Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Kenan slumped beside her quite contentedly, his hand resting on the black revolver holstered on his right thigh. The softness was fine for him. Guns didn’t demand strength or leverage or balance or agility. They were indifferent weapons for indifferent killers, for more civilized people, for softer people. Shifrah grimaced and turned her attention to the man in the seat across from them.

  It hadn’t taken more than half an hour to find him, and since they were well away from Tingis and racing toward the border of Numidia with not a single obstacle between them and freedom, there had been surprisingly little tension at that moment. So she and Kenan had taken the seat across from him. Quietly. Calmly.

  Kenan had merely squinted at the Aegyptian before sliding into the seat across from him without the barest hint of a threat.

  Aker smiled, a glass of Espani wine in his hand. “I am sorry about ruining your little setup back there. I know how hard it can be to arrange a deep cover, especially in a foreign country. But then, these things do happen to the best of us.”

  “The best of whom?” Kenan asked, eyes narrowed to slits, lip thrust out in a thoughtful pout, fingers still drumming lightly on his gun. “What are you? Just a contractor? You’re not very professional for a contract killer. Carrying a sword in a country like Marrakesh isn’t very subtle, or very effective. And you said you wanted to steal the aetherium salvage from the Strait. That’s a very specific cargo. It’s useless to anyone who doesn’t know how to handle it properly, which means resources, facilities, and infrastructure. So either you’re a liar, or you’re working for some very interesting people.”

  Aker shrugged. “I’m a liar when I’m paid to lie. Shifrah, what have you told your little friend here, exactly?”

  She frowned. She hadn’t been planning to discuss anything important with Kenan, not ever. It was easier that way. After all, she knew they would only be together a short while, and the odds were always fair that she would have to kill him herself one day. Even so, their time together had passed pleasantly enough, and for far longer than she had ever expected.

  So maybe. Maybe it’s worth telling him. Hell, I can always kill him later if I have to. Not that I want to.

  Shifrah shook her head. “I haven’t told him anything specific, but I suppose it’s time now, isn’t it?” She turned to Kenan. “You know about my broker in Alexandria?”

  The Mazigh nodded.

  “His name is Omar Bakhoum.”

  Aker chuckled.

  Shifrah glared at him. “Why is that funny?”

  “Because Omar is dead,” the Aegyptian said. “Has been for years. I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “He isn’t dead. What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, come now, Shifrah. I’ve been back to Alexandria three times in the last five years. Omar is never there. No one has seen him in at least seven or eight years. He went off on one of his little expeditions and this time he just disappeared.” Aker raised his glass. “He’s dead.”

  “Well if he’s dead, then who has been sending me my instructions?”

  “I couldn’t say. And I don’t care. But Omar is no more.” Aker shrugged. “Go on, you were saying?”

  Shifrah sighed. “I was saying, Kenan, that my broker is a member of a large organization based in Alexandria. They dabble in everything. Arms, drugs, slaves. They meddle in politics everywhere. They can destabilize whole markets when they want to. Gold, silver, ivory. They control most of the eastern railway companies, as well as the new steamer shipping lanes and canals.”

  Kenan snorted. “That’s a nice story. But no one could have their fingers in so many pies. So if that’s what they told you, they were selling a myth to scare you, to impress you, to manipulate you. What do they want exactly?”

  Shifrah hesitated, wondering if Kenan might be right, if Omar might have been lying. She’d known many men and many liars, but somehow Omar had never felt dishonest. Not that feelings counted for much in their line of work. “Some of them simply want wealth and power. They consolidated Persia and reorganized it into the Empire of Eran, for one.”

  “More propaganda,” Kenan muttered.

  “But most of them,” Shifrah continued loudly, “are looking for something else. In the old days, it was called Ra’s steel or sun-steel. You know it as aetherium.”

  “Ah.” Kenan raised an eyebrow. “Now this part I believe. And what do they want with it?”

  “What else?” Aker said. “Power. Real power. Not this political nonsense. But power over the world, knowledge of all things, mastery of the elements, dominion over death itself!”

  Kenan squinted at him. “Is that all? So it’s just another cult with delusions of…well, with delusions.”

  “Is this a delusion?” Aker drew his short sword halfway from its scabbard. The blade glowed with a dark golden light, burning like the setting sun. The air around the aetherium shimmered and rippled. “The grip and sheathe are protected from the heat by a special ceramic. The blade itself can only be forged by a trained master from the far east, because they refuse to teach our own smiths how to do it. But none of that really matters. What matters is what is contained in here.” He shoved the blade home, hiding the fiery light.

  “And what is contained in there?” Kenan asked.

  “Souls. You see, this metal, which your people have so aptly called aetherium, drinks in the aether mist, and any soul that happens to touch the steel is caught in the aether riptide and sealed inside. The more souls swallowed by the blade, the hotter and brighter it becomes, though it never melts. And when wielded by a master swordsman, the souls speak and give their wisdom to their master.”

  Shifrah watched Kenan’s whole face grow tight and tense and she wondered whether he was seriously considering what he had just heard or whether he was trying to suppress his natural inclination to ridicule all things that fell outside his Mazigh sense of logic and science.

  “So, you’re saying that if you kill a man with that sword, you can steal his soul?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, you’re saying that Don Lorenzo’s soul is in that sword right there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what is Don Lorenzo’s soul saying to you right now?”

  Aker’s only answer was a sour smile.

  Shifrah cleared her throat. “None of that matters right now. What matters is that I have a network of allies in Alexandria who can help us avoid the Mazighs and find work somewhere else, at least for a little while.”

  “I don’t want to work somewhere else,” Kenan said. “I want to drag his murdering ass back to Tingis and watch him hang for killing the Don.”

  “Then shoot me now.” Aker held out his empty hands and grinned.

  “I’d love to, but that’s not how I work.” Kenan yawned. “When we get to Carthage, I’m going to stick my gun in your mouth and march you right onto the next train back to Tingis and then hand you over to the police.”

  “And why would I go along with that little plan?”

  “Because bullets are faster than swords.” Kenan smiled. “Then again, you’re a delusional cultist, so I may have to shoot you once or twice somewhere unimportant to get you to cooperate. But don’t worry. I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”

  Shifrah shot him a stern look. “You’re not going to shoot him or anyone. And you’re not taking him back to Tingis. I’m sorry your friend died tonight, but these things happen. You knew who I was and you knew who I work with. If you had a problem with it, you should have said something before now.”

  “And you shouldn’t have mistaken my silence for my approval.”

  “I don’t care. Do what you want. Just leave Aker alone. I need him.” She rested the tips of her fingers on the handle of the stiletto in her right boot.

  “Why? Why do you need him?”

  “Because he’s been back to Alexandria more than I have. He knows the new players in town. I need him to help me find Omar.”

  Aker rolled his eyes.
“I already told you. Omar is dead.”

  “You know that for a fact? You saw his body? No? Then shut up,” Shifrah snapped at him. She turned back to Kenan. “Omar took care of me. I owe him. If he really is gone, then I don’t have a contact anymore, so I need to find out who has been sending me all these orders over the years.”

  Kenan frowned. “What orders, exactly?”

  Shifrah sighed. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because you want me to turn my back on my home and just walk away from my job, from my responsibilities. I won’t do that if it puts my people in danger. So what sorts of orders has this mystery man been sending you?”

  Shifrah paused. “If Omar has really been missing for seven or eight years, then it includes my orders to come to Marrakesh the first time, to work for Lady Sade, to help destabilize the Mazigh government and put someone on the throne who would be more friendly to Alexandria.”

  Kenan frowned a little deeper. “Lady Sade. I haven’t thought about her in years. That was a hell of a mess. Rioting in Arafez. Assassinating the queen. You’re saying that this new mystery boss of yours set all that up?”

  “Probably.”

  “All right,” Kenan said. “Then I won’t arrest Aker here. Yet. We’ll go to Alexandria and see what we can see, and I’ll play it by ear from there. Deal?”

  Shifrah blinked. “You’re coming with us?”

  “Of course. I’m not letting him out of my sight unless I get a damn good reason to.”

  Aker smirked. “How charitable of you.”

  Shifrah shrugged. “Fine. But you’ll need to watch yourself. Alexandria can be a dangerous place. Especially for foreigners.”

  Kenan laughed. “You can say that about any place. I’ll worry about Alexandria when we get there. We have to get through Carthage first, and that won’t be any picnic either.”

  Shifrah raised an eyebrow. “Why do you say that? What’s going on in Carthage?”

  Chapter 5

  Through her little round window, Qhora could look out over the wing at the rolling hills and wide open plains of Numidia. Patchwork fields and tiny towns and ant-like cattle spread out below, slowly sliding back across her view as the Halcyon droned on and on into the predawn sky. A faint smudge of pale gray and pink and yellow had appeared on the horizon, growing brighter in fits and starts between when she fell asleep and when she jerked awake.

  There were moments when she wanted to reach forward and slit Salvator Fabris’s throat for what he had done to Enzo, and to Enzo’s students, and to her. The pointless chases, the midnight raid, the cold jail cell, and the young men bleeding all over the floor.

  But none of them had died.

  The boys were all back home at Enzo’s fencing school just outside Madrid, training, playing, and waiting for their master to return. Qhora sighed and felt a horrible stain crawl over her memory of home. She would have to tell them. One day very soon she would have to walk inside, call them together, and say out loud that Don Lorenzo was dead, and they would all have to leave to find other schools or to go home and find something else to do with their lives. Don Lorenzo’s fencing school was already a thing of the past.

  For a moment, she envied their ignorance. But only a moment. Their doom was coming. All their plans and hopes of the future were already shattered. They just didn’t know it yet.

  She tried to remember the faces of the two people Salvator had killed in the Pyrenees. The Italian chemist and the Eranian student. Plane crash survivors, refugees, and ultimately victims of someone else’s greed and cruelty, their bodies left by necessity high on a mountain path in a raging snow storm. She wondered if anyone had ever found the bodies, or if they were still there where Enzo and Taziri had left them.

  Qhora sighed. It’s all so far away and long ago now.

  She couldn’t bring herself to care about the young Italian. Dante had been a rude and selfish creature. But the girl, Shahera, she had reminded Qhora of a childhood friend in faraway Cusco. And for her death, Qhora almost pulled the Songai knife from her boot and plunged it between Salvator’s shoulder blades.

  But she didn’t. She needed him. For now. Needed his money. Needed his knowledge. Maybe she would even need his sword. But then, when this was over and she didn’t need him anymore, then she could kill him. She could kill him for Shahera, and Enzo and the boys, and even for Dante.

  Why didn’t Enzo kill him when he had the chance?

  They had dueled. The Italian lost. But Enzo let him go. Qhora’s lip curled into a little smile.

  He let him go with a broken sword and two feet of steel through his hand into his kidney. Espani justice. It was almost enough for me back then. Almost.

  “We’re coming up on Carthage,” Taziri called back over her shoulder. “I’ll be landing in just a minute and then we’ll enter the city on one of the branch lines.”

  “Branch line?” Salvator looked up. “You mean you’re going to land this contraption on a railroad track?”

  “Of course.” Taziri glanced back with a grin.

  Qhora was almost reassured by that grin, but all machines were still too strange, too stupid, and too dangerous. They couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t do anything unless they were built to do them and told to do them. She missed Atoq. She missed Wayra. Right now, the saber-toothed cat was no doubt sleeping off a belly full of beef in his pen in Madrid, and nearby the towering war-eagle would be standing by a window, gazing out at the snowy Espani plains and dreaming of running free, of hunting down her prey and devouring it alive.

  If only we had brought them.

  Qhora’s hand tightened on the armrest.

  Atoq would have saved Enzo. He would have slaughtered that filthy Aegyptian maggot before he came within reach of us. Or Wayra. She could have run him down in the street and torn the flesh from his back with her talons. It would have been over, either way. As it should be. None of this. This running. This chasing. Other people. Machines.

  Qhora shook her head to clear away the soft warm hands trying to drag her soul down into sleep.

  No. I’ll sleep later. I’ll sleep when it’s done. I’ll sleep when the Aegyptian is dead.

  Glancing out the window, she saw that the ground was much closer now. The houses looked like real houses and she could see people and carts and horses moving along the roads. A soft roaring bled into the cabin as the wings dragged slower and slower through the air, and the entire machine began to shiver and shudder.

  “How exactly do you intend on getting this beast lined up properly with the tracks?” Salvator asked.

  Qhora heard the anxiety in his voice, and she smiled.

  “I have a guide clamp.” Taziri grabbed a small lever and they all heard a new series of hisses and clicks beneath their feet. The pilot said, “I only have to get close. Then I clamp the guide onto the rail and it straightens us out. Don’t worry. I’ve done this three times already. The real trick is making sure there isn’t already a train on the same line up ahead somewhere.”

  A moment later there was a sharp clang and the Halcyon jerked to the right. Then the chattering of gears and chains filled the cabin as the earth edged up closer and closer, and then they landed on the railroad line. The iron wheels screamed and the cabin shook violently from side to side, but only for a moment. Then the machine fell nearly silent and still, just as it had been in the air, and Qhora realized they were now rolling smoothly along the ground. Taziri shoved the big lever back down and the long shining wings began folding back up, snapping and clacking up into a rigid box against the sides and roof of the machine. As the panels locked shut, they covered the windows, drenching the cabin in shadows except for the bright glare coming through the forward wind screen. Taziri glanced back, her dark circular goggles shielding her eyes, and she smiled and waved to the passengers.

  Qhora exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding in.

  Well, that part’s over at least.

  For the next quarter hour, they clacked a
long the Numidian rail line with the pilot occasionally calling back to describe where they were. Orchards, suburbs, and warehouses. Qhora barely heard her.

  Finally she could feel the machine slowing down, and a moment later it juddered to a halt. The brakes hissed and Taziri’s hands raced over her controls, flipping switches and knobs, and then she stood up and said, “Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Carthage.”

  Qhora followed the others out the narrow door and stepped out into the bright morning light. They were in a small rail yard of half a dozen lines, two of them full of old freight cars covered in dust and the rest empty. Qhora hurried to the end of the Halcyon, which again looked like an ordinary locomotive now that its wings had collapsed and wrapped around the cabin. “Where is the train from Tingis?”

  Taziri glanced at the small watch chained to her pocket. “It should be here in the next half hour. It’ll pull into the station right there.” She pointed across the yard to a covered platform where a few dozen men sat dozing beside their bags on the benches in the shadows.

  “Then that’s where I’ll be.” Qhora strode away from the locomotive. She heard footsteps following. “Mirari, stay by the main exit, in case he gets past me.”

  “Yes, my lady.” The masked woman jogged ahead toward the tall wooden doors at the end of the platform that stood wide open, revealing the quiet streets of Carthage beyond.

  There were still footsteps following her. She glanced back. In the distance she saw Taziri inspecting her machine. But just behind her she found Salvator striding along, tall and confident, his scarred left hand resting on the ornate golden hilt of his rapier. Qhora looked straight ahead again. “I don’t need you.”

  “Of course you do,” he said airily. “But I wouldn’t dream of standing between you and your vengeance. Even though this man was able to defeat Don Lorenzo and escape from both you and your strange friend there, I’m sure you’ll have things well in hand.” He chuckled softly. “No, I’m here to hunt my own easterner.”