Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Enzo, do you still love me?”

  He swallowed. “I don’t think this is the time or place.”

  She looked around. “We’re alone in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do for the rest of the day. When would be a better time? Perhaps when we arrive in the capital. We can include the queen. What shall I say? Your Royal Highness, I, Lady Qhora Yupanqui of the Jisquntin Suyu Empire, cousin to His Imperial Highness Manco Inca, have ridden the length of your fine kingdom and killed many of your wretched subjects to bring you a birthday gift on behalf of His Excellency, Prince Argenti Valero of España. Behold these two young kirumichi hunting cats from my homeland. And may I introduce my escort, Don Lorenzo Quesada de Gadir, a renowned diestro and my lover of the past two years who has recently found religion and now refuses to share my bed. Have you any wisdom that might resolve our impasse, Your Highness?”

  Qhora saw the shame in Lorenzo’s eyes just before he looked away. She almost apologized, but she was still angry enough to continue. “He won’t talk to me, except to mutter about his imaginary friend, Ariel, who was so holy and perfect when she was supposedly alive that now he can’t stand anything about his own life.”

  “I meant…” Lorenzo broke off to clear his throat and steady his voice. “I meant, we should be more concerned with this engine and why it’s out here, alone.”

  Nothing. He gives me nothing. Not even anger. His heart is as cold and dead as his country. She shrugged and turned away from him. “Perhaps we will see the reason when it passes.”

  He nodded. “Or maybe we should move off the road until it passes.”

  He’s terrified of everything now, even a little machine in the distance. “Is this your ghost talking again? Is she telling you that we need to hide from this engine?”

  “No,” he whispered. “It’s too bright, too hot today. I can’t hear her or see her here. I wish I could.” He blinked and looked her in the eye, something he rarely dared now, though he had dared often enough in the beginning.

  It’s time I stopped indulging his fears. She said, “No, Enzo, I’m not going to hide in a ditch. We will stay here and watch it pass. You will see. It’s nothing but a machine and a few men, not some unholy monster. And then we will eat.” Qhora folded her hands on her knee and sat as tall as she could.

  Behind her, she knew Xiuhcoatl would be sitting just as calmly as she was. He may be old and he may not speak much, but at least I can rely on him. Wayra clucked and hissed, her huge head darting playfully at Enzo’s horse. The mare skittered back a few steps before the hidalgo got her under control. Qhora smiled a little. And at least I can rely on you, Wayra.

  The steam engine was much closer now, close enough for her to see its black funnel and gray boiler, and the gleaming steel railings and fittings along its side. The clacking wheels measured out the seconds as the engine roared along, accompanied now by the deep puffing and chuffing of the steam. But just as the engine came near enough for her to see two faces staring back at her from the cab, there was a stutter in the rhythm. She was about to wave to them when she heard the clacking of the wheels and the huffing of the steam begin to slow. A series of short steely squeals burst from under the engine and Qhora saw the wheels locking and shuddering as the train decelerated.

  “Qhora?” Lorenzo glanced at her.

  She shook her head. “I’m sure they only want to ask for the news, or to see if we need any help. They’re just engineers, Enzo, not soldiers.”

  The train squealed to a stop just a few yards from them and three men leapt out with long-barreled rifles in their hands.

  Lorenzo’s espada appeared in his hand as if by magic but she reached out to catch the shoulder of his coat, and cried, “No, Enzo! They’ll shoot you!”

  He looked at her, his eyes wide. “I don’t care if they do. Run, Qhora. Ride!”

  Qhora yanked the man’s arm back and nudged Wayra sideways to drag the mare stumbling away from the side of the road. As Lorenzo shook himself free of her, she leaned over even farther and pulled from his belt the revolver he had taken from the soldiers that morning. She straightened up and got her fingers around the handle. This doesn’t look so hard. Just point the barrel and pull the trigger. She aimed for the center rifleman, still a dozen yards from the edge of the highway.

  The man stumbled to a dead stop and held up his hands, clutching his rifle by the barrel. He shouted at her in Mazigh, but he spoke too fast and she couldn’t understand him. “Enzo?”

  The hidalgo let his sword fall to his side and he slumped a bit in his saddle. “He says they are soldiers from Arafez. They were sent to escort us back to the city with them.” Lorenzo sheathed his sword. “Lady Sade sent them.”

  Slowly, Qhora lowered the gun. Finally, some semblance of order in this country. Perhaps this Lady Sade is a person worth knowing. “Thank them for me, please.”

  The three men jogged up the embankment to the road and shook hands with Lorenzo and saluted Qhora. Their leader spoke, this time slow enough for her to follow. “My lady, we have come to bring you to Arafez. If you will join us in the engine, we will be in the city shortly.” He gestured to the locomotive.

  She flicked her eyes to the small cab where a sooty engineer was leaning against the railing. She said, “Sir, I thank you for your generous offer, but your engine cannot carry my guards, or my mount, or my gifts for the queen. I will not leave them behind. Please send your engine away. I will come to the city soon enough.” At least, that is what she meant to say. Qhora knew she had conjugated some of the verbs incorrectly and had probably mispronounced some other words as well. It was one thing to impress a foreigner by mastering his language and another thing entirely to appear an ignorant savage who garbles her words.

  Better to let Enzo speak for me in the future. Better to appear aloof in my silence than stupid in my speech.

  The soldier frowned. “You are certain, my lady?”

  She nodded.

  “Then we will send the engine back, but remain at your side to ensure your safety.” He snapped another salute and sent one of his men to tell the engineer he could leave. Moments later, the engine was huffing slowly back the way it had come and Enzo was preparing a cold lunch for her and her new guards.

  The sergeant called himself Berkan, probably. It had sounded like Berkan, at any rate. His two privates introduced themselves too quickly for her to guess what their names might have been. So she nodded and smiled demurely and allowed Lorenzo to carry the conversation as they ate. A handful of oats went to the horses and a fistful of salted beef was tossed to Wayra, who snatched it out of the air and swallowed it whole. Minutes later their rest was over and Qhora climbed up onto Wayra’s shoulders. Berkan sat beside Xiuhcoatl, apparently unimpressed or unconcerned by the older man’s jaguar cloak or obsidian sword. The two privates climbed into the back of the wagon, discovered what was sleeping in the straw, and clambered up to the front to sit just behind their sergeant, both of them staring pale-faced at the great fanged cat snoring at their feet.

  They had only been moving again for a quarter hour when a small rumble echoed across the plain. Qhora looked up, expecting to see dark clouds gathering on the horizon, but there were no thunderheads.

  “There. What is that?” Lorenzo pointed to the south.

  A small puff of black smoke rose from the sea of grass just to the right of the highway, and Qhora saw an angular jumble of brown shapes crouched beside the tracks and the road. Buildings? A town, out here in the middle of nowhere?

  “The train?” Berkan called from the wagon. “Is it the train?”

  “I think so,” Lorenzo answered. “The engineer may be hurt. I’ll go.” He lashed his mare into a gallop and dashed away down the dusty highway.

  Qhora let Wayra carry her forward a few more paces before her curiosity overwhelmed her and she clucked the great eagle into a sprint. She heard the sergeant call out to her, but she couldn’t understand him and she knew he was only telling her not to go.

  W
ayra ran swiftly, but not as swiftly as Qhora knew she could run. She wondered if the poor bird had grown weaker after the long months in the cold Espani stable, but then she thought that the hard gravel road might be the real problem. With a nudge to the right side of the highway, Wayra leapt down the embankment, across the drainage ditch, and onto the grassy flat beside the railway. Now they began to sprint, to race the wind. Wayra dug her cruel talons into the soft earth and come as close to flying as she ever would. Qhora let the wind catch her hair and cloak and felt them flapping behind her. She wanted to tear the lace from her throat and the skirts from her legs and ride, ride, ride to the ends of the earth as she had as a little girl in the highlands of a faraway land where men tamed beasts instead of machines.

  All too soon, the smoking remains of the engine appeared before her and she pulled Wayra back into a heavy-footed strut. To her left, she saw four long buildings rotting in the midday sun. The windows and doorways hung open and empty, revealing the long dusty hollows of the little market.

  Perhaps the farmers in the hills once used this place to sell their produce to travelers or merchants on the road. How long have they stood empty like this?

  They thumped through the tall grass toward the smoking wreckage and Wayra lowered her head, hissing. Lorenzo appeared at the edge of the road above them. He dismounted and ran down to stand beside her.

  “Do you see him? The engineer?” Enzo jogged around the far side the engine to search.

  Qhora let Wayra stalk forward slowly, picking her path carefully around the sharp bits of metal hiding in the grass and the boiling puddles that steamed in the mud.

  She smells something. Is it the engineer? Is it blood?

  The gray engine looked mostly intact except for the thin gashes in the boiler where the steaming water was trickling out. But as she approached the cab, the full extent of the damage was revealed. A second engine with a smaller black boiler had crashed into the gray locomotive. The black engine’s huge cow-catcher had split the back of the gray engine’s cab in half, peeling the steel open all the way up to the back of the boiler where the gauges and levers now stood nose to nose with the black engine’s head lamp.

  The sooty-faced engineer lay slumped over the twisted metal rail, blood dripping from the tips of his outstretched fingers. Qhora whistled for Enzo and continued past the body along the black engine to a much larger cab where she found another unconscious engineer, two groaning men in pale yellow jackets, and a woman in a long white coat lying in the grass.

  “Enzo?”

  “The engineer is dead,” he called from the gray engine.

  She nodded. Of course he is. That’s what happens to everyone in this country. Well, most of them. She pointed to the men in yellow who looked to be breathing. “These two survived.”

  “Who?” He jogged up beside her, then climbed into the black engine’s cab to check on the motionless driver. “He’s dead, too.”

  “Check the other men.” Wayra stalked past the engine toward the figure in white spread-eagled in the waving green grass. The woman had a prominent nose, sharp cheeks, wide lips, and a thick mane of black hair bound in a heavy braid. There was a dry and leathery texture to the lines around her mouth and eyes. Qhora decided to risk her broken Mazigh a bit more. “Hello? Are you alive?”

  The woman twitched, her eyes fluttered, and she groaned.

  Qhora frowned and looked back. Lorenzo was helping one of the men in yellow to sit up. On the road above them, the wagon rolled into view beside the deserted marketplace. Berkan and his soldiers jumped down from the wagon and trudged down the embankment toward the wreck. Qhora turned back to the woman in white and saw that her eyes were open. The woman’s hand darted into her coat as she sat up and a long thin knife caught the sun’s light.

  This is getting tiresome. Qhora tore her dagger free of her belt and cried, “Enzo!”

  Chapter 15

  Two bullets pinged off the gray engine’s boiler just above his head and Lorenzo ducked back again, clutching his slender sword in one hand and squinting at the wide expanse of grass that offered everywhere to run and nowhere to hide. He scrambled around the front of the engine across the railway tracks and looked up the embankment at the wagon standing in the shadow of the decaying marketplace. Berkan and his soldiers were crouched in the tall grass, rifles at their shoulders, firing carefully at the gunmen hiding in the black train engine. But Lorenzo could not see Xiuhcoatl or the huge fanged cat. And he couldn’t see Qhora.

  After a burst of rifle fire, the hidalgo leapt from his hiding place, dashed across the grass, and threw himself down into the dusty drainage ditch a moment later. He paused to catch his breath and listen to the guns bark and crack, the sounds echoing off the pale and cloudless sky. Peering out through the grass, he could just barely see the two gunmen hiding in the cab of the black engine.

  It had all happened so fast. The men in yellow woke up. The woman in white woke up. Shouting. Guns. Knives. Running. There hadn’t been a moment to speak or even to think, only time enough to run away and hide, and to listen to the pounding of his own heart.

  These are no desperados. These aren’t thieves or even murderers. No common criminal could have taken a train engine from Arafez. No, they’re something else. Mercenaries. Assassins. Someone wants us dead. Someone wants Qhora dead.

  He sheathed his sword and scrambled up the slope to the gravel road and then dashed behind the rotting remains of the market plaza. Berkan shouted at his men, and through a crack in the wooden wall Lorenzo watched the soldiers crawl forward down the embankment toward the engine and the men in yellow.

  “Qhora?” He scanned the dusty yard between the abandoned buildings, but there was no sign of life. Drawing his espada once more, he crossed the square and began skirting each stable and stall, looking for footprints and listening for footfalls.

  She has to be here somewhere. Somewhere close. Dear God, let her be alive.

  A man shouted off to the right and Lorenzo ran in that direction. It was Xiuhcoatl’s shout, one the hidalgo had heard before in the New World on the killing fields of Cartagena. He rounded the last market stall and saw the old Aztec slashing his obsidian sword at a tall woman in white. The woman danced back and forth, easily slipping beyond the macuahuitl’s reach. She held a stiletto in each hand, one by the handle and the other by the blade.

  Beyond the fighters, Lorenzo saw Lady Qhora mounted on Wayra with the revolver in her hand. She was aiming at the woman in white, but every few seconds she would put her hand down and shout at Xiuhcoatl in Quechua, “Move! Get away from her!”

  Lorenzo jogged out from the shadows into the bright afternoon sun with his espada at the ready, and he yelled, “My lady! Don’t shoot!”

  He saw her frown at him, but to his relief she lowered the gun into her lap.

  Then Xiuhcoatl screamed and Lorenzo saw the thin dagger buried in his throat. He dashed forward even faster. No! When did that happen? How is that possible? The old warrior clutched at his neck with one hand as he tried to swing his heavy sword in the other. He staggered off balance, gurgling, blood streaming from his mouth.

  “No!” Qhora kicked her mount into a sprint. With an eagle’s piercing scream, Wayra darted toward the woman in white.

  “Qhora, no!” Lorenzo raced toward the killer. “You! Don’t you touch her!”

  The stranger drew another stiletto from her belt to replace the one in Xiuhcoatl’s neck and she pointed both blades at him. Lorenzo gauged the distance between them, measuring it out in paces and lunges, in circles of attack, and at the last moment he slid into a sideways stance and thrust his espada at the woman in white. He snaked his left hand around his back to grab at his long black coat and pull it up and away from his legs in a flourish of wool and fox fur. The woman whirled back, dropping her hands to her sides as her heavy black braid and long white coat swirled around her slender figure.

  A deep snarling and growling almost drew Lorenzo’s attention, but he remained focused on his op
ponent. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lady Qhora turn and look in the direction of the trains. “Atoq is among them. It will be over in a moment,” she said.

  From the same direction, a man cried out, “Shifrah! Shifrah!” And then his words dissolved into screams, which cut off suddenly, leaving them in silence.

  The woman in white flinched at the man’s cries. She shook her head and smirked at Lorenzo. “You’re an Espani diestro, aren’t you?”

  “Si, senora.” He nodded curtly. She’s from the east and she’s familiar with professional swordplay. She’ll be more dangerous than any Mazigh soldier. “Have you studied destreza?”

  “In Rome, I met a man who fights with a small sword. He taught me a few things. In Italia, they call him some sort of genius with a blade,” she said. “And I admit, his small sword was more impressive than his small sword.”

  “Did this man have a name?” he asked. Don’t say Capoferro. Please, God, don’t say Ridolfo Capoferro. Any name but his.

  “Fabris. Salvator Fabris.”

  Oh, dear God. Lorenzo swallowed. Ridolfo would have been a blessing. If she was trained by Salvator Fabris, then I am a dead man.

  The woman lunged at him, swiping at his blade with her knives to close the distance and come inside his striking range. The sight of her flashing hands and weapons emptied his mind of everything he had ever learned. All he could think was:

  Salvator Fabris trains princes and generals. Salvator Fabris once slaughtered twelve diestros in a quarter of an hour. Salvator Fabris is the Supreme Knight of the Order of the Seven Hearts. I am a dead man.

  “Enzo!” Qhora shouted.

  He blinked.

  But she is not Salvator Fabris.

  Lorenzo slashed at the woman’s hands, pricking the soft olive blurs between the bright steel and the white coat. Splashes of red spattered her sleeves and the sun-scorched grass at their feet. His eyes never left her eyes as he pressed his advantage, driving her back, striding forward with the tail of his coat draped over the crook of his left arm and his sword-hand barely moving at all as the blade leapt like a viper at his command. The woman flinched, grunted and winced, and finally turned to dash back. One of her knives thumped in the dust as she clutched her bleeding hands.