Guilty Blood (6 page)

"So, they murdered him," he finished matter-of-factly, punctuating the sentence with a mirthful croak.

"The nobles?" I clarified. He nodded stiffly. "And threw his body in the Venachdalia family mausoleum?"

"So you say. No one ever knew. It was some business in its day. Everyone put on quite the show of being distraught and vowing justice. All the best sleuths and seers and whatnot went on the trail, but the culprits never turned up." He leaned toward me conspiratorially, continuing in a hoarse whisper. "The truth of the matter, though, is that they were all in on it. The best investigators were paid to find out what happened, but then were paid even more to turn around and go home. Very few people ever knew who the actual murderers were, or how Leiralt was killed, but everyone knew he had to die, and in the end were quietly relieved that someone had gone and done it. Except for Maraet, that is."

"The princess." I followed cautiously and was ignored.

"Without ever seeking the court's advice, she had the church do what they could. The bishop of Ardis took the task on himself, promising to call the prince's spirit back from the Lady's grasp. He tried. And he failed." Something about a disappointed priest obviously tickled the dead man, his new cackle nastier than all the times before.

This was starting to sound like some folk story. If anyone knew something about the dead and bringing them back or putting them down, it was the clergy of Pharasma. "How's that even possible?" I said, not bothering to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

"That's the best part," he snickered. "Nearly no one ever knew. And then after the tears and veils there was a new queen with a crown on her head and things were as they always were. Leiralt became the Lost Prince, just another royal mystery—just another story for the taproom."

"Nearly no one?" I asked. He was baiting me with this and his mention of "murderers," but for the moment I was content to indulge the withered wreck.

"We Barttleys have always had an interest in magic. When old Prince Knoldaman died, I was studying with a mystic who called himself Kirrahjah and claimed to be from Qadria—even though he spoke with a Chelish accent. Although foremost a showman and quite popular in Ardis at the time, he did truly know something about the arcane. I was there when the messenger first came with a bag of platinum and a request to solve a very strange puzzle: how to cut short a man's life and any life he might have thereafter. Kirrahjah mused on this for many nights, and then I didn't see him for nearly a month. Soon after the prince was killed, and I knew my mentor was involved. It took many years to be sure, but I finally found my proof." Barttley tried to nod proudly, an absurd lurching of his too stiff neck.

"After Kirrahjah's death, I bought all of his possessions and papers—many of which I still keep in my library today." He gestured around him to the ridiculous wreckage. Had Kirrahjah's papers truly held any secrets they were long lost.

"The old wizard had grown poor in his dotage, but worse, forgetful. Among his works I found four names—names that could have made him the richest man in Ardis had he remembered who they were: Ferendri, Geirais, Halboncrant, and Troidais, four of the oldest and most esteemed families in the city. They'd paid Kirrahjah to find a way to kill an unwanted prince and keep him dead, and he found a way—and he didn't. The old charlatan was never as skilled as his performances led most to believe, so there was no way he could actually do what his patrons asked. At the same time, he was a greedy coot, and the first bag of coins came with the promise of more of the same. So he conned them in a way only a better wizard would be able to reveal—and he knew they didn't have a better wizard. He created a dagger, and made it as grim and fabulous as only a showman could. I only saw the sketches, but I'm sure the murderers were quite delighted with his work. Truly, it was a weapon to kill a prince. But that's all it would do. Souls are sturdy things, you see—just look at me!" he spread his arms wide in a momentary burst of cackles.

"Kirrahjah couldn't conceive of a way to actually destroy a soul, but he was clever enough to trap one. So that's what he built: a cage for a soul. A cage shaped like a dagger. That way, when the prince was slain, his spirit would be locked into the dagger and nothing, not even the bishop of Ardis's magic, could call him back from the Boneyard, because he wouldn't be there. Clever fool!"

For the past day I'd been beset by dread: of the rotting thing in front of me, of a patchwork dog, and especially the murderous spirit I'd unleashed on Ardis. Now, I found myself actually starting to pity it.

"Then the spectre is the spirit of this Prince Leiralt," I mused absently, "and we set him free."

As soon as I looked upon Barttley's face I realized my mistake.

"You unleashed the Lost Prince's spirit. Then you have Kirrahjah's dagger!" A greed beyond death replaced the hate in the dead man's eyes. "I must have it! You must give it to me!" The corpse was scrabbling across the table toward me, eyes locked on my knife, broken yellow nails stretching out for me.

The damnable thing was faster than I'd expected, and again I lurched away too late. One of Barttley's dead gray hands had wrapped around the knife's blade and he was trying to wrestle it away from me, mistaking the crude dockworker's tool for his former mentor's masterpiece. I heaved back, but the corpse was far stronger than I had imagined his atrophied frame would have made possible. A black ichor—not quite blood, but more of a running clot—oozed down the blade, over the hilt, and, to my revulsion, beneath my grip. I could feel my hand slipping, yielding to the dead man's wrenching, but I'd be damned if I was going to be without a weapon in the corpse's lair. Jamming the ball of my left hand against the pommel, I shifted my momentum and thrust the blade directly into the corpse's grip. The half-sharp knife tore through the flimsy gray flesh, slamming the twitching claw back, pinning it to Barttley's hollow chest.

The blow had brought me intimately close to the dead thing, so when he screamed, he did so directly into my face, the full foulness of his decomposed bowels breaking over me along with the terrible, breathless noise. The dead man's scream was somehow even more profane that his laughter, a sound of agony that seemed to come from beyond bodily pain. Forcing the knife deeper, I met Barrtley's furious gaze, but there was more than hatred of the living in those dead orbs. A noxious yellow flame burned within, an unnatural light that swiftly filled the corpse's eyes and exploded forth, filling my vision and consuming the library around me. Blind, my head echoing with the scream of a damned soul, I felt a gut-wrenching vertigo, and then all went silent.

∗ ∗ ∗

Something incredibly large struck me, something wet and cold. I blinked and tried to clear my head. The realizations came gradually. I was on the ground. Mud was oozing between my fingers. A whippoorwill was rambling nearby, with the sound of water farther away. I hadn't been struck then, I'd fallen. But, the manor—how?

Kneeling, I looked around. I was outside the house, sprawled on its marshy, furniture-strewn lawn. I didn't think I'd blacked out. It was something Barttley did, some defense after I'd stabbed him. That sickly light had somehow magically flung me outside. Well enough for me. It seemed that the cordial part of my visit with the dead man had ended, and I wasn't eager to think of how our scrape might have ended otherwise. There were also other matters at hand.

"Leiralt," I murmured, testing the name. Somewhere out there was the spirit of a murdered prince, alive—or something like that—after a century of who knows what hell. Thinking back, it had been we who had attacked upon seeing the apparition. Could he have merely been defending himself? And when he killed Garmand…

Ferendri. Garmand Ferendri. Leiralt had said his last name. Had the prince mistaken Garmand for one of his killers?

The questions rushed past me, and I wasn't about to find their answers crouching in the mud, waiting for Barttley to chase after me. The dead man's recollections had left me with far more questions than I'd had before I'd come. Now I had a ghost to find, and I had a few leads on where he might be.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Just a moment more, Lord Halboncrant!" I tried to explain, doing my best to ignore the glares of the affronted house staff and the bluster of the corpulent nobleman who refused to hear how his life might be at risk. I'd had to make claims to get past the stodgy butler, claims he'd taken to his master as promises, and now that I'd thrice explained my deception and true reason for intruding I was suddenly—bafflingly—unwelcome.

"I've no times for jokes, girl. On your way, or I'll call for the guard." He dismissed me with a wave of his hand, which in turn set most of his upper frame waggling. The butler took an insistent step forward, wielding his disapproval like a pike.

"Your life is at risk!" I said as plainly as I could, not for the first time. "If you'd only listen for a moment I—"

"I'm quite sure I know better than some street trollop whether or not my life is in jeopardy. I don't know what you think you've heard or what reward you think you'll swindle with your lies, but you'll have to find some other mark. Ginieus Halboncrant is no dupe. Now good night!" He turned his attention to the butler. "Collis, see her out now. And we will discuss this later."

Nodding his obedience, the butler took another step toward me, guiding me with his gestures back toward the entryway. He was already gesturing for a footman to open the heavy front doors, as if at any moment he might pick me up by my coat and heave me though like a sailor offloading his bundle. My quick glower dissuaded any parting indignity he might have tried as an attempt to get back into his master's good graces.

In the next moment, I was past the barred outer fence surrounding the Halboncrants' overwrought townhome, the metallic echo of the slammed gate the only immediate sound on the dark avenue.

It had taken me the better part of the afternoon to sate my curiosities and eventually seek out Lord Halboncrant. I only passed through the city on my return from Merridweigh Gardens, knotting up my courage and returning to Evercrown Cemetery—by way of the road and front gate this time. The grave tenders paid me absolutely no mind, leaving me to suspect that our decision not to enter through the main road the night previous had been grossly overcautious. I found the Venachdalia mausoleum easily in the afternoon light, and in perfect repair—the door closed and without a sign of our disturbance or the other tragedies I knew had happened within. The great stone door was still unlocked, though. With a few bolstering breaths I had them open and was back inside.

"The squalor of an Ardis alley was no place for this creature."

It was just how I'd left it. The charred bones and ashes of a dozen counts scarred the mausoleum floor, the cold body of Sayn the boatman among them. Garmand was there too, a look of wide-eyed terror frozen on features that looked withered and wasted, as though he hadn't just died, but had every spark of vitality drawn from him. I looked away quickly. What wasn't there was both an immediate relief and a new mystery. Liscena, Garmand's sister, who had found the body with the remarkable dagger, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was that dreadful weapon. But most obviously, neither was the spectre of what might be Prince Leiralt. In the dust, the few flakes of his tattered corpse remained, crumbled to near nothingness with the spirit loosed from its rotten confines.

I departed swiftly and was back in the city before dark. With no idea where a century-old prince might go, or even generally how the dead might while away the daylight hours, I sought out what I could about the four families Barttley mentioned. Most gossip surrounded Ginieus Halboncrant, the only scion of the Halboncrant line residing in Ardis, a lecher who seemed to personally consume most of the profit—and product—of his family's local fisheries. I had hoped to probe him on what he might know of his ancestor's crime, or at the very least warn him that a murderous sprit might bear him ill will, but my audience did not go as well as I had hoped.

Here and there along the avenue shadowy travelers made their way through the night, drifting through irregular islands of yellow light as the ill-tended street lamps flickered and guttered in the chill evening breeze. The whole day had been a debacle, and a near-deadly one at that, serving only to remind me why I so purposefully avoided the company of the city's so-called nobility. It'd had been nearly two days since I'd had an honest sleep, and though the house I'd been squatting in was no palace, it was warm, dry, and relatively safe. With a long sigh, I cut into an alley, plotting the shortest path home.

I made one turn in the dark and he was there.

Royal and terrible, his severe features girded in the imposing finery of a bygone Ustalavic lord, he was like something from legend, a being that had lost his own life but won a greater existence for the reputation that persisted past his death. A crown adorned his head, one similar to that of royal heirs, but twisted and made morbid in death, transformed into a symbol of dread. He was as I had seen him the previous night, but somehow even more real, more present than before, though still his extremities grew transparent and faded away on ethereal eddies, making it impossible to mistake him for a living man. The squalor of an Ardis alley was no place for this creature, and the filth-smeared walls seem to shudder in dread of his very presence. I'd nearly run into him, and my flesh recoiled at the thought of his touch, both at the unnatural collision of flesh and soul and at the knowledge that everything I'd seen him encounter had died. He looked down at me, griping me with his gaze, judging the shocked expression upon my face. I waited for the blow to come, the touch that meant death, tensing in preparation—but it didn't fall.