The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  Lady Margraine flattened her palm against the open book. “I know, Seren. I am collecting my thoughts. You will have your orders as soon as I have decided on them.”

  She was still pale, her smile faint and faded, with none of the usual confidence in her eyes. Was it truly fear he glimpsed there, Gravis wondered, or something else?

  There was another brief silence, and then Almasy asked, “What are you reading?”

  Gravis braced himself for a dry retort, but it seemed Almasy had the right of it—Lady Margraine’s shoulders relaxed slightly, her voice steadying as she answered. “Tomar Gorrin’s research on the War of the Valerian Succession, but I can’t say I’m very impressed. Isthmus Gwyne’s version is vastly superior—for one thing, Gorrin seems to have worshipped Eglantine so ardently that he leaves out all the best anecdotes from his life. It’s an effort to make him seem more serious, I suppose, but whatever for?” She smiled. “Did you know that when the queen first raised him to a noble house, he wanted his words to be Well, and What’s Yours, Then?” She didn’t quite laugh, but her mouth twisted as if she was suppressing it. “The queen wouldn’t hear of that, of course, so instead he proposed No Hair in the Soup, Please. Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t any fonder of that one.”

  Gravis snorted in spite of himself. “Perhaps he wasn’t as clever as the scholars would have us believe.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt he was, Gravis. Have you heard some of the drivel the other houses used? House Valerian itself was Ancient and Pure—I can’t think of two more useless things to be. And then you had that butcher Ryvar Radcliffe, who chose a bloody sword and bloody words: Blood Will Have Blood. They say he wanted it to be Let There Be Blood, but it seems someone informed him that at that point he might as well have used Stark Raving Mad and had done with it.” She scoffed, but then grew thoughtful again. “Even House Margraine had its own words, though after the public soured on the idea of noble houses, we made sure to push them into obscurity. The Unclouded Eyes … and that’s not even a complete thought, is it? The unclouded eyes what? ‘See better than clouded ones,’ I suppose, but who doesn’t know that?” She shook her head. “I think our ancestors had the right of it when they did away with such things, along with knights and Ninism and all the other trappings of Elesthene.” But then she paused. “Except for No Hair in the Soup. That, I think, is true wisdom.”

  Gravis could not think of anything to say to that, and it seemed Almasy couldn’t either, but at least the marquise’s musings had returned a little color to her face. She finally turned to Almasy, clearly trying to make her smile seem as effortless as usual. “Seren, I’m afraid all I can do is repeat what I told you before: you must not move from my side, no matter what should happen. You must not fight them, even if they provoke you. Do you understand?”

  Almasy frowned. “I understand well enough. That doesn’t mean it sits well with me.”

  “But you will do it?”

  Almasy looked singularly unhappy, but in the end she bowed her head. “If that is your command.”

  “Good.” She curled her fingers around the wooden arm of the throne, then released it. “I shall take care of the rest.”

  Almasy raised her eyebrows. “The rest? But you are not having me do anything to begin with.”

  Lady Margraine tapped the wood. “And if everything goes well, you will not need to do anything. But they do say one should be prepared for the worst, don’t they?”

  Almasy said nothing. She kept her head bowed, and Gravis could not read the expression on her face.

  Either Lady Margraine required no confirmation, or else she could read some meaning where Gravis could not. Either way, she did not look at Almasy again, only returned to the book on her lap and continued to read. Soon she was turning pages avidly, as absorbed in it as she’d ever been in her study.

  And yet she was still so drawn, as subdued as Gravis had ever seen her. She took breath after shuddering breath, exhaling heavily as if hoping that would steady her, and her fingers shook ever so slightly on the arm of the throne when they were not engaged in page turning. Her gaze flicked up every so often, fixing on the far doors.

  When he heard the groan as the portcullis was lifted, Gravis instinctively clutched at his sword. “You won’t be needing that, Gravis,” Lady Margraine said sharply. “I know you must be anxious, but I’d be gratified if you would keep your admittedly minor wits about you. If you throw yourself at them, you’ll just get in the way.” In the way of what? Gravis wanted to ask. But her ladyship was not one to bluff, and he figured he had already given her about as much insubordination as she could stomach. So he released the hilt of his sword, and tried his best to act like an ordinary soldier at his post, not one who was expecting any invaders.

  The cowards entered as a mob, easily as many as Kern had told him. They strode down the hall shoulder to shoulder, swords and spears drawn and brandished, looking warily about them. They wanted to make sure they had taken the hall unawares, Gravis knew; the damned dogs would probably have flinched from even the whisper of a fair fight. They were rough, greedy-eyed men—none of Elgar’s devout here, it seemed. Perhaps he needed only the shiftiest for such deceit.

  He saw one of them, in a dented halfhelm that didn’t obscure his rough stubble or heavy jaw, step a little forward as they marched—ready to take charge now that he’d seen there were only three people in the hall. The rest of them stayed in line, following his lead. Many of them kept their gazes warily trained on Almasy—they’d been right, then, to assume their guests would expect her to be dead.

  By the time he’d closed in on the shallow steps leading to the throne, the man in the halfhelm must have realized the marquise had no intention of acknowledging his presence. No doubt this threw him a bit, but he was still smirking when he said, “Lady Margraine, is it? Nathaniel Wyles, of Hallarnon—at your service, as much as circumstances allow.”

  Lady Margraine looked up from her book with extreme and obvious reluctance. When she did, she betrayed no trace of emotion, just the usual cold amusement; this was perhaps the only time Gravis had been heartened to see it. “In Esthrades, the throne retires one day out of seven,” she said, “so I will hear no grievances today. Thus, as you see, I was reading. Can you possibly think you have sufficient reason to interrupt me?”

  This Nathaniel Wyles seemed to be the leader, at least as far as the talking was concerned. Gravis saw him balk at her words at first, but he quickly tried to hide it, attempting instead to match the lightness and unconcern of her tone. “Unfortunately, my lady,” he said, “we do have a reason. You see, we’ve got to put you under our protection, at least until the throne is safe.”

  Lady Margraine turned a page idly. “I gave no orders to that end, nor would I ever consider doing so. I will keep the throne far safer than you lot ever could. So far you are not presenting a compelling argument for why I should leave off my reading to attend to you, and it’s honestly not even that intriguing a book.”

  Wyles kept his calm, though the smirk was long gone; this scene must have gone quite differently in his imaginings. “My lady,” he said, “there’s quite a few of us, as you can see. And you … well, you’ve got yourself, and that woman of yours, and that fellow there, and that’s it. So you see, whether you like it or not, we’ve taken this castle.”

  “I do have more guards inside the hall, you know,” she replied. “Do you plan to leave those doors gaping open in the hopes that they’ll see you, and make it a fairer fight? I’d never have guessed you were so honorable.”

  He looked askance at that, and called over his shoulder. “Shut them. And make sure they’re barred.” Several men at the back of the hall scurried to carry out his orders, and he turned back to Lady Margraine, trying his best to smooth away his frown. “My lady, you don’t seem to understand the seriousness of your situation.”

  As if to underscore his point, she laughed at him. “Seriousness? I take few things seriously, and especially not arguments that are put to me by s
tupid people, thrown all out of order and made insipid with too many words. I grasped your meaning the moment you stepped in here: you have force of arms, you are within my walls, and you intend to take me captive. Be content with my understanding, sir, and leave the seriousness or lack of it to my own judgment.”

  Wyles jerked his head in a wary assent. “Can I take it, then, that that dog of yours will stand down, and not snap at our heels if we approach?” Gravis winced at the epithet. Kern had told them that. Kern had told them everything.

  The twitch of Lady Margraine’s eyebrow betrayed a twinge of irritation. “She will not harm you,” she said. Almasy looked as if she wished to disagree, in deeds rather than in words, but she did not move.

  Wyles smiled and took another step forward. “That’s very good, my lady. Now”—his fingers tightened on his sword—“I think it’d be best if you retired to your chambers until we send for you. We’ll give you an escort, of course.”

  If she had suffered that indignity, Gravis would not have been able to remain silent and still any longer, but her face made it clear that she had not entertained that notion for a moment. Instead she gazed at Wyles with utter contempt, somehow managing to look down her nose at him despite the fact that she was sitting and he was at his full height. “You really are determined, aren’t you? How ridiculous.” But her face was pale again, her breathing quickened, and suddenly Gravis knew where he had seen that expression before. In the aftermath of battle, when wounded soldiers were told they must either lose a limb to the knife or lose their lives to infection, there were those who did not scream or plead. There were those who grew pale, and nodded, and took deep, steadying breaths, closing their eyes or turning away, clenching their jaws and unclenching their trembling fingers, readying themselves for that loss in the only ways they knew how.

  It was not fear. She was steeling herself for something.

  Still, somehow, he waited, or perhaps he was just frozen. He waited, and he heard Wyles say, “The only ridiculousness here is yours, my lady. We will have you in your chambers, whether you walk there or whether my men carry you. Get up off that throne; you’ve no need to sit it anymore.”

  Lady Margraine shut the book that still remained on her lap, and tucked it carefully away at her side before looking at Wyles again. “You are an ant,” she told him, almost pleasantly. “You are a weak, wretched, pathetic little worm. You are irrelevant. I could crush the lot of you with a single blow; I could level you like sand. And yet you think to drag me from my very throne, from the seat my ancestors have held for centuries, simply because there are rather a lot of you and you’ve got a tight grip on those little scraps of metal. It’s … well, it’s remarkable, really.” She laughed, as if to herself. “The presumption of ants! Why did the scholars not write of that, I wonder?”

  Gravis expected that would stir Wyles to anger, but he only shook his head, as if in disbelief. “My lady, I don’t say my sword’s the prettiest that’s ever been forged, but as you’re unarmed—”

  “I have no sword,” Lady Margraine corrected him, “but I am always armed.”

  He shrugged. “With what, your position? Your nobility?”

  That made her eyebrow twitch again. “Of course not, you imbecile. With my mind.”

  Wyles laughed, but it was more relieved than mocking—Gravis wondered what he had expected her to say. “And you think that mind of yours’ll save you, do you?”

  “It’s just about to, actually,” the marquise said, as calm as could be.

  “I would dearly love to see that, my lady.”

  “Oh, you’ll see it,” she said. “Set one foot upon those steps, and I swear to you, you will see it. Every man in this hall will see it, and then perhaps others like you will begin to know the fear they ought.”

  Wyles hesitated, as did all the men behind him. The marquise smirked as she watched them, awkward and fidgeting in their boots, avoiding one another’s eyes. This was her power, Gravis thought—the same that even swayed him at times. They had her as defenseless as they could have hoped to, outnumbered and weaponless in an empty room, and still she could make them fear, with nothing more than her words and her confidence.

  But it would not be enough; he had told her that, back in her study. He had told her she could not bluff her way out of this. And sure enough, Wyles gathered himself, tried to smile as confidently as she did. She saw it, and let one hand spill over the arm of the throne, her fingers unfurling toward him as if in invitation. The gesture was lazy, but her eyes were fixed on his face. “Come on,” she said, and that smile was so wide it almost seemed hungry. “Show me what a man you are.”

  Wyles took one step, and then another. He had reached the base of the steps in moments, and he hesitated one last time before he placed his foot down on the bottom one, searching her face for whatever reaction he could find there.

  Gravis expected Lady Margraine to smile, because she always smiled, especially when you expected her not to. But her smile had faded as Wyles had moved, and it did not spread across her face again: her lips stayed flat and thin, revealing nothing. She merely met his eyes, and waited. They held each other’s gaze as he lowered his foot to the step, and then he smiled, into the silence that filled the hall as he stood there.

  And then he flinched, and raised a hand to his chest.

  In another moment he was on his knees, hunched over and grimacing with pain. And then the man behind him flinched.

  By the time Nathaniel Wyles started to scream, Gravis was conscious of it, something that flowed like a wave toward the very back of the hall, surging faster and faster through the gathered men as it gained momentum. The ones at the very back turned to run, but they had no time to do more than take a few steps. And finally the first tongue of flame appeared, licking at Wyles as if from inside him. The flames spread so quickly, and yet they did not touch a thing in the hall that was not human, did not stain so much as the corner of a tapestry with ash. Only the men were burning.

  Gravis turned to look at Almasy, but the shock on that usually stoic face was enough to tell him she hadn’t expected this any more than he had. Yet for all her surprise, she did not so much as take a step back from the flames; she remained straight and stiff, unmoving from her place beside the throne. But Lady Margraine—

  Lady Margraine staggered to her feet as if she did not know where she was, and for a moment Gravis thought she was startled. Then she took several halting, shaky steps, turned her face to the light, and he saw how pale and twisted with pain it was, heard the harsh rasp her voice made, as if every breath she drew tore at her lungs. She hunched over, one fist pressed against her heart, the other hand clutching absently at nothing. The screams were more muted now—the men were dying, or dead—and finally Lady Margraine managed to speak, though she sounded like nothing Gravis had ever heard.

  “Seren,” she said, her voice little more than a ragged gasp, “Seren, your arm—give me—hold—”

  Hold me up, she was too proud to say, but Gravis saw the truth of it. She looked as if she might faint—she looked as if she might expire. Almasy, at her side, extended her arm, and Lady Margraine clutched at it as if it could keep her from drowning. Her nails were digging so hard into Almasy’s arm that she must have felt it even through her clothing, but she gave no sign of pain, just made sure Lady Margraine didn’t fall. When the marquise swayed on her feet, Almasy drew her other arm across her shoulders, and Lady Margraine shut her eyes, tilted backward as if she were going to swoon. She recovered, though, and stared at the last of the men.

  Her laugh was so dry and weak that it crumbled to nothing nearly as soon as it left her throat, yet it chilled Gravis’s blood all the same. “Look at that,” she said, her voice still faint but undeniably triumphant. “Would you … look at that! It actually worked.” She turned to Gravis. “How many of them … did your traitor say there were?”

  Gravis’s mind was reeling, but he heard himself answer her. “Fifty-three, my lady.”

  “Fifty
… three.” She was still laughing, her eyes fixed on the bodies before her. “Fifty-three … at a single stroke. Could even the greatest warriors boast as much?”

  He knew this weakness, Gravis realized, though he had never seen it so severe. This was what they had thought illness when she was a child, that had left her exhausted and out of breath with no apparent cause. This was what she had brushed off as nothing, while the rest of them fretted and fussed and scratched their heads. And now he knew why.

  “It’s true,” he said. “It’s all true. You are a demon, or you made a deal with one. And all this time you told me—”

  Perhaps she meant to laugh again; the noise she made was small and pained, but none the less contemptuous for that. “Don’t be … ridiculous … Gravis. There’s no such—no such thing … as demons. I told you that.”

  “But you—”

  She shook her head. “Gravis, you always think so little of me, don’t you? You think I needed to bargain and beg with some otherworldly creature? You think I needed … to borrow that power?” Her next laugh splintered as it left her throat, but somehow she sounded stronger. “It’s mine. It’s always been mine.”

  “You are not human, then,” Gravis said. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, though he had not the faintest idea what he meant to do with it. Who on earth was his foe, at a time like this?

  Lady Margraine took a halting step, staggered again as if under a new spell of dizziness, and clutched once more at Almasy’s arm. She smiled at him, as self-satisfied as ever. “Oh, Gravis. In what living thing is magic more natural than in a human?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “You should be abed, my lady,” Seren said, shutting the door behind her. Arianrod did not answer that, nor turn to look at her. She was standing by the window, looking down at the orchard below. Though the sky had started to lighten, it was still too dark to see much. But the birds were calling as they fluttered about, no more than scraps of shadow between the trees. “They can be so noisy some days,” Arianrod said.