Ghost Protocol

Ghost Protocol Season 1, Episode 1: The Ghost of Lowmarket

It rained in Valencrest the way it did every autumn, in long grey sheets that turned the marble streets of the Noble Quarter into rivers of lamplight. Gold lanterns glowed along every gate. Far above it all, on the hill, the royal palace shone like something that had never once been cold.

On the rooftops below it, a shape moved without making a sound.

It crossed a slate ridge, dropped onto a balcony, and paused at a window that had been left open an inch for the night air. The curtain stirred once. Then it did not stir again.

Inside the study of Lord Aldric Vane, a fat man in a velvet robe was asleep in his armchair with his mouth open. He snored in long, wet, contented breaths. On the desk beside him sat a heavy coin chest and an open ledger.

A young man stood next to the desk.

He had not walked there. He had not climbed in. One moment the space had been empty, and the next it wasn't. He wore a black coat, darker than the room, and two katanas rode crossed on his back. His hair was damp with rain. On his mouth sat a lazy half-smile, the kind that made people assume he was harmless right up until they learned better.

Colter Wayne turned the ledger toward the lamplight and read a line.

The smile went flat.

He read the next line. Then the next. His eyes moved down the column, and with each entry, whatever was left of his good humor drained out of his face.

"Grain shipments to Lowmarket," he whispered. "Sold twice. Stolen once. And you're sleeping like a baby."

He tore out three pages, folded them, and slid them inside his coat. Then he picked up the coin chest. It was heavy enough to make a normal man grunt. Colter lifted it as if it were a loaf of bread.

Lord Vane stirred.

Colter froze.

The chest hung in his arms. Vane smacked his lips, mumbled something about a sauce, and settled deeper into the cushions. His snoring resumed.

Colter let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

Then, because he could not help himself, he leaned down until his mouth was beside the sleeping man's ear.

"Sweet dreams, Lord Vane."

The lamplight guttered.

Colter's shadow stretched across the floor, long and thin, as if the room had grown taller around it. It reached the chest in his arms and swallowed it whole.

Colter stepped into the dark after it.

By the time the curtain moved again, the study was empty.

Lowmarket woke slowly.

It was the poorest district in Valencrest, a sprawl of patched roofs and leaning walls piled up against the river like driftwood. Laundry lines sagged between windows. Children ran barefoot through the mud, shrieking over nothing. Smoke from a hundred cookfires crawled up the hill toward the palace, which was still visible from here, glittering on the horizon.

It felt very far away.

An old baker named Tobin opened his door that morning and nearly stepped on a coin.

He looked down.

There was a second coin. A third. A small heap of gold lay on his doorstep in the grey light, with a folded scrap of paper tucked beneath it.

He picked up the note and read it with a frown.

For the grain. Sorry it's late.

His hand started to shake.

On the wall beside the door, someone had drawn a small shape in white chalk. It was a ghost, round-headed, with two dot eyes and a wide, cheeky grin.

It looked like something a child would draw.

It also looked a little bit like a promise.

"Ghost," Tobin murmured.

Down the street, two kids who had been watching him from behind a rain barrel pointed at the chalk drawing and grinned.

The Rusted Plow was the kind of tavern that survived because nobody could think of anything better to do with the building.

The tables were scarred. The floor sagged. Half the chairs were empty even at midday, and the other half did not match.

In the back corner, at a table that had been battered by years of use, sat two people who looked like they belonged together and made no sense at all.

Hunter was enormous.

He had a wide, cheerful face, scarred knuckles, and shoulders that made the chair beneath him look like a toy. He had six plates in front of him. He was working on a leg of something, with the unhurried focus of a man who had never once been rushed.

Across from him sat a girl of about nineteen with sharp eyes and her dark hair tied back in a practical knot.

A ledger lay open in front of her. She was doing sums with a stub of pencil, her lips moving silently.

"Bread," said Yui Freeman. "Two weeks of flour. Boots for the Harlan kids. And the tavern tab."

She tapped the page.

"That's nearly all of what Colter took."

"So we're rich?" Hunter said, around a mouthful.

"We're fed. Those aren't the same thing."

"Feels the same."

She flicked a coin at his forehead.

Without looking up, Hunter caught it in his teeth.

The door swung open.

A familiar figure strolled in, coat slung over one shoulder, grin bright and wide. The cold thief from the manor was gone. In his place was someone who looked like he had never taken anything more serious than a second helping.

"Good morning, my beautiful, hardworking crew."

"You're late," Yui said.

"I was busy. Charming a maid."

"You were robbing a lord."

"And charming a maid. I multitask."

Colter dropped into the empty chair, leaned across the table, and stole a piece of bread off Hunter's plate.

Hunter didn't flinch. He had made peace with this years ago.

A serving girl passed with a tray. She was a few years older than Yui, with a tired face and a grey apron.

Colter leaned back in his chair and gave her his most devastating smile.

"Hey. Nice apron. Has anyone ever told you it matches your eyes?"

She stopped.

"It's grey."

"Exactly. Very rare shade."

She rolled her eyes, but her mouth twitched. She walked off with a little more swing in her step than she'd had a minute before.

Yui pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Is this how it's going to be all day?"

"It's how it's been for three years," Colter said cheerfully.

The tavern door opened again.

It was a quieter opening this time, hesitant, the kind that came with a held breath.

A stooped old woman stood in the doorway with a shawl pulled over her white hair. She wore a faded dress and old slippers, and she was clutching something small against her chest.

She did not belong in a tavern.

Everyone in the room could see it.

The noise died.

Even the clink of mugs stopped.

The old woman's eyes moved across the tables until they landed on the one in the corner.

She took a shaky step forward.

"Are you..."

Her voice cracked.

She tried again.

"Are you the ones they call the Ghost?"

Colter's smile stayed exactly where it was.

But behind it, something shifted.

"Depends," he said lightly. "Who's asking?"

"My name is Maren."

She came a few steps closer. Up close, her face was lined and grey with exhaustion.

"My grandson is missing. Three children this month, from the district. The guards say wolves."

Her hands tightened on the thing she was holding.

"But wolves don't take children out of locked rooms."

She opened her fingers.

In her palm lay a small wooden toy horse, worn smooth with handling, and four copper coins.

"It's all I have," Maren said. "I know it's nothing."

Hunter had stopped chewing.

His eyes went to the horse and stayed there.

Yui's pencil went still on the page.

And Colter stood up.

It was a small thing.

He didn't make a sound.

But the slouch went out of his shoulders as if it had never been there. His spine straightened. His eyes, which had been bright with mischief a moment ago, went level and calm and very, very steady.

When he spoke, the voice that came out of him wasn't the one he'd been using for the past ten minutes.

It was low, quiet, and without a single wasted word.

"Keep the coins. Tell me everything. Where. When. What the guards said."

At the table, Yui leaned toward Hunter and whispered, "There it is."

"I never get used to that," Hunter whispered back.

Maren talked.

Colter did not interrupt once.

He stood with his arms folded and listened, and the old woman's words came out in a halting, tangled stream: how Danel had been put to bed on a cold night with the door barred, and was gone by morning with the bar still in place. How the Harlan girl had vanished the same way, and the Thorne twins a week after.

How there was always a smell afterward, thin and sour, like burnt hair.

Yui wrote everything down.

Hunter had stopped eating, which was how anyone who knew him could tell how serious it was.

"And the whole neighborhood blames the man in the old chapel," Maren finished.

"Who's the man in the old chapel?" Colter asked.

"A boy, really. He moved into the ruins a few months back. Wears black. The children say he talks to shadows."

She shook her head.

"People say he's a witch."

Colter's eyes narrowed, just slightly.

"A dark mage."

"They say he's cursed the whole district."

"Do you think he did it?" Yui asked.

Maren hesitated.

It was a long hesitation.

It was the hesitation of someone who had been asking herself the same question for days.

"I think," she said slowly, "he's the only one who's been walking those streets at night looking for them."

Colter almost smiled.

It was a small thing, a tiny curve at the corner of his mouth.

He reached out and took the wooden horse from her palm. He turned it over in his fingers, and for a moment his face did something that was hard to read.

"We'll bring him home," he said.