by Holly Lisle
"There will be salted fish in some of those barrels," she said. "Ry and I will be able to eat that."
Ry was frowning. He pointed to the empty hooks, and then to waxed cloth and binding twine that lay in crumpled piles on the floor beneath them. "Why would anyone unwrap all the meat before taking it?" he asked. "It wouldn't store well without the wrappings, and no one could eat so much at once."
Kait didn't know the answer to that. "Perhaps I ought to check on the fish," she said.
She pried the lid off of one fish barrel and looked in. Fish should have been packed clear to the surface of the brine, but the barrel was empty down to the last third. And that third dark brine held no sign that it had ever held fish. She couldn't find a single scale in the water or the tiniest piece of fin stuck on the side. She took one of the gaffing rods from the wall and stabbed it into the liquid. "Nothing," she said. "Not a single fish. If I didn't know better, I'd say that there had never been fish in here."
"Maybe someone intended to fill it later," Ry said.
Kait gave him a long look.
He shrugged. "I suppose not. We wouldn't have put anything into our storage rooms that wasn't ready to use, either. I can't imagine what happened."
"Neither can I. But you and I are going to have to have meat. These other two will do fine without it if they must "
"I don't eat meat," Ulwe interrupted.
Kait nodded, but continued, "but if you and I don't have meat to fuel us during and just after Shifts, we won't last long."
"To the next storage room, then," Ian said.
The next hidden room had been cleaned out. The one following it had supplies intact. Except, again, for the meat. Once again, all the herb-stuffed waxed wrappings were crumpled into piles, and the barrels were sealed. Kait lifted one of the empty wrappings and realized that it was still intact. The wax seal was untouched, the wax-dipped cloth uncut. No one could have removed the meat without cutting the cloth or breaking the seal. Nevertheless, impossible though it seemed, the meat was gone.
"It isn't even as if the hams turned to dust," Kait said, frustrated. "If the meat had spoiled and rotted away, we'd at least have bones in these wrappings. But there's nothing."
Ry dug through the stores, clearly mystified. "What happened to everything?"
"It doesn't make sense." Kait dropped wearily onto a trunk that still contained gold and silver in a wide variety of denominations and mintings. "Who would take only the meat, leaving wines and herbs and spices and fruits and vegetables? For that matter, who would take dried meat and leave the gold that could buy fresh meat a thousand times over?"
"And how in the hells did they take it?" Ian grumbled. Ulwe crouched in the center of the room, her eyes squeezed tightly closed, her fingertips splayed to the floor. Kait became aware of the child's odd posture and the air of tense concentration that surrounded her.
Ry and Ian noticed Kait's stillness and followed her gaze. Both of them fell silent, too. The three of them watched the child, curious.
Ulwe began to speak, her eyes still tightly closed and her body rigid. "You're the first people in this room since before the... the evil day. The day of bad magics and bad deaths," she said softly. "Nothing alive... has moved across this floor since that day. No... human... has taken anything from this room."
Kait leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Then what did?" "The dead fed here. The dead were given flesh...." A shudder ran through Ulwe's body, and she squeezed her eyes closed tighter. "They were given dead flesh as an offering."
Her trembling grew more fierce, and her voice changed, dropping and slowing. "The promise made them still echoes in the walls. They still listen to it, and hold it as their due." In cadenced singsong, she began to recite:
"By the blood of the living
And the flesh of the dead,
I summon the spirits of Family
Who have gone before.
Without the walls of this room
But within the walls of this House
Enemies have come
And killed,
Have plundered
And pillaged,
Have conquered
And claimed.
Come, spirits of the dead.
All dead flesh within the walls of Galweigh House
I offer as your payment
If you will chase beyond the walls of this House
All alive beyond the walls of this room.
Harm none; draw no living blood;
Inflict no pain.
I ask not vengeance;
I ask only relief.
By my own spirit and my own blood
I offer myself as price to ensure
The safety of every living creature,
Friend and foe,
Now within the House's walls
Until this spell is done.
So be it."
"A spell," Kait whispered.
"Yes. Offered by a man both powerful and clever. I feel the echoes of his steps strongly through this place. He is tied here by his own blood and spirit, though he did not stay here long."
"So he summoned the dead."
Ulwe opened her eyes and looked up at Kait. "And they came. They watch still. They watch us now. The enemies that were here before came, but they could not live here. The dead are not as strong now as they were when first the spell was cast, but they are strong enough to... to do... things." She wrapped her thin arms around herself and Kait saw gooseflesh prickle on her arms. "No one can live in this place who is not your friend, or the friend of your Family. The dead claim all dead flesh within the walls as their payment, and when anything dies within the walls, or anyone brings inside the flesh of any dead creature, the spirits consume it and for a while grow stronger. And when they are strong, they work the will of the one who summoned them."
Ian began to laugh.
Kait looked at him. "What?"
"No wonder the Sabirs and the Dragons gave this place up. Meat-eating ghosts."
"That's going to make things difficult for us," Ry noted. "We must have meat to survive."
"We can hunt," Kait said. "And we can eat our meat outside the walls."
"I suppose. Yet doing so exposes us to anyone who might be watching."
Kait nodded. "There will be some risk. Still, I hunted here for years. I know where to go to keep out of sight of even watchful eyes."
Ulwe held up a hand, palm forward. "Kait. There's something else I found that might be important. Let me walk the road a little wider for you."
Kait nodded and waited. The girl closed her eyes again. For long moments she crouched to the floor, so still she barely breathed, eyes closed and lips slightly parted. She brought to Kait's mind the image of a fawn hiding in the tall grass, hoping to escape detection. The image jarred Kait the child was in no apparent danger, but Kait's predator senses would not let her banish the picture or replace it with something more suitable. She wondered what she had learned from watching the girl that she did not yet know she knew.
At last, Ulwe said, "A mother and her two children took refuge near this room. There is another room... like this one. They locked it from the inside. They are eating the stores. They have been hiding since the House fell the second time.... But, no. Two of them have been hiding since that day. The third... came later."
Kait froze. "There are survivors still here?"
The child nodded. "So the paths tell me. So the road says."
The House could hide them. The House could hide an army, if the army could get to the right places and sequester itself within the cunning walls. So many had been unprepared. But someone, somehow, had survived.
Kait said, "Can you take me to them?"
Ulwe nodded, wide-eyed. "They're so afraid, Kait. They've expected every day to be caught. I can feel the terror. They don't know the House is empty."
They might live out a full span of years within their hiding place, away from sunlight and fresh air, growing weak and pale and feeble. She had to find them.
A mother. Two children.
She tried not to let herself hope that they were her Family. Dùghall had told her that, as far as he knew, all of her immediate family was dead. But perhaps one of the cousins had survived. She reminded herself that the House had held more people who weren't Family than who were the survivors were most likely a terrified serving girl and her two babes.
She stood. Even if they were, they might still be people she knew. She would take any link to her past that she could get.
"Shall we go after them, then?" Ry asked.
"Perhaps I should go alone." Kait rested a hand on the wall.
"I have to take you," Ulwe said. "I can follow the road to them. Their footsteps sing to me."
Ry shrugged. "I'm certainly not going to abandon the two of you down here alone."
Kait took a slow breath, and let it out even more slowly. "Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow, and come down here when the day is young." Either great joy or great disappointment waited for her in the hidden room she had not yet reached. The events of her recent past made her wary of pursuing hope; she had become cautious.
"Perhaps we ought to get it over with," Ian said. "Before you lose your nerve."
Kait winced and nodded. "Perhaps you're right."
Ulwe led them out of the storage room and toward the balconies. As they moved progressively through lighter corridors, past chambers with opened doors and fine furnishings, her mood lifted a little. The near-perpetual darkness of the deep heart of the House bothered her more than she could ever explain. She was as much at home in dark as in light but she wondered still why the original builders of Galweigh House had created so many dark, airless, windowless rooms. Who had lived in them, what had they done in them? And why had anyone needed so much space?
Ulwe's path twisted like a serpent; they followed her down a level, then forward again, then down another level. They were very near the balcony rooms; Kait hadn't known of any storage rooms that were so close to the balconies. And when Ulwe took her finally down a corridor that she recognized one that dead-ended with two balcony rooms and two little storage rooms she said as much.
"You've made a wrong turn. I know this part of the House."
"This is the right way," the child said. She kept going. Kait didn't argue. It would be simple enough to show her that she'd made an error, and if they wasted a little time, well, she would not complain about any delay that held off disappointment.
To Kait's left, the two doors that would open into the lovely balcony rooms. To her right, the two storage doors. All four were closed. The child opened the second storage room door and walked between the shelves. She rested a palm on the back wall. "They're in there."
Kait looked at the smooth face of the wall, then at the child. "In there."
"Yes."
Kait moved close to the wall and sniffed along its edges. She did catch human scents there. They were faint far too faint for her to identify but people had been here. She ran her fingers along the corners of the wall, then along the back edges of each shelf. To her amazement, she found the slight seams of a pressure pad on the far corner of the bottom right shelf. She pressed, but the pressure pad didn't give. Locked, then... from the inside.
Her pulse picked up, and she looked at the child. "You were right. There is a room in there."
"I can feel them in it," Ulwe said. "They're alive."
"Then they can hear me."
"Yes."
Kait stood and pressed both hands against the back wall, and shouted, "Heya! In the room! It's me! Kait Galweigh!"
She pressed an ear against the smooth surface of the stone-of-Ancients, and listened. She heard no movement, no voices, nothing. She waited, then shouted again. "The Sabirs have gone. The three of you can come out. It's me! It's Kait! You're safe now."
Again she pressed her ear to the wall and listened. She heard nothing for a long time, then the faintest whisper. "It might be Kait." A child's whisper.
"Kait's dead. It's the bad people. Be still and they'll go away."
Then stillness again.
"It is me!" Kait called. "I can prove it."
No sound. No movement. The whispers could have belonged to anyone but the child had spoken the name Kait with tones of hope. There were other Kaits in the world there had been other Kaits within the House but perhaps the people in there had known her. Had, perhaps, cared about her.
What should she tell them to convince them? Should she start with things the servants might have known, or things Family would have known? Which children had cared about her? Nieces and nephews? Very young cousins? The children of the upstairs servants?
"I had seven sisters," she said. "Two living brothers. My older sisters were Alcie and Drusa and Echo. My younger sisters were the twins, Loriann and Marciann, and then Luciann and Helena. Kestrell and Ewan were the brothers who died. Willim and Simman are the other brothers both were younger."
No sound. No response.
Kait continued. "My chambermaid was Danfaith she came from the village of Hopsett on the north coast, near Radan. My mother's name was Grace Draclas she was from the lines of Imus Draclas and Wintermarch Corwyn. My father was Strahan Galweigh. His paternal line came from Ewan Galweigh. We lost track of his maternal line before Brassias Karnee and his mistresses."
Nothing. Please, she thought. Please answer me. Please come out. Please let me think of the right thing to say, so that I can convince you I am who I say I am.
"I had the corner room in the Willow Hall," she continued. "I kept a seashell in a carved puzzle-box beneath my pillow I found it while walking by the shore at our country house. The shell was plain brown on one side and white on the other but when I held it up to the light, it glowed like pink fire. I had a jay feather in there, too, and a crystal my sister Echo gave me. I used to borrow Alcie's horse because it was the fastest and was a steady jumper, but it didn't like me, and she used to get angry with me for riding it."
She heard footsteps moving slowly near the wall. Coming closer and closer. Stopping just at the other side. She held her breath, waiting for the wall to move. But it didn't, and there were no more sounds.
"Please come out," she said.
"Tell me... tell me why your brothers died." Still the whisper. She did not know who stood on the other side of the door. She couldn't smell the people in there, she couldn't hear them.
"They were both killed by Sabir spies. They were infants when they died."
"Yes. But why were they killed?"
Kait's heartbeat picked up. Only her own family her parents and sisters and her surviving brothers had ever known the answer to that question. In truth, only they had known to ask it and they had kept the truth secret to save their lives. It could still cost her hers.
She closed her eyes tightly and pressed her cheek to the wall. If she whispered the words, she invited death but some leaps had to be taken on faith.
"They were Karnee," she said at last. "Like me."
She heard a small sob. Then the wall began to slide back, away from her. Scents rolled out of the sealed storage room, sweetly familiar, and a slender form stepped from the opening.
Kait's nose knew her sister before her eyes recognized her. In fact, her eyes might never have recognized the fragile woman that was her oldest sister.
"Alcie," she whispered.
They threw their arms around each other and wept. When they pulled apart, Kait asked, "Who's with you?" Alcie had had five children.
"Lonar. And the new baby. I named her Rethen."
She led Kait into the room where she'd been hiding. Kait's nephew Lonar hid in a corner, tucked behind a stack of crates, a baby girl clutched in his arms. When he saw Kait, his hunted expression vanished, replaced by a broad smile. "You aren't dead," he shrieked.
"And neither are you." Kait dropped to her knees and held out her arms, and he, clutching the baby, ran into them. "I'm so glad to see you, Lonar. And your new sister. You can't believe how glad."
The baby, startled,
began to wail.
Chapter 18
Then you hadn't planned to be down there." Kait and Alcie sprawled in deep chairs in the salon of her family's apartment, facing each other. Alcie nursed her baby and nibbled fresh greens pulled from one of the untouched herb beds on the grounds. Kait sipped warm amber Varhees brandywine straight from the bottle.
Ry and Ian were dragging stores up from the closest of the intact storerooms; Ulwe and Lonar had already been tucked into bed. So Kait had been able to hear Alcie's story uninterrupted, and had been able to tell her own. Both sisters had done a fair job of horrifying each other.
"It was just luck. Lonar was lonely, and I knew with the baby coming soon I'd have less time for him. He wanted to go down to the balcony rooms, and I thought I'd show him the secret room I'd found when I was little."
