Ghost in the Hunt

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “Yes,” said Caina.

  “Is she also a Ghost?”

  Caina nodded. Claudia Aberon was other things as well. A physician. A capable sorceress. A former sister of the Imperial Magisterium. And the bastard daughter of Decius Aberon, the ruthless First Magus of the Magisterium.

  She wondered if Decius Aberon had sided with the Emperor or with the Umbarian rebels.

  “Was there any answer to my letters?” said Caina. She did not want to talk about Claudia Aberon. “My warnings about Callatas and the wraithblood?”

  “I fear not,” said Agabyzus. “I suspect no answer may come.”

  “Why not?” said Caina. “Grand Master Callatas is dangerous. If he finishes his Apotheosis, whatever it is, he will kill thousands of people.”

  “Thousands of people in Istarinmul,” said Agabyzus, “and an Istarinmul in chaos is an Istarinmul that cannot ally with the Umbarian Order against the Empire.”

  “That’s monstrous,” said Caina. “The high circlemasters want Callatas to succeed?”

  “I doubt it,” said Agabyzus. “The Ghosts have stopped sorcerers of Callatas’s nature before. But while the survival of the Empire is at stake, and Callatas’s plans threaten to bring chaos to Istarinmul…they may very likely do nothing to stop him.”

  Caina sighed, shook her head, and got to her feet. “Drink this.” She handed Agabyzus a small glass vial. “It will let you sleep without pain. You’ll be stiff and sore tomorrow, but at least you’ll have a good night’s rest.”

  “Where are you going, if I may ask?” said Agabyzus. He opened the vial and drank.

  “To steal a corpse,” said Caina.

  Agabyzus nodded, closed his eyes, and lay down upon the cot. “Caina.”

  “Yes?” said Caina, surprised. He rarely used her real name.

  “Thank you for my life,” he murmured. “Yet again.”

  “You are welcome,” said Caina, but Agabyzus did not answer as he sank into a deep sleep. She stared at him, her mind whirling with the news, rebels and Umbarians and Callatas’s dark Apotheosis.

  Gods. What would she say to Claudia if they met again?

  Caina crossed the cellar, Agabyzus’s deep snores rattling off the ceiling. She had to act, but before she could act, she needed information. Specifically, more information about this Umbarian Order and the invisible assassins.

  And she had a good idea of where to find it.

  Caina opened to a chest and stripped out of her clothes. She wanted a bath and a long sleep, but there was work to do. As she removed her dress, the glint of bronze upon her left arm caught her eye. An intricate torque of bronze-colored metal encircled her left bicep. It was not tight, but it would not fall off, not unless Caina pulled it off. Though that would do little good. She could drop the torque upon the floor and turn away, and a moment later she would find that it had transformed into a bracelet and attached itself to her left wrist.

  For the torque was not simply jewelry, but a pyrikon, an enspelled tool of sorcery. The pyrikons had once been the badges of office of the loremasters, the ancient sorcerers’ brotherhood of Iramis. Callatas had destroyed Iramis a century and a half ago. Yet some loremasters had escaped the destruction, and Callatas had hunted them down and killed them, claiming their pyrikons and using the enspelled devices for his own purposes.

  Now one such pyrikon rested upon Caina’s left arm. The thing had bonded to her, Nasser claimed, and Caina had been unable to get rid of it. She hated sorcery and wanted nothing to do with it. Still, the pyrikon had done her no harm, and had aided her several times.

  “The star is the key to the crystal,” muttered Caina, looking at the pyrikon. She didn’t know what those words meant, the strange prophecy the spirit of the Moroaica’s long-dead father had given her. The star had to be the Star of Iramis that Callatas wore. But what was the crystal?

  She didn’t know.

  Her eyes turned to Agabyzus. Those invisible assassins had almost killed them both.

  Right now Caina had more immediate questions.

  She donned the clothing of a caravan guard. Worn trousers and boots, a loose shirt, and heavy leather armor studded with steel rivets. A ragged cloak hung from her shoulders, and a short sword and a dagger went into sheaths at her belt. She clipped the ghostsilver dagger to her belt, just in case more of these invisible men came calling, and then gave her reflection a quick examination in a small mirror. Caina would have preferred some makeup to create the illusion of stubble, but with her hair short and her figure concealed beneath the armor and cloak, she could easily pass.

  She checked her weapons one last time and then left the cellar, circling through the alleys until she came to the main street.

  Caina stopped, looking around.

  Again she had the damnable feeling that someone was watching her.

  Another woman would have thought that paranoia, but paranoia was the irrational fear of imaginary enemies. Caina had the entirely rational certainty that numerous enemies did in fact want to capture or kill her. She scanned the street, the alleys, and the rooftops. Especially the rooftops. No one ever looked up, and she remembered the shadow she had seen atop the half-constructed merchants’ hall.

  But she saw nothing.

  The street and the rooftops were both deserted.

  Caina shook her head and kept walking.

  ###

  The assassin lay flat upon the rooftop and watched Caina Amalas, the Ghost nightfighter some called the Balarigar, make her way to the Old Quarter.

  A voice hissed and murmured with furious rage and fear inside the assassin’s head, but she did not mind.

  She had, after all, been hearing a voice inside her head for nearly one hundred and sixty years now.

  Or, more specifically, a Voice.

  The Balarigar’s abilities of disguise were remarkable. If the assassin had not known better, she would have sworn that she watched a tired caravan guard seeking a bed for the night. Not the Balarigar, the famed master thief who had put terror into the Slavers’ Brotherhood, the man who had destroyed the Widow’s Tower and dared to rob the palace of Grand Master Callatas himself.

  A man so notorious that Callatas had hired the deadliest assassin in Istarinmul to dispose of him.

  The assassin smiled, the dry breeze tugging at her black hair.

  She looked forward to the expression on Callatas’s face when he learned that the dreaded Balarigar was in fact a woman.

  The assassin watched the Balarigar for a moment longer, considering.

  She could not remember her own name. She had been given one at birth, of course, but she had forgotten long ago and it would have meant nothing had she been able to recall it. She discarded and claimed names as easily as she discarded and claimed disguises.

  Which was amusing, given how nearly everyone in Istarinmul had heard of her.

  They called her the Red Huntress, and spoke of her with the same half-awed, half-terrified whisper they used to discuss Morgant the Razor and Kalzir the Iron and the other legendary assassins and thieves of history. Morgant the Razor and Kalzir the Iron were figures of legend, but many of the myths around the Red Huntress were entirely true. She had killed countless men and women secure in their pride and power – emirs and lords, Alchemists and occultists and magi, merchants and princes, Kyracian stormsingers and archons.

  The Voice howled with approval at every death.

  For now, the Red Huntress thought of herself as Kalgri. The name meant nothing, but she liked the way it sounded. Kalgri straightened up, her loose clothes rippling around her as she watched Caina disappear around a corner. The Voice screamed with fury and hatred and a little fear.

  That was the only reason the Balarigar was still alive.

  Caina was cleverer than most, but Kalgri had hunted and killed hundreds over the decades, and she was patient. It had taken months of following the most tenuous of leads, but she had at last tracked Caina to the House of Agabyzus, a pleasant coffee house in the Cyrican Quarter.
It would have been easy to knife Caina in an alley and leave her for dead, and Kalgri had gone to the House of Agabyzus with that intention.

  The moment she laid eyes upon Caina Amalas for the first time, Kalgri discarded that plan.

  She had seen the shadow rippling around Caina, the darkness flowing past her. The Voice granted Kalgri many powers, and one of them was the ability to see sorcerous auras. Most people had dull and unremarkable auras, but Caina’s aura had been badly scarred and altered by sorcery. More than that, something of tremendous power had touched her and left its shadow upon her. That shadow was twofold – a past event of power had marked her, but so had a future one, one that had not yet come to pass.

  The Voice had seen the shadow and been afraid.

  That caught Kalgri’s attention. The Voice was a nagataaru, one of the malicious spirits that Callatas had summoned and bound from the netherworld. The Voice cared nothing for politics, for thrones and crowns and gold, only for killing, only for pain and the shedding of blood, an attitude that Kalgri herself shared.

  Yet the Voice had been afraid of Caina Amalas and the shadow around her.

  Caution and patience were required, and Kalgri had not survived for a century and a half by neglecting either. Callatas and the dire spirit that commanded the nagataaru wanted the Balarigar dead at once, but Kalgri did not care. Caina Amalas was dangerous. Kalgri would study her prey, consider her and learn her habits, remaining unseen and unobtrusive.

  When at last she understood Caina Amalas, then Kalgri would strike.

  The Voice whispered in excitement at the thought of feasting upon the woman’s agony.

  Kalgri had to admit she looked forward to it as well.

  She strode to the edge of the roof and stepped off.

  It was fifty feet to the street below, but the Voice’s power flooded through her, and she landed without injury, her legs flexing to absorb the impact. She started forward, intending to follow Caina Amalas from a discreet distance. It would be interesting to see where she went next. Those imbued assassins should have killed Caina, yet she had outwitted and slain them. The fools had trusted too much in their little sorcerous trick. Kalgri would…

  “A coin.”

  The Voice hissed with sudden hunger.

  Kalgri turned, her face bland, and saw an old man shuffling toward her. He was a beggar, clad in in a ragged, filthy robe, his limbs little more than trembling sticks. His gray hair and beard hung about his head like dead grass, and his eyes…

  She felt herself smile.

  His eyes were the pale blue of flames licking the bottom of a copper kettle.

  He was a wraithblood addict, a fool bound to the poison Callatas had brewed up with the blood of murdered slaves and the power of the nagataaru. Callatas had warned her against killing any of the addicts, claiming that he needed as many of them as possible for his great Apotheosis.

  Kalgri did not care, and neither did the Voice.

  “A coin, you say?” said Kalgri.

  “A coin, beautiful lady,” said the old beggar, tottering toward her. “A coin for the blood, the sweet dark blood. Let me see the visions again, the beautiful, beautiful visions…”

  “Of course,” said Kalgri. “I have something for you right here.” She held out her right hand. “Come to me and I shall give it to you.”

  He reached for her, a flicker of hope going over his lined face, and Kalgri’s smile widened. Something in her expression must have warned him, because he hesitated.

  But it was far too late for that.

  She called on the power of the Voice, and the nagataaru’s rage and hunger flowed through her. Shadow and purple fire erupted from the fingers of her right hand and hardened into a sword fashioned of shadows, its blade wrapped in purple flame.

  The old man staggered back, his eyes wide. “What…what…”

  “I am a huntress,” said Kalgri, pointing the sword at him, “and you are my prey.”

  She swept the sword before her, and lopped off both the old man’s hands at the wrists. The old man gaped at his spurting wrists in shock for a moment, and then started to scream, a high, incoherent sound filled with fear and agony.

  The Voice feasted upon his pain, and strength flooded through Kalgri.

  The old man, his wraithblood-addled mind overwhelmed with panic, made no effort to flee, but only stood there and screamed. Kalgri swung, and the immaterial sword sheared through the beggar’s ankles. He collapsed into a shrieking heap.

  His screams redoubled, and the Voice moaned in ecstasy as it feasted upon his pain.

  A flick of her wrist and the immaterial sword took out the old man’s tongue. The watchmen would soon arrive to investigate the screams. Kalgri could kill them all, of course, but the wanton slaughter of a score of watchmen would draw Caina’s attention. Of course, the murder of the old beggar might do the same. The Balarigar was a clever foe.

  Let her puzzle over a mutilated corpse and consider what it might mean.

  Kalgri took her time, shivering with pleasure as she carved the beggar up like a roast, the Voice moaning in glee as it gorged itself upon the man’s pain. The nagataaru, like Kalgri, were predators. Earthly predators feasted upon meat and blood. The nagataaru devoured pain and torment and raw life force, converting it into power, power that Kalgri used as she saw fit. The flow of power stopped, and she noticed that the beggar had died. Massive blood loss, mostly likely. She had not even gotten to his heart yet.

  Alas, there was not always time to savor every pleasure.

  But when she killed Caina Amalas, though…oh, but that would be sweet.

  Kalgri dismissed the sword and it unraveled into nothingness. The Voice’s power flowed back into her, and she ran for one of the nearby houses. The power made her stronger and faster, stronger than any mortal, and she jumped, soaring a score of feet into the air. She struck the wall, and the Voice’s power gripped the whitewashed adobe, letting her scramble up the wall like a spider.

  Kalgri reached the top of the building and jumped from rooftop to rooftop, leaving the Tower Quarter behind. Let the watchmen find the dead beggar and puzzle over it. Perhaps Caina would hear of it.

  Perhaps she would fear, which would lend her agony all the more spice.

  ###

  A short time later, Kalgri let herself into the kitchen of the House of Agabyzus. She had discarded her loose black clothes for the dress and headscarf of a common serving woman, and carried no weapons with her.

  Not that she needed any.

  Damla stood near one of the ovens. The widow’s expression was distant as she drew out a tray of baked bread, still hot from the coals.

  “Mistress?” said Kalgri. “Is everything all right?”

  “Hmm?” said Damla, looking up from the bread. “Oh, yes, forgive me. I could not sleep and so decided to start on tomorrow’s bread.”

  “Can I help with anything?” said Kalgri. Damla had already endured a great deal of pain…but she had so much more to lose. Two sons on the verge of manhood, for one. How much pain would Damla suffer to see them tortured to death in front of her?

  The Voice murmured with pleasure at thought.

  Damla smiled in the dull red glow from the oven. “I fear not. We simply live in unsettled times.”

  “Wars and rumors of wars,” said Kalgri. “I could not sleep, either, so I thought to start upon the day’s work.”

  “Thank you,” said Damla. “You are a diligent woman, Kalgri.”

  As Damla would learn to her sorrow one day.

  Kalgri went to work, making herself an unobtrusive but vital part of the House of Agabyzus.

  It was all preparation for the death of Caina Amalas.

  Chapter 3 - Thieves

  The next morning Caina parked a cart in front of the Shahenshah’s Seat. The pair of donkeys she had rented gave her a sullen glare, their tails whishing back and forth to ward off flies.

  The Shahenshah’s Seat was a towering, ramshackle tavern of whitewashed stone and timber t
hat stood at the edge of the Anshani Quarter, not far from the Gate of the Southern Road. Endless caravans went back and forth through the southern gate. By ancient law the caravanserai stood outside the city’s wall, lest foreign agents smuggle themselves into the city. In practice, the merchants and their guards parked their carts in the caravanserai and came to the Shahenshah’s Seat and the other taverns of the Anshani Quarter to drink and whore. Thousands of foreigners came through the Anshani Quarter and the Shahenshah’s Seat every month.

  Which made it the perfect place for the most wanted man in Istarinmul to hide himself.

  Two burly men in rough clothes detached themselves from the Seat’s door and walked towards her cart. They had the build of former soldiers and the hard, unfriendly expressions shared by bouncers in every tavern in the world.

  “You can’t park here,” said the man on the left.

  Caina held up some silver coins. “Delivery.” Her voice was rough and deep, a trick she had learned long ago. She gestured at the long wooden box in the back of the cart. “Let me park and borrow your porters to lift that damned thing, and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  The bouncer squinted at the long box. “What’s in there?”

  “Wheels of Anshani cheese,” said Caina, letting more silver glitter in her palm.

  The bouncers shared a look, and then divided the coins between them.

  “Damned Anshani cheese,” said the man on the right. “Never cared for it. Stops me up like concrete.”

  “I quite agree,” said Caina. One of the bouncers disappeared into the tavern and returned with a quartet of burly porters in the gray tunics and worn sandals of slaves. At Caina’s direction, they hefted the box upon their shoulders and followed her into the common room. Even in the early morning, men filled the tables, eating their breakfasts before setting out on the road once more. Caina climbed the stairs to the second floor, stopped before a door, and knocked. A moment later the locks rattled and the door swung open.

  A man of middle years with the look of a Nighmarian commoner stood before her, his graying hair close-cropped. He had the muscled build, grim face, and upright stance of a veteran of the Emperor’s Legions. He wore a loose tunic and trousers, a broadsword belted at his waist.