Ghost Keeper (5 page)

They were blue. Most men of Anshani and Istarish descent had brown or black eyes, but there were always exceptions. Yet this man’s eyes were a pale, ghostly, blue. The color of flames licking at the bottom of an iron pan. 

No one had eyes that color.

The old beggar looked at Caina, his eyes widening.

“Who are you?” said Caina in Istarish, remembering to keep her Caerish accent in place.

“Wraithblood,” he whispered.

“Wraithblood,” said Caina. “That is your name?”

“Wraithblood,” said the old man. “Coins. Give me coins. I will buy the black blood again. And then I shall see my wife and sons and my daughters. They all died so long ago. I can…I can tell them I am sorry. I can…coins.” He raised his wasted hands, as if to paw at Caina’s legs, but they dropped into his lap. “Coins. I will buy wraithblood. Buy the black blood.” 

“What happened to you?” said Caina. 

“I…I do not remember,” said the old beggar. “The blood…the blood takes away the pain. I…I think…”

His strange eyes grew huge, and he shied against the wall.

“I can see you,” he whispered. 

“Of course you can,” said Caina. “I am right here.”

“The shadows,” said the beggar. “I can…I can see all the shadows. So many shadows! They are following you! All the shadows!” He began to weep. “Don’t let them hurt me, please, don’t let them…”

“I won’t hurt you,” said Caina. “I…”

“Here, now,” said a gruff voice. “What is this? Begging is illegal.”

Caina turned, and saw a stout man approaching. He was about twenty-five, and unlike the slaves and the beggars, he looked well-fed. He wore gleaming chain mail beneath a jerkin of black leather, and a scimitar rested at his belt. A steel badge pinned to his jerkin showed a hand holding a coiled, thorn-studded whip.

The sigil of the Slavers’ Brotherhood of Istarinmul. 

This man was a Collector, one of the Brotherhood’s lowest ranks, a hunter who ranged about seeking new slaves for the Brotherhood’s markets.

Or one who kidnapped solitary foreigners from the docks.

Such as Caina. 

“His eyes,” said Caina.

“Eh?” said the Collector, surprised. “What about them?”

“Is he sick?” said Caina. 

“What?” said the Collector. “No, he’s addicted to wraithblood.”

“What is wraithblood?” said Caina, watching for the Collector’s associates. 

“A drug,” said the Collector. “The poor and other such vermin prefer it. Apparently it gives visions of dead loved ones and other such rot. Eventually it drives its users insane and turns their eyes blue.” He swept a thick arm over the street. “You’ll see hundreds of them here. The Padishah ought to have them killed and spare honest men the stench.”

“Indeed,” said Caina. The Collector was looking at her with barely concealed greed. A plan, hard and cold, came together in her mind. “Which way to the Cyrican Quarter? I’ve messages to deliver.”

“Why, right that way,” said the Collector. “Head up the street with the warehouses and take a right turn at the public fountain. You will come to the Cyrican Bazaar shortly.”

In between her frenetic exercise sessions and throwing knives at the mast, Caina had taken the time to memorize a map of Istarinmul. The Collector’s directions were wrong.

Likely leading her into a trap.

“Thank you,” said Caina, and she left without another word. 

She counted to twenty, and then glanced over her shoulder to see the Collector hastening away, no doubt to warn his friends. 

The old beggar stared at her, his strange eyes full of terror. 

Caina looked over the other beggars and saw many like the old man, their eyes transformed to that pale blue color. 

And from every one of them she felt the faint hint of a sorcerous aura.

Strange. Very strange. But Caina had more immediate concerns at the moment.

She turned the corner and walked down the street lined with warehouses. It was deserted at the moment. 

The perfect place to make a foreigner disappear into a slaver’s inventory.

Caina considered for a moment, then went to one of the warehouses. The masonry was rough, and she found ample handholds and footholds. A moment later she climbed to the roof, and jumped from warehouse to warehouse, taking care to avoid the skylights.

No one ever looked up. 

She jumped to the last warehouse, dropped down, and crawled to the edge of the roof. The street ended in a square surrounded by three towering, rickety tenements of whitewashed brick. A small fountain occupied the center of the square, and the place looked deserted.

Save for the four men in black leather jerkins waiting there. One of them carried a net, and another a set of iron shackles. Their plans for Caina were clear enough. Likely they planned to sell her to the mines, or perhaps to the fighting pits.

She felt a flicker of grim amusement as she imagined their reaction once they learned they had kidnapped a woman. Caina was not unattractive, and she knew how to dress and carry herself to appear pleasing to the eyes of men, but the massive scar across her belly would keep them from selling her to some nobleman’s harem. Likely they would sell her as a kitchen drudge or a domestic servant, and such slaves commanded far lower prices than strong backs for the mines. 

Well, she would inflict far more serious disappointments upon them before the day was done.

Caina crawled back along the roof and peered through one of the skylights. The warehouse below was deserted, and stored massive heaps of bulging sacks, lashed in place by rope nets. After a moment’s examination, Caina realized that the sacks held rice. The plantations of Istarinmul grew coffee and fruit and olives and many other things, but the Istarish themselves ate a great deal of rice.

Enough rice to pile it in sacks twenty feet high.

Caina dropped through the skylight and landed on one of the piles, a puff of dust rising from her boots. She scrambled down the net to the floor, and examined the knots for a moment. Then she drew her short sword and went to work, cutting ropes here and there. She stepped back, nodded in satisfaction, and after a moment’s thought hid her heavy pack behind another one of the piles.

She was going to have to run very quickly, and she did not want it slowing her down.

Then she went out the front door, making sure to leave it open behind her. 

Caina walked the remainder of the street and into the square. She ought to feel frightened, she knew, but she felt nothing but an icy indifference. Though she did feel anger. 

Quite a lot of it, now that she thought about it.

She took on more step into the square as the Collectors moved toward her.

“Welcome,” said the Collector she had spoken with earlier, smiling as he raised a club. “You’re going to come with us. Put down your weapons and come quietly. If not, well…you’ll fetch just as high of a price with a few bruises.” 

Caina made an expression of terror come over her face, and then spun and ran for the rice warehouse.

“Take him!” roared the lead Collector, and the men sprang after her.

They were fast. Which made sense, since they kidnapped people for a living. Caina head the crack of leather as two of the Collectors unfurled whips, no doubt to entangle her legs and pull her down. 

But she had a head start, and she dashed back into the warehouse. 

And as she did, she yanked a dagger from its sheath and slashed through the remaining rope holding the massive stack of rice sacks in place.

The Collectors ran through the door after her.

“You’re just making it harder on yourself,” said the leader, grinning. “I am going to…”

Right about then the twenty-foot stack of sacks collapsed, and two or three tons of dry rice fell upon the Collectors. 

The sheer force of the impact drove one man to the ground with such force that his head cracked against the hard floor. The other three men disappeared as dozens of forty-pound rice sacks fell upon them with bone-cracking force. Caina heard limbs snap, heard the Collectors scream. One man clawed his way free, and Caina cut his throat before he regained his feet. Another was trapped beneath three sacks, screaming in pain, and Caina put him out of his misery.

The lead Collector staggered to his feet, his left arm hanging at an odd angle. He turned towards Caina with a furious curse, but she seized his left arm and twisted. The Collector fell with a scream of agony, and she kicked him in the gut and sent him sprawling. He tried to stand, but she put her boot on his broken arm and he went rigid.

“Who are you?” whispered the Collector.

“Why did you try to take me?” said Caina.

“The…the Brotherhood,” said the Collector, “they’re buying slaves right and left.” His words tumbled out in a terrified rush. “It…it ought to flood the market, but the prices keep going up and up. I’ve never seen anything like it. It…it wasn’t personal, I just need the money…”

She looked into his eyes and saw the fear there. And for some reason she remembered the final words of Horemb the scribe before he passed to the next world, the words he had claimed would one day aid her.

“The star is the key to the crystal,” she said. “Do you know what that means?” 

“I…I don’t know, I swear,” said the Collector. “A poem? I don’t know. Let me go. I’ll do whatever you want. What do you want?”

The question cut into her like a knife.

She remembered Corvalis, remembered his strong arms around her. His dark wit, and the way his green eyes flashed when he found something funny. The aplomb with which he had masqueraded as Anton Kularus, merchant of coffee. His mouth against hers, his body against hers…

She did not know what might have passed over her expression, but dread flooded the Collector’s face.

“I want Corvalis back,” she told him, “but I will settle for one less slave trader in the world.”

He started to scream, but her dagger cut the cry short.

Caina cleaned her weapons and her hands and stepped over the mess to the door. Whoever found the dead Collectors would likely assume they had fallen to fighting and accidentally knocked over the sacks. So long as Caina departed quickly, she need not worry about vengeance from the Brotherhood or the dead men’s families. 

Odd, that. She had just killed four men…and she felt nothing at all. Once she would have felt guilty over it. But now, it seemed, she felt nothing but grief. 

And rage.

Still, the Collectors had deserved it. How many innocent men and women and children had they sold into slavery? 

Again Caina felt the overwhelming sense of futility, but shoved it aside with some effort. 

She left the warehouse, made sure she was unobserved, and set off for the Cyrican Quarter and the House of Agabyzus.

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Ghost in the Cowl
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