Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  The sergeant flipped through the papers on her desk. “Here’s the receipt I have from the telegraph office. Two messages, both from Tingis. One from the marshals’ office. One from Lady Damya’s estate.”

  “Lady Damya?” Syfax snatched the receipt to read it, but it offered no more information. “What would the governor of Tingis want with a police captain in Port Chellah?”

  “I don’t know. It was sealed, of course. I just delivered them.” The sergeant blinked and sat up a little straighter. “Why? What do you think it means, sir?”

  Anyone in the house could have sent that telegram, including a certain dinner guest. “I think it means we need to see your captain right now. Let’s go. Now.” Syfax pointed at the door. This time, the sergeant leapt up and led the way out into the night. Striding side by side, their boots clacked on the cobblestones and the sound echoed down the empty streets beneath the silent gaze of dark windows and locked doors. Streetlamps hung only at the intersections, leaving the avenues in between drenched in shadows, and the dim haze that hovered over the city obscured all but the brightest stars.

  “It’s just one more block this way.” The sergeant pointed to the left.

  Turning the corner they saw a strange shape on the ground, and they sprinted toward the body half hidden in the shadows of a narrow alley. Only one hand lay out upon the street, its outstretched fingers clawing feebly at the circle of lamplight just out of reach. The sergeant knelt at the man’s side and Syfax saw his face, the face of the young officer they had sent out to find the captain half an hour ago. His breathing was faint and ragged and watery. Blood trickled from his lip. When the sergeant took his hand, he showed no sign that he noticed.

  The major squatted down to study him. A single gunshot wound in the stomach, a wide pool of blood on the ground already beginning to congeal. Syfax leaned in closer to speak into the young man’s ear, “Hey kid, looks like you tried to take on the whole Songhai army by yourself. You bucking for an early promotion?”

  The officer’s lip twitched. “Guess I should have…called for backup, sir.”

  “Yeah, looks like,” Syfax said. “What happened?”

  “…caught her…leaving…” He mouthed the words as much as whispered them, his eyes already vacant and dull.

  “Who?” The sergeant squeezed his hand. “Who did this?”

  “Captain Aknin.”

  Why am I not surprised? Syfax squinted at the man’s mouth to make sure he caught every word clearly. “Why?”

  “…said…mess… clean…” The officer whimpered and gasped. “It hurts.”

  “I know, kid.” Syfax grabbed the woman’s arm and tugged her away from her partner. “Have you seen a wound like that before?”

  She nodded as the tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “Then you know he’s only got a little time left. We can’t save him.”

  She nodded again.

  “But we can help him.” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the word help.

  Her eyes went wide. “No, we can’t!”

  “Look at him again,” Syfax said. “He’s all torn up, his insides are burning, his arms and legs are shaking, and he’s coughing up blood. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “It’s…okay,” the man whispered. “Please.”

  The sergeant pulled back, sat down against the wall, and covered her eyes. Syfax knelt by the young man’s shoulders and took his head in his lap. The major whispered to him, “Look to your left.”

  The officer turned his head and mumbled, “Thanks, sir.”

  “On the count of three. Okay?” Syfax placed one hand on the youth’s cheek and the other hand on the back of his head, and pulled sharply. “Three.”

  The young man went limp and the sergeant wailed softly at his feet. Syfax closed the man’s eyes and backed away from the alley, leaving the sergeant with her dead comrade in the shadows.

  I can’t believe I had to do that. Again. Syfax took a deep breath and tasted the iron and copper tang of blood that hung heavy in the sultry air. These people better pray I don’t catch up to them in some dark alley.

  He meant to give her a full minute while he considered his options. After ten seconds, he leaned over her and said, “Sergeant, I need a horse. Now.”

  The sergeant nodded and staggered away from the alley, stared around at the empty street for a moment, and then set out to the right. Syfax followed close at her side. “Sergeant, I need your help. I need you to tell me everything you know about this Captain Aknin. Friends, relations, politics, vices, money problems, family problems.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” She sniffed. “I only transferred here last month. I don’t really know anything about her.”

  “What about her work? Her routine? Her habits?” He tried to keep his voice low, to avoid barking at her. “Where does she eat? Where does she make the most arrests? Where does she avoid going? What policies has she set for your station? Anything strange at all?”

  “Wait.” The sergeant stopped in the middle of the street with a frown.

  Syfax crossed his arms and tried to dig the answer out of her head by staring at it. Come on kid, spit it out. He glanced down the road. You really can’t think and walk at the same time? We’ve got killers on the loose. “Well?”

  She nodded. “The old tombs down near the beach, along the north shore. When I first started here last month, she had me doing patrols out there to make sure no one was squatting in the mausoleums. Half of them have been broken open by thieves and sometimes people sleep in them now. I’ve had to toss a few people out. The area is too large for the caretaker to watch all of it himself. But last week, Captain Aknin started doing the patrols herself. She said it was too important to let us do it.” The sergeant peered up at him. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “Great work, kid.” He beamed as he grabbed her shoulders and got her walking again. “Now get me that horse.”

  The stable wasn’t far and the hostler proved a light sleeper. Moments later, Syfax was in the saddle and galloping away with the sergeant still negotiating for the horse on behalf of the Port Chellah police force. When Syfax arrived at the airfield, Kenan stepped out of the Halcyon’s gondola to stare at the horse. “Major?”

  Syfax reined up beside him. “Give your gun to the pilot.”

  “My gun?” Kenan frowned over his shoulder at the woman in the cockpit. “Yes, sir.” Two soft snaps released his belt and holster, the heavy revolver dangling from the thick leather strap like a hanged man. Kenan ducked back into the cabin and shoved the belt at Taziri. “The major said to give this to you.”

  “What?” The pilot took the belt with a glare and strode out into the night air. “What do I need a gun for? What’s going on?”

  Syfax shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on, Ohana, but people are still getting killed so I don’t want anyone getting on or off that airship until I get back. You’re in charge until then. Kenan, get up here.”

  The corporal swung up onto the horse behind Syfax.

  Syfax said, “Listen, all I know is that someone in Tingis sent a telegram to the police captain here, and then she killed one of her own officers less than an hour ago. Maybe Ambassador Chaou and the captain are working together. Either way, killing folks in the service is a bad sign.” Syfax paused. “Ohana, if I don’t come back for some reason, I want you to fly straight back to Tingis and report everything that happened tonight to the Marshal General yourself, in person. Understood?”

  Taziri looked at the gun belt in her hand, held some distance away from her body. “I’ve never shot anyone before.”

  “Hopefully, that won’t change tonight.” Syfax snapped the reins and the horse bolted across the grassy field and onto a cobblestone lane.

  Kenan held on to the major as the dark faces of the houses and market stalls flowed past them, leaping into view beneath the streetlamps and vanishing into the shadows a moment later. “Sir? What’s the plan?”

  “I hate this crap. Why can’t
it just be a straight fight? Why does it always have to be a chase? Huh?” Syfax raised his voice over the clattering of the hooves on the paving stones. “Plan? Arrest Chaou and Aknin. And anyone else working with them.”

  “Like who? More police officers?”

  “I don’t know. Anyone. Chaou could have contacts or partners in every town in the country. She has money and influence, and she travels everywhere. She’s the worst type of suspect to nail down. All we know is her bodyguard is a terrorist, and Port Chellah’s chief of police just killed a fellow officer for her. Right now, everyone’s a suspect.”

  “Are you saying…the Marshal General? The military? The governors?” Kenan asked. “We can’t suspect everyone. That’s paranoid. That’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, it is. But that’s the job.”

  “So where are we going now?”

  Syfax grinned. “A necropolis.”

  After only a few wrong turns, they found their way out of the winding maze of the residential neighborhoods and down to the coastal road that shadowed the rail line. Passing the last few brick warehouses, their windows shattered and foundations bristling with weeds and uncut grass, Syfax turned his mare onto a narrow side street that angled down across the tracks to a flat gravelly strip of earth just behind the first few grassy dunes. The street became a winding lane that followed the contours of the land, weaving side to side with an occasional glimpse of the sparkling darkness of the ocean to their left beyond the dunes.

  The first tomb stood on their right where the paved lane became a sandy path. It rose like a man-made hill of earth and stone, a round foundation sloping up to a rough cone covered in loose earth and a few wisps of grass shuddering in the wind. Syfax circled the tomb and found the only entrance still sealed with ancient stones and mortar. “Not here.” He kicked the mare into yet another mad dash along the edge of the beach.

  Flanking the path were several crumbling stone columns covered in ancient carvings that could no longer be read, except for the vague human figures drawn near the bases. They rode beneath broad stone arches and petrified timbers suspended between the columns, and above the trees to their right the occasional broken tower stood black against the starry sky. A wolf howled and Syfax felt Kenan twisting around behind him, no doubt looking for the animal.

  A paved street emerged briefly from the sand, an avenue of pale stones on which the mare’s hooves clicked and clacked loudly, the echoes shuddering between the columns and half-fallen walls that stood between nowhere and nothing, dividing the grassy dunes into meaningless courtyards and rooms. Once the honored dead of the Phoenician princes and priests had lain in this silent city by the sea, but when the Mazigh warlords and queens retook their country they had built a grander walled city for their fallen lords and ladies, leaving the old tombs by the sea all but forgotten. There had been no new additions to this neighborhood in over a thousand years, and treasure hunters had made paupers of the skeletal remains in the great mausoleums. Now, only homeless wanderers and miserable poets visited the dead, and many of them never left.

  The second tomb loomed out of the darkness, its entrance black and gaping. Syfax shoved Kenan off and dropped down beside him. With his revolver drawn, he slipped around the wall and inside the burial chamber. The thin light of the stars cast a faint silvery glow over the floor just inside the doorway, but the rest of the space remained hidden. The major heard his footsteps echoing on all sides and in his mind an image of the room formed. Just another empty dome. Beside him, Kenan exhaled slowly, his breath curling in faint white wisps of vapor.

  “I hear every single person in España has seen a ghost at least once in his life,” the corporal said. “Especially when it’s so cold you can see your breath.”

  “In España, it’s always so cold you can see your breath. Come on.” Syfax jogged back to the horse and barely waited for Kenan to climb up behind him before they were off down the sandy streets of the dead city.

  The light from the third tomb’s entrance cast a long golden banner across the backs of the dunes, illuminating the waving grasses and shivering bushes in the hard-packed sand. A single horse stood behind the mound, half-hidden in the shadows of a stunted and gnarled tree.

  Syfax dropped to the ground, yanked Kenan down beside him, and led the mare away from the path, leaving the corporal to find something to hitch her to. The major strode silently up to the mausoleum and peeked around the front. Muffled voices were debating something inside, and judging from how long-winded one of the voices was, Syfax guessed the other person was getting an earful that wasn’t entirely complimentary.

  When the corporal sidled up next to him, Syfax gestured around at the front door of the tomb. Kenan nodded. Syfax pulled out his service revolver with a frown. Damn it. The kid’s unarmed. He shoved his gun at the corporal and ignored Kenan’s confused expression.

  Syfax drew the wide-bladed knife from his right boot and jogged out to the front of the tomb. Through the open entrance he glimpsed two figures, and one of them was definitely wearing a grey jacket with silver bars on the shoulder. Good enough for government work. He strode past the threshold and Kenan dashed in behind him brandishing the revolver. “Hands up! Royal Marshals! No one move!”

  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 w
all, 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

  “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?”