Ghost in the Throne (Ghost Exile #7)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “He never mentioned that in front of Lord Kylon,” said Annarah.

  “Vardo’s lecherous,” said Caina, flicking the brush once more, “not stupid. All done. Have a look and tell me what you think.”

  Annarah got to her feet and examined herself in the mirror. She was a costume that was vaguely suggestive of something an Anshani noblewoman might have worn, albeit in a highly imaginative way. Her golden vest came to the bottom of her ribs, leaving her stomach and arms bare, and a long skirt that had been cut to mid-thigh. Costume jewelry glittered upon her arms and her wrists, and she wore a brilliant diadem of false gold, her silvery hair piled up in an elaborate tower.

  “I look,” said Annarah at last, “like a very expensive prostitute.”

  “That is the point,” said Caina. “If the Teskilati are looking for the last loremaster of lost Iramis, they probably will not expect her to disguise herself as a circus performer.”

  “Probably not,” said Annarah. “The high loremasters would have been appalled. Though I suppose if I have the permission of the Prince of Iramis, they wouldn’t mind.” She touched her right hand. Annarah had donned the Seal of Iramis, and to the sight of the valikarion, the ring blazed like a wheel of sorcerous fire around Annarah’s finger. To Caina’s mortal eyes, the priceless relic looked like just another piece of gaudy costume jewelry.

  Sometimes it was best to hide in plain sight.

  Caina remembered helping Theodosia to prepare for her performances in the Grand Imperial Opera, and a wave of homesickness as sharp as a knife rolled through her. Her life had been simpler then. She hadn’t exactly been an innocent, true, but she hadn’t known about the Moroaica and her disciples. She hadn’t seen war, and hadn’t known about Callatas and the wraithblood and the cold, deadly cunning of the Red Huntress.

  Again the memory of the sword erupting from her chest flashed through Caina’s mind.

  She wondered if Kylon would come with her to Malarae if she asked, if she put the thought out of her mind.

  Annarah was still talking. “I am astonished that I am actually nervous.”

  Caina shrugged, the night air hot and dry against the skin of her shoulders and back. “It’s normal to feel nervous before a performance like this.”

  Annarah looked around and lowered her voice. She also began speaking in Iramisian, which save for Nasser, Callatas, and possibly Morgant, no one else still living could speak. Until Kharnaces had shoved the knowledge of the language into Caina’s head.

  It was a damned peculiar sensation to understand a language she had never learned.

  “I spent a hundred and fifty years in the netherworld,” said Annarah. “I saw Iramis and the Inferno both burn, and I went with you into the Tomb of Kharnaces. I am a loremaster of Iramis, and I underwent and survived the seven trials in the Tower of Lore. I have survived all that…and I am still nervous about appearing in a circus performance.”

  Caina grinned. “Aye, but you’re used to being a loremaster and walking into deadly danger.” The Iramisian words felt strange on her lips, and she had to pronounce them carefully. “You’ve never done this before.”

  “You have,” said Annarah. “You’re so calm.”

  In truth, Caina did feel nervous, but admitting that wouldn’t help Annarah, especially since Caina was about to throw knives at her, so she only shrugged again. “I’ve had more practice.”

  “Forgive me from saying so,” said Annarah, “but if I had to go before a crowd in that costume, I might well die of embarrassment.”

  Caina looked at herself in the mirror again.

  “Well,” she said, “at least there’s not much costume to get embarrassed about.”

  Annarah laughed. “No, I suppose not.”

  The costume was the same one Caina had used during her last stint with the circus. She wore a skirt of red silk knotted over her left thigh, leaving her left leg bare, the waist high enough to conceal the ugly scar beneath her navel. An intricate net of red silk encircled her neck and chest and did a marginal job of concealing her breasts, leaving her back and shoulders and stomach bare. Costume jewelry glittered upon her wrists and ankles and ears. The last time Caina had done this, she had shaved her head in the depths of her grief over Corvalis, so she had donned a red wig. This time, her black hair was long enough that she had piled it in an elaborate crown like Annarah’s, and she had shifted her pyrikon to its diadem form to complete the costume.

  She suspected the ancient loremasters had never suspected someone would use a pyrikon quite like this.

  Makeup made her eyes look larger, her cheekbones sharper, her lips redder. All trace of the caravan guard disguise was gone. All trace of Caina Amalas was gone, in truth. In their place was Natalia of the Nine Knives who had so beguiled the cowled master Ulvan that he had invited her to his bedchamber…

  Caina laughed at the memory.

  “What is it?” said Annarah.

  “The last time I did this,” said Caina, “it was in front of one of the cowled masters of the Brotherhood. He enjoyed the performance so much that he ordered his Immortals to take me to his bedchamber.”

  “How did you escape?” said Annarah.

  “I was wearing a wig,” said Caina, “so I took it off, started scratching, and complained about the lice.”

  Annarah burst out laughing. “That would do it. Though in truth, I think you have a different audience in mind than the one outside.”

  Caina frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Before Annarah could answer the tent flap opened and Tiri entered. She wore a red dress with a black collar, the skirt patterned with roaring lions worked in black thread. It was exactly the sort of garment one might expect a circus master’s wife to wear.

  “Ciara, Nadirah, you’re up next,” said Tiri. “Once the clowns finish their pantomime. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” said Caina, and Annarah only offered a quick nod.

  Tiri strode forward, scrutinized Annarah, and then peered at Caina. “Who did your makeup?”

  “I did,” said Caina.

  “Oh, good,” said Tiri. “That was well done. Better than most of our dancers can do, honestly. Some of them seem to think the paintbrush was invented to apply makeup. I’ll send Timost when we’re ready. He has your knives, too.”

  “Thank you,” said Caina.

  “Oh, and if you need work and you’re tired of appearing in costume,” said Tiri, gesturing at Caina’s relative lack of clothing, “then you can work for me applying makeup. The Living Flame knows we need someone competent around here.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Caina, but Tiri was already gone, so she switched back to Iramisian. “What were you saying?”

  “About what?” said Annarah.

  “Audiences,” said Caina.

  Annarah smiled. “The whole point of this is to get us into Istarinmul, but I do not think you would object if Lord Kylon saw you in this costume.”

  Caina opened her mouth, closed it again. Cronmer kept separate costume tents for his male and female performers, and so Caina had not seen Kylon since Cronmer had led him off to find suitable garb for a Kyracian hero.

  “I…we haven’t been alone together since we left Drynemet,” said Caina. “There wasn’t a chance for it.” She hesitated. “I don’t really know who I am anymore, Annarah. Not after Rumarah. I feel like I died there, like someone else woke up in Drynemet, and I don’t know who that is. I think…I think that Kylon deserves better than that…”

  “I think,” said Annarah, “that Lord Kylon is quite capable of making up his own mind upon the matter.”

  “Nasser said almost exactly the same thing,” said Caina.

  “The Prince is a wise man,” said Annarah. “And you underwent a terrible ordeal in Rumarah.”

  “I survived,” said Caina. “I should have been crippled or dead, but I’m neither. How is that terrible?”

  “You can survive an ordeal, but its marks will still be upon you,” said Annarah. “And you sur
vived several ordeals. Kharnaces’s poison. The tongues of the Maatish and the Iramisians being forced into your mind. The loss of your memory. The Huntress’s attack. The silver fire. The shadows in your mind. After surviving all those things, it is little wonder that you feel yourself changed.”

  “I love Kylon,” said Caina. “And…I wish he had not come here. He only came to Istarinmul because the Huntress murdered his wife. I…”

  Her voice trailed off. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar Iramisian tongue, but she could not find the words to describe the mixture of fear and guilt and love that had twisted within her ever since she had awakened in Drynemet.

  “You are so wise,” said Annarah, “that sometimes I forget how young you are.”

  “What does that mean?” said Caina.

  “It means you want Kylon to see you like this,” said Annarah. “I understand what it is to love a man like that.”

  “You do, don’t you?” said Caina. “Forgive me. I am whining about my own minor difficulties while your husband has been dead for a century and a half…”

  “And you understand what it is to lose someone, too,” said Annarah. “I can see it in your aura. Or at least I could before you become a valikarion. Kylon came to Istarinmul in pain and loss, and you did too, I think.”

  “So what do I do?” said Caina.

  “What you’ve always done,” said Annarah. “Be the Balarigar.”

  Caina snorted. “There is no such thing.”

  “I don’t know,” said Annarah. “I was there when the Balarigar threw down the Inferno and escaped from the Tomb of Kharnaces with the regalia of lost Iramis.” She grinned. “I think you remember that. And I think that once we finish here, you should find Kylon and…”

  Caina did not hear the rest of Annarah’s advice. The tent flap swung open, and Cronmer and Tiri’s oldest grandchild (and Tozun’s oldest son) Timost stuck his head into the flap. When Caina had met him two years ago, he had been eleven years old, and sober and dutiful as his father. Since then he had grown a foot and a half. Caina felt bad for him. The poor boy no longer knew where to put his eyes when talking to her.

  “The clowns are about halfway through their pantomime,” said Timost, staring at the ground. “You should come out now. I’ll have the tray with your knives.”

  “Thank you, Timost,” said Caina. The boy started to look up at her, jerked his eyes down, and beckoned for them to follow him.

  The laughter of the crowd filled Caina’s ears as she picked up her sandals and followed Timost, the dusty ground of the caravanserai pleasantly cool against her bare feet. The wagons and tents of the circus stood off to one side, while the acts took place in the center of the caravanserai. Cronmer’s carpenters had built huge bonfires, using large metal mirrors to focus brilliant light upon the acts.

  “By the Divine,” murmured Annarah, gazing at the clowns. “There must be thousands of people watching.”

  Caina nodded. Thousands of spectators ringed the circus, laughing and hooting at the antics of the clowns. “I don’t think there is much else to do outside the city.”

  She watched the pantomime, and realized with a little shock that she recognized the story. A dozen clowns had dressed up as caricatures of the Balarigar, dressed all in black with black masks painted upon their faces, filmy black cloaks hanging from their shoulders, and silver-painted wooden swords in their hands. They faced off against a dozen clowns dressed up as mockeries of the cowled masters of the Slavers’ Brotherhood in billowing robes and turbans and beards. As Caina watched, the Balarigars started to drive back the cowled masters. One of the slavers fell forward, landing upon his belly, his rump in the air, and one of the Balarigar clowns smacked him across the backside with the sword as gales of laughter rose from the spectators.

  Well. Caina had never done that.

  “Is that what I think…” said Annarah.

  “Aye,” said Caina. “Cronmer would never get away with showing that in the city.”

  “Grandmother did think it was too daring,” said Timost. He was watching the clowns, though he did sneak glances at Caina and Annarah every so often.

  Movement at the edge of the crowd caught her eye as someone forced their way through the tents. Nasser, maybe, or Morgant? Cronmer, like any good entertainer, employed a troop of bouncers to keep the riffraff away from his performers and his property, and several of the men oved towards the disturbance.

  “Ciara!”

  Caina knew that voice.

  A moment later Nerina Strake burst from the crowds. She was a thin, pale woman with ragged red hair and the ghostly blue eyes of a wraithblood addict, her green dress and headscarf dusty and disheveled. She stopped a few yards away as the bouncers closed around her, her eerie eyes fixed on Caina, her mouth hanging open in surprise.

  “You’re…not dead?” said Nerina. “But you look dead. I calculated it highly probable that you were dead, but my calculations were in error. So were the proclamations, apparently.”

  “Easy now, miss,” said one of the bouncers. “Why don’t you go…”

  “It’s all right,” said Caina. “I know her.”

  Nerina’s husband Malcolm shoved through the crowd next, a short, broad-shouldered Caerish man with gray-shot brown hair and beard. In defiance of Istarish mores, he always dressed in Caerish-style clothing, a jerkin and trousers and boots. He, too, looked surprised to see Caina.

  In fact, both of them appeared astonished. Caina had told them to assume that she was dead if she hadn’t returned in four months, and it had been just over two since she had left Istarinmul.

  The bouncer looked at Caina.

  “Him, too,” said Caina.

  The bouncer grunted and let Malcolm pass.

  For another moment Nerina stared at Caina, her expression both puzzled and concerned and relieved. Caina had been with Nerina in some very dangerous places, and she had never seen Nerina look so stunned. In fact, the last time that Nerina had looked that surprised had been…

  When they had found Malcolm, still alive, in the depths of the Inferno.

  Nerina let out a little cry, jumped forward, and caught Caina in a hug.

  “You’re not dead!” she said. “It appears mathematically certain that he must have been wrong. Though if you are a spirit, shade, or malevolent revenant, you are solidly corporeal.” She blinked a few times. “Also very oddly dressed.”

  “We shouldn’t talk about this here,” said Caina, and she caught Nerina’s arm and drew her towards the costume tent, Malcolm and Annarah following. “I’m glad to see you, too…but what the hell are you talking about?”

  “The proclamation,” said Malcolm. “The Umbarians published it, and posted it throughout the city. It said that you were dead. You, personally.”

  Caina opened her mouth to ask another question, and then Timost jogged over to her.

  “Mistress, the clowns are almost finished,” he said. “Grandfather will be expecting you and Mistress Nadirah.”

  Caina hesitated. Nerina was an established locksmith in the city, and the gate guards would let her reenter without any trouble. Perhaps the entire ruse at the circus was unnecessary, and Caina and the others could return to the city with Nerina and her husband. Yet the guards would get suspicious if Nerina and Malcolm returned with six strangers in tow. No, better stick to the plan.

  “I have to go,” said Caina. “Nerina, Malcolm, go find Nasser. He’ll be watching somewhere nearby. Tell him what you would have told me. I’ll rejoin you as soon as I can. Understand?” Nerina and Malcolm both nodded. “Good. I’ll see you soon.”

  Caina slipped on her sandals, wobbling a bit as she caught her balance in the high heels. Annarah followed her and Timost, and they stopped at the edge of the circus’s little camp. Cronmer himself paced in the center of the cleared space, clad in a brilliant coat and red trousers, his stentorian voice booming over the crowds like thunder.

  “Tonight we have gathered travelers from every nation and city under the sun,” said C
ronmer. It never failed to amaze Caina how loud Cronmer could be without the aid of a spell. The man had lungs like the bellows of a blacksmith. “Tonight you shall witness a spectacle of brilliance and skill! Behold, she comes to us from the frozen wastes of the barbarian north, from the beyond the northern boundaries of the vast Empire of Nighmar itself. Once she ruled a hundred thousand screaming Szaldic savages with a rod of iron, and nations beyond count trembled beneath her jeweled sandals. Yet she was deposed, and now comes to display her prowess with a blade for your amusement. Men and women of Istarinmul and all nations, behold Natalia of the Nine Knives!”

  “Ready?” whispered Caina.

  Annarah gave her a shaky grin. “Well, I’ve been in worse places, haven’t I?”

  A group of the carpenters rotated one of the mirrors, sending a shaft of fiery light toward Caina. She strode towards Cronmer, Annarah trailing after her, Timost following with a tray of throwing knives. Caina threw back her shoulders, her chin raised as she left a mask of aloof indifference upon her features. It was the way a Szaldic warrior-queen of old would have walked, or at least it was the way the crowds would have assume a Szaldic warrior-queen would have walked.

  She spotted Morgant at the edge of the crowd, stark in his black coat, one eyebrow raised in amusement. His notebook was propped open in his left hand, and a pencil flickered back and forth in his right with the speed of a bee zipping over a field of flowers. Gods, was he drawing her? She hoped not.

  “Perhaps you think that I, Cronmer of the Traveling Circus Of Marvels And Wonders, am lying!” said Cronmer. “Perhaps you look upon our fair young barbarian maiden and believe that those delicate hands cannot fling blades with enough force to kill, that her lovely face could not look upon the features of a man she has just slain. Let us put it to the test, then!”

  He reached into a pocket of his voluminous red coat, lifted a shining red apple, and then tossed it high into the air with a lazy throw. Caina whirled, letting her skirt billow around her in a dramatic motion, and snatched one of the throwing knives from Timost’s tray. She fed the motion of her spin into the power of her throw, and the knife hurtled from her fingers.