Ghost in the Blood (The Ghosts)

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “Wise of you,” said Caina.

  Radast kept starting at her. He began to chew upon the end of his quill. She could see something happening behind his eyes. Perhaps an equation coming to its end.

  “What?” said Caina.

  “You are most unusual. Many women serve in the Emperor's Ghosts, my Jiri among them. But a woman nightfighter? Astonishingly rare. Practically unique. You are a variable with a single value. And unusually perceptive.”

  “It’s what I was trained to do,” said Caina.

  “When you look at me,” said Radast, “what do you perceive?”

  Caina considered for a moment, and then shrugged. “You’re a locksmith. You’re not married to Jiri, but you live with her, and I’ll wager you share a bed. You can’t function without her. You’re a member of the Imperial Collegium of Locksmiths, but the other master locksmiths hate you, won’t have anything to do with you, and would expel you if you didn’t bring in so much money. Oh, and you used to be in the Legion, but you didn’t finish your term of service.”

  Radast blinked several times. “Remarkable. How did you calculate all of that?”

  “I didn’t calculate, I inferred. Deduced. And it wasn’t hard,” said Caina. “I’ve seen the way Jiri looks after you, the way she’s always bringing you pens and sheets of paper. She reminds you to eat and bathe, too, doesn’t she? She’d only do that if she loved you. When we first met, you calculated my height and weight at a single glance, and you didn’t have the self-restraint to keep it to yourself. I’ll wager that particular gift doesn’t endear you to the masters of the Imperial Collegium of Locksmiths. Nor to their wives.”

  “No,” said Radast. “No, it does not. Especially Presiding Master’s wife, who is fifty years and old and two hundred and forty pounds, and believes herself to be half that.” He snorted. “A foolish conceit. Numbers are numbers, and they do not lie.”

  “No, but people lie to themselves, don’t they? Collegium masters are a pompous bunch,” said Caina, “and they love their pride, but they love money even more. So the only reason they tolerate you is because you bring in the money. Special security needs, Basil said…so you probably specialize in locks equipped with lethal mechanical traps.”

  “Yes. Normal locks are boring. I prefer puzzles. I learned from the Strigosti,” said Radast.

  That caught Caina off-guard. The Strigosti were a secretive, unfriendly people, scattered far and wide, but no one could match their mastery of mechanical devices. Caina wondered how an outsider had learned some of their teachings.

  “How did you know I was in the Legion?” said Radast.

  She pointed. “Yesterday, you wore a tunic with shorter sleeves. Every time you raised your arm to write upon your slates, your sleeve pulled up enough to reveal the Legion tattoo. Though not all of it.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if you were in the Twenty-First, the Twenty-Second, or the Twenty-Third.”

  “The Twenty-Third,” said Radast. “My father was an agent of a Strigosti colony in the Great Mountains. The Strigosti hate anyone not of their race, but need someone to sell their devices to outsiders. My father did that. When I was fifteen, he tired of me, and sold me to a Legion recruiter.”

  “That’s illegal,” said Caina.

  “Correct. However, gold has considerably more weight than morality in most equations.” Radast fiddled with his quill. “I lacked skill at both fighting and manual labor, so I wound up as an engineer, working with the siege engines. My skill at calculation caught the attention of a master of the Imperial Collegium of Locksmiths, and he bribed the Twenty-Third’s legate to discharge me. Since then I have worked for the Collegium.”

  “How did you meet Jiri?” said Caina.

  “As you correctly calculated, material concerns bore me. Numbers are accurate and precise. Pure. Clean, even. The tedious business of feeding and cleaning up after oneself…well, I found myself forced to hire a maid. Jiri.”

  “So you seduced her?” said Caina. She looked at Radast and tried to picture him seducing anyone. “No. She seduced you.”

  Radast nodded. “I have always found women exasperating. Imprecise and illogical. But Jiri understands me. And…well…” He seemed at a loss for words.

  “Ah,” said Caina. “Material concerns bore you…save for one?”

  To her great amusement, Radast’s face turned red. “Well. I have a man's appetites.”

  “How did you join the Ghosts?”

  “Jiri was already a Ghost when I hired her,” said Radast.

  “Really.”

  “Indeed.” Radast scratched his chin. “Since childhood. Evidently old Lord Corbould Maraeus ruined her family, and the Ghosts recruited her soon afterwards. Later Basil contacted her. He needed someone killed, and Jiri suggested me. It was a…fascinating puzzle. The equations were most demanding. The…”

  “The crossbow bolts,” said Caina.

  “Yes, precisely,” said Radast. He hesitated. “But what of you? Equations must be balanced, and you have all my secrets. How did you become a Ghost?”

  “It’s not an interesting story,” said Caina. “I was born into a noble House. My mother wished to join the Magisterium, and viewed my father and myself as impediments to her skills. So she murdered my father and sold me to a group of necromancers in exchange for their teachings. Basil killed the necromancers and rescued me. I’ve been with the Ghosts ever since.”

  The story was mostly true. No need to tell him about Maglarion, or about the terrible bloodcrystal atop Haeron Icaraeus's mansion, blazing with the green flame of a thousand stolen lives...

  “I see,” said Radast, a distracted look entering his eyes. “Little wonder Basil brought you. It is only logical that you would hate both sorcerers and slavers.”

  Caina blinked, once. “Yes.”

  He had no idea.

  “But your mother. Did Basil kill…”

  “No,” said Caina. “He didn’t.”

  She saw Radast get it. He swallowed and began blinking, the distracted look deepening. Some idea seemed to have taken hold of him.

  “What is it?” said Caina.

  “You aren’t like the others,” mumbled Radast. “You are, in fact, unlike anyone I have ever met, Ghost or otherwise. Your perceptions seem unusually keen. Perhaps you will see the pattern where others do not.”

  “What pattern?” said Caina.

  “Something is wrong in this city,” said Radast.

  “Naelon Icaraeus is selling slaves here. That is bad enough,” said Caina.

  “No. Worse.”

  “What could be worse than that?” said Caina.

  “I don’t yet know. I only have a few variables. The complete equation eludes me. But let me show you. Let me show you!”

  He jumped to his feet and took her arm. Again Caina almost broke his hand, but she controlled herself. Radast guided her to one of the windows and threw open the steel shutters. Moonlight flooded into the room, and Caina saw the market plaza below.

  “What do you observe?” said Radast.

  Caina shrugged. “All the shops are closed. The sculpture gallery has a night watchman. That public house is still open, but all the patrons are probably asleep. I can see Lady Palaegus’s mansion from here. And the Citadel, and Black Angel Tower.”

  Odd that she could see a black tower so clearly at night.

  But. The moonlight rimmed the tower, even as the black stone seemed to drink the light somehow. It looked like a blacker rift in the black night, somehow hungry and alive. Caina felt herself shiver, and looked away.

  “But you do not see any people,” said Radast.

  “Of course not. It’s well past midnight.”

  “Sometimes the numbers fill my head, buzzing like flies, and I can think of nothing else,” said Radast. “So I go to the window and watch the crowds, and count things. It relaxes me.”

  “So you go to the window and…count people?” said Caina.

  “Yes!” hissed Radast. He seized a notebook from a shelf
and started paging through it. “I started writing it down. Five years ago I would see between three hundred and four hundred children pass my window each day. With variations due to weather, holidays, and certain other overriding factors, of course. They would go with their parents, or attend their masters’ errands, or simply play.” He looked at her, dark eyes haunted. “Do you know how many children I have seen pass my window in the last week?”

  Caina shook her head.

  “None,” said Radast.

  Again Caina felt a chill, but this time it touched her stomach. All at once she thought of the stinking room in Agria Palaegus’s cellar, of Zorgi’s wife Katerine weeping in the night, of the charms against the Solmonari and the Moroaica that covered half the doorframes in the city.

  “What are you saying?” said Caina. “That…no, that’s not possible. That many children? Someone would notice.”

  “I noticed,” said Radast.

  “Or…it needn’t be that many children,” said Caina. “If enough children disappeared, the people of the city would become cautious. They wouldn’t let their children wander outside alone.”

  “And the beggars,” said Radast.

  “Beggars?” said Caina. She remembered Marsis’s singular lack of beggars. “What about them?”

  “There aren’t any,” said Radast, paging through his notebook. “Five years ago, there were between two and four beggars at every corner, depending upon traffic and weather. Now there are none. When Jiri and I go into the city, I look for them. And I count no beggars.”

  “Icaraeus,” said Caina. “Icaraeus is kidnapping them and selling them. Perhaps to people within the city.” That would explain how he eluded inspection at both the gate and the docks. Though it would not explain what had happened to the people in Agria’s cellar.

  “It is the only explanation that fits,” said Radast. “And yet…and yet…the equation does not balance. How can one organization make so many people disappear, even with the aid of sorcery?” His face was anguished. “Something terrible is happening, yet I am not able to see it.”

  “We will find Icaraeus,” said Caina, “and when we do, he will pay for his crimes.”

  “You must,” said Radast. “You must find him. Jiri and Ducas do not believe me. Neither does Basil, though he finds me useful. They think I am mad.” He gave a shrill laugh. “Well, perhaps I am mad, but I am still right. Something terrible is happening. I think it is more than Icaraeus, something worse. You must find it, Anna Callenius. I cannot. I cannot even kill a man, unless I have three days to prepare the trajectories. But you are clever. Please, I beg you, discover what is happening.”

  Caina opened her mouth to answer, and then she heard the rattle of keys. The massive door swung open, and Halfdan and Jiri entered the workshop, bottles of wine in hand.

  “Ah,” said Halfdan. “You’re back. Where’s Ducas?” He grinned. “He didn’t see you, did he?”

  Jiri smirked. “Oh, he will love that.”

  ###

  “So I escaped and made my way back here,” Caina told the other five Ghosts, finishing her story.

  No one said anything for a while. Halfdan and Jiri looked lost in thought. Ark seemed troubled. Radast scribbled numbers across a slate. Caina wondered if he had paid attention. Ducas, as Jiri had predicted, looked annoyed.

  “So,” said Ducas at last, “you actually stood there and watched Lady Agria making love to that guard?”

  “I was hiding in the wardrobe,” said Caina.

  Ducas laughed. “I thought you were a frigid woman. But I suppose you just like to watch.”

  “It was either that or get killed,” said Caina. She thought of the enspelled objects lying upon Agria’s table. “Or worse.”

  “You overlook the obvious, Ducas,” said Halfdan. “That spell she laid upon the guard. To override a man’s will requires powerful, if not skillful, sorcery.”

  “So she has some sorcerous power,” said Ducas. “Why is that significant?”

  Halfdan sighed. “Because. If she has the power to enslave a man, then she might have the power to create those bracers. Anna saw a pair in Agria’s rooms.”

  Ducas frowned, but said nothing.

  “And Icaraeus almost certainly has the aid of a sorcerer,” said Jiri. “Might Lady Palaegus in fact be that sorceress?”

  “But six million denarii in debt?” said Ducas. “I always thought Agria was stupid…but that’s suicidal. If she’s clever enough to master spells, then why is she dumb enough to go that deeply into debt?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t care about money,” said Caina. “After her husband and child died, perhaps she turned to arcane sciences to fill the void. Maybe sorcery is the only thing that matters to her any more.”

  “Fine,” said Ducas. “She can cast spells. But who taught her? Hmm?”

  Caina had no answer for that.

  “Someone had to have taught her,” said Ducas. “I am no magus, but from what I understand most men simply cannot pick up a book and teach themselves sorcery. Someone has to teach them. Who would have taught Agria?”

  “A foreign sorcerer, most likely,” said Ark. “The Magisterium would not teach anyone outside their order.”

  “For that matter,” said Ducas, “you say Agria must have had forty or fifty captives in her basement. What happened to them? Surely she wouldn’t have sorcery enough to smuggle fifty manacled captives through the streets of Marsis.”

  “She needn’t have bothered with sorcery,” said Jiri. “Covered wagons would have done the trick. Or barrels. Or she could have moved them through the sewers and the catacombs. Gods know that there are mazes enough below the streets. But I would like to know what Hiram Palaegus was doing in the bedroom of his dead brother’s wife.”

  “He was looking for something, I’m sure of it,” said Caina. “I wish I knew what.” And she wondered who this Jadriga was.

  “Too many variables,” muttered Radast. “Too many variables to balance the equations.”

  “He’s right,” said Halfdan. “We’ve too many questions, and not enough answers. Well, there’s only one cure for that. We find the answers.” He rubbed his jaw for a moment, thinking. “All right. Here’s what we’ll do.”

  The other Ghosts leaned closer, and Caina suppressed a smile. Much as Ducas, Jiri, and Radast might bicker, they all obeyed Halfdan.

  “Jiri. Do you have many informants in the neighborhood of the Citadel?” said Halfdan.

  “Of course,” said Jiri. “Though for obvious reasons I cannot give you their names.”

  “That is only proper protocol. Have them focus their attention upon Lady Palaegus and her mansion,” said Halfdan. “Do you have any informers within her household?” Jiri shook her head. “Pity. Well, do what you can to recruit some.”

  “Agria is close friends with Messana Heliorus and Vorena Chlorus,” said Ducas, “and the names of their Houses appeared in Icaraeus’s records. We should look into them. Perhaps I shall seduce them and coax them into revealing their secrets.”

  “A hard duty for the Empire,” sneered Jiri.

  Ducas smirked. “I do what I can.”

  “See if you can secure invitations to their mansions as well,” said Halfdan. “They participated in that mummer’s show of mysticism with Agria, but it’s entirely possible they have real power as well. Be careful around them.”

  Ducas snorted. “I hardly fear a wine-addled widow.”

  “No, but you should at least be cautious around a sorceress,” said Halfdan. “Even if they lack the power to compel you against your will, they might have the skill to look into your thoughts. It would be disastrous if they learned anything about the Ghosts. Do your best to secure invitations. Anna will have a look around, and return later for a private tour.”

  Ducas grinned at her. “And if I get Messana or Vorena into bed, I’ll let you watch. Or maybe even join in, eh?”

  “That’s enough,” said Ark.

  “What?” said Ducas. “Do you fancy her?”
>
  “I have seen her vanquish foes that could have killed us all in the space of three heartbeats,” said Ark. “You ought to show more respect.”

  “Thank you,” said Caina. “But I can take care of myself.”

  Ducas’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  “As for myself,” said Halfdan, as if the interruption had not occurred, “I shall investigate the nature of this sorcery. The more we learn about Icaraeus’s sorcerer, the easier it will be to take him down.”

  “And how will you do that?” said Jiri.

  Halfdan shrugged. “I have my sources.”

  “I see,” said Jiri. She did not approve. “Be careful.”

  “I shall,” said Halfdan. He beckoned to Caina and Ark. “Let’s return to Zorgi’s Inn. Tomorrow shall prove a long day, I think.”

  They left the workshop, the scratches of Radast’s chalk against the slate lingering in Caina’s ears.

  Along with his warnings.

  ###

  It had been a long and exhausting day, and when Caina collapsed into bed at last, she hoped for neither dreams nor nightmares.

  As usual, she didn’t get what she wanted.

  In her nightmare Zorgi and Katerine wandered the cellars of Agria’s mansion, calling out for their lost son. Their voices echoed through the dark vaults, and the shadows twisted and writhed past the brick pillars, bloody light staining the stone floor.

  “No,” said Caina, “no, no, don’t look, you must not look, you dare not…”

  Zorgi and Katerine stopped before the iron portcullis, looked into the stinking, shadow-choked room, and screamed when they saw the rotting corpses hanging from rusted chains.

  Men in black robes emerged from the twisting shadows, knives glittering in their hands, and Caina screamed and tried to cover her naked flesh.

  The girl in the gray dress watched in silence, the silver comb glittering in her hair.

  Chapter 9 - The Informant

  Caina awoke at noon with her head pounding and a foul taste filling her mouth.

  She rose and washed out her mouth with a swallow of mixed wine. After that she practiced her unarmed forms until sweat dripped down her face and her arms trembled from exertion.