Ghost in the Yew

by Blake Hausladen

  “Birthdays and such?”

  Fana nodded cheerfully, and Aunt Burti whispered her birth date to me before she got busy herding the crowd.

  Thell had already cracked an egg into Clever’s feedbag and was coaching the crowd to never stand behind a hot blood. He saw we were ready.

  “The first to get in line will be the first back here with the horses,” he told them, and the village’s fathers and sons happily elbowed their way across.

  The work went fast, with Burti happily quizzing those in line. When there was just one young man left—even the absent farmers having made an appearance—she plopped herself down next to me with a wide smile.

  “I always wanted to learn to read and write,” she said, leaning in over my work as the youngish man struggled to remember his father’s birthday.

  “The 53rd of Winter, 1162,” Burti answered for him. The lad was relieved. Fana brushed the last entry, and I started to gather up our things.

  “So when is the wedding?” Burti asked me suddenly, taking hold of my arm. I winced from her squeeze of the bruises hidden there.

  “Wedding?” I managed.

  “You and the prince. Come, a date for it must be set by now.”

  “No, a date hasn’t been set yet.”

  “Hmm,” she sighed briskly. “Well, let’s see your bracelet then. Come, it must be magnificent.”

  “No bracelet either.”

  “Oh. I see,” was all she said, and for the first time her smile went away. She got up and left as if I had made wind.

  “That’s Auntie Burti,” Fana said with an apologetic shrug. “I’m usually the one she torments with questions.”

  “Charming.”

  I needed no other urging to be on our way. The villagers were very disappointed that our visit was so short, but with apologies we started east toward the next village.

  Thell was a wonderful guide, telling us all about the wide middle of Enhedu’s peninsula. He took us along the shores of the rather large and marshy Lake Almond, and after a hot meal he led us east and up toward a small gray peak. From the high vantage we were treated to a view of the vast swamps south of the peak I had heard about a time or two. A dreary expanse of scrubby pools and grayish trees reached from the lake all the way southeast to the ocean. A single dark green patch far to the south was the only thing that broke the view. It took me longer than it should have to realize the patch was the yew forest. I would have liked more time to enjoy the sight of them, but we moved further into the hills on our way east toward the next village.

  On the other side of those hills, the wide, cultivated patchwork of black earth around the village was as striking.

  “The winter wheat?” I asked Thell, hoping that was why the fields were bare.

  “It is. Fresh sown by the looks of it. We’ll be seeing a lot more of the same once we get north of Mount Thumb and up toward the rivers.”

  I giggled at the name of the rocky peak behind us and took my good humor with me down to the village.

  But there were a dozen Burties in that boisterous village, and the farther north we traveled, the more starved for news and gossip they became. There was no end to their questions, and our pace slowed from the constant interruptions.

  Most had come to the festival and had seen me standing beside Barok. The questions about weddings and bracelets became harder and harder to answer. It ruined the views as we moved around the thickly-forested tip of the peninsula, and by the time our adventure neared its end, despite Fana and Thell’s endless apologies, I could not help but feel like a whore.

  66

  Arilas Barok Yentif

  The 72nd of Summer, 1195

  My father’s letter stared back at me. I read it three time. Then I ready it a forth.

  * * *

  My son,

  Your gifts have brought me much joy, and I thank you for them. Their decoration of Bessradi’s gates is a welcome and refreshing sight—especially that of the barbute helmets you were stout enough to cleave. I have remarked upon it publicly that the same godly gifts that have propelled your brother Yarik to the top of his academy class now preserve you beyond the touch of all lesser men.

  * * *

  I must also pass along compliments to your thirty-year man and his greencoats, which it seems no slander to a Hemari to call them, as reports of their quality have reached me from several sources.

  * * *

  As reward for your righteous efforts in defense of our family, I have increased your stipend to 2,600 weight of gold per annum. Additionally, I send with this letter 2,000 weights from the 150,000 that I demanded the Ministry of Security pay to our family for failing to keep control of the Hessier. The pair were renegades, and Minister Sikhek sends his deepest regrets for the trouble you suffered.

  * * *

  Please also know, Yentif prince, that I am close now to uncovering which of our rivals is responsible for the murder of your brothers. I will send word when they similarly decorate God’s city. Until then, guard yourself well and trust no man above the divine guidance of our Lord Bayen.

  * * *

  The messenger who bore this and his escort have been assigned to our correspondence and will await your reply. Please send more tales of your days, my son. Stories of you warm away the growing cold.

  * * *

  Keep thyself safe and true to the Creed,

  Your merciful father

  * * *

  From my spot on the north corner of the battlements, the bone-white and perfectly ordered tents of the escorting troops of Hemari who camped upon the practice field seemed to house an army, and there the Hemari would stay until I had composed a reply to my father.

  In the town beyond, the members of the craftsmen’s consortium were assembling in the meeting hall, and there they would wait until I had addressed their concerns for Urnedi.

  At the end of the stone road northwest of town, a wagonload of timber had just been freed from the bog caused by a third day of warm rain. The dockwrights who awaited the supplies would be going nowhere until their work was done.

  In the fields and orchards across Enhedu, the crops of apples and wheat were fat from the warm days and regular rain. The harvest was imminent, and it would wait for no one.

  And watching it all from above, I was on time yet again; a nineteenth day started promptly despite the hateful words I had for Gern most mornings. I missed Dia more with each day that passed, and Leger had yet to hear any word of his girl. But the work allowed no time for our worries.

  Gern and my bodyguards were just stowing the gear from the morning’s rigorous swordplay, and behind me waited the men who had in hand all that needed to be done.

  Missing was the touch of the ghosts. I had lived almost a year with their voices and guidance and felt sometimes a hundred years older for the experience. But each visit to the sea had soothed more of them to a sound sleep, and on that day, I stood alone.

  I asked Leger, “Has the consortium called itself to order?”

  “Nearly,” he replied.

  The nine pages I had just read were Selt’s brutally efficient reporting of my income and outlays and the long list of items the consortium wanted to address. We had discussed the lot at length the previous night but had not agreed which of the consortium’s many proposed rules should be enacted. Ideas come easy, I was learning, but laws and policies come very hard.

  “Any new thoughts?”

  Leger replied, “I still say that priority should be given to the harbor. Anything that supports its establishment or future success must be done. The rest can wait.”

  “It is still all a matter of costs,” Selt said when I turned to him. “None of what they ask for is addressed in the original charter, so any addition to your support of Urnedi’s commerce must be balanced with an increase in taxes or consortium fees. If they will pay for it all, I say enact it all. Everything that Sahin passed on from the memberships is of worth.”

  Erom shrugged. “Merit and I agree. Until
you replace that mess of muddy streets with proper stone roads and gutters, you will lose more days to Enhedu’s soaking rain. We say tell them no on the lot until a man can walk from his house to the bay without getting his feet wet.”

  “Thank you,” I said, still uncertain.

  I handed my father’s letter to Leger. His first question was my own.

  “Do you think your father wrote this?”

  “It doesn’t seem like him, does it?”

  “No,” Leger said. “The fire has gone out of him. A man thinking about grandchildren and sitting by a warm fire wrote this—not the savage I helped make Exaltier. Haton’s idea for it all is proving more and more probable. Your father has grown weak. Bendent moves against him and means to replace him with a puppet. Your father is too in love with his notion of Yarik as touched by God to see that the boy is after his head.”

  “Yes. I worry for his health, and we are no closer to knowing who paid the Hessier to kill me.”

  “The only shoe that fits is Yarik. The act was impulsive and poorly considered.”

  Selt looked sour.

  “You disagree?” Leger asked.

  “No. Your reasoning is sound. I ...” He started over. “It was not something I had considered previously, but your notion for it begs the question. Why didn’t Bendent see the pair of you murdered while you rode so unescorted to Enhedu? There was no better time than then to see you quietly ended. You were defenseless.”

  One of the brothers Chaukai, the champion of the pair, spoke then, and it was the only time I had memory of hearing his voice all year. “Rather like setting your sword at a declination, if you ask me.”

  Selt and Erom looked mystified by these words, but I understood him perfectly.

  I translated. “His actions, or rather his lack of action, have invited my attack.”

  “You have attacked no one—” Erom said, but caught himself. “Other than your blatant challenge to Parsatayn.”

  “Which begs,” Selt added, “Why would Bendent want you to succeed and Parsatayn to fall?”

  We were quiet then, and I did not like the lack of answers.

  Leger began to crack his knuckles. I had never seen him so focused and watched as he popped one and then the next until he had done each finger three times.

  “You have something to add?”

  “Yes,” he said, though clearly still thinking. After another moment, he added, “I have another thought about the palace fire.”

  “Yes?”

  “The cost. It is the reason for it.”

  “Cost? Of the princes?” I questioned but saw his argument quickly. “You might be right. Our stipends were a heavy burden. The rest of the family eats table scraps in comparison. Bendent’s plot might very well count other distant Yentifs as allies. My father searches for rivals without when he should be looking within.”

  It was painfully odd to think of my father as an ally, but even if it was fleeting, we owed him our survival. The gold he had gifted me was already spent into a score of new ventures, and the Hemari that would be escorting his messenger up and down my road would give any man pause. If you kill a Hemari, as the saying went, you’d better be ready to kill them all.

  Still, I worried. I asked Selt, “What did Rahan see of this, if anything?”

  “Vall’s absence has been long developing.”

  “Rahan noticed it?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Not to this degree. He always described your father as unflinchingly brutal and in utter control of every living soul in Bessradi. The way he writes to you now ... there is little to suggest his grip upon the throne will outlast those who now plot against him. I did not think it possible when I arrived here, but I do not think you can count upon your father, nor the arrival of next spring’s stipend.”

  His was the sternest prognosis for our future I had yet heard. It resolved my thinking for the day.

  “Thank you, bondsman,” I said and led us down.

  Haton’s new tavern in town, The Constant Pony, sat between the meeting hall and the wide plot that would become Leger’s inn. It needed furniture, a bar, and glass enough to replace the skins that hung on the windows, but its kitchen was a cauldron of activity. I caught a smile from the Dame as we made our way through and into the meeting hall.

  It was quite a crowd in person, and I began to balk, but the men behind me kept marching forward until I was delivered to the edge of the riser before the waiting consortium. Enhedu’s craftsmen fell silent and took their seats.

  “It was your hope this day,” I began, summoning somehow Kyoden’s measured tenor, “to discuss all the simple rules of commerce that have not been established. Who, for instance, has right of way on certain streets for their wagons, how many apprentices can you take, and how should the contribution of labor necessary to clean the refuse from the streets be paid? You hope also to address broader points of taxation and tariffs that have, let us all be honest, no bearing upon the outcome of anything this season or next and yet warrant address now while we have both the capacity and constitution for the debate.

  “So I will start by saying that I do believe as matters stand now that there is equality between us and that every single proposal you have made is one I am willing to approve. Your chairman has balanced very well the interests of the consortium and the interests of Enhedu. You need only explain to bondsman Selt how each will be paid for.”

  The room warbled, some approving and disapproving voices talking over the murmur.

  “But this is not what we will discuss today,” I said over them and pointed through the open face of the meeting hall toward the tents of the Hemari upon the practice field. “I want to talk, instead, about all the things that can kill us.”

  The room fell silent, sat down, and they allowed me the indulgence of unhindered soliloquy. I did not waste it, describing in degrees all of Enhedu’s foes: Kuren Pormes and his larcenous timbermen, Chancellor Parsatayn and his ready writs, Prince Yarik’s unknowable rage, Arilas Bendent’s control over the Council of Lords, and Sten Disand Evangelista and his boundless ability to swallow us whole.

  But then, with arms raised to hold back their alarmed questions, I walked them through our defenses against each: our ready garrisons, the daunting palisade Leger was raising around the town, the Hemari who would travel our road, the winter that would close it, and my growing army of greencoats.

  Haton stood, saying, “Our defenses do grow strong, Prince, but our enemies are too great for us to stand and wait. What do you propose to rid us of them?”

  “You advocate open treason?” another man asked him.

  Haton spun on the man, but I said over them, “Settle yourselves. Settle. Think again upon all I have said. None of it runs counter to my father’s rule or primacy. We seek prosperity for ourselves, yes. We seek the safety and well-being of our families, yes. But none of the defenses we raise in furtherance of these goals undermines the laws of Zoviya or the wishes of our Exaltier. The same is true for what I propose we do next to unsettle and push back at our foes.”

  My preamble felt overdone and stunk of politics, but the silence that followed was earnest. A roomful of masters sat before me, and each wanted nothing more than to hear what I had next to say.

  What healthy children hope and enterprise bore.

  I said to them, “Until your trades and our harbor are established, we do as we are—we build with all propriety and careful diligence the foundations of this great enterprise. But know this, my fellows, when the day comes that your success is of a measure that cannot be ignored by the Council, I intend to reclaim Enhedu’s vote upon the Council of Lords. I expect of you to make this possible by this time next year.”

  The room gasped and then in a gathering wave, they stood and cheered. I did not need to tell them what affect this would have on our foes. Kuren would become my junior, Parsatayn would lose his vote and the hold he had upon so many of the provinces, and Bendent would be weakened—enough perhaps to lose his chairmanship.

&
nbsp; Sahin, Merit, and Erom looked a bit queasy. Haton, Leger, and Selt looked none but pleased. Kyoden woke only long enough to smile.

  I was left to worry that Bendent, whatever his plans, had already conceded these victories to me and more.

  67

  Matron Dia Esar

  Kyoden Vesteal

  Our road home was slow. The thin trails that crisscrossed Enhedu did not like the traffic of the craftsmen who moved north. The wheels of their heavy wagons dug deep furrows into the soft earth, and the warm rain filled them with water.

  Navigating the mess ruined my second best dress and made our return much later in the day than we hoped. It was so dark by then that when we encountered a deep trench and high wooden wall, I was momentarily confused by our location.

  “Leger’s palisade,” Thell commented and led us toward a gate further down. “Good to see it up, eh? It will make for a good night’s sleep knowing we are all behind such a wall.”

  We nodded our agreement, though all of us noticed the gatehouse was not entirely done, the drawbridge was a fixed bridge of logs and planks, and there were no guards upon the walls above.

  I set aside thoughts of it, though, when we rode through and got a look at the clouds gathering to the south around the base of the mountain. This new storm looked bigger than the last. We hurried into town.

  Few spared us hellos as they fled the approaching rain, and while Thell stabled the horses, Fana and I headed straight for the gallery. Selt was the last left working.

  “Did you finish it?” he demanded when he saw us, and he all but snatched the heavy satchel I offered. “What’s the count?”