Carved from white stone, it showed a fat man in Cyrican robes, his arms spread in surprise, his face twisted with fear and horror. Caina gazed at the statue with fascination. The lords of the Empire loved statues, and Caina seen thousands of them during her life. Yet she had never seen a statue like this one. She could see every wrinkle on the man’s face and hands, every fold and crease of his clothing. The level of detail was uncanny.
Almost eerie.
And the statue looked exactly the way Theodosia had described Barius.
Why the devil would Barius have an peculiarly detailed statue of himself in the back room of his pawnshop? For that matter, if he knew a sculptor of such sublime skill, why commission a statue of himself looking horrified?
It made no sense…
Unless.
Caina stared at the statue, a terrible idea trickling into her mind.
She remembered tales she had read in her father’s library as a child, stories about unearthly women with serpents’ hair whose glance turned men to stone.
She stared at the statue of Barius.
At the impossibly detailed statue.
“No,” said Caina, voice soft.
But why not? She had seen sorcery burn a man to ashes, rip lightning down from the skies, and store the lives of murdered innocents in a black crystal. Why couldn’t sorcery turn a man to stone?
She brushed the statue’s stone sleeve with a fingertip.
And she felt the faint, crawling tingle of sorcerous force.
She jerked backed in alarm, and for a terrified instant she wondered if the spell would spread, if it would turn her to stone. But the tingling sensation faded, and her hand remained flesh and blood. Caina took a deep breath and looked at the statue.
At Barius himself.
Who had done this to him? And why? Caina knew more about sorcery than she had ever wished to know, but she had never heard of a spell that did anything like this.
She took a deep breath…and noticed the shadow at the back door.
Someone was standing in the alley outside the shop.
Caina tensed, her fingers tightening around the dagger’s handle. Whoever stood outside the door might be listening to her, waiting for her to make a mistake. Yet who was outside the door?
The sorcerer who had done this to Barius, perhaps?
Perhaps this was a trap to catch any Ghosts coming to visit Barius.
But traps could be sprung.
She spotted a mirror sitting upon the shelf. Taking care to remain silent, Caina angled the mirror so it faced the door. Keeping the dagger in her right hand, she began to rummage through the items on the shelves, making sure to make lots of noise.
“There’s no one else here,” she shouted in Cyrican, making sure to keep her voice deep and rough. “No one but that damn creepy statue. Well, if Barius can’t be bothered to mind his shop, we may as well help ourselves. You watch the front door, and I’ll take the jewels.”
She kept rummaging through the items on the shelves, keeping her eyes fixed on the mirror.
And slowly, silently, the back door swung open. She saw a man wearing a yellow Cyrican robe standing in the alley, a dagger in his hand. He glided through the door, his feet making no noise against the floor.
Caina recognized the way he held that dagger.
A Kindred assassin had been lying in wait for the Ghosts.
“Hey!” shouted Caina, and the assassin froze. She picked up a bronze candelabra, as if examining it. “Does that silversmith still buy bronze? We could turn a pretty coin.”
The assassin moved forward, his dagger raised to stab.
Caina whirled and slammed the candelabra across his face.
The assassin staggered back with a cry, blood flying from his nose and mouth. Caina lunged at him, hoping to knock the dagger from his hand. But the brutal training regimen of the Kindred produced capable fighters, and the assassin deflected her thrust with a sweep of his own blade. Caina seized the opening and swung with the candelabra, catching the assassin across his free wrist. The man reeled back, lips peeled back in a snarl.
For a moment he glared at her, and then he whirled and fled through the door.
Caina blinked in astonishment. The Kindred assassins fled only when outmatched. Then she remembered her ruse. The assassin must have assumed that she had armed allies in the front room. For a moment she considered pursuing him, but rejected the idea. She did not know Cyrioch very well, and the twisted maze of streets and alleys offered hundreds of hiding places. Or, worse, the assassin could return with allies. Better to escape now while she still could.
Caina turned to go, and the stove caught her eye.
A small iron stove squatted in the corner of the back room. Given Cyrioch’s torrid heat, Caina wondered why Barius needed it, but perhaps he used it to cook meals. A few coals flickered within the stove, and Caina saw flecks of white lying among the ashes.
Scraps of paper.
She knelt and poked through the ashes, sifting for any legible remnants.
The ashes had once been a book, she thought, or perhaps a ledger. Whoever had burned it had done a thorough job. Caina recovered a single small scrap of paper. It had once been covered in scrawled handwriting, but now Caina could only make out four words.
“The Defender,” she muttered. “The Well.”
Was that a code of some kind? Odds were that it didn’t mean anything. But did that mean Barius had burned his ledger? Or had someone else burned it?
Caina didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to figure it out. That assassin would return with friends. She got to her feet and cast a quick look over the shelves. The assassin would recognize her disguise, but there was enough clothing here to improvise a new one. Caina cast aside her ragged cloak and snatched a garish red one. The cloak was a ridiculous color, but it looked Cyrican, and should conceal her long enough to rejoin Theodosia at the Plaza of Majesty.
She took one last look at Barius, and then slipped out the back door. The alley behind the pawnshop stank of garbage and urine, but was deserted. She took a quick look around and hurried towards the end of the alley. From here she would circle east, through Seatown until she reached the district of Westshadow and then the Plaza of Majesty at the foot of the Stone…
Caina froze.
A shape in a cloak stood at the end of the alley, staring at her. She could not see the figure’s face beneath the cowl, but the front of the cloak opened, and she caught a glimpse of chain mail and a sheathed sword.
Another Kindred assassin?
She raised her dagger and braced herself.
The cloaked figure turned and disappeared to the left.
Caina cursed and ran to the end of the alley. It terminated in a street leading east from the plaza, lined on either side with shabby houses. She saw no trace of the cloaked figure, or of the Kindred assassin in the yellow robe.
Caina hastened for the Plaza of Majesty.
She wondered what Theodosia would make of Barius’s fate.
Chapter 3 - The Lords of Cyrica
Caina slipped unnoticed through the crowds, merely another figure in a red Cyrican cloak.
She had to admit that the Plaza of Majesty lived up to its name.
It sat at the base of the Stone, broad and wide, paved with white marble chosen to match the peculiar white rock of the Stone. On the northern side of the Plaza stood the massive temples of the gods of the Empire. On the western side stood the basilica of the Magisterium’s chapterhouse, stern and grim. Across the Plaza from the chapterhouse rose the black, pyramidal shape of a temple to the Living Flame, the chief god of Cyrica and Anshan. And at the base of the Stone itself a broad ramp climbed the face of the hill to the Palace of Splendors itself.
Lord Governor Armizid Asurius and his chief magistrates awaited Lord Corbould at the end of the ramp. Around them stood a company of the city’s militia, wealthy merchants, minor nobles, and a host of other hangers-on. Citizens of Cyrioch lined the Plaza, watching the spectacl
e, held back by a line of militia spears.
Lord Corbould Maraeus entered the Plaza from the other end, flanked by a troop of black-armored Imperial Guards.
Caina slipped through the crowds, which proved easy of enough, since most of the commoners had their attention focused on the nobles. She passed Lord Corbould and his guards and came to the rear of the column. The chariot drivers Corbould had brought walked there, followed by the singers and stagehands of the Grand Imperial Opera. Caina spotted Theodosia, clad in a brilliant red gown with black trim, her hair covered by a scarf of similar color.
Caina approached, and Theodosia smiled.
“Ah,” she said. “There you are. Did you get the things I asked for?”
“No,” said Caina, keeping her voice disguised. “Things…did not go well.”
Theodosia’s smile faded. “This is an outrage! An outrage! Why, I shall speak to Lord Corbould himself! I have his ear, you know. I’ll have you shipped back to Malarae as a kitchen drudge! I’ll…”
Theodosia went on in that vein for some time, much to the amusement of the other members of the company. Bit by bit their attention wavered, and turned to Lord Corbould’s ceremonial entrance into the Plaza of Majesty. Theodosia looked at them and nodded.
“There,” she murmured. “They ought to be distracted now. What happened? What did Barius tell you?”
“Nothing,” said Caina.
Theodosia frowned. “Is he dead?”
“Yes. Maybe,” said Caina. “I don’t know.”
“Hearken!” boomed the voice of Lord Corbould’s herald. “Corbould, Lord of House Maraeus, once Lord Governor of the Imperial Pale, twice Lord Governor of Marsis, and four times Lord Marshall of the Legions, has come! He sends greetings to his brother Armizid, Lord Governor of Cyrica, and requests permission to enter the city!”
“Come with me,” said Theodosia. “I want to watch this, since whoever hired the Kindred to kill Corbould is probably in the Plaza right now. You can tell me what you found once I have a better view.”
Caina nodded and pushed her way through the crowd, Theodosia gliding after her with stately grace. After a few moments, she reached the edge of the Plaza, not far from the line of militiamen that kept the Plaza clear for the nobles. From here, they had a clear view of the festivities. Lord Corbould dismounted his horse and waited while his herald continued the stentorian recitation of honors and offices.
“Now,” said Theodosia, voice low. “What happened? Is Barius dead?”
“Probably,” said Caina. “Someone turned him to stone.”
It was one of the very few times Caina had ever seen Theodosia taken aback.
“Turned to stone?” said Theodosia. “That’s not possible.”
Caina shrugged. “Unless there is a reason Barius had a life-sized statue of himself in his back room. A life-sized statue sculpted with incredible detail and showing an expression of horror. A life-sized statue that also has an aura of sorcery.”
“That does seem unlikely,” said Theodosia. “But…turned him to stone? I’ve never heard of any kind of sorcery that can do that. There are the old stories about serpent-haired women, true, but those are just stories. Was there any indication how it happened?”
“I don’t know,” said Caina. “The door was open, and it looked like it was forced. There was a Kindred assassin waiting in the alley behind the shop. He got away before I could kill him. And there was another man in a cloak, watching everything. He fled before I could get a good look at him.”
“I suppose neither one of them were serpent-haired women,” said Theodosia.
“No,” said Caina.
“Well,” said Theodosia, “that’s a puzzle, then.” The herald kept droning through Lord Corbould’s honors. “Barius was going to be our contact with Cyrioch’s Ghost circle, tell us of any plots against Lord Corbould’s life. So did the Kindred do this to him? Or did he stumble into some other kind of trouble?”
“A very good question,” said Caina. She passed the charred scrap of paper to Theodosia. “Someone burned a book or a ledger in Barius’s stove. This was all that was left. Does it mean anything to you?”
Theodosia squinted at the paper and nodded.
“It might,” she said. “The Defender is a statue in a plaza a bit east of here. The Plaza of the Defender, they call it. We’ll be staying at the inn there. As for the Well…there is a place in the Palace of Splendors called the Gallery of the Well. I have never been there.” She grinned. “But if Lord Khosrau enjoys Nighmarian opera as much as the rumors say, I might get an invitation.” She looked at the paper for a while longer, and then handed it to Caina. “Keep that. It might not mean anything. But just in case…”
Caina nodded. “What will we do now?”
“I’ll have to contact Cyrioch’s circlemaster,” said Theodosia. She scowled. “Which I was hoping to avoid, because he’s a dreadful bastard. But we have no choice. We need his help.”
“And if someone is targeting the Ghosts of Cyrioch,” said Caina, remembering what Kalastus had done in Rasadda, “they’ll need to know.”
Lord Corbould’s herald wrapped up the recitation of honors, and Lord Governor Armizid’s herald stepped forward.
“Hearken!” thundered the herald. “Armizid, a scion of House Asurius, Lord Governor of the province of Cyrica, guardian of Cyrioch, keeper of the Palace of Cyrioch, and scourge of the Sarbian tribes, does bid his brother Lord Corbould welcome to the Shining City of Cyrica Urbana!”
Lord Governor Armizid Asurius stepped forward, and Caina got her first look at the man who governed Cyrica. He was about thirty, with a soldier’s lean build, and wore a gleaming white robe and turban in Anshani style, an elaborate jeweled sword and dagger at his belt. His expression was stern, his black eyes hard and cold.
“A humorless martinet of a man,” murmured Theodosia, “but his father Khosrau is the real power in Cyrica.”
Lord Khosrau followed after his son. The men had the same facial features and eyes, but Khosrau was enormously fat, so fat that his white robe and beard made him look like an ambulatory snowball. He walked with a limp, leaning upon an ivory cane in his right fist. Unlike his son, his expression was not a cold mask. If anything, he looked…amused. As if he was privy to some joke unknown to everyone else in the Plaza.
A man in a black robe with a purple sash trailed after Khosrau, a slave girl in a gray tunic following him.
“Who is the master magus?” said Caina.
“Ranarius, the preceptor of the Cyrioch chapterhouse,” murmured Theodosia. “A cold one. Was a strong supporter of Haeron Icaraeus. Even the First Magus steps lightly around him.”
Caina took a closer look at Ranarius. The master magus was in his sixties, with a gaunt, ascetic face and the perpetual squint of a scholar. The slave girl was perhaps a few years younger than Caina, with hair so blond it was almost white. A strip of black cloth covered her eyes, and an elaborate collar of carved jade rested around her neck. Caina wondered why Ranarius bothered keeping a blind slave. Perhaps she warmed his bed - Caina would not put it past a magus to keep a slave mistress or three. The suspicion was confirmed when she saw a jade bracelet of similar design on his left wrist.
Lord Armizid strode toward Lord Corbould, and a sudden memory struck Caina with the force of a blow.
She remembered standing in the Great Market in Marsis, taking Nicolai to see the grand arrival of Rezir Shahan aboard his ships. Lord Corbould had been there with his bodyguards and magistrates, coming to greet the Padishah of Istarinmul’s Lord Ambassador. Yet the meeting had been a trap, and Istarish soldiers had stormed into the Great Market, killing and capturing slaves. The slavers had taken Nicolai captive. Dread rose up to choke her throat at the memory. She had to get him back! She had to find him before…
Caina shook her head. She had rescued Nicolai, had slain Rezir Shahan and outwitted the Moroacia’s disciple Scorikhon. Nicolai was safe with Ark and Tanya. She had saved him.
Yet the dread did not l
eave her, and for a terrible instant she was sure that Istarish footmen would boil into the Plaza of Majesty, their khalmirs bellowing commands…
She heard a voice, hissing urgent words.
Caina blinked.
“Are you all right?” said Theodosia. “Because this is not the time to let your attention wander!”
“I’m fine,” said Caina, but she knew it was a lie.
Theodosia’s expression said that she knew it, too.
Then Lord Governor Armizid started to speak, and Caina pushed aside her memories and emotions.
“My lord Corbould,” said Armizid in High Nighmarian with a thick Cyrican accent. “I bid you welcome to Cyrica Urbana, the Shining City.”
The two men gripped hands briefly.
“I think you, my lord Armizid,” said Corbould. “On behalf of our Emperor, I offer greetings, and thank you for your hospitality.”
Armizid offered a thin smile, and Caina suspected that he did not like Corbould very much.
“All nations know the hospitality of the Cyricans,” Armizid. “Truly, we are generous to our friends…and merciless to our enemies.”
“Indeed?” said Corbould. “Then it is well that the Cyricans are friends and loyal citizens of our Empire. For our Empire is threatened by bitter enemies.”
Armizid lifted an eyebrow below his white turban. “By the Kyracians and the Istarish, you mean? Perhaps they are your enemies, Lord Corbould, if they went to such efforts to seize Marsis from you. But for generations beyond count, the slaves who labor in our mines and plantations have come from the slavers’ brotherhood of Istarinmul. The ships that carry our olives and rice and cotton to the ports of the world come from New Kyre. The Kyracians and the Istarish have been friends of Cyrica for centuries. Perhaps they are your enemies, my lord Corbould, but they may not be the enemies of Cyrica.”
Corbould’s face grew hard. “So you would rather side with enemies of the Empire than with your Emperor, my lord Armizid?”
“I wish to remain friends with the Emperor of Nighmar,” said Armizid. “But if the Emperor makes himself into the enemy of Cyrica, well, then he shall have to live with the consequences.”
Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 05 - Ghost in the Stone Page 3
