Free Ghost in the Storm (The Ghosts) by Jonathan Moeller Page B

rooms. Caina raced up three flights of stairs, her heart pounding, and found herself on the building's top floor. At the end of the hallway a ladder climbed to the roof.
    She heard the crash as Sicarion's men kicked through the wine shop's door. 
    Caina climbed the ladder, scrambled onto the roof, and jammed the trapdoor shut behind her. It wouldn't slow down Sicarion and his men for very long. But hopefully it would delay them just long enough. 
    She sprinted across the roof, came to the edge of the alley, and jumped. She hit the roof of the tenement across the alley with a thud, her boots scraping against the clay tiles, and for a terrible moment Caina thought she would fall forty feet to her death. But she caught her balance, and saw the trapdoor on the wine shop’s roof shudder as Sicarion's men hammered it open.
    So she stepped off the edge of the roof. 
    She caught the edge of the gutter in her hands, her arms protesting with the strain. Just below the roof a window yawned in the blank wall, the shutters open. The room was in disarray, as if the inhabitants had fled. Caina swung and landed in the apartment. She rolled to one knee, reached up, and pulled the shutters closed, leaving then open the tiniest crack. 
    With any luck, Sicarion and his lackeys would assume that she had fled over the rooftops. Once they were gone, Caina would leave the tenement and resume her search for Nicolai. 
    The trapdoor on the tavern's roof shook once more, and then burst open. The four mercenaries scrambled onto the roof, followed by Sicarion. They looked around, their eyes passing over the side of the tenement. 
    "She's gone," said one the mercenaries. "She must have jumped to another roof, and climbed down to the street." 
    "No matter," said Sicarion, closing his eyes. 
    Caina felt the sudden prickle of arcane power against her skin. 
    Sicarion's mismatched eyes opened, looking right at her.
    "Ah," he said, pointing. "She's right there, hiding behind those shutters. Very clever. Take her." 
    Two of the mercenaries jumped to the tenement’s roof, followed by Sicarion himself. The other two disappeared down the ruined trapdoor. Caina suspected they planned to block the tenement’s front door when she tried to flee. 
    She sprinted from the room, and half-jumped, half-ran down the tenement stairs. The sound of shattering wood echoed through the stairwell as the other two mercenaries kicked down the front door.
    Time to change plans, again. 
    She changed direction and entered a deserted apartment on the second floor. A brazier of dying coals stood in the corner, and Caina pushed it onto a discarded blanket. The blanket went up in flames, the fire spreading into the dry planks of the floor.
    These tenements were firetraps. 
    Caina pushed open the window's shutters and jumped. It was fifteen feet to the street, and Caina let her legs collapse beneath her, rolling to absorb the energy of the fall. She came to a stop against the wall of the building across the street, scrambled to her feet, and kept running. Smoke rose from the tenement’s windows as the fire spread.
    She saw one of the mercenaries burst from the front door an instant before she turned a corner.
    Caina cursed and ran faster, ignoring the ache in her legs, tearing deeper into the dockside district. Again she felt the crawling tingle of arcane force. Somehow Sicarion had the ability to track her with sorcery. No matter how fast she ran, no matter where she hid, she could not elude him. 
    Which left only one choice. She had to kill him, and all four of his men.
    As soon as she thought up a way to do it. 
    But Sicarion might not know that Caina knew about his ability to track her. 
    Which meant if Caina was clever, she could set a trap for him. 
    But where? Halfdan had a hidden safehouse in an abandoned warehouse not far from here, stocked with weapons, supplies, and other useful things. Caina’s shadow-cloak was hidden there. Woven with a method known only to