The city guard made us stand and wait beside the cistern in the first courtyard as they searched the house. Vaenahma watched me out of the corner of their eye. My distress must have been obvious, yet they knew that I wanted to bear it alone. Until I didn’t.

  “She spies for Libreigia,” I said. “She must. Is Libreigia behind Dasuekoh, then?” My voice sounded gruff, worn out. Like I’d been shouting. Or sobbing.

  “They might not have been working together. Why would she want you to capture him, when she could capture him herself?”

  “So that’s what’s happened? I drove him into some trap that she had set?”

  “Maybe.”

  I paused, then spoke my fear aloud. “I’m a fool. That’s why they promoted me, of course. Too blind to see what’s really going on. Too stupid to ask questions.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Why should you pay attention to evil doings?”

  I stared at them. “One might say that it is a guard captain’s entire duty.”

  A shrug. “Or that a guard captain is meant to protect the innocent. It’s strange, Captain. Your charge was to guard the royal court. The Guard of Everyone Else. But that nickname was meant to refer only to the courtly palaces. Strange that we’ve spent so much time tracking down criminals and killers, during the few years that I’ve been in your service.”

  I was surprised. “Well, we kept hearing of things.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  I thought. “That widow who was cheated last year. Those brothers who murdered their parents.”

  “The merchant Demirill.”

  “Yes, him.”

  “And why did you hear of them?” they asked patiently, like a tutor drawing thought out of a reluctant child.

  “Because people kept coming and telling us about them.”

  “Telling you about them.”

  “I suppose. Listen, I wasn’t the first to do it. The captain before me did as I do.”

  A small smile flickered across Vaenahma’s face. “You have a reputation, Captain. You’re the one that people go to when no one else will look out for them.”

  I tried to push the compliment away. “It distracted me from the way the world really works.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Vaenahma sighed. “I regret killing those youth.”

  I blinked, caught off guard by the non sequitur. “Those four bandits in the woods?”

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  They nodded. “I killed them out of hatred, but not hatred for them. I wanted to punish the Sasturi.”

  “Martiveht? She’s all right.”

  The small smile, again. “As an individual, maybe. But she is sasturi. I told you how they accompanied Daas Muhkat when he brought his army out against us. After the battle, they picked over the dead, taking some ghosts and leaving others. It is their way. There was a Neuthermakra with them, who made a shrine in a nearby hill. Daas Muhkat’s troops had to dig the hole for it, even though they were tired after the day’s fighting. But the dead cannot be allowed to wander. The riders of old would dig their holes before a battle. Did you know that? The opposing horse lords would meet and settle on a spot, and their troopers would come together and dig, all working as one, until a hill was hollowed out or the earth mounded up. Then the Neuthermakra would enter the darkness with a spirit stone and make the shrine. When that was done, they would fall to killing each other.”

  “Grim,” I commented.

  “Yes. They couldn’t cooperate when it came to ceding pasturage or sharing treasure, but they worked together to protect themselves from the dead.” There was a strange look in Vaenahma’s eye as they said this. I didn’t know what to make of it, then.

  “And if they didn’t have a Neuthermakra with them when they met in combat?”

  “Then the ghosts would wander the plains. Every ten years or so the horse lords would call for a grand procession. It could travel through every lord’s territory and no one could offer it violence. It was led by a Neuthermakra who carried a spirit stone. It wound slowly through all of the petty kingdoms of the west and brought the spirits to the Ghost House at Chalbadihvin. But before the spirits could enter the house, they had to pass through the Sasturi, who lined the road and picked among the ghosts, plucking the ones who were too dangerous for the House.”

  “Too dangerous?” I asked.

  Vaenahma nodded. “They are very like the tinkers of the Sangrahalaya,” they said.

  “Who are? The ghosts?”

  A brief smile. “No, Captain. The Sasturi. The tinkers travel the roads and steal away anything that might be dangerous to humanity as a whole. Swords and inventions and alchemical discoveries. They seize them and take them to the Sangrahalaya for safe-keeping. The Sasturi do the same with the dead.”

  I sat down on the edge of the cistern and thought about the dangerous dead. Nolio has sung many lugubrious dirges about ghosts and hauntings to me. They are very popular among the songsters who wander the roads. I had heard of the Ghost House of Chalbadihvin, of course, but never of this ritual. The sound of the city guard’s search through the house reverberated in the courtyard. “What happens when a spy dies? Who snaps them up before they can tell their secrets?”

  Vaenahma shrugged. “I don’t know.” They nodded towards the house. “I killed a man on the stairs just now.”

  “If there were no Sasturi your victim might haunt you,” I said.

  “Yes. I know.”

  I wished I hadn’t said it. Vaenahma’s expression changed only fractionally, but I could read it. All of the regret and anger and sorrow. Now it was my turn to comfort them. “The Duke is more savvy than he looks,” I said. “He let us enter this house so that the guard could respond to our intrusion. He’ll express his regrets to the Jahnadee patriarch after the fact. It couldn’t be helped. There were miscreants loose in the compound. Of course the city guard had to come in.”

  “Will he name us as the intruders?”

  “I don’t think so. The city guard seems to be rounding up the Jahnadee’s men. I suppose they’ll take them somewhere until the flotilla is safely away.” I scratched my chin. “There is the boy I left in the alley, though. Still, the threat is removed and the Jahnadee know that the Duke knows about their plotting. It should keep them looking over their shoulders for the next few days, and shy of asking too many questions.”

  I might have said more, but at that moment I heard a strange sound. It seemed to come from within the cistern. Vaenahma heard it, too. Their eyes met mine and we both dropped our hands to our sword pommels. We listened, and heard it again. The sound of a voice calling.

  It was Vaenahma who found the secret lever, built within the inner rim of the cistern. A set of tiles that were raised a little higher than the others. My lieutenant pushed, and a piece of ground beside the cistern’s rim fell away. A hidden door, swinging back on silent hinges and sending a shower of dirt into the darkness below. We both stared at it for a moment, and then a voice called from within.

  “You’ve found me! I was afraid that I’d be left here. That I’d starve to death.”

  I thought I recognized the voice, and went to the edge of the hole. There was a narrow stairway leading down, and a face looked up from the bottom. The handsome, able face of Setrabohst Sarangbau, the duke’s son.

  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2025

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  The Ghost House at Chalbadihvin

  Reports of the Alchemist’s Procurers