Ghost in the Winds (Ghost Exile #9)

by Jonathan Moeller

  If Grand Master Callatas was not stopped, far more people than the soldiers would die.

  “This locksmith,” said Tomazain in a low voice.

  “What about her?” said Damla.

  “You think she can help us?” said Tomazain.

  “Yes,” said Damla.

  “She once calculated a catapult shot of such precision that it landed on a shed of Hellfire from half a mile away,” said Kylon. “She will be useful. She is simply…”

  “Somewhat insane,” said Agabyzus.

  Tomazain grunted. “We’re planning to seize the gatehouse and let in an army of rebels. I suppose insanity is not a weakness in such a venture.”

  Damla laughed, amusement flickering through her aura. “I suppose not.”

  Kylon stopped before a three-story house of whitewashed adobe. He had been here several times with Caina, but the house had changed since his last visit. Nerina Strake and her husband Malcolm had purchased the building next to theirs, and Malcolm had renovated it into an armorer’s shop. He had been making money hand-over-fist by producing chain mail and selling it to the Grand Wazir’s army. Kylon supposed that he had killed men wearing Malcolm’s armor during the battle.

  He climbed the steps up to the door and knocked. Most of the goldsmiths’ and silversmiths’ shops along the street had reinforced doors to deter thieves, but this door was a massive slab of solid steel, mounted to the frame with hinges as thick as Kylon’s arm. With the sorcery of water, he could kick down most doors, but even his full power would fail to dent massive door.

  After a moment he heard a steely rasp, and a small plate slid aside at eye level.

  “Azaces,” said Kylon. “Are Nerina and Malcolm there? We need to speak with them.”

  The plate slid shut. Kylon heard several bolts and locks clanging, and the door swung open in silence. A huge Sarbian man, nearly seven feet tall, stood behind the door, his face scarred beneath his graying black beard, the hilt of a two-handed scimitar rising over his shoulder. His black eyes moved back and forth, taking in the people on his employers’ doorstep, and Kylon felt the question in his emotional sense.

  “The circlemaster is not here,” said Kylon. “I don’t know where she is. We’ve got a problem, and we need Nerina’s help.”

  Azaces glanced at Damla, Agabyzus, and Tomazain. He would know Damla, possibly Agabyzus, but Kylon doubted that he had ever seen Tomazain before.

  “They are with the circlemaster,” said Kylon.

  Azaces shrugged, nodded, and beckoned for them to follow, heading into the house.

  “Taciturn fellow, isn’t he?” said Tomazain.

  “No tongue,” said Damla in a quiet voice.

  Tomazain grimaced, but nodded and followed them into the house.

  The sitting room beyond the door was narrow, dusty, and unused. Azaces led them to the top floor and opened another massive door, lantern light spilling into the stairwell. The room beyond was a locksmith’s workshop, and it was one of the strangest rooms Kylon had ever seen in a lifetime of traveling to strange places. Three long wooden tables ran the length of the room, each one sagging beneath the weight of tools, half-assembled locks, various mechanical contraptions, and notes. One wall held slates covered with scrawled equations written in chalk, while shelves adorned another wall. A wooden cabinet, the door open, held papers secured in leather folders, and high windows looked over the courtyard behind the shop. Iron shavings and sawdust covered the floor in a fine carpet.

  Nerina Strake stood near one of the tables, muttering numbers to herself as she worked upon an intricate lock. She was a short, gaunt woman in her late twenties, with a tangled mass of red hair. She wore a leather apron over a loose shirt, dusty trousers, and heavy boots, and a set of magnifying lenses and goggles had been pushed up over her sweaty hair.

  Azaces let out a rumbling grunt, and Nerina looked up. She had the eerie, pale blue eyes of a wraithblood addict. Evidently, her father, the slave trader Ragodan Strake, had addicted her to wraithblood as a means of controlling her. Kylon wondered if Ragodan had known the truth about wraithblood. Perhaps he had known and simply not cared.

  “Ah!” said Nerina, straightening up with a smile. “We have four visitors. Lord Kylon, mistress Damla, master Agabyzus, and a man unknown to me. Azaces, could you wake up Malcolm?” Azaces grunted. “Of course, he will be cranky. He is always cranky unless he has at least three hundred and seventy-four minutes of sleep a night, but probability dictates that if Lord Kylon is here, something urgent is underway.”

  “Yes,” said Kylon, once he had parsed his way through Nerina’s sentence.

  Azaces headed back towards the stairs.

  Nerina took a step forward, blinking as she stared at Tomazain, who raised an eyebrow under her scrutiny. “You are seventy-two inches tall and weight two hundred and seven pounds without your armor.”

  Tomazain frowned. “Do I?”

  “She does that when she meets someone for the first time,” said Damla. “She guessed my weight and height accurately.”

  “It is so much more precise and efficient than social niceties,” said Nerina. “A pity we cannot discard them entirely. You stood exactly sixty-seven inches tall and weighed one hundred and thirty-five pounds when I met you, but since then you have lost two pounds.”

  Damla’s smile was brittle. “I’ve been too worried to eat.”

  “And you,” said Nerina to Kylon, “were seventy-four inches tall and one hundred and eighty-five pounds when we met. This has not changed.”

  “Good to know,” said Kylon. “I was worried I was getting shorter.”

  “Really?” said Nerina. “At your age, that is highly improbable.”

  “A joke,” said Kylon.

  Nerina blinked three times and then smiled. “Oh. Yes. That was humorous. Is the circlemaster here?”

  “No,” said Agabyzus. “We don’t know where she is, but we need your help. It…”

  The door to the stairs opened, and Azaces returned, followed by a short, muscular man with graying brown hair and a bushy beard. Nerina smiled at the sight of her husband, though Malcolm scowled at them all.

  “What’s this?” said Malcolm. “Bit late for a drinking party in the workshop, isn’t it?” He grunted. “You’re all Ghosts. Except for him,” he jerked a thumb at Tomazain, “and him,” he glanced at Kylon, “but he’s just here because he’s sleeping with the circlemaster.”

  “Malcolm,” said Nerina with disapproval. Evidently, her grasp of social mores extended at least that far. Or she was just protective of Caina.

  “It is the truth,” said Malcolm. “That’s my entire problem. I can’t speak anything but the truth.” A magus had damaged his mind as a child, rendering him unable to lie.

  Kylon supposed that was a liability in business dealings.

  “Must be inconvenient for a married man,” said Tomazain.

  “Yes,” said Malcolm.

  Nerina smiled. “I rather like it.” She had never smiled like that before they had found her husband in the Inferno.

  “We should turn our attention to business,” said Agabyzus.

  “Good point,” said Malcolm, grabbing a stool and seating himself. “What is the problem?”

  “Mathematically,” said Nerina, Azaces waiting behind her with folded arms, “it most likely has to do with the defeat of the Grand Wazir and the rebel army besieging the city.”

  “You are correct,” said Agabyzus. “I shall be brief. Grand Master Callatas departed the city for Pyramid Isle with the circlemaster pursuing him. Callatas returned, but she did not.”

  Nerina frowned. “Is she dead?”

  Kylon said nothing, his jaw set.

  “We do not know,” said Agabyzus. “She has not returned, but we do know that Grand Master Callatas has begun the final spells of Apotheosis. We only have a few days to stop him.”

  “How?” said Malcolm. “Malik Rolukhan was powerful, and we barely killed him. The Grand Master is stronger by far.”


  “Lord Kylon has the valikon,” said Nerina. “That can penetrate any protective spell.”

  “Only if Callatas doesn’t blast him dead first,” said Malcolm.

  “We have a different plan,” said Kylon. “The army of Prince Kutal Sulaman Tarshahzon is outside the walls, and they’re here to overthrow the Grand Wazir and the Grand Master and put Sulaman upon the throne of Istarinmul. If they get into the city, they’ll be able to stop the Apotheosis. We might not be able to kill Callatas, but at the least, we can force him to flee the city and abandon the Apotheosis.”

  “They won’t be able to take the city,” said Malcolm. “I’m not a soldier, and the Grand Wazir lost most of his men. But he can still hold the walls long enough for Callatas to finish his damned sorcery. Especially since every single one of the catapults on the wall is loaded with enough Hellfire to burn down half the city.”

  “You’re right,” said Kylon.

  “Obviously, I’m right,” said Malcolm. “I wouldn’t be talking if I wasn’t right.”

  “Or if you believe you’re right,” said Nerina. “Experimentation has revealed that you can, in fact, tell a lie if you believe yourself to be telling the truth.”

  “A philosophical point,” said Malcolm. “If I believe myself to be telling the truth, I am therefore telling the truth, even if I mistakenly believe inaccurate information…”

  “That’s very interesting,” said Kylon, hoping to stop the conversation before it wandered into the weeds. He liked Nerina and Malcolm both, mad and brilliant as they were, though by the gods of storm and sea they sometimes got on his nerves. Caina got along well with both of them, though she was mad and brilliant as well, so that made sense. “But Malcolm’s right. The rebels can’t take the city in enough time. If things were different, they might be able to wear down the defenders, but we don’t have the time. Another two or three days and Callatas will finish the Apotheosis.”

  “The mathematics of the problem are not favorable,” said Nerina.

  “No,” said Kylon. “Which means we need to introduce another variable into the equation. We need to find a way to open the city’s southern gate to the rebel army, and we need to find a way to do it by tomorrow.”

  Silence answered him. Nerina’s eyelids fluttered as they did when she did some complex calculation in haste.

  “The mathematics of that problem,” said Nerina, “are even less favorable. The southern gate will be well-guarded with the Grand Wazir’s most loyal and capable men.”

  “Aye,” said Malcolm. “You might as well ask for us to find a way to fly from Istarinmul to Rumarah in the blink of an eye.”

  “Several possibilities present themselves,” said Agabyzus. “First, we raise a mercenary force and attack the gate. Many lives will be lost in such an endeavor. Second, we find a way to poison or drug the rations or drinking water of the men assigned to guard the towers.” He scratched his beard. “Third, we find a way to steal an amphora of Hellfire from one of the siege engines and use it to kill everyone in the gatehouse. Fourth…”

  “The weapon,” said Nerina, her eerie eyes widening.

  “Weapon?” said Agabyzus. “What weapon?”

  Azaces and Malcolm shared a look.

  “Right,” said Malcolm. “Well, you know I’ve been manufacturing armor for the Grand Wazir’s army. At least I was. I suppose the Grand Wazir isn’t in a position to buy much of anything at the moment. Anyway, I had some surplus armor, so I’ve been selling it to anyone who would buy. I figured the circlemaster wouldn’t mind, seeing as how we’ve been taking the Grand Wazir’s money and using it to plan his overthrow. Some of our customers pay in coin, others in kind or with favors.”

  “Go on,” said Agabyzus.

  “We sold some armor of a mercenary captain based in the Cyrican Harbor,” said Malcolm, “and when I dropped the armor off, I noticed he had quite a lot of sleeping mist stored in his warehouse.”

  A flicker of excitement went through Kylon. This could be just what they needed.

  “Sleeping mist?” said Tomazain.

  “An alchemical weapon,” said Kylon. Caina had told him how the Alchemist Sinan had used the weapon in Malarae. “It’s stored in an amphora under pressure. When the seal is broken, the fog boils out, and anyone who breathes it in falls asleep.”

  “Fortunately, it is easy to shield yourself from the effects,” said Agabyzus. “A wine-soaked cloth placed over the mouth and nostrils will permit a man to ignore the effect. Nonetheless, it is a devastating weapon when deployed in an enclosed space against an unsuspecting foe.”

  “Such as the guards of the gatehouse?” said Kylon.

  “Precisely,” said Agabyzus. “This could be the advantage we need.”

  “It would look suspicious if we walked up to the gatehouse with an amphora of sleeping mist,” said Kylon.

  “Bread,” said Damla.

  Kylon looked at her, saw Tomazain giving her an odd look.

  “Soldiers need to eat, do they not?” said Damla. “We could claim to be delivering bread to the soldiers guarding the gate.”

  “That could work,” said Agabyzus. “That would likely work. The documents would be easy enough to forge, and so many of Erghulan’s officers and nobles have been slain that there is likely a great amount of chaos in his ranks. So long as the forgery was done properly, no one would look twice. We can deliver the bread, don our masks, set off the sleeping fog, and open the gate once the soldiers are immobilized.”

  “Tricky,” said Tomazain. “If the timing is off, we’re all dead.”

  “We’re all dead anyway if the Apotheosis is finished,” said Kylon.

  “We can give ourselves another advantage,” said Damla, taking a deep breath. “As loath as I am to admit it. We can drug the bread, help the soldiers to sleep before we even open the sleeping fog.”

  “Why does that offend you?” said Tomazain. “Clearly, it does.”

  She offered the mercenary a little smile. “I am a coffee merchant, master Tomazain. I dislike creating something to harm, even for a good cause.”

  “Malcolm and Azaces and I can help as well,” said Nerina. “I calculate that we can jam the machinery in the gatehouse, lowering the odds that the Grand Wazir’s men can close it again. Also, Malcolm and Azaces are good at killing people.”

  “Are you?” said Tomazain.

  “He was an Immortal,” said Malcolm, “and I’ve had a lot of practice at swinging a hammer.”

  “Huh,” said Tomazain, glancing at Azaces. “Wouldn’t have guessed. He doesn’t have that…glow.”

  Azaces remained impassive.

  “The alchemical elixirs that create the Immortals fade over time if they are not regularly ingested,” said Kylon. He hoped that was true of Nerina Strake, that the craving for the wraithblood addiction would pass in time.

  “Elixir or no elixir, he knows his way around in a fight,” said Malcolm.

  “Then we have a plan,” said Agabyzus. “I shall obtain the forged documents and steal the sleeping mist from the warehouse. Damla will prepare the drugged bread. Nerina and Malcolm and Azaces will accompany us when it is time to deliver the bread.”

  “Will you accompany us, Lord Kylon?” said Damla.

  Kylon hesitated. Caina would want him to look after her people, to make sure they were safe, but…

  “No,” said Kylon. “I came from the south with the army, and went over the wall to see you.”

  Tomazain frowned. “How did you get over the wall?”

  “Sorcery,” said Damla.

  “Ah.”

  “I have to get out of the city and tell Lord Tanzir and Prince Sulaman and the other leaders of the army to prepare an attack,” said Kylon. “Once the gate is open, they have to strike at once with their fastest horsemen. That is our best chance of holding the gate…and of saving your lives. Because the Grand Wazir’s soldiers will try to storm the gate once it is open.”

  Damla swallowed, and he felt the fear in her emotional sense, bu
t the fear was matched by a steely determination. He felt similar things from everyone else in the room, albeit in different proportions. Their loyalty to Caina surprised Kylon, but perhaps it should not have. She had saved all their lives at some time or another, just as she had saved his.

  “Very well,” said Agabyzus. “We are in accord. We shall meet at the House of Agabyzus at dawn and proceed with the plan to open the gate.”

  “I will look forward,” said Kylon, “to meeting you there.”

  ###

  An hour later Damla stepped into the kitchens of the House of Agabyzus, Tomazain following her.

  Lord Kylon had escorted them back to the House, and then vanished into the night, heading towards the wall and the rebel army. Agabyzus had departed as well, leaving to steal the sleeping fog and to obtain the forged order for the bread that would allow them access to the gatehouse. Before leaving, he had given Damla a vial of some kind of odorless, colorless drug. One drop per loaf would put to sleep anyone who ate the bread.

  He had also left Tomazain to help protect the House. Bayram and Bahad had gratefully gone to sleep. Damla would gladly have sought her own bed, but she had work to do.

  “A mad business,” said Tomazain.

  “Aye,” said Damla, walking to one of her ovens and opening it. She started to take some wood from the wood pile, and Tomazain helped her. “A mad business indeed.”

  “I wouldn’t believe it myself,” said Tomazain, “but I have seen these things with my own eyes. Your brother hired me for a job, I met the Nighmarian girl, your circlemaster, and she saved my life. There was this monster, a demon, this thing of shadow and purple fire…”

  “A nagataaru,” said Damla, stacking the wood in the right pattern within the oven. The trick was to arrange the wood so it would burn for a long time, allowing the bricks and tiles of the oven to absorb the heat.

  “Damned thing,” said Tomazain, handing her the logs. “Never would have believed it until I saw it with my own eyes. Anyway, the Nighmarian girl saved my life, and here I am.”

  “She did something similar for me,” said Damla. “My sons had been taken by slavers. I despaired of ever seeing them again, but she rescued them. And now here I am.” She held out a hand, and Tomazain passed her another log, adding a few more of his to the pile. “It…I wish I had not lived to see such terrible things. But not that I have, I will not flinch from them.”