Agatos was a great trading city — maybe the great trading city of its age. The goods of dozens of nations flowed through its streets and markets. Deals were struck that could destroy or enrich whole cities. If you had enough money and you knew where to go, you could buy almost anything.
For most of what the citizens of Agatos needed or wanted, there were three main markets, as well as the hundreds of shops, stalls, and smaller markets.
Mile End Market, in the heart of the Upper City, specialised in fine fabrics and clothing. It was the kind of place that people went to as much to be seen as to buy things. Many of the stalls had evolved into semi-permanent shops where you could sit in chairs being fanned while inspecting clothes worth more than I was. Let’s be honest. You’d be more likely to find me beating myself around my head with my own leg than shopping in Mile End Market.
Further down, near where Agate Way finally slipped off the low end of Horn Hill and rejoined the rest of the city, was Cheap Gate Market, the city’s main food market. Agatos sat firmly across the main north-south trade route, where ships from half the world met the caravans travelling down from the north. No matter how exotic, if you wanted it, Cheap Gate Market had it, if you could afford it. Which I couldn’t.
Then, finally, on the edge of the Grey City was the market known as the Penitent’s Ear. It was noisy, chaotic, and cheap enough to be used by the assorted peasants, workers, and lowlifes who actually kept Agatos running.
But the real business of the city, the commerce that made men like Carnelian Silkstar rich — the contracts, the deals, the fix-ups, and the kind of criminal activity that would never introduce its perpetrators to the inside of a cell — didn’t take place in any of those markets. It took place in Nuil’s Coffee House. The coffee house was a three storey building that took up most of one side of Peridot Plaza. Its body consisted of a single grand room filled with rich wooden furniture, screens, and randomly placed plants. Balconies ran around the edge of the two remaining stories, and opening off the back of the balconies were the private rooms in which the actual business of the city took place.
Someone in there would have the information I needed about the wool contracts. So it was just a shame that I would never be allowed in Nuil’s, new shirt or no new shirt. Nuil’s had standards, and I had discovered several years ago that those standards didn’t encompass me. I loitered around the rear, while the sky shaded from lilac to purple, until the back door opened and Elosyn Brook came out to shoo me away.
Elosyn worked as a chef in the kitchen and was unfortunate enough to know me. I had once broken a curse that had made her wife, Holera, cry tears of blood whenever she smelled garlic or onions. It hadn’t been hard to break, and they had paid me for it, but Elosyn still had enough residual gratitude not to throw stones at me when I came around.
“What do you want, Nik?” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. Smells of baking rolled out of the door with her. Elosyn looked harried, hot, and not in the mood for crap. “You know I can’t give you leftovers until later.”
I could have been offended, but it wouldn’t be the first time I had come for handouts. I wasn’t proud of it.
“It’s not that. I need your help.”
Elosyn glanced over her shoulder at the open door. “This isn’t a good time.”
I had figured that out the moment she had come through the door. I hadn’t seen her so stressed and nervous since her wife’s curse. It couldn’t be that again, though. She would have come to me right away.
“I can wait.” I knew I was being unfair. You don’t have time for fair.
“Shit, Nik. Things are kind of tense right now.”
“I just need some information. I don’t need you to sneak me in or anything.” I was pushing too hard. I didn’t know how much credit I had left with her. She still looked uneasy.
I sighed and closed my hand about my few remaining coins. Elosyn might be grateful to me, but information cost money, and Elosyn would have to pay the coffee house staff if she wanted them to talk. I wasn’t going to get away with offering favours here.
“I can pay,” I said. I opened my hand to show her the coins.
She stared at them. “Are you trying to be funny? That wouldn’t buy you a coffee.”
I kept my gaze on her and tried not to let her see how guilty I felt.
“Ah, shit,” she muttered, snatching the coins. “You’re going to owe me. I’m going to send you an invoice. What do you want to know?”
Relief overwhelmed the guilt, at least for a moment. I had been sure she was going to refuse me.
“I’m trying to find out about Carnelian Silkstar and his new wool trade contracts. How did he get them? Who lost out? Anyone he upset?”
Elosyn was already shaking her head. “Narth’s tits, Nik. You really know how to pick the worst cases, don’t you?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This is about Master Servant Rush, isn’t it? I heard you were involved in her death.”
I swore under my breath. If the rumour had reached Nuil’s, everyone would have heard it. I had been hoping it would have stayed in the Warrens and with Silkstar and the Ash Guard. This was going to make things more difficult.
“I wasn’t involved. I was just nearby.”
“She was a regular here, you know. Silkstar trusted her to carry out his business. Anyone who did deals with her is looking over their shoulder. People are nervous, Nik. If Silkstar’s Master Servant can be killed, people are asking if anyone is safe. It’s making it hard to get information. The coffee house staff are being kept out of meetings.”
I dug my nails into my palms. I needed this. “But you can do it, right? You can find out what I need?”
She watched me for a few seconds, and I tried not to let my desperation show. Then she rubbed a flour-whitened hand across her headscarf.
“Maybe. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be fast. No one wants to talk. I can’t ask straight out. Now.” She turned back to the kitchens. “I really do have to get some pastries out of the oven.” Before I could say anything, she added, “And, no, you can’t have one. Piss off before I regret this whole thing.”
I stood there for several minutes, staring at the door and running through every curse I knew.
It’s not going to be fast.
Shit!
I needed it to be fast. Benny needed it to be fast. We couldn’t just wait around for Elosyn to find something, if there was anything to find. But what else could I do? That had been my only lead. I couldn’t go back to the Ash Guard until I had something new.
Maybe I should just go up to Silkstar and demand he told me who he had cheated, bribed, and extorted to get those wool contracts.
And when he turned me inside out, Depths, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this anymore.
My stomach rumbled at the smells drifting from the kitchens, and suddenly I was furious at the Estimable Larimar Sunstone for firing me and not even paying me what he owed. I needed that job, and he had taken it from me. I had just given Elosyn the last of my money.
It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t, not with every other way I had been screwed these last few days.
I wasn’t putting up with it. I fucking was not. I could have done the job. I could have rid them of their ghosts for good. And he had sacked me. The bastard.
Ghosts weren’t easy to get rid of. Half the cults and religions in Agatos claimed to be able to exorcise dead spirits. They were full of shit. They blew coloured smoke, rang a few bells, scattered around some perfectly good herbs, and claimed a large donation for their temple. Most of the time, there was never a ghost in the first place, and, in any case, the living gods were not so easily pushed into sharing their power, not for something like that.
The other half of the cults and religions were even worse, worshipping ghosts or seeing them as some wishy-washy extrusion of their gods. I had never bought that idea. If I were a god and I wanted people to notice me, I wouldn’t send some nebulous wisp to float around and give people the willies. I would come down with boots of stone and demand obeisance.
No one said I didn’t have issues.
Ghosts weren’t dangerous in a tear-your-skull-open-and-suck-your-eyeballs-out kind of way, but they were persistent, and they could get into your head. A ghost that was pissed off enough could soak a house in so much crawling, slithering ectoplasmic shit that it could turn you into a shattered wreck. Galena Sunstone’s ghosts didn’t seem like that kind of spirit, but even your average haunt could send unsettling fingers into your mind, and if it had died horribly — which most of them had — you wouldn’t want to experience that too often.
The temples might not be much use, but I knew how to exorcise ghosts, and I had done it before. The best way was to find whatever anchor the ghosts were attached to — sometimes their bodies, sometimes an item that they had valued in life, sometimes the place of their death, or sometimes just something their spirit clung onto as it left their body — and destroy it.
If I couldn’t find the anchor or it was something I couldn’t destroy, I could feed the ghosts enough carefully focused and structured magic that I disrupted their essence. It could take decades, even centuries, for the ghosts to re-form, which was good enough for most people. I wondered, idly, how a ghost would react to Ash, but I didn’t think the good captain would be parting with any for my experiments.
There were other items that could weaken or trap a ghost: silver, arevena flowers, and charcoal being the most common. It had been a long time since I’d had any spare silver, but I had a bottle of arevena flowers put by — fresh would have been better — and charcoal dust was easy enough.
I would gather my supplies and head up to the Sunstone house. The Estimable Sunstone could pay me what he owed or he could give me my job back. Or I would show him what a pissed off mage could do, and damn the consequences.
It was full dark by the time I reached the Sunstone house. Morgue-lamps glowed around Heliodore Plaza, and the shadows of cypress trees swayed gently in the middle of the plaza, like seaweed in the slow, rolling waves near the sea wall. The heat of the day still squatted malignantly over the city, but we were high enough here that the sea breeze made it bearable.
I slowed as I approached the house. My fury had cooled on the walk up here. This wasn’t what I should be doing when Benny was going on trial in the morning. I should be scouring the city for clues, chasing down leads, and calling in favours.
What clues? What leads? What favours, you pathetic excuse for a mage?
I had none. This — this job — was all I had, or what I should have had, until Sunstone had kicked me off like a shit-covered shoe. He owed me.
This wasn’t really about Sunstone. Of course it wasn’t. This was about the bastard who had framed me and Benny and tried to kill us. But I had no idea who that person was, and I couldn’t get my hands on them. Sunstone had screwed me over at the wrong time.
I reached for the ram’s head doorknocker and slammed it against the door.
A few moments later, the door swung open and the Estimable Sunstone glared up at me.
“What the Depths do you want?”
Maybe I should just punch him. I gripped my hand tight on my mage’s rod.
“You fired me,” I said. “I get it. All right, I get it. Maybe I would have fired me, too.” If I were an ignorant, arrogant fucker. “But you want the truth? You have ghosts. Real ghosts. That’s a problem. You can’t ignore them. They’ll get inside your mind, inside your dreams. They’ll corrupt the way you think and feel. They could even drive someone in your family insane.” He didn’t look impressed, so I added, “Maybe not you. Maybe your wife or your children.” Did he have children? I hadn’t seen any, but then I would have kept them away from me, too. I thought maybe Galena Sunstone had mentioned kids. Whatever. Go for it. “Do you really want your children growing up with that kind of shadow on the back of their minds? It’ll twist them. You don’t have any choice. You have to deal with the ghosts. Pay me what you owe me, and I will get rid of those ghosts for you.”
Maybe I should have flattered him or grovelled, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t in me. Benny was right. I did have problems with the rich and powerful of the city.
He stared at me like I was a dead seagull in his breakfast. Then a smirk spread across his face. “Oh, you have convinced me with your arguments, Mr. Thorn. I am won over.”
I paused. Convinced? I had intended to threaten him, maybe throw magic around for show. The Estimable Sunstone didn’t strike me as a man who listened to arguments.
“You are?” I said, cautiously.
His smirk widened further. “Quite. And that is why we have employed someone to do exactly that.”
I blinked. Someone? That didn’t make sense. I was the only mage for hire in Agatos. Yeah, sometimes you could make a deal with a high mage or one of the merchants with a mage on staff to borrow their services, but those services were jealously guarded. It would put him in their debt. They might even demand a share of his business in exchange. Would he really do that just to spite me?
Of course he would, the arrogant prick.
He reached a finger up and tapped the corner of his mouth thoughtfully.
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Thorn. Why don’t you come in? You can see exactly what you should have done four nights ago. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
The only thing I really wanted to learn was what he would look like if I punched him in the face. But I had too much invested in this. I wasn’t leaving without my money.
Sunstone swung the door fully open, spilling bright light from a dozen lamps onto the paved plaza.
Slowly, not sure what to expect, I followed him to the kitchen.
Galena Sunstone was there, and she wasn’t alone. A couple of maids stood in attendance, holding wine and pastries — no one had ever offered me wine and pastries — and standing before them, belly jutting like a belligerent whale, was a heavily-robed priest.
“Oh, for Pity’s sake,” I said under my breath. I was tired, bruised, hungry, and my nose hurt. Now this.
There were more priests in Agatos than fleas on an old dog. Priests of the dead gods, priests of the living gods, priests of the no-one’s-quite-sure-whether-they’re-living-or-dead gods. It didn’t make much difference. Gods didn’t answer prayers, dead or alive. I had figured that out a long time ago.
The priest in front of me wore a large medallion showing a broken eye, which marked him out as a priest of Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many. Gwillan was a god of commerce and wealth, which I supposed was why the Estimable Sunstone had gone to his priesthood for help. Gwillan was one of the living gods, for all the good it would do. No amount of praying, jangling bells, or waving religious symbols around was going to disrupt the ghosts’ essences, unless the priest was carrying some item invested by his god, and with my magical vision, I could see that he wasn’t.
“What’s he doing here?” the priest demanded as I followed Sunstone in.
The Estimable Sunstone smirked again. “Seeing how it should be done.”
I snorted. What a fucking joke. They were throwing away money on a monkey circus. I would have done the real job for a fraction of the cost. When this guy failed, I was going to put up my prices.
The priest shot me a look of pure venom, but he knew who was paying him. “He had better not get in the way. This won’t work if he interferes.”
Like it was going to work anyway. “I didn’t realise that Gwillan had performance anxiety,” I said.
The priest looked like he wanted to spit acid, but he glanced at the watching Sunstones and instead forced a smile. “Gwillan will be merciful.”
“That’s big of him.”
“Enough!” the Estimable Sunstone snapped. “Let’s get this over with.”
I bowed ironically to the priest, retreated to where the remains of the dinner had been piled, and helped myself to a chunk of bread. I took a bite, chewed it, and closed my eyes. Gods, I had needed that.
I opened my eyes again and waved a gracious hand to the priest. “Off you go, then.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have been trying to wind him up, but right now I couldn’t cope with the idea that I had been fired in favour of this fraud.
The priest shot me another death glare, then smoothed down his robes. I noticed crumbs still scattered across the cloth. Why had I never been invited to dinner before I started work? I hoped the priest would fail horribly. I would love the chance to rub it in his face.
He waved the maids and Galena Sunstone back and placed candles in a circle. I knew for a fact that candles had no effect one way or another on ghosts. They did add to the atmosphere, though. He could charge double with candles. I had seen them for sale for a dozen a penny in the Penitent’s Ear. I was in the wrong job. All he needed now was … ah, yes. Here was the bloody bell. The priest lifted it up in the air and struck it twice. The sound echoed around the room. I watched with my magical senses. Zilch.
I was going to enjoy this.
Running his tongue over his lips, the priest began to chant. As far as I could tell, whatever he was saying was nonsense, just random syllables to impress the suckers watching. Fuck me.
Then something did happen. In my magical vision, I saw a thin, seawater-blue fog coalesce around him, bleeding out of the air, apparently in response to his nonsense chant. I dropped my magical sight, focused my eyes again, and confirmed that it wasn’t actually visible. The fog wasn’t magic in the way that I knew it. The priest hadn’t pulled in raw magic, and he hadn’t formed it into a spell. It was coming from elsewhere. With a sinking feeling, I realised it was the influence of his god seeping into the mortal realm. Who’d have thought that Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many would actually be paying attention and be willing to lend his potency to his priesthood? Assuming that was how the whole religion thing worked. I had never really paid close attention, because as far as I could tell, most priests were conmen. I could count on the fingers of my hands the number of priests who could actually do this. Just my luck that the Sunstones had tracked down one who had the favour of his god.
I unfocused again and watched the fog shape slowly under the influence of the priest’s prayers. It was weak and slow, but it was there. Forget the candles and the bell. They were just the show. This was the real stuff.
If this bastard actually exorcised the ghosts, I was going to be really upset.
The ghosts emerged slowly, white ectoplasm coaxed into existence, one strand at a time, drawn from whatever source kept them in the mortal realm. First they were insubstantial, wisps of forlorn memories and sorrow, more a possibility or a hint than anything truly there.
I knew the moment the ghosts became visible from the scream that cut through the kitchen and the sound of a tray being dropped.
I blinked away the magic so I could see what everyone else was seeing. A young couple, dressed in clothes that hadn’t been seen in hundreds of years, seemed to be fleeing hand-in-hand across the kitchen, but slowly, as if caught in oil, as the priest’s prayers constrained them.
I took the opportunity to look more closely. I had been right that there was nothing malign about this pair of ghosts, but I could feel their fear. They had been running from something. If they were left to repeat this night after night, the fear would work its way into the house and into the minds of the people who lived here, whether the ghosts had ill intent or not. I didn’t know what had raised these ghosts to haunt the Sunstones in the last few weeks, but now they had been raised, they would keep returning, and with increasing frequency.
“See?” the Estimable Sunstone said, triumph turning his voice into a laugh. “This is how you do it. This is why we don’t need you, Mr. Thorn. This is why you are a fraud.”
I didn’t answer. Calling the ghosts was the easy bit. They wanted to rise. The hard bit was getting rid of them again, and for good, not just for a few nights.
The priest had used his god’s power to draw them out, but the power had been weak. Dismissing the ghosts permanently would take a whole lot more. We would have to see if the priest commanded that much of Gwillan’s attention. I hoped he didn’t. I really wanted this job back.
The priest stepped in front of the ghosts, raising the broken-eye amulet of Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many. I let my eyes unfocus again. You could learn a surprising amount about a mage by watching how they worked, and I figured it would be the same with the priest.
The seawater-blue fog had wrapped itself around the ghosts, smothering them. Mages drew in and manipulated the raw magic emitted by a dead god. Priests called on the will of a living god and shaped it through prayer. There had to be some relationship between the processes. I wondered if a mage could learn to manipulate the will of a god in the same way they did magic. I had always been fascinated by the way magic worked. Of course, if a god noticed you were doing that without the rituals, sacrifices, and general sucking up…
The priest’s prayers intensified, and the seawater-blue abruptly sharpened into thousands of tendrils. They began to work at the ghosts’ substance, pulling away and fraying it. He was trying to disrupt the ghosts, scatter them. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would be enough for the Sunstones.
Damn it. He was going to do it. The ghosts would be gone, maybe for decades. I was watching my only hope for a job evaporating under the will of a minor god. There was no way Sunstone would pay me now.
Then the ghosts changed.
One moment, they were the echo of a young couple from centuries ago. The next, something surged through them. The power was enough to send me staggering back, and that was what saved me.
The seawater-blue of the god’s will blew apart. The ghosts twisted, grew, combined. Something hurled itself forwards. It was part bear, part wolf, part great cat. It was still ectoplasm, this thing, but power raged within it. The priest’s shriek of fear was cut off in a spray of blood. He went down, and the beast came over him towards the rest of us.
I threw everything I had into a shield spell. The beast’s long claws cut through it as if it were thin cloth.
I was already moving, tearing open my bag and pulling out my sack of charcoal. My fingers fumbled over the string before I got it open. I swung the sack, spraying the charred wood and dust in an arc. The thing, the creature, flinched back. It was still made of ectoplasm, whatever it was. Where the charcoal touched it, it hurt. But not enough. It kept coming. I scrambled back, trying to stay out of reach. There was something wet on the floor — blood, wine, urine, I didn’t stop to look. I grabbed my bottle of arevena flowers and smashed it on the flagstones. The creature reared back, revealing a ghostly, striped belly.
The Estimable Sunstone chose that moment to flee. I guessed no one had told him you shouldn’t run from a predator. The creature turned, lashing out with its foot-long claws. A single claw caught the Estimable Sunstone across his back, slicing through silk and wool and skin. Blood spattered the wall.
I grabbed one of the petrified maids. “Silver!” I said. “You have to have silver.”
She gaped at me. Shit. I wasn’t getting through to this one. I turned to the other.
“Silver. Anything. Cups, a tray, anything.”
She gestured mutely at a drawer.
I glanced back at the ghost creature. It had left Sunstone and was picking its way around the charcoal and arevena flowers, eyes fixed on me with a predator’s gaze. The fear that hit me almost reduced me to a pulp. This wasn’t just ordinary fear. It was a supernatural terror, of things that hunted in the dark of the night, that had stalked our ancestors at the dawn of time when all we’d had were wooden spears and the dim safety of campfires to protect us from the things that saw us only as food.
No! I wasn’t a primitive hunter. I was a mage of Agatos. I wrenched my mind away. The effort made me sag, and the creature came for me.
I ripped the drawer out of the sideboard and tossed the whole thing at the advancing beast.
Silver cutlery spun through the air, glittering like the water of the Erastes Bay, and hit the beast in a hail. Where the silver touched it, ectoplasm parted, sizzled, and reformed. The beast howled, a sound that turned my muscles to water.
Then it was gone. All that was left were the ghosts of the young couple fleeing the kitchen.
I looked around at the devastation, at the eviscerated priest of Gwillan, whose light certainly wasn’t shining on his priest anymore, at the Estimable Sunstone lying groaning and bleeding among broken crockery, at Galena Sunstone pressed, terrified, against the wall, at the blood, spilled wine, scattered charcoal, crushed flowers, and piss, and at the terrified onlookers.
“Fuck,” I said. My legs let go, and I slipped to the floor. The impact when I hit travelled up my spine, making my teeth click. “Fuck.”