Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “So what? It’s not a crime to ignore someone.”

  “No,” Omar said slowly. “She didn’t ignore them. She shunned them. Except when she gave us the ginger as we were leaving Tingis. But even then, she only looked at me, and never at them.”

  “Huh.” Riuza looked back at her engineer. “Come to think of it, I don’t recall you ever really talking to them on any of our expeditions. Not even to give them a hard time. And you give everyone a hard time.”

  Morayo glared at them, her face nearly chalk-white from the blazing light of the seireiken. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Tell me about your family,” Omar said. “Do they live in the south, near the Songhai border? A man in Tingis told me that last summer the Songhai raiders came over the border and killed the homesteaders up in the hills, but there was no retribution because the Mazigh queen refuses to declare war on the Empire.”

  “Lieutenant?” Riuza stepped closer to the engineer. “Put down that sword and answer the man’s question. Was your family involved in the attacks last summer?”

  “Yes,” the young woman whispered. The bright sword in her hand crackled with electric arcs and the air around it began to warble and ripple like a mirage on the desert sand. “They killed my parents, and my little sister. They even killed my dog. Burned the house to the ground. Burned the orchard to the ground. They left nothing alive.” Morayo face twisted with rage. “And what did the queen do? Nothing. She’s too damned scared to defend her own people, so while she’s safe up in her palace in the sky, we’re the ones dying. We’re dying, captain!”

  “So you killed Garai and Kosoko?” Riuza asked softly. “Because they’re Songhai?”

  “You’re damn right I did! I poisoned the ginger. It should have killed them all sooner, but Kosoko was such a damn baby about eating it. And you, it didn’t even bother you, did it!” she yelled at Omar.

  The Aegytpian said nothing, but he remembered the stomach pains he had the night that Garai died. If I could die, I would have.

  Bright tears spilled down the young woman’s cheeks. “I mean, what the hell were they even doing here? You can’t tell me there aren’t any Mazigh mapmakers or naturalists who could do their jobs! They’re Songhai! They’re goddamn Songhai! And I’m glad they’re dead!”

  “All right, Morayo, it’s all right.” Riuza stepped a little closer. “It’s all over now. It’s done. Here, let me take that.” She reached for the seireiken.

  “No!” Morayo lurched back and raised the sword.

  “Watch out!” Omar yelled. “Don’t touch the blade!”

  “I heard you the first time, Mister Bakhoum,” Riuza said coldly. She reached behind herself to the harpoon gun and yanked the winch handle off the wire spool. She held up the steel handle as a club. “Morayo, put that thing away before you hurt someone. We’re a long way from home and the nearest living Songhai is over three thousand kilometers away. So just settle down. You’re not going to kill me, and you’re not going to kill our Aegyptian friend. Do you hear me?”

  “But don’t you see, captain? We can pin it on him, easy. We can just go back home and say Omar killed them, and then we killed Omar in self-defense. So maybe when the Songhai find out, they’ll go to war with Aegyptus or Eran, and they’ll stop coming after us. You see? We can fix it all, you and me.” She sniffed and wiped her sleeve across her face. “All we have to do is tell a little lie.”

  “You know it won’t work out that way, Morayo.” Riuza shook her head. “The Songhai won’t care about a couple of dead scholars, and even if they do, they’ll probably just use it as propaganda against Marrakesh, not Aegyptus, and definitely not Eran. I don’t know what the right answer is right now, but we have a few days to figure it out. And in the meantime, you’re going to put down that sword and no one is going to hurt Mister Bakhoum. So put the sword down, now.”

  The engineer sniffled and the tip of the sword began to droop lower. But then she winced and shook her head sharply. “What is that? Who’s there? What’s that sound? Who is that?”

  Oh God!

  Omar stood up. “Morayo, you have to listen to me. Ignore the voices, ignore the faces, and listen to me. You need to put the sword down. Just put it down carefully on the floor. You need to ignore the voices and put the sword down!”

  “What voices?” Riuza asked.

  “No, stop, get out of my head!” Morayo spun in a drunken circle, swinging the seireiken in wild flashing arcs. Twice the tip of the sword scorched the walls and once it melted the edge of a window.

  “Crap.” Riuza leapt forward and grabbed her lieutenant’s arms, struggling for control over the sword. Omar scrambled out of his narrow slot beside the toilet and stumbled as the Frost Finch shuddered under his feet. He tried to catch himself, but his bound hands slipped off the rail and he fell into Garai’s empty seat by the fish.

  In the center of the cabin Riuza and Morayo were locked in a vicious knot of arms and the blinding white seireiken blazed in between them. Omar could hear both women gasping and grunting as they struggled for the sword. The Finch shuddered again and the slender bar wedged against the steering column popped free and fell to the floor of the cockpit. The flight stick leaned forward and the entire airship pitched forward with it. The two women fell down the uneven deck into the cockpit with Morayo sitting on Riuza’s chest. The lieutenant had the seireiken poised over her captain’s chest, the blazing tip just inches from Riuza’s leather jacket. “Stop it, all of you! All of you, shut up!” the young woman screamed, shaking her head in violent circles.

  Omar lurched up across the tilting cabin and fell face-first onto the women’s legs. He got his own feet under himself and shoved up, slamming his shoulder into Morayo’s back. The engineer pitched headfirst over the captain and crashed into the thick glass of the forward windscreen. The glass crackled and a sudden draft of freezing wind shrieked into the cabin. Morayo lay very still, her glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling.

  “The sword! Grab it!” Omar hollered over the wind.

  The seireiken lay on the deck just under the pilot’s seat and wedged under the flight pedals. The brass plates and controls were already deforming, melting, twisting, and dripping down to the deck. Riuza yanked the sword out of the floor just as the pedals collapsed into the deck and she shoved the weapon into Omar’s hands. As he fumbled the seireiken into its scabbard with his bound wrists, Riuza climbed into her seat and grabbed the flight stick and throttle, but when she pulled back on the stick it snapped off in her hand. “Crap.”

  “What do we do now?” Omar shouted over the wind screaming in through the broken windows.

  Riuza pointed out the forward windscreen. “Not much we can do now.” She reached over with a small utility knife and cut his hands free.

  Omar rubbed his wrists as he looked out into the darkness and saw the moonlight falling on the frozen sea. But just ahead the ice sheet ended and he saw dark waters lapping on a dark shore, and above that rose the black shapes of mountains against the starry sky.

  “Welcome to Ysland, Mister Bakhoum.”

  Chapter 8

  The Frost Finch was still pitched down and descending quickly. Riuza cut the throttle and for the first time in seven days the engine fell completely silent. Omar crouched beside her in the cockpit, watching the dark island grow larger below them.

  “So it would seem your theory was right,” Riuza said calmly. “There’s no snow on your island, or not much, at least. Since we’re going to die here, would you mind telling me what this was all about?”

  Omar glanced down at the still form of Morayo Osaze staring up at him from the broken corner of the window. “It’s about this.” He held up his sheathed sword. “This metal. It’s very rare, and very dangerous, and very strange. We call it sun-steel. In its raw form it looks like dark gold. It attracts the aether mist like a magnet, and if a soul is drawn into the steel with the aether, then the metal grows hotter and brighter. For years I’ve been trying to find more
of it, trying to learn more about it. And then I heard a story about an island in the north where the earth shone like gold, and it was always warm, and the living walked side by side with the dead.”

  “So you think this Ysland has more of your sun-steel?”

  “A lot more.” He nodded. “So much that the very ground under their feet is kept warm by it all year round, even here at the top of the world. With so much of it, the people here must be masters of it. They must know everything about it. Some of my people back in Alexandria know how to make weapons from it, like my sword, and to make other more useful tools as well.” He reached up to touch the lump of the golden pendant under his shirts. “We can even talk to the souls trapped in the steel. But these people, these Yslanders must know far more than we do. To them, sun-steel must be as common as tin. It’ll be everywhere, in every aspect of their lives. And here they are. Look there.” He pointed at a shimmer of yellow light on the dark plain of the island. “A home. People. We’re not going to die, dear lady. We’re going to live for a very long time.”

  They had several long minutes together in the cold dark cabin of the wounded Frost Finch to watch the island loom up larger and larger before them. The fiery dot on the shadowed plain grew larger as well, and soon burst apart into a dozen lights, and then a hundred.

  “It’s a town,” Omar said.

  Riuza spent a few moments banging around the cockpit, but she gave up trying to salvage the controls and came to stand back in the center of the cabin beside him with one hand on the overhead rail and the other hand holding the collar of her heavy jacket closed tight around her neck. Omar saw a wisp of pale steam curl off the woman’s shaven scalp.

  “It’ll be very soon now,” she said.

  The cold wind blasting through the front windscreen grew more wild and all of the nets and bags and sacks and strings inside the cabin danced and whipped through the air around them. And out in the darkness, the scattering of lights continued to grow.

  “That’s no town,” Omar said softly. “It’s a city!”

  “I think you’re right.” Riuza nodded. “It is a city. It even has a… get down!”

  She tackled him to the floor just as the airship collided with a tall black spire. The dark tower of jagged rock scraped along the port side of the gondola and they heard the terrific ripping sound of every layer of the balloon overhead being shredded open to flap violently in the wind. The Finch nosed down more steeply and a quiet scream rose in the air as they fell faster and faster toward the ground.

  Omar sat up, clutching Riuza to his side as he tried to wedge himself between the cabin wall and an empty box of dried beef. “Well, dear lady, it certainly has been an adventure. I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

  She snorted and a small smile curled her lip. “I thought you said we were going to live.”

  “Yes, well, I’m the optimistic sort. So…” He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, luxuriating in the warmth of her soft lips and tasting the salty sweetness of her tongue in his mouth. He leaned back and smiled at her.

  She gave him a wry look. “I would hit you, but you’re handsome enough, and we’re about to die, so I’ll let it slide. Just this once.”

  And the Frost Finch crashed into the earth.

  Omar had half a second to hear the steel frame of the airship keening and wailing as it twisted and bent around him. He heard glass shatter and fabric tear, wood splinter and flesh thump. There was the grinding of stone and the groaning of brass pipes. And in the distance, there was shouting. But that half a second ended when Omar flew forward with Riuza still in his arms and he collided with the front of the cockpit.

  The world ended, for a time.

  When he opened his eyes, the sun was high overhead. He was lying on a cold bumpy street and he could see the sides of stone buildings around him. There was a giant smoking skeleton of steel off to his left, and to his right there was a group of people standing and kneeling around the body of Riuza Ngozi. The pilot coughed and her hand moved.

  We’re alive. We’re both alive. We made it to Ysland. The airship is destroyed and three people died, but we made it. I made it. I’m here. Ysland, at last!

  A scowling old man knelt down over Omar and the Aegyptian looked up into the wind-burned and bearded face. In his best Old Rus, Omar asked, “Is this Ysland?”

  The man raised an eyebrow, and nodded. “It is.”

  “And is there much sun-steel here? The hot gold? The bright metal?”

  The man shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said slowly. “I have no gold. But you, you’re hurt. It’s very bad. I’m sorry.” He reached across Omar’s chest and lifted up a heavy cloth lying on the man’s shoulder. Omar rolled his head over and saw the stump where his left arm used to be.

  A wild giddiness swam up into his brain at the sight.

  My arm is gone. All gone. I’ve lost my arm. I’m sure I had it a moment ago. What did I do with my arm?

  The ground shone with dark blood as far as he could see in every direction.

  My blood. All of my blood. It shouldn’t be outside like that. That’s very wrong.

  His teeth chattered for a moment, but he rolled his head back and reached up with his right hand to grab the old man’s wool shirt and pulled him down close. “I know there is sun-steel here. Where is the gold that keeps this island warm? Where is it? How much is there?”

  The old man chuckled and shook his head as he loosen Omar’s grip on him and straightened up. “There’s no gold here, friend. Iron a-plenty, but no gold.”

  “I don’t care what you call it, old man!” Omar felt his arm shuddering, felt his mind slipping back toward oblivion. His skin was cold and his vision was growing dim. “What keeps this island warm? Why isn’t it covered in ice?”

  The old man shifted back and pointed at the northern horizon, and then to the east, and then to the south. Omar followed the man’s finger to see the huge smoking mountains around the city. Omar shook his head. “Volcanoes? No, no, no. But the stories. The stories said… I thought…” He clawed at the old man’s arm and hauled himself up onto his knees. He teetered off balance from the missing weight of his arm. Gripping the old man for support, he stared at the northern volcano with a terrible icy emptiness in his belly. “The stories were wrong. I was wrong.”

  He stared across the street at Riuza, and then up at the brass ribs of the Frost Finch rising high above the city, with a few charred shreds of fabric still clinging to the beams. The airship’s engine was burning brightly and belching a thin column of black smoke into the sky. Staring and panting, he saw the stoic faces of the Yslanders all around him, all dressed in rough leather and fur, all standing outside simple stone houses, all carrying simple steel tools and weapons, and adorned in nothing more ornate that carved bone trinkets.

  “There’s nothing here,” Omar whispered.

  The hills outside the city shivered with yellow grass, and the lower slopes of the volcanoes gleamed with patches of snow on the black rocks, and the more distant mountains shone with sunlight glancing off their pale gray faces and snowy caps.

  The roads were paved with gravel and dirt. The buildings were mortared with clay. The only animal in sight was a shaggy little pony.

  “Nothing.”

  There were no shining temples, no golden palaces, no proud warriors fighting alongside the spirits of their ancestors, no wise priests conversing with the souls of their predecessors. He saw no sun-steel, no marvels, no legends come to life, and no answers to the mysteries of the universe.

  “It was all for nothing.” He pitched forward onto the stone street and his vision went white.

  Is this my fate, then? Is this finally the end?

  Against the hard gravel road, he felt the tiny lump of his golden pendant pressed into his chest through his shirt.

  And after a moment, he felt the dull throbbing of his heart beating on and on and on…

  No. There is no end for me.

 
At least, not yet.

  Assassins of the Steam Age

  Chapter 1

  “Once more around the Middle Sea!” Taziri swept up her tiny daughter and carried her around the dining room, through the kitchen, and back again. Menna giggled and waved her chubby arms. After several minutes of dashing around the house, Taziri gently crashed her baby onto a pile of cushions in the corner of the dining room. “And back home to Marrakesh!” Taziri groaned as she straightened up and rubbed her back. “She’s getting heavy.”

  Yuba finished setting the table. “You always say that when you come back. You know, she’ll be walking soon,” he said quietly.

  “Time flies.” She stroked Menna’s cheek. Time flies, Menna grows, and you, Yuba, what about you? What’s happening to you? His once glorious mane was gone, shaved during her last trip as yet another surprise to come home to. They were all doing that now, everywhere she went. The men were changing. Some things were small, like the shaved heads. Other things were more troubling, like their missing veils.

  Yuba paused in the doorway. “I went by the university again this morning. My work is backing up. Trees to move, gardens to plant, and a new fountain to build. They asked when I’ll be back full time, again, but I think they’re just going to replace me soon.”

  Taziri sighed. Please, Yuba. Just one evening together as a family without an argument. She said, “I told you, as long as I’m a flight officer, I don’t get to decide my schedule. I’m sorry, but you might just have to let that job go, at least until Menna’s older.”

  As Yuba came back into the dining room with the steaming tajine, a booming detonation thundered through the house. Plates and glasses crashed to the floor. Lights flickered. Neighbors screamed. Taziri held her baby girl close to her chest as she knelt down under the dining room table. The ground shuddered again. “Yuba, down here!”

  He ducked down beside her and together they huddled around their crying child, listening to the muffled sounds of frightened children and frantic parents in nearby houses. After a moment, Yuba leaned back and surveyed the room, one hand absently stroking his daughter’s hair. “I think it stopped.”