Ghost in the Blood (The Ghosts) Read Online Free PDF Page B

“about the last time I came to Marsis.” 
    “Oh,” said Caina. 
    “I was going to kill myself,” said Ark. “I thought about throwing myself from the walls of the city, but I decided that I had been a centurion of the Eighteenth Legion, and I would damn well die by the sword. So I headed north I wanted to see the ocean one last time before I died.” He snorted, laughing at himself. “But the road was too crowded, and I wanted to be alone when I did it. I wandered a little farther than I intended…and met Tanya.”
    Caina nodded. He had told her this story before. She knew how it ended. 
    “When you were in the Imperial capital,” said Ark. “Did you ask after her?”
    “I promised you that I would,” said Caina. “I disguised myself as a sailor, visited taverns, warehouses. No one had seen a Szaldic slave woman named Tanya, or her son.” 
    Ark nodded. 
    “She’s probably dead,” said Caina. 
    He nodded again, silent in the darkness.
    “The Ghosts have spies in every port with a slave market on the western seas,” said Caina. “Not a one of them saw the slavers’ ship. It probably sank at…”
    “I know,” he said, sharply. 
    “I’m sorry,” said Caina.
    “It was not your doing,” said Ark. “I know that she is dead…and yet I wish I knew for certain. I would give anything to know what happened to her, to my son.” 
    “Sometimes that can be worse,” said Caina. “I saw what happened to my mother and my father with my own eyes.”
    “You loved your father, did you not?” 
    “I did,” said Caina, touching the ring hanging from her neck. 
    “Would you rather lie awake at night, wondering what had happened to him?”
    “I suppose not,” said Caina. “But if it meant I had a chance of seeing him again, however small…I don’t know, Ark. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “What a pair we are. The widower and the barren woman. Halfdan has strange tastes in recruitment.”
    Ark coughed. “But effective. You saved Rasadda, didn’t you?”
    “We saved Rasadda. Both of us. How many times must I remind you?”
    Again they stood together in silence.
    “Independent slavers have been attacking the western coast for years,” said Ark. “But I wonder…”
    “What?” said Caina.
    “The slavers who took my wife. Were they working for Naelon Icaraeus and his father?”
    “It was five years ago, wasn’t it?”
    “About.” 
    “I don’t know,” said Caina. “They might have been. Haeron Icaraeus was buying slaves in bulk for Maglarion's experiments by then.” Something occurred to her. “That’s the real reason you came here, isn’t it? Not because you hate slavers. Because the particular slavers who took your family might have been working for Icaraeus.” 
    “Still clever,” said Ark. “And when you and Halfdan find Icaraeus’s hiding place, when you have him at your mercy, I will ask him. I will ask him if the men who attacked the village of Hruzac were working for him.” She heard his fingers tighten against his sword hilt. “And if they were…the gods themselves will not save him from me.” 
    Caina said nothing. She didn’t know if the gods existed or not. She knew that some of their priests taught mercy, kindness, compassion. 
    Yet they also taught justice.  
    “I don’t think,” she said, “that the gods would want to.”

    ###

    Eventually, Ark let her take the watch and went to sleep. Caina kept watch for the rest of the night, keeping an eye on the road and the sea. Asides from the running lights of a ship heading south, she saw nothing. Caina wondered if that was Icaraeus’s ship. If the renegade slaver had made allies out of Marsis’s noble Houses, then he would almost certainly flee to the city. 
    She watched the distant lights until they vanished. 
    Later Halfdan took her place at watch. Caina caught a few hours of sleep. If she dreamed, she didn’t remember it. 
    When morning came, Halfdan made breakfast, and Caina wandered