Living With Ghosts Read Online Free PDF

collecting in gutters, descending in sudden deluges from overburdened awnings. Gracielis walked the length of Silk Street and smiled absently at his fellow whores, hovering damply in doorways. He did not stop. At the street’s head, he crossed into a congested thoroughfare, cloak held tight. People pressed close around him: servants, housekeepers with laden baskets, farmers in from the surrounding countryside to sell vegetables or poultry, factors and beggars, middle-class ladies and their maids, apprentices and day laborers. Guild masters or burgesses strode by, using their elbows and the points of their canes. Merchants and seafarers from six or seven different countries jostled against egg sellers and flower sellers. The occasional aristocrat passed by in a carriage, coachmen hollering for the crowd to make way. Street cries echoed from the sides of temples, rumbled along the arcades, and rattled through the congested squares. In the air hung a new tension, an anxiety not wholly weather-borne.
    Changes hung in the rain, nearly visible to Gracielis. It was a slender thing, fragile as the reflection of a reflection. The lieutenant’s ghost, stalking maliciously through the fishwives and the carters, was filled with glee, his form edged with faint, static light. Changes, thought Gracielis, and could not quite control the shiver that ran through him . If I had not failed, if I had been chosen, if I had been someone else . . .
    It was forbidden. He was Quenfrida’s one flaw, her one mistake. He should not have failed his initiation; he should not have been able to fail. She had given too much by the end, so that the gift might not be wholly withdrawn from him. (Except in death. But her calm, balancing hands had not seen that route for him, not then, not yet.) Anomaly, failed priest, flawed lover, reluctant spy—his fault and hers. An obscure comfort, that. Just as Quenfrida was his one weakness, so was he hers. For she should have chosen better.
    He reached the edge of the road, the dry place under the overhang of the old buildings, and began to pick his way through the press of people. The arcades were lined with stores and workshops: tailors, print shops, spice factors, cloth merchants. It was said you could buy almost everything somewhere in Merafi. In this district, the goods being offered were mostly luxuries: fabrics and trimmings for high-class finery, fine bound books, trinkets of silver filigree or ivory or porcelain. In the squares, stalls sold fresh fruit, vegetables, and flowers. On the corners, peddlers sold ribbons and needles or hawked hot chestnuts from their trays. Down the side streets, he could glimpse small cabarets, some already open for business, rubbing shoulders with patisseries and perfumers. When the wind shifted, it brought with it hints of the fishmarket on the other bank of the river, or the bloody scent of the shambles. Through open doorways the floors of shops were trampled and muddied, wares pulled back from the damp, attendants peevish with chill. Too many people were packed here to avoid the wet and the mud. There was a smell of stale wine and soggy wool and worse things. Fastidious, he wove his way through the unwonted press. The ghost mocked him, smug with his discomfort. He would, at that moment, have greatly enjoyed the indulgence of irritation.
    He was silken charm to the bone.
    It was a slow progress. Aware of the danger of being late, he began to work his way back to the road and the downpour. Better wet than impolite. Coming to the edge of the shelter, he ducked his head against the rain and pulled his cloak even tighter. His boots were going to require a great deal of work to restore their shine. A man pushing a handcart swerved to a halt in front of him, casting up mud. He looked at the man with mild regret.
    At the man, and beyond. All along the length of the street, people were stopping or huddling back against the sides. Turning the corner into the street came a unit of the