Ghost in the Flames (The Ghosts)

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I’ll know it when I find it.” Caina wanted a good look at Romarion’s ledgers. She suspected she might find all sorts of interesting things there.

  “How will I know if you need help?” said Ark.

  “Trust me, you’ll know,” said Caina, checking her weapons and tools one last time. “Use your judgment. You did yesterday, after all.”

  Ark stepped back in sudden alarm, and Caina did the same. A troop of mounted militia rode past, torches in hand, and Caina waited until they had passed. She counted to twenty, took a deep breath, and stepped into the street.

  She saw no one.

  “If I’m not back by midnight,” said Caina, “return to the Inn.”

  Ark nodded and vanished into the alley. Caina hurried across the street and plunged into the shadow of Romarion’s mansion, her cloak blending with the darkness. A low ornamental wall surrounded the mansion and its grounds, and Caina hopped onto the corner, wrapped her cloak around her, and waited.

  She did not wait long. A guard strolled through the mansion’s well-kept grounds. He wore a studded leather jerkin, sword and dagger at his belt, and carried a crossbow ready in his arms. All his weapons were in good condition, and he looked as if he knew how to use them. Caina remained motionless, watching the guard.

  When he vanished around the corner, Caina moved. She raced across the grounds, grapnel and thin rope spinning in her right hand. She flung the grapnel, felt it catch on the red tiles of the mansion’s roof. After a few cautionary tugs, Caina scrambled up the line, her boots scrabbling against the smooth marble walls. The guard came around the corner again, and Caina swung into a darkened window frame, huddling into her cloak.

  The guard did not see her. People never looked up. Caina waited until he had passed, and resumed her climb. She stopped at a high window just below the roof. Caina swung into the frame, pulled down the rope, and returned it to her belt. She scrutinized the shutters for a moment, then slipped a knife into the gap and popped the latch. They swung open, and Caina jumped inside, pulling them closed behind her.

  She found herself in a bedroom, perhaps a guest room. Her boots sank into a thick carpet, and polished furniture gleamed in the faint light leaking through the shutters. The bed was empty. Caina listened for a moment, but heard nothing. She crossed the room and opened the doorway.

  A high-ceilinged hallway stretched the length of the upper floor. Nighmarian and Saddai statues stood in alcoves, while unlit iron chandeliers hung from chains. If Caina remembered right, Romarion kept his offices on the east side. Still listening, she started down the corridor.

  She had gone no more than six steps when she heard the voices approaching. Caina looked back and forth. The door was too far away, but a massive statue of an Emperor in antique armor stood to her left, and one of the iron chandeliers hung right over her head. Caina scrambled up the statue, perched on the dead Emperor’s shoulders, and jumped to the chandelier. It rocked a little, but the massive chains held it in place, and with the candles extinguished she cast no shadow. She settled into place, like a spider in an iron web, and waited.

  Romarion and another man walked down the hallway, speaking to one another in low voices, four guards trailing after them. Caina tensed, but they didn’t notice her. People simply never looked up. She settled down to listen.

  “It could just be a coincidence,” said one of the men. To judge from his dress, Caina supposed he was Romarion’s steward.

  “No,” said Romarion. “It’s not a coincidence.” He clutched a letter in one hand.

  Caina blinked in surprise. Romarion had always had spoken High Nighmarian with a cultured, elegant accent. Now he spoke Caerish, his accent rough and harsh. He sounded like a lifelong sailor.

  “They got all the others,” said Romarion. He sounded angry, or frightened, or perhaps both. “They’ve been turning up dead one by one in their beds. I never thought to die in bed, you know. I always thought I would drown, or hang, but to die like that…no, gods, no.”

  “I still think…” said the steward.

  “No!” said Romarion. “All the others are dead, and then we receive word that Vanio is dead in Mors Crisius?”

  Caina blinked in surprise.

  “It could have been an accident,” said the steward. “The letter didn’t say.”

  “No,” said Romarion, shaking his head. “It’s not an accident. I’ll wager the poor bastard was found burned to death in his bed, just like the others. First he came for the others. Then he got Vanio. And he’s going to come after me next, I know it.”

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  “What are you going to do?” said the steward.

  “Get out of Rasadda as soon as it’s feasible,” said Romarion. “Hell, I ought to get out of the Saddai province entirely. Vanio was in Mors Crisius, and he got to him anyway. As soon as I can convert enough of my solid assets to ready money, I will leave. If I can convince that charming young countess to marry me, all the better. It’ll make it easier to land on my feet.” He shrugged. “But if not…I am leaving before the month is out. I can always rebuild my fortune. I can’t bring myself back from the dead.”

  “Very true,” said the steward. “But you may not have a month.”

  “Perhaps,” said Romarion. “But I don’t think he suspects that I know anything. If I sail steady and calm, I can get away before the storm comes. And if not…well, I’ve got a few hiding places around the city.” He clapped the steward on the shoulder. “You can always loot the mansion after I flee.”

  “That was always the plan, sir.”

  Romarion laughed. “Enterprising man, I like that.” They kept walking, and Caina soon heard the sound of them going downstairs. She counted to a hundred, but no one else appeared, and she dropped from the chandelier, cloak pooling around her legs.

  Interesting. Caina wished that Romarion had mentioned more names. But clearly he feared falling victim to this unknown pyromancer, just like all the others. Caina wondered who the “others” might have been.

  Time to find out.

  She crept down the hallway and reached the door to Romarion’s study. He had left it locked, and Caina knelt before the door, pulled the appropriate tools from her belt, and set to work. She soon realized that Romarion had not scrimped on security. The lock was damnably good, so good that Caina almost decided to go out the window and crawl along the ledge. But at last the lock released with a click, and the door swung open.

  Unlike the rest of the mansion, Romarion’s study was simple, almost austere. A pair of cutlasses, the blades notched with use, hung on the wall, alongside a shark’s jawbone. Bits of coral and exotic shells sat on the writing desk. Relics from Romarion’s days at sea, Caina supposed.

  She walked around the desk, intending to read the papers covering its surface, and stopped. A huge iron box sat below the window, massive enough that it would take five or six strong men to move. Dark, solemn designs covered its sides, along with dozens of ominous black slits. Three different keyholes adorned the massive lock.

  Caina whispered a curse.

  A Strigosti trapbox.

  This was very bad. The Strigosti were a reclusive, unfriendly people, but none could match their skill with machinery and intricate mechanical devices. They specialized in siege engines, locks, and cunning traps of ghastly lethality. Romarion must have paid dear for the iron chest, but thieves who tried to break into a Strigosti trapbox without the proper keys almost always wound up dead.

  Caina had disarmed Strigosti trapboxes twice before, but it had almost killed her both times. She ought to just find the keys, but Romarion no doubt kept them on his person. If she stole them, Romarion might panic and flee the city before Caina could learn anything useful from him. She was sure Romarion kept things in this chest that he wanted kept secret, which meant that Caina wanted to know them.

  She had to try. Caina closed and locked the study door and took a moment to clear her head. Then s
he unpacked her tools, knelt before the iron box, and set to work.

  Of the three keyholes, Caina guessed that the first two disarmed the traps, while the third would undo the lock. Turning the keys in the wrong order would undoubtedly trigger all the traps at once. Caina had no way of knowing the correct sequence, so she had to try other methods.

  She examined the front of the chest until she found a slender seam in the carvings. After several minutes of prying with a dagger, a metal plate popped away, revealing an intricate maze of gears, springs, cogs, and wound springs. The logical course would have been to smash the intricate machinery. Logical, and suicidal; smashing the machinery would release all the traps at once. Instead she stared at the gears for a moment, thinking. It looked as if one trap would fling darts from the dark slits on the box’s sides. To judge from the small steel bottles Caina saw, the blades would have a coating of poison. The second trap would send dagger blades stabbing from hidden compartments, taking the fingers and eyes of any clumsy thieves.

  She selected a small prybar from her tools and set to work. Bit by bit she worked her way through the machinery. A spring loosened, a gear wound back here, and Caina began to feel more confident.

  Then something clicked. The gears began to spin, faster and faster, the cogs working up and down. Caina cursed and threw herself backwards, rolling over Romarion’s desk to land on its far side. A heartbeat later she heard another, louder click, followed by a silvery hiss. Her heart thudding, Caina peered around the desk.

  Foot-long steel blades had erupted from the Strigosti trapbox, making it look like a freakish metallic porcupine. Yellow grease coated the blades. A poison, no doubt. After a moment the clockwork innards began to spin again, pulling the blades back into the chest. Another click, and the trap reset itself.

  Caina took a moment to steady herself. When her heart had slowed and her hands stopped trembling, she took a deep breath and resumed work. This time she knew what gears and cogs to avoid. One by one, she disarmed the box’s traps. Then she stared on the chest’s lock. It was a masterpiece of the locksmith’s craft, and sweat began to drip down Caina’s face as she worked. She had been working for at least an hour, and very soon she would run out of time. Ark might take direct, and dangerous, action.

  The lock shuddered, releasing. Caina flung open the massive iron lid, and rolled backwards, half expecting a rain of razor blades to erupt from the iron chest. But nothing happened. Caina sighed, straightened up the desk, and started rifling through the box, taking care to memorize the arrangement.

  She found several leather pouches of precious gems and platinum coins, along with a few small jade statuettes. No doubt Romarion planned to take them when he fled. Caina left them alone, and turned her attention to the stacked ledgers. She lifted them free, opened them on the floor, and began flipping through the pages.

  The records only went back four years, but Romarion’s business interests included gold, silver, gems, ivory, ebony, marble, rare woods, fine wine, and other valuable luxuries. But it seemed that the foundation of his great wealth came from dealing artworks. He had sold dozens of rare Saddai statues for vast sums of money. A lot of Romarion’s statues had gone through Vanio in Mors Crisius. Caina’s mouth curled into a crooked smile. No wonder Romarion kept his records under lock and lethal trap. He smuggled his statues into Mors Crisius, avoiding the Imperial customs agents in Rasadda’s harbors. From there he shipped the statues overland to Rasadda, and then sold them through his partners.

  Caina blinked. She read over the list of partners again.

  Her breath hissed through her teeth.

  The names of Romarion’s business partners, every last one of them, had been on Valgorix’s list of the burned dead. Caina’s eyes scanned the ledger’s pages, doing the math in her head. In fact, if she added it up, there had been only two groups of identified victims on Valgorix’s list of the slain. The Ghost circle of Rasadda, and Romarion’s business partners. And Caina would wager that the unidentified bodies on the list were connected to either the Ghosts or Romarion’s partners; spouses, perhaps, or servants who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Caina could almost see the sequence of events. Four years ago Romarion and his partners began dealing in ancient Saddai artwork. Then someone started to murder his partners using pyromantic sorcery. The Ghost circle under Ostros noticed and investigated, until this pyromancer killed them all lest they interfere.

  She stared at the ledger for a moment, thinking hard.

  Romarion looted ruins for his artworks. He must have found something valuable, something priceless. But someone else must have learned of his discovery, and was willing to kill to claim it. What could possibly be worth such carnage? Some old statue? Caina didn’t know.

  For a moment Caina considered breaking into Romarion’s bedroom and demanding the truth, or kidnapping him and taking him to a safe place for interrogation. No, too risky. Caina and Ark could not pull it off between them. And Romarion surrounded himself with armed guards. Too much could go wrong.

  Caina still needed more information, so she resumed flipping through the ledger. Two things caught her eye.

  First, Romarion had been frantically converting his assets to coin, even selling numerous artworks below cost.

  Second, Romarion had sold a huge amount of Saddai artwork to the Magisterium, even several pieces to both Kalastus and Ephaeron personally. One piece, in particular, had commanded a truly enormous price.

  Very interesting.

  But she could think about that later. It was past time to go. Caina returned the ledgers to the trapbox and closed the lid. She heard a series of clicks as the lock and the traps reset themselves. With any luck, Romarion would not notice anything amiss. She jumped atop the Strigosti trapbox, opened the shutters, and gazed into the grounds below until she found the patrolling guard. Once she saw his pattern, she climbed into the windowsill, closed the shutters behind her, and rappelled down the side of the mansion. From there she raced across the grounds, jumped the ornamental wall, crouched into the shadows, and waited.

  No cries of alarm. No sign of pursuit. Caina crossed the street, her cloak flowing into the darkness of the night. Ark waited in the mouth of the alley, staring at the mansion. He did not see her until she was four or five paces away. He flinched, reached for his sword, and lowered his hand.

  “I was ready to go,” said Ark. “What took so long?”

  “There were complications,” said Caina. The mask covering her face felt hot and sweaty, and she wished she could take it off. “Romarion invested heavily in his security. All his records were in a Strigosti trapbox.”

  Ark frowned. “You opened it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re still alive?”

  “Either that, or my shade has come to haunt you,” said Caina.

  Ark’s eye twitched. “And did you find anything?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Caina. “It seems that Romarion’s business partners, every last one of them, have been found burned to death over the last year.” She wrapped her cloak tighter, sinking into the shadows of the alley. “Between them and the Ghost circle, they account for every last identified name on Valgorix’s list. Which means that these killings are not random. Someone started killing Romarion’s business partners, and slaughtered the Ghost circle once Ostros started investigating.”

  “Why hasn’t Romarion been killed yet?” said Ark.

  “I’m not sure,” said Caina. “But he guards himself night and day. If some of the victim’s blood is required to work the fire sorcery, then our pyromancer might not have been able to get close enough to get some of Romarion’s blood. Still, he knows someone is after him, which is why he’s preparing to flee the city.”

  Ark growled. “We should take him and make him talk.”

  “A fine idea,” said Caina. “And if you can figure out a way to do that without getting killed, let me know.”

  “Why?” said Ark. “Why kill Romarion’s business part
ners?”

  Caina shrugged. “I don’t yet know. Romarion made most of his fortune selling Saddai artworks plundered from old ruins. It probably has something to do with that.”

  “Then Gaidan did it,” said Ark. “He must view Romarion and his partners as tomb robbers. So he started killing them with pyromancy, and killed the Ghost circle when they realized what was happening.”

  “Perhaps,” said Caina, “but where did Gaidan learn pyromancy?”

  Ark said nothing.

  “And Romarion sold a lot of art to the local Magisterium, and received a great deal of money for one piece in particular,” said Caina. “I’d like to know what that was.”

  “I still think you refuse to see the obvious,” Ark said.

  “We can discuss this later,” said Caina. “We’d better get off the streets. Someone might find us here if we loiter.”

  They started back towards the Inn.

  “All this butchery over some damned statues, then,” said Ark, shaking his head.

  “Maybe,” said Caina. “I wonder…”

  “You wonder what?”

  “I wonder,” said Caina, “if Romarion found something…worse.” She shrugged, wrestling with the idea. “There are dozens of nations in the Empire, and all of them had their own arcane traditions until the Magisterium suppressed them. Halfdan has told me of incidents where tomb robbers dug up something that should have remained buried.”

  “Like what?”

  “Some fearsome thing of old sorcery, some enspelled artifact,” said Caina. “Maybe Romarion found something darker than an old statue. A weapon, perhaps. Some sorcerous relic of the old Saddai empire.”

  “Do you have any proof of this?”

  “No,” said Caina. “Just a suspicion.”

  Ark shook his head. “Then…”

  He stopped, reaching for his sword.

  A score of men blocked the street, staring at Ark and Caina. All of the men wore gleaming chain mail beneath jerkins of black leather, polished steel helmets, and armored boots. Broadswords rested ready in their hands, round shields on their left arms. They had the look of seasoned, hardened veterans. Mercenaries, most likely, and competent ones.