Zaredis’s puzzled gaze moved between shade speaker and shade. “What do you wish to tell me?”
“Do you still intend to execute the cat’s-paw?”Kalun tipped his chin toward Gharek, whose attention was fully on Estred as she pointed to the things on the map he was drawing.
Judging by his expression, the question caught Zaredis by surprise. Siora as well, though she did her best to keep any emotion out of her voice while she relayed Kalun’s words to his brother. The general eyed her suspiciously for a moment. “I’m only repeating what he tells me,” she assured him. “Nothing more. Nothing less.”
She wanted so badly to implore Zaredis to reconsider his quest for vengeance against Gharek, to beg for mercy—if not for Gharek than for Estred, who needed him. Estred had Siora should she lose her father, but a homeless shade speaker couldn’t offer much to an orphan.
Zaredis answered Kalun’s question with one of his own. “Why do you ask?”
“You always were a cagey one with your answers,”Kalun replied with a smile. The smile melted away.“Because his life has been of more benefit to you, and his death will serve no purpose. I’m dead and will remain dead, whether or not you kill him. The only real impact will be on his daughter. The innocent suffer enough in this world as it is, brother. Why add to the misery?”
Siora avoided meeting Zaredis’s eyes as she translated, afraid the emotion she managed to keep out of her voice would be blatantly painted on her face for him to see. His features took on a more severe cast at Kalun’s remarks. “Do you not want vengeance? You were innocent of wrongdoing and died a savage death for trying to help. All thanks to the cat’s-paw.”
An ethereal sigh of regret drifted across Siora’s soul, and Kalun stared at his brother with wistful melancholy.“He fetched me with only the knowledge that I was summoned to heal his liege. He didn’t know what she would do, though I doubt he was surprised when Dalvila turned on us.”A flash of anger tightened his misty features for a moment.“This is an empty vengeance. The person I’d want to extract it from is dead, the manner of her death a justice none of us could have imagined but more befitting than anything you or I or anyone else could have dealt her.”
The struggle to keep her tone emotionless grew harder and harder with every sentence Siora translated for Kalun. This uneasy spirit, still lingering, had become Gharek’s best chance of avoiding a death sentence and Estred’s best hope of keeping her father, and it was her own strong belief that he, above all others, would be the one to sway his brother toward clemency.
Gharek wouldn’t meekly submit to dying. He played puppet to Zaredis first to buy time and then to protect Estred. For him, allroads led back to her. Still, Siora didn’t doubt he’d worked out in his mind some plan of escape for himself and his daughter. In her opinion, his chances of succeeding were slim at best, but if the general was inclined to change his mind...Please,she silently begged Zaredis. Please reconsider.His answer disappointed her, though it still allowed her to hope.
“I’ll think on your argument,” he told Kalun, his frown even darker now. “For now he’s in no danger from me. I still need him to help me retrieve the Windcry.”
“I can help with that,”Kalun said. Siora gave him a questioning look. So did Zaredis.
“How so?” He nodded to Siora. “Without her, none can see you or hear your words, not even Rurian. And it makes no sense to bring her. She’ll only be a hindrance while we sneak inside.”
As much as she disliked the notion of being a hindrance for anyone about anything, she had to agree and told Kalun, “Your brother’s right. The more people trying to sneak past Domoran guards, the greater the challenge in doing so.”
“The dead have ways of alerting the living when they so desire,”Kalun argued.“A shade speaker is damn convenient but not necessary. My brother and I can figure out a way for me to warn him and the cat’s-paw, if there’s trouble afoot or they’re about to be discovered.”
Siora could almost hear the calculations, the strategies, and the risks weighed and measured as Zaredis stared at his brother’s ghost. “So be it.” He held out a forearm, which Kalun clasped in a phantom grip, his hand and arm vague shadows against Zaredis’s living flesh. “I welcome your help, brother. Once I see the cat’s-paw’s completed map, we can plan in detail.”
He gestured for Siora and Kalun to follow him back to thetable where Gharek continued sketching an impressively detailed map of the summer palace’s interior. Rurian stood beside him, silent except for an occasional question about true distance between one hallway and another or the position of a staircase and where it stood in relation to a guard’s line of sight.
Estred, who’d soon grown bored with her father’s dull task, approached Siora. She still wore the remnants of that condemning expression, a mask to conceal the hurt shining so clear in her eyes. Guilt sat heavy on Siora’s chest, as did regret, making it hard to breathe. Still, the girl closed the distance to stand beside her, small toes pointed to pet the folds of Siora’s dirty skirts.
Siora glanced at Gharek, who watched them both with his hawk’s gaze. He nodded once as if to say, “Well done.”
It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was a start.
Rurian still held the book Gharek had brought with him, reluctantly passing it back to Zaredis when he gestured for its return. The general held the tome up to Siora. “How does this book help my brother?”
She wasn’t sure if it could. Before she could explain why, a bone-shuddering chill blasted into the tent, colder than Kalun’s touch, colder than the presence of any ghost she’d ever faced. Numerous gasps echoed throughout the tent. The rising terror inside her was reflected on both Gharek’s face and Kalun’s as well.
It’s here,Kalun said.The ghost-eater.
To her horror, a second ghost joined Kalun in the tent. Skavol’s revenant swirled in an endlessly changing mass that warped his features, as if he couldn’t control his manifestation in the world of the living.Help me, daughter!
The cry boomed in her mind, greater than any full-throatedshout. A second frigid blast of air blew out the tent’s sides like the wings of a bird in flight. Darkness edged this draft, serpentine and purposeful and smelling of decay.
Chaos erupted in the tent. Siora jerked her hand free of Kalun’s to hoist a cowering Estred into her arms and shield her from the debris of parchment, candlesticks, plates, and cups hurling about the space in a whirlwind, striking people who dove for cover.
She caught a glimpse of Gharek lunging toward her, features pale with terror and fury. The otherworldly voice she’d heard in Midrigar rose above the howl and maelstrom, an echo of a command that still made her soul shrivel at the words.
“Come, meat. I hunger. I starve.”
Despair and suffering, an endless gnawing on the bones of the soul by something whose ravenous appetite knew no end. More ghosts swarmed into the tent, dragged there helplessly by the ghost-eater.
Or drawn to her, for protection, for sanctuary. A shield against that which would devour them.