Qhora raised her stiletto to hurl at the fourth man in front of her, but then a gunshot rang out and the man dropped to the ground. Tycho fired again and again, killing the two closest to him, and then he turned and shot the man chasing Mirari across the street.
“You’re a very good shot,” Qhora said.
“I have good eyes,” the Hellan said with a weary little smile. He pointed his revolver at the last two men near Salvator.
Click. Click.
Tycho’s eyes went wide. The two swordsmen stopped, turned, and charged back toward the dwarf. The one on the left held his seireiken high in both hands as though ready to chop the Hellan in half from brain to bowels. The one on the right held his blade low and to the side, preparing to slice his target across the waist.
In that moment, Qhora saw the useless gun shake in Tycho’s hand, and she saw the gun fall to the ground. It thudded on the planks of the platform with a hollow wooden thump.
Qhora leapt forward, reaching out toward Tycho, reaching toward his shoulder to dig both hands into his shirt and haul him bodily away from the two men, but she missed.
Tycho wasn’t there anymore. He was running toward the two men, and he was clutching the white-hot seireiken in both hands. The first attacker sliced straight down and the Hellan hurled himself aside to let the orange blade crunch into the platform boards. At the same moment, the second man sliced across and clanged his sword against the one lodged in the platform floor. Tycho swung the white sword in a level arc and it smashed through both of the fiery blades and blazed through both men’s knees. The men fell to the ground, silent and still and pale. Their broken swords lay in pieces on the platform, gray and cold.
Before she could speak, a chorus of gunfire drew Qhora’s gaze out to the rail yard. The other five green men all lay on the ground, all of them groaning and writhing as they clutched their shattered knees and bloody legs. Their swords lay bright in the dust, illuminating the haze with their hellish glow.
“There! Do you see that?” the detective shouted at the men on the ground. “That’s what happens when you bring magic swords to a gun fight!”
And the captain muttered back something that sounded like, “You do know it’s not really magic, right?”
Qhora looked around the platform and the street and the yard. Everyone was gone, or dead, or whimpering. No one was running. No one was shooting. A soft, warm breeze gently brushed the dust away to better reveal the stillness of the train station. Taziri put her fingers to her forehead in a little salute.
Qhora waved back. Then she hopped down from the platform and walked slowly and quietly across the gravel yard, stepping carefully over the train tracks and bodies, and looked up at the last man in green still standing.
“Aker El Deeb.” She said it calmly and softly. “You killed my husband. You stole his soul. Where is your sword?”
The man glanced back over his shoulder.
“It’s here.” Taziri pointed to the ground. “I destroyed it. Melted it down. All the souls are free. Lorenzo is free, Qhora. It’s over.”
He’s free. He’s at peace. It’s over.
Qhora cleared her throat and looked at the bloody, haggard face of Aker El Deeb. “Were you under orders? Were you hired to kill my husband?”
He spat in the dirt. “No.”
“That night, did you come to rob us?”
“No.”
“Did you come to rape me?”
He grinned. “No.”
“Would you have killed the rest of us that night, if you could have? Me, Mirari, Alonso? My baby? If you could have, would you?”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
She let her gaze drift across the yard, no longer seeing the bodies or the buildings or the trains. They were all just meaningless blurs of color and light. “So, that night, you came to kill him because you wanted to kill him. You wanted another soul for your sword. You wanted his skills. You wanted to steal his strength to make yourself a better killer.”
Aker snorted and tried to straighten up a bit taller, but he winced and put his hand to the burned side of his neck. “Yeah, something like that. It was worth it, too. I could fight like him.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Qhora said. For a moment, the sun-bleached gravel almost looked like the glaring snowfields of Espana, and then like the pale beaches at Cartagena, and then like the bright streets of Cusco.
So many places I’d rather be, so far away, so far from where I am.
And what I am.
And who I am.
She swallowed. “During the war, Enzo fought for his survival, and for his king, and for his fellow soldiers. After the war, Enzo fought to protect the people he cared for, and even to protect people he didn’t know. And as a teacher, Enzo fought for peace and justice. He wanted to end war. All war. He hasn’t…he hadn’t killed anyone for many years. I remember once,” she smiled, “we were attacked in the street and Enzo pretended to kill those men because he didn’t think I’d understand why he left them alive.”
“Oh?” Aker winced. “And you understand now? Now that you’re all civilized and holy?”
“No.” Qhora stared at him blankly. “I’ve tried for years to understand why such a gifted warrior as my Enzo would leave his enemies alive, why he would show mercy to people who wanted him dead, and why he was so humble. He deserved to be proud. He was strong and brave. A soldier, a hero, a teacher. Everyone loved him and respected him. But he clung to his faith, to his three-faced god.” She touched the triquetra medallion on her chest. “Uphold the Father’s justice, defend the Mother’s life, and temper all things with the Son’s mercy and compassion. It is the Espani way. It was Enzo’s way.” She paused to look down at the little golden disk in her hand. “But it isn’t my way.”
Aker grimaced. “What are you going to do with me?” He glanced over his shoulder at the two Mazighs. Taziri was reloading the gun bolted to her arm. The detective had already reloaded his black revolver and was staring flatly at the Aegyptian.
“I’m giving you to the Mazighs. You’ll go back to Marrakesh. You’ll stand trial. You’ll go to prison. Or maybe they’ll execute you. I don’t know. I doubt they’ll torture you. That isn’t their way. But to honor my husband’s love of justice, you will live to stand trial. I swear that.” She tilted her head back to look at the sky. A single faint strand of cloud stretched from east to west, torn and driven by the sea wind. “But that isn’t enough for me.”
She felt her chest drawing in, crushing her ribs around her heart. It hurt just to breathe and a dozen tiny claws seemed to be tearing at her throat, making it harder and harder to speak. The rims of her eyes burned. She pressed her lips tightly together for a moment. “You took my husband from me. And you took my son’s father. Forever. So now I will take something of yours. Forever.” She swallowed and steadied her voice, and then screamed, “TURIIIIIII!!!!!!!”
The harpy eagle screamed a wordless scream high overhead, a scream that shredded the sky and pierced the ear, a scream that was more than inhuman, a scream beyond rage or hate. It was a herald’s cry. A god’s cry.
Qhora raised the tip of her knife to point at Aker’s face, and the man glared at her and then up at the sky. Instantly his face was transformed into a mask of wide-eyed terror and the man spun and took three running steps before the enormous vengeful mass of feathers and talons streaked out of the sky and smashed into his head and shoulders. Aker twisted and fell to the ground with the eagle’s claws sunk deep into his face. Turi hunched his shoulders and lifted his wings for balance, screening the man’s upper body from view, but Qhora saw the harpy’s head strike down again and again as the blood trickled over his talons.
Aker jerked and rolled from side to side and wrapped his arms around his face to shield himself from the viciously darting beak. But the more he flailed and kicked and thrashed, the deeper Turi’s talons sank into his flesh. And then the eagle’s head shot down and stayed down, and Aker screamed. “Oh God! Help me! Please, God, somebo
dy help me! Help me! PLEASE! HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”
Qhora almost smiled. Instead she cleared her throat and held out her arm. “Turi. To me.”
The harpy lifted his head to look over his shoulder at her with one luminous golden eye, and then he hopped and flapped into the air, glided across the few short yards between them, and perched heavily on her arm. He wrapped his bloody talons gently around her arm, and Qhora watched the blood drip from his beak. “Good boy.”
Aker curled up on his side, his hands pressed to his eyes and painted in blood. He gasped and shuddered and sobbed quietly in the dust. “My eyes…my eyes…God, please…my eyes…”
“He’s all yours now, detective,” Qhora said.
Kenan holstered his gun and sauntered over to inspect his prisoner with a squint and a grimace. “Thanks. I guess.”
Qhora walked past him and paused beside Taziri. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. You?”
“I’m fine.” Qhora glanced back once across the rail yard over the dead men and the crying men, over the burning swords and scorch marks, over Mirari and Salvator and Tycho, and finally over Kenan squatting beside Aker. “I’m ready to go home now, captain.”
Lewis, Joseph Robert
Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy)
The days that followed…
Chapter 29. Shifrah
“Are we there yet?” Shifrah smiled across the compartment at Kenan.
The detective glanced over at her, shook his head, and went back to staring out the window. Shifrah sighed and looked at the other bench seat in their little private room of the Eranian passenger car.
Aker lay very still, but his snoring was quite loud. Perhaps he was faking, but Shifrah doubted it. The Aegyptian had whimpered and moaned all through the long hours in the rail yard as Taziri arranged for the Halcyon to be hitched to a west-bound train.
Tycho had strapped his new sword across his back and gone in search of a doctor, and returned with a distinguished Hellan surgeon. The surgeon had clucked his tongue at Aker’s missing eyes and burnt scalp, but pronounced them relatively superficial and that he would be fine, though blind barring some extraordinary advance in Mazigh optical prosthetics.
The surgeon had then bound Qhora’s arm, stitched Shifrah’s arm and reset her shoulder, collected Salvator’s money, and left with a song on his lips.
By mid-afternoon the Halcyon had been coupled to the end of an Eranian train, the aging steam locomotive had rumbled to life, and they had all watched Alexandria clatter past the windows and shrink into the distance behind them. All except the Italian and the dwarf, who had watched the train leave from the platform.
Tycho had waved.
Salvator hadn’t.
Time to see where we stand. Shifrah sighed again. “I suppose I’ll need to get a private detective’s license when we get back. Who do I see about that?”
Kenan looked at her. “So you’re serious? About that? About us?”
She nodded.
“You’re just going to give up your old life, just like that?”
She nodded. “It was just a job, Kenan. People change jobs all the time.”
“Murder isn’t a job.”
“But executions are? But war is?”
He was silent.
“People kill people, Kenan,” she said. “Sometimes for money, or orders, or passion, or just by accident. In the great scheme of things, the death itself is always all the same. People die. The only thing that matters is why. What was in the killer’s heart? Hate and greed? Or honor and duty?”
“What was in your heart?” he asked.
She shrugged. “That I needed the money, and that the world would probably be a better place without my marks in it. It’s not like I was hired by sadistic monsters to kill innocent children. I was hired by monsters to kill other monsters. At least in the old days. In Marrakesh, I was mostly hired by the victims to kill the monsters. I tried to tell you this before.”
He nodded and looked away. “Yeah, you did.”
“So? What do you say?”
Kenan moved over next to her and looked her in the eye. “No more killing?”
“No more killing.” She smiled.
He’s cute when he tries to lose an argument gracefully.
“All right then. Agyeman and Dumah Investigations. We’ll give it a try.”
She kissed him. “Dumah and Agyeman.” And she reached for his belt buckle.
He glanced across the narrow compartment at their snoring prisoner. “Here? Now?”
She grinned.
I think I’ll name our daughter Ziva.
Shifrah pulled him to her. “Here. And definitely now.”
Chapter 30. Salvator
The customs inspector at the pier had fixed an unpleasant eye on the sword strapped to the dwarf’s back and to the second sword rattling on Salvator’s hip, but the Italian quickly allayed the official’s concerns with a fistful of coins and a few choice words in Eranian that might have been misconstrued to mean that both of the travelers were close personal friends with a certain Master Rashaken.
The two men climbed the gangway and paced along the deck of the Hellan steamer to stand near the bow and watch the other passengers board.
“Is it very cold in Constantia?” Salvator asked.
“Cold-ish.” Tycho shrugged. “Why? Thinking of visiting? I thought you had a sword to deliver to your king in Rome or somewhere.”
“This?” Salvator patted the second blade sheathed below his rapier. After seeing the brilliant white blaze of the dwarf’s sword, he had taken the brightest of the surviving seireikens scattered around the rail yard before the local scavengers arrived to pick the bodies clean. The Italian shook his head. “I can hand this off to another agent in Athens when we change ships. There’s no need for me to deliver it in person.”
“You’d let someone else take the credit?”
“Of course not. I’ve already sent five letters to my associates at court to inform His Majesty that the sword is en route. They’ll know the truth of the matter.”
“Five?”
Salvator smiled. “You can’t trust the postal service, my young friend. Not in any country or any age. Are you sure you wouldn’t be willing to trade souvenirs?”
“No,” Tycho said quietly. “Philo died searching for this sword. I nearly died as well. But when I bring it to my Lady Nerissa, and she presents it to the prince of Vlachia, it will change the world. With Vlachia at our side, Raska and Rus will surely follow. The war with Eran will come to a head, and then it will end, and my city will be safe. Truly safe.”
Salvator raised an eyebrow. “Or, your alliance will call down the full might of the Empire, utterly destroying three northern nations as well as your little town.” He paused. “An extra ten darics for it?”
“No.” Tycho looked up. “Would you say I’m an attractive man?”
Salvator grinned. “No. But a woman probably would. Why?”
“I was just thinking that when I return, I’ll be a hero, right? Heroes get rewards. Honors. Money. Not that I did this for a reward, but if a reward was offered, it would only be polite to accept it, right?”
“Of course. Twenty darics?”
“No. And then, well,” the dwarf shrugged, “it would only be natural for a young lady to hold me in a higher esteem. If I was a hero, I mean. Wouldn’t she?”
“Is this a particular young lady, or a hypothetical one?”
“A hypothetical one,” Tycho said slowly. “With long black hair that shimmers red in the sunlight, and a lovely singing voice…and very muscular legs.”
“Oh, her?” Salvator nodded sagely. “She would be most impressed by your heroics, without question. Thirty darics?”
“No.” Tycho drummed on the white-handled revolver on his hip. “Does the gun make me look dangerous and exotic? Or no? I think I rather like it.”
Salvator frowned. “I hate guns. They’re for cowards and monsters.”
Yes, it most certainly does.
“Forty darics?”
“No.”
Chapter 31. Taziri
When the train finally came to a stop in the Tingis station, Taziri was the first to climb down and feel Mazigh soil under her boots and see the Mazigh stars overhead. She quickly found the yardmaster and oversaw the uncoupling of the Halcyon, and watched a small steam tram shunt the special locomotive off into a siding where it would be safe and out of the way. By then, everyone else had woken up and disembarked.
Kenan and Shifrah wrangled their semi-conscious prisoner onto the platform. The detective paused. “Thanks for your help, captain.”
I guess he found his place in the world after all. It definitely worked out for me this week, at least. Taziri nodded. “Thanks for yours. Just keep her out of trouble.” She nodded at the one-eyed woman in white.
Kenan grinned. “I’ll try. Be seeing you.” And they left.
Taziri found Qhora and Mirari waiting at the end of the platform. “Come on,” she said softly. “Someone’s waiting for you.”
“And you,” the weary princess said.
They walked the long mile from the train station uphill across four intersections to the quiet old neighborhood where the Ohana house stood at the end of a paved street dotted with slender elm trees. Taziri opened the front door and saw the men in the living room.
Alonso was snoring in the armchair in the corner. Little Javier lay sprawled across the young man’s chest, drooling and whimpering.
Yuba sat on the sofa with Menna curled up in his lap. They both looked up from the book they were reading. “Mommy!” Menna dashed across the room and Taziri scooped her up and swung her through the air before crushing the little girl to her chest.
Qhora quietly picked up her baby and Mirari gently woke Alonso, and Taziri backed out of the room with Yuba to give the others a moment alone.
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