Ghost Arts

GHOST ARTS

Jonathan Moeller

***

CAINA AMALAS is the Ghost circlemaster of Istarinmul,
the leader of the Emperor's spies in the city.

When one of her informants is murdered, Caina must
act to defend those under her protection.

But the murder might have been nothing more than
bait.

Bait in a trap to kill Caina...

***

Ghost Arts

Copyright 2015 by Jonathan Moeller.

Smashwords Edition.

Cover images copyright Kriscole | Dreamstime.com -
Young Beautiful Girl With A Sword Photo & Zoom-zoom |
Dreamstime.com - Treasury In Petra Photo & Daniil Peshkov |
Dreamstime.com.

Ebook edition published July 2015.

All Rights Reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without the express
written permission of the author or publisher, except where
permitted by law.

***

The trouble began when someone murdered one of
Caina’s informants.

Caina Amalas was the Ghost circlemaster of
Istarinmul, the leader of the Emperor’s spies in the city. She had
rebuilt the city’s Ghost circle from scratch after the Teskilati,
the Padishah of Istarinmul’s secret police, had wiped them out.
Consequently Caina had eyes and ears all over Istarinmul – an
emir’s factor in the Old Quarter, an apothecary’s apprentice in the
Anshani Quarter, scribes in the Padishah’s Golden Palace, a pair of
prostitutes in the Old Quarter, a minor emir whom Caina had saved
from an assassin with a poisoned knife. Some of them knew that she
was a Ghost, but most of them did not. Caina preferred to keep them
ignorant, both for her safety and for theirs. The Grand Wazir of
the Padishah’s magistrates had put a bounty of two million bezants
upon Caina’s head, and that kind of money could turn many a man
into a traitor.

For that matter, there were countless bounty hunters
who would cheerfully kill Caina’s informants for a shot at the
reward.

So when one of Caina’s informants was murdered, she
was not surprised.

Furious, but not surprised.

The man’s name was Tradek. He was a slave, but one
with a position of trust and ease in his master’s household. His
owner was one of the cowled masters of the Brotherhood of Slavers,
the men who provided Grand Master Callatas with the innocent
victims he needed to manufacture wraithblood and work his terrible
Apotheosis. Tradek was not particularly loyal to his master, and in
exchange for a reasonable sum of money, every few months he shared
his master’s secrets with Caina, knowledge that she had found
useful more than once.

Now someone had gotten to him.

Caina stood in the alley where she met with Tradek,
wearing the disguise of a ragged caravan guard. Tradek lay sprawled
upon his back, clad in the fine gray robe and silver collar of a
high-ranking household slave. His eyes stared at the sky with
shock, and his robe had darkened with the blood from his cut
throat. Caina crossed the alley and stood over him, anger simmering
beneath her thoughts. It was possible Tradek had been murdered to
lure her into a trap. If so, she would not go quietly.

Yet the alley was quiet. No one was waiting for her,
and she was alone with Tradek’s corpse. Caina looked around, hoping
to find any clues that might indicate who had murdered him. A
survey of the ground was useless. The hard-packed earth of
Istarinmul did not keep footprints. Tradek himself had a look of
terror on his face. His fingers were scratched and bloody,
indicating that he had fought his killer in vain. The skirt of his
robe was dusty, which meant that his killer had forced him to his
knees and then cut his throat.

Tradek had a money pouch at his belt. None of the
coins within had been taken. For that matter, his silver collar
would fetch a good amount of money if it was melted down and sold.
Someone had strolled up to Tradek, killed him, and then left
without taking anything of value.

That made no sense at all.

Eventually she left. Caina dared not linger over his
corpse. Sooner or later the watchmen would find the corpse, and
they would likely arrest anyone they found near the body. Caina
spent the next week asking discreet questions of Tradek’s fellow
slaves and his friends, and learned nothing useful. The man had no
family, but no enemies. No one in the world wished him harm, and
the only reason to kill him would be to rob him or to send a
message to Caina. Yet no one had taken Tradek’s money, and none of
her other informants or Ghosts had been killed.

Then, one week after finding the body, she saw the
painting.

###

Caina walked past a coffee house in the Masters’
Quarter and froze in surprise.

Istarinmul had hundreds of coffee houses. Some were
little more than small rooms where the men of the local Quarter
socialized. Other were larger affairs with multiple levels, where
wealthy merchants gathered to conduct business. The Masters’
Quarter of Istarinmul housed the palaces and mansions of the cowled
masters of the Brotherhood of Slavers, where the masters of the
Brotherhood lived in luxury attended by their slaves. Sometimes the
cowled masters preferred to meet with potential business partners
away from their palaces, so at the edge of the Masters’ Quarter
stood a small cluster of shops, including a gaudy coffee house
constructed of marble. Two gray-clad slaves moved towards the front
doors, maneuvering a painting in a wooden frame.

The scene in the painting had caught Caina’s
attention.

She moved towards the coffee house. No one stopped
her. She had chosen the robes and turban of an Istarish emir’s
factor, complete with a false beard and makeup that made her look
twenty years older, so she looked as if she belonged here. The
slaves carried the painting into the common room, a gleaming
expanse of marble with round tables of expensive wood and cushions
of equally expensive cloth. Another slave awaited them, an
irritated-looked man with a gray tunic and a carpenter’s hammer in
hand.

Caina stared at the painting.

It showed the corpse of Tradek.

The Istarish had grisly tastes in art to match their
equally gloomy taste in epic poetry. Some of it was innocuous, like
scenes of hunts or great battles from Istarinmul’s past. The tastes
of wealthier emirs and merchants tended towards the decadent, with
scenes of dying slaves or gladiators lying slain upon the ground.
The worst were the Alchemists, who sometimes transmuted living
slaves into statues of dead crystal, to stand lifeless forevermore.
In that light, the painting before Caina would not have been
remarkable.

Except she had seen Tradek’s corpse with her own eyes
not a week past.

The scene was stylized, more geometric than reality,
but the slave lying dead in the picture was unquestionably Tradek.
He was even lying in the same pose. For a moment she looked at the
painting, stunned, and then her mind caught up with her
surprise.

The answer was obvious. Whoever had killed Tradek had
created this painting.

“Carefully!” A fat Istarish man in a fine robe and
turban hurried over, watching the slaves with anxiety. “I paid a
large sum for the painting. More than all of you would fetch upon
the auction block. Carefully, carefully.” He waved his hands with
annoyance.

“Pardon, sir,” said Caina, and the man’s eyes turned
to her. “You own this establishment?”

The man considered, realized that she was probably an
emir’s factor, and decided that he did not risk offending her. “I
am, sir.” He bowed. “I am Malak Lorgan, and this is my
establishment, the Slavers’ Lash.”

A charming name for a coffee house.

“I was admiring your painting,” said Caina as the
slaves struggled to mount it.

“It is handsome, is it not?” said Lorgan. “I like to
think it will make my customers reflect upon their own mortality
and the fleeting brevity of our span of years, and therefore make
them purchase more coffee.”

“My master the emir is a great admirer of such
artworks,” said Caina, “and I wonder where you purchased it.”

“From the House of Contemplation, of course,” said
Lorgan.

“I fear the name is unknown to me.”

Lorgan offered her a patronizing smile behind his
thick beard. “It is a market and museum for art, located in the
Emirs’ Quarter.” Caina did have a vague recollection of an artists’
market in the Emirs’ Quarter, but she had no interest in art, so
she had never visited. “There the greatest artists of Istarinmul
sell their works to the high nobles and wealthy merchants of the
land.”

“Such as yourself,” said Caina.

The insult went right over Lorgan’s head. “Such as
myself. I have the ear of many influential men.”

“Who painted this most excellent painting?” said
Caina.

“A new artist,” said Lorgan. “A Nighmarian,
regrettably, but he does grasp the Istarish soul. His name is
Helioran.”

“Helioran?” said Caina. That was the name of an
extinct Imperial noble house. There had been several Helioran
Emperors during the start of the Third Empire, and one of them had
brought the Magisterium back under Imperial authority after the
collapse of the Second Empire. “He is a nobleman?”

“So he is,” said Lorgan.

“I would like to meet him,” said Caina.

“One must be invited to the House of Contemplation,”
said Lorgan. He smirked. “Perhaps your lord the emir holds enough
prestige to merit such an invitation.”

“Perhaps he is,” said Caina. “Thank you, Master
Lorgan.”

She left before the owner of the Slavers’ Lash could
speak again, her mind working. Caina knew of no one with enough
prestige to get her into the House of Contemplation. Martin Dorius,
maybe? As the Emperor’s Lord Ambassador to the Padishah, he had a
great deal of influence…but Caina was loath to drag Martin and his
pregnant wife into the hunt for the man who had murdered
Tradek.

Caina stepped into the street, the hot Istarish sun
blazing overhead, and an idea came to her.

She didn’t have an invitation to the House of
Contemplation…but she knew a man who probably did.

###

An hour later Caina knocked on the door of a rundown
house in the Cyrican Quarter. The house was unremarkable, three
stories of whitewashed stone, though it was in dire need of repair.
The man known to the public as Markaine of Caer Marist lived in the
house, and Markaine was one of the most famed and eccentric
painters in Istarinmul. Caina knew that was just a front. The man
was actually Morgant the Razor, the famed assassin of legend.

He was also two hundred years old, give or take.

The door swung open. Morgant kept no slaves, but
sometimes hired an elderly freedwoman to clean his house when the
dust got too thick. The old woman stared at Caina for a moment,
then shrugged and stepped into the street, leaving the door
standing open as she hobbled away. Caina stared after her,
puzzled.

“Don’t mind her,” said a man’s voice with a thick
Caerish accent. “She didn’t open the door because you knocked. She
left because she was done for the morning. Very sensible,
really.”

Caina took a deep breath and stepped into the lair of
Morgant the Razor, legendary assassin.

It looked exactly like a painter’s workshop, with
wide skylights to admit ample light. Tables stood here and there,
cluttered with jars of paint, vials of pigment, and rolled
canvases. Sketch books stood in piles upon the tables, and easels
held pinned canvases in various stages of completion. Morgant
himself stood at one of the tables, staring at a vial of pigment.
He looked like a gaunt man in his middle fifties, far paler than he
should have been after years under the Istarish sun, with
close-cropped gray hair and pale blue eyes. As ever, he wore a
stark white shirt, a long black coat, black trousers, and boots,
though when in his workshop he buttoned up his black coat to the
neck and wore a leather apron. The heavy clothes should have been
unbearable in the Istarish heat, he seemed comfortable.

In fact, he appeared amused to see her.

“The Balarigar herself,” said Morgant. “Come to sit
for a portrait? Don’t expect a discount just because you know
me.”

“No,” said Caina.

“You could always pose nude, of course,” said
Morgant, gesturing with the vial of pigment. “True, you are not,
shall we say, classically voluptuous, but you could always send the
portrait to the Kyracian. I’d imagine he would pay quite handsomely
for it. Assuming he hasn’t seen the sights in the flesh. So to
speak.”