The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  Seth bit his lip and felt absurdly like crying. “You don’t.”

  Deinol still blinked at them. “Why, what’s she done now?”

  Seth couldn’t speak, and Lucius sighed into the silence. “She stole it after all. I should’ve guessed.”

  “Then what the hell are you standing around for?” Deinol nearly roared. “We’ve got to go after her! Which way did she go?”

  “I don’t know,” Seth said.

  “Deinol—”

  He ignored both of them. “She was as tired as we were—more, probably. She can’t have gotten far. We—”

  “—move far more clumsily than she does,” Lucius finished. “Even me. If we go looking for her now, in the dark, we’ll be lucky if we don’t find her—then we also won’t find the point of that knife. And by the time morning comes, she’ll be so far away she might as well be across the sea. She knows where she’s going and how to get there; we barely know where we are.”

  Deinol stared at him. “Is it so simple for you? Can you just give up on Morgan and Braddock like that?”

  “I haven’t once said I’m giving up.” Lucius leaned against the nearest tree, stroking the hilt of his sword. “I’m just saying that chasing after her is hopeless.”

  “That’s the same thing!”

  “No, Deinol, it isn’t.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That damned stone is worth nothing to us in itself, remember? It’s just a means to an end. We need to find another way, that’s all.”

  Deinol kicked at the grass. “What other way is there?”

  “Well, we’ve got to try some, haven’t we? What we need to do now is go back to Sheath and find Roger, and then we can come up with a plan. Even if trying to spring them again is a bad idea, maybe we can gain an audience with that Oswhent—”

  “Because he’ll be so happy to hear how we failed, I’m sure.”

  “Look, Deinol, it wasn’t unlikely Elgar would have tried to kill us whether we succeeded or not. Even if we had gotten the stone, it wasn’t a safe or certain thing, and you know it.”

  “Aye, I do know it. That’s not what gets to me.” He paced along the line of the trees, pausing every other step to scuff the grass. “She tricked us. We had it, and she stole it from us.”

  Lucius smiled. “We’ve certainly stolen enough from other people.”

  “That’s not what I mean!” He threw up his hands, then let them fall to his sides again. “She played us for fools.”

  Lucius sighed. “Well, it worked.”

  “Not if we find her—”

  “Deinol, I’m sorry to have to remind you of this, but every day we waste looking for her is another day Elgar has to grow impatient and decide Morgan and Braddock are better dead. We’ve spent enough time away. We need to go back.”

  Deinol rubbed at his face, then looked to Seth. “You’ve been awfully quiet. What do you think?”

  Lucius turned to him too, and Seth fidgeted under the sudden scrutiny. What could he say? The truth was he couldn’t even think about what Seren had done without feeling anger rise in him, and he would’ve been willing to chase her to the ends of the earth, if he only knew he’d find her there. But Lucius was right—she was long gone by now, and there was no way they were going to hunt her down. If only he’d been able to fight like Lucius and Deinol, to challenge her instead of standing there helpless while she walked away …

  “I think Lucius is right,” he said at last. “Revenge may be sweet, but it won’t do much for Morgan and Braddock, and we have to put them first.” He stared at the ground. “Look, this was—this was my fault. I bargained for her freedom, I let her get loose—”

  “And I was the one who wanted her to come with us in the first place,” Lucius said. “Hell, it seems the only blameless one here is Deinol, eh? You never liked her.”

  “Oh, I deserve my fair share of blame,” Deinol said. “I could’ve tried harder to get you two idiots to listen to reason, and I didn’t. Besides, we’d never have gotten this far without her—you think the two of us alone could’ve taken on five brigands in that shrine, or even those looters? You figured her blade would be useful, and you were right—you just didn’t think about what would come afterward.”

  Lucius rubbed at his arm. “My skills really do need sharpening if five against two is a problem for me. Remember when we did seven at once on the Rat’s Tail job?”

  “Remember? I’m not like to forget that. I saved your hide at the end there.”

  “Aye, but four of the kills were mine.”

  Deinol laughed. “You would remember that.”

  Lucius shuffled his feet. “So…”

  “So, fine,” Deinol said. “We’ll go back to Sheath, and we’ll find Roger. But if the gods are ever good enough to cross my path with that woman’s again…”

  “The gods are rarely that good,” Lucius said. “But if they are, I suppose we’ll deal with it then.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “A daring prison break from the very heart of the Citadel, and you’ve turned up no news about it?” Captain Wyles smirked. “Isn’t information your job?”

  “Information, yes.” Varalen spread his hands along the edge of the table. “There’s always information to be found when you’re willing to pay for it. But will it actually help? I doubt it.”

  “And the cell yielded nothing,” Elgar said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Nothing,” Varalen answered anyway. “The only clue we have is the coin that was found in the corridor, though I suppose that could as easily have been dropped by one of our men while he was making his rounds.”

  “It seems to me that my men don’t make very many rounds, if they’re this inept at keeping prisoners in their cells,” Elgar said, smoothing his beard. His breath came a bit short, and his eyes were still bloodshot, but he looked much better than he had the day before. He had walked the walls in the predawn hours, and seemed to have caught a bit of a chill. Varalen knew better than to ask after his health: all men, no matter how great, took sick from time to time, but Elgar scowled ferociously at even the barest suggestion he might be ill, as if it were some grave insult. “By now,” he continued, “there is little hope of finding them still in the city.”

  “Unfortunately,” Varalen agreed.

  “Then perhaps it is time we stopped paying for information about them.”

  “We needn’t have paid for it to start with,” Wyles said. “Given a longer leash, my men could—”

  “Your men could round people up at random and terrorize them into feeding us a thousand lies,” Varalen finished for him.

  “And have you turned up aught but lies, for all His Eminence’s coin? Even you admit—”

  “I understand if you lack the finesse to see it, Captain Wyles,” Varalen snapped, “but this city is the imperator’s home, as much as yours or mine, and he has enough reason not to wish to stir up a panic among its citizens.” He silently prayed that this was true.

  But Elgar nodded easily, and Varalen suppressed a sigh of relief. “He has the right of it in this instance, Nathaniel. I wish the streets to remain as calm as possible for the present.”

  Wyles scowled. “Your Eminence—”

  “Enough,” Elgar said, with a harshness that surprised Wyles and Varalen both. “I have not forgotten what happened the last time you assured me of the superiority of your methods, Nathaniel, and I trust you have not either. You do your job well enough on the streets, but you are not equipped for more subtle matters, and you forget that at your own peril.”

  Wyles clearly knew what Elgar meant, though Varalen had far less of an idea. There was something Quentin Gardener had told him once, about an incident that happened before Varalen had come to Elgar’s service, when Wyles was still chief among Elgar’s torturers. Even Quentin had never known all the details, but it seemed some of Wyles’s subordinates had been interrogating a prisoner who turned out to have an unexpectedly weak constitution, and the boy had died in the midst of their ministrations. This
mistake had sent Elgar into an unparalleled rage—something the loyal Quentin had taken as evidence of his master’s moral character. But Varalen had never had reason to suspect their master of any moral character whatsoever, and he often wondered at the truth of it, though he knew better than to ask.

  Either way, Wyles had clearly overstepped, and Varalen wasn’t about to let that opening go to waste. “My lord, I must entreat you again to let me—”

  Elgar waved his words away. “I know well enough what you want, Varalen, and I’ve already told you no. Stopping and searching everyone who tries to enter the city will, at best, wreak havoc on every trade or enterprise in the area, and at worst it will frighten Aquila and his friends away when they would otherwise have returned.”

  “My lord, if they return to the city and learn their friends are free—”

  “We must endeavor to make sure they do not learn of it.”

  Varalen shook his head. “We spread enough rumors making our own inquiries. It is not possible to keep them ignorant: if they stay in Sheath for more than a quarter of an hour, they will hear of it. And then why would they come anywhere near us again?”

  “All I need,” Elgar insisted, “is to get them within the city walls without incident. Once they are in Valyanrend, I can take the stone from them at my leisure. But if they take it and flee … no. That is what we must prevent above all.”

  What on earth did he mean, at his leisure? It was difficult enough to find someone in Valyanrend who wanted to be found; did he think it would be so easy to capture a group of thieves who had every reason to hide? “I don’t understand,” he said, as mildly as he could, “just how it is you propose to know when they’re in the city at all, let alone how you propose to hunt them down once they’re here.”

  “I know you don’t understand. It is not necessary for you to understand. I am telling you that if that stone passes into Valyanrend, I shall know of it, one way or another. You can disbelieve me if you choose, but I will hear no more on the subject.”

  Well, it wasn’t as if it mattered to him whether Elgar obtained the thing or not, so why should he care if he wasn’t making any sense about it? “Understood, my lord.”

  “Good.” He turned to Wyles. “Nathaniel, you may consider anything more on this matter outside your purview. Return to your post, and when next we speak, I’ll want to hear that you’ve made some discoveries about this resistance.”

  Wyles bowed, but said nothing more as he left.

  Varalen would have been happy to take his leave as well, but he doubted it would be that simple. “Was there something more you wanted to discuss with me, my lord?”

  “There was,” Elgar said. “This little bird you found for me … he appears very promising, but I think you should continue corresponding with him in my stead. He took my assurances well enough, but you seem to make him feel more comfortable.” He smiled. “Perhaps he finds you more trustworthy, or simply more palatable. Either way, we cannot allow him to reconsider our arrangement.”

  “He won’t,” Varalen said. “He’s come too far to turn back now; what he’s done for us already damns him a hundred times over. His only hope lies with us, and he knows it.”

  “That may be so. Men have still been known to develop consciences at the least opportune moments.”

  Varalen laughed. “Oh, he has a conscience already. That’s precisely why I’m so sure of him.”

  Elgar raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

  “Undoubtedly. It’s the ones without consciences that cause all the trouble.”

  “Hmm.” Elgar folded his hands, leaning calmly back in his chair. “Which are you, I wonder?”

  Varalen bit his lip. “I wouldn’t presume to say, my lord.”

  “Yes,” Elgar agreed. “That’s just what I thought you’d say.”

  * * *

  He had told Morgan he’d be careful, yes, but wasn’t a coward always careful? She was the one who’d gone in for all the damned heroics back in the Citadel. All Roger wanted to do was explore a tunnel or two—that hardly mattered by comparison, did it?

  He passed the torch to his left hand so he could mark the wall. If he’d been retracing Morgan and Braddock’s steps correctly, to his left was the passage that came out near Rat’s Tail, and to his right was farther back toward the dungeons. Rat’s Tail wasn’t the most destitute of the districts—that was the Bowels—but it was the most dangerous, because the inhabitants of the Bowels were already too ill or starved to do much of anything besides die slowly. In Rat’s Tail, so the saying went, they’d steal the clothes off your back, and then they’d eat the skin off your bones. He figured it was best to prevent any fellow thieves from wandering out that way unawares, so he fished in his pocket for the key Morgan had given him and used it to cut as deeply as he could into the stone on his left side. Most thieves were cowards by nature, so perhaps the finger-sign for danger was so intuitive because it was the one they least wanted to forget: a circle divided in fourths by an X—so simple, you barely had to be taught it to understand what it meant.

  Morgan had drawn the mark she’d found in the cell for him, and that was a finger-sign too—the one that marked a hidden escape route, naturally. But the second mark, the one she and Braddock had seen three times as they traveled down the right-hand passageway, had not stuck in their memories, and they could only vaguely describe it to him. Even then, it was decidedly not a finger-sign, and had no meaning Roger could determine. That, if he was honest, was the main reason he was here right now, not to explore the tunnels. Once within them, he had seen that Morgan’s concerns were justified—these passages were indeed far older than any he had traversed in the city before, and he wasn’t entirely certain they weren’t about to come crashing down around his ears. Worse, sometimes he thought he heard shuffling noises echo off the stone—rats, perhaps, or perhaps guards searching for their lost prisoners.

  The next fork was the one he wanted, and, sure enough, the wall bore a series of strange, rambling lines. Roger tilted his head this way and that, trying to figure out what it was supposed to be. Was it a sort of map? Perhaps the branching lines were meant to be the forks in the path—but no, he had it. Branching. The longest line was the branch of a tree, the smaller ones were offshoots from the central stem, and the heavy marks at their tails were the leaves. He nodded, confirming it—then caught himself, and almost laughed. Even if he were right, what would be the significance of drawing a tree branch on a cavern wall?

  The answer that came to him first was that the branches were meant to communicate that the route they marked led outside the city walls. That made sense enough, but somehow it didn’t seem right to him. According to Morgan, the finger-sign in the cell had been painstakingly carved, but what good was this drawing if you could barely figure out what it was supposed to be? It suggested that the one who had drawn it didn’t care whether anyone else understood it or not—so it probably hadn’t been meant to communicate anything at all. The etcher had meant it for his own benefit, so he could tell which pathways he had tried. But that just brought Roger back to the same question: Why draw this tree branch, when an arrow or an X would have worked just as well?

  Roger wasn’t sure how long he stood there pondering it, but eventually that shuffling noise brought him back to his senses. He would have had a hell of a time trying to copy the marks and hold the torch at the same time, so instead he stared at it as intently as he could, hoping he could remember enough of it to produce a workable sketch once he got back outside.

  But he hadn’t retraced his steps very far when he felt something strange, a mild heat spreading into his hip. He reached into his pocket, and his fingers closed around the ruby—it was radiating an inexplicable warmth.

  He pulled it out, half expecting to see it start flashing again, and for a moment he almost thought it did. But he couldn’t have said for sure, and then it was certainly dim, and maybe even slightly cooler. He waved it around, then pulled out the emerald and started waving that around, bu
t neither gemstone reacted any further. And when he touched them together, he just got the same flash from the ruby as always—it was even starting to grow mundane to him.

  In the end he decided to go back for the day, after another look at the symbol to make sure he’d memorized its lines enough to sketch it when he got back into daylight. It was best to tackle one problem at a time, and at least this one had a potential lead. But he’d be taking the ruby with him the next time he explored the tunnels, that was for sure.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  His father looked up from his desk, the firelight flickering in the hollows under his eyes. “Kelken. Eirnwin said you had something to discuss with me.”

  “I do.” Kel eased himself into the opposite chair, propping his crutches up next to him.

  His father grimaced. “Something else about Alessa, no doubt.”

  “Yes.”

  His father’s fingers curled around the edge of the desk, but his expression smoothed out. “I’ve made my decision. You know that.”

  “I know, but if you’d just listen to my idea—”

  For a moment he thought he’d only be dismissed, but then his father sighed. “Very well. Tell me.”

  Kel took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. It wouldn’t do to capture his father’s attention only to muck everything up because he was nervous. He knew this was a good plan, and he’d rehearsed it. He just had to get his father to see what he saw.

  “It’s not that I mind about Lessa getting married,” he said at last. “Not really, anyway. It’s just the journey—the Curse. I know—we both know there’s a good chance she won’t survive it. So I thought of another way.” He took another breath, resting his hands on the arms of the chair. “I could be the one. I could go in Lessa’s stead.”

  His father’s eyebrows rose. “You? Whatever for?”