Ghost Lock

by Jonathan Moeller

  That sent a flicker of old sorrow through me.

  “That fake beard doesn’t suit you,” I said aloud.

  Caina shrugged. “It’s not supposed to.” Her voice was quiet, cold, precise. “How are you?”

  I shrugged in turn. “My back hurts, my legs hurt, my ankles keep swelling, I have no appetite, and my moods swing back and forth faster than the pendulum of an overwound clock. But I am still alive, so I suppose I cannot complain.”

  “I have never known that to stop you before,” said Caina.

  I snorted and gestured for her to take a seat.

  Caina and I have a…complicated relationship. She saved me from the magus Ranarius, but she distrusted my arcane powers, and I distrusted her hatred of the magi. I also disliked that my brother Corvalis had fallen in love with her. Later, after Komnene had taken me as a student, we made peace, and I met Martin and became his betrothed.

  Then Corvalis died, killed saving the world from the Moroaica, and I hated Caina. I blamed her for his death, thought that she had sacrificed Corvalis without a qualm. Later I learned that his death had shattered her in a way I hadn’t thought possible, and then we saved each other from the wrath of the Red Huntress.

  Now I trust her. I don’t always like her very much (and I suspect she feels the same about me), but I trust her as I trust few other people.

  She sat down at the other side of my writing table, and I noted with envy how easily she sat, how much thinner she was than me. Of course, that was because I was five months pregnant and she was not. She would never be pregnant, even though it was something she wanted very badly.

  Life is neither simple nor fair, alas.

  I lowered myself into the chair with a sigh. “Thank you for coming.”

  “I am sorry I was not here sooner,” said Caina. “Some things came up.”

  “Yes, I heard about that robbery at the Craven’s Tower,” I said. “I am entirely certain that you had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’re learning to lie like an ambassador’s wife.”

  “It is a useful skill,” I said. “Martin and I have a problem. Have you heard of a magus named Keldrius?”

  “Vaguely,” said Caina. “I remember Halfdan mentioning him. A necromancer from the Ulkaari provinces, wasn’t he? The Magisterium killed him fifty or sixty years ago after he made too much trouble for even the high magi to ignore.”

  “Fifty years, actually,” I said. “He owned a house in Istarinmul. Some of the Saddaic refugees bought it and started to dig in the cellar.”

  “Oh,” said Caina. “I’ve heard stories like this before.”

  I nodded. “They found a safe in the cellar. There’s a sorcerous item of some kind inside it. I can’t tell what it is, and the safe’s rusted shut. The Umbarians want whatever’s inside the safe, and the Silent Hunters and some of their spies have been prowling around.”

  “I see,” said Caina. “Do you know if a man named Khardav is involved in this?”

  I blinked. “How did you know? He was a mercenary working for the Saddaic merchant who found the safe.”

  “He’s not just a mercenary,” said Caina. “He works for the Umbarian Order. Specifically, he works for Cassander Nilas, does a number of quiet jobs for him on the side.”

  “Ah,” I said with a grimace. Cassander Nilas was the Order's ambassador to the Padishah, and he had tried to kidnap me several times, to use me as leverage against Martin. I feared the thought of falling into the hands of a man like him. I absolutely dreaded the thought of Martin or our unborn child coming into his power. “So anything that Cassander wants…”

  “He shouldn’t get,” said Caina, getting to her feet with annoying ease. “Let’s have a look at that safe.”

  ###

  “Heavy thing,” muttered Caina, tapping at the safe’s door with a dagger. “I wonder what Keldrius wanted to protect so much.”

  I stood in the study, watching her work. Martin had returned from his meeting with a minor emir and had joined us.

  “Whatever it is,” said Martin, “it is something the Umbarians want badly. The Imperial Guards spotted two men we know to be the Order’s spies on the street outside the mansion yesterday. They chased the spies off, but I do not doubt that Cassander’s hirelings will try to get their hands on the safe.”

  “We should keep it here, then,” said Caina, tapping her dagger against the safe’s door a few times. Martin watched her with a puzzled expression. I had a complex relationship with Caina, but Martin still did not know quite what to make of her. He had told me once that he thought Caina brilliant, but ruthless and without mercy, and that he would not want to be her enemy.

  I could not disagree with that.

  “Is there no safer place you can keep it?” said Martin. “Some safehouse of the Ghosts?”

  “None of them are as well-guarded as the embassy,” said Caina. She slipped the dagger into its sheath at her belt, reached into her coat, and drew out a small crowbar. I wondered why she had been walking around with a crowbar, and decided that I did not really want to know. “And I can’t exactly sneak out with the safe hidden under my coat. It must have taken a dozen men to move this thing.” Martin nodded. “If we move the safe, the Umbarians will know, and they can follow it at their leisure. A hundred Imperial Guards make a sound deterrent to thieves.”

  “I thought,” I said, “that you knew a mad locksmith who can open anything.”

  “I do,” said Caina. “And she can. Well. Almost anything.” She worked the crowbar along the front of the safe, little flakes of rust falling to the floor. “I just need to have a look at this to make sure it isn’t trapped…ah, there were go.”

  She strained for a moment, and then a plate of metal popped away from the center of the door. The opened panel revealed an intricate maze of gears and cogs, complex beyond my ability to follow.

  All of them frozen solid by rust.

  “Well,” said Caina. “That settles that.”

  “Your locksmith can’t open that?” said Martin.

  “It isn’t a matter of opening it,” said Caina, standing up. “All the moving parts are stuck. There’s not a locksmith in the world who could open it.”

  “A blacksmith, then,” said Martin. “Someone to hammer the damned thing open.”

  “Maybe,” said Caina. “That might destroy whatever is inside it, though.”

  “Better that,” I said, “than Cassander Nilas claiming it.”

  “Maybe,” said Caina again.

  I knew that look, that tone of voice.

  “You have an idea,” I said.

  Caina sighed. “I do.”

  “It doesn’t,” I said, “sound like you enjoy the prospect.”

  “I know a man who has a weapon that can open the safe without destroy its contents,” said Caina. “Unfortunately, he is…difficult.”

  “Difficult?” said Martin.

  “Let’s just say he’s the sort of man who collects enemies easily,” said Caina.

  “If he can open the safe,” I said, “I think we can endure a few hours of difficulty.”

  “Very well,” said Caina. “My lord Martin, I think it’s time you sat for a formal portrait.”

  ###

  Caina returned the next day in the company of a man.

  I was sitting in the mansion’s grounds, in the gardens between the house and the outer wall, when the gate opened and the Imperial Guards admitted two people. The first was Caina, wearing again the disguise of a courier. The second was a gaunt man in his fifties clad in a black coat, a stark white shirt, black trousers, and scuffed black boots. He had a thin, lined face, close-cropped gray hair, and pale blue eyes that never seemed to stop moving.

  I watched them both with interest. I knew Caina well enough by now to tell when she was on her guard, and she was on her guard around the man in the black coat. She had said she trusted the man, to a point, but clearly that point was not very far.

  “
My lady,” said one of the Imperial Guards escorting them, “these men asked to see you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Go back to the gate. I shall take our guests to Lord Martin myself.”

  “Fine day for it, too,” said the man in the black coat. He spoke High Nighmarian with a thick Caerish burr, the sort of accent common in the hills of Caeria Ulterior. “All that black armor in the direct sun. Does it get hot?” The Guard gave him a flat look. “If I cracked an egg on your shoulder plates, would I be able to cook it?”

  “Thank you,” I said, before the Guard got irritated. “You may return to your posts.”

  The Guards bowed and departed, leaving me alone with Caina and the black-coated man.

  “Let me guess,” I said to Caina. “I assume that this is him.”

  “Aye,” said the man. “If by ‘him’, of course, you mean ‘me’.” He offered a florid bow, flourishing the end of his coat as he did so. “I am Markaine of Caer Marist, and I say without exaggeration that I am the finest painter in all of Istarinmul, and possibly all other nations, as well.”

  “Modest as ever,” said Caina.

  “Wait,” I said, blinking in surprise. “You’re Markaine of Caer Marist? The painter?”

  Markaine tilted his head to the side as he considered me. “You’ve heard of me, then?”

  “You painted that mural about the fall of Iramis in the Tarshahzon Gardens,” I said. “My father has several of your paintings. There was one, ‘The Dying Assassin’. It scared me half to death when I was a girl.”

  “Oh, I remember that one,” said Markaine. “Quite a story behind it, too.”

  “I thought you would be older,” I said, remembering the age of some of the paintings my father had collected. “Also, dead.”

  “Clean living,” said Markaine.

  “Markaine has certain other skills that might be able to help us with our little problem,” said Caina.

  “And then, perhaps, you can sit for a portrait,” Markaine said as I stood. He moved around me in a circle, pointing as he did. “Right here, I think. Yes, with the garden and the mansion as the backdrop. Perhaps a green and golden gown, to match your hair and eyes. It would make for a striking portrait. We would title it 'The Young Noblewoman In The Full Bloom Of Her Pregnancy', and everyone who saw the painting would stop to admire its loveliness.”

  “You know,” I said, looking at Caina, “I like him.”

  Caina rolled her eyes.

  “Your ladyship is clearly a woman of excellent taste,” said Markaine. “Alas, our mutual friend has no sense of aesthetics whatsoever.”

  “Sadly not,” I said.

  “If you’re quite done amusing yourselves,” said Caina, “we can begin.”

  “Ah, but that’s the secret to a long life, you know,” said Markaine. “Never stop amusing yourself.”

  I led the way across the gardens, through the entry hall, and into the study. Martin paced back and forth before the bookshelves, dictating a letter to a pair of scribes. One of them had propped his portable desk upon the rusted safe, using it is an impromptu table.

  “We will finish this later,” said Martin. The scribes bowed, packed up their desks, and departed.

  “This is Markaine of Caer Marist,” said Caina, and Markaine offered a more restrained bow to my husband. “I believe he can help us.”

  “Unless I am mistaken,” said Martin, “you are a painter, not a locksmith.”

  “That is entirely correct, my lord,” said Markaine, considering the rusted block of the safe. “You and the Lady Claudia would make for a handsome portrait. I wouldn’t even charge very much.”

  Martin snorted. “Until I am sure I can keep Istarinmul from allying with the Umbarian Order, I’m afraid a commemorative portrait would be premature.”

  “A sensible attitude,” said Markaine, still examining the safe.

  “So if you are a painter,” said Martin, “how can you help us open the safe?”

  “Well,” said Markaine, reaching into his coat, “I haven’t always been a painter.”

  He drew out a weapon, a black dagger with a red gem of some kind upon the hilt. Something in his stance changed as he did so, become grimmer, more menacing. Martin shifted as he did, his fingers twitching towards the hilt of the sword at his waist. He rarely wore armor while in the house, but he never went anywhere unarmed. The Silent Hunters had broken into the mansion too many times for that.

  “That is a remarkable dagger,” said Martin, “though I fail to see how that will open the safe.”

  Markaine grinned. “Watch.”

  He knelt and stabbed the dagger down. I expected the weapon to bounce off the safe’s steel side, or to snap against it. Instead the blade sliced through the thick steel with the ease of a knife cutting soft cheese, and I watched in astonishment as Markaine sliced a line through the safe, the edges glowing white-hot.

  “How are you doing that?” said Martin.

  I cast a quick spell, focusing upon the dagger. The thrum of potent sorcery radiated from the dagger, a spell unlike any I had ever encountered before.

  “It’s enspelled,” I said.

  “Friction,” said Caina, watching as Markaine began another cut. “It works through friction. Or the absence of it, rather. A normal blade can’t cut through a steel safe because there’s too much friction. The dagger bypasses it, sucks up the heat from the cuts, which lets it slice through pretty much anything.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Where does the heat go?”

  “Ah,” said Markaine, wincing as he got to his feet. An L-shaped cut glowed in the side of the safe, and the gem in the pommel of the dagger shone with red light. “Do you mind, my lord, if I use your fireplace? There’s a layer of lead in the safe, which makes the cuts tricky.”

  “By all means,” said Martin, gesturing at the empty fireplace.

  Markaine nodded and flicked his wrist. The dagger flew into the center of the fireplace, and an instant later there was a flash. A fireball roiled against the inside of the hearth, so hot that it stung my face. Markaine snapped his fingers, and the dagger jumped from the flames and flew back into his hand.

  “Are you a sorcerer?” I said, frowning as I recast the spell to sense the presence of sorcery. The spells upon the dagger all but blazed against my senses. The thing had to be a formidable weapon in combat.

  “I’m a painter, not a sorcerer,” said Markaine, kneeling back next to the safe. “Though I’ve been called a magician with a paintbrush. The dagger’s a useful little toy, isn’t it? Found it a long, long time ago. Didn’t realize what it could do, not at first. Worked it out with some experimentation, though that means the dagger’s spells are bonded to me. If anyone else wants it, they’ll have to kill me to get it. Though the dagger makes that harder…”

  I had already cast my spell to sense the presence of sorcery, and that was why I sensed the sudden spike of arcane power surging through the garden. I looked at the window in alarm at the exact same moment Caina did. She could not use sorcery, but could sense it nonetheless.

  As I looked out the window, a wall of white mist erupted from the ground, rolling across the garden to engulf the mansion. I saw it sweep over two of the Imperial Guards, and both men collapsed to the ground. Had the fog killed them?

  I could not tell if they were breathing before the gray mist swallowed them.

  “It’s an alchemical spell,” said Caina. “Sleeping mist.”

  “Get near me, all of you,” I said. “Right now. Now!”

  Caina, Martin, and Markaine moved to obey, and I cast a spell of my own. Blue light flared around my fingers, and as the white mist erupted through the door and windows I thrust out my hands. A shimmering dome of blue light appeared around us, and the white mist washed over the dome, leaving us standing in a clear island in a sea of mist. The entire room disappeared around us, and I could not see more than a few feet past my warding spell.

  “That,” said Markaine without alarm, “is quite a lot of
sleeping mist.”

  “The Umbarians,” said Martin at once, drawing his sword.

  “Are you sure? It was an alchemical spell,” I said. “Cassander Nilas and the other Umbarian magi couldn’t do anything like this.”

  “No,” said Caina, “they couldn’t. But the Grand Wazir said he would expel the Umbarians from the city if they tried to attack you again. So I wager Cassander has hired this one out. Alchemists need money, too. Likely he bought a large volume of sleeping mist from some penurious Alchemist and hired some mercenaries to break in and steal the safe.”

  “Perhaps it would be best to leave the safe unopened,” said Martin.

  Caina shook her head. “Too late for that. They know it’s here. If we can remove whatever’s inside, we…”

  Suddenly the mist vanished into nothingness, and I lowered my warding spell.

  “That didn’t last long,” said Martin.

  “It didn’t have to,” said Caina, crossing to the window. “The Imperial Guards and your servants will be unconscious for only a few minutes. But that will be long enough for them to get the safe and get out again.” Markaine kept hacking at the side of the safe, the gem in his dagger glowing. A wondered uneasily how much heat that thing could store before it exploded. “Damn it.”

  I hurried to Caina's side and scowled. A dozen men in chain mail and leather moved through the gate, running across the garden. At their head strode a towering man in expensive chain mail, with a thick mane of black hair and a long mustache, its ends bound in brass rings in Ulkaari fashion.

  “Our friend Khardav,” said Caina. “Cassander must have hired Khardav for this and supplied him with the sleeping mist.”

  I started to say something, and then Markaine grunted in satisfaction. He had carved a smoking hole into the side of the safe, and he reached inside and withdrew a crystalline vial the size of a man’s thumb. Within shone a purple liquid that gave off a gentle light.

  “That’s it?” I said, casting the spell to sense sorcery again. The vial in his hand was indeed the source of the arcane aura I had sensed earlier.