Halcyon est-1

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  His frown faded and he nodded. “Fine.” He sat down again, and this time looked her in the eye. “Listen, I’m sorry. I know you didn’t do this. I know you didn’t kill Quesada, but your friend did, and he brought this mess to our doorstep and ruined my tidy little world. This is not what I was expecting when I came home for supper last night.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry if I don’t seem worried enough, but this is what most of my life has been like. Everything ends, sooner or later. Being alone, with Omar, with Aker, with Sal. And now Marrakesh is over, too. Time to move on. I’m happy to take you with me, wherever I’m going, but you’re the one who is going to need to adjust to the world out there. Not the other way around.”

  “Maybe.” He nodded. “But you’ve changed more than I have. You’re not so cold as before, not so angry. You seem pretty happy most days, and I mean happy in the normal way, not the crazy way. I was starting to think you and I might be together a long time.”

  “Married?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “When we get to the city, you’re going to see some bad places, and meet some bad people, and hear some bad things about me.” She leaned close to his neck where she could smell his sweat. “You might not want to marry me after that. You might get the idea that I’ve been a bad girl.”

  “A little late for that.” His mouth hovered near her ear and he whispered, “How long until we arrive?”

  “Long enough.” And she pulled him back into the bunk.

  Afterward, when she was dressed, Shifrah left their little cabin in search of Aker. She caught him admiring his glowing sword down in the shadows of the cargo hold.

  “How’s your friend?” he asked.

  “He’ll be fine. He thinks we should leave and row ashore in case we run into Don Lorenzo’s wife again.”

  Aker grunted. “Who cares? Did you see me back there fighting that fencer? He couldn’t come near me. He was afraid of me.”

  “He was afraid of your sword, the one glowing because it’s practically on fire.”

  “Two hundred and fifty souls,” Aker said. “The blade isn’t hot enough to be dangerous until it claims fifty and it isn’t considered a true seireiken until it claims two hundred. This one holds two hundred and fifty. But the truly great blades, the heavenly swords, hold thousands. Only the masters have them. They say the blades glow perfectly white, and a single stroke can set an entire mountain on fire.”

  Shifrah tried to get a better look at the sword in his hand, but he slid it home into its ceramic scabbard and let his loose green robe obscure the grip at his belt. She said, “That fencer at the rail yard has a name, by the way. Salvator Fabris.”

  “Fabris? Why do I know that name?”

  “He’s one of the Italian masters. He was also my partner for a while, before I met Kenan.” Shifrah crossed her arms and leaned against a crate. “I know Salvator. I’ve seen him fight. I don’t know exactly how good Don Lorenzo was, but I know Sal, and the old Aker I knew could never have beaten Sal. So who have you been training with?”

  “No one.” Aker grinned. He patted the sword at his hip. “Just the Don himself. I know what he knows. I remember what he remembers. It’s all just images and instincts right now, but it will grow sharper in time.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She stared at the sword and wondered how long she could let him keep such a thing. Aker was a common mercenary, a blunt weapon with more ambition than sense. He had always talked a big game and when she left him years ago he was still just talking. Clearly, something had changed. “The aetherium in the blade. I mean, I’d heard the stories, but I figured it was all Espani nonsense. Souls and ghosts. But it’s real, isn’t it?”

  “It’s all real. Very real. I admit, most of the souls in here are nothing special, nothing more than fuel for the fire in the blade.” He smirked. “But there have been a few soldiers, a few killers. Their strength and skill and knowledge are in here. And now the master Don Lorenzo is in here too, and I can stand toe to toe with the great Salador Fabee!”

  “Salvator Fabris.”

  “Whatever.”

  Shifrah sniffed and looked away. “Listen, Kenan says we should go ashore alone to avoid running into the Don’ widow, and I think he’s right. I want to go into town quietly, not in the middle of a pitched battle. All right?”

  Aker shrugged. “As you wish. There is no need, but if it will make you feel better to sneak back into your own city, I will not stop you.”

  “Fine. Meet us by the rear launch as soon as the city is in view.”

  Shifrah spent the next hour trying to rest in the bunk with Kenan, but the bunk was too narrow for her to get comfortable and Kenan kept touching her, so eventually she suggested that they go up on deck to wait. They went outside and stood in the stern of the steamer beside the little wooden launch hanging over the side. The tiny lights of Alexandria twinkled in the darkness far off to their right.

  Aker sauntered up. “Are we ready to go?”

  “We’re just waiting for someone to help us put the launch out.” Kenan glanced around the empty deck.

  “No, the captain said there’s nothing to it.” Shifrah winked at Aker and the two of them deftly unlashed the launch and lowered it into the water. The three of them climbed down into the boat and released the lines, leaving them to bob and wobble in the steamer’s wake. As soon as the water was calm again, Kenan and Aker put out the oars and began to row.

  Shifrah watched their steamer cruise into the harbor and settle beside a long stone pier. Behind them on the point, the bright lights of the enormous lighthouse swept across the sky with ghostly fingers to point at the dark horizons. The steamer docked and a handful of sailors lashed it to the pier.

  As their little launch rounded another pier farther down the harbor side and approached the lower mooring, Shifrah saw at least a dozen men waiting at the foot of the steamer’s pier, and as the lighthouse lamp swung around, the light glinted off the steel weapons in their hands. “Looks like Kenan was right.” She pointed at the dark figures.

  They found an old iron ladder and climbed up to the street, which was dark and deserted. Aker pointed the way and led them down the road at a brisk pace. Shifrah glanced up at the shadowed faces of the towers and temples in the distance. The taste of the salt water mingled with the smells of fish and birds, of fire and spices, of flinty sand and crumbling stone.

  Alexandria. It’s been a long time.

  Chapter 8. Qhora

  She stood in the darkness, staring out at the starry sky and the lights reflected on the rippling waters of the harbor. She watched Salvator lead his band of cheap muscle down the pier, and she watched them talk to the crew of the steamer, and she watched them come back empty-handed.

  We lost them. Again.

  Mirari laid a gloved hand on Qhora’s shoulder, and the Dona reached up to squeeze her hand for a moment. “Go talk to Salvator for a moment,” Qhora said. “I just need a minute to myself.”

  “Yes, my lady.” The masked woman strode away to intercept the Italian and the two stopped on the dockside to talk.

  Qhora turned and shuffled back into the darkness of the empty warehouse where Salvator had placed a single chair with a few ropes and a rickety little table displaying an assortment of stones, broken glass, and splintered wood. Crude, he had said, but more than adequate to your needs.

  She stood in front of the empty chair, a spectral shape drawn in starlight and shadow. The harpy eagle on her arm squawked and stretched his talons. She reached over to stroke his feathered head.

  We would have put the Aegyptian in this chair, she thought. Tied him down. Tortured him. Bled him. Mutilated him. Listened to him scream. And killed him.

  The cold emptiness in her chest made it hard to breathe and she sat down in the chair. Her lip shook, but she did not blink, did not crumple, and did not wail. She sat tall and proud, staring across the dirty floor of the empty warehouse.

  For vengeance
. For justice. For me, and Javier, and all of Espana.

  She exhaled slowly. Her breasts ached.

  Forgive me, Enzo. You deserve better than this. I tried. I did. But I failed. I failed you. The man in green is gone. And I know you wouldn’t have wanted me to kill him, but you deserve that much, and more. But it doesn’t matter now. He’s gone.

  And we both know that killing him would do nothing for us. It wouldn’t bring you back to me and our son. It wouldn’t even bring me peace, let alone happiness.

  I need to go home. I need Javier, and he needs me. I need to go back to Madrid and tell your students that you are gone, that your school is closed, and that your sword-of-life style exists only in your little book now.

  Where should I go now, Enzo? How will I live? Where will I live? I suppose I can go to your parents in Gadir for a while, but that will not last forever. And what will I do then?

  She reached up with her bare right hand to clutch the old triquetra medallion hanging around her neck. The metal was warm to the touch. Very warm. Qhora closed her eyes and tried to pray to Enzo’s three-faced God. But where was the justice of the Father? Where was the life of the Mother? Where was the mercy of the Son?

  Enzo is gone, without justice, life, or mercy.

  Qhora opened her eyes and saw a figure standing just a few paces away. It was a shadowy, indistinct figure, a little old woman as dim as dark glass and through her body Qhora could still see the door of the warehouse beyond her.

  A ghost.

  “You.” Qhora croaked the word.

  “I’m so sorry, Dona.” The ancient Espani nun looked older than Qhora remembered. She had only seen the specter once in a butcher’s icehouse in Marrakesh. The dead woman had made a stronger impression that day, wreathed in swirling vapors and aether, passing down her wisdom centuries after her death to teach Enzo, to guide him.

  But now she was just a shadow trapped in an old medallion, her soul imprisoned in the little patch of aetherium in the edge of the golden triquetra.

  “I watched it happen,” Sister Ariel said. “I saw the man strike, saw the fiery sword shatter Lorenzo’s espada, and I saw it pierce his flesh. I saw it all. And I felt the aether riptide of that sword trying to tear me free of my prison in exchange for another, but I remained here in the triquetra while poor Lorenzo…” The nun covered her mouth.

  Qhora frowned sternly, struggling not to give in to the misery and horror the old ghost was projecting at her. “What about Lorenzo?”

  “His soul was taken, dragged away, drawn into the aetherium sword.” The nun made the sign of the triquetra and bowed her head. “And I could hear them. So many souls, other souls, older souls, all trapped in that sword with him. I can’t imagine what it must be like. I’ve been alone in this medallion for two years. Two years of quiet, of watching over you and Lorenzo, and little Javier. Alone. But Lorenzo is bound up with so many others. I’ve done nothing but pray for him since that moment.” Sister Ariel buried her shadow face in her shadow hands.

  A cold needle of fear and revelation pierced Qhora’s heart as she leaned forward on the edge of the creaking chair. “What are you saying? That my Enzo’s soul is in that sword now? That he’s in some prison, trapped for all time? In the hands of that death-worshipping filth?”

  The nun nodded. “Yes, I believe so. It’s such a terrible weapon. I’d never imagined such a thing. It kills the flesh, steals the soul, and makes itself and its owner even more deadly in the process.”

  Qhora wanted to leap up and shake the dead woman. “But Enzo! He’s in there? If I get that sword back, will I be able to see him and hear him, just like I can see you right now?”

  Sister Ariel nodded meekly. “I suppose so. Yes. Of course.”

  Qhora balled her hands into fists on her knees to stop them from trembling. Her wild eyes darted around the dark warehouse, her mouth half-open and making silent little words as her mind raced.

  I can get him back. I can get him back!

  She leapt out of the chair and ran straight through the shadowy image of the old nun and out the door. Outside, she dashed to Mirari’s side with her eagle weighing heavier and heavier on her arm and said, “We have to find the Aegyptian. I need his sword!”

  “Of course, my lady.” The masked woman bowed her head.

  “What for?” Salvator asked. “A trophy?”

  Qhora fixed him with an iron stare. “I’m getting my Enzo back.”

  The Italian nodded slightly. “You want his soul, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.” Salvator adjusted his cuffs. “You know, I don’t have a great deal of experience with aetherium swords and such, but I was raised in Italia and I know a thing or two about ghosts and souls. There is a reason we ignore them back home, even those of our own ancestors, our own friends and lovers. And that reason is that everyone who has ever devoted their time to commerce with the dead commits suicide. Everyone. They lose their grasp on the entire purpose of being alive. They become fixated on the romance of being dead, of being an immortal shade and wandering the world forever, meeting the souls of those who have gone before.”

  “I have no intention of killing myself to be with my husband,” Qhora said.

  “No. I’m sure you don’t. Now.” Salvator shrugged. “Just keep in mind that ghosts can only roam freely where the aether lies thick, and that is only in the coldest and darkest corners of the world. And even then, only the most holy or most miserable of souls bother to walk the earth. Everyone else stays in the ground, asleep, awaiting the end.”

  “The end of what?”

  Salvator smiled sadly. “The world.”

  Qhora shook her head. “I don’t care about any of that. My Enzo is dead, but his soul is out there, imprisoned in some killer’s sword and if I can’t have my husband alive in my arms, then I will have him dead by my side, but not enslaved by some ugly trash. Never that.”

  The Italian nodded. “Very well. In the morning, we will begin our search anew.”

  “We’ll begin now.” Qhora spun and strode down the street away from the dock, leaving the soft rolling sounds of the water and the sharp salt smells of the sea behind as she clacked and stomped along the ancient stone road.

  Salvator quickened his step to come alongside her. “Do you have a plan? Perhaps your new feathered friend here can sniff out the killer’s scent?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Eagles have no sense of smell.”

  “Oh. Then I fail to see what use he’ll be to us here. You should have kept your daggers.”

  “I traded two stupid daggers for six smart ones.” She indicated the harpy’s talons.

  “And does this set of intelligent knives have a name yet?”

  Qhora frowned. “Turi. His name is Turi.”

  Brother. My little brother, taken from his home and lost in this eastern world, just like me. But free now, like me.

  “I assume he’s trained to attack on command?”

  She smiled briefly. She’d passed the long hours on the flight from Carthage by whispering the old Quechua commands to the eagle, trying to teach him to seek and to strike using gestures. They were the same commands she used with Atoq, and saying them out loud had been a comfort, if only for the familiarity of it. “I believe he’ll listen to me. He’s a fast learner.”

  They crossed an intersection, and then another. The warehouses fell away, leaving small shops and offices in pale clay and stone on every side. Fat candles burned in the occasional streetlamp on the corners, and lumps of dry dung sat in the middle of the road. Locusts creaked and droned in the distance. There were also voices and lights in the distance, but they echoed with laughter and snapped like firecrackers.

  Not a market then. Not at this hour of the night.

  Qhora paused in the middle of the street. There were a few lights in the windows here, and a few men walking swiftly along beside them. The men of Alexandria did glance at the foreigners, but only for the briefest moments.

  “Where to now?” Sal
vator asked. “I recall a few lovely little hotels back this way near a popular cafe. They serve coffee there…”

  “A market. No, a smith. A sword smith. Someone here must know about aetherium swords.” Qhora nodded to herself. “We’ll start with the sword makers.”

  Salvator sighed. “As you wish.”

  For the next hour, they strode down one shadowed street after another, asking the rare passerby for directions to a smith, or an armory, or an antiques dealer. But every shop they found was closed for the night. Foot-weary from walking and arm-weary from carrying the huge Turi, Qhora was about to suggest that they retire for the evening when Salvator quickened his step and closed in upon a small cafe on a quiet street corner. Qhora glanced through the door at the four half-sleeping patrons inside and decided to remain outside with Mirari. The Italian went in.

  Qhora let her tired eyes admire Turi’s gray and white feathers, his long black talons, and his wide golden eyes. He was healthy and strong, and the silhouette of his head reminded her of Wayra, towering Wayra striding across the Espani countryside with Qhora asaddle on her shoulders.

  Wayra. Home.

  “My lady.” Mirari touched her arm.

  Qhora looked up and saw three men across the street staring back at her. Staring. Not looking away. “These must be some of the less educated gentlemen Taziri warned us about. Come Turi, give us a scream. Sing your blood song for these men.” She held her gloved hand and the harpy eagle lifted his wide wings, flapped once, twice, and screamed. The cry reverberated down the street like a trumpet blast and a cymbal crash, like shattering glass and twisting steel. The men across the street winced and looked away. But one of them looked back at the women again.

  Mirari stepped forward and let her hatchet slip down into view in her gloved hand.

  The man looked away and the group moved on, muttering in low voices.

  Qhora sighed. “You see? A woman doesn’t need to fear anything in the world as long as she has a weapon, a friend, and her wits.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  A few minutes later, Salvator emerged from the cafe with a weary smile. “I have a name. But it will have to wait for morning. May we retire now, Dona?”