Ghost in the Throne (Ghost Exile #7)

by Jonathan Moeller

  And if she was right, the Umbarian Order had noticed that.

  The Guards opened the door for her. Tylas and Dromio went in first. The centurion’s hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, and even Dromio had taken to wearing a short sword, though Claudia didn’t know if he knew how to use the thing. She went up the steps to the door, trying not to grunt as she did so, and entered the bakery.

  It was always hot inside Master Kassam’s bakery, thanks to the rows of brick ovens lining the walls of the large square room. A score of slaves in gray tunics toiled at the long wooden tables running the bakery’s length, kneading dough and preparing the loaves for the ovens. At the rear of the room, upon a raised dais, stood the work area of the more skilled bakers, most of them freeborn journeymen. They made the elaborate cakes and pastries that Master Kassam sold to his wealthier customers.

  Kassam Aydin himself hurried across the floor, bowing with every other step as he did so. Claudia had yet to meet a baker who did not carry an extra thirty or forty pounds, and Kassam was no exception, though he was tall enough that the extra weight made him look vigorous rather than plump. He had a bushy black beard, stark against the bronze skin of his face, and black hair turning to gray.

  “My most noble and august lady Claudia,” said Kassam, bowing over her hand and placing a dry kiss upon her signet ring, “you do me great honor. What can Kassam bake for you this day? I see you are very close to the blessed day of birth. What a splendid day that shall be! Perhaps I can bake a cake to celebrate the occasion, frosted in the colors of your lord husband and your noble Emperor.”

  “That sounds pleasant,” said Claudia with a smile. Truth be told, a sweet cake did sound nice. The Istarish liked so much turmeric and cumin and garlic in their food that Claudia often had a hard time keeping her meals down. “But I fear my needs are far more prosaic. Several thousand loaves, delivered to the Lord Ambassador’s mansion in the Emirs’ Quarter. My seneschal has the details.”

  Dromio produced a letter containing the exact specifications for the order, all of it written in formal Istarish by one of Martin’s scribes. Kassam scrutinized it, nodded, and began haggling. Of course, it was beneath the dignity of an Imperial noblewoman to haggle with a mere tradesman, so Dromio stepped forward to handle the negotiations. Claudia found the whole thing annoying. She would rather have signed a contract for future deliveries, but the Istarish considering it insulting to bypass the haggling.

  Still, it had its uses.

  Claudia remained aloof and silent as Dromio and Kassam argued, but her eyes swept the bakery. It was possible one or more of the slaves were Umbarian spies, passing information to the Order in exchange for money. She didn’t think any of the slaves would be Silent Hunters, though. Most of the slaves working the ovens had stripped down to loincloths to cope with the heat, and the distinctive scarring of a Silent Hunter would have been visible.

  The journeyman bakers, though…

  Yes. That seemed likely. There was a man standing near the dais, speaking to one of the journeyman bakers in a low voice. He could have been Caerish or Cyrican or Saddaic or a member of a dozen other nations, and wore the nondescript clothing of a caravan guard or a prosperous mercenary.

  He was exactly the sort of man Claudia would not have expected to find in an Istarish bakery.

  She kept her face aloof, but cold satisfaction closed around her.

  At last Dromio and Kassam finished their negotiation, with Dromio remaining polite and formal, and Kassam growing more and more animated. It would have been funny to watch, had Claudia not been sure someone was going to try and kill her in a few minutes. At last the seneschal and the baker reached an agreement, and Dromio counted out Kassam’s payment from his coin pouch. The money, at least, was not a problem. The Empire was fighting for its survival against the Order, and Martin’s embassy to the Padishah’s court had been well-funded.

  Considering what might happen if that embassy failed, the coin was money well-spent.

  “Thank you, my lady Claudia,” said Kassam, bowing again. “Truly, you are too generous to this humble baker.”

  “Not at all,” said Claudia. The nondescript man, she noted, had slipped out the back. “You bake an excellent loaf, Master Kassam. It is a pleasure to purchase your wares.”

  Kassam bobbed his head. “Thank you, my lady. Ah…concerning the matter of the delivery…”

  “I will send my own wagons to pick up the bread tomorrow,” said Claudia. If the Umbarians decided to take offense at Kassam selling to the Lord Ambassador, they might arrange for his bakery to suffer an “accidental” fire, or for Kassam and his wives and his children to be murdered in their beds as a warning to anyone else.

  Kassam smiled with relief. “Thank you, my lady.”

  “I won’t even demand a discount for it,” said Claudia.

  Kassam’s smile widened.

  A few moments later Claudia and her escort left the bakery, heading through the streets towards the Emirs’ Quarter and the Lord Ambassador’s mansion. Dromio offered to hire a sedan chair for Claudia, and she wanted to take him up on it. Yet if she did, her quarry might decide to hold off. Claudia wanted to look helpless, wanted to look like an exhausted woman in the final stage of pregnancy, unable to pose a threat to anyone.

  That was mostly the truth.

  Mostly, because before Claudia had become the wife of the Emperor’s Lord Ambassador to Istarinmul, she had been a sister of the Imperial Magisterium. Claudia had left the Magisterium, but the skills of an Imperial magus had not left her, and as they walked she made small gestures with her hands, focusing her will and casting a minor spell. The spell let her sense the presence of other spells, of gathered arcane forces and enspelled objects. While she held the spell, she could not focus it with any degree of accuracy, but she could detect any active spells around her.

  The attack came as they left the Cyrican Quarter and entered the Emirs’ Quarter. The Lord Ambassador’s mansion was large, but it seemed like a shack compared to some of the gleaming palaces that Istarinmul’s emirs had raised, sprawling, massive edifices of white marble and slender towers and rippling pools and gleaming domes, all of them maintained by armies of slaves. Little wonder that Callatas had begun his grim work in Istarinmul. Slaves filled Istarinmul, even more slaves than Claudia had seen while in Cyrioch. Callatas needed lives, expendable lives, to create his wraithblood and prepare his Apotheosis, and Istarinmul was full of expendable lives.

  Claudia now understood why Caina had terrorized the Brotherhood of Slavers. She still was not convinced that had been a good idea, that it had been anything other than Caina’s way of dealing with her grief over Corvalis’s death. But after looking at all the slaves filling Istarinmul, after learning what Callatas intended to do with them, Claudia understood why Caina had done…

  Something brushed against Claudia’s spell.

  She kept walking, but focused her will. There was a locus of necromantic force approaching from the street ahead, moving towards her left. She glanced in that direction, but saw nothing unusual.

  Claudia had known that she would not.

  “Centurion,” she called out. “The left.”

  Tylas spoke an order, and the Imperial Guards on the left parted.

  Claudia whirled, her hands coming up as she drew upon arcane power. When she had first become pregnant, when the morning sickness had set in, her ability to draw arcane power had become erratic, fluctuating between a trickle and an overwhelming surge. After her stomach had settled, she had found that she could draw more power than before. Claudia suspected that her unborn child had latent sorcerous talent, and she was unconsciously drawing upon it to augment her own strength. Maybe that was why so many children of sorceresses developed arcane abilities themselves – their mothers’ own spells started to develop the talent of the unborn children.

  On the other hand, Claudia had often been able to draw more power when she was angry.

  And she was very, very angry.

 
She flung out her right hand, her will shaping the sorcerous power into a wall of psychokinetic force. Claudia could not see her target, so she could not unleash a focused hammer of force. Instead the spell erupted in an expanding cone that would hit anyone in its path with a powerful but non-lethal blow.

  She heard a startled cry of pain, and a little puff of dust rose from the street.

  “Now!” roared Tylas.

  The Guards surged forward, rushing towards the puff of dust. They reached the spot and started stamping with their armored boots. Claudia started another spell, and as she did she heard the crack of breaking bone, followed by another cry of pain. She focused upon the noise and cast a spell of dispelling.

  There was a flash of silver light and a naked man appeared on the street beneath the Imperial Guards, his mouth bloody and his chest covered with bruises. The Imperial Guards had managed a few good hits on their invisible adversary. Sigil-shaped scars covered the man’s chest and shoulders, still glimmering with silver light from the collapsed invisibility spell.

  The Silent Hunter started to raise his dagger, and one of the Imperial Guards brought his boot down with contemptuous ease. The sound of the Silent Hunter’s shattering wrist echoed through the street, followed shortly by the assassin’s scream of pain.

  Claudia felt no pity. The Silent Hunter would have killed her and her unborn child. Ordering Tylas to kill the man would have inspired no emotion in her but a vicious satisfaction.

  Yet she might have a use for the assassin.

  “Nudity in front of an Imperial noblewoman,” muttered Dromio, shaking his head. He seemed more offended by that than the assassination attempt. “Disgraceful.”

  “I’ll send a strongly worded letter to Lord Cassander,” said Claudia.

  Two of the Imperial Guards hauled the Silent Hunter to his feet, gripping his forearms and shoulders. The assassin flashed with silver light and turned invisible, only to reappear a few seconds later.

  “Oh, don’t bother,” said Claudia. “We know where you are. I assume you came here to kill me? That was a mistake. Better men than you have tried and I am still here, and better men than you defend me.”

  Once she would have been horrified at the thoughts of using her spells to kill a man. Now she only just kept herself from using a burst of psychokinetic force to crush his skull. Her time with the Ghosts had hardened her.

  The war with the Umbarian Order had hardened her further. If anyone tried to hurt her husband or her child, then by the gods they were going to suffer for it.

  The Silent Hunter sneered and tried to spit at her, only to miss. Tylas stepped forward and backhanded the assassin until the bottom half of his face gleamed crimson.

  “Where is Cassander Nilas?” said Claudia.

  The assassin tried to smile and only managed to wince. “Bringing about…bringing about the downfall of your Empire.”

  “Where is Cassander Nilas?” said Claudia.

  “Bringing victory to the Order.”

  “Centurion,” said Claudia, “start cutting pieces off him until he talks. Save his tongue for last. We’ll need that.”

  Tylas nodded and drew a dagger. The other Imperial Guards moved into a circle around the captured assassin, ready to shield his torment from the eyes of anyone who passed by. Not that anyone was likely to intervene. Erghulan had made it very clear that the Imperial and Umbarian embassies were not to shed blood in the streets, and no one would come to the Silent Hunter’s aid.

  Especially since the assassin had tried to kill a pregnant woman. The Istarish held that as an especially heinous crime, and in those gloomy epic poems they loved so much the villains often established their wickedness by ordering the death of the hero’s wife in the ninth month of her pregnancy, a death usually accompanied by several stanzas of maudlin verses.

  As inconvenient as it was, Claudia had to admit that pregnancy sometimes offered advantages.

  “Wait!” said the assassin, his eyes fixed on the dagger. “Wait. Wait!”

  Tylas seized the Silent Hunter’s wrist, holding his hand steady. “Which finger, my lady?”

  “Surprise me,” said Claudia.

  “What do you want to know?” said the Silent Hunter.

  “Where is Cassander Nilas?” said Claudia.

  “I do not know,” said the assassin. “He left the city after the fighting at the Alqaarin harbor.”

  “What happened at the docks?” said Claudia. She had heard differing accounts, all of them contradictory.

  “An ambush,” said the Silent Hunter. “For the Balarigar. Lord Cassander knew the Balarigar would be there, so he laid a trap for her. Yet she eluded him, and he left the city in a rage the next day, I know not where.”

  “Pursuing the Balarigar, I presume,” said Claudia.

  “Yes,” said the Silent Hunter, bobbing his head. “The red woman told him where to go.”

  “Red woman?” said Claudia, a little chill running down her spine.

  She remembered the Red Huntress’s mask of crimson steel, remembered the woman slashing through the Immortals at the Court of the Fountain like a wolf savaging sheep.

  “The red woman,” said the Silent Hunter. “Lord Cassander did not tell us who she was. Yet she visited him often, and after her last visit, he gathered many Adamant Guards and Silent Hunters and sailed from the Alqaarin harbor.”

  “Did he say when he would return?” said Claudia.

  “No,” said the Silent Hunter. “There has been no word from him since. The other magi of the embassy have been…restless.”

  “Probably slithering around each other like snakes in a bucket,” muttered Claudia, remembering some of the brothers of the Imperial Magisterium that she had met. Ranarius and her late half-brother Torius Aberon would have made fine candidates for the Umbarian Order. She would have thought her father an Umbarian as well, if not for the fact that the Order had spent the last two years trying to kill him.

  “There has been some…discord,” said the Silent Hunter.

  “Undoubtedly,” said Claudia. If the Red Huntress was after Caina again, she had to be warned. Yet Caina had departed nearly a month and a half ago, and Cassander had disappeared soon after. Their confrontation had likely already happened.

  It was possible that Caina was dead, that Cassander was on his way in triumph to Istarinmul. Erghulan Amirasku had promised to open the Starfall Straits to the Umbarian fleet if Cassander slew Caina, and the thought filled Claudia with fresh dread. Caina had been certain the Huntress would not return for at least a few more years, and if the Huntress had taken Caina off guard…

  The fate of the Empire might already have been decided.

  It was out of Claudia’s hands. She had to deal with more immediate problems.

  “My lady,” said Tylas. “What should we do with him?”

  “I answered all your questions,” said the Silent Hunter. “I...I was helpful.”

  “Yes,” said Claudia. “You were.”

  Her hand settled upon her belly.

  She saw the panic flash over the assassin’s face as he realized his fate.

  “Centurion,” said Claudia, “please kill that man.”

  Tylas was good at his work. The Silent Hunter barely had time to scream. After it was done the Guards dumped his body in an alley, and they continued to the mansion. Claudia walked in silence, her mind upon something other than her aching ankles. She had just ordered the death of a man without blinking, without even looking away. Five years ago that would have been unthinkable for her.

  Now she had done it without hesitation…and without the slightest hint of regret.

  Her hand stroked the front of her gown.

  She hoped the gods would have pity upon anyone who threatened her husband or child, for Claudia would surely not.

  ###

  That night Claudia sat at her desk in the solar, writing letters.

  By tradition, the senior wife of an Istarish nobleman handled his social engagements and correspondence. Cla
udia was damned certain she was going to remain Martin’s one and only wife, so the duty fell to her. Most of the letters came from various minor nobles and wealthy merchants, cautiously wondering whether the Empire would favor Erghulan Amirasku or Tanzir Shahan in the coming civil war. Those she passed off to Martin’s scribes, and they wrote more or less the same reply, that the Emperor wished for friendship and amity with the Padishah of Istarinmul, and that how the Padishah and his nobles chose to govern their realm was no concern of the Emperor of Nighmar. A few the letters dealt with more sensitive matters, and Claudia answered those in her own hand. She could write quickly and accurately when she put her mind to it, and as a child she had begrudged all the hours spent with her handwriting tutor.

  Now she was grateful for them.

  The door to the solar opened, and Claudia looked up, her hand already starting to work a spell.

  But it was Martin Dorius.

  “Husband,” said Claudia, getting to her feet, her pained ankles for a moment forgotten.

  Martin Dorius was tall and strong, with gray eyes and black hair that seemed to acquire more gray with every passing day. He looked tired. Claudia understood why. The fate of the Empire and millions of lives might depend on what happened in Istarinmul.

  “Wife,” said Martin. “You should be sitting.”

  “Then I could not do this,” she said, and she hugged him as tightly as her belly would allow.