It was a good plan. Her Saturday night usual.
“Shifrah Dumah with a basket of fruit?” A male voice chuckled.
Shifrah snatched one of the stilettos from her jacket and whirled to face the man in the shadows. He was sitting in the far corner of the flat, half-hidden by a curtain that was flapping in the evening breeze coming in through the open window. He leaned forward a bit more to let the fading light fall on his face.
“Aker?” Shifrah lowered her knife, but didn’t put it away. “What the hell are you doing in Marrakesh? And how the hell did you find me?”
“I’m here working, and I found you by looking.” He leaned back into the shadows and grunted as he stood up. He stepped forward clutching his arm. “I could use a little help.”
She glanced over him, but saw only the short sword on his hip, which meant nothing. He probably had a dozen weapons on him somewhere. Then again, Aker had always been more confident than prepared. She waved him forward to look at the wound. It was a clean and narrow cut, and not too deep, but deep enough to bleed all over her floor. “My friend will be home soon,” she said. “He shouldn’t see you here.”
“Ah. The jealous type?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Someone I know?”
“No. He’s local. Ex-military, but he’s a contractor now. Mostly bounty-hunting.” She shoved him down into a chair and went looking for her needle and thread. They weren’t tools that saw much use, so it took some rummaging through several drawers and bags to find them. When she came back, Aker had his shirt off. Ragged white scars lined his arms.
Funny. I remember him being a little rounder. Someone’s been training.
Shifrah picked up a small bottle by the sink, opened it, and splashed it casually on his wound.
“Good God!” He bit his lip and grabbed his arm. “What is that?”
“Just vodka. Take a sip. It’ll help.”
He took a drink. “Gods, that’s awful. Ugh. So. When did you lose the eye?”
She pulled a second chair over and began stitching his flesh back together. “A couple years ago in Arafez. But what about you? I didn’t know you were working this far west.”
“I go where the information takes me. There’s sun-steel here. Lots of it.”
“Sun-steel?” She frowned. “Yes, I suppose there is a little. The Mazighs and Espani finally discovered it for themselves two years ago. They call it aetherium. I suppose you came about the huge lump of it that fell into the Strait?”
“Absolutely. The Mazighs have a plan to find it and bring it back up. And I will be there to collect it the moment it comes ashore.”
“If you’re just waiting around for that salvage, then why am I stitching up your arm? Shouldn’t you be lying low?”
He grinned. “Well, you know me. I never could just sit around. Ever since I received my seireiken,” he patted his sword, “I’ve been looking for opportunities to make it stronger.”
Shifrah eyed the sheathed sword. She’d seen them back home from time to time, though they were very rare. And she’d even seen one drawn and used once. “What do you mean, stronger?”
Aker smiled and narrowed his eyes. “When this sword takes a life, the blade burns hotter and deadlier, and I grow stronger as well.”
More of his occult nonsense. Shifrah sighed. “Fine, don’t tell me. As long as you don’t bring any trouble into my house, I don’t care.”
“Nothing to worry about. It wasn’t even a Mazigh. Just an Espani fencer. He was very good, but his espada was no match for my seireiken.”
“You silly boys and your silly toys. You never change.” She finished the last two stitches and tied the end in a tight knot. “There. You’re done. Take it easy and you’ll be fine in a couple weeks.”
He gave her handiwork a brief glance before pulling his shirt back on. “It wasn’t all for fun, you know. This was a two-for-one deal. This fencer had a bit of sun-steel on him as well.” Aker held up a round medallion with the triquetra of the Roman Church etched into its face. “I took this off him just before I made my escape. A daring bit of work, really. He had a whole entourage with him. At least one professional bodyguard in a mask. And his lover threw a few knives at me, too.”
The knob of the front door clicked as a voice said, “Shifrah, you didn’t tell me we were having company tonight.”
The words came from beyond the front door, giving them a brief moment to look up to see the door open and a young Mazigh in loose blue trousers and a loose white shirt step inside. His hand rested lightly on the matte black revolver holstered on his hip, half-hidden by his black leather jacket.
“Kenan.” Shifrah cleared her throat. “This is Aker. An old friend of mine.”
“Ah. A friend.” Kenan nodded as he closed the door behind him. “Professional associate? Colleague? Partner?”
“We worked together back east for a year,” she said carefully. She had been with Kenan long enough for him to understand that she had slept with more than a few of her previous partners, friends, and targets, but he had never accepted that part of her past gracefully.
Kenan looked down at Aker. “And are you working now?”
“Always.” Aker stood up with an easy smile. “But not to worry. As I was just telling our dear Shifrah, I wasn’t after one of your countrymen. Just an Espani fencer.” He held up the stolen triquetra medallion. “You see?”
Kenan’s stern face hardened slightly. “What fencer?”
“No one important. His name was Quesada.”
Kenan’s revolver spun out if its holster and snapped up to point across the table at the shorter man. “You killed Lorenzo Quesada?”
Shifrah stepped away from Aker and held up one empty hand. “Kenan, please put the gun down. We’re all friends here.”
“You killed Lorenzo Quesada?” Kenan repeated.
Aker’s eyes danced from Kenan to Shifrah and back again. “Shifrah said you were in the business yourself. You know how it is. It was a job, nothing personal.”
“Then I guess Shifrah didn’t do a very good job explaining what business I’m in.” Kenan thumbed the hammer on his revolver. “I hunt down escaped convicts. I bring in thieves and killers that the police can’t find. I uphold the law. And Lorenzo Quesada was not only a friend to me, once, but a friend to the queen of Marrakesh. He saved my life. He saved her life. And now your life is forfeit. Give me that medallion. Now. Get down on your knees. Now.”
Aker raised an eyebrow. “A gun. How typical. Do you have any idea of the power of the sword I’m carrying?”
“Is it a magic sword that can draw itself and fly across this room faster than a bullet?” Kenan’s voice was deadly flat.
Aker hesitated only a brief moment before flinging the gold trinket in Kenan’s face. Kenan snatched the triquetra just before it would have hit him in the nose, and in that instant when his hand was up across his eyes, Aker ran. The Aegyptian bolted into the next room and hurled himself out the open window into the narrow alley behind the house. Shifrah reached for Kenan’s arm, but he was already running into the next room, and he fired twice out the open window. “Damn, he’s fast.” He turned back toward the front door.
Shifrah stopped him with both of her hands on his chest. “Kenan, stop. Let him go.”
“Get out of my way!”
“No, listen to me! Aker is a contractor. We work for the same broker. I know him. He’s just doing a job.”
“And so am I.” He shoved her aside and flung open the door, and stopped short. There was a knot of strangers marching up the street and they all turned their heads at the sound of the door opening. Three of the strangers were Tingis police officers. The fourth member of their group was a woman in a long blue dress wearing a white porcelain mask framed with long red-brown hair. There was a hatchet in her hand.
“He’s got a gun!” yelled one of the officers.
“He’s got Master Lorenzo’s medallion!” yelled the masked woman.
Kenan slammed
the door and held it shut as the officers crashed against the other side. “What the hell is going on?”
Shifrah snatched up her white jacket and slipped it on, feeling the long knives inside it clink against each other and against her. “Out the back, now!” She dashed to the other room and vaulted out the open window just as Aker had done a moment ago. A glance back revealed Kenan hopping out behind her and running down the alley.
“Shifrah!” he snarled. “I’m not spending one minute in a cell for your damned friend. Where is he? Where is he staying?”
“I don’t know,” she called over her shoulder. “I didn’t even know he was in town until he showed up tonight.” At the end of the alley she ran out into the street, darting left and right through the heavy press of the evening traffic. She ducked around porters with baskets on their heads, and around rattling carts full of huge wire spools, and around giant lumbering sivatheras, and around clanging trolley cars racing down the tracks in the middle of the road. On the far side of the road she dashed into another alley and heard footsteps right behind her.
But they weren’t Kenan’s heavy pounding steps.
Shifrah drew one of her stilettos and spun around in time to see the masked woman in the blue dress take two running steps up onto a barrel against the wall and leap high into the air with her hatchet raised to strike. Shifrah hurled her knife into the woman’s belly, but the hatchet fell like a lightning bolt to knock the knife away. The masked woman landed as light as a cat, swinging her hatchet in short vicious arcs. Shifrah tumbled back, falling and rolling and dodging and scrambling to avoid the relentless whistling blade of the hatchet.
“Stop it, you psycho! I didn’t do anything wrong!” Shifrah drew a second stiletto but the hatchet smacked it out of her hand before she could throw it. She reached for a third knife but the hatchet was suddenly hooked behind her ankle and it yanked her leg out from under her, dropping her hard on the cobblestones at the end of the ally. Shifrah groaned as the pain shot through her back and leg and the knife fell out of her hand.
“Freeze!”
Kenan. Thank God.
The masked woman turned to look at the man pointing a revolver at her. “You!”
Kenan fired once at the wall next to her head. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Now listen to me. I didn’t kill Quesada, and I don’t know the man who-”
“Liar!” She dashed at him.
Shifrah tensed, waiting for the shot that would kill her. But the shot never came. She looked down the alley to see Kenan grappling with the masked woman. He had his free hand on her wrist holding the hatchet, and she had her free hand on his wrist holding the gun.
Damn it, Kenan. Why didn’t you shoot? Never mind. I know why.
She staggered up to her feet and forced herself to run back down the alley on an aching leg. Once behind the masked woman, Shifrah deftly slipped her arm around the stranger’s neck and squeezed. With Kenan restraining the woman’s arms, it only took a moment to choke her into oblivion. The woman fell to the ground.
Kenan frowned. “Did you kill her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Shifrah heaved a sigh and rubbed her back. “You all right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but we need to find your friend. Now.”
“Fine. Let’s go before her friends catch up to us.” She eyed the end of the alley for the police officers, but there was no sign of them. Yet. Then she saw Kenan putting the golden medallion into the sleeping woman’s hand. “What are you doing?”
“Her clothes and accent were Espani. She must be one of Quesada’s friends or students. I want the triquetra to get back to the right person. Besides,” he stood up and holstered his gun. “I don’t want to give these people another reason to try to kill me. A little good will can go a long way sometimes.”
Shifrah frowned. Her instincts all screamed that this situation was already completely out of control. They couldn’t go home. They couldn’t be seen on the street. The odds of Kenan being recognized by an old comrade from the army, the marshals, or the Air Corps were pretty good, and keeping company with a one-eyed woman probably wasn’t going to help him blend in. Her training told her to get out of the city. Now.
Training.
“Aker will get out of town, as soon as possible.”
Kenan glanced at his watch. “Well, the evening air courier to Arafez left half an hour ago. The ferry to Gadir won’t leave until the tide turns, which is in a few hours. That leaves the trains.”
“Is there anything eastbound tonight?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Probably. Let’s go see.”
Shifrah followed him out of the alley and down the street, angling swiftly through the thinning traffic across one intersection after another on their way toward the Tingis Central Station. The wrought iron roof of the station rose above the neighboring offices and warehouses, and just beyond the station, a little farther up the hillside, she could see the massive hangars where the airships of the Northern Air Corps were housed. But the hangars were closed and there was no sign of anyone there now.
The shrill cry of a steam whistle split the air and Kenan quickened his pace. Shifrah hurried after him and as they turned the corner through the gate in the outer fence around the station, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw a familiar white face in the crowd. The masked woman saw Shifrah looking at her, and she broke into a run.
“Kenan, she’s here!” Shifrah dashed into the station, grabbing his arm and propelling him inside. They found the outer vestibules all empty with only one young woman in uniform at the ticket window to their right. Across the wide floor of the inner station, a shining black locomotive stood at the head of a long train of passenger cars and two young men in matching blue jackets were waving to the engineer leaning out of the locomotive. The engineer waved back and leaned back inside. Another shrill whistle shrieked through the station, and the locomotive shuddered, and began to roll forward.
“It’s leaving!” Kenan pulled his arm free of her grip and climbed clumsily over the turnstile as the young woman at the ticket window banged on the glass and yelled at them.
Shifrah leapt over the turnstile behind him. “Do you see Aker?”
“Of course not!” Kenan snarled. He ran to the side of the train, which was rolling along at a steady pace and gathering speed. Kenan jogged left and right, straining to peer up into the dark windows of the passenger car.
Shifrah stood near him, scanning the windows. There were too many faces, and all moving too quickly. “We’ll have to get on,” she said.
“What if he’s not even on this train?” he asked.
She pointed behind them where the masked woman had just dashed into view.
“I thought you killed her,” he said, as he began jogging alongside the train.
“And I thought you didn’t like it when I kill people.”
Kenan grabbed the hand rail at the end of the nearest passenger car and pulled himself up onto the step outside the door. “Hurry up!”
Shifrah looked back again to see the masked woman vaulting high over the turnstile with her cruel hatchet in her hand. Behind her, three policewomen in gray uniforms raced into the station. Shifrah grimaced. “Damn it.” She grabbed Kenan’s outstretched hand and jumped up beside him just as she ran out of platform. The train accelerated out of the station and Shifrah leaned out to watch the masked woman and the officers jog to a halt at the end of the platform and stare after the retreating train.
“Great, that’s just great, Shifrah.” Kenan stomped up the steps and put his hand on the door handle of the passenger car. “Now we’re on the run for a crime neither of us committed. I told you this could happen. I told you what might happen if you kept friends like this. I told you!”
She slapped him and he shut up, his eyes still smoldering. She said, “And I told you that you could leave whenever you wanted. What’s done is done. So, if you’re finished whining, let’s go look for Aker.”
Chapter 3. Taziri
Yuba cleared the last of the dishes from the table and little Menna ran after him to help with the washing up. Taziri smiled. Five years old. Five!
She stood up from the table, pushed in the chairs, and began straightening up the rest of the room. Toys lay everywhere. Wooden blocks covered in faded paint, old dolls with torn arms and legs and new dolls with hair already in tangles, coloring pencils and scrap paper, little wooden trains and tracks, little wooden airships, little wooden lions and zebras and sivatheras. She gathered them up one by one and tossed them into the bin in the corner. “Menna! Can you help me with your toys, please?”
The little girl ran back in with her hands covered in soap suds, her hair a tangled mess to rival her dolls, and she began merrily hurling her toys in the general direction of the box. Taziri smiled and got out of the line of fire.
From the kitchen, Yuba called out, “Was today payday, or is it tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. The royalty checks for her batteries and capacitors and insulation came like clockwork from Othmani Industries, more money than they had ever seen, and yet somehow their expenses had steadily grown to gobble up the new income. “Why?”
“I wanted to talk to a man about expanding the greenhouse so we can grow more vegetables. We’ll need more glass, of course, and more pipes for the water.”
“That sounds fine.” Taziri flipped through the unopened mail by the door. So many cards, she thought. Invitations to tour this factory or teach at that school or partner with this inventor. She smiled and put them back. Time enough for that tomorrow. She turned back toward the kitchen, but a knock at the front door turned her back again. Taziri opened the door.
Outside stood a small Incan woman with a tiny baby in her arms. She wore tan trousers, a white blouse, a blue vest, and an old Espani military jacket tailored to fit her tiny frame. Her shining black hair was uncovered and it trembled in the evening breeze. Behind the woman stood a pale-faced Espani youth and a masked figure in a conservative Espani dress. Taziri smiled. “Dona Qhora? Alonso?”
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