Nightspell (8 page)

only make out the vaguest murmur of their conversation, which meant Varis couldn’t hear hers, either. She

said, “That’s good. Because I’m not going to accept it.”

Kestin choked on his wine. For a moment she thought he was angry; then she realized he was laughing.

Kestin choked on his wine. For a moment she thought he was angry; then she realized he was laughing.

“Real y?” he said final y, put ing down his goblet. There were purple stains at the upturned corners of his

lips. “And yet I’ve barely said a word to you. The women here don’t find me unat ractive, but perhaps on the

plains women value dif erent things in a man.”

Like having a pulse? Darri just looked at him.

“Truth be told, I would rather wait a few years and marry your sister.” The prince flashed a conspiratorial

grin, one that probably had a great deal to do with Ghostland women’s high opinion of his looks. “I would stil

be the same age I am now, you know.”

Darri lifted her goblet to her lips; upon consideration, instead of sipping the wine, she drained as much of it

as she could. Kestin’s eyes gleamed—he knew the ef ect he was having on her. Suddenly furious, Darri

straightened and looked straight at him. Without flinching, she said, “Yes. I do know. And you should know

that my brother won’t force either of us to marry a dead man.”

Kestin put his goblet down on the table, his grin suddenly gone. Out of the corner of her eye, Darri saw Varis

watching them anxiously; but King Ais was stil talking, and her brother had no way to intervene.

Kestin wiped of his mouth and leaned forward, his black hair swinging across his cheek. “Are you so sure?”

“Yes,” Darri said, but al at once she wasn’t. She glanced away from Kestin at Varis. His bloodshot blue eyes

seemed smal and faded after the impact of Kestin’s dark gaze, his mouth grim and uncompromising. He

looked at her as if he didn’t much like what he was seeing.

It had been a long time since she had truly known her brother, if she ever had. He spent his life fighting and

scheming and kil ing. She had no idea what he was capable of; and, obviously, he hadn’t fol owed through on

his assurance that they would be leaving soon. Maybe he would wed her to an abomination, if he deemed it

necessary.

Then again, he had no idea what she was capable of. You just try it, she thought at him, and his eyes

widened slightly as he met her gaze.

“Don’t look so terrified,” the abomination said, and she turned back to him. His eyebrows lifted, and he

leaned back in his chair; clearly, terror was not what he was seeing on her face now.

“I meant,” he said, “don’t look so terrified, because it won’t happen. There is another option.”

She clenched her hand around the cool stem of her goblet, waiting. But before Kestin could continue, Varis

leaned over the table and said loudly, “Darri can tel you about the time she ruined a hunt to save her favorite

dog.”

Darri’s fist clenched; she loosened it before she broke the goblet, but kept her lips pressed together. After an

awkward moment, Varis coughed and began tel ing the story himself, and Kestin gave her a smal nod that

clearly meant later.

The rest of the meal passed in a series of awkward conversational forays issuing from the other three people

at the table. Darri didn’t bother. She had never been much good at pretending, and obviously it wouldn’t

mat er; Varis expected nothing of her, Kestin didn’t intend to marry her, and King Ais was a fading power, an

old king clinging to his dead son.

When the meal was final y over, Kestin stood with an easy grace and extended his hand to her. Darri looked

at the blue silk covering his forearm. Her flesh crept along her hand; she tried to think of something to do,

something that wouldn’t make her revulsion so evident, but she couldn’t. And she couldn’t make herself take

his arm.

Kestin’s mouth tightened, but he merely inclined his head politely and let his arm drop to his side. “I was

hoping you would walk with me,” he said. “I’d like to show you the castle.”

“That would be wonderful,” Darri replied promptly. “Would you take me to my sister’s rooms? I would love

to see where she has been living.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Varis make some sort of movement, but she ignored him; there was

nothing he could do to stop this charade.

Kestin’s eyes crinkled at the corners, reminding her that he, too, knew it was a charade. But he merely said,

“Of course. You must miss her, after al this time.”

“Yes,” Darri said, and al at once was overwhelmed by how true it was. She missed Cal ie so much it was

like an ever-growing hole somewhere inside her; and now that Cal ie was so close, it was worse than it had

ever been. She turned abruptly from the sympathy in Kestin’s eyes, blinking fast to keep herself from tears. The

wine had been a mistake; she had forgot en it could have ef ects other than lightheartedness.

They walked out of the banquet hal , turned left down a wide hal way, and walked up a marble spiral

stairway. At the top of the stairs was a round, lamp-lit chamber, from which a multitude of narrow

passageways led into the depths of the castle. Kestin turned down one, and Darri fol owed him. It wasn’t until

they had passed several closed wooden doors, and the silence was becoming thick and oppressive, that she

stopped walking and turned to face him.

“Can we talk here?” she asked.

Kestin stepped back on his heel as he turned, a lithe motion that reminded Darri of Varis. It was the

instinctive movement of a trained swordsman. “These rooms are al unoccupied, so we’re safe. There’s no one

who can overhear us.”

Darri gathered her hair in one hand and slung it behind her back. “No one I can see.”

“No one you can’t see, either.” Kestin raised an eyebrow. In the lamplight, his hair gleamed blue-black.

“When ghosts become invisible, their presence can be sensed; ironical y enough, it’s easier for them to hide

“When ghosts become invisible, their presence can be sensed; ironical y enough, it’s easier for them to hide

when they’re solid. I’d know if we had any watchers. You’l pick up on the feeling soon enough.”

Darri hoped she would be gone long before she had to learn that particular skil . . . a brief, forlorn hope,

but dif icult to let go of now that she had let it in. She took a deep breath, braced herself, and said, “What is the other option?”

Kestin stepped back to the opposite wal of the hal way and leaned against a red and gray tapestry. This

time, there was nothing hidden or quick about the assessment in his gaze; he watched her for a long,

considering moment before he spoke. “I have a second cousin named Cerix. He’s next in line to the throne after

me, and he’s alive.”

Slowly Darri said, “I don’t think a second cousin wil seal this particular al iance.”

“No,” Kestin agreed. “Your father’s armies are too powerful for anything but a royal marriage to stop him.”

A royal marriage or an army of ghosts, Darri thought; but Kestin must know the stakes as wel as—or bet er

than—she did. Her father didn’t truly want to test his soldiers by ordering them to invade Ghostland; and King

Ais, presumably, didn’t want to risk an invasion either. The heart of Ghostland, a three-day ride through

gnarled forest, was safe enough; but its borderlands, where forest faded or was cut into field, and where a band

of horsemen could ride in at sunrise and be out by dusk, was dangerously vulnerable. A few wel -timed raids

could destroy a season’s harvest, which would be felt even in the deepest, darkest chambers of this invulnerable

castle; and the commoners would die in swathes.

So both countries needed an al iance, and a marriage to make it stick.

“I was told,” she said slowly, “that your father considers you his heir.”

Kestin jerked his shoulders, making the tapestry shift dangerously behind him. “He does,” he said, biting of

the words. “It is unprecedented, but quite legal.”

She rubbed the back of her neck. “Then what are we—”

“But I am not heir yet,” Kestin went on. His eyes narrowed. “Until I agree to the coronation ceremony, his

choice is not binding, which is where my father’s trouble currently lies. I don’t want to be king, not anymore.

Not now that I’m—” He stopped, lips pressed together, and Darri knew she hadn’t succeeded in hiding her

reaction. “My cousin Cerix, on the other hand, does want to be king. Quite desperately. And if I were to

disappear, he would be next in line.”

Darri hadn’t the slightest clue what Kestin was get ing at. She said, “If . . .”

“If I find out who kil ed me, and avenge myself, I wil cease to be.”

“Is that what you want?”

Kestin was very stil , but his black eyes blazed. “Yes.”

Darri couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. She had been raised to understand the importance of vengeance;

and she knew, oh she knew, what it was to want one thing so badly that nothing else mat ered. She leaned

toward him and said, “You want my help.”

“I need your help.” Kestin leaned forward too; she could see the beads of sweat on his forehead, the sharp

creases around his eyes.

Darri lifted her eyebrows. “Why me?”

Kestin blew out a short breath. “My father has forbidden any of his subjects to help me. He wants me as his

heir. The dead are backing him because they want one of their own on the throne. And the living are al too

afraid to help me.”

The disdainful undertone in the way he said “the living” made Darri blink. For a moment she had almost

managed to forget that the man in front of her was dead.

Bile rose in her throat. She swal owed it hard and straightened abruptly. “What if you change your mind, at

the end? Decide you don’t wish to just . . . vanish?”

“If I know who kil ed me, there wil be nothing to decide.” Kestin went translucent as he spoke and made a

violent gesture with his arm, which went right through the wal behind him. “That’s how it is, for ghosts. It’s an obsession. As the living desire procreation, so do the dead desire justice.”

Darri wrenched her eyes away from that arm, her stomach roiling. The remnants of the wine didn’t help at

al with the sudden wrenching emptiness inside of her. Because she had no doubt that Varis would accede to

this plan.

Nothing had changed, she told herself. She had come to trade herself for Cal ie. She would marry Cerix

instead of Kestin, and Cal ie would get to go home, and it would be exactly as she had planned. Nothing had

changed just because she had dared believe, for a short while, that there was a happy ending for both of them.

Kestin’s eyes were intently watchful, and something in their dark gaze made her think he sympathized.

Which was probably his intent. She looked at his arm, stil half in the wal .

“I wil help you,” she said quietly, “if you promise me that you’l make Cal ie go.”

“Of course. She’s not a prisoner. ”

“Not let her go. Make her go.”

Kestin’s eyebrows slanted, two diagonal black lines on his ash white forehead. He pul ed his hand out of the

wal and passed it across his face. “Even if she’s content here?”

She’s learned not to think about the perversion that surrounds her, Darri thought. That’s not “content.” But of

course she couldn’t say that to Kestin, and in any case, she had no interest in discussing her sister with the dead prince. “Yes.”

prince. “Yes.”

Kestin nodded, and Darri drew in a deep breath. This was good, she told herself. This was exactly what she

wanted.

She folded her arms over her chest. “Then we’re agreed. I’l help you find your murderer. How did you die?”

He looked up at her in surprise, his hair fal ing back over his cheekbones. She had guessed it was a rude

question, but she didn’t have time for him to get around to the subject on his own. She lifted her chin and

waited.

Kestin bit his lower lip. “I was strangled in the middle of the day. I didn’t even realize I was dead until I

woke up in the evening, and found out it was three ful nights after I had gone to sleep.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“I don’t know. It must have been one of the dead, because my guards saw no one pass.”

“So whoever it was went through the wal s?” He nodded. “What were you strangled with?”

“I don’t know. It was gone by the time my body was discovered.”

“Can ghosts carry weapons through wal s?”

Kestin pressed both his hands against the tapestry behind him. This time, they didn’t go through. Instead he

ran his fingers over the fabric, making a faint brushing sound. “The older ghosts can; they can make anything

they’re holding fade with their bodies. The new ghosts . . . it’s dif icult for us to do anything we couldn’t do

when we were alive.” He grimaced. “The older we get, the more powerful we become. I can’t manage much

yet.”

We. I. It was impossible to forget what he truly was, a corpse guised in silk and skin. Darri said hastily, “And

it happened a few weeks ago?”

He pushed himself away from the wal and took two steps sideways, his eyes remaining on her. “Yes.”

Just about the time they would have heard about Kestin’s new marriage prospect.

“And your father . . .” She said it experimental y, with no idea how she was going to end the sentence, and

recognized the betrayed anger that ignited in the prince’s eyes. His father had trapped him in this state, unable to move beyond life, unable to be alive, either.

“We’l keep your father out of it,” she said, and his eyes flashed again, but this time it wasn’t with anger. He