“If a ‘shivering tide’ and ‘hollow wind’ happened, they must have taken place long ago, in a land very different from this one. In these days we are ruled by the Tranquil Empire. The witch roads—the imperial roads, I mean—and their wardens protect us from the Pall and its Spore. The imperial army roots out bandits and thieves, and keeps the land safe from the Sea Wolves and the Blood Wolves. The imperial magistrates provide aid to those who suffer during famine, winter storms and summer fires, floods, tempests, avalanches, and a host of other natural disasters. The justiciars enforce the law. The Heart Temple and its healers nurse those who become sick and open the way for the dying. Theurgists do the palace’s bidding. As for the rest of the dangers that plague and harm folk day to day, they are of the commonplace kind.”

His gaze sharpened with a sardonic flash of interest. “The commonplace kind?”

“How people treat each other. Greed. Anger. Lust. Envy. Pride. The desire for power. The urge to be violent.” She could not restrain herself from a remark meant to tweak his cool confidence. “But perhaps the noble and resplendent people of ancient days never suffered from such ordinary vices.”

He laughed with a palpable sense of delight. “I would never claim such virtue for myself. I’m neither so foolish nor so conceited. Although not all those who once knew me would agree on that!”

She winced, because people who could laugh at themselves were her weakness; she trusted them too swiftly, as she’d learned at a cost. Wasn’t that the danger of haunts? They were alluring precisely because they weren’t alive and yet entangled their victims within an insinuating presence that knew where to strike where the heart was most susceptible.

What if, by some magic beyond her ken, the haunt became alive, as she and all those who walked on the earth defined living? When she thought of the beast’s head that had been cradled in the statue’s arms, she wondered if he was even human.

She rubbed her itching forearm, realized she had done it, and braced herself for what he would say next, he who saw too much.

“I do not know this Tranquil Empire. Tranquil. Ha! Such a claim must be purposefully misleading. Or perhaps it acts in the manner of a comforting threat. Rulers love to speak in ways that make their power seem benign.”

She smiled in agreement, caught herself doing it, and realized the haunt was far more dangerous even than he had at first seemed. But he wasn’t focused on her, not as prey. She got the impression he was talking through the situation as he tried to figure it out, like a man waking from a profound sleep and trying to remember where he was and how he had gotten there.