Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Yeah, thanks, we know.” Shifrah lowered her knife. “That’s why we’re here, watching him. We can’t just go in there. We’ve got half a dozen bounty hunters prowling the streets down there looking for us, and we don’t know which room Aker is in, and if he pulls that sword on us, we’ll probably be dead in half a minute.”

  “Indeed.” The stranger grimaced. “My cousin asked that I help you complete your task so you might safely return to your home. But if you are too afraid to act, then I must act in your stead.”A sudden gust of wind rose from behind him, whipping his white garment and his black braids forward. And then the man himself simply dissolved into an outline of white mist, which was whisked away on the wind and off the roof.

  “What the hell!” Kenan snapped his gun back up to follow the pale cloud as it glided across the intersection and vanished into the side of the house where Aker slept. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know. A ghost, maybe?” Shifrah crept quietly up to the peak of the roof where she could sit more easily.

  “Do you have any friends of friends who are ghosts? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

  “I don’t know!” She frowned at the house, and then at Kenan. “So you’re ashamed that you love me, eh?”

  “I’m not ashamed of anything.”

  “Then you just love me?” She grinned.

  I don’t know if anyone has ever loved me before. Certainly not Aker or Salvator. Maybe Omar, but not like this.

  “Shut up or I’ll tell him to read your body language.”

  Shifrah shrugged, but she also squared her shoulders and straightened her back and legs as she stood at the peak of the roof, watching the house across the street. “Do you think he’s in there right now, killing Aker and getting the sword for us? And if he does, do you think we should pay him or something?”

  Kenan shrugged back.

  The wind shifted abruptly and now it blew back toward them, buffeting them in the face. Shifrah blinked and raised one hand to shield her eye, but between her fingers she saw a pale haze fill the air just in front of her, and sudden the black man was standing before her, his golden bands and beads shining in the early morning light and his staff planted on the tiles beside him.

  “The man you seek is sleeping on the ground level of the house, two windows to the left of the front door. He has placed his sword on a small table at the end of his bed, just below the window. Break the window and you will be able to reach the sword,” he said.

  “Why should I believe you?” Shifrah asked. “Why should I trust you?”

  The man blinked, and then gestured to Kenan. “You want to be with this man so badly that you have fantasized about bearing his children. You want an apology from him, but you know he will never offer one. And so you will forego the apology as soon as he makes even the slightest overture toward reconciliation.”

  “All right, stop, stop!” Shifrah swallowed. She felt her heart rebounding against her breastbone.

  How the hell is he doing that? And he’s wrong anyway. I never fantasized about bearing any children. I just wondered what we might name our daughter…if we ever had one…someday.

  Kenan was grinning and trying to keep his shoulders from shaking. “I think we believe you. At least about the window and sword.”

  “The mercenaries are moving in this direction,” the stranger said. “You must be quick. Do not attempt to kill El Deeb. Only take his sword. He will follow you to retrieve it and you can kill him at your leisure. After you take the sword, you must follow this street due west to reach the rail yard.”

  “Escape on a train? Works for me. Got it, thanks,” Kenan said.

  “Then my task is complete.” The stranger lifted his black staff.

  “Wait! What’s your name?” Shifrah asked, staring into the man’s eyes.

  “Anubis,” he said. He struck his staff on the shingles and a blast of wind tore across the roof, scattering his body like smoke in the cool morning air.

  Shifrah shook her head. “Definitely not a ghost.”

  Kenan crept to the edge of the roof, his back to her. “There’s a ledge just below us. We can get down to the street right here. And then I think we just run for the window. Unless you’d rather bear my children instead.”

  She knelt down beside him. “I’d rather throw you off this roof.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe you’ll be in a better mood when we get home.”

  Before she could respond, he slipped down off the roof and climbed down to the street. She scowled and followed. They paused a moment in the shadows and then dashed straight across the intersection toward the house where Aker slept. Kenan grabbed the lip at the bottom of the second window on the left of the door and nodded at her.

  While he swept the street with his revolver, Shifrah leapt up and smashed her arm through the old wooden rods that barred the window. The rods splinted into pieces and she hooked her arm over the sill. She felt Kenan shoving her thighs up and she half-fell inside the room. The sword was lying on the table right in front of her, just as the stranger had described it. Shifrah grabbed the heavy scabbard and shoved herself back out of the window. As she fell back to the street, she caught a glimpse of the man in the bed and the young woman lying beside him.

  “Run.” Kenan dashed to the left and Shifrah dashed after him, clutching the heavy seireiken in both hands.

  After a bit of fumbling, she got the strap of the scabbard over her shoulder and let the sword bang and thump against her back as she ran. “Did you see them? The bounty hunters?”

  “I heard them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A gunshot ricocheted off the wall above them.

  “Pretty sure,” Kenan grunted. “We need to lose them before we get to the rail yard.”

  “So we’re trusting this Anubis person with our escape plan, too?”

  “He was right about the window and the sword, wasn’t he?” Kenan bolted left down a long narrow alley.

  Shifrah tore after him. “Do you have a plan for losing the bounty hunters?”

  “Run really fast?”

  “I didn’t think so.” Shifrah tried to picture the city in her mind. It had been so long since she had had to escape from anyone on the streets of Alexandria, but a few old memories swam to the surface. “Follow me.”

  She pulled ahead of Kenan and led him down the next street. Their own footsteps echoed along the empty corridors of the city, and a low shout echoed from behind them.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Back to the arena.”

  “Why?”

  “We need the high ground.”

  “This isn’t mountain warfare!”

  “It is now!” Shifrah turned another corner and the arena came into view ahead. A quick glance over her shoulder showed her one of the tall Bantu hunters less than twenty yards behind them, and another figure in the distance just rounding the corner.

  Shifrah sprinted into the long dark tunnel of the arena, speeding by the empty stalls and stairs, her footsteps multiplied a hundredfold by the close walls. The end of the tunnel was a spot of bright morning light in a sea of darkness that grew steadily larger with every step.

  “Move-move-move! This is a shooting gallery!” Kenan hissed.

  I know, I know.

  Shifrah raced out of the mouth of the tunnel and veered to the left as the first bullet whistled out of the darkness. Kenan ran out behind her, ducking his head. She wheeled about and ran up the steep stone steps, climbing the rows of empty seats two at a time, and she waved Kenan down. “Shoot them when they come out!”

  “Shoot them?” He drew his matte black revolver. “That’s your plan?”

  “Just do it!” She clambered up a bit higher before crouching down in the seats to watch. The stone benches stretched out around the arena like the wings of a great bird, dotted here and there with a sleeping body. She took the seireiken off her back and waited.

  The first Bantu ran out of the tunnel just as they
had a moment ago. A large rounded pistol gleamed in his hand. Kenan’s first shot snapped the pistol out of the man’s hand, and his second shot shattered the man’s knee. The bounty hunter crashed to the ground, groaning.

  The second man, however, was far more cautious. After a moment’s pause, a head and a pistol popped up over the lip of the tunnel and he fired at Kenan. The shot struck the seat in front of the detective, and he fired back. A splash of red leapt from the bounty hunter’s hand and he fell back down, out of sight.

  Shifrah was up and running. She leapt up the steps as fast as she could, her legs already burning from the long sprint across the district. “Kenan!”

  When she reached the top row, she turned right and found a wooden panel on the ground in front of her. There were two huge iron hinges on the left of the panel and a rusted iron lock on the right. Kenan jogged up behind her and looked over her shoulder. “There’s two more of them down there,” he said quietly. “When do we start using the high ground?”

  “The what?” Shifrah carefully drew out the seireiken, and the bright fiery blade painted both their faces in golden orange hues. A quiet buzzing filled her ears, the soft babble of a hundred distant voices, but she ignored it as she touched the point of the sword to the wooden panel, and it instantly blackened and started to smoke.

  “The high ground. You said we needed the high ground.”

  “Oh, that. No. I just needed you to follow me.”

  “What the hell?” He glared at her. “Then what’s the real plan?”

  The wooden panel burst into flames. The boards crackled for a moment, and then slowly caved in, falling into the dark passage below. Shifrah smiled. “This is the real plan. Run, hide, shoot. Repeat as necessary. Don’t worry. You’re doing great.” She slid the deadly burning blade back into its clay-lined scabbard and dashed down the dark stairwell, which was now partially illuminated by the bits of burning wood that had tumbled down into it.

  They both clattered down the steps as quickly as they could in the dark. Down and down, passing no landings or openings, until Shifrah stumbled onto a stone floor. The stairs had ended. They stood in a small dark room with a single ray of soft blue light slicing along the floor on one side.

  A door. Shifrah pressed her ear to the door and listened. Nothing. No one out there.

  She carefully tried the handle, but it too was locked. Damn.

  Drawing out the seireiken once more, she again heard the buzzing of distant voices, and this time she paused to rub her ear and opened her jaw, hoping to dispel the noise. When the babble continued unabated, Shifrah shook her head and pressed the point of the sword carefully to the door handle. The metal quickly glowed, brightening from dull red to bright yellow. The iron twisted, sagged, and finally fell to the floor with a dull wet slap. The door swung open.

  Shifrah sheathed the sword and slipped out into the dark corridor. To her left at the far end of the tunnel she saw one of the tall bounty hunters looking down on the arena field. To her right was the open street. They went right.

  As they jogged across the street and headed west down the main avenue, Kenan said, “Well, that wasn’t much of a plan, but it worked. Two down and two lost. If we’re lucky, there won’t be any more after us right now, at least not until Aker realizes his sword is missing and puts out another call for hired help.”

  Shifrah rolled her eye. “I smashed in the bars of the window in the room where he was sleeping, Kenan. He probably woke up and figured out that someone took his sword about two seconds after I took his sword. He’s already coming for us, right now. The only advantage we have is our two-minute head start.”

  “Which we just squandered running around the arena,” Kenan said. “So the only real advantage we have is that Aker doesn’t know where we’re going. Unless he’s working with the man on the roof, Anubis, and this is all one big set-up.”

  “Do you honestly think that Aker, a brainless, whoring, hash-smoking thug, is working with a mysterious man who floats around on rooftops?”

  Kenan laughed. “Aker is part of secret society of men with magic swords, so I’d say that all possibilities are firmly on the table.”

  “It’s not magic and you know it.” Shifrah glared at him. They were well into the Songhai Quarter again and the morning foot traffic in the street was quickly growing as the locals left their homes for the shops, markets, and the new Eranian factories. They wove into the crowd, shuffling along no faster or slower than anyone else. “I trust Anubis. He was right about the window and the sword, and he was right about us, and I’m going to the rail yard, like he said.”

  “He was right about us?” Kenan grinned. “So you do want to have my children?”

  “Shut up, mister ashamed-of-your-own-love.” Shifrah sidestepped around a particularly slow-moving old woman and found a wall of white cloth and black muscles in her path.

  The ageless youth frowned slightly. “You’re moving too slowly.”

  “You!” Kenan stepped forward. “Who are you really?”

  “You know my name,” Anubis said. “I made a promise to my cousin that I would see the two foreigners safely back to the rail yard with the sword of Aker El Deeb. That is all you need to know. But you might also wish to know that El Deeb and two dozen Shona and Zulu bounty hunters are approaching from the east. They have not seen you yet, but they will in a moment.”

  “Can’t you just fly us away, like you did on the roof?” Kenan asked. “You know, poof?”

  Anubis stared down at the detective. “No.”

  “Then what would you suggest?” Shifrah slipped her hand into her jacket for her last knife as she glanced around the crowd in search of their pursuers. She suddenly felt very naked and exposed in her light olive skin.

  If Kenan was wearing shabbier clothing, he might have been able to blend in by himself. As long as he kept his mouth shut. Not that it would do me any good.

  “The Songhai Empire has no love for the Bantu kingdoms. Help is at hand,” Anubis said. He indicated a right turn at the next corner. “Go, quickly.”

  Shifrah hurried past him, glancing back just once to see the stranger step into the shadows and vanish into a steamy mist. “When we get home, I’m going to have to learn that little trick.”

  They jogged around the corner and found that the street ended just a few yards away at the front gates of a Songhai barracks. A dozen men in brown uniforms stood at attention on either side of the open gate, short sabers on their belts and single-shot rifles in their hands. Shifrah asked, “Do you know anything useful about the Songhai?”

  “I know they like to shoot our men along the border of Marrakesh,” Kenan said. “But if you want a way to get them to protect us from Aker and a small army of Shona and Zulu warriors, then I can’t help you.”

  “I thought you were the man with the plan.”

  “I am, when I have time to come up with a plan.”

  Shifrah grimaced. “Maybe it will be enough for us to just be here, close to the barracks. Maybe that will keep the bounty hunters from following us.”

  They turned to watch the main street. A tall man strode into view, and then two more. They turned their heads slowly and stopped when they saw Shifrah and Kenan standing in the dead-end road in front of the barracks gates. A moment later, four more men joined them, and a step behind them followed Aker. The Aegyptian pointed at Shifrah, said something to his band of hunters, and the group started toward them.

  “Nope,” Kenan said. “It won’t keep them from following us. Come on, think. We’ve got a gun, a knife, and a sword. How do we…?” The detective grinned.

  “You have an idea?”

  “Yeah, but you’re not going to like it,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Just do it.”

  Kenan winked and yanked the seireiken free of the scabbard on Shifrah’s back. He held the bright orange blade high over his head for all to see. “Do I have any bidders for an authentic aetherium sword? Step right up and buy a one-of-a-kind seireiken! W
e have only one left in stock and it is priced to sell! Do I have any bidders?” He went on shouting, making the offer in Mazigh and Espani.

  Oh, great. Now everyone else will want to kill us too. Well, what the hell?

  Shifrah took a deep breath and started echoing him in Eranian.

  Every man in the Songhai ranks looked up. Every eye was fixed on the glowing sword. Several more men emerged from the gate to look. And behind Aker and his Bantu entourage, a handful of people began pointing and talking excitedly as they started forward.

  “Okay, it looks like we have everyone’s attention,” Shifrah said. “Now dazzle me with your escape plan.”

  “Follow me.” Kenan went on shouting about the great sword sale as he paced in lazy circles closer to the barracks gates, right down the dusty path between the two dozen guards in brown. Shifrah stayed at his side, announcing the imminent bidding war in Eranian.

  But she kept her eye on Aker. He had brought his hired muscle most of the way down the dead-end road and now was hovering just beyond the Songhai soldiers, arguing with his men. She couldn’t hear him over Kenan’s yelling and the rising murmurs from the gathering crowd of gawkers and would-be bidders, but from Aker’s gestures she thought he was trying to convince the Bantu men to go closer to the soldiers.

  The three men wearing tight-fitting red vests and white-beaded arm bands, whom Shifrah identified as Zulus, all shook their heads and walked away, vanishing into the crowd. But the five remaining hunters, who looked to be Shona from their patchwork trousers and intricately laced sandals, all stayed at Aker’s side and followed him toward the barracks.

  “Now, Kenan,” Shifrah muttered. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now.”

  “No. It’s Aker’s move now.”

  Shifrah watched the man in green, and he looked straight back at her, his eyes blazing with hate. He grabbed a pistol from one of the Shona men and aimed it at her. She yelled, “Gun! Get down!”

  Half the crowd instantly ducked and a dozen people let loose shouts or screams of terror. The Songhai soldiers leveled their rifles at the Shona, and the Shona all raised their weapons in reply as several more bounty hunters jogged into the street. Shifrah grabbed Kenan as the detective sheathed the bright aetherium blade, and together they bolted into the crowd, putting two dozen soldiers between them and Aker.