Read Online Ghost in the Cowl by Jonathan Moeller - Free Book Online

chains right now, had she done so.
    Or dead. 
    “The Collectors took everyone?” said Caina. 
    “The slaves and the servants,” said Damla. “They have been here for years, worked for my husband and my brother before they died. But that was not enough. They took my sons, my sons, my sons…” Her voice started to crack.
    “Why did they take your sons?” said Caina.
    “Why do you care?” said Damla, her voice rising to a shout. “What does it matter? Don’t you understand?” She started to cry, her face twisting up. “It was…inevitable. My husband is dead. My brother is dead. And now my sons are gone. Everyone, I have lost everyone. I always knew I would lose everyone, and now that day has come.” She started to claw at her face. “I…I have…”
    Caina seized Damla’s wrists before she could hurt herself. Damla screamed again and tried to pull away, but Caina was stronger and knew how to handle herself. Damla struggled for a moment, but then went limp, still weeping.
    “Listen to me,” said Caina, voice low. “It might not be too late. Perhaps I can help you.”
    “How?” whispered Damla. “No one crosses the Brotherhood and lives.”
    “I don’t know how,” said Caina. “Not yet. But do not despair. Did the Collectors kill your sons?”
    “No,” said Damla. “No, they took them. They will be sold to the mines. A terrible fate.”
    “Perhaps we can avert it yet,” said Caina. “Tell me more. I need to know more before I can act.” 
    Damla stared at her for a moment, and then nodded.
    “Maybe,” she said, tugging her wrists free. Caina let her go. “Perhaps you are simply a madman and I am listening to you ramble.” She shook her head. “But if there is any hope at all…” Damla closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again. “Forgive me. I am…not myself.”
    “I understand better than you think,” said Caina. “Please, tell me more.” 
    “Anburj led the Collectors, along with some other men from the guard of Ulvan of the Brotherhood,” said Damla. “That was why Anburj was here for Sulaman’s recitation. I thought it odd…he is a brutish man, and cares little for poetry. I always instructed my slave girls to make sure they were never alone with him, and took the same precaution myself.”
    “So then he only came to the Song of Istarr and the Demon Princes,” said Caina, “to scout, to see if any of the guests would be a threat later.” Had Anburj come to the House of Agabyzus to hunt for Caina? That seemed unlikely – most likely her erratic behavior last night would have made him think that the Imperial Collegium of Jewelers needed to hire a better quality of courier.
    “That is my thought as well,” said Damla. “Anyway…his Collectors smashed down the doors. They pulled us from our beds and took us to the common room and started to put us in chains. We screamed, since I figured Anburj had gone mad, or had been dismissed from Ulvan’s service and turned to robbery.” She shook her head. “But he announced that my sons, my free servants, and my slaves were Ulvan’s property.”
    “But not you?” said Caina.
    Damla scowled. “No. Because the debt, apparently, was mine.”
    “Debt?”
    “Yes, the debt,” said Damla. She rummaged through the clutter on the bed. There were a number of ledgers and legal contracts atop the blankets, and Damla had been paging through them. “Here. The Writ of Servitude claimed that Ulvan had bought Agabyzus’s debt.” 
    She handed over a scroll, and Caina unrolled it with a frown.
    It was an impressive-looking legal document written in formal Istarish, no doubt produced by some enslaved scribe toiling away in Ulvan’s palace. The document declared that Agabyzus had owed a sum of three hundred and fifty bezants to a moneylender, and the moneylender had sold the debt to Ulvan of the Brotherhood. To collect on the debt, therefore, Ulvan would seize Damla’s sons and slaves and sell them to raise the necessary