David Dalglish - A Dance of Ghosts

It was the wrong thing to say, every word, and he knew it the moment they left his lips. Delysia stared at him, and it seemed her entire body had grown rigid. He reached out to her, wanting to hold her, to find some way to tell her that he knew he was being stupid, but she slapped his hand away. He reached again, and she repeated the slap, pointing a finger at him, her green eyes wide, the tears in them long since fallen and gone.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “You just … stay away from me for a while.”

“Delysia,” he said, but what else did he have to say? That he was sorry he’d killed Ghost? But he wasn’t, and he wouldn’t lie to her. She’d sense it immediately and just distance herself further. The priestess weaved through the trees, heading for the distant path.

“Delysia!”

She paused, and he watched her take in a deep breath before she turned to face him.

“You once told me that as long as I was there for you, as long as I could forgive you, you would endure,” she said. “That you’d remember who you were and believe you were still worth saving. You wanted me to be there for you, but I’m not sure I can. If I’m so naïve, if I’m not part of your world, then I can’t be the one to help you remember who you are. Someone else has stolen that place from me.”

He started toward her, but her glare held him back.

“You have a body to bury,” she said, and then she returned to the road, leaving him alone in the silence.

Haern felt his anger bubbling up, overwhelming him, keeping his anguish at bay. Like a statue he stood, watching Delysia until she was gone. At last, he could control himself no longer. Turning to Ghost’s corpse, he drew his sword again.

“Why couldn’t you stay dead?” he asked it, falling to his knees and plunging the sword into Ghost’s unmoving chest. Ripping out the blade, he jammed it in, again and again. “You bastard! You were dead, four years you were dead, so why now?” He beat the corpse with his fist, punctuating his words. “Why … now!”

There was gore all over him, and Haern leaned back, feeling so tired, so very tired.

“I’m not him,” he told the quiet forest. “I’m not the same. I’ve only done what was necessary. I’m better than him, better than he could ever be!”

But there was no one there to argue, no one to call him a liar or believe his words to be true. So, alone Haern stayed, pulling up the soft earth to bury Ghost, using the man’s swords to mark his grave. By the time he was done, the night was deep, the cicadas in full rhythm. Hiding from the stars, Haern slept wrapped in his cloak, but even its comfort was meager, for it stank of drying blood.

It was a meeting Alyssa could put off no longer. She went to her room and sat down on the bed beside Nathaniel, who’d been waiting there per her request.

“Is everything all right?” her son asked. Alyssa wrapped the boy in her arms, holding him against her as she struggled for the right words.

“It will be,” she said. “I promise, it will be.”

That was it; she had nothing more for him, but she’d wanted him close for a moment, to remind herself why she did what she was about to do.

“Go on,” she said. “And tell one of the servants to find Lord Victor and show him to my room.”

“Yes, Mother,” Nathaniel said. He slipped off the bed, and she heard his feet pad across the carpet to the door. It creaked open, he spoke softly to someone, and then silence. Alyssa sat amid it, trying to keep her heart steady.

“Zusa?” she asked. “Are you there?”

Only more silence. Good. She didn’t want Zusa near, not for this. That would come later. One struggle at a time.

The door opened, and she heard a man clear his throat.

“Milady?” asked Victor.

“Shut the door,” Alyssa said, hands squirming in her lap. Victor had been visiting nearly every day since he’d come with Antonil’s help to free her from John and Melody’s imprisonment. She now did her best to greet him warmly, but still she felt uncomfortable in his presence. Too much of his true self remained guarded, and what she could glimpse was tainted with frightening zeal.

When the door was shut, she heard his heavy footsteps lead toward her, then pause in the center of her bedroom. He had nowhere to sit, and she knew he would not be presumptuous enough to sit beside her on the bed.

“Matters appear to have settled down significantly,” Victor said after clearing his throat. “Muzien has not repeated his spectacle at the marketplace, and what information I can gather shows him carefully guarding anyone who pledges money to him for protection.”

“Such a benevolent ruler,” Alyssa said, unable to hold back a bitter smile.

“There’s some truth to that, sadly,” Victor said. “But we know better. His extortions are far from extreme, his greed bearable, because it’s not coin he wants. It’s power. If we bend our knee to him and offer coin for protection, does it matter if we give one or a thousand, so long as our knee is bent?”

Alyssa shook her head, thinking of how the elf had sneaked into her room. He treated everything like an amusing game, and they were but interchangeable pieces. When Victor had come to her after Melody’s death, he’d tentatively suggested paying the protection money Melody had promised. He’d been so nervous, so fearful to offend, it had made Alyssa laugh in his face.

A show of strength meant nothing if she could not back it up. There would be a time to resist the elf, but it wasn’t now, with her house in shambles. If she was to make enemies out of an elf who, by all accounts possible, now ruled the entirety of Veldaren, she’d do it when victory could be hers.

“Have you heard any rumblings from John Gandrem?” she asked, trying to push Muzien from her mind and talk on matters more immediate.

“None so far,” Victor said, and by his footsteps and moving voice, she could tell he was pacing. “He’s still upset, to be sure, but more that you’d question his honor. He really did feel he was doing what was best, but now that Melody is out of the picture, he’s willing to let bygones be bygones, you might say.”

Alyssa sighed. She’d thought about executing John for his part in everything, but Victor had insisted she hear him out. John had calmly but firmly declared his respect for her and his love of her son. Everything he did, it’d been lawful and just, and had he not ordered his men to stand down come Victor’s attack to free her? Given her drastic lack of allies, Alyssa had allowed him to escape without major punishment, though she’d still banished him from ever setting foot inside her home again, as well as promising no further contact with Nathaniel until he came of age. It was a slap on the wrist in her mind, but at least it didn’t seem John was actively trying to replace her, nor spreading foul rumors or hateful speech.

“Victor,” she said, trying to find the right words. She sensed him straighten up, as if he too sensed the importance of what she sought to say. “After everything that’s happened … are you still willing to fight against the guilds?”

Victor cleared his throat before answering.

“I am,” he said. “Perhaps not in the way I started, but my resolve has not broken.”

Alyssa rose from the bed, and she walked in the direction of his voice, hand outstretched. His hand touched her arm when she neared, as if letting her know of his position, and she then put her fingers against the side of his face. She used it to see him, to remember the blue of his eyes, the strength of his stare. A man who would refuse to allow even death to deny him success. A man fueled by a righteous fury.

“Let me hear you say it,” she said. “Tell me Muzien will not destroy us. Tell me you’ll have his head on a pike before the gates, along with all others of the damn guilds that have torn our lives apart.”