Cloak & Ghost: Lost Gate

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “Really,” said Caina. “And just why am I going to do that?”

  “I happen to have need of your particular set of skills,” said Andromache. “You’re going to solve a small problem for me. Once that problem is resolved, I will arrange for a suitable payment.”

  “You still haven’t answered the question,” said Caina. “Why am I going to solve this problem for you?”

  “Because it is the kind of problem you are uniquely qualified to solve,” said Andromache. That was bad. Andromache was one of the few humans who knew that Caina was a valikarion. “And, really, Miss Amalas, I know you too well. Once you find out what the problem is, you’ll want to solve it for me. You won’t be able to stop yourself. 8 AM. Don’t be late.”

  With that, she ended the call.

  Caina glowered at the screen for a moment.

  “Hell,” she snarled, and put the phone back on the nightstand.

  There wasn’t a way around it. Caina had to go see what Andromache wanted. She was too important of a client for Ghost Securities to risk losing her business, and if Ghost Securities got into a fight with Kardamnos Shipping, the High Queen would be irritated. And saying no to someone like Andromache Kardamnos was always a risky proposition. Most people thought that all power and influence lay with the Elven nobles, which was true enough – but a human with sufficient nerve and cunning could assemble an enormous power base.

  And Andromache Kardamnos had nerves of steel.

  Caina sat up, wincing at the feel of the cold concrete floor against her bare feet. She had to get around to having a carpet installed one of these days. The apartment had a small kitchenette, and since Caina hadn’t eaten for sixteen hours, she threw together a smoothie and ate it while she got dressed. Part of her was tempted to show up in exercise pants and a tank top just to irritate Andromache, but Andromache already had a grudge against Caina, and there was no reason to annoy her further.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Caina settled on a black business suit with a high-collared white blouse and heeled black boots. Her hair went back in a bun, held in place by a pair of lacquered sticks, and she applied just enough makeup to make it seem like she had tried. When she was finished, she looked like a sleek business executive from a stock photograph. A stray memory flickered through her mind, the day she had met Nadia Moran for coffee to discuss their mutual problem with Congressman Joseph Sulzer. Caina had worn a similar outfit that day, and Nadia had said it made Caina look like the villainous corporate executive from a video drama, the one who closed the local factory but secretly turned out to be in league with the Rebels.

  She grinned into the mirror, collected her purse, and headed out. Caina wished she could have brought a gun with her, but Kardamnos Memorial Hospital did not allow weapons on the premises (except for the security guards), and there was no way Andromache’s own security would let Caina anywhere near their employer with a weapon. Still, Caina could never be parted from her valikon so long as she lived, but when dealing with ordinary humans, a gun often proved more useful than a sword.

  Besides, Caina was sure she wouldn’t have to shoot Andromache. Mostly.

  She stopped in the lobby and checked with Desmond, the day manager, and left him a few instructions. Then she took one of the company’s nondescript four-door sedans and started across Queens to Kardamnos Memorial Hospital.

  The New York branch office for Ghost Securities was not far from JFK International Airport, and neither was Kardamnos Memorial Hospital. Unfortunately, at this time of the morning, traffic was a nightmare, so it took Caina the better part of forty minutes to make the drive. It was faster than walking, but only just. Traffic was particularly backed up near the airport. She glanced at local news on her phone while waiting at a red light and saw that four runways had been temporarily closed for emergency repair, causing a massive backup. Caina was glad she didn’t have to fly anywhere this week.

  And while she was waiting at the red light, the High Queen made contact.

  The ring on her right hand grew hot against her skin, and to the sight of the valikarion, it glowed with magical power.

  The High Queen’s voice filled Caina’s head.

  “You did well,” said Tarlia. “The data you obtained from New Robotics Corporation has been reviewed. Fortunately for them, they were true to their word, and did not collaborate with any of my enemies.”

  Caina’s phone buzzed. It was a notification from her bank. The High Queen had just sent a payment of fifteen thousand dollars to her account. Tarlia didn’t pay her shadow agents, not exactly – but she was sure to make her pleasure with their performance known.

  Or her displeasure, when necessary.

  “Thank you, your Majesty,” said Caina inside her head. The power of the blood ring on her finger would take the words back to Tarlia wherever she was. The Skythrone was presently in Russia, but that didn’t mean anything. The High Queen constantly flitted about the world, roaming from trouble spot to trouble spot like a landowner prowling his property and looking for problems to fix.

  “What are you doing now?” said Tarlia. “The urgency of a task fills your mind.”

  She could have looked into Caina’s mind and found the answer. The blood rings let Tarlia communicate with her shadow agents, but they also let her keep them under control and locate them. But Tarlia wouldn’t look into Caina’s mind unless she found it necessary.

  “I’m going to meet Andromache Kardamnos at her hospital,” said Caina.

  “Are you, now?” said Tarlia, surprised.

  “She summoned me to a meeting,” said Caina. “Wouldn’t say why over the phone. I think she has a problem she wants handled quietly.”

  “Indeed,” said Tarlia. “Play along and see what the problem is. I do hope Andromache hasn’t decided to become disloyal.”

  “I really doubt it, your Majesty,” said Caina. “I suspect it’s a problem with the hospital, and she wants it resolved before it causes a scandal. That hospital is a monument to her parents, and nothing is more important to Andromache Kardamnos than her family.” She remembered the cold fury in Andromache’s eyes after Kylon’s doomed wedding. “She’ll interpret any attack on the hospital as an attack on her family, and she’ll deal with it harshly.”

  “Observant as always,” said Tarlia. “Very well. Find out what Andromache wants. Naturally, I expect to hear all about it.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” said Caina. The High Queen controlled the Inquisition and Homeland Security (and the national security apparatus of every other country on Earth), but she didn’t trust them. So that was why she secretly owned Ghost Securities and used the company to carry out tasks for her quietly.

  With that, the contact ended, and the stoplight changed to green.

  A few minutes later, Caina reached the sprawling campus of Kardamnos Memorial Hospital. Between Andromache’s cunning and financial acumen and the patronage of Baron Thronaris of Queens, the hospital was one of the largest and most prestigious in the United States. Its crown jewel was a trauma and rehabilitation center that specialized in helping wounded men-at-arms recover. Which was noble work, though Caina noted it was mentioned in the hospital’s fundraising and advertising a lot.

  She parked in one of the hospital’s towering parking ramps. It was just as well that the High Queen had paid her fifteen thousand dollars, given how much the hospital charged for guest parking. Perhaps she could bill Andromache for that. Caina walked from the ramp and into the hospital’s bustling, cavernous lobby. A row of check-in desks lined the far wall, and the receptionists sent people to urgent care or the emergency room as necessary.

  Two large portraits on the wall drew Caina’s eye. One showed Baron Thronaris, the Elven noble who was the patron of the hospital. The second was a portrait of a pair of humans. It showed an older man with gray hair and a middle-aged woman with long black hair. The man wore a formal suit, and the woman a black dress. His hand rested upon her right shoulder, and her left hand came up to grasp his. It wa
s a stiff, but obviously loving, portrait.

  They were Andromache’s late parents, Andreas and Calantha Kardamnos. Twenty-five years ago, they had owned several successful businesses in Athens. That year, the Archons had launched a massive attack on Greece, a campaign that had taken the better part of a year to drive back. In the resultant chaos, the government of Greece collapsed, and a group of Marxists seized control of Athens and attempted to establish a commune. Naturally, the first thing they had done had been to liquidate their class enemies, so Andreas and Calantha had been dragged from their bed in the middle of the night, doused in gasoline, and burned alive in front of their son and daughter. A few weeks later, the Elven nobles rallied and crushed the Athens commune. The few surviving commune leaders had wound up joining Nicholas Connor’s Rebel organization and then had been slaughtered during the Rebel attack on New York. The Archons themselves had been annihilated in Lord Morvilind’s Mage Fall a few weeks later.

  Andromache had lived long enough to see all her enemies crushed.

  But Andromache and her younger brother Kylon had come to the United States as penniless orphans, raised by a foster family. Twenty years later, Andromache ruled with an iron fist over a vast business empire. Kardamnos Shipping was one of the largest companies in the world, and Andromache herself was one of the richest and most powerful people in the United States.

  And she didn’t like Caina all that much.

  No, definitely not someone to cross.

  Caina traversed the lobby, made her way to the administrative wing, and then to Andromache’s outer office. The sleek desk of one of Andromache’s army of personal assistants filled the room. A large framed photograph on the wall showed Andromache breaking ground for the hospital five years ago, flanked by local leaders and Elven nobles. Four solemn-looking men in suits stood in the office, Andromache’s bodyguards. The personal assistant, an efficient, sleek-looking young woman, looked up from her computer.

  “May I help you?”

  “Good morning,” said Caina. “My name’s Caina Amalas. I have an appointment with Ms. Kardamnos at eight.” According to the clock behind the receptionist, it was 7:49. Caina had made it with time to spare.

  “Of course,” said the receptionist, getting to her feet. “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll let Ms. Kardamnos know that you are here.”

  Caina nodded and sat down, plucking some dust from the sleeve of her jacket. She expected that Andromache would make her wait, so she was surprised when the receptionist emerged from the inner office at once.

  It must be a serious problem, whatever it was.

  “Ms. Kardamnos will see you right away,” said the receptionist. “This way, please.”

  She escorted Caina into the inner office, and Caina found herself face-to-face Andromache Kardamnos.

  The office looked sleek and modern, with a polished concrete floor and white walls. Windows behind the desk had a splendid view of the main entrance to the hospital and its surrounding landscaping. The desk itself was a thing of glass and steel that looked like some bizarre art installation, and there wasn’t a speck of dust in sight anywhere. The sleek, sterile look of the office was belied by the family pictures that lined the walls.

  Andromache Kardamnos Ravenwood stood before the desk, watching Caina.

  She was approaching forty, but thanks to the small army of nutritionists and personal trainers she employed, she looked younger, and she seemed to radiate implacable energy. She wore a business suit the color of blood, with a white blouse and black boots, but Andromache always wore some combination of red and black. Her long black hair had been arranged in a hairstyle that looked something like a braided crown wrapped around her head, and her whiskey-colored eyes watched Caina without blinking.

  They looked just like Kylon’s eyes, come to think of it. An odd thought to have just now.

  There were two men in the office with Andromache. Caina didn’t recognize the first man. He wore dress slacks and shoes, a white shirt, and a pale blue tie. Over it all, he wore a lab coat with an ID card clipped to the pocket identifying him as Dr. Geoffrey Harper, Chief of Medicine. He had the soft, slightly overfed look of a man who didn’t do much physical labor, and his gray hair had been divided in a perfect part. He looked fatherly, almost like he should be playing the part of a kindly doctor on a video drama.

  Caina recognized the second man at once, and alarm flooded through her.

  The man was an Elven noble, which meant that the situation was indeed serious.

  The noble was Thronaris, the Baron of the borough of Queens. The Elven nobles, Caina had observed, tended to fall in three camps in their opinions of humanity. A small number actively detested humans. A slightly larger number were indifferent to them. But a surprising lot of the Elven nobles seemed to quite like humans, even to find them fascinating. Caina suspected it was the difference in human and Elven lifespans. An Elf typically lived a thousand years, and could even reach fifteen centuries. Humans lived, on average, seventy or eighty years. If Elves seemed aloof and alien and lordly to humans, human seemed vigorous and dynamic and irrational to Elves.

  Baron Thronaris liked humans, and he also liked human clothing. Unfortunately, his fashion choices left something to be desired. He wore a white turtleneck, a blue velvet jacket, and blue corduroy pants with suede shoes. This made for an odd contrast with the red cloak of an Elven noble that he also wore. His silver eyes regarded Caina, and his pointed ears rose into his artfully disarrayed mane of black hair.

  Caina offered a deep bow. “My lord Thronaris. I did not know you would be here.”

  “You are Caina Amalas, yes?” said Thronaris. His voice was deep and musical. A good voice for giving speeches.

  “Yes, my lord,” said Caina.

  “Andromache says that you are trustworthy,” said Thronaris, glancing at Andromache, “though she does not like you very much.”

  “She has her reasons,” said Caina, glancing at Andromache.

  “Yes,” said Andromache. “I’m afraid Miss Amalas and I have not spoken since she killed my brother’s fiancée at their wedding.”

  Dr. Harper’s mouth fell open, and Thronaris raised a slender eyebrow.

  “Her brother’s fiancée was a necromancer,” said Caina. “My lord, do you recall Baron Maglarion of Canterbury?”

  Thronaris frowned. “Vaguely. The High Queen had him attained and announced his execution a few years ago.”

  “He was a necromancer, my lord, and he gathered a circle of human disciples around him,” said Caina. Her own mother included, but she shoved that thought out of her head. “The Inquisition hired my company to help track his movements in the UK. Colonel Kylon Kardamnos helped us. We tracked one of the disciples to Colonel Kardamnos’s wedding…but we didn’t realize that his fiancée was one of the disciples until it was too late. The disciple tried to kill everyone in the church to escape, but she was killed in the resultant fight.” That had been a bad, bad day. “My lord, if you wish to contact the Inquisition to confirm these details, I will be happy to wait upon your convenience.”

  Thronaris waved a dismissive hand. “The last thing I want to do is to contact the Inquisition.”

  He didn’t? Now that was interesting. Though the Elven nobles feared the High Queen’s Inquisition as much as humans did.

  “Yes,” said Andromache. “Miss Amalas’s story is correct. To every sordid detail of her failure.”

  Caina felt her temper spike. “We didn’t fail.”

  “You killed my brother’s fiancée in front of God knows how many witnesses, bringing my family into disrepute in the UK,” said Andromache. Her lips started to pull back from her white teeth in a snarl. “And you put my family at risk. My children were there, and…”

  “Kylon killed Maena,” said Caina. “I just helped. And I didn’t put anyone at risk. Maena did that. You did that, by forcing him to marry her to help your business interests.”

  “Kylon hasn’t spoken to me in two years,” said Andromache, taking a st
ep forward. “It is because of you that he is estranged from his family. You had that pet assassin following you around like a loyal puppy, but maybe you wanted to throw him over and take Kylon for yourself…”

  A red mist fell over Caina’s vision, and the mingled fury and guilt choked in her throat. Her expression must have been something to behold because Andromache took a sudden step back. Caina wasn’t at all sure what she might have done next, but Thronaris’s voice cracked like a whip.

  “That is more than enough!” he said. “We have a serious problem to discuss. You two can resolve your personal differences later.”

  Caina took a deep breath and turned away, looking at the pictures on the wall as she tried to make herself calm down. One picture showed Kylon in the black uniform of the Wizard’s Legion, a colonel’s insignia in his collar. Another showed Andromache with her husband and children. Andromache had married her husband at the age of eighteen and used his money to start Kardamnos Shipping. Winston Ravenwood the Ninth was the scion of an old-money upstate New York family that could trace both its lineage and its fortune back to nearly three hundred years before the Conquest. Caina had met Winston a few times. He was a lawyer, a charming, genial, unambitious man, who nonetheless had the wit to step back and let his far more driven and far more ruthless wife make him into a billionaire.

  “I apologize,” said Andromache at last. “My remarks on the topic of Corwin Aberon were…inappropriate.”

  That was probably the closest Caina was going to get to an actual apology. Caina sighed, turned around, nodded, and looked at Dr. Harper, who looked as if he wanted to flee or shrink into the corner of the room.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” said Caina. “I’m Caina Amalas.”

  “Geoffrey Harper, Chief of Medicine for Kardamnos Memorial,” said Dr. Harper. He offered an apologetic smile. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake hands. This is a hospital.”

  “Right,” said Caina. She looked at Thronaris. “My lord, perhaps we should discuss your problem. We can determine whether or not I can help you, as I have no wish to waste any of your valuable time.”