Ghost in the Blood (The Ghosts)

by Moeller, Jonathan

  Jiri snorted. Radast glanced at Caina, his eyes calculating, and nodded to himself. He turned back to his slate, writing a fresh equation.

  “But…” started Ducas.

  “Enough talk,” said Caina.

  Her voice came out in the growling rasp she used while disguised. Ducas flinched, hand twitching towards his broadsword.

  “I’ll be back by dawn,” said Caina. “If not, assume I’m dead.”

  “Try not to burn the place down this time,” said Halfdan.

  Caina rolled her eyes, crossed to the window, took a quick look at the street, and vaulted over the sill. Down the rope she went, cloak billowing, and landed in the alley. It was nearly midnight, and the streets were deserted. Caina adjusted her cloak and set off.

  ###

  A short walk took her to Agria Palaegus’s mansion.

  As Ducas had said, the security was excellent. Two guards in Palaegus colors stood before the gates, watching the street with cool eyes. Two more guards made a steady circuit around the low wall encircling the gardens. The Magisterium’s damned glass spheres sat atop the wall at regular intervals, and the guards had plenty of light.

  Caina settled in the shadows, watching the guards. She waited until she had memorized the pattern of their patrol. The security was good…but not that good. The guards should have changed the pattern of their walk, but they didn’t. Which meant that a corner of the wall was left unguarded every three minutes or so.

  Caina waited until the guards rounded the corner, and burst into a run.

  The wall was only nine feet or so. Caina jumped, grabbed the lip, and rolled over into the gardens. She landed silently, wrapping the cloak around her, and remained still. No shouts. No sounds of alarm.

  No one had seen her.

  The garden’s numerous bushes and trees provided ample cover. Caina crept through the garden unnoticed. Two more guards stood at the mansion’s double doors. Like the rest of Agria’s guards, they looked like Legion veterans, their eyes hard and alert.

  Fortunately, Caina didn’t plan to go through the door.

  She circled the mansion until she came to the balcony where she had met Hiram Palaegus. A second grapnel and coiled rope dangled from her belt, and she flung the steel hooks onto the marble railing. A quick climb took her to the balcony. She secured the grapnel on her belt and pulled up the rope. It would make for a handy escape, but even the most oblivious guard wouldn't fail to notice a rope dangling from the railing.

  Caina glided into the corridor. Halfdan had spent years teaching her to move silently, and her boots made no sound against the marble floor. The mansion lay utterly silent, and Caina paused for a moment, thinking. If Lady Palaegus had indeed purchased large quantities of slaves, evidence would have to be somewhere. Where to begin?

  The steward’s office. There would be financial records. Naelon Icaraeus’s ledger had recorded the sale of slaves to House Palaegus. Perhaps Agria had kept receipts.

  Caina took another step, and heard footsteps approaching. She ducked into a nearby door. It opened into an unused sitting room, the expensive furniture draped in sheets, the glass spheres darkened. Caina left the door open a crack and settled down to listen and watch.

  Two guards passed, talking to one another in low voices.

  “I don’t care what Lucius says,” said one. “End of the month, once I take my pay, I’m out of here.”

  “Fool,” said the second man. “This is a soft job. Good money, plenty of food, and a warm bed. You’d give that up to grub in the fields?”

  “I signed up to guard a mansion,” said the first man. “Not work for a sorceress. Those noblewomen locked in their tower all night, chanting...gah! I saw enough sorcery when I was in the Legion. I don’t want any part of it…”

  Their voices trailed off, and the footsteps faded away. Caina counted to sixty, and slipped into the corridor. She made her way down the stairs, crossed the ballroom, now dark and empty, and headed for the servants’ quarters.

  The servants’ chambers lacked the mansion’s opulence, but were still roomy and comfortable. The steward’s room was the largest, the door locked. It took Caina only a few moments to pick the lock, and she pushed the door open.

  The steward lay naked in his bed, entangled with a woman twenty years his junior, both of them asleep. No doubt a maid or one of the cooks desired higher pay or easier duties. The steward’s desk and ledgers occupied a small room next to the bedroom. Caina closed the door behind her and rubbed her gloved hand over a glass sphere in an iron stand. She felt a sharp tingle, and sphere glowed with gentle light. Shrouding it with her cloak, she let the light fall over the desk, and began to sort through the papers. The steward kept good records, and she moved through the accounts with ease.

  Or what was left of the accounts.

  Lady Palaegus was in massively in debt. Just over six million denarii, borrowed from practically every lender in the Empire and several foreign ones. Lord Martin Palaegus had left a substantial sum when he died, but his widow had burned through that in under a year. Now the income from House Palaegus’s lands and holdings wouldn’t even the loans’ interest. House Palaegus’s finances were on the edge of collapse; in another year, Agria’s creditors would eat House Palaegus alive before the Court of Exchequer.

  Could Agria really be that stupid?

  Caina thought of the spell. Perhaps Agria had other concerns. Perhaps money didn’t matter to her.

  Caina paged through the records. Agria had spent huge sums on wine, food, jewels, silks, gowns, artwork, and other entertainments. But the biggest sums went to Agria herself for “privy expenses”. There was no record of what Agria bought with that money.

  Slaves, perhaps? Or tutoring from a master of arcane sciences?

  Caina shivered. She could think of several things a sorcerer could do with slaves, and none of them were good.

  Her gloved hand twitched to the scars stretching across her belly.

  A noise from the bedroom made her look up. Caina darkened the glass sphere, placed it back on its iron stand, and peered through the keyhole. She saw the maid rolling over in bed, settling back down to sleep. After a count of ninety, Caina pushed open the study door and glided back into the hallway.

  If Agria was buying slaves from Icaraeus, she would need to hide them. A warehouse at the docks? Risky. Jiri’s informants would notice, sooner or later. The mansion was much more secure. Especially since old mansions almost always had subterranean vaults and deep cellars. The Houses of the Empire tended to hide all sorts of things in their vaults.

  The entrance to the mansion’s cellars was near the great hall. Caina crept through a corridor lined with windows, listening and watching for any guards. Through the windows she saw Agria’s solar atop its tower. Within she glimpsed candlelight, the silhouettes of women, and a faint flickering blue glow.

  Caina felt a twinge of uneasiness. Someone, possibly Agria, was casting a spell. She didn’t know the extent of Agria’s abilities, and the thought of sorcerous power in the hands of a reckless noblewoman was not a pleasant one.

  It reminded her too much of her mother.

  Caina borrowed one of the glass spheres from a pedestal and approached the cellar door. It was massive, iron-banded oak, no doubt built in years past to keep invaders at bay. The lock was equally enormous, but Caina’s tools and skill made short work of it, and she descended down the damp stairs, the sphere held in one hand to provide light.

  The stairs ended in a forest of thick pillars and barrel vaults, the brickwork damp and gleaming. Barrels and crates lined the walls, and the wine racks created a wooden maze. The air was wet and cold, thick with the smells of damp brick, rotting wood, and…

  And human excrement.

  Caina’s heart quickened. She hurried through the cellar, following her nose. The smell of ordure grew stronger. Were slaves chained in the cellar right now? Her mind raced, trying to work out a plan to free them and escape before the guards noticed…

 
She stopped, lifting the glass sphere.

  An iron portcullis sealed off an arch in the wall. Caina peered through the bars, turning the glowing sphere back and forth. Within she saw an empty room, reeking of excrement. Some dried vomit stained the corner, and ragged pallets lined the floor. A lot of people had been held in this room, and recently. Perhaps no more than two or three days ago, Caina thought. But what had happened to them?

  Odd that she saw no chains or shackles on the wall.

  A quick search through the cellar turned up nothing but old barrels and older wine. Caina crossed back to the stairs, thinking. Clearly, Agria had imprisoned a large number of people in the cellar. Slaves purchased from Icaraeus? Yet what had she done with them? If Agria was buying slaves from Icaraeus, why would she move them elsewhere? To a safer location? Or perhaps she was actively in business with Icaraeus, her accounts designed to obscure that fact. Lady Agria did have a lot of debt, after all, and slave trading brought in considerable money.

  Enough. She could chew over the facts later. There was one last thing to do before she left. She wanted a look at Lady Agria’s bedroom.

  You could always learn a lot about a woman from her bedroom.

  She paused before the door and darkened the enspelled sphere. As much as she despised the Magisterium, the glass spheres were occasionally useful. She slipped through the door, returned the sphere to its place, and took another look out the window. The blue glow still flickered in the solar, illuminating the women’s silhouettes. Agria was still occupied with her mystical arts. Her bedroom should be safe enough.

  Caina went out the window and into the garden. A quarter of the way around the mansion brought her to the balcony of Agria’s private suite. Caina threw the grapnel and scrambled up the line. After securing the rope to her belt once more, she pushed open the doors and entered Agria’s bedroom.

  The room had a palatial opulence that put both the White Road Inn and Zorgi’s establishment to shame. Her boots sank into thick carpets from Istarinmul, the threads woven into elaborate geometric designs. The wardrobe was the size of a small house. The bed, layered with blankets, could have accommodated ten people with room to spare. A massive oak table held an astonishing array of bottled cosmetics, with a huge mirror reflecting the room. Caina wondered how much time Lady Agria spent with that mirror and those bottles.

  A mirror was also set in the ceiling, above the bed.

  Caina decided not to think about that.

  She took a step towards the table and felt the familiar crawling tingle against her skin.

  Sorcery.

  For a moment she froze, half-expecting to see Agria appear from the shadows, blue light flickering around her fingertips. But the tingling remained steady, subdued. After a moment Caina realized it came from the table.

  She drew closer, her reflection shadowed and blurred in the mirror, and looked over the bottles. There were powders, perfumes, salves, brushes, combs, pins…

  There.

  A silver dagger and a heavy silver chalice sat side by side. Rubies encircled the chalice, and glittered in the dagger’s hilt. Caina lifted her gloved hand and held it an inch from the objects. The tingling grew stronger, so strong that it was almost painful. Both the dagger and the chalice were enspelled, powerfully so. Caina wondered who had enspelled them, and to what purpose.

  Something dark and cylindrical lay behind the chalice. Caina leaned forward to take a better look, careful not to touch the chalice, and her breath caught in her throat.

  Leather bracers, gleaming and oiled, their surfaces carved with sigils.

  Identical to the ones she had seen on Icaraeus and Tigrane.

  She waved her hand over the bracers and felt the same crawling tingle. So. Icaraeus and Agria had gotten their bracers from the same source. Was Agria skilled enough to create such a potent object by herself? Or had the bracers come from some other sorcerer?

  Caina didn’t know, but she intended to find out.

  She took a step towards the door and froze.

  The handle was moving.

  She had a half-second to react. Caina dove to the floor and rolled under the bed. Her cloak blurred with the darkness, concealing her. A moment later the door swung open, and Caina saw booted feet enter, accompanied by the rattle of armor and the swish of a red cloak.

  She inched forward and peered up.

  Hiram Palaegus stood over Agria’s table, rummaging through the bottles. Caina considered the odd sight of a military tribune searching a lady’s cosmetics for a moment. She doubted that Hiram had come here to steal perfume. He was looking for something. But what?

  Caina watched as he searched the bedroom, digging through the bottles and rummaging in the wardrobe. He turned towards the bed. Caina sucked in a quick breath, pulled her cowl low, and pressed her face into the carpet. Hiram looked under the bed, but her shadowed cloak must have concealed her, because he straightened up and walked into the next room. Caina looked up, heard him searching through drawers and chests. Perhaps a quarter hour passed before he returned to the bedroom, and Caina risked a glance at him.

  He looked angry. No, furious. And grieving. He looked as if he wanted to weep, or to smash things. Maybe both.

  “Damn you, Agria,” he muttered. “Damn you to hell. And damn you too, Jadriga. Damn both of you.”

  Jadriga?

  Hiram left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Caina started to count, her mind working. Hiram hated his former sister-in-law, that much was plain. But what had he been looking for? Blackmail, perhaps? Or maybe he knew of her dealings with Icaraeus, and wanted incriminating evidence.

  Caina counted to ninety. No one came. She got to her feet and started towards the bedroom door.

  The handle started to move.

  Not again.

  Caina bounded across the room, yanked open the wardrobe door, and jumped inside. A fortune’s worth of gowns and dresses brushed against her. A moment later the bedroom door burst open, and two people stumbled inside. Caina left the wardrobe door open a crack so she could see.

  Lady Agria, her clothes disheveled, her hair in disarray, had her arms around one of her guards. The muscular young guard’s face was slack, his eyes dull, his movements leaden. As they passed the wardrobe, Caina felt a sudden sharp tingle, her skin crawling.

  Both Agria and the guard crackled with sorcery.

  Caina’s lip curled in disgust. Agria had laid a spell over the guard. Probably some sort of compulsion or mind-controlling spell. It seemed pointless. Agria was attractive, and Caina doubted that many guards would refuse an invitation to their widowed lady’s bedchamber. Why bother with a spell, if she desired male company? Ducas and a dozen other rakes would be happy to warm her bed.

  Perhaps Agria enjoyed the control, enjoyed turning people into puppets.

  Caina’s mother had enjoyed that as well.

  “You,” gasped Agria, pulling away.

  “Yes, mistress?” said the guard, his voice slurred.

  “Remove your clothes,” said Agria. She began to tug out of her gown. “And lie on the bed.”

  “Yes, mistress,” said the guard. He pulled off his armor and clothes, his movements jerky. He lay down on the bed, and a moment later Agria threw off the last of her garments and climbed atop him.

  Her back was to the wardrobe, and her body blocked the guard’s view. Caina slipped out of the wardrobe. Whether through mind-altering sorcery or maddened lust, neither Agria nor the guard had noticed anything.

  In fact, they hadn’t even bothered to close the bedroom door.

  Caina crept past the bed, Agria’s wild grunts and moans filling her ears. Agria had thrown her head back, and she was gazing at herself in the ceiling mirror, her expression an ugly mix of lust and gloating satisfaction.

  Caina left as fast as she dared.

  Chapter 8 - Calculations

  Caina climbed the rope to Radast’s windows. Like the doors, the shutters had locks intricate beyond anything she had ever seen. Fortunatel
y, Radast had left them open. Caina gripped the sill, heaved herself up, and rolled into the workshop.

  Radast sat at a nearby table, writing by candlelight. Next to his papers rested a crossbow, a bolt loaded and ready. No doubt Radast had calculated the precise angle to kill any unwanted guests coming through his window.

  “Ah,” said Radast. “Anna Callenius. You have returned. Just as I calculated.” He glanced at a mechanical clock standing upon a nearby table. “Though two thousand three hundred and forty seven seconds earlier than I anticipated.”

  “Punctuality is ever a virtue,” said Caina.

  “Close the shutters, please,” said Radast. “The draft is disturbing my papers.”

  Caina closed the shutters. They settled into place with a heavy click. “Where are the others?”

  “Jiri and Basil went to the cellar. They wanted wine while we waited.” Radast glanced at the clock again. “They should return in another four to five hundred seconds. Ducas and Arlann watch the street for your return, in case you were followed.”

  “They must not have seen me, then,” said Caina. She drew back the cowl and removed her mask, running a gloved hand through her sweaty hair.

  Radast smirked. “Ducas will be wroth. He prides himself upon his vigilance. Though he overestimates his abilities by at least a fifth, possibly a third.”

  “He can blame Basil. He trained me in stealth, after all.”

  Radast resumed writing, his lank hair falling over his face. Caina looked at his papers. Endless strings of numbers and symbols in Radast’s crabbed hand covered the pages.

  “You must work through the night often,” said Caina.

  Radast blinked. “Yes. How did you calculate that?”

  “All the layers of old wax coating the candlestick,” said Caina. “Though I’m surprised you do not use some of the Magisterium’s glass spheres.”

  Radast blinked again. “Your perception is excellent. But I prefer candles. I do not trust sorcery.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “It does…not easily conform to precise calculation.”