“Hey, you! Stop!” The man waved.
“Aw, crap.” Syfax grabbed Nicola and lifted her into the boat, dropping her into the bottom on top of stiff coiled ropes and rotting tarps. Then he grabbed the rough gunwale and shoved the boat back into the sea, back against the rising tide, driving out until he was hip-deep in the freezing water. Syfax leapt up into the dinghy, dragging his soaked legs up into the howling sea breeze. He rolled to his knees and stomped off-balance to the seat in the center of the boat, wrestled the oars into the oarlocks, and began sweeping them about in awkward circles as he tried to propel the little boat out into the harbor.
“Help! Boat-thief! Help!” The stocky man was no longer in the open doorway and Syfax couldn’t bother to look for him in the dark.
The oars bit into the inky sea and drove forward inch by inch. The boat rolled as the waves and wind whipped and battered it back toward the beach.
We’re moving. Just stroke. Gotta be a machine. Gotta work like an engine. Stroke. Again. Again.
Syfax ground his teeth as he hauled on the oars. His rough palms were already burning where tiny splinters sliced open his skin and his back was already aching from the unfamiliar motion.
Harder. Harder.
The beach was still only a dozen yards away when the first rifle shot echoed across the water. A babble of Espani shouts soon followed, and a smattering of rifle shots followed that. Syfax peered up at the beach and saw the dark figures running down toward the water.
Four, eight, twelve.
Damn it.
“Halt, thief!”
The next shot was a proper volley, six rifles crackling in unison. Two bullets struck the water just to their right, sending up tiny jets of brine. A third bullet struck the stern of the dinghy.
Nicola lay flat in the bottom of the boat, twisted and contorted at the major’s feet. “Can we escape?”
Syfax took one last quick glance at the black waves shoving him back to shore where a line of men were leveling their weapons at him. “Nope.” He let go the oars and raised his hands over his head. “Stand down!”
No more shots were fired and in a very few moments the tide deposited the dinghy back on the beach. Syfax stood up, hands raised, and let the sneering boys in uniform pull him out onto the sand at gunpoint. He looked back at Nicola. “Don’t say anything.”
“Don’t be stupid, I’m well versed in Espani law. I can have us out of this little predicament in an hour.”
“I said shut up.” Syfax looked into the face of the oldest soldier there on the beach. The grim man peered back with an all-too-familiar sleepy-eyed look. There were no nervous eyes, no shaking hands, no shuffling feet here tonight. “Just shut up.”
Chapter 21. Shifrah
She stood in the shadows across the street and watched the soldiers lead the Mazigh major and his homely friend into the constable’s little jail. When the uniforms were all gone, Shifrah stepped out from the alley and walked slowly past the jail. It was a small building but built of massive gray stones, and she knew the country’s construction habits well enough to guess that the cell would be caged with heavy wrought iron bars bolted deep into the stones.
So much for you, big man. Shifrah paused. But where is your sickly little friend?
She continued past the jail and down the lane, through a dark little graveyard behind a dark little church, and onto another street that looked to have a few more lights than the others. But she found only three guttering torches outside a tavern. She ducked inside, found only a few old fishermen nodding in their cups, and resumed her walk down toward the water.
Maybe the kid ran away when the major got arrested.
But as she strolled along the top of the pebbled beach, she saw no men still at work on their boats, and the boats themselves were little more than rotting relics passed down from fathers and grandfathers who probably knew as little of shipwrighting as she did. There were a thousand places to hide in the dark, but no real shelter, nowhere worth staying for more than a few minutes.
She stood in the cold wind, smelling the salt and tasting the faint oils of the dead fish. Seeing and hearing nothing, she turned to walk back up into town when she heard the unsteady shuffling of boots on the steep slope of the beach. And there in the darkness was the sickly boy, only he wasn’t so sickly now. He walked tall with an angry stride, as though stomping either toward or away from some argument. She couldn’t quite see his face, but she recognized the line of his small nose and the unhappy lines around his mouth.
“Good evening,” she called.
He stopped and looked up at her, squinting in the dark. The starlight fell on his angry face. “You again. What do you want?”
“I came to find you, of course. Well, your friend the major, anyway,” she said. “Have you seen him lately?”
He glanced up the beach. “Not in a few hours. I was just going to find him now.”
“I think I can help you with that.” She turned and started walking back the way she had come. “I saw him and that horse-faced Italian woman less than hour ago.”
“Where?”
“Being led into a jail.”
He shook his head and started walking again parallel to her along the water’s edge. “Don’t be stupid. It would take a dozen soldiers to take down the major.”
“Only half a dozen from what I saw.”
He stopped short. “You’re serious?”
“Always.”
“Show me.”
It only took a few minutes to lead the young man back past the tavern, through the graveyard, and around to the back of the jail. He strode as all angry young men do, hunching forward, fists clenched, brow furrowed. “Do you have a name?” he asked.
“Shifrah. And you?”
“Kenan.” He studied the heavy stones of the jail walls, grimed with filthy ice and pitted by countless years of salt winds. “You’re sure they’re in there?”
“I saw them go in. I assume they’ve not gone out for supper.”
“Right.” Kenan’s gaze wandered up the wall to the roof and the stars beyond. “Well, then I guess it’s up to me to get them out of there.”
Shifrah smirked. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?”
“The old-fashioned way. Wait here.” He strode off into the night with his arms crossed over his chest and his frown as deep as ever.
She waited in the shadows, huddled under her furs, staring at the stone wall and wondering if it was time to disappear again, to wander off into the darkness and find some young sailor willing to share his bunk until they reached some distant, warmer shore. Numidia, perhaps. Or even Aegyptus. It might be time to visit my broker again and check my accounts.
Kenan’s loud footsteps preceded him up the alleyway from the graveyard, as did the flickering light of the torch in his hand. She recognized the iron basket holding the coals as one of the torches from the tavern near the beach.
“If you’re planning to burn the jail down, you may be disappointed. I don’t know if stone walls burn in Marrakesh, but here in Espana I can almost assure you they won’t.” She smiled.
He only cast her a tired look stained with contempt as he passed by. He walked right up to the jail and held the torch high over his head against the first ironwood rafter of the roof. Patiently he stood there, waiting for the frozen wood to burn.
“This is stupid. There are other ways to get him out of there,” she said. “Lies. Bribes. Distractions.”
“I don’t recall asking for your help. You can leave now.”
“Oh no, I want to watch you burn down a stone jail covered in ice.”
Just then a soft crackle sounded overhead and she saw the tongues of fire licking greedily at the rafter. Kenan took two steps to his left and began heating the next one. And so one by one he slowly proceeded along the back of the jail setting dark orange flames wriggling and writhing around the rafters.
It took nearly half an hour, but eventually the roof was well and truly burning. Kenan nodded
. “All right, let’s go.” He strode toward the corner of the jail and Shifrah followed him, right into the arms of a startled old man peering up at the roof.
“Fire?” The old man squinted.
Kenan held his torch up between the man’s face and the roof above. “No. Just my torch. Sorry about that. Here, let me help you, sir.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
Kenan and Shifrah each took the old man by the elbow and escorted him back out into the street in front of the jail where they left him and strolled calmly away. Kenan tossed the still-burning torch into an alley as they passed, and at the top of the street they turned to look down on their handiwork. The entire back of the jail’s roof was burning steadily and smoking mightily, but the fire burned quietly under the whistling sea wind.
Minutes passed. Then they heard the first shout, and then some more. Men yelling. Church bells ringing. Buckets clanging. Water sloshing.
The constables jogged out to consult with the bucket-bearers, and then the lawmen dashed back inside only to emerge again a minute later with the major and the Italian in chains.
“All right,” Shifrah said. “You got them out. But what now? We’ll have half the city down here in the few minutes to put out that fire before it starts spreading from roof to roof. Don’t you think it will be a little difficult to get to him with four hundred people watching?”
Kenan shook his head as he picked at his lip. “No. It’ll be easier. Much easier. And besides. There’ll only be two hundred at most.”
“I’ll bet you one of my shiny Espani reales it will be more.”
Kenan didn’t smile. He didn’t even look at her. He only watched the fire and crowd growing in the street. “Two reales.”
Ten minutes later the fire had spread across the entire roof and leapt to the adjoining building, but the buckets were flying from hand to hand and freezing sea water was flying through the air, splashing and hissing on the roofs. With a creak and a groan, the entire roof of the jail buckled and broke and collapsed within the walls.
“Now.” Kenan started walking down the street, straight into the crowd. It was no tangle of panicking bodies. The men stood in loose lines, passing buckets and sloshing water. Several shovels and axes lay in the street where they’d been deposited by the rallying townsmen, just in case there would be wreckage to clear away later. Kenan stepped over the tools without looking down at them.
The two constables had positioned their prisoners just across the street from the burning jail, pressing the tall man and woman against the cold stones of a house that had already poured out its share of men to fight the fire. Shifrah followed Kenan along the edge of the street, wondering what this angry young man would do. Or at least, what he would try to do.
She remembered some of the angry young men she had known in Eran, the gallant soldiers of Nablus near her home on Mount Gerizim. Quick to drink, quick to laugh, quick to argue, quick to fight, and all too quick to die. She had no particular love for angry young men, and yet they fascinated her. Their passion. Their violence. She had no idea what this one would do next, but she wanted to see.
Kenan swept past the prisoners and the constables and barked out, “Constables, with me. We need to put your prisoners somewhere safe.”
Shifrah marched along at his side as he turned sharply into the next alley to cut over to the next street. To her mild surprise, the constables followed with their prisoners. The older lawman said, “Sir? Sir? I’m sorry, who are you? Where are we going?”
“Somewhere secure,” Kenan said over his shoulder.
“Did General Vega send you?”
“Of course.” They stepped out of the shadows onto the next street, a quiet lane where the moonlight on the snow and ice gleamed a pale blue. Kenan turned. “Do you have the keys to their shackles with you?”
“Yes, of course,” the older constable said, his hand going to his jacket pocket.
“Good.” Kenan grabbed the man’s collar and punched him in the nose.
Shifrah yanked the older man forward and punched him in the throat, leaving him gasping and staring. She pulled a long thin knife from the sheathe on her thigh but Kenan grabbed her wrist. “No killing.”
She smiled. “That’s very sweet, and very stupid.” But when she tried to slice the constable’s throat, the young man’s grip on her tightened. He’s strong for a stringy one. “Fine. No killing.” She reversed the knife in her hand and struck the constable in the temple, and then a second time, dropping him to the ground.
A few feet away, the huge major had his arms around the younger lawman’s neck, gently choking him into oblivion.
Kenan knelt down and found the keys in the constable’s pocket. He removed the major’s restraints and then the Italian woman’s as well. Then they shackled the two constables and stowed the unconscious men on a pile of firewood in a narrow alley. Kenan paused to study his towering companion with a look of tired irritation. “How did they find you?”
The major shrugged. “We were the only people stealing a boat at the time, so it probably wasn’t too hard for them.”
Kenan glared. “I told you not to steal from anyone!”
“Yeah, well, I don’t take orders from children, so clearly we weren’t communicating very well. Don’t worry about it. You got me out of jail, so we’re square. Just don’t do it again.”
“Square?” Kenan shook his head as he walked away down the street.
“And you,” the major turned to Shifrah. “What’s your story? You helping us out or not?”
Shifrah looked from the hulking Mazigh to his younger companion striding away toward the beach. “No. I think I’m helping him now. He had the good sense to not get arrested, and the brains to get you out again.” And she set out after Kenan.
“I saw you at the bar in Ciudad Real, didn’t I?” asked the Italian lady. “Who are you? Who is she, major?”
“I dunno, just some crazy broad looking for someone to mooch off.”
“That was good enough for you at the time, wasn’t it, major?” Shifrah said.
“We both got what we wanted.”
Shifrah sighed. “If you say so. Do you two have names?”
“I’m Syfax. She’s Nicola. You?”
“Shifrah.”
“Nice to meet you,” the major said. “Now what the hell do you want?”
“From you? Nothing.” Shifrah quickened her step to come alongside Kenan. She could see the rage in his face, just barely contained below the skin.
He was cool back there. His plan wasn’t very clever, but it worked perfectly. He was in control. Even his voice was calm and even. But now he’s on the verge of a bloodthirsty tantrum. I wonder how dangerous he could really be.
She glanced back at the major following a few yards behind.
And all because of him. Kenan hates him. I wonder what else he hates.
At the beach Kenan turned to follow the waterline farther and farther from the dim glow of the burning jail and the huge plumes of smoke and steam rising above Malaga.
“Hey kid, slow down,” Syfax called out. “We need to start looking for another boat.”
“No, we don’t.” Kenan kept walking.
“Oh, I see. So you’ve found religion and you plan on walking across the Strait now?”
“No, I found a fisherman willing to sail us to Tingis and I plan on sleeping across the Strait about an hour from now when the tide turns.” Kenan lowered his voice. “Idiot.”
Shifrah smiled. “What exactly did you tell this fisherman?”
He looked at her and some of the darkness clouding his young face faded away. “I told him the truth. I told him that we were foreigners, that we hadn’t done anything wrong, and that we wanted to leave before we were wrongly arrested. I told him we just wanted to get home to our families.”
“You have a family? You’re married?”
“No. I guess I was thinking of the captain and her family, mostly. She’s a good officer, a good person. Smart. Tough. You
’d probably like her if you met her.”
Shifrah scratched the edge of her eye patch where it rubbed her cheek. “So where is this captain of yours?”
“I don’t know exactly. Somewhere up north, I guess. She’s guarding the rest of our passengers until she can get them out of the country.”
“Up north? In the Espani winter?” Shifrah laughed. “She’s got stones, I’ll give her that. No, give me a warm beach and a clear sky any day.”
He grinned and suddenly looked five years younger. “Yeah, me too.”
Kenan led the way to a small house at the top of the beach. Looking back, Shifrah saw they were more than two miles from the city center and there was no sign of the fire anymore except for a dirty haze in the air.
The fisherman was waiting for them with a curvaceous little pipe clenched in his teeth. He gave them all a brief glance and led the way down to the water. “Good timing. Tide’s just turning now. Weather looks as fine as I could ask, considering. Not expecting any rain for another few days, says the almanac, if you believe in that sort of thing. Come along.”
At first Shifrah thought he was leading them toward a rotting, collapsing dinghy on the beach, but the fisherman turned to the right and led them onto a floating dock made of old planks lashed over old barrels that bobbed and shook when she stepped on them. The floating dock reached out some thirty yards into the harbor, and while the first few boats moored there all seemed to be more hopeless dinghies, out at the end she saw a half dozen little yachts, their naked masts pointing at the stars.
The fisherman waved them onto a narrow sailboat no more than twenty feet long. Shifrah moved cautiously in the dark, clutching at ghostly ropes and rails to keep her feet under her, and sat down on a hard, cold wooden seat just behind the mast. Kenan sat beside her and Syfax sat beside Nicola across from them. For the next few minutes they sat in silence as the fisherman went about loosing the moorings and freeing the sails, winding his winches and lashing his lines to the cleats. The old canvas sheet snapped back and forth as the night wind raced across the harbor, and the boom swung violently back and forth just above their heads.
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