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Kathil lies in the dusty chill of the attic, wrapped in blankets, reading by the thin light that comes in through the ventilation holes during the day. She is used to this, the waiting. She is a ghost, now. Ghosts wait.
The others have gone home. They took her phone with them, her bags, her camera, Lorn, everything but the bare necessities. She has no way to contact the outside world; she has a cheap little radio and earbuds that she stole from a department store that she uses to keep track of the news.
She misses Lorn, but Lorn can’t climb the sides of buildings, and having a giant and obviously well-fed dog at her side would be cause for stares, for murmurs.
The building she occupies is derelict, waiting for the spring so it can be torn down to make way for an office building. Squatters occupy the bottom floor, but the attic is only accessible from the outside, and only by someone who is good at climbing. During the day, she lies still beneath the blankets she’s smuggled in. The floor creaks if she moves, so she does not move. At night, she slips down the side of the old rooming-house and roams the frigid night, dumpster diving for meals and joining the crowds around the steam vents to warm up.
It’s easy to slip back into this existence. The old habits come back to her all too quickly. Her enemy is boredom, the temptation to do something, the aching urge to find a way to contact Lils and Laica and tell them she’s all right.
She closes the book softly, sets it aside. She closes her eyes and plays the mental games with herself that she knows so well, chasing down old rabbit holes. How would you murder someone in broad daylight without getting caught? How would you frame an old woman for a bank robbery? How many litres of water are in the Waking Sea?
There are litanies, old poems that she has memorized wholesale. She plans out the rest of the show she’s working on, visualizing each frame in exacting detail, just as she wants it.
She waits. Her ghosts wait with her.
#
She shuffles in the line at the soup kitchen, wedged between a tall, broad man with an enormous beard and an elf with a baby in her arms and two toddlers at her heels. This is a chance she’s taking, but only a small one. It’s unlikely that anyone will mark her, a thin-faced woman in a dirty hoodie.
She wears a black wig that she’s carefully treated so that the strands look authentically lank, her hood up over it. She’s cold clear through, and worried that without something hot in her belly she won’t be able to make the climb back to the attic. You’ve gotten soft. Used to be you could go days without eating.But she’s older now, and she has a soft little belly. Her meals have been regular for years.
And there’s more than one hunger that dogs her. It’s easier to fend off the other if she’s taken care of food and drink.
A little nip and I wouldn’t feel a thing. I wouldn’t be scared any more, or bored.
There’s a scrabble against the inside of her skull and she flinches. One of the toddlers stares at her, and she averts her eyes.
Assumptions do most of the work of camouflage for her. People see her hoodie and her too-big eyes and stop looking, afraid that if they look too long they’ll start staring. Or maybe if they look too long she’ll ask them for something, for money, for food, for drugs.
The line shuffles forward. There’s stew, day-old bread, pastries, granola bars to take. Coffee and tea, though mostly she drinks hot water, no teabag. There’s no place to piss, in the attic, so she has to be careful with what she puts into her body.
She eats, and sets off into the night. The price of staying at the shelter is that someone might notice her, and she can’t have that.
If she keeps moving, she stays warmer.
A dark shape strides beside her, a long shadow next to her. “It’s almost time,” she promises the ghost of her partner. “Almost.”
She can barely make out Sati’s remembered face. You’re me, now. The planner. The thinker.
“I’ll keep them safe,” Kathil says. “And stay out of jail.”
She is a ghost, walking with her fellow ghosts through the streets of Denerim. She tucks her hands into her armpits, to try and ward away the chill.
#
The fifth day, it gets bad.
She curls tight around her cramping belly, whispers ricocheting around in her head. She lives breath to breath, clinging to memories—Lils’ smile, Laica’s hands, Cullen’s bashfulness, Warren’s eyes, the way Kahrin looked at Anders when they were in for a portrait. The way Sebastian embraces Laica. The way Lorn smells when he needs a bath.
Her head hurts like it’s splitting open. She takes some tablets, washing them down with a spare sip of water, and by some miracle they stay down. The medicine even helps, a little.
If it hurts, you’re still alive, she tells herself. A headache is better than a stroke.
She wants to call Lils and Laica so badly that the need is metallic on her tongue. She presses her face into the blanket and breathes through it.
You are doing this to keep them safe, she reminds herself. Them and so many other people the Howe would kill.
Kathil clings to this, and endures.
#
On the eighth day, she hears the verdict in the tinny tones of the little radio.
A mistrial has been declared in the trial of Rendon Howe.
Through near-frozen teeth, she clenches a smile.
It’s time.
#
Kathil is a ghost, waiting with her ghosts.
Rendon Howe doesn’t even see her, occupied as he is with Delilah and Kahrin. Kathil stands by the closed door, watches, and waits.
When the time is right, she steps forward.
She is coiled tight around the whispers and the ghosts, submerging them all under the iron calm of the job she has to do. This is murder and this is justice, and this is safety for everyone she loves.
This is worth the price.
When the flames creep up Rendon Howe’s pant leg, she meets his terrified eyes and smiles.
I’m nobody, she tells him.
Nobody at all.