Halcyon est-1

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Safe.

  Heaving a long sigh, Shifrah slipped away her last stiletto into her ruined jacket and sat down on the wooden bench beside Rashaken. The old man sighed as well, and then began to chuckle. He said, “It’s been a very long time since I’ve moved so quickly. I almost felt young again.” He squeezed her knee. “But not that young. My poor back is aching, but I think yours is a bit worse for wear. Take off your shirt and let me see those wounds.”

  Shifrah nodded and slipped off her jacket and shirt. The old man tutted and tsked and patted around in his robes. “This one on your back is not deep at all, but I imagine it stings quite a bit. A little bit of Espani whiskey will help clean it out.”

  She winced as he poured the alcohol over the wound.

  “And a bit of cloth to keep it clean for now.” He tore the sleeves from her shirt and deftly fashioned a bandage to tie around her back and across her chest. “But your arm, that one will need to be stitched.” He bound another cloth over the gash, knotting it so tightly that Shifrah felt her fingers go cold for a moment.

  She slipped her jacket back on gingerly. “Thank you, Master Rashaken.”

  Kenan paced from one door to the other, peering through the cracks and listening to the silence in the halls beyond.

  “Sit down, young man,” Rashaken said. “We’re quite safe here. No one is allowed down here, and your Italian friend will not leave the forge alive, thanks to Master Jiro.”

  Shifrah translated the master’s words and Kenan grudgingly holstered his gun and sat down by the outer door.

  “So, Shifrah Dumah, Omar’s little girl is all grown up, I see.” Rashaken’s smile gleamed in the shadows. “I never thought to see you again. I thought perhaps Omar had whisked you away to the ends of the earth with him. Why have you come back?”

  She released the last heavy exhalation from her duel with Salvator and felt the heat bleeding away from her arms and legs, leaving her with a sweaty chill. “It’s a long story. But all that matters now is that I’m looking for Omar. Zahra says he went west to Marrakesh eight years ago and never returned.”

  The old man’s smile faded. “That is true. And if wandering Shifrah has not seen him, then I doubt anyone has or ever will.” He shrugged. “A great loss to us all. Omar was as wise in council as he was entertaining in the tavern. I miss him.”

  “But you must know something more. He must have told you some detail about where he went or what happened to him. Omar took the train to Carthage and then went west to Marrakesh. But where was he going? Did he go alone? And why?”

  Rashaken sighed. “I’m sorry, dear girl, but you remember how he was. He would run into the room with that gleam in his eye. Aha, he says, I’ve found more sun-steel! And away he would go, and a few weeks later he would come back with stories and souvenirs but no steel. This was just one more trip. Aha, he said to me, there is an island covered in ice where the greatest treasure of sun-steel in the world awaits us! And away he went. But this time he did not return.” The old man leaned on Shifrah. “I know it is hard for you. He raised you, yes? He was good to you. Taught you to fight, taught you to think. He taught so many over the years. But it seemed like the years never caught up to him. He was never too tired, but me, I am always too tired now. I sit with Jiro in the forge because the heat helps my back.” His smile gleamed in the dark again.

  Shifrah looked down at her hands. One of her little fingers was twitching. She massaged it to stop it. “So that’s it then? Omar really is lost and gone?”

  “I’m afraid so. Death catches up to us all, sooner or later. Even to Master Omar.”

  A comfortable silence fell across the small room, a respectful quiet for the lost Omar Bakhoum. Until Kenan cleared his throat and said, “Does he know anything?”

  “No,” Shifrah said in Mazigh. “Omar is gone.”

  “Not about Omar. About Aker.” Kenan leaned forward, peering at the old man. “Where can we find Aker El Deeb?”

  “Aker?” Rashaken straightened up with a scowl and looked at Shifrah. “What does he want with that stupid boy?”

  “Aker murdered a man in Tingis,” Shifrah said. “And my friend and I are now accused of the crime. My friend here, Kenan, wants to take Aker back to Tingis to clear the record.”

  “Ha!” Rashaken frowned. “Good. Take him. Good riddance to him. He’s a damned dog, like all of Khai’s little soldiers. Worshipping their swords. Bah! Swords? Of all the great things that might be done with sun-steel, why are they making swords? Because they lack faith. They lack inspiration. They lack imagination. All they can see in this wonderful gift is one more way to kill people and seize power they do not deserve.”

  “Omar carried a seireiken,” Shifrah said.

  “Yes, but Omar had a purpose. He killed with purpose. He only killed to better shape our city, to cut away the cancers that ate away at our people. It wasn’t for him. Never for him. Always for the cause. For the plan. For the future.” Rashaken nodded. “He learned that in the east. Did you know that? He studied the philosophy of the Buddha. Some think the Buddhists are all timid pacifists, but that is not true. They fight and they kill, but never in anger or hate, never for themselves. Always for the greater good. Always in the name of peace and life. It was easy to respect Omar. I didn’t always understand him, but I always respected him.”

  Shifrah smiled sadly. It was getting harder to remember Omar’s face and voice. There were only a few snatches of memories that stood out clearly to her now, but they too were fading and she knew one day they would be lost along with the rest of him.

  “So Aker has returned to our fair city, has he? Well, if he’s not with Zahra at that establishment of hers, then you can check the nearby dens, and if he’s not hiding in the smoke, then try the old arena in the Songhai Quarter,” Rashaken said. “Some of Khai’s young dogs like to fight there at night, gathering warrior souls into their damned swords. Aker would sometimes walk the halls here in the morning, bragging about his kills.”

  “We’ll try there. Thank you, Master Rashaken.”

  The old man quickly described how they could find their way from the small room down to a cellar and back onto the streets outside without encountering any more Osirians. Kenan stepped out into the hall and Shifrah was about to follow when Rashaken said, “My dear, I hope you do find young Aker and dispose of him. I would consider it a kindness to me and to the Temple, especially as it would gall Khai very much. And if you were to remove Aker from my city, I might be persuaded to overlook the fact that you’ve been whispering secrets to a certain Italian gentleman.”

  Shifrah froze, an icy blade of shock slicing down her spine. It had never occurred to her that Salvator would ever piece together the tiny shreds of information she let drop over the years, and she never dreamed he might find his way to Alexandria, much less into a room with Master Rashaken. The dire consequences of her accidental betrayal made her hand shake. The Sons of Osiris were all too quick to dispose of anyone who dared to pull back their cloaks to reveal the truth of the Temple to the outside world. Even those within the Empire who knew of the Temple knew only what the Temple allowed them to know.

  “I never told him anything,” she said.

  “You told him enough. But take care of our mutual problem, Aker, and all will be forgiven. For now.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  Well, that makes things simple. Either I kill Aker for Master Rashaken, or I capture Aker for Kenan. Once again, all roads lead to Aker.

  She glanced across the room at the door to the narrow passage and the forge beyond where she had left Salvator. It didn’t matter whether he was alive or not, but somehow it did matter whether the Italian had been sealed away in Master Jiro’s blade. But even asking the question might sound like sympathy for the outsider and she did not dare test Master Rashaken’s largesse.

  She slipped out and closed the door.

  Shifrah and Kenan hurried down the hall and through a small cellar that housed nothing but spider webs and
a dead rat, and after fumbling about in the dark for a few minutes they emerged into a small house two streets away from the Temple, and then they stepped out into the chilly boulevards of Alexandria beneath a vast sea of stars. Glancing up, she guessed the hour to be shortly after midnight.

  “So what now?” Kenan asked. He walked beside her but kept closer to the shadows at the side of the road, and he threw a sharp stare over his shoulder every few steps.

  “Relax. We’re going to get Aker, and this time you can take him wherever you want. Rashaken said we should try a place in the Songhai Quarter.” She gave him a wry smile. “You’ll fit right in. After all, you only patrolled that border, how long? A year? You didn’t kill too many Songhai soldiers, did you?”

  “I didn’t kill any. I was the medic for my unit. I spent most of my time staring at empty fields and mountainsides, and a few terrified minutes running toward my friends to wrap them in bandages and watch them bleed to death.” The detective spat on the ground. “Good times.”

  “You know, Zidane probably saved your life when he took you with him into the marshals.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about the major, if you don’t mind. I can still picture you on top of him in that inn where we first met.”

  Shifrah raised an eyebrow. “I thought you slept through that.”

  “Only mostly, but not quite enough. Where are we going exactly?”

  “An old arena. Apparently young fighters like to go there to kill each other.”

  “More good times.”

  They walked on in silence, traveling down one long straight road after another. There were still a few people out, and not all of them were hurrying home to get off the streets. Shifrah kept her hand near her knife and hoped the cut on her back really was as shallow as Rashaken had said. Her left arm throbbed but the bleeding had stopped.

  “You know, I could have used a little more help back there with Sal,” she said. “You could have shot him. Just a little, at least.”

  “Why? He hasn’t done anything to me, and he doesn’t seem to have any mixed feelings about finding Aker El Deeb,” Kenan said. “Maybe I should be working with him.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. If I don’t catch Aker, I can’t go home. And that notion does not amuse me.”

  “Well, I don’t have any mixed feelings about Aker anymore. Besides giving us all that trouble with Zahra, apparently he’s not too popular with Master Rashaken either. He’s asked me to get Aker out of Alexandria as a sort of personal favor.”

  Kenan grinned. “Oh, so now we’re on the same side again?”

  “We were always on the same side,” she said. “But now we have the same goal. See how life has a funny way of working out? So I help you take Aker back to Tingis and everything goes back to the way it was before, all right?”

  “What do you mean, everything? You mean you and me? You said we were done.”

  “Yeah, I did. Because you pissed me off.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to get caught in some game of choosing sides and picking arguments depending on your mood. You want to keep playing mercenary, fine. But not under my roof. And if someone ever hires me to hunt you down…”

  Shifrah sighed. “Look, Omar’s dead. So I’m done with this place and these people. I owed Omar, but not them. They’re all crazy anyway. And maybe I was too for a while. But this isn’t my life anymore. It’s not the life Omar raised me for either. So maybe…” She paused.

  If I say this, am I committed? No. I can still walk away whenever I want. But maybe it’s time for a change. It can’t hurt to try. At least, it can’t hurt much, can it?

  “…maybe it’s time for a little career change. Maybe I could partner up with you, like you said. You and me, hunting down bad guys. Shifrah Dumah, bounty hunter. No assassinations. What would you say to that?”

  He was very quiet for a moment. “Maybe.”

  Shifrah smiled. That’s a yes.

  It took another half hour to walk into the Songhai Quarter, a long thin finger of land along the southern edge of Alexandria where the pilgrims and soldiers from the southwest congregated before moving on to the holy Mazdan sites deeper inside the Empire of Eran. The streets were just as quiet and dark here as elsewhere in the city, but Shifrah’s hand never strayed from her knife. And soon their destination loomed up in the darkness above the street.

  The old arena had been built centuries ago by Roman slaves in the Roman style, and the cylindrical structure looked quiet alien next to the square blocks of the buildings to either side. The walls of the arena rose three levels above the street, each wall ringed with open archways and Hellan columns, and beside each column was a statue of an ancient Aegyptian god. Each had the head of a different creature. Jackal, Ibis, Falcon, Lion, Crocodile. But in the dark, the gods were all just creatures of dead stone.

  The main gate to the arena stood open, rusting quietly into oblivion against the stone walls. No one loitered there or in the dark corridor beyond, but low voices and scuffling sounds did echo in the vast stone chamber of the arena itself. Shifrah nodded and they went inside.

  The inner corridor offered many open doorways and branching halls to the market stalls where street vendors had once sold food and wine to the wealthy patrons of the games, but it was all dark and empty now. Past those spaces, Shifrah emerged again into the night air on the bottom level of the seats and stood beside a small stone wall looking down at the weedy field of the arena floor.

  Three men armed with glowing seireiken blades circled each other slowly, shouting taunts and challenges at each other. The fiery swords drew blazing orange lines in the darkness. A dozen other men lounged on the benches at the edge of the field, but the pale starlight didn’t reveal any details of their dress or arms.

  Mercenaries or soldiers, she guessed. Songhai, Bantu, and Kanemi, most likely.

  Looking up into the stands above her, Shifrah saw a thin scattering of other people in the crumbling stone seats. Some of them were lying down, possibly homeless, with equal chances of being asleep or dead. Other people were also lying down, but were most emphatically not dead, judging by their grunting and gasping. But these were mere whispers in the darkness, shadow figures few and far between in the vast emptiness of the ancient arena.

  “That’s him.” Kenan pointed down at the three swordsmen pacing about in the center of the field. One of the glowing swords whirled through the gloom, crashing and scraping across the other two blades, which retreated before it. “The one attacking.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I have good eyes, remember?” Kenan started down the steps to the arena floor. “And besides, I recognize the fencing style. It’s Espani.”

  Then it’s true. Shifrah followed him down. When Aker took the fencer’s soul, he somehow took his knowledge and skill as well. Or he can command the fencer’s spirit inside the blade.

  She shivered at the thought of being trapped in a cell and forced to serve Aker’s whims. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed Aker’s whims even as a willing participant, back in the old days.

  Down on the arena floor, the sound of the seireiken clashes seemed to shift between electric snapping and rumbling thunder. And she could see now that the man attacking the two others was indeed Aker El Deeb.

  “Should we wait until they finish?” Kenan asked.

  “No. With our luck, he’ll trip and fall on his own sword and we won’t have anything left to take back to Tingis. Best to collect him now.”

  “Right.” Kenan drew his black revolver and strode out onto the field. The men lounging on the benches muttered to each other at this intrusion, but they didn’t get up.

  Shifrah drew her knife and followed. All right, Kenan, show me how you do things.

  The revolver barked once and a puff of dry earth flew up between Aker and the other men. The swordsmen paused, their burning blades seeming to hover unaided in the darkness.

  “Aker El Deeb,” Kenan b
ellowed in a deep, booming drawl. “You are under arrest for the murder of Don Lorenzo Quesada. Drop your weapon. Get down on your knees and cross your ankles, and put your hands on the top of your head.”

  Aker did not move, but the other two men backed quickly away, sheathing their bright blades and plunging their side of the field into darkness. Aker swung his sword toward Kenan and Shifrah could hear a soft hissing from the blade. The Aegyptian slurred, “You’re an idiot. First I’m gonna kill you, and then I’m gonna take your stupid gun. You hear me?”

  He’s drunk!

  “I hear you,” Kenan said softly. The hammer of the revolver clicked sharply in the dark.

  Then a low woof-woof-woof sound drew their attention to the left as a bright seireiken blade came whirling out of the shadows, tumbling end over end. Kenan took a half step back and let the sword fly past harmlessly, and then he fired into the darkness. A man cried out. A second blade slipped free of its scabbard, illuminating the other swordsman, and Kenan fired again. The man toppled over as his leg collapsed beneath him. The bright sword spun from his fingers and fell on his arm. He screamed, but only for an instant.

  Kenan cocked his gun again. “Aker El Deeb! Drop your weapon and get down on your knees!”

  “You first!” Aker slammed his bright sword into its scabbard, dousing the blade and plunging the center of the field into utter blackness. The thrown seireiken continued to glow on the ground to their far right, and the dropped seireiken gleamed dully beneath the dead Osirian on their far left.

  Shifrah squinted and blinked, trying to force her eye to readjust to the loss of light, but the blue after-image of the seireiken remained plastered across her vision and she couldn’t throw her knife. But before she could begin to wonder where Aker might be or what he might be doing, she heard the heavy footsteps thumping away across the weedy field and then echoing in the stone corridors of the arena halls.

  Kenan was already running after him, his shadow-black figure fading swiftly into the distance. Shifrah cast one look over at the bright seireiken that had lodged in the ground to her right, and then at the twin blade lying under the dead man on her left.