The Queen's Gambit

20: Ghosts From The Past

"It was pitch," said Rhea as she soaked in her bath. "The chandelier had been practically drenched in it."

Caris gathered up Rhea's dress and underthings from the night before to throw away. They were unsalvageable. "What about the marriage?"

"True, I'm afraid. I wasnt left with much of a choice."

"And the ghost?"

"Ah, yes, I saw it."

Caris froze.

"It's not a ghost, Caris, it's a person."

"I know, highness, I'm not a child." replied Caris, as if she hadn't been squealing at ghost stories only days before. "But knowing a dangerous person is hiding in the castle is more frightening than a wayward spirit."

Rhea smiled. "Indeed. It is fortunate this person seems to be on our side. Although," she mused, "destroying my dining hall was a questionable decision at best."

Rhea breathed deeply the rose and lavender scent of her bath, bringing on a fit of coughing. It would take a while for her lungs to heal--and more than rose and lavender soap to get the smell of smoke out of her skin and hair. Caris had changed the water twice already.

"Which corridor was the captain's body found in?" asked Rhea when her coughing had subsided.

Caris paused to think, a stack of robes draped over her arm. She stuck the tip of her tongue ever so slightly past her lips when she thought, and Rhea found the youthful expression strangely endearing. "The West corridor. Between the infirmary and the throne room."

A quiet knock at the door made them both jump, rose-and-lavender suds spraying across the tiled floor.

"I'll get it," said Caris.

Faint voices echoed from the main room, Caris' high, lilting voice and a deeper male voice. Her servant seemed to be repeating something that only made the exchange grow more heated.

Exiting the bath, Rhea searched for her robe before realizing Caris still held it. Swiping a towel and hastily wrapping it about her, she stepped into the main room to ask Caris what was going on.

The man was not beyond the door, but rather standing in her sitting room--and it was Kain.

He turned to her and had the decency to blush deeply.

"He--he insisted on seeing you, highness, I--" Caris sputtered.

"Are you bothering my servant?" demanded Rhea, trying to keep her dignity despite her state of undress and the puddle forming at her feet..

"She told me you were unable to see visitors. I thought--I didn't know you were..." he gestured vaguely at her exposed legs.

"Naked?" provided Rhea.

Kain shrugged and cleared his throat. "I wanted to give you this." He held out a small iron key, rusted with age.

Rhea took it with the hand not holding up her impromptu garment, inspecting it carefully. How many hours had he spent hunting down this key in the castle? She had only half expected him to actually find it.

"Come back at supper time if you can," she said to Kain, a smile curling the corner of her mouth. "We're going to meet a ghost."

***

Kain reappeared, attached to sword and a plethora of daggers, just as the yolk of the winter sun began to dip below the horizon. Aside from Rhea's comment about bringing along half the armory, they journeyed through the castle in companionable silence.

The torches had not yet been lit, and the west side of the castle was bathed in shafts of orange and red that slanted through narrow windows. They met no one; with the dining hall being rebuilt, the court took their meals in their rooms, leaving the corridors mostly deserted during the mealtime hour.

They passed the sealed doors of the throne room.

"Do you think he suspects you?" asked Rhea softly. Kain may not have been able to answer when she asked him to help her, but giving her the key was as good a sign as any.

"He doesn't pay attention to what I do.  I come when I am called, serve when I am asked, kill when I am ordered. And that is all that concerns him."

Rhea suppressed a shiver. Despite their current alliance, she reminded herself he could still be forced to betray her at any time. Kill when he is ordered. She wondered who he had been forced to kill. His voice had been level, but she could see the pain deep in his face.

She was no stranger to that pain. Her thoughts drifted to the first time she had taken another life--two of them. The guards who thought they were only watching a helpless girl mourn for her executed father. Two murders that had set her free, yet been the trailhead of a bloody, desperate path.

"Stop here," said Rhea abruptly. They stood beside a floor length tapestry--a woven hunting scene--with a bleeding boar at the center skewered by the triumphant king's spear. "The captain was found nearby, no?"

"Yes," said Kain, pointing a few paces down the hall, "there."

Rhea swept back the tapestry, revealing what looked like a grate. She flipped a hidden latch and the grate swung forward, revealing a small chamber wider and taller than it was deep, barely large enough for a man to sit curled up in.

"I hid here," she explained, "in Montroy's armor. I broke away from my guards when they captured me. Not for long, but long enough to fit myself in here. I stayed for three days, until I was dying of thirst."

Kains eyes widened, imagining the horror of spending hours curled in the cramped, airless space.

"A few days later, you found me in the forest."

"No wonder you smashed my head in with a rock."

Rhea's mouth twitched. "I left the gold armor in here when I escaped to the river."

"So that's how our ghost is masquerading as Montroy."

"Right. And there's only one person I've ever shown this chamber to." She nodded at Kain's weapons. "You won't need those."