An Uninvited Guest

She snatched the ring away before Kasvren could even extend his hand. Then she fixed him with a look brimming with suspicion, turned her body at an angle, and examined the ring closely.

Kasvren watched her — watched Isolde's expression shift from moment to moment — with a feeling equal parts fascination and unease. Unlike an ordinary young lady, one raised properly for society, Isolde was utterly impossible to predict. He could not guess her next word or her next move.

She sighed several times as she turned the ring this way and that, studying it like a shrewd old merchant of precious metals — inspecting the engraving on the inner band, even the setting of the gemstone. Whether such scrutiny could truly distinguish the genuine from the false, Kasvren had no idea. After a long, meticulous examination, Isolde clenched the ring tight in her palm and glared at him once more.

"It's my father's real ring. What on earth is going on? Why do you have it?"

"It was among his effects. Your father left me several of his belongings."

"Belongings? My father sent you his effects?"

Kasvren could bear it no longer. The one-sided suspicion was absurd, and worse, she wouldn't listen to a word he said!

"Before you suspect me, my lady, I suggest you first open that ring. Then you will learn in full detail why I came here, who I am, and what your father asked of me."

Her suspicious gaze did not soften, but she complied. As she unlocked the ring's clasp and drew out the hidden paper, and as she read the letter's contents, Kasvren shivered in the gloomy, desolate air of the mansion's interior. Wind pushed through the gap of the open door and rushed upward toward the ceiling with a low, keening whoooo… The sound — the kind one might hear in a graveyard crowded with the dead — made his whole body tense without his meaning to. How did anyone keep their sanity living in a place like this? And besides himself, Isolde, and Rad Dat, he could sense no trace of another living soul anywhere in the house.

At last Isolde sighed and crushed the small letter in her fist.

"Have you finished reading?"

At Kasvren's question, she shot him a fierce glare — as though he were a creditor come to dun her for a debt she didn't owe — then bit down on her lip and swallowed a breath. She tucked the letter into her bodice and handed the ring back to Kasvren. He had assumed, naturally, that she would keep it, so this came as a surprise.

"Why are you giving it back to me?"

She turned her head away.

"Because it's something my father left to you. If he decided you should have that ring, he must have had his reasons. I can't begin to guess what he was thinking, but whatever the case, it's your rightful share."

Then she said something else.

"Rad Dat, show our guest to the kitchen. He looks hungry."

Kasvren marveled at her powers of observation. Hungry was exactly what he was — desperately so. He had gone nearly an entire day without a proper meal, after all. At the inn where he'd stopped before boarding the carriage here, he'd managed only a sausage, a couple of flour cakes thin as paper, and two sugar-dusted biscuits. Only God knew what the sausage was stuffed with, but whatever it was, the reek of it was so foul he'd barely been able to choke it down. So he'd filled his belly on the flour cakes and biscuits instead.

On the road through the village, he'd eaten almost nothing at all. He'd had a single cup of coffee at a small tea house on the outskirts, and that was it. Now his stomach churned with hunger, hammering away so violently he could practically hear it. The old man who had been given the order — he would learn later that Rad Dat was the sole remaining servant of this vast mansion — dropped his brusque manner entirely at Isolde's command and bowed his head with genuine courtesy.

"Please, come inside."

Kasvren felt a considerable stir of excitement at finally being admitted into Drasken Mansion itself. True, the thing that welcomed him was a damp, stagnant darkness, but the relief of knowing he would soon eat made even the gloom and silence feel like a comfortable refuge. At least for the moment.

"This way."

Kasvren followed the butler, Rad Dat, at a slow pace. Were there no other servants? There was no bustle of maids' footsteps, no chef bellowing over a boiling pot, not so much as a stifled giggle. The dining room was the same. Rad Dat opened the door himself and pulled out Kasvren's chair himself.

"Please wait a moment."

With that, Rad Dat vanished beyond the dining room door, leaving only the faintest whisper of footsteps behind. Kasvren sat alone at the long banquet table, glanced around, and closed his eyes. He tried to imagine it: the laughter that must once have flitted above this table, the sounds of children at play, while the quiet rhythms of joy and prayers of thanks and clinking silverware wove together beneath it. Isolde Drasken — she, too, must once have been a little girl. Sitting primly in a dress trimmed with ruffles and ribbons like a proper little lady, yet secretly dreaming, no doubt, of gorging herself on jam? And hadn't his godfather watched such a daughter with quiet, contented delight?

He tried hard to summon some bright and lively scene, but his efforts came to nothing. Somewhere on the road here — no, long before he ever set out — the wellspring of Kasvren's happy imaginings had run completely dry. Conjuring someone else's happiness, happiness that wasn't even his own, was harder than plucking a star from the sky. And then there was this silence, this gloom. Even if the House of Drasken had once overflowed with gratitude and joy like the sun itself, all he could picture now was a family freshly returned from a funeral, each wrapped in their own solitude and sorrow, mechanically spooning up bland soup without exchanging a single word.

How had it come to this? From the moment he'd entered the mansion, Kasvren's questions had not been answered — only fattened. The floor, layered with soft velvet carpets and rugs of exotic pattern, suggested not luxury so much as a thick coating of poison. The portraits and paintings on the walls — or the unknown frames draped in black cloth — deepened the macabre atmosphere. In place of any vital, living energy, the lightless eyes of figures taxidermied in paint seemed to keep watch over the mansion's order.

Kasvren realized the figures in the paintings were staring straight at him. They seemed to be crying out in one voice: uninvited guest. A chill spread through his whole body as though he'd been caught in an autumn rain, and cold sweat traced a line down his spine.

Ah, damn it all.

He could endure no more. At the feeling of some ghost's thin, translucent fingers caressing his cheek, Kasvren shoved back his chair and shot to his feet. He had come to the wrong place. Coming here had been a grave mistake. Far wiser, as he'd originally planned, to follow the advice of his closest friend — Johan Halborn, who never stinted on useful counsel — and sail across the sea to some far-off country.

Yes. He had honored his godfather's wishes. The youngest daughter, the one the old man had worried over so — the one Kasvren had half believed might already be dead — was alive and living proudly as mistress of this enormous mansion. And he was supposed to take her away from here? Pity her? The whole notion was absurd on every count. He had to leave.

As he gathered himself and pushed his chair back under the table, the aged Rad Dat appeared, bearing a large silver tray — and froze where he stood. Several dishes of food sat upon the tray, and they suddenly rattled and clattered. Thinking the old man's grip must have weakened, Kasvren instinctively took the tray from his hands.

"Were you about to leave?"

Rad Dat asked it without a hint of fluster. He would learn later that the man was almost never flustered, never hurried. Rad Dat himself liked to say, "When you grow old, you learn to take most things in stride," but that was not the whole of the answer. His story, however, could wait for another time. Kasvren set the tray down on the table, stood there at a loss for a moment, then let his arms fall helplessly to his sides.

"It seems I'm an uninvited guest after all. And I haven't the thick skin to keep lingering here knowing it."

"Did the late master not entrust Lady Isolde to your care?"

"He did, yes. But she's rather different from what I imagined. When I read the letter your master left me, I pictured someone — well, entirely unlike her. She isn't frail. She doesn't seem to need anyone's help at all."

Then, quite unexpectedly, Rad Dat allowed himself a faint smile.

"Lady Isolde is a strong woman, it's true. From her standpoint, I suppose you are nothing more than an unwelcome intruder. And yet… having watched over Lady Isolde all my life, I find myself hoping that you may bring her some kind of change."

"A change? What kind of change?"

"That, I fear, is not mine to say. If you truly must go, I shall clear away the meal."