The two women froze. One was shorter and older wearing expensive shoes. The other was wearing a police captain’s uniform. Syfax relieved her of her sidearm. “Good evening, Captain Aknin. Have a seat.” He pointed at a large, jagged rock just behind her.
Captain Aknin sighed and raised her hands in a half-hearted gesture of surrender. “I think I’ll stand, sir.”
“I wasn’t asking.” He shoved her down onto the rock as he checked her revolver. “Kenan, search our other friend.”
“Yes, sir.” Kenan lowered his weapon and approached the older woman in the green dress and gold jacket. “Ambassador Chaou, yes? Where’s your gun, ma’am?” He quickly patted down her jacket pockets and slid his hand around her belt. “The gun you used to shoot the Crake’s pilot, where is it?” The woman stood quite still, staring across at the major while Kenan searched her.
Syfax saw the twitch in her hand. “Kid, get back!”
The ambassador lurched back to put the seated police captain between her and Syfax. He saw her hand flash through her inner jacket and he heard the click of a revolver’s hammer. The gun emerged in a shaking hand, pointed loosely at the major.
“Officers! Please!” Her voice trembled. “No need for violence, surely. I am Barika Chaou, senior ambassador from Her Royal Highness Din Nasin to the Prince of España, His Royal Highness Argenti Valero. My associate here is Captain Aknin of the Port Chellah police.”
“I know all that.” Syfax rested his knife on the captain’s shoulder, his fingers gripping the woman’s collar with the blade close to her throat. He thumbed the hammer on his new revolver and leveled it at Chaou. “I also know you shot a pilot in the back and your bodyguard blew up a couple dozen civilians. And your buddy Aknin here killed one of her own officers tonight,” Syfax said. “It sort of makes me think you two aren’t really cut out for civil service. Drop the gun and show me your hands. Now.”
“No. I’m sorry, marshal. Major, is it?” The gun shook in her hand at her waist, the barrel pointed vaguely at Syfax’s belly and Aknin’s back.
“Major Zidane.” Syfax dropped his own gun as he lunged forward to grab the barrel of the ambassador’s revolver with his right hand while his left hand remained firmly planted on the knife and the captain’s collar.
The ambassador stumbled back but the major held the gun fixed in midair, and as the old woman fell backwards she pulled the trigger. Syfax tried to twist aside as he heard the cylinder turn and the bullwhip crack of the gunshot filled his ears. A hot sting sliced across his belly and Aknin’s head snapped forward. He shuffled back, releasing the revolver to grab at his stomach. Blinking and clutching his bloody shirt, he felt his breath still coming soft and easy. It just grazed me. I’m fine. He looked up and saw Chaou shoving Kenan back into the wall, her gun pressed to his stomach. The corporal’s gun lay on the floor. When did he drop that?
Then the ambassador was gone and Kenan was staring back at him with wide white eyes. He pointed at Aknin. “Her f-face!”
The major pulled back the captain’s head to see the gaping bloody hole where the woman’s nose and eye used to be. “Yeah, that’s not pretty.” Syfax snatched up his own gun as he lunged toward the open doorway. “Wake up, kid! Move it!”
Outside he heard the waves crash on the beach and hiss softly as they slipped back out into the ocean. A horse whickered.
Syfax ran around the side of the tomb in time to see Chaou galloping up the sandy path back to Port Chellah. He bolted through the tall grass up the path and found his own horse where Kenan had tied her up in a thicket. He yanked the cords free, climbed into the saddle, and whipped the mare’s flank. “Hya!”
Syfax glanced over his shoulder at the dark figure standing beside the mausoleum. Sorry kid, looks like you’re walking.
Chapter 7. Taziri
“You’re very quiet, doctor.” Taziri wiped at her eyes with her left hand while her right hand rested on the gun in her lap. She blinked hard and glanced over at the Hellan, who sat with arms crossed and brows furrowed, staring at a blank spot on the floor. Ghanima snored softly on the bench across from him. Hamuy snored loudly on the floor.
Evander yawned. “What am I supposed to say? Clearly this whole country has gone mad and I’m to be treated as a common prisoner along with these murderers and arsonists. It’s your own fault, of course. These machines of yours. You have the power to travel the sky, to kill with a flick of your finger. You’re walking the paths of Icarus and Prometheus. And we all know what happened to them.”
“Not really, no. What happened to them?”
Evander glared at the floor a little harder. “Bad things. Very bad things.”
“Oh.” Taziri blinked hard again and suppressed a yawn. “So how many gods do you people have?”
“You people?”
“Sorry,” Taziri said. “Europans, I mean.”
“In Hellas, we honor the one true God and His three aspects, and all of His attendant saints and angels. How you Mazighs survive without a proper faith is beyond me.”
“Well, we get by.” Taziri offered what she thought was a polite smile. Passengers. So full of opinions, always trying to sound clever, always trying to come across as just another working-class friend with a sincere interest in airships. Except this one, apparently. Taziri wondered if any working-class people had ever even set foot in an airship. And here was a man trying to tell her about God, of all things. Taziri resolved to play nice. “But I suppose I can sort of see the appeal of having all those different characters, with different names and symbols and things. I mean, it doesn’t seem to really reflect the divine unity of the universe, but I’m just an electrician.” She let her mouth run as she looked back over her dark gauges in the cockpit. “Although, it’s probably much easier to explain to your children. I know I’m not looking forward to trying to talk about the holy mysteries with my little girl.” Menna’s chubby little face danced through her mind and her smile warmed.
“Characters?” The doctor screwed up his face into a wrinkly grimace. “Children?”
Taziri winced as she replayed her words in her mind. “Oh! No, I just meant, well, it’s very different, obviously, and I’m sure it works very well for your people in Europa.”
Evander looked up, wide-eyed. “Europa isn’t a country, you know. It’s a vast continent, filled with many different nations and peoples, languages, and religions!”
“Really?” Taziri ran her tongue around her teeth, thinking. “There’s a special airship we built just for exploring Europa, the Frost Finch, specially equipped for the cold weather. I’ve read about their expeditions in the journals. They only found a few villages scattered along the northern coasts, I think. I got the impression there were only a few tribes in Europa north of Hellas and Italia. Big pale brutes like giant albinos, wearing furs and eating bones up on the glaciers.” She paused. “We lost the Finch a few winters ago. They were supposed to survey an island somewhere, but they never came back.”
“Well, I don’t know about any of that. But the cities of Hellas, Italia, and España are no mean little villages. And they’re much prettier than this place, I assure you.”
Taziri nodded. “You’re from a city called Dens, right?”
“Athens!”
The engineer continued bobbing her head. “Ah, that’s right. Sorry, my captain is the one who’s good with names. I’m better with wrenches.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Evander squinted at her. “I’ve a question for you, since we’ve nothing better to do. If you’re not a soldier, why do you wear all that armor?”
Taziri glanced down at her orange flight jacket. The small steel plates were stitched into the lining of the chest, back, and sleeves. Rolling her shoulders, she felt the weight of the thing dragging her down, making her back ache, and always keeping her just a bit too warm. But for all its faults, she couldn’t imagine being on an airship without it. “It’s just for protection.”
“Protection from what?”
“The engine.”
The doctor slowly turned to look at the silent bulk of the machinery behind him. The maze of chambers and shafts slept in the shadows, visible only as faint metallic glimmers and reflections of the distant streetlamps and starlight. “Why do you need protection from the engine? And more importantly, why don’t I have any protection from it?”
Taziri shrugged. “A steam engine is a lot of moving metal parts, under pressure, very hot. There’s always a small danger of something popping loose, or bursting, or exploding.”
“Exploding?!” Evander sat up straight, his eyes wide beneath his bushy brows. “You never said anything about it exploding! And I was sitting right here, right next to it, all the way from Carthage!”
“Shhh.” Taziri waved wearily at him and nodded at the young pilot sleeping on the bench. “There’s no need to worry. There hasn’t been an accident on a Mazigh airship in over six years. That’s thousands of hours of flight time. We’re very good at what we do. And frankly, the jackets are just to keep the safety inspectors happy. Regulations and all. I doubt they would do much good in a real emergency anyway.”
“Oh, really? What happened six years ago?”
Taziri winced. The two accounts of the disaster played simultaneously through her mind, the official story in the press release versus the contents of the inspector’s report. Duty demanded the official story: “Faulty assembly. The main line valve sealed shut so the pressure in the boiler kept increasing until it burst. The explosion shredded the cabin with all sorts of debris. Shrapnel killed the engineer instantly and injured the pilot, but not badly. No one else was on board.”
The doctor massaged his temples. “You’re all mad.”
Taziri stared blankly at the shackled man on the floor. “Some of us more than others.” She gestured at Ghanima. “How is she doing?” Taziri massaged her eyes again. They were screaming at her for sleep, for darkness, for relief from the cold dry air and the invisible traces of smoke that clung to her jacket.
The doctor knelt down beside the young pilot to examine her. “Sleeping just fine.” Evander shoved himself up on a creaking knee and returned to his seat. “Do you know her?”
“Not really. About as well as anyone else in the Northern Air Corps.” Taziri glanced at the pilot for the hundredth time. She looked so young, her cheeks and nose still ever so slightly plump, her dark brown hair sprinkled with glimmers of gold and crimson, her full lips parted, and a small puddle of drool on the seat cushion under her head. Someone’s wife, or mother, or daughter. “I’m just glad she wasn’t hurt.”
“I’m sure you are.” Medur Hamuy rolled over onto his back and grinned up at them.
“Oh good,” Taziri muttered. “You’re awake.” She showed the gun to the bandaged man on the floor. “Let’s behave, shall we?”
Hamuy contorted the raw flesh around his mouth into a grin. “Where’s the Redcoat?”
“Lonely already?” Taziri kept her eyes on the dark window on the opposite side of the cabin. “Maybe you’d rather have a few more women to cut up.” Her words seized in her throat and her eyes burned and brimmed. A dull heat washed through her skin, yet she shivered.
“Huh. So, flygirl, are you having fun tonight?” Hamuy grunted as he tried to sit up. After several seconds of trying, he gave up and thumped his head on the floor.
Taziri swallowed and blinked, keeping her eyes on the night-shrouded airfield outside. “I’ve had better days,” she said evenly.
“Huh? Oh, right, all the burning and the killing. No, I guess a clever girl like you doesn’t see much of that, do you?” Hamuy shivered. “You should get out more. See the world. The real world. I highly recommend Persia, if you ever have the chance. A man can go far in Persia. In fact, a man can go wherever he wants in Persia. Taverns. Whorehouses.”
“Can a man in Persia go to work without being set on fire or being stabbed to death?” Taziri slowly let her gaze slip down the far wall to the ruined flesh beneath the gauze wrapped around the prisoner’s head. The words falling out of her mouth were dry, lifeless things. Half of her wanted to explode with rage, but the other half didn’t have the energy to move, so she stayed very still and tried not to feel or think too much. “Because lately that’s become something a concern of mine. Dying.”
Hamuy chuckled and then shuddered. “Dying?” He clucked his tongue. “Don’t see much dying either, do you? I guess you’re more of a talker, eh? Just like the queen, all words and no fight. You like words, don’t you?”
“Not right now, I don’t.” Taziri let her finger slip a little closer to the trigger.
“Mm. You’re still angry about your little friends back in that hangar, aren’t you? Well, if it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t personal. Just a job.” He shivered.
Taziri blinked hard again. “Doctor? Why is he shaking like that?”
The older man roused himself slightly and muttered, “The burns. Nerve damage. Burns can get progressively worse if not properly treated. As the minor burns spread, the pain will get worse. As the major burns spread, the pain will fade away as the nerves die.”
“Oh.” The engineer wiggled her numb finger. “Hey. Hey you.” She kicked Hamuy’s boot and the man looked up. “You can talk all you want but I’m not going to shoot you. I’m going to sit here and watch you twitch. You’re probably going to die soon, one way or another. And whether the marshals throw you in prison, or you just shiver and bleed to death on the floor there in a puddle of your own filth, is fine with me.”
“You know, it must be really nice for you,” Hamuy said. “Nice to have all these other people to take care of things for you. Redcoats, police, soldiers. People in uniforms all over the place, all to tell you what to do. To make the hard calls. To get their hands dirty. For you.”
Taziri looked down at the weapon she was petting. A steel barrel, steel cylinder, hammer, trigger, shells, handle, little scratches and dings here and there, a clear fingerprint where her thumb had been a moment earlier. Cold steel. Only three moving parts, because bullets don’t count. It was all wrong. No warm brass, no clicking gears, no buzzing wires. She wanted copper, shades of sunfire and sand. She wanted power and motion, useful things puttering and whirring, gauge needles turning and signals whistling. The gun offered none of those things, none of the images or sounds or smells she loved about machines. It was too simple. It was a cold, dead thing. Closing her eyes, Taziri tore the gun apart in her mind. It was easy, just like her days in school. All machines are nothing more than their parts, arranged in sequence. Before her mind’s eye, the gun came undone. The screws spiraled backward, plates separated, shells slid out, powder spilled upwards. Then the bits hovered in her mind, lonely and harmless. But she couldn’t hold the image of the pieces apart, she had nothing else to do with them and years of training and habits die hard, and so the pieces slid back together and before she could stop it the image of the gun was complete and it was spewing bullets. At people. At Menna.
Her eyes snapped open and she shoved the revolver off her lap onto the seat beside her with a shaking hand. The old Hellan was snoring again. Taziri slowly let her gaze wander to the bench where Ghanima lay on her side, and then to Hamuy, who was lifting his legs up and preparing to kick the sleeping girl in the head.
Taziri’s hand snatched up the revolver, thumbed the hammer, and leveled the barrel at the prisoner’s chest. “Get away from her!”
Hamuy only grinned and in the darkness Taziri thought she saw his boot move.
The bark of the gun snapped Evander and Ghanima up to sit and stare at each other, their hands clutching the edge of the bench cushions. Hamuy fell on his back, a tiny wisp of smoke rising from his chest. Then he groaned and slowly sat back up.
Incredulous, Taziri stood and shuffled closer. Ghanima turned, looking lost and sick, and then she scrambled down the bench away from the prisoner. Taziri reached up and flicked the cabin light on. Hamuy grinned and coughed. Taziri kept the gun pointed at the man’s chest as she knelt dow
n, still staring and frowning. Behind the wisp of smoke was a dark hole in Hamuy’s shirt, and behind the hole was a ring of light brown skin, and in that ring of flesh was a crushed bullet and the bright silver gleam of steel.
“What is that? What’s under your skin?”
“That?” Hamuy’s grin melted into a cold, flat stare. “That’s the future, girl. And it’s nothing compared to what they did to Chaou.”
Day Two
Chapter 8. Lorenzo
The hidalgo sat high in the saddle, his black greatcoat draped over the horse’s rump, the brim of his hat shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun rising above the rim of the Atlas Mountains on his left. After only a few minutes on the road, they were already beyond the last of the small cottages of Tingis. The cobbled street became a broad dusty highway where a glance to the right revealed the thin black line of the ocean beyond the hills but to look anywhere else was to stare into an endless sea of grass and dust. Stunted trees and gnarled shrubs clustered around the rocky dips in the hills and the occasional spoor on the side of road betrayed the recent passage of rabbits and wild dogs, but to Lorenzo Quesada the wind-stroked plain was as alien and treacherous as the jungles of the New World.
No snow, no ice. Animals everywhere, but no tracks anywhere. He sipped from his water skin and unbuttoned his coat, revealing his white shirt and dark blue vest to the warming air. The pommel and swept-hilt guard of his espada bobbed along at his hip, the blade sheathed in supple oiled leather with a tuft of fur at the mouth to protect the steel from snow and rain, though he did not expect either to fall anytime soon.
To his right and several paces behind rode Lady Qhora astride her monstrous Wayra. The Inca called them hatun-ankas, the great eagles. Striding as fast as a horse could trot and towering nine feet above the ground on its massive talons, the animal bore little similarity to any bird Lorenzo had ever seen. But the beasts were feathered and beaked, and they screamed like eagles well enough. Below the neck their plumage was drab browns and grays, but around the head they wore crowns and masks and collars of red and blue and green, as garish as they were hideous. He had once met a man from Carthage who claimed that there were similar striding birds in the east called ostriches, though they were thin-legged and clumsy. The thought of more of these creatures elsewhere around the world was not comforting to him.
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