Ghost in the Seal (Ghost Exile #6) (7 page)

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Granted, Caina hadn’t intended to burn down the Shahenshah’s Seat. And to be fair, the Sifter had been at least partially responsible. 

Caina walked through the Bazaar of the Southern Road in the Anshani Quarter, the southernmost edge of the city itself. The Great Southern Road, the main caravan route to Anshan and Cyrica, began at Istarinmul’s southern gate. Consequently the Bazaar was one of the largest in the city, and perhaps one of the largest in the world, full of men from a dozen nations buying and selling every conceivable manner of merchandise. The sprawling caravanserai outside the walls usually held thirty or forty merchant caravans at once, some preparing to depart for Anshan or Istarish Cyrica, others unloading their goods to sell in the Bazaar.

At least, the Bazaar usually held that many caravans. Now it was half-empty. The rumors of war in the south had scared off many merchants. Strabane’s Kaltari warriors had been raiding the Brotherhood’s slave caravans, adding the freed slaves to their ranks, and numerous tribesmen had decided to take advantage of the chaos by going bandit. Consequently merchant traffic had slowed to a crawl, and now only the boldest dared to make the journey across the Trabazon steppes to Istarinmul.

Perhaps Caina could blame herself or that, too. 

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, and then felt something cold against her left wrist. Caina kept walking, but slipped her right hand into her left sleeve, her fingers coiling around the ghostsilver bracelet on her left wrist. Of course, the pyrikon wasn’t really a bracelet, and it wasn’t really made of ghostsilver. Caina had once thought the pyrikons were enspelled bracelets of the loremasters of Iramis, but they were more than that. They were spirits of defense, summoned from the netherworld and given material form. The loremasters of Iramis apparently earned them as some part of trial, and when Caina had rescued Annarah from the nagataaru in the netherworld, one of the spirits of defense had decided that Caina was worthy.

It had followed her back to the material world, and now resided upon her wrist in the form of a bracelet. It unsettled Caina to no end, and if she could have figured out a way to get rid of the thing, she would have done so. She did not like carrying enspelled objects, let alone a spirit of the netherworld. Yet the pyrikon had made itself useful. It had transformed into a gauntlet that allowed her to handle the Subjugant Bloodcrystal, and that had led to the destruction of the Inferno and the freeing of the Undying. It also had another useful ability that Caina had not anticipated. 

It sometimes grew cold in the presence of another pyrikon. Given how hot it was in Istarinmul, it was a pleasant feeling, but it also let her find Annarah.

Caina turned back and forth, then nodded to herself and started down the aisle between rows of merchant booths. At the end of the aisle was a booth selling knives of dubious quality. The merchant himself was a plump Istarish man with beady black eyes, a florid blue robe, and a turban of the same color.

A man and a woman stood before the booth. The man looked like he was in his middle fifties, though Caina knew he was much, much older. He wore a stark white shirt, a loose black coat that hung to his knees, black trousers, and black boots. A sheathed scimitar and dagger rested in his sword belt, and something like a red gem flashed in the pommel of the dagger. He had close-cropped gray hair, icy blue eyes, and a sour, gaunt face. He claimed to be Markaine of Caer Marist, famed painter, but Caina knew that he was Morgant the Razor, infamous assassin. 

Right now his expression was caught somewhere between annoyance and incredulity as he looked at the woman.

The knife merchant, too, devoted his entire attention to the woman.

She was striking, taller than both Caina and Morgant, with dark skin, brilliant green eyes, and long silvery hair that Caina had tried to persuade her to cut or dye. The woman would worn the robes of an Iramisian loremaster, but both Caina and Morgant had managed to convince her to wear a simple green dress and headscarf, her distinctive hair bound into a long braid. Her pyrikon rested around her left wrist in the form of a delicate bronze bracelet. The merchant stared at her, eyes wide, and for an awful moment Caina was sure that the man had recognized Annarah, that he was about to call for the watchmen.

But as she hurried over, she saw that the merchant was nodding in agreement. 

“Then…I should speak to him?” said the merchant.

Morgant rolled his eyes.

“You must speak to him,” said Annarah. She spoke Istarish with a peculiar accent. Caina suspected Annarah was one three people left in the world who spoke with the accent of lost Iramis. “Do you not see? He did not mean to insult you. No, he simply wanted a better life for his children, just as you did.”

The merchant nodded again. “My father dug ditches all his days on a plantation in Istarish Cyrica. Now I have risen higher!” He gestured at his booth. 

“Now your son shall rise higher yet,” said Annarah. “When he finishes his studies and becomes a scribe, he shall have the opportunity to provide well for your grandchildren. He did not dishonor you by choosing a different trade. Rather, he followed your example.”

“I had not considered it in that light,” said the merchant. “I always thought scribes were dishonest folk, twisting words and making up documents to cheat hard-working men like myself out of our just profits.” 

“Oh, aye, hard-working indeed,” said Morgant with disdain. He spoke Istarish with a thick burr, his words colored with the accent of Caeria Ulterior. “Selling these knives for thrice their actual worth does work up a sweat, does it not?” He picked up one of the knives, tossed it to himself, and set it back upon the counter. “Tell me, when your father dug ditches, did he always leave them just a foot too shallow? It must run the family. If it does, I suppose your son will forget a word or two in his legal documents when…”

Annarah gave him a look, and Morgant rolled his eyes, but he fell silent. 

“Speak with your son when he returns from Cyrica Urbana,” said Annarah. “I do not have the right to command anyone, but that is what I think you should do.” 

“Yes,” said the merchant, nodding. “You may be right. I shall ponder upon what you have said.” His eyes flicked to Caina. “Ah, good sir! Welcome! Are you planning a trip upon the Great Southern Road? In these perilous times, you should invest in some protection! My blades are the finest in all of Istarinmul…”

“If you want to invest in protection, just give your money directly to the bandits,” said Morgant, stepping away from the booth. “Much more efficient.”

“My apologies, master merchant, but we are late for an appointment,” said Caina. “Come along.”

Annarah smiled one last time at the knife merchant and followed Caina and Morgant from the booth.

“What was that about?” said Caina. 

“The usual,” said Morgant. “Our mutual friend saw a wounded puppy and had to bandage it.”

Annarah shrugged. “I saw his aura. There was great pain in it. A few words revealed that he was estranged from his eldest son. His pain was needless.”

“You cast a spell to see that?” said Caina, glancing at the pyrikon on Annarah’s wrist. 

“No,” said Annarah. “That is one of the abilities of the loremasters, one of the gifts granted to use by the Words of Lore. It is…hard to articulate. We can see auras. Or threads.”

“Threads?” said Caina.

“The lines of destiny, perhaps,” said Annarah. “Some of the loremasters suspected that the mortal world is in fact an endless web of chains, with each decision made by a mortal creating a new link in that chain. Others theorized that time was in fact a tapestry, and that the choices of each individual wove a thread into that tapestry.”

Despite the heat of the day, Caina felt a little chill. “I’ve heard something similar.” The Sifter had seen the world through that lens, and Caina had glimpsed something of the ifrit’s malevolent, alien thoughts. “Tell me something. Do you see anything in my aura? My destiny thread?”

“Why?” said Annarah.

“Indulge me,” said Caina, thinking of Sulaman’s warning.

Annarah shrugged, her green eyes focusing upon Caina. A faint tingle rolled over Caina as Annarah drew upon the peculiar form of sorcery the loremasters had called the Words of Lore. At last Annarah shook her head and looked away. 

“Nothing in particular,” said Annarah. “Only…that there was great pain in your past. And momentous events revolve around you.”

Morgant laughed. “At least you don’t gaze into a crystal ball and ask for silver to cross your palm before you make these pronouncements. Though if we ever run short of money, you could go into business as fortuneteller.” 

Annarah was perhaps the only person Caina had met who never seemed annoyed by Morgant’s endless barbs. She only raised a silver-white eyebrow and smiled. “I see the same thing when I look at you, Master Markaine of Caer Marist.” 

“I am the best painter in Istarinmul,” said Morgant. “Of course you see momentous events swirling around me.” 

“Speaking of paint,” said Caina, “I wish you would dye your hair. If you go around helping people…”

“Constantly,” said Morgant.

“A silver-haired woman with uncanny knowledge is bound to draw attention,” said Caina. “Callatas has a bounty of a million bezants upon your head. There are a lot of people looking for you.”

Annarah smiled. “The bounty upon your head is twice as high as mine. Yet here we are, walking openly through the Bazaar.” 

“True,” said Morgant, “but she’s wearing a false beard that looks as though a rat used it for bedding.” 

“That’s the point,” said Caina. This part of the Bazaar was mostly deserted, so it ought to be safe enough to talk, but she wished Annarah would turn from the subject until they were behind closed doors. “The bounty decrees don’t include my description yet. So I’m dressed as a man. It’s worked so far.”

“Yet they’ve almost caught you any number of times,” said Morgant.

“Aye,” said Caina. The Kindred had set several traps for her. The Red Huntress had come after her. Cassander Nilas had conjured the Sifter and set the ifrit to hunt her down. 

“Someday we shall have to confront Callatas,” said Annarah. She gave a sad shake of her head, her braid rustling against her back. “He was once called Callatas the Wise, the most respected of the loremasters of Iramis. Then he turned his back upon us. He burned Iramis, and in the centuries since, he has wrought the most appalling crimes. The wraithblood may be the greatest of them. I want to know what happened to him. I want to know why one of my kindest and wisest teachers became Grand Master Callatas.” 

They reached the half-rebuilt Shahenshah’s Seat. The walls of the sprawling tavern had survived, though the fire had gutted the interior and collapsed the roof. The workmen had cleared away the debris and whitewashed the walls anew, rebuilding the first floor in the process. The carpenters intended to rebuild floor by floor, which meant that the owner had already reopened the first floor for business, selling beer and wine and cheap bread while the work continued overhead. Caina had financed some of the rebuilding herself, funneling money to the owner in exchange for certain modifications to the building. 

A Ghost circlemaster could never have too many safe houses.

The common room was dim, lit only by the sunlight leaking through the opened shutters. The air smelled of sawdust and plaster, the odors drowning beneath the sour reek of sweat and vomit. Fresh-cut tables and benches littered the room, and even at this hour of the morning there were a large number of caravan guards, porters, teamsters, and farriers sitting at the benches, drinking cheap beer and speaking in low voices. 

Caina crossed the room, Annarah and Morgant following her. Annarah drew some appreciative glances from the men as she walked, but her expression remained serene. A man with close-cropped graying hair leaned against the far wall, arms folded over his muscled chest. He had the look and stance of a veteran of the Imperial Legions, and wore a simple tunic, trousers, and heavy boots, a broadsword sheathed at his belt. He looked at Caina for a moment, and then nodded. 

“Master Ciaran,” said the man. 

“Laertes,” said Caina. “Is he ready?”

“He’s waiting for you,” said Laertes, casting a glance over the others. “The Kyracian’s already here. Come along.”

“You can take the centurion out of the Legion,” said Morgant, “but you can’t take the Legion out of the centurion. Do you sometimes forget and accidentally salute your employer as your tribune?”

Laertes only grunted and led the way to a narrow door. Beyond the stairs descended to the Seat’s cellar, the brick walls still scorched and blackened from the fire. A new doorway had been built in the corner, and Laertes crossed to it and knocked a few times. The door swung open, lantern light spilling out, and Caina stepped into the secret room. She had stocked it with weapons and supplies and other useful things a Ghost might need. As a concession to her guests, she had included a low round table ringed with cushions. Kylon leaned against the wall near the door, wearing the leather armor and rough clothes of a caravan guard, his muscled arms folded over his chest. He smiled at Caina, and she smiled back at him.

Nasser Glasshand, once the last prince of Iramis, rose from his cushion and smiled.

“Ah,” he said in his deep voice, his white teeth flashing in his dark face. “Our friends have arrived. Ciaran, loremaster, welcome.” He wore dark, simple clothing, a scimitar belted at his waist, a glove and bracer of black leather covering his left hand. Given that his left hand was fashioned of some sort of peculiar living crystal, a side effect of the spell that had destroyed Iramis, Caina understood the need for the glove. Nasser’s hand was even more distinctive and unusual than Annarah’s hair. 

“My lord Prince,” said Annarah with a bow. 

“No greeting for me?” said Morgant.

Nasser’s white smile flashed like a knife. “Laertes did not throw you into the street.” 

In answer Morgant snorted, sat upon one of the cushions, and propped his boots on the table. He reached into his coat and drew out a scarab made of jade, wrapped in a short, thick golden chain, and began tossing it to himself. Caina sensed the faint sorcerous aura around the torque, the power worked into it by the long-dead necromancer-priests of ancient Maat.