Caina Amalas was the Ghost circlemaster of Istarinmul, the leader of the Emperor’s spies in the city. She had rebuilt the city’s Ghost circle from scratch after the Teskilati, the Padishah of Istarinmul’s secret police, had wiped them out. Consequently Caina had eyes and ears all over Istarinmul – an emir’s factor in the Old Quarter, an apothecary’s apprentice in the Anshani Quarter, scribes in the Padishah’s Golden Palace, a pair of prostitutes in the Old Quarter, a minor emir whom Caina had saved from an assassin with a poisoned knife. Some of them knew that she was a Ghost, but most of them did not. Caina preferred to keep them ignorant, both for her safety and for theirs. The Grand Wazir of the Padishah’s magistrates had put a bounty of two million bezants upon Caina’s head, and that kind of money could turn many a man into a traitor. For that matter, there were countless bounty hunters who would cheerfully kill Caina’s informants for a shot at the reward. So when one of Caina’s informants was murdered, she was not surprised.
