Ghost in the Cowl (16 page)

“And I am just a courier,” said Caina, “and know nothing of such doings.” 

But she had been doing more than just pushing her luck. She had been shoving her luck as hard and as fast as she could manage. So far her gambles had paid off, and she had been aided by the tremendous apathy of the Istarish slaves. The cruelty of their masters had taught the slaves to look the other way, to never ask questions, and to close their eyes when anything unusual happened. Caina could never have robbed the mansions of Malarae as she robbed the palaces of the Brotherhood – the merchants and Imperial nobles hired capable guards, and did not trust their security to indifferent slaves and homicidal Immortals. 

But sooner or later, Caina would push too far, and then she would be killed. 

“Perhaps,” said Damla in a quiet voice, “the Balarigar is in mourning.”

Caina blinked. “Oh?” 

“It seems to me that a man like the Balarigar,” said Damla, “would only risk his life so boldly if he thought he had nothing left to live for, if he had lost someone…very dear to him.”

Caina said nothing, though she felt her eyes start to sting. 

“If I could meet the Balarigar,” said Damla in a careful voice, “I would tell him that such a loss…it changes you, yes. It never leaves you. But it is not the end.” Her eyes strayed to where Bayram carried a tray of coffee from the kitchen. “There is life beyond it. But only if you do not destroy yourself first.”

“I suppose you would know,” said Caina. 

Damla laughed and brushed the black cloth of her headscarf. “Better than I would wish, alas.” 

Caina took a deep breath, got to her feet, and walked out the front door. She stopped and looked into the darkened Bazaar, taking deep breaths. After a moment she heard the door open again, and Damla stepped into the night.

“Did I offer offense?” she said. “If so, I apologize.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” said Caina, taking another deep breath. She wiped at her eyes. “It’s just…you were right.” She shook her head. “How did you know? What gave me away?”

Damla sighed. “I fear I know grief as intimately as I knew my husband. And I see the grief in you.” 

Caina looked around, made sure they were alone. “Corvalis. His name was Corvalis. And there was another man, the one who raised me. Halfdan. They…both died when the golden dead came.”

“I am sorry,” said Damla. “And I am honored that you trust me enough to speak of it, though puzzled.”

Caina shrugged. “You already know enough to get you killed a dozen times over. What are a few more secrets at this point?”

Damla gave a quiet laugh. “This is so.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“Do you want to know another secret?” said Caina. She did not know why she was talking of this, and part of her mind warned that it was a terrible idea, but she desperately wanted to talk to someone. 

“If you trust me enough to speak of it, I shall listen,” said Damla.

“Corvalis saved your life,” said Caina. “The lives of your sons, too. All of our lives.” 

“How?” said Damla.

“The golden dead,” murmured Caina. “I was there when it began, in New Kyre. The sorceress of Szaldic legend, the Moroaica, created them. A mad plan to forge a new and better humanity. We tried to stop her. She would have killed me, but Corvalis threw himself in front of her spell. That distracted her long enough for me to strike her down, aand the golden dead died once more when her spell collapsed.”

They stood in silence once more, and Caina felt hot tears upon her cheeks.

“By the Living Flame,” whispered Damla. “Were you any other woman, I would say you were a charlatan…but I have seen you do wonders with my own eyes. You are telling the truth.” 

“I wish I were not,” said Caina.

“What wonders and horrors you have seen,” said Damla. “And we all owe a great debt to your Corvalis.” 

“We do,” said Caina. “If he had not done it, the golden dead would have devoured the world. Yet…I wish that he had not. I wish that more than anything. I wish he were still here.”

Again they lapsed into silence. 

“There are no words that offer comfort, I fear,” said Damla. “I know this well, for when my husband died, I heard all the comforting words. That he had died in service to his Padishah, an honorable death. That I was still young enough to find another man, if I wished. That I had my sons, at least, which was true, and I love them dearly. That at least I would not be impoverished, and would not have to sell myself into slavery. All these things are true…and still they offered no comfort. But there is one thing I can tell you.”

“What is that?” said Caina.

“Do not destroy yourself in your grief.”

“Why not?” said Caina. "I'm not trying to be glib. I...just want to know. Why not?" 

“I asked myself that question,” said Damla, “and I realized that the answer was that my husband would not have wanted me to do so. And I am sure your Corvalis would want you to live and thrive, and this Halfdan who was as a father to you.”

Caina shook her head. “That is…an effective argument, Damla.” 

“It worked on me,” said Damla. “But, please, Ciara…do not throw yourself to your death. Though if you were to die, there are worse ways to do than by bringing misfortune upon the heads of the Brotherhood.” 

“I suppose so,” said Caina. She another breath. “Thank you. I feel…”

“Not better,” said Damla, “but steadier?”

“Yes, that is it,” said Caina. “I have an errand to undertake. I shall be back before the House closes for the night.”

“Please,” said Damla. “Be careful.”

Caina smiled. “I shall be perfectly safe.”

###

That had been a lie. Caina was not going to put herself in any physical danger tonight, not unless the Teskilati and the Immortals tracked her down. 

But as she looked at the ledgers and letters spread across the Sanctuary floor, she suspected they held some very dangerous information. 

Whenever she raided the house of a cowled master, she had made sure to take any documents and ledgers along with gold and gems. She had no immediate need for the money, but its loss discomforted the Brotherhood and the funds would likely prove of use later. The letters and the ledgers, though, they did something else.

They told her a story.

A story dark and dangerous.

The papers lay arranged in an orderly pattern upon the Sanctuary’s floor, and Caina had dragged some of the iron stands near to provide adequate light for reading. 

In the shape of the documents, Caina had seen a pattern of slaves. 

Master Kazyan had sold three hundred slaves to Callatas a month past. They had been delivered to Callatas’s lieutenant Ricimer, who had apparently been appointed Wazir of the Widow’s Tower a year past. 

A week before she had robbed his palace, Markut had sold his entire inventory of slaves, all four hundred of them, to Callatas. Once again they had been delivered to the Alchemist Ricimer, in his office as Wazir of the Widow’s Tower.

She saw the same pattern over and over again. Two hundred slaves, sold to Callatas, delivered to Ricimer at the Widow’s Tower. Three hundred, four hundred, even one group of nearly six hundred. Others of the Brotherhood had sold smaller groups, but Callatas had purchased slaves from almost all of the cowled masters, and the numbers added up. 

In the last year, nearly four thousand slaves had been sold to Callatas and moved to the Widow’s Tower. Surely the production of Hellfire did not require that much manual labor. For that matter, was there even room at the Widow’s Tower for that many slaves? Where would they all sleep? Feeding a garrison of soldiers was one thing. Feeding that many slaves was quite another. 

Perhaps the work was as dangerous as Damla said, and the Widow’s Tower burned (perhaps literally) through workers that quickly. 

Caina checked the numbers again. The slaves went to the Tower in waves. As recently as three months ago, nearly a thousand had gone to Ricimer and the Widow’s Tower at once. Yet three months after that, Markut had sent another four hundred slaves to Ricimer. 

Why?

It did not make any sense. 

Caina checked the gaps between the deliveries to the Tower. Callatas had continued buying slaves in that time, but those slaves had been sent to the Desert of Candles, to the mines that Callatas owned there. Yet he had never purchased as many slaves for his mines as he did for the Widow’s Tower. That made even less sense. Surely mining required more raw physical labor than mixing alchemical reagents. 

Yet the records Caina had stolen showed that the Brotherhood had sent nearly three times as many slaves to the Widow’s Tower.

Caina sat cross-legged in the middle of the papers for a long while, thinking hard. The pieces of the puzzle swirled in her mind. All those slaves. Callatas’s strange questions to her at Ulvan’s ascension, and his conversation with Ricimer after. The ghostly blue eyes of the wraithblood addicts. The murmurs she had heard from Sulaman and others that something was wrong in Istarinmul, terribly wrong. 

Caina suspected that the Widow’s Tower held the answer to her questions.

She would just have to find them for herself.

Chapter 15 - The Widow’s Tower

The next morning, Caina rose early and headed for the Alqaarin Quarter.

Nearly two months spent robbing palaces and fleeing from the Immortals had given her a fairly thorough grasp of Istarinmul’s geography by now. The Istarish called all their city’s districts Quarters, though there rather considerably more than four of them. The Cyrican Quarter faced the western harbor. The powerful and the wealthy resided in the Masters’ Quarter and the Emirs’ Quarter, though some cowled masters lived in the Emirs’ Quarter and some emirs in the Masters’. No one in their right mind went to the College of Alchemists and the surrounding Alchemists’ Quarter unless summoned. The Merchants’ Quarter held the Grand Bazaar, where men came to buy and sell from across the world, and the Slavers’ Quarter hosted the auctions of the Slaves’ Bazaar and the stinking pens that stored the slaves until their new owners carried them away in chains. The Anshani Quarter was a sprawling slum that housed most of the city’s poor, those who received a weekly bread ration from the Wazir of Grain. 

The Alqaarin Quarter faced to the east, to the Alqaarin Sea and the road that led southeast to the Desert of Candles and the Widow’s Tower. 

Caina bought what she needed there, using some of the coins she had looted from the Brotherhood, and headed into the desert. 

The land outside of Istarinmul’s walls was arid, the sun blazing mercilessly overhead. The city might have been surrounded by the sea, but rain never fell here, and nothing but tough grass grew outside of the walls. All the city’s food came from the south, from the Vale of Fallen Stars and the Kaltari Highlands, supplemented by fishermen sailing from the twin harbors. An army could starve out the city in short order, if not for Istarinmul’s control of the Starfall Straits. 

Caina walked at a steady pace, taking a moment to adjust her burnoose. She had adorned herself as one of the tribesmen of the Trabazon steppes south of the city, with a brown robe, turban, and burnoose, sandals upon her feet and a scimitar at her rough leather belt. The tribesmen rarely had pale skin and blue eyes, but she had donned a false beard and smeared her face with dust and grit, as if she had spent a long time walking into the desert winds. If anyone troubled her, she would claim that she searched for a missing goat from her tribe. The steppe tribesmen were notoriously prickly, and often declared a blood feud at the slightest offense. 

She kept walking, feeling the weight of the waterskin slung over her shoulder. The road veered southeast past the city’s walls, and to the north Caina saw Istarinmul’s eastern harbor, just as choked with merchant ships and fishing vessels as the western harbor. The Alqaarin Sea stretched to the north and west, brilliant and blue in the harsh sun. The road marched along a bluff overlooking the sea, and Caina passed dozens of carts, merchants traveling south to trade with the Vale of Fallen Stars or Anshan, or heading north to sell their wares in the city.

No one spoke to her. The steppe tribesmen had a reputation. 

Four miles outside of the city, the road continued southeast, but a large spit of rocky land turned to the north, its cliffs rising a hundred feet above the churning waves. 

And atop that crag sat the Widow’s Tower. 

The fortress filled the entire peninsula, its grim gray walls rising from the very edge of the cliffs. Towers jutted from the walls, and atop the turrets stood siege engines. Any ships attempting to attack the eastern harbor would have to sail past the Widow’s Tower, and the engines upon the wall could fling jars of Hellfire upon the enemy vessels. From what Caina had heard of Hellfire, it could devour a ship in seconds.

Three massive drum towers dominated the fortress’s courtyard, each rising a hundred and fifty feet tall. Walls and narrow bridges linked the drum towers. Caina saw soldiers in the spiked helms and scale mail shirts of Istarish infantry patrolling the walls. 

The fortress was large and strong, but it was not large enough. Cramming four thousand slaves into the place would prove challenging. Perhaps Callatas had the slaves brought here before moving them elsewhere? Yet that seemed a waste of time. Why not just send them to the mines and be done with it? Why send them to the Tower first?

Caina needed a closer look at the Tower. Yet it was guarded, and she suspected the soldiers would show the sort of vigilance she had not seen in the guards of the Master Slavers. A good deal of traffic moved up and down the road, but if Caina lingered too long, she would draw the attention of the guards.

That would likely be fatal. 

Yet she saw a weakness. Rocks and boulders littered the fifty yards or so of ground between the road and the Tower’s outer gates, no doubt intended to hinder any attacking soldiers. Yet the same boulders would allow a determined scout to get close to the walls without drawing notice. 

And Caina was determined.

Now. How to get off the road without drawing undue notice?

The answer came to her a moment later. She turned, wandered off the road, and moved behind a boulder, as if she wanted to remain unseen by the travelers.

Then she squatted and hiked up her robes, as if she needed to relieve herself. 

Caina stared at the outer wall, watching the guards. So far she had not drawn any attention. Her eyes wandered over the boulder-strewn ground between the road and the walls, mapping out the position of the rocks. It would be possible to get closer to the wall unseen, if she was careful and used the massive chunks of rock as cover. But to what end? She needed to get inside the Tower and look around, not stare at its walls for hours. If she…

Something caught her eye at the base of the cliffs below the fortress.

A peculiar white fringe, clinging to the rocky beach, spotted here and there with blotches of pale color. 

Surely it was just some plants. Or dead fish, washed ashore by the action of the tide. 

Yet something about it set off a warning in Caina’s head. 

She straightened up, adjusted her robes, and wandered northwest. She came to the edge of the bluffs, picked up a few rocks, and started throwing them into the sea, trying to give the impression of a bored tribesman killing time. Caina hoped the traffic on the road would mask her presence, but if she loitered too long, one of the guards upon the wall might come to investigate. 

And as she threw another rock, she got a good look at the beach below the cliff, and felt her blood turn to ice. The white fringe was neither seaweed nor dead fish.

Bones. Lots and lots of bones. The pale splotches were human corpses in various states of decay. From the walls overlooking the cliff, the guards within the fortress must throw corpses over the battlements. They would land on the beach, and eventually the tide would drag them out, and the corpses would decay or fall prey to various hungry scavengers. 

Caina was so disturbed that she headed back towards the road, lest her reaction draw the guards' eye. 

There were bones from dozens, even hundreds, of corpses down there. Did the guards execute disobedient slaves by flinging them off the wall? Or did they kill the slaves within the Tower and then dump the corpses into the sea? The production of Hellfire was apparently quite dangerous, and Damla had said the slaves at the Tower had a high attrition rate. 

Or did Callatas send the slaves to the Tower and kill them for a different reason?

Some necromantic spell, perhaps? Sorcery fueled by death and blood, as Caina had seen so many times before?

She saw movement upon the walls, and stopped to watch, fearing that the guards might have come for her. Instead she saw pair of guards moving along the ramparts, dragging something between them.

They flung their burden over the battlements.

A dead man

The corpse fell and struck a rock halfway down the cliff. It tumbled away and disappeared into the waves with a splash. It was possible, Caina supposed, that the man had died of natural causes. Or that he had perished in accident. 

Or he had been deliberately killed for some other reason.

The reason eluded Caina. Callatas had spent a vast fortune on slaves, and even the Grand Master of the College would not have unlimited wealth. Why spend so much money on slaves and then murder them?

It made no sense.

Caina needed to find a way inside the Widow’s Tower. Something dark was happening with its walls, and she needed to ferret it out. 

So. How to get inside?

That would be much harder than raiding a Master Slaver’s palace.

She turned back to the road and saw a dozen Immortals approaching. 

For an alarmed instant she thought the Immortals and the Teskilati had tracked her down at last. But the Immortals were escorting three wagons. Each wagon carried an iron cage.

And each cage held a dozen slaves. 

Caina had terrorized the cowled masters during the last month and a half, but Callatas still had his need for slaves. Two men walked at the head of the little caravan. One had the look of a mercenary and wore chain mail, sword and dagger at his belt, his face unshaven, his clothing worn. The second was in his middle forties, and wore steel-studded leather armor, a scimitar and dagger on his belt. His face was hard and clean-shaven, his nose like a hawk’s beak, and…

A flash of recognition went through Caina.

Anburj. The man who had claimed to be the head of Ulvan’s guards, the man who had led the raid upon the House of Agabyzus. Caina had not seen him during Ulvan’s ascension and the resultant chaos. That had not troubled her. Thousands of people had filled the gardens during the celebrations, and in the chaos she might have simply missed him.

Yet now he was taking more slaves to the Widow’s Tower. Had Ulvan recovered from his disgrace? No, the slaves had been branded with the sigil of another cowled master. 

So what was Anburj doing here?

The wagons turned towards the Tower, the donkeys grunting. Anburj and the mercenary spoke in low voices, and Caina edged closer, hoping to overhear their discussion.

And as she did, Anburj’s hard eyes fell upon Caina.

Did he recognize her? He snapped his fingers, two of the Immortals stepping to his side. Anburj strode toward her, the mercenary and the two Immortals following him.

A jolt of fear went through Caina, and she considered her options. She could try to run, but there were too many Immortals. Fighting was out of the question. That left only bluffing.

She settled her face into a truculent glare and scowled at Anburj.

Anburj, the mercenary, and the Immortals stopped a few paces away.

“You seem,” Anburj said in a quiet voice, “most interested in us, boy. Why is that?”

“Damned steppe vermin,” said the mercenary. There a slur in his voice, and Caina wondered if he was drunk. “The Padishah ought to have killed you all years ago. It…”

“Be silent, Yunus,” said Anburj. “Boy. Explain your presence here.”

“Goat,” said Caina in a thick voice.

“What about a goat?” said Anburj.

“I want my goat,” said Caina.

Anburj sighed and drew a dagger, the blade glinting. As he shifted the blade to point at her, another shock of recognition went through Caina. She recognized the way he held the weapon, the way his stance shifted as he gripped it. She had seen it before, again and again. Corvalis had used the same stance and grip when wielding a dagger.

Anburj was an assassin of the Kindred. 

“Let us be candid with each other, shall we?” said Anburj, the point of his dagger motionless a few inches from her face. “I would prefer not to kill you.” He grabbed her shoulder and jerked her forward, the Immortals closing around them. “The last thing I need is some damned Trabazon tribesmen lurking outside the walls, and if I kill you, we’ll have a blood feud with your tribe. I’d prefer not to be knifed in my bed. But I have no trouble sending you back to your tribe without a hand or an ear. So you’re going to tell me what you are doing here, or else I will cut pieces off until you do. Do we understand each other?”

Caina was relieved. He did not recognize her. Amazing was a false beard, a burnoose, and some dust could accomplish.

“You took my goat,” said Caina in her thick voice. 

“Goat?” said Anburj. “What goat?”

Yunus snorted. “The damned tribesmen. Goat humpers, every last one of them.” He laughed. “He probably took the goat into his bedroll and made it his wife.” He laughed again. No one joined him. 

“I told you to shut up,” said Anburj. “What goat?”

“One of our goats, it wanders off,” said Caina, gesturing. “My father, he sends me to find it. The soldiers in the fortress take the goat and eat it.” 

“No,” said Anburj. “They are not to leave the fortress for any reason. Their orders are very clear…and the penalty for disobedience is death.” 

“Then where is my goat?” said Caina. 

“Do I look like I give a damn?” said Anburj. His free hand blurred, and before Caina could react, he backhanded her across the face. She lost her balance and landed hard, spittle and blood flying from her mouth. 

When her eyes cleared she found Anburj’s scimitar resting on her throat.

“I don’t want trouble with your tribe,” said Anburj, “so I’m not going to kill you. But take a message back to your elders. You will stay away from the Widow’s Tower, all of you. The fortress is under the authority of the College of Alchemists, and they do not tolerate interference. If I see any of you near the Tower again, any of you at all, I will have you killed. Do you understand me?”

Caina nodded. And as she did, she saw the ring of keys hanging from Anburj’s belt. They were the same design as the keys Ulvan and many other of the cowled masters had possessed.

Nerina Strake had made the locks for the Widow’s Tower.

“Run as fast as you can,” said Anburj. “Now.”

Caina scrambled to her feet and ran for the road. She heard Yunus’s spiteful laugh, but ignored it. She kept running, and heard the creak as the wagons continued into the Tower’s gates. Caina veered northwest, followed the road, found a likely boulder, and hid herself to watch. Anburj and his men would kill her if they saw her again, but she would be careful.