Ghost in the Flames (2 page)

It was coming from the bed.

Again another memory from that awful day came to her, as she crossed her father’s study, her heart pounding with terror, towards the chair at his desk…

Caina shook aside the memory. She crossed the room, flung open the curtains, and found the source of the awful stench.

Vanio himself lay sprawled across the silken sheets.

Or, rather, what was left of Vanio.

His corpulent body had been reduced to a twisted mass of black char, his fingers curled into shriveled claws, his mouth yawning in an eternal scream, his eyes and nose blackened pits. His teeth seemed shockingly white in the black ruin of his face. The smell rolled off his charred flesh in nauseating waves. Grease seeped from red cracks in his torso, staining into the silken sheets. 

Impossible. 

Caina stepped back, staring at the gruesome corpse. Vanio looked as if he had been roasted atop a pyre, or burned at the stake. Yet she saw no fire damage to the bed or the room, no smoke stains on the walls. Had he been burned elsewhere and carried here? That made no sense either. Caina had been able to sneak into the townhouse, but she doubted a pair of men carrying a charred corpse could have managed the same feat. 

Her mouth tightened. That left only…

“Murder!” shrieked a woman’s voice from the hallway. One of the maids, no doubt. “Murder! Murder! Master Vanio!”

Time to go.

Caina tore the curtain from the bed, wrapped her fist in it, and smashed the window. Leaded glass fell in a rain to the courtyard below. She threw the ledger out the window, and then went through herself, finding easy footholds in the townhouse’s stonework. More lights came on in the windows, and Caina heard more shouts, followed by a shrill scream from the broken windows. 

No doubt the poor maid had found Vanio’s corpse. 

Caina dropped into the courtyard, retrieved the ledger, and scrambled over the wall. More screams and panicked shouts came from the house, but it didn’t sound as if anyone had spotted her. Caina had only wanted to get in and out with Vanio’s ledger, and she hadn’t wanted to kill anyone. How had things gone so wrong?

Well. She hadn’t planned on finding a charred corpse, for one thing.

Caina broke into a full run, the cloak billowing out behind her like a living shadow. 

Chapter 2 - Ark

A run across Mors Crisius took Caina to the Caravaners’ Inn.

It sat on one side of the city’s dusty caravanserai, a rambling pile of whitewashed walls, squared timbers, and red clay roofing tiles. The place could have held two hundred men with ample room to spare. Of course, caravans rarely came through the city now, and hardly anyone stayed at the Caravaners’ Inn.

Halfdan liked it that way. When they had come to the city a month past, he had bought the Inn from its previous owner, and it now served as the Ghosts' local headquarters. 

Caina hurried across the dark, dusty square, passed the Inn’s closed front doors, and came to a small door in the back. She rapped twice on the door with the handle of her knife, then thrice, and then twice more. Nothing happened for a few moments. Then an iron plate rattled aside. A thin shaft of firelight stabbed into the darkness.

It gleamed on the razor-edged tip of a crossbow quarrel.

“Sign?” rasped a man’s voice, low and harsh.

“There are Ghosts in the shadows,” said Caina, reciting the countersign in High Nighmarian, the formal language of the Imperial court, “and let the tyrants tremble in their beds, for the shadows are ever watchful.”

The heavy door swung open. 

A hulking man stood on the threshold, his face half-hidden beneath locks of greasy gray hair. His scarred arms were heavy with muscle, and he carried a massive crossbow drawn and ready. He stared at her for a moment, eyes glittering beneath his lank hair, and then jerked his head. 

“Halfdan,” said Caina, stepping inside.

“You’re late, girl,” said her circlemaster, closing the door and redoing the locks. He switched to the common Caerish tongue. “I expected you back an hour past.”

“There were complications,” said Caina in the same language.

“There are always complications,” said Halfdan. “Did you get the evidence?”

Caina held up the ledger. Halfdan took it, flipped through the pages, and nodded to himself once. “Good. Very good. This is just what we need. When some anonymous fellow takes this evidence to the magistrate, Vanio will go to the sword for his crimes.”

“That will be unnecessary,” said Caina.

Halfdan stared at her for a moment. “I happened to hear the alarm bells in the mortuary temple ringing a short time ago. Murder, I would guess. Did you have something to do with that?”

Caina sighed, drew back her hood, and nodded.

“Is Vanio dead?” 

“Yes.”

Halfdan’s breath rasped through his nostrils. “I told you not to kill Vanio. With proper inducement the magistrate would have made an example of him. Now the people will think that a business rival murdered him, or that the slavers turned on him. Where is the justice in that?” 

“I didn’t kill Vanio,” said Caina, pulling off her mask.

“Who did you kill, then?” said Halfdan. “You killed someone. I can see it in your face.”

“Some of the watchmen,” said Caina. She shook her head. “I got sloppy. I should have just gone out the window, but I ran into them in the hallway.”

Halfdan scowled. “So Vanio yet lives, then? And now he is warned to our presence! We cannot spy for the Emperor if we reveal ourselves.”

“No,” said Caina. “Vanio was dead when I found him.”

“Dead?” said Halfdan, surprised. “How? I saw him walking the streets this very afternoon. Someone got to him before we did?” He scowled suddenly, and leaned towards to her. “You smell…burnt.” 

“He was burned to death,” said Caina, voice soft.

Halfdan blinked, and then his face went very still. Caina had trained under him, had worked under him for years, and she knew that meant trouble.

“Burned?” he said.

“Burned,” said Caina. “It looked as if he had been roasted over a fire for hours. I don’t understand it. There was no fire damage to the room, no smoke damage. Yet it didn’t look as if his corpse had been carried…”

“It looked as if he had been burned to death right there,” said Halfdan, “but the room showed no damage. Is that it?”

“Yes,” said Caina, “how did you know?” 

Halfdan lifted a scarred hand. “Wait.” A flicker of worry went through his face. “You will tell me everything. But with a clear head. I don’t want you to forget any details.” He beckoned, tucking the crossbow under one arm. “Come.” 

Caina followed him down the narrow hallway. They went down a flight of stairs to the Inn’s common room, its ceiling supported by thick wooden pillars. Casks of wine rested against the stone walls, while wine bottles stood in neat racks, and a fire crackled in a cavernous stone hearth. Caina sank wearily into a wooden chair, while Halfdan picked up a pair of goblets and crossed to one of the casks.

“What will you have?”

“I don’t care,” said Caina. “So long as it’s mixed.”  Halfdan opened one of the casks and began filling the goblets. Caina did not know what Halfdan had done before he had joined the Emperor’s Ghosts, but she had a strong suspicion that he had been a vintner. He knew more about wine than any man she had ever met. 

She did not know how his old life had ended and his new life as a circlemaster of the Ghosts had begun, but the scars on his arms suggested that experience had not been pleasant. 

Nor had Caina’s. 

“Mixed?” said Halfdan, cutting into her thoughts. “That ruins the palate.”

“Mixed,” said Caina. 

“You brood too much, girl.”

“I cannot argue. And alcohol makes me brood. So mixed wine.” 

“Suit yourself,” said Halfdan. He handed her a goblet. Caina took it and drank. It did feel cool and pleasant against her throat, and the aroma helped drown out the stench of burned flesh that still clung to her.  

“Thank you.”

“Now,” said Halfdan, settling into another chair. “Tell me everything. Leave nothing out.”

She told him. She described the townhouse, the watchmen, the safe and the ledger, and the sharp, vicious fight in the upstairs hallway. Halfdan listened without interrupting, and at last she came to Vanio’s charred corpse.

“So you could smell it the entire time?” said Halfdan.

“Yes.”

“Recent, then,” said Halfdan. “And no damage to the room?”

“No,” said Caina. “He was a big man. Three hundred pounds, at least. Yet he’d been burned down to a husk. A fire like that should have reduced that house to ashes. And yet there weren’t even smoke stains on the walls.” 

“So his body was moved into the room, then.”

“No,” said Caina again. “No. There were no char marks on the floor.” She frowned, watching the wine ripple within the goblet. “And he had been…cooked. There was grease pooling beneath him, staining the sheets. I did not see any grease on the floor.”

Halfdan grunted, took a long swallow of wine. “Could it have been cleaned up?”

Caina scoffed. “That carpet he had on the floor? It would take a dozen maids all day to clean that carpet. I don’t see how it could have been cleaned. Especially if Vanio had only been dead for a few hours.”

“Very well,” said Halfdan. He glanced at the door, then back at her. “Then we have a man burned to death in his bed, with no damage to the bed or the room, and no signs that the body was moved. How, then, was Vanio killed?”

Caina stared at the fire, rolling the goblet in her fingers.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. 

“Think it through. Have I not always told you that the mind is sharper than any blade?”

Caina thought for a moment. “Sorcery.” Her voice hardened with contempt. “A brother of the Imperial Magisterium.”

“But have you ever seen a magus do something like this?” said Halfdan. “Or even heard of it?”

“No,” said Caina. She had seen magi use their arts to dominate the minds of others, to lift boulders with a thought, to cloak themselves in illusion and ward themselves from all harm. And to do worse things, but nothing like what had happened to Vanio. “No. The magi are villains, cowards, liars, and murderers, but I’ve never heard of a magus using fire. Isn’t that one of the arcane sciences forbidden to them?”

Not that such a restriction would ever stop them, of course. She kept her voice level, but her thumb rubbed the heavy signet ring through her glove. 

“So if the magi didn’t kill Vanio, who did?” said Halfdan.

“I don’t know,” said Caina again.

“Then it is our task to find out,” said Halfdan. “The Emperor himself has commanded it of us.”

“The Emperor?” Caina sat up a little straighter. “Why should the Emperor care about some wretched slave merchant?” 

“Vanio’s death is not an isolated aberration,” said Halfdan. “Do you know the city of Rasadda?”

“I’ve never been there, but I know of it,” said Caina. She thought for a moment. “The capital of the Saddai Province. A week’s ride east of here, along the coast road. Shorter by ship. It used to be the capital of the old Saddai kingdom, before the Saddai became part of the Empire.” She frowned. “During…the War of the Second Empire, I think. In fact, old Crisius was the Emperor who conquered them. They built this city around his tomb and mortuary temple, didn’t they?”

Halfdan nodded. “They did. And over the past year, twenty people have been found dead in Rasadda.”

Caina stared at him.

“All of them burned to death,” said Halfdan, “in much the same circumstances as you found Vanio. No trace of a fire, no sign that the bodies were moved, and yet still they were burned alive. You can see why the Emperor might take an interest.”

“Twenty people?” said Caina. “How is that possible?”

“We don’t know,” said Halfdan. “The Ghost circle in Rasadda became suspicious, and sent word to the Masters in the capital, asking for assistance. You will be that assistance, girl.”

“Me?” said Caina. “Why?”

“Because you are good at finding things out,” said Halfdan, “and no one knows how or why these people have been killed. Sorcery of some sort must be involved, but we don’t know what kind.”

“The Magisterium,” said Caina. “It’s plain enough. Some rogue magus dabbling in forbidden arts. It’s happened before, and it will happen again.”

“Unlikely,” said Halfdan. “Have you ever heard of an order called the Ashbringers?”

Caina frowned. “Yes. I…”

The door to the Inn’s common room swung open.

Halfdan had his crossbow leveled before Caina even had time to blink. “Sign?”

The newcomer stopped, and Caina took a good look at him, her hand slipping beneath her cloak to a knife. The man looked like a killer, his face grim and weathered, his mouth a hard line, his hands marked with faint scars, his balding hair close-cropped. He wore a ragged red tunic, trousers, and worn boots, and a broadsword hung from his belt. 

His eyes glittered like ice, or frosted steel, and Caina saw no fear in his face. Then his eyes met hers. For a moment the color drained from his face, and he took a half-step forward. Then he stopped, still staring at her, and something like desolation sank into his grim face. 

“Sign?” said Halfdan. “I’d really prefer not to shoot you. The blood would take forever to mop up.” 

There are Ghosts in the shadows,” said the man, speaking High Nighmarian with a heavy Caerish accent, “and let the tyrants tremble in their beds, for the shadows are ever watchful.”

“You’re late. But good enough,” said Halfdan, setting the crossbow aside. 

“That gets tiresome,” said the man in Caerish, stepping forward. He had excellent balance, and Caina guessed he knew how to use that broadsword. “You know who I am.”

“Protocol is protocol,” said Halfdan, “and you should have come through the back door. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you on sight.” He gestured at the casks. “Wine?”

“Do you have any word?” said the man. “And news at all?”

“No,” said Halfdan. “I’m sorry.”

The man nodded, his expression unchanging, and crossed to the wine casks. He filled a goblet and joined them at the table. His eyes flicked to Caina, cold and sharp, and then moved on, dismissing her. 

Caina wondered what that had been about. 

“You may call this man Ark,” said Halfdan. “He is a member of the Ghost circle in Rasadda, and will assist us.” He gestured at Caina. “For reasons that will soon become clear, there is no good reason for you to know this young woman’s name. She is a Ghost as well, of nightfighter rank, and you may call her the Countess Marianna Nereide.” 

Caina outranked him. Ark’s left eye twitched, once, but he said nothing. She knew the name Marianna Nereide, as well; she had masqueraded as the Countess in the past, spying for the Ghosts. 

“Now, Countess,” said Halfdan, “you were telling me about the Ashbringers.”

A faint frown flickered across Ark’s face, but he remained silent.

“I know very little,” said Caina. “Nothing more than what I have read about the history of the Empire, and what you told me about them. They were a band of sorcerer-priests, and they worshipped the Saddai god. The Living Flame, I think. Fire fueled their sorcery, and the Ashbringers were loathed for their brutality. They…tried to enslave all the world, but the Emperor founded the Magisterium to fight their sorcery, and the Ghosts to spy on them, and old Crisius wiped them out below the walls of Rasadda.” 

“Very good,” said Halfdan.

Caina shook her head. “That’s ancient history. Centuries gone. What does it matter? Does the Emperor think some Ashbringer has killed these people?” 

“We don’t know,” said Halfdan. “But the Emperor wishes us to find out. Certainly the deaths match the ancient descriptions of the Ashbringers’ spells. If some zealous follower of the Living Flame has rediscovered the Ashbringers’ arts, the Empire itself could be in danger. The magi of the Magisterium are corrupt and wicked, but at least they do not practice forbidden arts, at least not openly. The Ashbringers did, and if the histories are correct, they were outright madmen, and murderous madmen at that.” He shrugged. “Certainly they should remain in the dust of history.”

“If only the Magisterium could join them there,” said Caina. Ark gave her another appraising glance, but he remained silent. “But I am doubtful. The Magisterium governs the arcane sciences in the Empire, and they do not suffer rival practitioners. If some fool tried to become an Ashbringer, the magi would kill him within a month.”