Ghost Omens Read Online Free Page A

system.” 
    “Do you think that will work?” said Halfdan. “She didn’t eat the damned powder.”
    “She said some of it went in her mouth,” said Corvalis.
    Levinius returned with a brown pot of mustard. Even from a distance, the sharp smell filled my nostrils. 
    “I’ll do it,” I said, “if you can hold her down.”
    They dragged Caina to a table and placed her upon it. Corvalis climbed atop her and sat on her chest, his knees pinning her arms in place and his hands clamped about her wrists. Caina struggled against him, mad with rage...but her eyes remained fixed on me.
    “Sorcerers,” she spat, “I’ll kill them all, every last one of them, rid the Empire of them for all…”
    Halfdan pinched her nose shut and pulled her jaw open, and I had the suspicion he had done this sort of thing before. 
    I spooned the raw mustard into her mouth, and Halfdan forced her to swallow. By the fourth spoonful, her face turned green, and she started gagging. Corvalis got off her, and I feared Caina would throw herself at me, her hands clamping around my throat. 
    Instead she rolled over, threw up everything she had eaten recently, and then flopped upon the table, panting and dripping with sweat. Corvalis cradled her, and she remained limp.
    Some time later she lifted her head, her eyes dull and unfocused.
    But no longer full of mad rage.
    “Gods,” she muttered. “My head hurts. And my throat. And belly.”
    “I fear you ate something that did not agree with you,” said Halfdan. 
    Caina shook her head, blinking. “Claudia. Did I…” She looked at me, her expression filling with chagrin. “Did I hurt her? I can’t...I can’t remember. It’s like a blur.”
    “No,” I said. “You came close...but no.”
    Yet some of the things she had said stung. 
    “Gods,” said Caina, closing her eyes. “I’m sorry. I was...I was sure you had killed my father, that you had been laughing about it behind your back all these year.” She opened her eyes and shook her head. “Of course, you would have been thirteen or fourteen when he was murdered, so that would be unlikely.”
    “No,” I said. “I didn’t kill anyone until I was fifteen.”
    She stared at me for a moment, and then laughed. 
    “I think it is safe to assume,” said Corvalis, “that the powder is some sort of hallucinogenic drug.”
    “That is plain,” said Halfdan. “Tonia must have been giving it to them. Which would explain why they heard the voice of a dead Emperor speaking to them. I imagine the drug made them susceptible to her commands.”
    “It would have,” said Caina. “Believe me.” She stood up with a groan, rubbing her head. “Just as well we didn’t kill any of these men. They weren’t in their right minds.”
    “But why go to all the trouble?” I said. “The drugs, the dead Emperor...all of it?”
    Caina looked at me, at the stunned men, and back at me.
    And then, for some reason, she looked at the dust on the floor.
    “We can question the men when they wake up,” said Caina, “but Tonia was behind all this, and I think I know why.”
    “No,” said Levinius, who had been watching our discussion. “No. Tonia...Tonia is a good woman. She wouldn’t have done this, any of this…”
    “I’m sorry,” said Caina, “but she did. She came to Mors Septimus for the Emperor’s Helm Inn, for your inn. She married you just to get at it. And she’s trying to kill you so she’ll can claim the inn when you’re dead.”
    I saw him start to protest, saw the guilt and the shame spread over his face. He had been living in denial for too long...but now the truth had been shown to him, irrefutably.
    I knew what that felt like. 
    “But why?” he said, hands knotted in his apron. “The Emperor’s Helm...it’s just an inn. It’s nothing special. It has been in my family for as long as anyone knows, true...but it’s just an inn. Why would she do this?”
    “I think I know why,” said Caina. “And I think I can prove