Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 08 - Ghost in the Mask (6 page)

But it was an idle fancy. She was an outcast magus masquerading as a physician’s apprentice, and even disgraced, he was still a Lord of the Empire and a Lord Governor of a province. She was beneath his notice. Perhaps he might take her as a mistress, and Claudia found even that prospect more appealing than she might have a year ago. But he was the Lord Governor, and he could have his pick of mistresses, and even if he chose her, one day he would return to Malarae and leave her behind. 

An overwhelming wave of loneliness washed through her. Once she had thought to rise high in the Magisterium, to use her powers for the benefit of all mankind. Catekharon had taught her the folly of that. Now she was Komnene’s apprentice and a spy. Her father wanted her dead, if he bothered to think about her at all, and her brother was hundreds of miles away in Malarae. 

Claudia was alone, as she had rarely been in her life, and she felt tears in her eyes. 

She leaned against the window, and her eyes turned to the hills north of Calvarium.

To the black walls of Caer Magia. 

Her loneliness vanished, replaced by fear. Something terrible had happened in that city a century and a half ago, something that had killed over one hundred thousand people. 

Something that might happen again, if Maena and Anashir found whatever it was they sought. 

Unless the Ghosts found a way to stop them.

Claudia had failed as magus, had failed in Catekharon.

But she would not, she vowed, fail at this.

The stakes were far too high.

She started to clean the tables, waiting for Komnene to return so she could report what she had learned from Lord Martin.

Chapter 4 - The Stormdancer

Kylon, the High Seat of House Kardamnos and the thalarchon of New Kyre’s seventh fleet, had known he would have to wed after his sister Andromache died in Marsis.

He had no choice. 

Andromache had been one New Kyre’s nine Archons, the leaders of the Assembly, and she had been the most powerful stormsinger the city had seen in centuries. At her word alone, the Assembly had agreed to ally with Rezir Shahan of Istarinmul to seize Marsis from the Empire. Andromache had promised a swift victory, one that would ensure the Empire would never again threaten Kyracian interests in the western sea.

But Andromache had been a disciple of the Moroaica, the ancient sorceress of legend, and had launched the invasion to seize the power of a tomb below Marsis. The tomb’s power devoured her, the invasion failed, and Kylon barely escaped with the Kyracian fleet, his mind heavy with the knowledge that he was now the High Seat of House Kardamnos. 

And in the two years since, New Kyre had fought the Empire in a war that Andromache had started for her own aggrandizement. 

Most of New Kyre thought House Kardamnos would fall into disgrace after Andromache’s defeat, but Kylon had reversed that. He had won victory after victory against the Emperor’s fleets. At last the Assembly had appointed him thalarchon of the Seventh Fleet, and he had utterly crushed the Empire’s western fleet. 

The prestige of House Kardamnos had been restored. 

Yet Kylon still needed to wed. His parents had been murdered when he was a child, and his only sister had died in Marsis. He was the last legitimate scion of House Kardamnos, and his cousins could not inherit the title if he died. 

He needed a legitimate heir. 

So he planned to wed, to find a bride from among the nobles of New Kyre. His victories raised his prestige among the citizens of the Assembly, and he had expected no trouble finding a suitable wife among them.

He had not, however, expected to fall in love.

And so Kylon found himself on the balcony of his chambers in the Tower of Kardamnos with Thalastre of House Ixionos. 

Her father was the Exarch of Kyrant, one of the Kyracian colonies on the islands of the western sea. The Exarch was a stern and pitiless man, and House Ixionos was rich in prestige but poor in wealth. When the Exarch offered his daughter, Kylon had expected either a humorless spinster with the Exarch’s disposition and features, or a wild-haired island savage.

He had certainly not expected someone like Thalastre. 

“More wine, my lord?” said Thalastre.

“Please,” said Kylon, lost in his thoughts.

One of the middle-aged female slaves Thalastre had brought from Kyrant stepped onto the balcony, a carafe of wine in her hands. The balcony had a fine view of the central distracts of New Kyre, the ziggurats of the noble houses, the canals gleaming like ribbons of steel between their bases. Beyond rose the massive Pyramid of the Storm, where the Assembly met to govern the Kyracian people. Past the Pyramid he saw the vast expanse of New Kyre’s harbor, the finest in the world, its entrance guarded by two massive statues of ashtairoi that doubled as both lighthouses and fortresses. 

The wealthiest city in the world…and in danger of falling to the Empire without a single drop of blood. 

Kylon’s power with the sorcery of water gave him the ability to sense emotions, and the emotions rising from the city were…strained. Men feared the future, feared war and famine…

The slave poured the wine.

“Thank you,” he said. 

The slave blinked in surprise, smiled, and lowered her eyes. Kylon had grown up around slaves, had been served by them all his life. Then he had met that cold-eyed Ghost woman in Marsis. To save her friend’s son from the life of a slave, she had killed Rezir Shahan and thrown the attack upon Marsis into disarray. 

She had changed the fate of nations, all to save her friend’s son from a slave’s collar.

Ever since then, Kylon could not be comfortable around slaves. 

“You seem grim, my lord,” said Thalastre. “Does the wine displease you?”

“It does not,” said Kylon, taking a sip. “I have already drunk far too much of it, given that I must address the Assembly tomorrow. But it is excellent wine.”

“Caerish,” said Thalastre, “from the vineyards near Caer Marist, I understand. My father obtained a stock of it before the war began.” She laughed. “For all that he detests the Empire, he enjoys his Caerish wine.”

“A surprising man, the Exarch,” said Kylon. “Perhaps he passed it on to you.”

She smiled. “You found me surprising, my lord thalarchon?”

“Constantly,” said Kylon.

He looked at her for a moment. She was twenty-three, five years younger than him, with curly black hair that hung in waves to her hips. She was fit and trim, which had surprised him in an Exarch’s daughter, until he learned she enjoyed hunting the truculent seals that swam the seas near Kyrant. 

And she was a stormsinger, a powerful one. Not as skilled or as powerful as Andromache, but Kylon’s sister had been unique among her generation. When the Empire’s western fleet had launched a raid upon Kyrant, Thalastre had turned the winds against them, smashing their vessels against the rocks as lightning sundered their masts and set their sails aflame, and the Empire’s battle magi had not been strong enough to stop her. Kylon had expected Thalastre to be plump and spoiled, yet she was confident and capable. 

And she was beautiful, too.

“I am pleased,” said Thalastre, her dark eyes gleaming, “that you do not find me dull and predictable.”

Kylon took another drink. “I could say that, but I am afraid you would call the lightning to chastise me. A woman’s temper is ever volatile…but not all women can summon the storm to show their displeasure.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You have a bold tongue, my lord Kylon. It amuses me.” 

“After some of the things I have seen, my lady,” said Kylon, the wine tingling on his lips, “the fear has been burned out of me. Or I have come to fear too much, and grown numb to it. I am uncertain of the difference.”

He remembered Andromache shrieking as Scorikhon’s spirit possessed her. 

The Empire’s western fleet burning, the sailors screaming as the sharks swarmed over them. 

The Forge that Mihaela had built in the molten heart of Catekharon, a vile machine of necromancy to enslave living souls to steel. 

“You are so grim, my lord,” said Thalastre. “The war?”

“Aye,” said Kylon. “The war does not go well.”

“We have won every battle at sea,” said Thalastre. “You have won many of them.”

“But those will not bring us victory,” said Kylon. “The Emperor has convinced the Padishah of Istarinmul to close the Starfall Straits to our trade. Soon the treasury of the Assembly will run bare. And worse, he is trying to bribe the Shahenshah of Anshan to cease selling grain to the Assembly. A half million people live in the city, my lady. We cannot feed them all. If the grain shipments end, if we even run out of coin to buy grain…the people will starve. If they starve, they will revolt and overthrow the Assembly, and New Kyre will become another province of the Empire of Nighmar.”

For long centuries, the Kyracian people had waged their struggle against the Empire of Nighmar. Old Kyrace had perished at the end of the Third Empire, burning in the wrath of an unleashed fire elemental. But New Kyre had remained free, defying the might of the Magisterium during the Fourth Empire, and the Emperor’s fleets and armies during the Fifth.

It seemed Kylon had lived to see the end of the Kyracian people. 

“Perhaps not,” said Thalastre. “For if the Empire forces us to become desperate, we shall fight as desperate men. The combined might of our stormsingers could alter the patterns of wind and rain over the Empire, and the Magisterium is not skilled enough with the sorcery of wind and rain to defy us. If they cut off our food, we shall bring such a famine upon their heads that men a thousand years from now will hear of it and quake.” 

“And that,” said Kylon, “would trigger a war to drench the world in blood.” Mihaela had almost unleashed such a war from Catekharon. 

“The Emperor must know this,” said Thalastre. “Both the Empire and New Kyre have the power to lay each other waste. Perhaps that can force a peace.”

“Yes,” said Kylon, his voice heavy. “A peace would be best.” Andromache was remembered as an ambitious failure, an Archon whose reach had exceeded her grasp. But if the Assembly knew the truth, that she had started this ruinous war simply to increase her personal power, she would be reviled as one of the blackest traitors in the history of the Kyracian people.

“Come, my lord,” said Thalastre with a smile, “let us turn our minds from such dark places. It grows chill, and we should withdraw inside.” 

Kylon nodded and got to his feet unsteadily. He had indeed drunk too much wine. Once he would have chastised himself for his lack of self-control, his lapse in discipline. But despite his betrothal, his mood had grown darker lately. He had trusted in Andromache all his life, and she had started the war that he could not win, a war that might destroy New Kyre. 

Why should he not get drunk?

And Thalastre did have an eye for finding good wine. 

She clapped her hands twice, and the half-dozen slaves who had accompanied her to the Tower of Kardamnos moved into motion with efficiency. They cleaned away the wine cups and retreated into the bedchamber. Four of the women left the room, while two retreated to the corners, one holding a pitcher of water, the other a pair of towels. 

He turned to ask Thalastre why she had sent some of her slaves away, and she slipped out of her garments and stood naked before him.

Through the sorcery of water, he could sense her emotions, and he felt her lust…and found that it matched his own. 

“Come to me,” she said, “and I will take your mind from your troubles.” 

He was no stranger to women. He had been fifteen when Andromache had purchased a slave woman and sent her to his bed, with the explanation that he would soon be a man of New Kyre, and that he could hardly live with the abstinence of an Anshani monk. He had found the experience a pleasant release, but since the war started, there had been little time for such things. 

But looking at Thalastre, he found that he wanted her as he had wanted little else in his life. 

Kylon cast aside his clothing, picked her up, and carried her to his bed.

After they had finished, Kylon rolled onto his back, breathing hard, sweat dripping down his face. Thalastre sighed in contentment, pushed some loose hair from her face, and levered herself upon on one elbow, the fingers of her other hand tracing the muscles of his chest. 

“I confess,” said Thalastre, “that you were something of a surprise to me as well, my lord. When my father decided to offer my hand in marriage, I thought he would pick some fat old merchant or a grim Archon of the Assembly.”

“I believe Alcios of House Kallias is unwed again,” said Kylon. “Your father could always betroth you to him.”

Thalastre laughed. “Gods, no! I would much rather wed you, my lord Kylon. Lord Alcios is a noble man, but utterly humorless, and I doubt he has your…stamina, shall we say.” Her smile was almost shy, which was odd, given what they had spent the last hour doing. “I always thought affection had no place in marriage between nobles. A lord and lady contract a marriage for reasons of political advantage, and the lord takes comfort in his mistresses, and the lady takes joy in her children. Yet…I find I take affection in you, my lord Kylon, and I have come to love you.”

Kylon blinked. For all her confidence, for all the self-control and poise she had shown in the battle against the Imperials, Thalastre looked like a vulnerable young woman at that moment, her heart in her eyes. It was entirely possible that he was the first man she had ever loved, and almost certainly he was her first lover. 

She would make a fine wife. Assuming that New Kyre did not first fall to the Empire.

“And I,” said Kylon, “love you, too.”

Her smile was radiant. “Since we are to be wed, that is just as well.” She kissed him, and then sat up. “Are you thirsty? I am parched.” 

She clapped her hands, and the slaves waiting in the corners stepped forward with a pitcher of water. In the heat of the moment, Kylon had forgotten about them, but he felt a sudden urge to cover himself. Thalastre seemed utterly unconcerned about her nudity, and accepted two clay cups from one of the women.