Free Ghost Keeper by Jonathan Moeller

not want it slowing her down.
    Then she went out the front door, making sure to leave it open behind her. 
    Caina walked the remainder of the street and into the square. She ought to feel frightened, she knew, but she felt nothing but an icy indifference. Though she did feel anger. 
    Quite a lot of it, now that she thought about it.
    She took on more step into the square as the Collectors moved toward her.
    “Welcome,” said the Collector she had spoken with earlier, smiling as he raised a club. “You’re going to come with us. Put down your weapons and come quietly. If not, well…you’ll fetch just as high of a price with a few bruises.” 
    Caina made an expression of terror come over her face, and then spun and ran for the rice warehouse.
    “Take him!” roared the lead Collector, and the men sprang after her.
    They were fast. Which made sense, since they kidnapped people for a living. Caina head the crack of leather as two of the Collectors unfurled whips, no doubt to entangle her legs and pull her down. 
    But she had a head start, and she dashed back into the warehouse. 
    And as she did, she yanked a dagger from its sheath and slashed through the remaining rope holding the massive stack of rice sacks in place.
    The Collectors ran through the door after her.
    “You’re just making it harder on yourself,” said the leader, grinning. “I am going to…”
    Right about then the twenty-foot stack of sacks collapsed, and two or three tons of dry rice fell upon the Collectors. 
    The sheer force of the impact drove one man to the ground with such force that his head cracked against the hard floor. The other three men disappeared as dozens of forty-pound rice sacks fell upon them with bone-cracking force. Caina heard limbs snap, heard the Collectors scream. One man clawed his way free, and Caina cut his throat before he regained his feet. Another was trapped beneath three sacks, screaming in pain, and Caina put him out of his misery.
    The lead Collector staggered to his feet, his left arm hanging at an odd angle. He turned towards Caina with a furious curse, but she seized his left arm and twisted. The Collector fell with a scream of agony, and she kicked him in the gut and sent him sprawling. He tried to stand, but she put her boot on his broken arm and he went rigid.
    “Who are you?” whispered the Collector.
    “Why did you try to take me?” said Caina.
    “The…the Brotherhood,” said the Collector, “they’re buying slaves right and left.” His words tumbled out in a terrified rush. “It…it ought to flood the market, but the prices keep going up and up. I’ve never seen anything like it. It…it wasn’t personal, I just need the money…”
    She looked into his eyes and saw the fear there. And for some reason she remembered the final words of Horemb the scribe before he passed to the next world, the words he had claimed would one day aid her.
    “The star is the key to the crystal,” she said. “Do you know what that means?” 
    “I…I don’t know, I swear,” said the Collector. “A poem? I don’t know. Let me go. I’ll do whatever you want. What do you want?”
    The question cut into her like a knife.
    She remembered Corvalis, remembered his strong arms around her. His dark wit, and the way his green eyes flashed when he found something funny. The aplomb with which he had masqueraded as Anton Kularus, merchant of coffee. His mouth against hers, his body against hers…
    She did not know what might have passed over her expression, but dread flooded the Collector’s face.
    “I want Corvalis back,” she told him, “but I will settle for one less slave trader in the world.”
    He started to scream, but her dagger cut the cry short.
    Caina cleaned her weapons and her hands and stepped over the mess to the door. Whoever found the dead Collectors would likely assume they had fallen to fighting and accidentally knocked over the sacks. So long as Caina departed quickly, she need not worry