The Empire's Ghost

by Isabelle Steiger

  Gravis tried not to wince; he would have preferred someone less perceptive than Dent to accompany him. For his part, Dent bowed his head wordlessly, then walked forward to take Kern by the arm. Gravis took the other, but before they could march Kern off down the hall, Lady Margraine held up a hand. “Wait.” They did so, and she addressed her next words to Kern. “I suppose it is customary at times like this to ask if there is anything you’d like to say.”

  Kern lifted his chin. “There is. I wish it known that I regret none of what I did—I am only sorry that I failed, not that I tried.”

  “Had you succeeded,” Lady Margraine said, “you would very quickly have become sorry that you tried. As you did not succeed, you are free to hold on to your dream of what success would have been, and need never look upon the reality.” She waved them off. “He’s yours, Gravis. Render your judgment as you wish.”

  The three of them remained in step with one another as they walked. Kern was unresisting, meekly following where they led him. Dent kept pace with Gravis, and looked calmly ahead; he did not speak. Gravis’s vision was strained, focused too sharply on the space directly in front of him. He could not meet Dent’s eyes.

  Private executions within Stonespire Hall always took place in the dungeons, in spaces that had been bloodied so many times that one more mess hardly mattered. The room they came to was dark and low, fitting for what was meant to happen in it. Gravis pushed Kern in ahead of him, then hesitated in the doorway. He murmured back to Dent, still avoiding his gaze. “You can wait outside, if you like.”

  Dent shrugged, an answer that did not mean precisely yes or no, just that he understood. Gravis nodded, and shut the heavy door behind him, and then he was alone with Kern.

  Gravis did not know where to begin at first, so he simply stood there and looked at him.

  The boy did not speak, but he did not look away, either, just kept his chin level and his eyes calmly focused. He did not struggle against his bonds, and his lips were flat and composed. After several moments of Gravis’s silence, he raised his eyebrows, but not insolently, only as if to say, Did you not have something to tell me?

  Gravis did, but he could not get the words out as yet. Instead he said, “Why don’t you tell me why you have done this thing.”

  “You have to ask that?” Kern said, and he truly looked surprised.

  “I do,” Gravis said. “I surely do, for I cannot understand it.”

  “Why, sir, I…” He pressed his lips together, considered his words, began again. “Sir, I love Esthrades. I loved Lord Caius, and I know he sits in glory among the gods.”

  I will be punished, Gravis, his lordship had said, before weakness and fever had taken away his lucidity. The gods see all, and they will not spare me. Why should they? I have not deserved it. But those words had not been spoken for Kern’s ears, so Gravis said nothing, and simply nodded.

  “I have no love for Elgar,” Kern said, “but I have less for her. She spat on Lord Caius’s legacy; she’ll destroy it, if we continue to let her. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I just couldn’t.” He shook his head. “Elgar needs to think he possesses this land, that’s all. If he wins it this way, without waging a true war against us, he won’t want to change things too drastically, for fear of angering the people. I had hoped—I had hoped I might persuade him to let you govern here. Lord Oswhent, at least, seemed amenable to the idea, and he has Elgar’s ear. Who knows Esthrades the way you do? And the people love you. He would give you the command, and you would restore things to the way Lord Caius wanted them—to the way we both know is right.” He set his jaw, looked Gravis in the eyes. “I know you love this land, sir. I know you do. You love it just as I do. In the service of your country, you could never give less than everything. You taught me that.”

  Gravis had intended his voice to come out steady and stern, yet the words he heard were melancholy, hesitant. “I do love Esthrades. I have loved it more than I could ever love another person, man or woman.” He curled his fingers into a fist, the familiar feel of his armor a small comfort. “What makes you think her ladyship does not love it?”

  Kern blinked at him. “What?”

  “Let me put it another way,” Gravis said. “You seem to think her a greater danger to Esthrades than Elgar. He would conquer this country by force and absorb it into his own, so whatever you think her capable of must be truly foul. I ask you, then: What is it she has done, to bring you to this opinion? What atrocity has she committed?”

  The boy only stared at him, his eyes so earnest and astonished, so very blue.

  Gravis sighed. “Much of the fault in this is mine, Kern, and I admit that freely. I gave you too much praise too soon; I was so certain you were following in my footsteps that I never once turned back to see if you had strayed. Perhaps worst of all, I never kept my personal dislike for her ladyship a secret from you, and it seems I should have. I will always regret that.” He paused, clenching his fist again and releasing it. “I cannot blame you for sharing my dislike—indeed, perhaps mine even nurtured yours. But to allow that dislike to blind you to your responsibilities, to think for one instant that it gives you sufficient cause to betray your sworn liege—that is foolish and ignominious. It is unforgivable.”

  “Captain,” Kern said, “if your service becomes merely a stone around your neck—”

  “You are not released from your oath the moment you stop enjoying it,” Gravis snapped. “If it were easy to keep your vows, you would not need to swear—to tie your honor to your service, so that, whatever you may think, you cannot put off one without the other. It is the virtue of a soldier to hold fast, not startle away like a sparrow at the first harsh word he hears or the first time his liege chooses not to follow his advice. You hold fast, no matter what comes. Even if it means nothing in the end.”

  “Even if it means dishonoring yourself?” Kern asked quietly.

  Gravis shook his head. “If your liege had ever given you a command your conscience would not let you follow—as I am certain she has not—it would have been your duty to do everything you could to turn her from that path. If you could not, it would have been your duty to refuse to aid her in dishonoring herself, and to accept any punishment she wished to give you for your disobedience. It would never, in any situation or under any circumstance, be your duty to feign obedience while selling her to her enemies in secret, out of supposed loyalty to a man you never knew and could not possibly understand.” He gritted his teeth. “In the midst of your contempt for her ladyship, did you somehow forget she is our lord’s only daughter? Can you truly think he would ever wish harm or misfortune upon her, no matter what she might become?” I will surely be punished, Gravis, Lord Caius had said. For every stroke I laid against my daughter’s back, I will receive a thousand in the world beyond. And so it should be. I will deserve every one of them. “Had you succeeded in your plan, Lord Caius himself would have returned to this world to snap your neck for committing such deeds in his name.”

  Kern’s face had crumpled, as if he were going to cry. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I … I am so sorry, sir. I never meant to disappoint you so.”

  “I know that,” Gravis said. “And you are not truly the one I am most angry with. This was Lord Oswhent’s plan—you told me that, did you not? And Lord Oswhent hoped, as you did, that I might join you.”

  Kern bowed his head. “That’s right.”

  Gravis clenched his fist again, and this time his voice did not shake. “Then there is something I need this Lord Oswhent to understand. One thing, above all else. He is a smart man, I don’t doubt, and he used that intelligence well. I don’t blame him for trying to take the Esthradian throne for his master; that is his purpose, and without it Elgar would surely have no use for him. But he did something else.” He met Kern’s eyes. “He believed he knew what kind of a man I was. He believed I would abandon my oath for a chance at power, merely because my liege and I have our disagreements. Do you understand what that means?”

&nbs
p; “Sir, I—”

  Gravis’s stomach roiled, but he suppressed it; his path was clear. “It means he took me for a man without honor. For that mistake I would gladly send him his head, if I could.” His fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword. “Since I cannot, yours will have to do.”

  * * *

  Once it was done, and once he had recovered his composure, he opened the door. But the hallway was empty; Dent was gone.

  Gravis found him patrolling the orchard, walking among the shadows of the blood apple trees. He was whistling to the birds again, but he turned when he heard Gravis’s footsteps. “Gravis?” he asked. “What’s bothering you?”

  “You didn’t wait,” Gravis said. He didn’t know what else to say. “You didn’t wait outside the door. You didn’t make sure that justice was done.”

  “There was no need,” Dent said calmly.

  “No?”

  “No,” Dent said. “How many years have we served together? I know your heart, Gravis. Can you really think I would believe for a moment that you intended to deceive us?”

  That was one weight off his heart, but it still felt so heavy. “I used to think myself a fair judge of men, and especially of the men under my command,” he said. “I don’t understand how I could have been so blind to the deceit in him. I was used to it from rulers, nobles, but I thought, a soldier—”

  “You weren’t wrong,” Dent said. “Not completely. You looked for doubt, and you found none. You just didn’t know that was because he’d already gone too far to the other side.” He scratched his nose. “We all make mistakes, Gravis. You corrected this one, and everything turned out all right in the end, didn’t it?”

  “Not for him,” Gravis said.

  “And whose fault do you think that was? It was his own foolishness that drove him to treason, never doubt that.”

  Gravis looked down at the grass. “When Lord Caius still lived, I begged him to see her married. She was his heir, of course, but a husband could … soften her, I thought, or curb her stubbornness, at least.” Dent was frowning, but that was an old disagreement, and one Gravis knew well. “Lord Caius always refused. ‘My own father tried to marry me off,’ he said, ‘and I wouldn’t have it either. My marriage may have brought me as much grief as joy, but I chose it for myself, and I would not change it. She has the right to choose her own misery as well, and I’ll let no man compel her otherwise.’”

  Dent laughed. “That sounds like him.”

  “After that,” Gravis said, “I became convinced Esthrades was doomed. She showed about as much interest in marriage as butterflies do in beefsteak, and with her sitting the throne alone … I could scarcely imagine what orders I might hear then. When has she ever wanted to do anything but just as she likes? When has she ever shown the slightest bit of consideration for justice or compassion or honor? I imagined there was nothing she would not do if it would amuse her, and that we’d live to see the fields burn and the treasury run dry, the common folk spared or slaughtered at her whim.”

  He shook his head. “It never happened, of course. She rules … irreverently, infuriatingly, but well. Better—better than her father ever did, though it galls me to my soul to say so. And I … I still don’t know why. Part of me still thinks I’ll wake up one morning to burning fields.” He looked at Dent. “How do you have such faith in her?”

  Dent was looking away, through the soft morning light at the branches of the trees. “You’re an old friend, Gravis, so I’ll tell you the truth, as embarrassing as it is. I’d have to say it’s the birds. More than anything else, I think it’s because of the birds.”

  Gravis raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that some fable?”

  “It’s something that happened with her ladyship,” Dent said. “Many, many years ago, when I was on patrol in this very orchard. She liked to come down and talk to me sometimes, when she was in the mood to talk to someone. And one day she came dragging a book near half as big as she was, while I was watching the birds. ‘Denton,’ she said—that was back when she used to insist on calling me Denton when my own mother never did, out of some caprice no one could ever determine—‘do you know what I read today, Denton?’ she said, and I told her I imagined it was a great many things, as she liked it so much. ‘I read today,’ she said, ‘that a pinch of craehen’s wort will kill an adult human in half an hour. Is that true?’

  “I told her I couldn’t swear to it myself, but I reckoned if her book said so, then it was true. ‘But that’s all?’ she asked. I told her that people are very fragile creatures, when you get right down to it. Then she scrunched up her little face in that way she had, and she said, ‘But I don’t feel very fragile, and I’m a lot smaller than an adult.’ ‘Nobody ever feels it about themselves,’ I said. ‘You’re your whole world, aren’t you, and how could the world just cease to be one day?’

  “So then she looked at the birds. She asked me, were the birds fragile? They certainly were, I said—much more delicate than the two of us. And she asked—” He swallowed. “She pointed to a sparrow, and asked if it would die if I shot it. ‘I’m no expert with a bow,’ I said, ‘but if I hit it, then yes, I expect it would.’ It would die forever, she asked? Yes, I said. Forever and a day.

  “She thought about that for a moment, and then she said—she said, ‘If I told you to shoot it, would you shoot it?’ And what could I say to that, Gravis? She was mistress of Stonespire, and I told her as much, and that I’d do as she bade me, unless her father bade me otherwise. ‘What about all the birds?’ she asked. ‘What if I told you to shoot all the birds in the orchard?’ And I knew—I knew I had to say something.

  “Trouble was, if anyone ever told her she shouldn’t do a thing, that only ever made her more determined to do it—and woe betide the man who ever dared tell her she couldn’t do it. So I took my time thinking about it, and I answered her in what seemed to me the best way.

  “‘Here’s the thing, little mistress,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you feel about birds, but I like them. I like to hear them sing, to watch them flutter about when I take my rest here. It might be you like that too, and it might be you don’t now, but you’ll grow to like it in time. Or it might be you never do, and you never have any use for these fellows here. Now, I’m sworn to your service, and if you tell me to shoot them, I’ll set aside my personal feelings and do as you say. But if I do that for you, and you find out this old orchard’s too quiet without them, I won’t be able to make them sing again, no matter how much I want to. So perhaps you’d be happiest if you thought on it awhile, and asked yourself if you might have a use for birdsong one day.’

  “She screwed up her little face again, and she looked at the birds, and she looked at me, as if she were trying to figure out if I meant to trick her. But she gave me a nod, in the end. ‘Very well,’ she said, as prim and proper as you please. ‘I will think on it.’ And then she picked up that great book of hers and wandered off, and that was that.”

  Dent craned his neck, looking up at the crowded bustle of little wings about the trees. “It’s been more than fifteen years since that day, Gravis, and those birds are still here. I guess I just have to tell myself that means something.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “Shall we assume they’re dead, then?” Elgar asked.

  Varalen sighed. “Probably. I haven’t heard a single word from Stonespire since I gave the order.” He dug his thumb into the ridge of bone above one eye, trying to drive out the ache. “Who knows? Perhaps if we wait a bit longer, we’ll receive tokens from the rest of them as well.”

  By the time the rider had arrived at the Citadel, the stink wafting off the head had grown so severe that Varalen had nearly retched when he opened the box. The note that accompanied it was simple enough, a scant two sentences long:

  Lord Oswhent,

  You may not recognize him—indeed, perhaps you never met him face-to-face—but this was Kern. Next time, I hope I may have the pleasure of your neck beneath my sword.

  —G
ravis Ingret

  “Captain Ingret seems to have developed quite the grudge against you,” Elgar said. “I wonder what the boy told him.”

  “Enough for him to know I was behind it, clearly,” Varalen said. “And, by extension, that you were.”

  “Yes, but I’m not the one he’s so angry at, am I?” Elgar traced the edge of the table with his fingertips. “I wonder that you ever thought it wise to allow the boy to try to turn him.”

  “I never thought anything of the sort, and you know it. You were the one who told me I should give the boy whatever assurances he needed to play his part, so I told him what he wanted to hear. That’s all.” He laughed weakly. “He was such a little fool—he really thought he could just flick Arianrod Margraine out of the way and set his precious captain up in her place, as you might pluck a single rose and leave the rest undisturbed. As for the captain, what I saw of him at Mist’s Edge led me to believe there was a chance he might turn against his mistress—he clearly has no love for her. That was a mistake, obviously.”

  “And not the only one, either.” Elgar stroked his knee. “I’d say it’s a waste, but even a failed endeavor can prove worthwhile if it allows us to learn something.”

  “Well, I didn’t learn anything,” Varalen said. “Nothing besides rumors, anyway, and I even had less of those than usual. I had so many people inside that city, and now it’s as if they’ve been pulled out by the roots.” At least Wyles seemed to have perished with the rest of the men, though the news coming out of Stonespire had been worryingly vague about what precisely happened to them.

  “You wagered too many of them,” Elgar said.

  Varalen shook his head. “What I don’t understand is how she did it. My predictions weren’t off, I’m sure of that. Our men should’ve outnumbered hers two to one, and they had the advantage of surprise, the difficulty of defending the hall once the walls have been breached.… I went over it again and again. I was as sure of that strategy as I’ve ever been of anything. I can’t understand how she defeated them, and left no trace.” He let his hand fall heavily to the table. “No matter how smart she is, if she hadn’t detected what we’d been doing beforehand, she shouldn’t have been able … Well, maybe that’s it. Maybe she figured it out, and just pretended that she wasn’t aware of it. But even so…” He trailed off, shaking his head again.