Spurlock relaxed. Finally, something would get done. He would avenge those of Arcosia who had spilled their blood in these lands, and in so doing, prove his worthiness to the power in Blackveil. One day he would be accounted among the great of Second Empire, and his descendants would hold him in highest honor.

It was much too early to be up and about, to trudge up the Winding Way to the castle gate while the sun had not yet peeked over the rim of the world. Lanterns still ablaze, the guards at the gate had looked down at the bleary-eyed recordskeeper and chuckled.

“Ol’ Spurlock drivin’ ya hard again, lad?” one called down.

“Yes,” said Dakrias Brown, even though it wasn’t entirely true, but he would never tell these hard-bitten soldiers the real reason he needed to catch up on his work: that it had been upended by the spirits of the dead.

The guards made sympathetic noises and let him through the “small” gate, a normal-sized door in the big gate. Ever since the intrusion on castle grounds, and the burning of Rider barracks, they’d been shutting the big gate at sunset, and not reopening it till sunrise.

Dakrias had been slaving away in the records room, because of Spurlock, since the night of the intrusion. He had emerged from the castle only to witness the chaos outside, and the blaze of Rider barracks. Someone had died in the fire, and another was seriously wounded, both Riders. He hadn’t known Ephram Neddick, but he did know Mara Brennyn, and the thought of her grave wounds hurt him.

He yawned hugely as he made his way toward the castle. He would much rather hide in his room at Mistress Charon’s. Small as it was, it was blessedly un-haunted. What will the ghosts have left for him this morning? he wondered. More smashed crates? An overturned table or shelves? Papers he had labored to file in an organized manner now spilled across the floor?

These days Dakrias spent more time on hands and knees picking up than attending to his other duties. Good thing Spurlock had been so preoccupied with other matters of late. He rarely checked on the records room, and when he did, he seemed not to notice his surroundings.

He reluctantly mounted the steps to the main castle entrance. For days now he had been making this early morning walk to reclaim order from disorder. He’d also done some reading, surreptitiously, in the castle library. It contained too few books on ghosts, and most of the writings seemed too fanciful to be as true as the authors claimed.

One book, however, proved more useful and dealt with ghosts in a serious way, by examining and classifying their traits. It was called Phantoms in My Attic, by Lord Eldred Faintly. As Dakrias read, he thought, perhaps, he might be haunted by poltergeists, “. . . a type of ghost that leaves an unseemly mess in its wake,” Lord Faintly had written. But poltergeists were also prone to “violent manifestations and unbearable wailings.” Dakrias’ ghosts were not otherwise violent, nor did they wail.

Of the more mainstream ghosts, there were “the curious ghost, the friendly ghost, the sorrowful ghost, and the mischievous ghost.” Dakrias was not sure exactly what demeanor his ghosts displayed, though the havoc they wreaked in the records room might be construed as mischievous. He rolled his eyes.

Most ghosts feel they have left something undone, Lord Faintly wrote, and so they forever walk the Earth trying to right a wrong, or to see some activity to fruition. Until those goals are achieved, the ghost will not rest.

There are still other ghosts who are merely disturbed and seek attention. They can be a housekeeper’s nightmare.

Dakrias had hit on his ghosts. They weren’t only a housekeeper’s nightmare, but a recordskeeper’s, too. Just why they sought attention, or just why they were disturbed, was probably something he would never learn. Unfortunately, according to Lord Faintly, the resolution of their problem was the only way to get rid of them. And how was he going to figure that out?

He sighed as he scuffed down the corridor toward the administrative wing. The only one who hadn’t laughed at his claim of ghosts haunting the records room was Karigan G’ladheon. Not only had she refrained from laughing, but the look in her eyes told him she believed.

If Dakrias hadn’t profoundly felt his duty to the king and people of Sacoridia, he would run from the castle all the way to his uncle’s farm in D’Ivary Province without looking back.

The hauntings had made a mess of his life. Where once he kept an impeccable and orderly records room, it now fringed on chaos, just like his personal life. He jumped at the slightest sound, and he felt like a cat afraid of its own shadow. The other clerks dropped books behind him just to see how high he’d jump.

He didn’t know how much more he could take, how many whispers in his ears, or the cool touches on the back of his neck . . . He wasn’t sure his heart could handle any new antics on their behalf.

Ghosts rarely alter their behavior, Lord Faintly reassured. They are cursed to repeat the same motions time after time unless, by good fortune, there is closure to whatever it is that anchors them to the Earth, and only then, at last, may they rest in peace.

Dakrias paused at the entry to the records room to ignite a candle with which he could light the lamps within, and unlocked the door. It swung inward with a screech. All else was silence.

He took a deep breath and stepped inside, and immediately a chaos of strewn books and papers fell into the circle of his candlelight. He groaned.

Then voices, distant whispery voices, raised the hair on the nape of his neck. Slowly he gazed upward. There, high above, were two spirits that manifested as colorful spheres of light.