Ghost in the Throne (Ghost Exile #7)

by Jonathan Moeller

  Morgant shrugged. “I always thought the world deserved to die. Perhaps it does not. I shall see this through to the end, Kyracian. After all, I’ve been part of it for far longer than you have.”

  Kylon stood in silence for a moment.

  “Then you’re really not in love with Annarah?” he said.

  Morgant let out a sound that was half-exasperated, half-amused. “Gods and devils, boy, but you’re thick. Just as well you’re so determined. Else I would wonder what the Balarigar sees in you. Most women want a rich man who can give them a comfortable life. Not her, though. She needs a warrior. Someone to fight her enemies with her. And you’re a determined warrior, I’ll give you that. But prone to regrettable thickness.”

  Kylon considered that. Morgant was making a point, albeit in his usual convoluted way, though Kylon could not figure it out.

  “And Annarah?” said Kylon.

  “Haven’t you realized it yet?” said Morgant. “She’s married.”

  Kylon frowned. “To Nasser? No, that’s not right. I saw Nasser’s wife. Callatas’s spell…it turned her into a statue in a fountain in the Desert of Candles.” He looked at the assassin. “Annarah was married…and her husband died in Iramis, didn’t he?”

  “A hundred and fifty years ago,” said Morgant.

  “But not for her,” said Kylon. “That century and a half seemed like only a few moments to her. The loss…it must still be fresh.”

  Yet he had sensed nothing of the sort from Annarah. There had been fear and anger and pain, and bursts of sorrow, but for the most part the loremaster’s emotions seemed calm and controlled. Kylon wondered if that was a discipline the loremasters had studied. Or perhaps Annarah’s pyrikon helped to shield her emotional aura from his arcane senses.

  “She has a secret,” said Morgant. “She and Nasser both. Something they both know that no one else does.”

  “And just what is that secret?” said Kylon.

  “I don’t know,” said Morgant.

  “That’s it?” said Kylon. “You don’t know? What happened to the wisdom of age?”

  “I’m wise, not omniscient,” said Morgant. “I was wondering if the Balarigar knew. She’s good at figuring out this sort of thing.”

  Kylon shook his head. “If she has, she hasn’t mentioned it to me. She trusts both Annarah and Nasser.”

  Morgant grunted. “That might be unwise.”

  “Why?” said Kylon. “Just because Nasser doesn’t like you?”

  “I killed someone he liked in Iramis a long time ago, and he tried to arrest me,” said Morgant. “It didn’t go very well. That doesn’t matter any longer. That man has been dead for a century and a half. If he had lived to see his grandchildren, they would have been dead for decades by now.”

  “So what does matter?” said Kylon. He felt Morgant’s emotional sense grow sharper and colder, and suspected that the assassin was reaching his point.

  “Why,” said Morgant, “did the Knight of Wind and Air work so hard to save Caina Amalas?”

  “The Knight?” said Kylon. “You mean the djinni. The spirit that calls himself Samnirdamnus.”

  “Yes,” said Morgant. “And he told you how to save Caina, didn’t he?”

  Kylon said nothing.

  “There’s no need to be coy, Kyracian,” said Morgant. “I was there, remember? She was about to die. You knew that the Elixir Restorata would kill her and blow up the building. Yet you took the wedjet-dahn from my pocket, put it on her, and poured the Elixir down her throat. Why did you do that?”

  “The Knight,” said Kylon. He had never told anyone the entirety of what he had done that day, not even Caina, but there seemed no point in lying now. “He said…no, he never came out and said anything clearly. He appeared to me in the middle of the fight, while Nasser was stalling Cassander. The world went frozen and gray…”

  “Yet you saw the Knight,” said Morgant, “wearing the form of someone from your past, and speaking in riddles and half-truths that convinced you to take the wedjet-dahn.”

  “I did,” said Kylon. “He took the form of my sister.”

  “Your sister?” said Morgant. “Didn’t the Balarigar kill your sister?”

  “No,” said Kylon. That, at least, was not a tale he wanted to tell Morgant. “She…suffice it to say, her own pride killed her.”

  “That’s what does for most people in the end,” said Morgant. “But you’re overlooking the obvious.”

  Kylon sighed. “And that is?”

  “The Knight told you to take the wedjet-dahn and use it to save Caina,” said Morgant. “And the obvious question is…”

  Kylon considered that. “Why was the wedjet-dahn there in the first place?”

  “There we are,” said Morgant. “The obvious question.”

  “You took the wedjet-dahn from the Inferno, from the Halls of the Dead,” said Kylon, remembering, “because…Samnirdamnus told you to do it.”

  “He said I had a choice,” said Morgant. “If I left the wedjet-dahn behind, the world would die. If I took it with me, the world would live. Do you not realize what that means? The Knight foresaw what would happen. Somehow he knew that the Balarigar would die, or was destined to die, in Rumarah. So he made preparations. He made sure I took the amulet from the Inferno. He made sure you gave her the Elixir Restorata…”

  “She stole the Elixir from Callatas,” said Kylon. “From his laboratory in the Maze, before I came to Istarinmul or she had met you. She told me about it. Samnirdamnus is bound to guard the Maze, but she and Nasser figured out a way to bypass him…”

  “Did they?” said Morgant. “Or did the djinni let them pass so Caina would have Elixir at hand when the moment came?”

  “He told me I would have to choose between Caina’s life and the world,” said Kylon.

  “So you chose her,” said Morgant.

  “Obviously,” said Kylon.

  “Over the entire world, Kyracian?”

  Kylon gave an irritated shake of his head. “What does that even mean? That the world is going to end because the Huntress escaped to tell Callatas of the regalia? She would have escaped anyway. If Caina hadn’t drunk the Elixir, Cassander would probably have killed us all, and then Callatas would have killed him and taken the Staff and the Seal. No, Samnirdamnus wanted us to save her. He was just manipulating us into doing it, probably because he cannot openly act against Callatas’s interests.”

  “Why?” said Morgant. “Why go to such efforts to keep her alive? If I am correct, the djinn have kept me alive for a century and a half to first rescue Annarah and then to save Caina. Surely it wasn’t simply to provide you with a new lover.”

  Kylon shook his head, so focused upon the question that he barely noticed the barb. “I don’t know.”

  “One woman cannot be worth such efforts,” said Morgant.

  “She can,” said Kylon.

  “You say that because you are in love,” said Morgant. “The Knight is not.”

  “Samnirdamnus saved her because…he wants her to do something,” said Kylon.

  “Like what?” said Morgant. For a moment a flicker of frustration went through the assassin’s rigid, ancient aura.

  “I don’t know,” said Kylon. “But you’ve seen what she can do. We went into the Inferno with her, and the Inferno is now rubble and ashes. She defeated the Sifter. And before....” He shook his head. “She killed the Moroaica. She tricked and defeated one of the Great Necromancers of Maat in the ruins of Caer Magia. She slew Rezir Shahan in Marsis, and if not for her, likely Marsis would be an Istarish emirate today.”

  “She truly slew Rezir Shahan?” said Morgant. “She claimed to have done it, but I wasn’t sure I believed her. So Caina killed your sister and his brother, and you’re both now her allies. Is that her preferred method of making friends? She kills a brother or a sister as a means of introduction?”

  “Caina didn’t kill my sister,” said Kylon. “As I told you, Andromache destroyed herself. And Rezir…Tanzir does not
miss him. I half-wanted to kill Rezir myself, and we were allies at the time. And if I recall correctly, you killed his grandfather.” Or his great-grandfather. Kylon could not recall which from Morgant’s interminable rambling stories.

  “Mmm,” said Morgant. “He did deserve it.”

  “You claim only to kill those who deserve it,” said Kylon, “but I’ve noticed that extends to quite a few people.”

  Morgant grinned. “That’s the secret, Kyracian. Nearly everyone deserves it for some reason or another.” The cold grin faded. “So. What do you think the Knight wants with her?”

  “He wants her to do something,” said Kylon. “That has to be it. Something only she could do.”

  “Then you really do believe it,” said Morgant.

  “Believe what?”

  “That she is the Balarigar,” said Morgant. “The demonslayer. The bane of sorcerers and tyrants. Sent by the gods to terrorize the wicked.”

  “I was there when it began,” said Kylon. “Rezir Shahan started taking slaves from Marsis right away. She killed him in front of his soldiers and the slaves. Some of them were Szaldic, and they started shouting about the Balarigar. I suspect the legend spread from that.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” said Morgant. “Do you really believe that she is the Balarigar?”

  Kylon was silent for a moment. “I don’t know if there is such a thing as the Balarigar or not. But if there is…it would be her.”

  “Then you do believe,” said Morgant.

  “I believe,” said Kylon, “that I’m not going to let anyone hurt Caina. I believe that if the Huntress returns, I’m going to kill her. And I believe that you talk too much.”

  “It is a failing,” said Morgant. “But a man of my great experience is entitled to the occasional eccentricity.”

  “You may have exceeded your entitlement,” said Kylon.

  He started to walk away.

  “Think about what I said, Kyracian,” said Morgant.

  Kylon nodded, but he did not look back. His head whirled as he walked in silence through the hall and back to Caina’s room. Nasser and Annarah had a secret between them. The Knight of Wind and Air had spent decades scheming, all of it apparently to save Caina’s life. The Huntress was still out there somewhere, and if Callatas knew that the Staff and Seal were in the village of Drynemet, he would turn the Kaltari Highlands to a smoking wasteland.

  And Caina Amalas was at the center of it all.

  He slipped into the room and closed the door in silence. Caina had not moved since he had left, her breathing still slow and regular. Kylon watched her for a moment. Her decisions had changed the fate of nations and started and ended wars. She had thrown down powerful sorcerers and corrupt lords. She had even killed the Moroaica, the author of so much misery across the centuries.

  Yet, to look at her now, it all seemed so unlikely. She looked like a pretty young woman, her black hair stark against her pale neck, her lips parted, her chest rising and falling with the draw of her breath. He felt a sudden urge to seize her hands and to feel the pulse in her wrist, to make sure that it was still there.

  It was impossible that she was still alive, but she was. Thanks to the manipulations of Samnirdamnus.

  Kylon didn’t know why, but he was grateful for the help.

  If anyone wanted to come for her, they were going to have to go through him and the valikon first.

  As he undid his baldric and propped the sword next to the bed, a thought occurred to him.

  Nasser and Annarah might have a secret between them.

  Did that mean Morgant had a secret of his own as well?

  Chapter 3: Soon To Burn

  Claudia’s ankles hurt.

  She did not feel well. The muscles of her back ached, and her belly strained against her gown. Any day now her child would come, and she felt tired all the time. The Istarish sun blazed overhead like a furnace, and while her headscarf kept it off her head and face, the streets radiated heat like a baker’s oven in the morning. Claudia Aberon Dorius was tired, a little nauseous, and sore.

  Yet her ankles still bothered her the most of all. It was an odd thing, but there it was. After the baby came, she hoped her ankles would stop hurting, or at least hurt less.

  It was hard to think of anything else. She knew that Istarinmul was about to burn in the fire of a civil war. The destruction of the Inferno had been the final straw. The Grand Wazir, idiot that he was, decided to blame the southern emirs, and the southern nobles had responded by marching north with an army.

  If that was not enough, her husband’s life was in danger. Cassander Nilas, the Umbarian Order’s ambassador to the Padishah, disappeared after a disturbance at the docks of the Alqaarin harbor, but the Order’s embassy remained in the city, holed up in their fortified mansion in the Alqaarin Quarter. The agents of the Umbarian Order would not hesitate to kill Martin Dorius if the opportunity presented itself. Every time her husband left, Claudia did not know if she would see him again, if some Silent Hunter might take him from her.

  The Order wouldn’t kill Claudia, though, if they got the chance. They would take her captive, use her to force Martin’s cooperation with their schemes. It was one of the Order’s favorite tactics, and the pregnant wife of an Imperial Lord Ambassador would make a fine lever to insure Martin’s compliance. If she gave birth while in captivity, all the better. The Umbarians might send one of the child’s fingers or toes to Martin to make their point.

  And if all that were not bad enough, the threat of Callatas’s Apotheosis lay over everything like a storm cloud about to burst. Claudia didn’t know what Callatas intended, but she saw it in the starving wraithblood addicts that swarmed through the streets of the dockside districts, their eyes like blue flames licking the bottom of a pan, their hands shaking as they begged for wraithblood. Perhaps Caina had figured it out by now. Though Caina, too, had disappeared, vanishing from the city on some errand or another. She ought to have returned by now. She might be dead. That, too, was cause for fear.

  Claudia knew she ought to fear all those things, but only one thing dominated her thoughts.

  Her child was coming soon.

  It would be any day now. She could feel it in her bones. It had been almost nine months since their journey to Silent Ash Temple to claim the valikon and use it against the Red Huntress, and Claudia knew she had become pregnant either at Drynemet or during the approach to Silent Ash Temple. Certainly she had been pregnant when they had arrived at Silent Ash Temple, when the Emissary of the Living Flame had looked at her and spoken the truth.

  Right now her life was divided into two halves. The time before her baby came, and the time after. She knew that was not logical, that even after the child came her enemies would still remain.

  But right now she just wanted to have the baby and get it over with. Maybe then her ankles wouldn’t hurt so much.

  The rest of the world would not wait upon her, and Claudia had work to do.

  So she walked through the Cyrican Bazaar, flanked by several Imperial Guards.

  “I must state again, my lady,” rumbled Dromio, “my objection to this plan.” Her husband’s seneschal was a middle-aged Nighmarian man of common birth, paunchy and bald, clad in sober servant’s black. They had been in Istarinmul for nearly a year, yet Dromio had never lost his suspicion of foreigners, which given the number of spies who had tried to infiltrate the Lord Ambassador’s mansion was probably a good thing. He ran the household with an iron hand, and Claudia had come to find his help invaluable.

  “I agree completely,” said Tylas, the centurion in charge of Martin’s deputation of Imperial Guards. He wore the black plate armor of the Guards, a broadsword at his belt and a massive shield upon his arm. A cloak of Imperial purple hung from his armored shoulders, and a purple plume topped his helmet. Nine other Guards surrounded Claudia, watching the crowds filling the Bazaar with suspicious eyes.

  “Ah, well,” said Claudia. “When the two of you agree, the world must
be coming to an end.”

  The centurion and the seneschal shared a look.

  “I must say, my lady,” said Dromio, “that I have always found Centurion Tylas’s security arrangements to be sensible and prudent.”

  “And I approve of the orderly way Seneschal Dromio manages Lord Martin’s household,” said Tylas. “The efficiency is almost military.”

  “Thank you, Centurion,” said Dromio.

  Claudia sighed. “I was trying to make a joke. It didn’t work. Besides, we need supplies.”

  If the civil war began, if Tanzir Shahan assaulted Istarinmul, the city might devolve into chaos. Almost certainly Tanzir and his allies would provide Istarinmul with a better government, one friendlier to the Emperor and more hostile to the Umbarians. Of course, if Erghulan Amirasku heard the slightest hint that the Empire favored the rebels over him, he would expel Martin’s embassy from the city. Or the Grand Wazir would run right into the arms of the Umbarians, which would be a catastrophe. If Istarinmul allied with the Order, the Umbarians would send their fleet through the Starfall Straits to attack Malarae itself, and that would be the end of the Empire.

  Claudia didn’t know what would happen. Every possible disaster seemed likely.

  So it was wise to stock up on as much food and water as possible. The Lord Ambassador’s residence was a small but well-fortified mansion in the Emirs’ Quarter, and Martin thought they could hold out there for some time. Martin spent every day with Erghulan Amirasku and the court of nobles and magistrates surrounding the Grand Wazir, making sure Erghulan did not decide to side with the Umbarians. He was having some success, given Cassander Nilas’s extended absence. But the duties of the Lord Ambassador took up the entirety of Martin’s time.

  It fell to Claudia to prepare for a potential siege.

  And, perhaps, to eliminate a few Umbarian agents in the process.

  She strode through the Cyrican Bazaar, and the crowds filling the market parted around her, thanks to the escort of Imperial Guards. Well, she tried to stride anyway. The child in her belly had thrown off her center of gravity, and the pain in her ankles made it hard to stride. At best she could manage sort of a hasty waddle, but she hoped it was a dignified waddle. Claudia reached the bakery at the far end of the bazaar. Istarinmul had dozens of bakeries. Some focused on preparing delicacies for the emirs and the wealthy merchants, cakes and tarts and pastries and the like. Others made as much bread as cheaply as possible, selling it to the Wazir of the Treasury to distribute to the city’s poorer citizens. Claudia had a suspicion that a good deal of sawdust and dead beetles turned up in those loaves. The bakery of Kassam Aydin had a good reputation, and Claudia had purchased a large quantity of bread from him over the last few months.