Ghost Relics by Jonathan Moeller Page B

plans for Caina were clear enough. Likely they planned to sell her to the mines, or perhaps to the fighting pits.
    She felt a flicker of grim amusement as she imagined their reaction once they learned they had kidnapped a woman. Caina was not unattractive, and she knew how to dress and carry herself to appear pleasing to the eyes of men, but the massive scar across her belly would keep them from selling her to some nobleman’s harem. Likely they would sell her as a kitchen drudge or a domestic servant, and such slaves commanded far lower prices than strong backs for the mines. 
    Well, she would inflict far more serious disappointments upon them before the day was done.
    Caina crawled back along the roof and peered through one of the skylights. The warehouse below was deserted, and stored massive heaps of bulging sacks, lashed in place by rope nets. After a moment’s examination, Caina realized that the sacks held rice. The plantations of Istarinmul grew coffee and fruit and olives and many other things, but the Istarish themselves ate a great deal of rice.
    Enough rice to pile it in sacks twenty feet high.
    Caina dropped through the skylight and landed on one of the piles, a puff of dust rising from her boots. She scrambled down the net to the floor, and examined the knots for a moment. Then she drew her short sword and went to work, cutting ropes here and there. She stepped back, nodded in satisfaction, and after a moment’s thought hid her heavy pack behind another one of the piles.
    She was going to have to run very quickly, and she did 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