“Anyway,” Bright continued, “I kindly offered to take him back to Elayison in secret so that his embassy could get him home without a diplomatic incident.”
The ghost snorted. “For a consideration.”
“Yes, that’s the best thing. He’s going to find your mother for us.”
“What? But she’s dead.” I didn’t know that for sure, but she’d gone off with my outlander sire to visit his homeland when I was barely twelve months old, telling Auntie Eff she’d be home in a couple of months. Apparently she’d been fascinated by the ghosts. Eff had always said she’d adored me and would never have stayed away so long if she’d been able to come back. I’d long assumed that she’d died on the journey through the Bone Mountains, which was supposed to be very long and extremely hazardous. Everyone in the family called her ‘poor dear lost Aurora’—except Granny, who refused to believe she wasn’t coming back.
“If Shadow can find proof of what happened to her in Ghostland, Granny will have to sort out her estate and you’ll finally get your allowance. And you’ll be able to get out of here. See, I told you I’d make it up to you for being disinherited.”
This whole idea was so surprising I didn’t know what to say. I struggled to close my mouth and say something useful.
“You can’t take him to Elayison,” was the best I could come up with. “You’re in exile.”
“You did not say—” began the ghost.
“Shut up, both of you!” Bright glared at me and then at the ghost. “I can’t take you. But Shine here can. She’s not in exile.”
Trust a mage not to consider the obstacles.
“Bright, I can’t go anywhere. It’s Blessing time.”
“So? You stash this fellow somewhere until the festival is over. And then you set out. Simple.”
The house was going to be packed to the rafters with the family and their ravenous servants, sticking their noses into everything, snooping all over the estate and hunting all through the forest. And the peasants would be too frightened of the ghost for me to stash him at one of their houses. Yet Bright said it was simple. Cursed mages! Life just isn’t real for them.
“And before you say ‘but’ again,” said Bright, “I’ve got the money for the tickets.” He held out a fat little purse.
“Ladybless, did you rob someone?” I took the purse. It contained about ten lumins. I whistled. “Did you actually win at cards for once?”
In the background, Graceson rolled his eyes.
“No,” snapped Bright. “The commander gave me an advance on my pay. I’m her little bright-eyed boy. She loves me.”
“What, you mean you managed to make love to the commander?” The family’s problem with Bright was not only that he liked to sleep with men, but that he’d refused to be unfaithful to Graceson even with women. Since he was only a man and not important to the lineage, it was a mystery why the family had made such a fuss about it. Plenty of noble men didn’t do their duty.
Graceson had been thrown into prison on a trumped-up charge, but Bright had managed to bail him out. Despite this being perfectly legal, there had been a scandal over their relationship and the prison sentence. Bright had been given an ultimatum and when he refused to give up Graceson, he was disinherited. The family had hushed up some truly dreadful scandals in the past, so why they had to make an example of Bright was still a mystery to us. Eff said she saw Auntie Flara’s fell hand in the deed.
“What my lord is saying is that he’s the best mage in the regiment,” interjected Graceson smoothly.
“Not that that’s hard,” Bright’s round face split into a cheerful grin. “A more pathetic collection of smoke rats, drunks and arrogant shitheads too stupid to follow a mundane commander’s orders, you could never hope to find. Almost makes me believe the stuff Mother says about mages being too decadent to govern properly.”
I stared at the purse. Elayison! Even for a short time, it would be fabulous. And I might be able to save some of this money. Because, like it or not, I’d have to come back. I wasn’t going to leave Auntie Eff here on her own. Not now she’d lost all hope.
“You’ve really thought this through,” I said, touched by Bright’s planning. On the whole mages don’t do planning, even for their favourite cousins.
“Don’t sound so surprised. I’m doing my best to sort out Mother too, but that’s a bit of an uphill battle now. How is she, by the way?”
The light tone didn’t fool me. The way he was rubbing his hands together gave away his anxiety.
“She’s fine, though missing you,” I lied. No point in telling him how shattered Auntie Eff had been by his disgrace. As anyone would be if her only son had been exiled from the capital, disgraced, beaten up, and forced to join the army in a frontier regiment to make a living. Eff had been counting on her noble son to sort out her own exile, not to join her in it. “She’ll be over the sun to see you, Bright.”
Bright jumped up. “Good. Let’s get on up to the house. Back in the trunk, Shadow.”
“So his name’s Shadow, is it?” I asked. Mages often nicknamed people to suit themselves.
“No. It’s something awful... Say your name for us, would you, Shadow?”
The ghost opened his mouth and let out a long stream of sing-song sounds that sounded like swear words.
“Wha...!” I gawped at him open mouthed. “Lady! Say it again slower.”
Bright grinned. “You’ll never learn it. Their language is awful. I’ve decided to call him Shadow ’cause he’s a ghost.”
“You might as well do the same,” said the ghost. He smiled ruefully. “Cultural correctness seems to be an unknown concept here.”
“What did you say?” I asked for a second time.
“Don’t worry about him,” said Bright. “He’s some kind of scholar in his own country and I beginning to suspect he’s as big a radical as Mother. He says weird stuff all the time, but he’s pretty well behaved on the whole.” With another grin, he whacked the ghost on the back. “He’s even housetrained. Can you believe that?”
The ghost rolled his strange light eyes as he turned to climb back into the trunk. Clearly he understood Bright’s teasing; I hoped we’d understand each other.
CHAPTER TWO
“FINDING MY MOTHER is a bit of a long shot, isn’t it? Why are we really helping this ghost?” I asked Bright as we drove back to the house.
“An unregistered ghost sneaking over the border and wandering about the country would make things very hard for Great-Uncle in the Great Council. The conservatives would have a field day.” Even out here in Willow, I knew how much the ghosts were distrusted by our leaders. They brought interesting inventions and trinkets, but most of the mages felt we didn’t need them. Apart from that, there wasn’t much else they had to trade for the crystal they seemed so interested in. Many mages thought we should forbid them to enter our Empire and instead trade with them in the desert outside our borders. As it was, they were limited to living in Elayison and every one of them had to be registered.