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

the door might be listening to her, waiting for her to make a mistake. Yet who was outside the door?
    The sorcerer who had done this to Barius, perhaps?
    Perhaps this was a trap to catch any Ghosts coming to visit Barius.
    But traps could be sprung.
    She spotted a mirror sitting upon the shelf. Taking care to remain silent, Caina angled the mirror so it faced the door. Keeping the dagger in her right hand, she began to rummage through the items on the shelves, making sure to make lots of noise.
    “There’s no one else here,” she shouted in Cyrican, making sure to keep her voice deep and rough. “No one but that damn creepy statue. Well, if Barius can’t be bothered to mind his shop, we may as well help ourselves. You watch the front door, and I’ll take the jewels.” 
    She kept rummaging through the items on the shelves, keeping her eyes fixed on the mirror. 
    And slowly, silently, the back door swung open. She saw a man wearing a yellow Cyrican robe standing in the alley, a dagger in his hand. He glided through the door, his feet making no noise against the floor. 
    Caina recognized the way he held that dagger.
    A Kindred assassin had been lying in wait for the Ghosts.
    “Hey!” shouted Caina, and the assassin froze. She picked up a bronze candelabra, as if examining it. “Does that silversmith still buy bronze? We could turn a pretty coin.” 
    The assassin moved forward, his dagger raised to stab.
    Caina whirled and slammed the candelabra across his face. 
    The assassin staggered back with a cry, blood flying from his nose and mouth. Caina lunged at him, hoping to knock the dagger from his hand. But the brutal training regimen of the Kindred produced capable fighters, and the assassin deflected her thrust with a sweep of his own blade. Caina seized the opening and swung with the candelabra, catching the assassin across his free wrist. The man reeled back, lips peeled back in a snarl.
    For a moment he glared at her, and then he whirled and fled through the door. 
    Caina blinked in astonishment. The Kindred assassins fled only when outmatched. Then she remembered her ruse. The assassin must have assumed that she had armed allies in the front room. For a moment she considered pursuing him, but rejected the idea. She did not know Cyrioch very well, and the twisted maze of streets and alleys offered hundreds of hiding places. Or, worse, the assassin could return with allies. Better to escape now while she still could.
    Caina turned to go, and the stove caught her eye. 
    A small iron stove squatted in the corner of the back room. Given Cyrioch’s torrid heat, Caina wondered why Barius needed it, but perhaps he used it to cook meals. A few coals flickered within the stove, and Caina saw flecks of white lying among the ashes.
    Scraps of paper.
    She knelt and poked through the ashes, sifting for any legible remnants.
    The ashes had once been a book, she thought, or perhaps a ledger. Whoever had burned it had done a thorough job. Caina recovered a single small scrap of paper. It had once been covered in scrawled handwriting, but now Caina could only make out four words.
    “The Defender,” she muttered. “The Well.” 
    Was that a code of some kind? Odds were that it didn’t mean anything. But did that mean Barius had burned his ledger? Or had someone else burned it?
    Caina didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to figure it out. That assassin would return with friends. She got to her feet and cast a quick look over the shelves. The assassin would recognize her disguise, but there was enough clothing here to improvise a new one. Caina cast aside her ragged cloak and snatched a garish red one. The cloak was a ridiculous color, but it looked Cyrican, and should conceal her long enough to rejoin Theodosia at the Plaza of Majesty. 
    She took one last look at Barius, and then slipped out the back door. The alley behind the pawnshop stank of garbage and urine, but was deserted. She took a quick look around and