He sat up straight, and his mouth fell open.
She drew her finger to her lips, then melted away into a shadow, became part of it, and did not reemerge.
Stevic’s heart plunged. “Nooo,” he moaned.
Sevano looked at him startled. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“Karigan ...”
“What about her?”
“She’s dead, she’s dead. . . .” Stevic put his face in his hands.
“What?”
“Her ghost.” Stevic pointed a shaking finger where he had last seen her.
“Her ghost? Now look here. That Connly lad said she was alive.”
“Was. She’s dead now. I saw her ghost.”
Stevic shook his head and put his ashen face in his trembling hands.
Jendara peered in each alcove along the east wall in search of the merchant. There had been something unsettlingly familiar about him, and she now took the opportunity to seek him out while King Amilton was preoccupied with terrorizing his nobles.
She found the man and his guard tucked away in one of the alcoves, and to her surprise, he was weeping, the cargo master’s hand on his shoulder.
“You there,” she said to the cargo master. Her voice was nasal and muffled from having her nose broken. “What is the problem?”
The cargo master looked at her with jaundiced eyes. “It is none of your nevermind,” he said.
“I could cut your heart out before you drew your next breath, old man.” Jendara unsheathed her sword and watched as comprehension dawned on the man’s face when he saw the black band on her blade.
The cargo master looked up at her, but the disgust in his expression had only deepened. “What in life made you fall to such a level, Swordmaster?”
Jendara smiled, showing her canines. “You say I have fallen? Am I not the personal Weapon to the king of Sacoridia? It seems I have ascended to a higher place.”
“That is no king.” The cargo master pointed in the direction of the throne.
Swiftly, the blade tip pressed against the old man’s throat. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
“Do you wish to die?” she asked him.
“I have no such wish,” he said with equal intensity. “But I see it in your eyes.”
Jendara laughed. “We become Weapons because we expect death.”
“Then I will rephrase my question. What has made you such a bitter woman?”
“A man,” she said.
She pushed the cargo master away with the flat of her blade. She gazed down on the overcome merchant. “Tell me what ails him, old man.”
“Grief.”
“Is that all? There is enough to go around these days.”
“His daughter has been missing. Now he believes her to be dead.”
“He believes? Doesn’t he know?”
“He says he saw her ghost.”
“What? Just now?”
“Aye.”
There was a prickling on the back of Jendara’s neck. She placed the tip of her sword beneath the grieving man’s chin, and lifted it, tilting his face upward. Even in the shadows, she saw how striking his face was, how strong and well-formed, though drawn and creased with worries. The lines around his eyes suggested character and more merry days. There was also that nagging familiarity.
She grabbed his chin. The cargo master started, but she whipped her sword to his chest.
“Stand off,” she told the old man. “I won’t hurt your chief.”
She shifted the merchant’s face in the dim light. Yes, there it was in the dimples around his mouth, and perhaps the bright glint of his eyes. The shape of the face was different though. She dropped his chin, and then saw on his finger a familiar ring. She had worn its twin.
The girl’s features must favor the mother, but the ring was unmistakable. A fine chill tingled up her spine. “She should have killed me,” she whispered.
The merchant seemed to only just notice her. “What?”
She looked right into his eyes. “I know her.”
Jendara swung around. Amilton had another noble on her knees. He was about to place his hands, hands full of magic, on her shoulders. Jendara would not interrupt him, and he would not notice her absence.
She stalked down the throne room, peering into every alcove, testing the air before her with her sword. The Greenie could be gone by now for all she knew.
Then, near the entryway, she saw it—a flickering light, a streak of green. Jendara pelted down the throne room and through the great doorway, past astonished guards. Here the corridor was well lit with lamps and candles, and the flames bent at the Greenie’s retreat. Down the corridor she saw the Greenie run, transparent and ghostlike. No wonder the merchant thought his daughter dead.
Holding her sword before her, Jendara charged down the corridor after the Greenie, but when she rounded one corner into another corridor, she discovered it was darkened and the air thick with candle smoke.
Jendara peered through the hall and into the shadows. Careful, she thought. The Greenie could be armed.
The shape of a person loomed up on her left and in the blink of an eye she swung her sword into it. A suit of armor crashed to the floor. The helm rolled down the corridor. Jendara narrowed her eyes as she stepped over a leg of armor and extended every sense into the gloom, but she heard nothing, saw nothing, felt not even a shift in the air. She smelled nothing but candles.
Even then, however, another sense awakened in her, like a peripheral vision of the mind. She perceived the Greenie to her right, tight up against the wall. Jendara shifted her eyes, but could see no one. Maybe there was a deepening of a shadow against the wall.