Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 05 - Ghost in the Stone Read Online Free Page A

bright clothing moved from stall to stall.
    Barius’s pawnshop awaited on the far side of the square. 
    Caina stopped, moved in the shadows beside an empty stall, and stared at the pawnshop.
    Something was amiss. 
    The pawnshop’s windows were shuttered, but its door stood ajar by a few inches. Caina suspected the merchants of Seatown kept their doors locked and opened them only when a paying customer arrived. 
    So why had Barius been so foolish to keep the door open? Had he let in a customer and forgotten to close the door?
    Or had someone forced the door and not bothered to close it?
    Caina watched the pawnshop, but no one approached, and she saw not a hint of activity from within.
    She crossed the square, keeping her walk casual, but her eyes swept her surroundings for any hint of danger. If someone had attacked Barius, they might now lie in wait for any other Ghosts.
    But no one looked in her direction.
    Caina stopped at the pawnshop door and listened. 
    Utter silence.
    She took a deep breath, slipped a dagger into her hand, and pushed open the door.
    Barius’s pawnshop was a dank, narrow vault of a room, its walls lined with wooden shelves.  Pots, pans, clothes, shoes, and the occasional sword rested on the shelves. A wooden counter stood near the far wall, a pair of scales and a set of weights resting on its surface. 
    There was no trace of Barius or of anyone else. 
    Though the door to the shop’s back room stood open. 
    Caina stepped around the counter, dagger raised, and into the back room.
    Shelves lined all four walls of the back room, holding valuable goods – metal plate, jewelry, rolls of silk, and all the other things Caina supposed Barius didn’t want kept in the public eye. Another door on the far wall opened into the alley behind in the pawnshop.
    And in the middle of the back room stood single strangest statue that Caina had ever seen. 
    Carved from white stone, it showed a fat man in Cyrican robes, his arms spread in surprise, his face twisted with fear and horror. Caina gazed at the statue with fascination. The lords of the Empire loved statues, and Caina seen thousands of them during her life. Yet she had never seen a statue like this one. She could see every wrinkle on the man’s face and hands, every fold and crease of his clothing. The level of detail was uncanny. 
    Almost eerie.
    And the statue looked exactly the way Theodosia had described Barius. 
    Why the devil would Barius have an peculiarly detailed statue of himself in the back room of his pawnshop? For that matter, if he knew a sculptor of such sublime skill, why commission a statue of himself looking horrified? 
    It made no sense…
    Unless.
    Caina stared at the statue, a terrible idea trickling into her mind.
    She remembered tales she had read in her father’s library as a child, stories about unearthly women with serpents’ hair whose glance turned men to stone. 
    She stared at the statue of Barius.
    At the impossibly detailed statue.
    “No,” said Caina, voice soft.
    But why not? She had seen sorcery burn a man to ashes, rip lightning down from the skies, and store the lives of murdered innocents in a black crystal. Why couldn’t sorcery turn a man to stone?
    She brushed the statue’s stone sleeve with a fingertip.
    And she felt the faint, crawling tingle of sorcerous force.
    She jerked backed in alarm, and for a terrified instant she wondered if the spell would spread, if it would turn her to stone. But the tingling sensation faded, and her hand remained flesh and blood. Caina took a deep breath and looked at the statue.
    At Barius himself.
    Who had done this to him? And why? Caina knew more about sorcery than she had ever wished to know, but she had never heard of a spell that did anything like this. 
    She took a deep breath…and noticed the shadow at the back door.
    Someone was standing in the alley outside the shop. 
    Caina tensed, her fingers tightening around the dagger’s handle. Whoever stood outside