All material on this site, except where otherwise explicitly stated, is copyright of the author known as Ann Somerville. All art, except where otherwise explicitly stated, is copyright of the artist known as Kiriko Moth

  A Peace Within

Copyright © 2006 Ann Somerville

I’d been a soldier since I was seventeen. I’d been shot, blown up, buried alive, led men to their death, lost count of the men I’d killed. After fighting a filthy war for fifteen months, I came home, left the army, surrendered my rifle for the last time. I thought my life would never change again. A soldier should know better than to tempt the will of his god like that.

He was sitting alone on a bench at a viewpoint by the river, a well-dressed man with apparently nothing to occupy himself on a working day save staring out over the water towards West Disenko. Small brown birds pecked around his feet, and he was so still, they probably imagined him part of the bench itself. They ignored him much as he ignored them.

“Good day, sir,” I said pleasantly. I was new to this position, and taking every chance to reacquire the civilities of ordinary life I’d had no need of for so many years.

“Hello,” he said quietly, and turned his head. It was then I saw his eyes – blue, and wide, and full of weary sadness – and I wanted to apologise, absurdly, for intruding. But it was too late to undo my interruption. “Was there something you wanted, officer?”

“Not at all,” I said hastily. “Lovely day.” It was a little chilly, in fact, and his clothes, though well made and cut from good cloth, were rather light for the weather. I wondered if he was supposed to be at work, and had slipped away from his place of employment to enjoy the fresh air.

“Yes,” he said, and turned his gaze back to the river. “You’re new,” he added, not looking at me. “Parger Joeno usually walks this path.”

“He’s retiring. You know him?”

“Not at all.” A slight smile flitted across his lips. “He introduced himself once, that’s all.”

Was this a habitual place of rest then, I wondered. “I’m Parger Teisu. I’m in charge of this sector now.”

“Congratulations.”

He didn’t offer to reciprocate with his own name, and I could hardly ask, since he was breaking no laws. Given the lack of further information, I had no reason to prolong the conversation, so I tipped my cap. “Thank you. Good day again, sir.”

He nodded, apparently concerned only with the slow-moving river below us, or perhaps the busy bridge a quarter demi-dec away. I turned, intending to resume my patrol, when he spoke again. “Was it your right femur or your tibia you broke in service?”

I stopped short, and narrowed my eyes at him. “And what do you know about that?”

“Nothing, I....”

“May I see your papers, sir?”

I put my hand on my baton to show I was serious, but he seemed utterly unperturbed, pulling a fine-grained leather wallet from his inner jacket pocket, and extracting his identity papers. He held them out to me in long, elegant fingers. “I’m sorry – I’m an anatomist. The pathology of military injuries is one of my interests.”

I grunted, still suspicious, but his papers were in order, confirmed he was one Garwe hon Jeimsaie, a medic consultant of this city, and a registered empathic and telekinetic paranormal. There were no endorsements, and the documents seemed genuine. I handed them back. “That doesn’t explain how you knew I was military, Mase Garwe.”

“Your bearing, your manner of speech. Also, your profession,” he added with an embarrassed little nod. “Civil defence employs many reservists and former servicemen, does it not? Especially now the war is over. I assume you broke your leg some twelve months ago or more. The army is very bad about ensuring the bones are properly supported through healing, and so there’s often a shortening of the bone and the consequent limp.” He coughed. “It’s very typical,” he said. “The way you walk.”

“Ah.” It seemed simple enough, explained like this. “So are you observing? For your research?”

“No,” he said quietly. He tucked his papers into his wallet with precise, delicate movements, then placed the wallet back in his jacket. “I meant no offence.”

“None was taken.” He smiled slightly, but offered no further information. “Sorry to have interrupted your musings, Mase Garwe. Enjoy the day.”

He turned away as if I was forgotten, and after a moment or two, I walked on. I did have a patrol to do, and much to learn about the sector. But my thoughts drifted back many times that day to the quiet, brown-haired man with sad, observant eyes, and I puzzled over what he was doing by the river. I’d seen him again on my way back to the station and he’d apparently not moved at all in the hours since I’d first encountered him. I had no patience with idleness or inactivity – the three months I’d been laid up with my broken leg had been pure hell for me – and a man of education and intelligence surely had better things to do with himself.

But seemingly not, for I saw him again the next day, and the one after that. Always in the same spot, always alone, and always with nothing else to occupy him but the view, the birds and his own thoughts, whatever they might be. If he was an anatomist, he wasn’t active, but he was too young to be retired. His papers said he was a year younger than me, and I wasn’t yet forty. A puzzle, and an oddity, but harmless for all that.

Something to fit into the mosaic picture I was constructing of this sector of the city. To have the leisure and the peace to do this, felt very strange after the war. To walk down a street and know the worst that might happen to me was that I would have to break up a drunken fight, or apprehend a pickpocket, perhaps listen to an honest citizen complaining about the suspicious habits of her neighbour (invariably a quiet, blameless soul whose only sin was to belong to the wrong temple, or enjoy unusual art, or to spend too little or too much on their barchin carriage), was luxury indeed. My dreams at night might be filled with blood and explosions and the screams of dying men in sun-scorched lands across the ocean, but my days were uneventful. In a year, I might regret that. For now, it was what I needed.

I first encountered Mase Garwe towards the end of summer, and as the days grew cooler, and his vigil remained unchanged, I came to realise I wasn’t the only person with an interest in him. Twice I saw a woman speaking to him, remonstrating with him, and on the second occasion, she dropped an overcoat onto his shoulders. He only smiled, and didn’t shift position, and as she walked off, a frown on her pleasant features, he made no move to tug the coat about him more securely, even though the breeze held a definite hint of the winter just weeks away. All this I observed from a little distance away, and at the time, I had no thought of becoming involved, but as it happened, the woman changed direction downhill towards the town and headed my way.

On impulse, I stepped into her path, startling her. “Good day, madam. May I have a word with you?”

“Oh! Officer...of course. Is something wrong?”

She was much younger than Mase Garwe, with the same deep blue eyes, the general fine shape of the nose and ears. She had to be his sister. “I wanted to ask you about him,” I said, nodding back at the solitary figure on the little bench, high above the river.

“Gar? Why? Has he done something?” she asked, a hand coming up over her breast as if the man was in the habit of causing her worry.

“No, not at all. I was merely curious as to why...what he could be doing here, day after day. He’s your brother, is he not?”

She seemed rather startled at that assessment, but then she nodded. “Yes, my only sibling. Officer....”

“Parger Teisu,” I said, quickly introducing myself. “He’s not in any trouble. I’m merely curious. I see him here every day on patrol.”

“Oh.” Her eyes darted quickly back up the hill, but her brother was unaware – or at least, uninterested – in what either of us were up to.

“Does he have no employment at present?” She was well-dressed, I saw, and the ornaments at her neck and ears were subtle but expensive, the kind of thing worn by women who had no need to proclaim their status because they were secure in their social standing. “Or does he not need any?”

She grimaced. “He has need,” she said, “but not for money.” She glanced up the hill again. “Parger, I don’t want him to see me talking to you. I don’t want to distress him. Would you come to my house? It’s not far.”

I agreed readily, intrigued at learning more about my little puzzle. To my shame, I thought it no more than that – a simple distraction, an oddity, something to leaven the mundanity of my routine. I didn’t miss the terror of the battlefield, but already I’d rediscovered a taste for more excitement in my day than my day usually offered. That was all that was in my mind as I followed her through the streets of East Disenko, towards the fashionable quarter. Even with her dress and jewellery as warning, I confessed myself astonished at the residence to which she led me. The house two doors down belonged to the Minister of Finance. Across the street lived the head of the largest bank in the region. Neither home was as lovely or as large as the house through whose gates I was admitted by a sombrely uniformed footman.

Her gloves and cape were taken by a ladies’ maid whose eyes grew big at the sight of a civil defence officer in her mistress’ company. My hostess ignored her attendant’s surprise. “Mirei, kifai for two in the yellow sitting room, please.” The maid bobbed a curtsey and scurried off.

The young woman turned to me. “Oh, I’m sorry – I’ve not introduced myself. Kyra hon Jeimsaie. This is the home of myself and my husband, Reten hon Absilu.”

“Reten hon.... The cloth manufacturer? The House of Absilu?” Half the warehouses at the docks and fully a third of the trading ships that arrived from the coast, were owned by this firm.

“Yes, that’s the one.” She opened an elegant door a little way down the hall. “Do come in, Parger.”

Very often the houses of the merchant class tended slightly to the vulgar, but not this one. Here I found the same unostentatious taste as was common among my family and their acquaintances, and what was new in this bright, elegant room was chosen with the same eye to durability and quality as the older furniture and paintings. My eye was drawn immediately to a lovely painting in oils to the left of the fireplace – Garwe with a woman and a child. His family, I surmised. She saw me looking, and as she beckoned me to a satincloth-covered chair, she said, “Gar’s wife and son. Adopted child, of course. His world.”

I sat and looked at her. “His world...no longer?”

She bowed her head, her expression pained. “A year ago, there was a fire in their house. Gar was at a scientific assembly that evening, giving a lecture. He returned home to find the army fighting the blaze – he had to be restrained from rushing into the flames to search for them. His wife, son and three servants perished. I’m surprised you don’t know the story, Parger. It was a widely reported tragedy.”

“I was only demobbed two months ago, Mase Kyra. I’m sorry for your loss.” She bowed her head again. “So he’s still grieving?”

“No, it’s not that simple. Since that time, he dwells among the dead.” She lifted her eyes. “He claims to – pardon me for saying this – to see the spirits of the deceased.” Automatically she made the cross-fingered gesture, warding off sin. I circled the back of my hand in response, shocked by this blasphemy. “Please don’t judge him,” she said quickly, pleading with me. “He makes no claim to speak to them or for them. But he says he can sense them, and spends all his days listening for them. He was under medical care for months, and the medics tried to convince him that it’s all a delusion, a product of his grief, an effect of his empathic powers, but finally they could do no more. He was released two months ago into our care. They say he’ll probably never work again.”

Her voice caught, worry and sadness for her beloved brother making her large eyes well with unshed tears. Horrified as I was by the taint of Garwe’s sin, I could understand how this madness made him unable to see the enormity of what he was saying. I doubted the priests would be so understanding, though. “Can nothing be done, Mase Kyra? His soul is imperilled. The temples would pray for him. A cleansing could be carried out....”

She glared at me fiercely. “I won’t subject him to that! Not after all he’s been through. My brother’s mad, not evil. The priests might disagree, but I believe that Marra understands Gar wouldn’t be like this if he were sane.”

There was no point in upsetting her, and she might be right for all that. I only nodded. “His mercy is infinite,” I said piously.

“Yes, it is. But there you have it, and now you know the story, Parger, I have a favour to ask of you, if I may. If not as an officer, as a...friend, perhaps. You’ve taken an interest in him, haven’t you?”

Her eyes were disconcertingly sharp, and I wondered if she knew that I, too, was a sinner and a blasphemer, at least by the lights of some of the Marranite teachers. “I’ve been puzzled by him. Slightly concerned, I confess,” I said mildly. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just...watch over him. Keep an eye on him.”

“Madam, I would do that anyway,” I said somewhat stiffly. “It’s what I have sworn an oath to do.”

Her maid came in at that point and laid a delicate porcelain kifai set in front of us, before curtseying and withdrawing. Mase Kyra made no move to pour the kifai. “I’ve offended you. Please accept my apologies.”

“Not at all. I’m only saying you have no need to ask for a favour in that regard. But you understand that if your brother’s...eccentricity affects or offends anyone else, he can’t expect special treatment.”

“I know, I know,” she said, wringing her hands a little, and biting her lip. “But if you only knew Gar – he honestly is the kindest, most gentle man in the world, even more than my husband whom I adore. He can’t help himself. The death of his wife and child have broken him. You must understand,” she said, laying her hand on my wrist. “One hears stories about soldiers, and battle....”

“Yes, you do. You say his empathic abilities have caused this?”

She sat back. “No one knows for sure. We’ve sent all over the country for someone to help us with him, my husband’s exhausted all his contacts – but most have said as you have – send him to the temple to be cleansed.” Her mouth turned down in distaste. “I won’t. It’s just humiliation. He’s sick. He’s not a sinner.”

I doubted the temples made that kind of distinction, but I understood her wanting to spare her beloved brother such an ordeal. “I give you my word, Mase Kyra, that I’ll make a point of keeping an eye on him, and I’ll do my best to see he comes to no harm.”

She smiled, but her hands shook as she lifted the pretty kifai pot and poured for us both. “Our parents died when I was five, Parger,” she said quietly. “Gar raised me. My husband is his closest friend. Our business partner is another intimate companion. He’s precious to all of us, and to my children. I pray every day that this madness will leave him, but I’d die to save him, mad or not.”

I couldn’t help but admire her loyalty and affection, and even if I were not already intrigued by her brother’s strange case, I would have been pleased to honour her devotion by giving the man my protection. The blasphemy was troublesome, certainly, but I’d seen rather more of life than some of the devout citizens who lived in Disenko, knew that things were done and thoughts were kept when men were confined together, fought alongside each other, that were supposed to cause great offence to Lord Marra. I knew, more than most, how difficult it was to obey all Marra’s injunctions with equal fervour. To be blunt, I was a pervert and to some priests, as grave a sinner as any blasphemer. I hadn’t gone to the temple to be cleansed, so I could not condemn another for that failure.

After sharing a small cup of excellent kifai to be sociable, I left, repeating my assurances to watch over her brother. My steps took me back up the hill to the viewpoint and its constant, solitary occupant. The overcoat Mase Kyra had dropped around him was still about his shoulders, but not adjusted, as if he didn’t really care if it was there or not. Was he lost in a vision where he saw his dead loved ones? Was his lonely vigil a prelude to suicide?

But I’d never seen him move closer to the wooden railings than he was now, or even stand up to look at the river. He seemed completely content to be where he was. Did he intend to spend the rest of his life this way? And did I, newly released from the army, with a pension enough to live on even without my family’s wealth, have any greater purpose than him, when my days were filled with trivia and patrolling of largely peaceful streets?

“Good day to you, Parger Teisu.”

I was still at least five hundred midecs away from him. I hadn’t spoken a word, nor had he turned. “How did you know?” He was only a minor empath – surely he couldn’t sense me at this distance.

“Your limp. And you and my sister are the only two people who stand and watch me.”

Mad he might be, but his ears and eyes were sharp as a sniper’s. I approached him, coming to stand at the side of the bench. “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable indoors. The wind’s rather cool.”

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” He tugged at the overcoat around him rather distractedly, as if noticing it for the first time. “Why don’t you sit or is it not allowed?”

The town hall timekeeper had tolled five just as I left Mase Kyra’s pretty house. “No, my shift’s over.” He didn’t move as I sat down, which meant I had to perch rather close to the end of the seat to avoid touching him. He still didn’t look at me, and seemed unconcerned I’d accepted his invitation. “There are lovelier views in this city. Towards the mountains, for instance.” Across the river were the factories and warehouses, the financial engine of the city – important, to be sure, but not aesthetically the finest sight on offer.

“My son loved this place,” he said quietly. “We would watch the ships, and the bridge being raised. He would wave to the sailors, and tell me that he would go to sea when he was a man.”

“‘Loved’?” I asked innocently, as if I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“He passed away.”

“I’m sorry. Was it a recent loss?”

“A twelve month.” His voice was flat, his expression empty. Only the endless sadness in his eyes revealed that this was not, in fact, a subject on which he felt nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. What else could I say? The boy was dead, and so was Garwe’s wife. Words were inadequate. I’d never taken any comfort from them, so why should he? “Does it help? Coming to a place he loved?”

“A little. Why do you watch me, Parger Teisu? Every day I hear you. You come and stand by the corner of that building there, the bakery, and you stare at me. I can sense your curiosity. You could come and say hello, but you never do. Do I frighten you?”

I confess my face flushed with embarrassment. I’d never dreamed he could detect me. “Not at all. I didn’t want to intrude, that’s all. But while we’re asking questions, let me ask you one – do you intend to sit here for the rest of your life? Are there no patients demanding your skills? No friends longing for your company?”

“No wife to comfort me?” he added softly, and then he turned. “You’ve been speaking to my sister. She told you, else you’d have mentioned a wife.”

“Nothing gets past you, sir. Perhaps you should be civil defence and I, the idler.”

He gave me a wry look as if to imply I was being a fool. “I’m not idling, Parger. If you spoke to Kyra, you know what I’m doing.”

“Listening for your loved ones?”

To my surprise, he shook his head. “No. They’re gone,” he whispered, a look of pain crossing his features.

“But then, who?” I felt rather guilty, encouraging his madness, but it seemed it wasn’t as simple as I – or his sister – had assumed. “And for how long?”

“You shouldn’t be asking me about this, you know. The priests would be very cross. So would Kyra. They all want me to stop talking about the spirits.”

My hand twitched, and I forced myself not to make the sign. It was mere superstition, after all. His sin, if sin it be, didn’t affect me. But he didn’t need to look at me to sense my unease. “You really shouldn’t be asking me about it,” he repeated, turning his gaze back to the river and the factories.

And that, curiously, exasperated me enough to set aside my religious misgivings. “Well, I am,” I said stubbornly. “What – who – do you see?”

“See? No one, Parger. Sense...that’s different.”

The fine distinction annoyed me, though I suppose to someone of his background, it wasn’t a trivial one. “Then who or what do you sense?” I said, striving to keep the impatience out of my voice.

“I don’t know.”

I shook my head. For a few moments, I’d forgotten he was mad – but better men than me had tried to understand him and failed.

“Sorry to have disturbed you,” I said, getting to my feet. “I advise you to return home, Mase Garwe. It’s getting late and your sister is concerned. Good evening.” I turned to go, irritated at myself, and with him.

“Wait.” He looked at me, and my irritation faded as I saw the profound sorrow in those remarkable eyes. “You’re asking me questions for which I don’t have answers, and it’s not my habit to be so...imprecise. I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry.”

“I won’t if you try to understand that we ordinary mortals don’t have the words to ask the questions you do have answers for.”

He gave me a slight smile which transformed his handsome face. “You’re far from ordinary, Parger Teisu. Won’t you sit? I like to stay until sunset. Until the birds fly home to roost. It was a sight my wife and I would enjoy, sitting together.”

I wondered that it wasn’t more pain than pleasure for him, but I took my seat again. It would be another hour or so until sunset, but I had nothing pressing to return home for. My supper could be purchased at any time. He turned to me again. “Tell me, Parger. How does a man of your class and breeding come to be walking the streets of our pedestrian little town? You’re not from here. I would venture to say your family are from Visinken, but that you have a close relative – your mother, perhaps, who’s from the far north?”

I blinked. “My mother’s from Selsni, and yes, we come from Visinken. How do you know? The accent isn’t that different.”

“Different enough. You’re fair in colouring, which is more common in Visinken, but the upward curve to your eyelids, and the size of your earlobes suggest a more northern inheritance, as does the fact you drawl the final syllable. That the effect on your accent is there, though so slight, implies it comes from a single source, close to you.”

I wondered what else I had given away about myself just by sitting here, and resisted the temptation to tug on my tell-tale earlobes. “It’s an astonishing skill.”

“I can’t really help it,” he said with an apologetic smile. “You never answered my question – why here, so far from home, and in such a profession. There’s nothing dishonourable about civil defence, but I fancy your father had higher hopes for you.”

“Possibly,” I said rather coolly. My father had died while I was off fighting in the war. Our last words had been angry, but my career hadn’t been the cause of them. “I was demobbed in Tsikeni, and one of my officers said that Disenko had openings for men in the civil defence here. I decided to come and look for myself, and liked the place. Simple as that.” And my homecoming was delayed, to my mother’s sorrow and my brother’s puzzlement, but it had been what I’d needed and I hadn’t yet had cause to regret the decision.

He continued to stare at me a little longer, then nodded as if satisfied, turning to look westwards again. “You asked me what I sense,” he said after a few moments of silence. “It’s very hard to explain because it’s not like my empathy. It’s new, you see, only since Semaru and Davil died. At first, I couldn’t understand what it was. It was annoying, like a fly that you keep trying to wave off, but it never leaves you be.”

“What was annoying?”

“The...feeling that I was being watched. That I wasn’t alone, even when I was. Don’t you know that feeling? If someone’s looking at you?”

“I know if someone’s got a rifle trained on me.”

He winced. “Quite. Imagine if you felt that day and night, and it was fifty, or a hundred rifles.”

It sounded most unpleasant. “That doesn’t mean....”

“...that it’s spirits? No, of course not.” He stretched one long leg, and shook himself. It made him seem more human, that small gesture. I’d wondered if he had even been aware of his body, of his environment, as he sat here day after day. “I assumed, logically, that it had to be something wrong with my empathy, because we’re prone to emotional disturbances, so I began to research the impact of grief upon people with my abilities. I found a great deal of scholarly work, suggestions that empaths might be susceptible to religious mania, even that we’re rather weak-minded. But nothing which described what I was sensing. Frustrated, I turned towards the less scholarly sources – the myths, the legends, even the reports of blasphemy trials. Finally, my studies led me to historical researches on the Dar-Sen age – and there, for the first time, in translations from their texts, I found someone had described, very precisely, the same phenomenon as I’d been experiencing.” He looked at me directly then. “The Dar-Sen believed in the permanence of the spirits – in reincarnation. And what this scholar, this scientist – an empath like me – was sure he was sensing, was the presence of souls of those who had died. He took it for granted, in fact, because he had known other empaths who could see the dead. For him, it was an ordinary fact of existence, but when I read his words, it was like being shot.”

I, who knew exactly how that felt, doubted that, but I kept my counsel. “But how is his opinion proof?”

“Well, it’s not, of course. But all I know is that when I read his account, what he said made sense. And then what I was feeling, made sense. Have you ever looked at something – something far distant, or at a strange angle, and at first, you can’t puzzle out what it can be?” I nodded. “And you know that feeling, that moment, when suddenly...you realise what you’re looking at? That’s what it felt like. And as soon as I realised it, then I could start to pick out the individuals. I know what sex they are, their age – what they’re feeling, their emotions. I can’t hear their voices exactly, but I hear them. They’re real. And they’re here and they need me to listen to them. That’s what I’m doing. I am listening to them because no one else can.”

It was such a shame, I thought, looking at him with pity in my heart and a pleasant expression of understanding on my face. He was quite, quite mad, and yet, if anyone were to destroy his delusion, he would probably die of sorrow. “And will you listen forever?” I asked politely.

“You don’t believe me,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t blame you. As a rational scientist, it’s not something I wanted to accept. But, Parger Teisu, we’re asked to accept things which are just as strange – the wisdom and mercy of an unknowable deity, the existence of paranormal abilities that our finest minds can’t begin to explain. We accept that people can make fire from nothing, read the minds of others, or like me, sense other people’s emotions as if they were my own. So why should the presence of spirits be such a problem?”

“Because it’s blasphemous,” I blurted out.

“So many things are,” he murmured. “My very existence for one, if you believe the Brethren.”

I’d forgotten that the same people who objected to my own inclinations, also believed paranormals to be perversions too, cursed by infertility and abilities which made them freakish. To the rest of society, he and I were something to be tolerated, though hardly approved of. “But your existence is a fact.”

He smiled. “A man after my own heart, indeed. Yes, it’s a fact, and while to me the spirits are also a fact, I can’t prove it or test it. So your objections are quite fair, Parger Teisu. Quite fair. Ah – and there they go,” he said, pointing to a long skein of wildfowl, flying over the city to their roosts out in the countryside. “I...sometimes imagine that was how Semaru and Davil’s souls looked, flying from this life. I hoped they didn’t suffer. There was...so little left, we couldn’t tell....”

He wiped his eyes hastily, then stood, quite abruptly. “Forgive me, Parger. It’s another reason I like to be up here alone. I get rather stupid at times.” He held out his hand. “Thank you for listening to my unpleasant ramblings, and please, pardon my offence.”

I stood and accepted his hand, shaking it firmly. “No offence, sir. I promise not to disturb your solitude in future.”

“You don’t, you know. I’ve got used to it. I hear your step, sense that intent, cautious curiosity of yours, and it makes me feel that life goes on. We’re all safer for your presence,” he said with a little ironic smile, and yet I felt he wasn’t mocking me.

“I hope so.” I felt rather awkward, leaving him just there like that. “Would you like an escort home?”

“If it’s not out of your way, why not?”

He picked up the overcoat which had fallen, and put it on properly. He looked so ordinarily respectable, a prosperous medic taking the air, but the clues to his distraction were there, if one was observant. His hair was a little too long and ragged for true respectability, his scarf, knotted negligently around his neck, didn’t match his suit in style or quality, as if it had been randomly chosen. Most medics wore a discreet emblem of their profession – a tie or lapel pin, occasionally a pendant around the neck. Mase Garwe wore none of these, and carried himself as if his clothes, his respectability, were alien to him, unwanted. But the real sign was in his eyes – even now, as he matched me step for step with legs as long as my own, his gaze seemed to focus on nothing in this world. The people passing us in the street, the shops and businesses now closing down for the day, the sounds of a city putting itself to bed, left him untouched. His life, I felt, must be torture to him, feeling himself surrounded by the dead, disconnected from all those who loved him.

Concentrating on him, thinking about his sad situation, I hadn’t realised he had led us on a different path to that his sister had taken, until I heard him say, ‘Oh’. I looked up, and saw a ruin. A burned out house in the fashionable quarter. A house in which five people had died.

“I forgot again,” he whispered, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “I got confused.” He began to shake slightly, his eyes filling. In another moment or two, I knew he would collapse.

I seized his arm by the elbow, and dragged him away, around a corner, and pushed him against a wall for support. He stared at me with such stark misery that I felt my heart wrench in sympathy. “I just forgot,” he whispered again.

“How long did you live there?”

“Fifteen years. I was married fifteen years. Davil was nine. I was a father for nine years.” He covered his mouth again, and shook his head, his eyes squeezed shut.

Nothing I could do, except keep a hand on his shoulder, offering sympathy, what little understanding I could. I understood grief, but I’d never been a father. Never would be. Never know what it was like to remember a son sitting by me, waving to the sailors on the river. Never know what it was like to yearn for that so hopelessly.

Finally I shook him gently by the upper arm. “Let me take you home, Mase Garwe.”

He let me lead him, his head hanging down, and I knew he felt ashamed. He hid his pain from most people, I suspected. That he had revealed it to me either meant he trusted me, or it had become too much to conceal.

He gently shrugged off my guiding hand as we reached the gate of his sister’s house. “I’ll be all right now,” he said. “I feel a terrible fool.”

“No need to,” I said lightly. “Go inside, sir. Let your sister care for you. It’ll help her.”

He seemed rather startled at that assessment, but then he nodded. “Yes. Quite right. I forget that part. Good evening, Parger Teisu.” He reached over and touched my arm. “And thank you. Will I...see you tomorrow?”

“Certainly. Go on,” I urged, and nodded to the footman, waiting to see what his mistress’ brother would do. The gate swung open, and Mase Garwe stepped through. Safe once again, for another night at least.

I could have gone straight back to my boarding house, but instead I returned to the station, and asked the night clerk what reports we held on the fire at Mase Garwe’s house. He knew the case well – I imagined it was a pretty big event by Disenko’s standards. Fires weren’t uncommon, but a fatal fire of this gravity and in that area, surely was rare. It had been investigated more than usually thoroughly, the clerk assured me – the area, the social standing of the family ensured that – but it had at last been determined to be nothing more than a tragic accident. It was thought that one of the maids, known to be overfond of her drink, may have tipped over a candle in her bedroom. The boy had been ill with some minor complaint, so his mother was sleeping in his room. The fire had trapped them there, and as Mase Garwe had indicated, consumed their bodies to the point where the cause of death was undetermined.

“A dreadful thing,” the clerk said, accepting the file back from me with a heavy sigh. “I went to the funeral. So many people did. A young family like that, destroyed...I remember the husband, speaking in the temple. He made the most beautiful speech. We were all in tears, Parger, but he didn’t cry. So very dignified.”

What had that felt like, to an empath, being surrounded by so many grieving people? I shivered a little. I had my demons, but at least any pain I felt was my own.

I thanked the clerk, and left the station. In days gone by, the streets would have been almost empty at this time, but the new electrical lighting system made them far safer at night, though I was old-fashioned enough to miss the weight of a lamp in my hand. The boarding house wasn’t far from the station, though it was a long way indeed from where Mase Garwe would lay his head that night. It reminded me of barracks in a way, and so felt more like home than an inn or a billet in a house would have done. The fact that most of the residents were ex-soldiers – one or two even from my own regiment – contributed to that feeling. I decided to eat what was on offer in the dining room for a change, made my usual ablutions, then went up to my room.

It was my custom to read a little before I went to sleep, but tonight, my thoughts still on Mase Garwe and his strange delusion, I lay on my bed and considered what I had learned that day. If he’d said he could sense his wife and son, I’d understand that. Marra alone knew after Brean died, I thought I could see him everywhere – when I walked into a room, it was as if I had just missed him, that I could almost hear the echoes of his voice. Seeing a red-haired man, even fifteen years after Brean had gone, made my heart miss a beat so painfully it would make me retch.

That kind of thing made sense. The heart longed, and created a delusion that the one who’d passed on lingered in some form, whatever Marra taught us. But what Mase Garwe was claiming...no, he was simply insane. A charming, gentle man who lived in a fantasy. There could be no happiness for him while he did. And yet.... Even in his madness, there was so much of the person he had been before, the one his sister adored, the father and husband who had once been so happy. He still had something to offer the world, if he could give his madness up.

I blew out my lamp, and stared into the darkness. I had promised Mase Kyra to watch over her brother, and I would. But I would try to do more than that, if I were able. I had spent twenty years of my life fighting, killing, in destructive, necessary service for my country. Now I was a man of peace, preserving the peace. I would find a new way to serve.

The intended recipient of my charity seemed reluctant to accept it, I discovered. He was back in his usual spot the next day, keeping his usual vigil, and greeted me willingly enough as I came by at the end of my last patrol. But attempts to draw him out were politely rebuffed, and the conversation ended up being all about me and my family, my decision to go against the destiny mapped out for me and become a soldier. The same thing happened the next day, the only difference being that we talked about my father and brother, and their roles in the government. On the third day, as he attempted to deflect my questions about his welfare into a discussion about military tactics in the Goeden Peninsula, I held up my hand. “Mase Garwe, when did my life become your research subject?”

He gave me a wry little smile. “I’m sorry. I really can’t help it. Kyra always said I was too nosy.”

“Did Kyra ever point out that you don’t like to talk about yourself?”

His smile disappeared. “No. Reten does that.” He looked over the river. A barge, laden most likely with his brother-in-law’s cloth, was leaving the docks under full sail, and the bridge was being raised to accommodate it. “I don’t, you know. Though you make me talk more than anyone. I don’t sense any judgement in you.”

“I don’t. It’s not my place. But I worry about you – as a friend.”

“Yes, I know. I sense that in you too.” He sighed quietly. “They’re leaving, some of them.” Momentarily confused, I looked at him blankly. “The spirits. That fits the account I read too. They come and go, no one knows why. Maybe they know I can’t help them.”

Or maybe his delusion was disappearing, I thought, with a little burst of hope. “What will you do when they go?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I don’t want to make plans that....” He grew silent, his gaze distant.

“That don’t involve your wife and son?” He nodded slightly, his expression unchanged. “Sooner or later you’ll have to.”

He turned to me, eyes wide and far-seeing. “Who was he? The one you lost?”

I jerked back. “How...? You read minds too?”

“No. You said you were unmarried, rather than divorced or widowed, and yet you’re a handsome man, a former officer, and of high status. A very marriageable man, so I assume therefore that being unmarried was your choice. Also, you were in the army, where, ah,” – he coughed in an embarrassed manner – “manly love is not uncommon, and so I made a guess, which you’ve just confirmed. Did you think I would censure you for being a pervert, Parger Teisu? I, a dreadful blasphemer?”

“I hadn’t thought about it at all. I don’t talk about it,” I said with more coolness in my voice than I felt. He just kept staring at me, and under that sad, blue-eyed regard, my stiff objections began to melt. “He was my brother. Not my...like a brother. Brother in arms. In bed, in battle, at my side, in my heart. He was killed fifteen years ago. I’ve never loved again.”

“And yet...you found the courage to move on?”

“The alternative,” I said, my voice thick with painful emotion, “is death. Why throw away the gift stolen from them? They don’t want us dead.”

“But what if the Dar-Sen were right? They believed that we pass on to a new life, and encounter all our loved ones again. Suicide would seem logical in that case.”

“Then why live at all? Why not kill all the children at birth? If the Dar-Sen were right, there has to be some point to our existence. Marra spared me for a reason.”

His mouth tightened. “The more I think, the more I wonder if Marra has a thought for the likes of you or me. I believe in the spirits, Parger Teisu, because I feel them all around me. But Marra’s mercy hasn’t touched my life, so his existence remains unproved.”

Instinctively, my fingers crossed to ward off the taint of his terrible sinning. “You really shouldn’t say things like that out loud, Mase Garwe.”

“I know.”

He looked out across the river again. It was getting late, and cold, but he was making no move to leave, and I, still shocked at his sudden deduction over Brean, was in no hurry to return to my solitary room. “Can you...?” The question started to leave my lips before I’d really thought about it.

“Can I...?”

“Never mind.”

“What was his name, your lover?”

“Brean. Brean hon Huisen.” Brean the golden, I thought, his face suddenly clear in my memory as if it had only been yesterday I’d last seen him.

“I can’t sense him. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

You can’t sense anyone, I thought angrily, but held my tongue. “No,” I lied. Marra help me, I was starting to fall into his madness too.

“Ah. My apologies.” He rubbed his forehead, as if he was suddenly tired – I doubted he slept any better than I did. “I wish I knew who some of these people were. There’s a girl who’s so sad, and I want to comfort her, but I know nothing about her. She’s the one I sense the most clearly, as if she’s trying to get my attention.”

“Won’t she move on, like the others?”

“I don’t know. I think...they’re waiting for me to...help them do that. Or perhaps it’s just not their time. The Dar-Sen didn’t know, and no one of our era talks about it. We should. It makes no sense that we ignore the spirits. They’re people too, even if they don’t have bodies. They’re our link with the next life. I wish I knew more empaths,” he muttered. “I would ask them about this...but then they’d just think me mad,” he corrected himself with a little laugh. “It always comes to that, doesn’t it? The only people who know about the spirits are insane – because the only reason they think they can see them, must be because they’re mad.”

He smiled, but his eyes were still sorrowful. It was so hard to remember that he really was as mad as he described himself, when all I could see was a reflection of the pain I had experienced firsthand.

“Did the Dar-Sen say how long the spirits were thought to persist?”

He shrugged. “No one knows. I suspect not long. There’s nothing for them in this world, you see. They need to move on. The Dar-Sen never made their presence an important part of their belief system, and their main communal ceremonies were all about encouraging the dead to go to their new life, to remind them that they wouldn’t be alone forever. It made sense to me. People grieve at different levels of intensity. Spirits would be no different, missing their old life, their loved ones.”

It felt so strange, discussing his blasphemous notions in this calm, academic manner. A good Marranite would have dragged him along to the nearest temple and demanded the priests cleanse him for the sake of his soul and future in the Land of Marra. But I wasn’t a very good Marranite, so I merely murmured, “It’s getting late, Mase Garwe.”

“So it is.” He stood up, stared out at the setting sun. I’d not seen the birds tonight, but I knew he’d have noticed, whatever our discussion. “You should go on, little one. Find Davil and play with him. Tell him his Dada misses him,” he whispered, and his words caught at my heart. Madness or not, this was real for him.

He allowed me to walk him home – careful not to absentmindedly follow the path to his former home – and at his gate, seemed about to ask me something. But then he just gave me one of his slight smiles, nodded, and said, “Good evening, Parger Teisu. And thank you.”

I tipped my cap in salute, and he went inside. I stood and looked at the house thoughtfully for some time, until the footman made it clear I was irritating him. I smiled politely, and walked back to the station house.

“Good evening, Parger Teisu,” the day clerk said cheerfully. “Winter won’t be long coming, I suspect,” he added with a shiver. “I’m looking forward to my wife’s dumpling stew.”

“Ah – Sartie Huimei, before you go, I do have a favour to ask. Not urgently, but....”

“Anything, sir.”

He was a little less cheerful once I gave him the details, but he did his best. The main problem was that the station’s, and civil defence’s records weren’t comprehensive. “We only have records of crimes, sir. Not accidental deaths, or even those which were slightly suspicious but which were not reported as a crime. You’ll need to speak to the law courts for the coroner’s reports.”

“Then I’ll do that. Just give me what you can, when you can, Sartie.”

I really shouldn’t be doing this, I told myself. I was encouraging his insanity. But...part of me wanted to know if he really wasn’t deluded at all. The part of me that had been about to ask him if he could sense Brean. The part of me that wouldn’t have known what to do if he’d said he could. Long ago I’d accepted Brean was gone forever. Part of me would never stop hoping that one day I’d see him again, even if only in death.

I’d warned Mase Garwe that I had two rostered days off, and though I’d offered to drop by, he was insistent that I did not. I still went past the viewpoint, though at a distance, far enough away that even his sharp ears couldn’t hear my cursed limp. He never turned to see me looking at him, so I doubted he knew I was there. His sister was with him one afternoon, sitting with him quietly, and a youngster I guessed was hers. I wondered if his family softened his grief at all, or only made it worse. I’d turned to my brother officers when Brean died – he’d been their friend, they’d known what I was going through. We’d all lost friends, lovers, even family. Mase Garwe was no stranger to bereavement either, but to lose a wife and child...that was a special agony.

He seemed almost relieved to see me when I came back on duty, and, as had become my habit, joined him at the end of my shift. “Did you do anything interesting on your days off, Parger?”

“Yes. In fact, I was doing some research, you might say.” I drew my papers out of my breast pocket, and handed them to him, to his obvious puzzlement. “That’s a list of all the young women between the age of five and twenty one who’ve died in the last year in this town. Maybe your...sad spirit...is on it.”

His hand, reaching for the list, stilled. “Are you serious? Or is this a test, Parger?”

“You said you wanted to know. I don’t know how else you would.”

He took the papers from me, and scanned the names. “How many?”

“Fifty-six.”

“You’ve given me no information. It is a test.”

“You don’t have to....”

“No, it’s only fair.” He sat up, and turned to stare into space, westwards, as he did so often. “All right, my friends – if you hear your name, you’ll have to get my attention. I don’t know how, but since Parger Teisu’s gone to so much trouble....” I ignored the mild barb, since it was deserved. He cleared his throat, and then began quietly to read the list of names, pausing for some time after each, as if he was listening.

I waited, unsure what was going to happen, or if anything would. If he got to the end of his list and had no ‘answer’, would that tell him he was mistaken? Or would he make some excuse why the test was insufficient? I had to admit, I probably wasn’t going to achieve much, but it was all I’d been able to come up with.

I realised that the pause in his recitation had become rather long, and he was clutching the list in a white-knuckled hand. “Mase Garwe?” I whispered.

“Heruni hon Ermer. That’s who it is.”

I had a second list, this one with the ages, addresses and causes of death of the girls, and I found the entry. A ten-year-old girl, murdered by her stepfather, who had escaped the gallows by the narrowest margin and was now serving a life sentence. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. It’s Heruni, and she wants something, but I don’t know what. How did she die?”

“Not sure,” I lied. Damn. Now what did I do? I was sure he was mistaken, sure that his ‘identification’ was no better than a random choice, though I was also sure he believed his own words.

He turned to me and gave me a stern look. “Tell me the truth, Teisu.”

It was the first time he’d omitted my title, and I knew better than to lie again, not with that expression on his face. “She was murdered. Beaten to death by her stepfather. He claimed it was an accident, and she’d fallen down the stairs. The judges didn’t believe him. He’d been drinking, and there was recent bruising, so it wasn’t the first time he’d laid hands on her.”

He exhaled, as if that hadn’t been what he’d expected. “I know I have no right, but may I ask a favour?” I nodded. “Is there any way I can see the court reports? At least the autopsy? I’m still a sworn authority on the court register. It should be allowed. If you ask, they’d let you see them.”

I could see no harm in it. “But how do I explain the interest?”

“The delusion of a deranged medic?” he said, self-mocking smile on his lips. “I’ll just say it’s for comparison with a case I’ve been researching. They think all anatomists are ghouls anyway.”

“All right, but...Mase Garwe...what do you hope to learn?”

“I don’t know, Parger. I just know Heruni wants to tell me something.” He tilted his head. “You were expecting me to fail, weren’t you?”

“Yes. You know why. You can’t blame me for that.”

“I don’t,” he said, his tone mild. “If I’m wrong, then no one suffers. But if I’m right, then maybe we can help Heruni’s spirit move on.”

So I agreed, and the very next day was able to report I’d arranged the files to be pulled for him. His name, and that of his brother-in-law, had made things remarkably easy. Garwe hon Jeimsaie’s reputation still counted for something, and I wondered how much effort his sister put into keeping his derangement a secret.

For the first time since I’d encountered him, he abandoned his post. I didn’t dare intrude on his researches down at the court archives, but I hoped he wouldn’t mention why he was really looking this up. I also had no idea what he thought he might find. Ermer hon Tadim had been convicted fairly, and to my mind, should have been hung as all child murderers were. He’d received leniency only because of doubt cast by his habitual drunkenness on his intention to kill, but to me, a man who threw a ten-year-old girl down the stairs, drunk or not, deserved to die.

I became a little worried when he didn’t return to his vigil the second day, since I knew he wasn’t at the archives. I dared, finally, to enquire at the house, but his sister told me he wasn’t there. “He said he had to call on some people. He said you and he were investigating something. Is that untrue, Parger?”

“No, it’s true,” I agreed hastily. “I just wasn’t sure what he was doing today. Er...how does he seem lately?”

“Lately? Much the same. Perhaps...quieter in the evenings. But no more or less unhappy. How does he seem to you?”

“Unchanged. Friendly, distant.” I shrugged. “Not surprising, since I hardly know him.”

She smiled. “Maybe so, but at least he talks to you. He was once so popular, Parger. He and Semaru used to host such wonderful dinners, with the finest minds in Disenko vying for invitations to his table. Now he never sees anyone, except us – and you.”

“It’s natural after a bereavement,” I said.

“Yes, true.... I know he was bound to change after such a tragedy but...I miss my big brother. Is that foolish?”

“Not at all,” I said, smiling at her in reassurance. “He’s not gone – he’s only licking his wounds. One day your brother will come back.” I wished I felt more certain of that, but I didn’t know it wasn’t true.

For three days, Mase Garwe was occupied with his researching. The bench on the hill seemed rather lonely without him, which was absurd because since I’d met him, I’d been wishing him to find another way to fill his days. On the fourth day he reappeared, and I, with a rush of relief that surprised me, came to join him at the end of my shift as if our routine had not been altered at all.

As soon as I sat down, he turned to me, his expression serious. “I’ve written to the Prosecutor General and informed him that the prisoner, Ermer hon Tadim, has grounds for appeal and that, in my professional opinion, his conviction is based on flawed and incomplete evidence. I have also forwarded my report to the Chief Coroner, and the State Head of Civil Defence.”

“Will they listen?” I said, surprised at the forceful actions he had taken on his own initiative. But of course, he was once an important person – still was, to the outside world.

“Oh yes,” he said with grim determination. “Heruni was never murdered, and I can prove that.” I waited for him to explain. He folded his arms and looked at the river, his eyes distant, as if he spoke to her, not to me. “Ermer married Heruni’s mother a year ago, and sadly she died but six months into the marriage, leaving her daughter in his care. Ermer, being heartbroken, took to drinking, which was quite unlike his habit before her death, and his friends say it never became uncontrolled, nor did they notice Heruni being neglected in any way.”

“But the bruising....”

He held up his hand. “What the investigating law officers failed to discover was that Heruni’s bruising has been a feature all her life. It was also a feature of her grandmother and an aunt – they all had an inherited clotting disorder of the blood, a disposition to bleeding and bruising. You could leave a terrible bruise on that child just by holding her arm a little firmly. And what the investigators and the medical inspectors also failed to note was that she had fallen at school four days before, hitting her head. The child had complained of headaches and dizziness afterwards – yet no mention of this was put before the judges. I have made a report stating that in my professional opinion Heruni suffered an intracranial bleed as a result of this fall, and that some time during the night on which she died, this bleeding, possibly compounded by a stroke, reached crisis point. In her confusion, she stumbled out into the hall, looking for her father, and her brain injuries cause her to fall down the stairs. This fits exactly with the evidence of her father, who said he heard her outside her room, calling in pain, came out to see what was wrong, and saw her at the top of the stairs where she collapsed and fell, before he could reach her and stop her.”

He paused. “No one ever saw him strike the child, and his drinking was of a solitary, nocturnal kind. He may have been too drunk to reach his daughter in time – but I doubt he could have saved her. There was not a shred of evidence other than the bruising that the child was being hurt, and other than her grief at her mother’s death, the school reported she was managing well. Her teacher even praised her stepfather for his kindness and love. There were witnesses who testified that the child was bruised and had been seen crying on the street, but even these never said they saw a blow land. The law officers were lazy, and Ermer was too grief-stricken at this second loss to fight it. Two days ago, I visited him in prison. He thinks he deserves to be there – he believes he should have been hanged.” His mouth tightened. “But guilty feelings don’t always mean someone is guilty.”

I let out a breath. “How can this all have been missed?”

“Because people thought they knew what they were dealing with. And no one was there to fight for him.” He smiled at something – someone – I could not see. “No one but Heruni, who loves him, and wants to help him.”

My mind was spinning – he could have chosen that girl’s name by pure chance, and coincidence could explain how it happened to be the one child whose father had been wrongly convicted. That was how a rational person would explain it. But in my gut, with my instincts which had kept me alive all these years despite the determined efforts of our country’s enemies to kill me, I knew the rational explanation was wrong. “Brean,” I whispered. I would see him again.

Garwe touched my hand. “Are we both mad, or is it real?”

“I don’t care.” I rubbed my eyes quickly and looked up. “Now what happens?”

“We wait. Nothing happens quickly in the law.”

“And you?”

“Nothing’s changed for me, Parger Teisu.” He fixed me with his gaze. “But you’ve helped right an injustice, and given me an answer to a mystery. At least...I’m not as mad as I was.” His mouth quirked ironically, but his eyes held gratitude.

“You’re not mad,” I said roughly.

“I’m hardly sane. But I’m harmless. There are the birds again,” he whispered, and together we watched the wildfowl fly to their home. Brean, I thought, and like Garwe, wondered if this was what a soul looked like as it left this world.

For another month, as the season deepened and we had our first light snow, I kept Garwe’s vigil with him, though with the days becoming shorter and much colder, I often had to drop by well before the end of my patrol, and urge him to get indoors before he froze to death. He never argued with me about that, to his sister’s relief. I wondered what he would do in mid-winter. A person could die in half an hour, sitting outside at that time of year.

But we never talked about that. We talked about Brean, and we talked about his wife and child. We talked about the Dar-Sen, and the ethical basis for that society which had created, for all too brief a time, a golden age of learning and reason. He spoke of how he could no longer believe in Marra, or any god, and I was no longer shocked by his words because he might be a blasphemer, but he was still the kindest, gentlest man I’d ever known. I’d put my faith in my brother soldiers all these years, and would always choose a good man over a god, when it came down to it. So I did now.

The morning newspapers were full of the appeal result when it was announced, and I ran, slipping and sliding in the new fallen snow, through the streets and up to the rise over the river to find Garwe and tell him. But he wasn’t there, and his sister didn’t know where he was, since he’d left the house at the usual time.

My heart tight with fear, I cast about for where he might have gone – and then I knew. It wasn’t far to that house, the house where he’d lost so much, his life changed forever.

I found him kneeling in the snow, his eyes devastated, staring at the charred timbers, the broken bricks and shattered stones. “Gar....”

“They’re gone,” he whispered. “All of them. Heruni last of all, but now...I’m alone.” He bowed his head, and I knew he was weeping.

I knelt beside him, put my arms around his shoulders. “Her father’s freed, his reputation restored.”

“He lost his wife and child, same as me. His life will never be the same.” He turned his drowned blue eyes to me. “What should I do, Teisu? What do I do now?”

I cupped his cold face, stroked his skin with my gloved thumb. “Live,” I whispered. “Live for them, live for yourself. You can give people hope, tell them death isn’t the end, but a continuum. Live for them.”

“And you?” His breath puffed out in small, white clouds through perfect, frozen lips, but his eyes weren’t cold, nor his heart.

“I,” I said, leaning and resting my forehead against his. “I will live for you. Live, Gar. And be loved.”

Against my chest, his heart beat like a captured bird’s, but he was safe, and I would keep him close until he was ready to fly on. We would fly on together, like wildfowl over the plains, our spirits joined in this life and in the next. And if this was madness, then let it be so, for I was happier mad and with him, than I ever would be sane.

The End