When the carriage stopped, she was led out into a dimly lit carriage house, through a door and down a narrow corridor, and then up a short stair, around a corner, and a hall and a door and on and on. It became an exhausting parade of old stone walls, chipped stone steps, scuffed wooden steps and creaking iron stairs, stone archways obscured by curtains, and stone doorways sealed with dark wooden doors with crude iron handles. Candle light played on the walls ahead and behind them, and sometimes she caught a glimpse of the young lady from the restaurant leading the way.
I’m here. I’m inside their fortress or temple or whatever it is. Aker El Deeb might be here, somewhere. If I could only get away, if I only knew where to look. I could find someone and force them to tell me, to lead me to him. I could find him. I could find the sword. I could hold Enzo’s soul in my arms. Tonight.
They walked on. Finally they arrived at the end of a hall several floors higher than where they entered. The lady knocked at the door and was admitted alone. A moment later the door opened again and the lady beckoned Qhora to follow.
It was an office or a study. It reminded her of Enzo’s little library at home, a small room dominated by a large wooden desk that belonged in a larger room, and a few shelves of books, and a few papers scattered about the desk and floor. A warm breeze was blowing through the small window, which revealed a small square patch of the night sky. The loose papers shuddered in the wind. She sat in the chair in the center of the room and the lady left, closing the door behind her.
The man behind the desk sighed. He appeared to be in his fifties, his wiry black beard lined with a few bright white heralds of age. Deep crow’s feet drew his eyes and mouth down in a look of perpetual disappointment and fatigue. He sighed again and sat up. “Zahra thinks you know something that I might find valuable. Maybe many things.”
Qhora glanced back at the door. “Miss Zahra said you would torture me and eventually kill me to learn about my homeland.”
The man shrugged. “We could. I can order my people to do so, if you wish. I may order them to do so, if I think it would be worthwhile. Would it be worthwhile, miss…?”
“Dona Qhora Yupanqui Quesada,” she said. “And you are?”
“Khai. Just Khai.” He didn’t smile or glare. He looked to be on the verge of falling asleep. “So tell me, Dona Qhora, should my associates and I take an interest in the New World? We haven’t in the past. After all, it’s very far away. And the moment we arrive, most of us will fall dead to the ground with plague, and those few who survive will be devoured by enormous flesh-eating birds and cats. Have you come to offer me a cure for this plague? Or some way to avoid the roving flocks of hatun-ankas and prides of kirumichis?”
She smiled a little. Just looking into his drooping eyes and listening to his weary, rasping voices made her feel tired. “No, sir. There is no secret to surviving these things. My people are the descendants of the few men and women who survived the plague long, long ago. We have no secret cure. And the great eagles and cats can only be tamed from birth. The wild ones are as deadly to us as to you.”
“Ah.” Khai nodded. “Then it hardly matters how fabulously wealthy your distant empire is, does it? Nature herself stands in our way. And who are we to defy Nature?”
Qhora shook her head. “I wouldn’t dream of it myself.”
Khai sniffed. “Zahra means well. She wants to prove herself. She wants to prove to us that she deserves her position. Oh, to be young again.” He sighed, drumming his fingers on the desk, revealing a bandaged hand with a bloody stain where his small finger should have been. Then he stood up and she saw the short sword on his belt. “Let’s take a little walk, you and I.”
She stood up and stepped back toward the door.
If I had a knife, just one knife, I could have that sword off him and force him to take me to Aker. He’s old. He’s tired. Maybe…maybe I can do it without a knife.
As the old man shuffled around the desk toward the door, she started forward to catch him as he was trapped in the narrow gap beside the desk. Instantly an iron hand wrapped around her wrist and she gasped as she felt her tiny bones grinding together in his grip. She looked up and saw there was no change in his face. Still haggard, still tired, still disappointed.
There is something horribly empty and hollow about his gaze. No anger, no fear, no passion. Nothing at all. He feels nothing at all.
She dropped her gaze, hoping he might simply release her if she didn’t seem too dangerous. Instead he kept her held tightly with his right hand as his left hand drew out his seireiken. He only exposed a few inches of the blade and instantly the entire room was ablaze with pure white light that blasted all color from the walls and books and clothing, reducing everything to pale silvery grays. Qhora shielded her eyes with her free hand, and through her squinting lashes she saw tiny electric arcs snapping and sizzling on the brilliant steel. The air hissed and she smelled a faint char on the warm breeze.
The air. The air is burning. The blade is so hot that it can scald the empty air into ash.
Indeed, a faint scattering of pale gray motes was falling steadily on the floor under the sword like snow on a quiet winter’s evening.
Then he slid the sword back into its clay-lined scabbard. “You understand our swords?”
She nodded. “They burn with the souls of all the people that they’ve killed.”
“This is a very old sword. It has claimed many lives, and many of those were at my hand. The blade would only have to touch you for a moment to burn away your flesh and draw the aether from your blood and swallow your soul for all time.”
“I understand.”
He nodded and released her wrist. Qhora stepped back and let him open the door and lead her out into the hall. Zahra and her guards had left and Qhora followed the old man down many long and deserted corridors with only the echoes of their footsteps for company.
“I lost my husband to one of your swords,” she said. Her words echoed alone down the hall.
After a moment, Khai said, “Is that why you’ve come? Revenge?”
“Yes.” She whispered the word. And then louder, “No. Not now. I don’t care about the person who killed my Enzo. I just want the sword that has his soul. I just want to take him home to our son.”
The older man grunted. “I see that life among the Espani had softened your sensibilities. From proud barbarian princess to sentimental housewife. Not that it matters. You’ll never take a seireiken from us, with or without killing its owner. You may never even leave this building, young miss.”
Qhora curled her fingers into a small bony fist. “I thought you’d already decided there was no reason to keep me here. You don’t care about the New World.”
“No, we don’t care about the New World. But we do care about outsiders infiltrating our ranks, stealing our secrets, and exposing our operations to the scrutiny of foreign governments.” Khai coughed. “I’m taking you to a room now. You’ll stay there while I discuss your future with my brothers. You may be retained here to work, or we may simply kill you. I understand that you chose to surrender to our people rather than try to fight them. That speaks well for you. Civilized people can be useful. Barbarian princesses cannot.”
A whirlwind of impulses and desires and red mists ran riot through her mind. Her hands wanted to kill this man, to tear down his temple brick by brick, to rip the head clean off Enzo’s killer, and to carry home the burning steel cage with her beloved’s soul inside it. But the sick gnawing in the pit of her stomach only wanted to run far, far away. And the cold splinter in the back of her mind was telling her that she was only one woman, alone, unarmed, unwanted, unloved, and soon to be unmissed by the world.
“I have a son.” Qhora wanted to say more, but she couldn’t imagine what maternal feeling or natural obligation this man might care about. Still she said, “He’s waiting for me. He’s only three months old. I can’t stay here.”
“If you truly valued him above all else, you wouldn’t have left him to com
e here. So don’t try my patience with your false sense of loyalty.”
“I was wrong.” The word left an aching knot in her throat. Wrong.
“Oh?”
“Wrong to come here. I came because that’s what I know. When attacked, I attack in kind. Blood cries out for blood. Let no trespass go unpunished. Absolute war. Death without mercy. That’s what kept me alive through…everything. Being stronger, faster, crueler. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It was only a way to survive. To keep my blood on the inside.”
“There’s nothing shameful about survival,” Khai said. “Few scholars study the philosophies, passions, and beliefs of failed nations. After all, they’re dead. What can they possibly offer the living? To simply survive in this world at all is to understand a great deal about the human body, mind, and society.”
Qhora frowned. She was certain there was something wrong in what he had just said, but she didn’t care to dwell on it. “I just meant that if I could go back to that night when my husband died, I wouldn’t have left my son to find the killer. I would have stayed at home and taken care of my boy, and let others find justice for us. I can’t save Enzo’s life. I can’t even save his soul, can I?”
“No. You can’t free a soul from a seireiken,” Khai said. “But you can see them and hear them, for whatever that is worth. Would you want to see your dead husband again?”
“Of course!”
“And a year from now? Ten years? Twenty?” The older man glanced back over his shoulder at her. “You’re a young woman with a child to raise. Surely your fortunes would be better served if you were to find a new husband to provide for you. And besides that, surely you yourself would want to find a new companion for the many long years of your life still ahead of you. Would you truly want your dead husband’s ghost trapped in your home with you, watching you live your life with another man? Or would you forego a lifetime of love and security to keep a dead man’s soul in the palm of your hand? Would you deny your son a new father, a living father, just so you can hear that same voice from beyond the grave telling you that you are beautiful and that he loves you?”
Qhora rubbed her aching forehead. “Wouldn’t you want to keep the souls of your loved ones close to you?”
Khai stopped and turned. He touched the sword at his side. “I keep the souls of countless thousands of men and women close to me. I’ve known very few of them in life. I’ve known a few more of them in death. I’ve never loved any of them, and they have never brought me any measure of joy or even satisfaction. They are less than slaves. Only tools, nothing more. But to your question, no. If I had a wife or a child die, I would not wish to have them near me. Children are meant to leave the nest. And everyone dies, sooner or later. It is the measure of a person how they cope with loss. The dead must be let go for the living to truly carry on living.”
“And yet you keep that sword, and you keep filling it with the souls of the dead. You don’t let them go, do you?”
“No. I don’t.” He continued down the hall.
Either he’s insane or he’s so detached from normal life that he might as well be crazy. Even if he doesn’t kill me today, he’ll kill me one day all the same. One more slave to serve his twisted ambitions.
They were reaching the end of a corridor. Ahead were two doors on the left but on the right was an opening where she saw a spiraling iron stair rising up and plummeting down into the darkness. The old man passed the stair and approached the last door. “Here we are.”
Qhora leapt over the iron railing and crashed down on the rattling stairs. As she bolted forward and down, she heard the crackling hiss of the man’s drawn seireiken scorching the air and a blinding, colorless light filled the stairwell, drawing nightmare shadows around her body and down the steps.
“Stop!” The man’s voice boomed down the stairwell.
Qhora spun and looked up through the iron rails and steps. The light of the sword was blinding, obliterating all details of the man holding it.
“Come back here, young lady.”
She shifted down a few more steps, moving crablike to keep her eyes on the sword.
“I need only drop the seireiken and it will burn straight through those iron stairs,” Khai said wearily. You son will be orphaned long before the blade strikes the foundation at the bottom of the stairwell.”
“Somehow I doubt you would take the risk,” she said. “While I have no doubt the sword is up to the task, are you? What if you miss me? And what if I reach the sword before you do?”
He didn’t answer and she took the opportunity to slip down several more steps. She was at the next floor down. The hallway was empty.
But I want to keep going down.
She peered up at him. The sword was still hovering out over the stairwell, not pointed down, not walking down, not falling down.
Qhora ran.
She leapt down the tiny, curving, rattling iron steps two and three at a time, using the railings to hurl herself on and on, crashing around the never-ending bends of the spiraling staircase. She passed a second floor, and then a third. Over the clangor of her own feet on the stairs it was impossible to tell whether anyone was following her down the steps, but she didn’t dare stop now.
Faster, faster!
She crashed around a bend in the stair, her hip colliding sharply with the rail, but there wasn’t time for pain, there was only time to run and run faster. A face flashed by on the next floor, a young man wearing a sleepy-eyed look of surprise. She ran on, down and down, jumping and leaping and pulling herself down by the railings.
How far? How far down? How far up was I? Do I hide? Do I look for the man who killed Enzo now, or wait? How long can I dare to wait? An hour? A day?
She grimaced. There was a man just below her, slowly making his way up the steps. He looked up at her, a frown twisting his bearded cheeks as he said, “Excuse me.”
She shoved him aside and ran on. She wasn’t even running anymore. She had fallen into a pattern of leaping down a quarter turn of the spiral stair at a time, four or five steps at a time. Jump, crash. Jump, crash.
Damn me if I turn my ankle again now!
A warm yellow light filtered up through the gaps in the stairs below her and Qhora slowed down just a bit, stutter-stepping as she glanced up and down in search of pursuers.
Whatever that light is, it means people. Damn!
She hesitated just above the opening in the stairwell that led out onto the brightly lit landing. A man and woman were yelling. The crashing and scraping of swords. The clatter of wooden furniture overturning. A man laughing.
Wait, that voice, could it be…?
Qhora stepped out onto the landing and hurried to the closed door obscuring the noise and the yellow light under its sill. For several seconds she listened and caught her breath.
It is him!
Qhora threw the door open and saw the tall Italian dashing around the room, slashing at a one-eyed woman while a lean figure in black held a matte black revolver pointed at the ceiling. She shouted, “Salvator!”
The Italian barely spared her a glance. “Your timing is otherworldly, my dear.” He leaped from the top of a massive anvil, contorting his long, lithe form to avoid a slashing stiletto. He landed lightly and lunged at the one-eyed woman. “If you’d care to help, you’ll find a pair of knives just beside your head.”
Qhora turned and saw two Italian stilettos embedded in the wooden door. She ripped them free and charged after the one-eyed woman in white. Dimly, she noted the two other men in the room, the older one sitting in the corner and beside him a taller man in a heavy leather apron. They both seemed to be watching the fight in mild amusement.
The woman in white whirled to catch Salvator’s rapier on her slender knife, and Qhora glided up behind her to stab her through the upper arm.
The woman screamed and threw a powerful back-hand punch, catching Qhora in the side of the head and sending her sprawling to the floor, her vision broken by flurrying specks of b
lack and white and red.
“Kenan!” The one-eyed woman bolted away from Salvator, and the Italian deftly slashed her across the back, but only deep enough to shred her white jacket and draw a thin red line across her scarred shoulders.
She stumbled to the corner with the young man in black on her heels. Together they grabbed the old man seated in the shadows and crashed through a narrow door in the far wall.
As Qhora pushed up to her feet, Salvator was already vaulting over the anvil in pursuit, but then the tall man in the apron stepped forward to block his path.
“Stand aside!” the Italian snarled.
The man reached to the small of his back and drew a small, straight knife with a single edge. It was barely length of his own hand, but the blade shone as bright and white as the sword Khai had shown her a few moments ago.
Salvator slid to a halt. “I’ve no wish to hurt you.”
“You have no skill to hurt me,” the man said. He held the small knife out in front himself at arm’s length, the blade level to the floor. “You were free to fight the Samaritan and the boy. But not Master Rashaken. I know they will not harm him. But you will not pass. And per Master Rashaken’s orders, it falls to me to see that you do not leave this place with the answers you have found.”
Qhora looked down at the one poor knife left in her hand. “Salvator?”
The Italian did not move. “That man just now, the old one they took, he knows all about the aetherium steel. He knows all about this place. He can tell you how to find Don Lorenzo’s soul, I’m sure of it! This one here might, too, but he’s more likely to put up a fight, I think.”
Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy) Page 82
