Caina spotted Nerina at the north end of the street, running towards the Old Bazaar. Nerina, like Caina, was dressed as a man. Specifically, she was disguised as a nomad of the Sarbian desert, with a long sand-colored robe and a turban of similar color to conceal her ragged red hair. She was too pale to pass as Sarbian, but the towering man running behind her was Sarbian, his dark face marked with scars, an enormous two-handed scimitar strapped to his back. He was a dozen yards behind Nerina, and Caina had the distinct impression that he was chasing her.
Both Nerina and Azaces ran towards the Old Bazaar.
To where a hundred Immortals waited to escort their new commander south to the Inferno.
So why were Nerina and Azaces running towards the Immortals?
Caina raced after them, shooting a look over her shoulder, wondering what could have possibly caused Nerina and her silent bodyguard to run towards the Immortals. Another troop of Immortals? Perhaps the Silent Hunters or the Adamant Guards of the Umbarian Order, or a nagataaru-possessed assassin? Or maybe the Teskilati, the secret police of the Padishah, had caught up to the Ghosts?
But the street was deserted.
Nerina was moving at a good clip, and Azaces was fast, but Caina was faster than them both and she started to overtake them. She did not dare call out. They were almost to the Old Bazaar, and the Immortals might overhear. Yet Nerina started shouting at the top of her lungs, over and over again.
“Malcolm!” screamed Nerina. “Malcolm!”
Caina was so surprised that she almost stopped running.
Malcolm was the name of Nerina’s husband, but he had been dead for three or four years. Caina had never gotten the exact date out of Nerina. Caina would never get an exact date because Nerina had been using so much wraithblood at the time that she had lost the ability to discern between hallucination and reality. The sorcerous drug wraithblood was many things, but it was also a potent hallucinogen that induced terrifying delusions.
Such as seeing a dead husband returned to life?
Caina whispered a curse and ran faster.
“Nerina!” she shouted. If Nerina had started taking wraithblood again and had hallucinated her dead husband among the waiting Immortals, she was going to get killed. The alchemical elixirs that gave the Immortals their inhuman strength and stamina also gave them a taste for sadism, and the Padishah’s elite soldiers could do whatever they wished within Istarinmul. If Nerina annoyed them, they would not hesitate to kill her.
After enjoying whatever torments their twisted minds could imagine.
Nerina burst into the Old Bazaar, still shouting Malcolm’s name, and Azaces finally caught up to her. He seized one of her shoulders, his meaty arm going around her waist, and picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all. Nerina shouted again, trying to twist free of Azaces’s grasp, but it was like fighting a boulder.
Caina skidded to a stop next to Azaces, and the big Sarbian gave her a relieved look.
“Let me go!” said Nerina. “Malcolm!”
“Nerina,” said Caina, “what the…”
She fell silent as dark figures walked closer, and Caina realized that they were in a lot of trouble.
Normally the Old Bazaar would have bustled with activity as women and slaves went from shop to shop and stall to stall to purchase goods. Now the shops were closed and the stalls shuttered. Nearly twenty wagons stood in the square, each pulled by a pair of oxen and tended by slaves in gray tunics, their beds laden with supplies. The wagons had not closed the Old Bazaar. Far more traffic than that passed through the Bazaar every day.
The hundred Immortals guarding the wagons had driven away the merchants.
Five Immortals walked towards Caina, Azaces, and Nerina. They wore black armor of steel plate and mail, scimitars and coiled whips of chain at their belts. Their helms enclosed their heads, and the faceplates had been wrought in the likeness of grinning skulls. A pale blue glow shone in the eyeholes of their skull-masked helms. The same elixirs that gave them their strength and cruelty caused their eyes to shine with that ghostly blue light.
Nerina’s eyes were the same color, but they did not glow. Wraithblood did not have that effect.
The Immortals stopped a few paces away as Nerina struggled, and Caina felt a drop of sweat slide down her back.
“Disturbances in the Bazaar,” said the lead Immortal in Istarish, his helm making his voice cold and metallic, “are unwelcome.”