, though; they’d done even more walking than they were used to, and the others had had to fight a battle besides. Seth was probably the least tired among them, so he agreed to take first watch, and it was doubtless a testament to their own exhaustion that the others didn’t argue. Lucius and Deinol went to sleep almost immediately, but Seth looked up after some indeterminate amount of time to find Seren staring at him.

  “Aren’t you going to sleep?” he asked.

  “Think I’m getting there,” she mumbled, but her face was drawn, her brow vaguely furrowed.

  “Did you have any trouble?” Seth asked. “Getting it, I mean?”

  She shook her head. “Easy enough. Easier than I’d thought. The hard part comes now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked at the stone, lying in the grass in front of Seth’s crossed ankles—he had to keep watch over it as well. “What do you think, boy? Is it just a rock, or is it something else?”

  Seth considered it, reaching for the stone and turning it over in his hands. “I think it doesn’t matter,” he said at last. “It’s what we need to free Morgan and Braddock. Even if it’s a weapon … well, Elgar has many weapons already.”

  “Yet, weapon or not, this was important to him.”

  Seth put the stone down again, careful not to drop it. “I can’t say I know Elgar personally, but word is he believes all sorts of outlandish things. They say he thinks the marquise of Esthrades is using magic to defeat his men in battle.”

  Seren smiled. “I’d heard that one, yes. And that he won’t keep men to occupy Mist’s Edge because he thinks it’s haunted.”

  “By vengeful ghosts,” Seth said, and laughed. “I wish it were—then maybe they could take care of him for us. I guess he’d just get replaced by someone even worse, though.”

  “Quite a bit of history is bad people being replaced by worse people, it seems,” Seren said. “Sometimes they get replaced by slightly less bad people instead, and then that’s really something. Everyone writes a book about it.”

  “My stepfather used to talk about what it was like when Gerde Selte ruled Hallarnon. Elgar was like a bleating lamb compared to her, he always said.”

  Seren tapped her chin. “From what I’ve heard, Gerde was worse—more talented than Elgar, probably, but worse. They say she liked to leech some of her enemies, and burn the rest alive. Elgar may be just as merciless, but he isn’t half so fond of terror—he kills to accomplish things, not for the sheer spectacle of it.” She smiled again, even more dryly than usual. “The problem is that the things he wants to accomplish aren’t so lovely, of course. At least he’s further from his goal than Gerde ever was.”

  “Is that really true?” Seth asked. “They like to talk about how she killed all her rivals, but if that’s so, who was left to assassinate her?”

  Seren waved a hand at him. “It wasn’t an assassination; that’s just a story. She was unchallenged in Hallarnon, and when she died, your precious city was in chaos for months. It was sickness that felled her, not some arcane poison—just bad luck. Or good, depending on how you see it.”

  “Hmm,” Seth said. “I guess it’s too much to hope for to have Elgar choke on his breakfast in the morning, eh?”

  “You can always hope,” Seren replied, staring off into the trees.

  * * *

  Seth woke so suddenly that his head nearly snapped back off his neck, his eyes frantically blinking in the dark. For just a moment he didn’t know why he’d woken, and then he did—his watch hadn’t ended, had it?

  He tried to remember. Seren had had the watch after his, but she’d been awake at first, and they’d been talking. They’d stopped eventually, and he thought she’d dozed after that, but had he woken her before falling asleep himself or hadn’t he? “Seren?” he whispered, but no one answered, and he kept blinking, trying to see through the darkness of the forest. He stared at where she had been sleeping, but he could make out nothing but grass.

  Then he heard a rustle from beyond the edge of the clearing, and a horrible certainty made the pit of his stomach drop out.

  He dove headlong after the noise, sprinting as fast as he could, tearing past trees as their branches snatched at his eyes. He could see just enough to keep from slamming into anything, but he hardly cared—all he cared about was finding her, and if that brought every creature that lurked in this forest snarling out of the darkness, it didn’t matter.

  It felt like he’d been running for half a moment and half an hour when she caught him, but it was probably closer to the former. She threw one arm across his waist, trapping his arms at his sides; the other hand was at his throat, and he didn’t have to see it to know it held a knife.

  “You’re going to want to do something very stupid right about now,” Seren said, right against his ear. “Don’t.”

  Seth started to squirm, but then the edge of the knife kissed his throat and he went still. “You took it,” he said, hardly able to breathe.

  For a moment she was silent, and almost as frozen as he was. “Aye,” she said. “And I’m going to leave with it.”

  “That’s what your errand was,” he hissed, clenching his fists so he wouldn’t struggle. “You were already looking for it, even back in the prison.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?” he insisted. “What’s it to you?”

  “To me? Nothing. It’s a rock.”

  He wanted to spit, but his mouth was dry. “Liar.”

  He’d thought that would wound her, but she didn’t even flinch, didn’t tighten her hold on him. “I said I’d help you find it, and I did. And now you’re going to do something for me, just like you said. Believe me, that’s the way we both want this to go.”

  “Like hell it is,” Seth snapped, but that made her grip tighten, the knife coming so close that it was an effort not to whimper.

  “Boy,” Seren whispered, holding so still, “listen to me, because I mean what I am telling you: I don’t want to kill you, but I will.”

  Seth scoffed—or as close as he could get to it with the fear bearing down on him. “I thought you only did what you wanted to do—no less, and no more.”<
br />
  He felt Seren hesitate, though she didn’t move. “Aye,” she said again. “And this is what I want—make no mistake about that. One day, if you’re lucky, you’ll kill for something too.”

  Seth said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. She was going to get away, and it was going to be his fault.

  “I’m going to let you go,” Seren said, “and I’m going to walk away. If you scream, or if you take one step to follow me, I will end you. You can shout if you like once I’m gone—I expect it’s the only way the others will find you again.”

  “We’ll come after you,” Seth insisted. “We’ll get it back, and they’ll kill you.”

  “You won’t catch me before I get where I’m going,” Seren said. “And by then it won’t matter.”

  “You couldn’t take them both,” Seth said; he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “I’m nothing, but against Lucius and Deinol both, you’d be—”

  He felt the knife prick at his throat, and for a moment he thought she’d killed him, but then he realized the pain was slight, and he was still breathing. Seren shifted her hand just a bit, and he felt something sticky slide against his neck and the underside of his jaw. “Do you feel that? That’s your blood, boy, do you understand? Don’t make me spill any more of it.”

  Seth took a deep breath, suddenly light-headed. “Fine. Go.”

  “If you—”

  “I won’t. Get the hell out of here.”

  She released him so suddenly, it was almost as if she’d vanished. Seth was afraid to turn—he didn’t think she was bluffing, and what if she counted that movement as a step?—so he stood where she’d left him until he could no longer hear her. Then he released a breath, trying to steady himself against the dizzying pounding at his temples. He had to call for Lucius and Deinol now, or the shame would overtake him. He’d curl up in a ball amidst the fallen leaves, and they would never find him.

  He shouted their names until they stood before him, and by then he was out of breath. Deinol looked bewildered enough, but Lucius looked as if he only wished he were. “Do I need to ask where Seren’s gone or don’t I?” he said.