together, forming a pale white scar on his dark skin. When finished, Calan took a step back and more collapsed than sat with his weight pressed against the door. His head thumped against the wood, and it seemed those dark circles had increased.
“A long two days,” he said, as if to himself.
“Blame the Trifect,” Ghost said.
“I blame no one. Have no reason. Some days are long, and some painfully short. Must say, I do prefer the calmer ones to this, however.”
Ghost chuckled, but he didn’t have the strength to continue. Drowsiness was stealing over him. He’d only slept a few hours in the tavern, and it’d hardly been deep or comforting. The pain had found him even in his dreams.
“I think I’ll sleep now,” he said.
And then he did. His sleep was deep, dark, and strangely without dreams. When he awoke, he felt as if an immense amount of time had passed. His leg felt worlds better, though he was still hesitant to bend it. What if it were all an illusion, and the pain returned tenfold when he finally tested it? Rubbing his eyes with his hand, he shook his head to speed up his waking. He found himself alone in the room.
When he put his weight on his knee, it buckled and gave completely. He caught himself on the bed and collapsed back atop it.
“What the fuck?” he asked, then felt guilty for cursing in the middle of a temple. It was a silly feeling, but still his neck flushed. He stretched his arms and back, then settled in. What should he do now? It wasn’t like he was in any real danger, and he’d already paid for the bed and healing. The only thing nagging on his mind was the Watcher. He needed another confrontation, one without those annoying mercenaries getting in the way. How could he manage it? And would the Watcher be foolish enough to return to that building, return to where he knew others might find him? What he knew about the Watcher could be written on a pebble. The man might still be with the Eschaton, or he might be halfway to Ker.
Ten minutes later the door opened, and in stepped Calan. He looked a little better, but not much.
“Was your rest pleasant?” he asked. He sounded distracted, the question more obligatory than any conscious desire to know.
“Best in years. How long was I out?”
“Five hours,” Calan said. He pulled the chair out from the desk and plopped into it. Massaging his forehead with his fingers, he stared down at the wood and appeared to soak in the calm. Ghost had seen people look like that before, after they’d endured a long stretch on a battlefield. Once the blood and bodies were gone, the men looked as if solitude was something physical they could soak in like a sponge, silence a concoction they could massage through their temples and neck.
“It bad out there?” he asked, disliking the lack of noise.
“It was,” Calan said, his eyes staring through his desk. “Better now. A lot of dead, and even more anger and hopelessness. Too many expect miracles, as if I had any to give.”
Ghost felt another awkward silence descend over them. Deciding he was out of his league, he pulled things back to something more grounded, more real to him.
“What’s wrong with my knee?” he asked. “I can’t stand on it.”
Calan looked up. “I cleansed the infection and knit the flesh, but it is still tender. The spell I used to numb your pain will take time to fade, and until it does, most of your muscles will ignore any request you make of them. Don’t fight it; there isn’t much point. In another few hours, you’ll be walking, albeit with a limp. A few more and you’ll be back to doing whatever it is you do. Killing, I assume, sending me even more men and women to care for.”
“I came and paid good coin for healing, not insults.”
“My apologies, that was uncalled for.”
“It was.”
He tilted his head toward the wall, not even wanting to look at the old man. The only ones he’d killed recently were those he’d been contracted for, or defending the priests’ temple. That was the thanks he got? Vague accusations of making his life harder, and a claim that he was nothing but a killer?
“You know what it’s like to live in a place where everyone who sees you either hates you or is afraid?” Ghost asked.
“There are many who are unsettled by my presence, and more who are angered by what I speak.”
“But it isn’t the whole city. Even those who fear you do so because you’ve got something they don’t understand. They don’t understand me either, but you, they could choose to be like you if they wanted. They can’t be like me, no matter what they do. They best they could do is smear themselves with coal, and that’d vanish with a good scrub.”
Calan leaned back in his chair, and he seemed to truly look at him for the first time.
“Is that why you paint your face? To show them how different you are?”
Ghost chuckled. “You want to know why? Truly why? It should show them how the difference between us, between me and you, is something as stupid as a strip of paint, something so thin and artificial we think nothing of it if done to a wall or a piece of armor. But that never happens. Instead they look at me with even greater fear. When I first started, those I hunted called me Ghost, and so I took the name and abandoned my old one. At least if they hated the Ghost, feared it, it was my own creation they feared. It wasn’t me; it wasn’t who I really was. Let them focus their hatred on something I can shed as easily as I shed this paint upon my face.”
“Are you a killer?” the priest asked.
“No. But I think Ghost is.”
“And who are you when you are not the Ghost?”
Ghost looked at him, trying to understand the true desire behind the question. Calan seemed interested, almost invested in what he might say and do. There was no lie or deceit in him, and Ghost considered himself an excellent judge of both. Who was he when not the man with the white face? Who was he when not hunting, when not contracted to capture or kill another?
“I’m not sure I remember anymore,” he said.
“Do you still remember your name?”
He should have, but suddenly it didn’t seem so clear. It’d been over ten years since he adopted the Ghost moniker. Before that, he’d gone by a dozen names, changing them as he traveled east, each city a new name. He tried to pull up childhood memories, of hearing his mother say his name, but each one was different in the time- worn haze. Suddenly he felt ashamed, and he wanted to be anywhere other than beneath the priest’s unrelenting gaze.
“No,” he said at last. “And I may never. Why does it matter to you, old man?”
“If you have to ask, I fear your mistrust has sunken in far deeper than any infection.”
Ghost used the wall to shove himself onto his good leg.
“Enough,” he said. “My thanks for your help. Good luck with your wounded.”
“And you with your wounds as well.”
Ghost limped from the temple, more than ever certain that Haern needed to die, if only to put his suddenly troubled mind to rest.
24
Veliana pulled her dagger free of the Wolf’s neck and kicked his body away. All around her rose the stench of blood and dead bodies. They’d thoroughly trashed the home, broken chairs and shattered tables. Deathmask stood at the door, scanning for more trespassers to their territory, while the twins entered from the house’s other room.
“I’m bleeding,” said Mier.
“He’s bleeding,” said Nien.
“Badly?” Deathmask asked, not bothering to glance inside.
“No.”
