Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Impossible to tell,” Omar said. “Sound bounces around in a fog like this. It carries over the water, it echoes off the walls. I’ll bet you a million darics it’s just a little fishing boat puttering past the anchorage.”

  A huge dark shadow formed in the fog, and Wren backed away from the railing. “A million darics?”

  The mist parted and the iron-bound prow of a Turkish gunboat slammed into the side of La Rosa. The deck shook beneath her feet and Wren stumbled to her knees, but she scrambled up and away from the starboard rail and grabbed hold of a rope lashed to the mast in the center of the deck. To her right she saw Omar running back toward the captain at the wheel, and to her left she saw the Espani sailors pouring up from their bunks below decks with clubs and knives clenched in their fists.

  The starboard rail of the caravel cracked and splintered as the gunboat turned hard against it, and the Turkish ironclad swept around and crashed its side against La Rosa‘s. Wren peered into the fog, at the dark figures running along the gunwales of the other ship, and suddenly there were men leaping from the gunboat onto the caravel with wide-mouthed pistols and single-edge swords.

  The blood thundered in her ears as the Espani sailors crashed into their attackers, and Wren dashed across the deck to the port rail and then back to the quarter deck where Omar and Ortiz stood shouting orders at the crew. As she pounded up the steps, she heard a woman’s voice echoing through the mist and she turned to stare at the deck of the Turkish gunboat.

  A woman stood on the iron-bound deck with one foot planted on the back of the small cannon there. She wore a pale blue tunic under a dented breastplate that looked as though it hadn’t been polished in a century. There was no helmet on her head, and a short crop of black hair fluttered over her forehead. Wren almost mistook her for a man, but the woman called out again in Eranian as she pointed her long silvery saber at the Espani ship. Wren grimaced, trying to remember her lessons in the southern tongue, but the woman spoke too quickly for Wren to understand.

  What does she want? We passed their check point. This ship doesn’t even have any guns!

  Wren bolted to Omar’s side and when she saw that neither he nor the captain was holding the wheel, she grabbed it with one hand as she said, “What’s going on? Who is that woman? What does she want?”

  Ortiz muttered something in Espani and then jogged to the steps to fend off one of the invading sailors.

  Omar glanced back at Wren. “That woman… She…”

  “What? Can you tell what she said? What does she want?”

  Omar’s expression hardened. “She wants me.” He gripped his seireiken tightly, but did not draw it out.

  “You? Why? Do you know her?”

  Omar nodded. “That’s Nadira.”

  Who the devil is Nadira, you old fool? Can’t you ever just answer a question without making me ask another one?

  But Omar was already jogging away to help Ortiz. Wren frowned at the wooden steering wheel before her and then gazed out over the deck of La Rosa where a dozen Espani sailors were grappling and stabbing a dozen Turkish sailors. Above the fray she peered into the mist, seeing nothing but knowing that somewhere out there was the southern shore of the Strait and the walls of Stamballa.

  Well, my good lord Woden, if the Turks aren’t going to play nice, then there’s no reason to give them what they want, is there?

  Wren spun the steering wheel to the left and felt the caravel lean gently to port as the combined force of the wind in the reefed sail and the momentum of the gunboat slowly spun La Rosa around her mooring. Watching the tips of the masts of the nearby ships and the walls of Stamballa, she waited for the pair of battle-locked ships to come about until they were both pointed out into the Strait and the northern shore of Constantia, and then she straightened up the wheel. For a moment the ship seemed to come to a full stop, but then she felt a ragged tremble in the deck and they began to move forward again.

  Yes! We’re dragging the anchor and moving away from the Turkish shore! Now they’ll have to get back on their own ship unless they want to be dragged all the way to Constantia!

  Wren looked down at the ship again and her satisfaction evaporated. On her left, a Turk shot one of the Espani in the belly and then charged up onto the quarter deck. Wren let go of the wheel and reached out for the Turk with her right hand, willing the frail aether in the fog to rise up against the man. A swirl of white rippled up from the deck and slapped the man sideways, sending him tumbling over the rail and into the water.

  A second Turk in blue jogged up the steps right behind his fallen comrade, and Wren felt a cold hollowness in her arm. The aether was too thin now, too scattered. She’d barely managed to push the first man overboard. So she shook her right hand, unwinding the sling around her wrist, and yanked a stone out of the pouch on her belt as the second Turk charged across the deck with his cutlass raised to strike her down. She’d only just managed to get the stone in place when the man slashed at her.

  Wren dodged back, keeping the huge wooden steering wheel between her and her attacker. She hurled her stone at him through the spokes of the wheel, only to have it glance harmlessly off the man’s armguard. “Omar? I could use some help here!”

  The Turk dashed around the wheel and she dashed back toward the stairs down to the main deck, where she saw yet another man in blue waiting for her. She shouted, “Nine hells!” and threw up her right hand. The aether answered, rolling up against the man and sending him reeling back several steps. And while he kept his footing and he kept his weapon, the momentary distraction was time enough for Wren to wrap the leather strap of her sling around the man’s neck and yank him off balance and wheel him about to use as a shield against the swordsman charging down from the quarter deck behind her.

  The swordsman lunged, Wren shoved her hostage into the attack, and blood spattered the deck. As her prisoner went limp in her hands and the swordsman raised his blade again, the armored woman on the gunboat shouted “Bas-ast!” and the swordsman stepped back and lowered his weapon.

  I know that word. Stop? Enough?

  Out of the corner of her eye, Wren saw the fighting across the deck stutter to a standstill, leaving the men bloodied and leaning and panting. She loosened her grip on her sling and the dead Turk slumped down onto the deck, and she scampered back a few steps to stand beside one of the injured Espani sailors.

  Captain Ortiz shouted something as well, and his men slowly sheathed their knives and straightened up, though they continued to cast black glares at the men in blue.

  Her heart was still pounding and her palms were slick with sweat, but Wren shivered and tugged her black scarf a bit more firmly forward over her forehead before she wrapped her sling back up around her wrist. Across the deck, she saw Omar talking to the armored woman, who had jumped down from her ship onto La Rosa. For a moment she hesitated, not wanting to break the semi-mystical trance that had seemingly frozen all of the Espani and Turks in place on the deck as they waited to hear whether they could truly stand down or would be called upon to resume butchering one another.

  She swallowed, and then started walking, slowly at first and then more quickly, heading toward Omar and the woman he had called Nadira. And as she walked toward them, she saw a pair of hands appear on the railing behind Omar and Ortiz. And then two more. And then five young men, little more than boys and dressed only in gray tunics and belts, with bare feet and only a single knife clenched in their teeth, came swarming over the side of the ship.

  Five, then ten more, then twenty, all in the same drab state of undress. But after the ones with knives came the ones with guns and they poured across the deck, tackling the Espani to the ground as they opened fire on the Turks. Wren dropped to the deck, her hands wrapped around her head, her eyes squeezed shut as the huge pistols thundered again and again.

  The lead balls screamed through the air and the men screamed as they fell to the deck or overboard into the sea. Wren heard wet slapping sounds and thumping sounds all around her
, and she tightened her body up into the smallest ball she could imagine.

  Lord Woden, I’m sorry I said anything about your fog. It’s a wonderful fog, and you’re a wonderful god, and please don’t let me die here like this!

  A moment later the pounding of the guns subsided, and the screams of the men retreated into a few half-hearted moans. As the ringing in her ears faded away, Wren began to hear someone calling her name. Slowly, with her hands still clenched on her hood and her belly still a bundled of knots, she half-rolled onto her side and peeked up at the voice.

  Omar.

  He was squatting right beside her, leaning toward her, but not touching her, and as her eyes readjusted to the light after the darkness inside of her arms and hair, she saw why he had not come any closer. All around her, in every direction she looked, there was a wall of aether. It swirled and drifted and bubbled in a perfect dome over her, like a watery current moving around and around a vortex but never being drawn down into oblivion. As she relaxed her hands and exhaled, the protective bubble of aether broke up and drifted away, vanishing into the fog, and Omar shuffled forward and helped her sit up.

  “Are you hurt?” He moved his hands over her arms and back quickly and roughly.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Did you see what I did? That shield—”

  “Yes, yes, very impressive. But there is something else—”

  “Where did your friend go?” Wren squinted at the railing where the armored woman had been standing, but both she and her gunboat were gone.

  “Wren, listen to me.” Omar gripped her shoulders. “We’ve been boarded by the Hellans and—”

  The Aegyptian was wrenched away, lifted and pulled back, and Wren felt hands hauling her up to her feet as well. She looked around at the young men in gray, at their dark staring eyes and dark curling hair and the corded muscles of their bare arms glistening with sweat and sea water. She licked her lips and said, in Rus, “Hello?”

  One of them reached out and yanked off her scarf. The cold morning air ran over her tall fox ears, setting the tiny hairs on them to tingling and tickling. A shiver ran back over her scalp and down her neck, and she shuddered as she stared at the young men staring back at her.

  “Omar? Omar? What do I do?”

  Her mentor cleared his throat loudly and began speaking in what she guessed to be Hellan. In their months together, he had quickly taught her to speak Rus, which was very similar to her native Yslander, and she had learned a bit of Eranian, which she would need in the empire. But all other southern languages were mysteries to her.

  The Hellan youths barked a few questions at Omar, and he answered them with a polite smile, but the two men pinning his arms behind his back did not relent, and Wren felt the hands on her arms tighten their grip.

  “I don’t think that’s helping,” she said.

  “It would help more if those ears of yours would stop twitching like that,” he answered.

  “I can’t help it.” Between the breeze tickling her ear-fur and her instinctive need to focus on the sounds around her, both of her ears were dancing left and right as quickly as they could to follow the sounds of the men all over the deck.

  Omar let loose another torrent of Hellan, and the young men babbled back. Wren glanced left and right, seeing the fascination and revulsion and amusement all mingling in the eyes of the Hellans.

  Then they threw a sack over her head and start shoving her forward with her hands twisted around behind her back.

  “Omar! Omar!” she shouted. “Help me!”

  She tried to summon up the aether shield again, a wall to hold them back, a fist to push them away, but she couldn’t move her right hand and she couldn’t focus on the muffled noises and the jostling bodies.

  They’re going to kill me. They burn witches in the south. Omar said that once. They burn witches here! They’re going to burn me!

  She stumbled and the Hellans lifted her up to carry her.

  With tears brimming in her eyes, Wren tired to tilt her head back to look skyward, though all she could see was burlap.

  Woden, I know you’re a wise god and a kingly god, but you can be a goddamn monster too. So please, don’t be a monster now. Live or die, just don’t let them burn me!

  Chapter 7

  Tycho heard Salvator coming, but he did not turn to look. He kept his eyes on the northern horizon, on the grim gray sky and the snowy fields and the trees sparkling with ice. The road drew a dirty brown line across the land, snaking away over the hills. There were a few people out there, leading mules and driving wagons, but there were no fleet-footed messengers or mounted soldiers racing back to the city.

  Not yet.

  “You’re never going to believe this,” the Italian announced. “Just wait until you see them!”

  “Not now.” Tycho glanced up at the bright glare of the sun hidden beyond the clouds. “It’s nearly noon. They’ll be coming soon. News from Saray.”

  Salvator Fabris, the Supreme Knight of the Order of Seven Hearts, agent and weapon of the king of Italia, leaned against the wall and spat over the edge. He peered down. “This is a very tall wall. I thought you didn’t like high places.”

  “You know I don’t. But I want to see them the moment they come back. I need to know about this deathless army. Lady Nerissa needs to know.” Tycho kept his eyes on the horizon. It was easier to ignore the height if he kept looking out there.

  “What I know is that waiting here will not bring your messenger any faster, and waiting here will not make his news any happier.”

  “Stop trying to annoy me.”

  “I’m trying to teach you sense, little man. Either the messenger will come or he won’t, and either it will be good news or bad. You can’t do anything about it, so there is no point in freezing your nose off out here,” Salvator said.

  Tycho sighed. “So what should I be doing?”

  The Italian’s eyes lit up. “You should come back to the Sunken Palace with me, right now. We have two new prisoners.”

  Tycho rubbed his eyes. “More frightened Turks?”

  “Better! Much better!” Salvator herded the Hellan dwarf off the battlement and down the stone stairs to the frozen road below where a small carriage waited. It took half an hour to cross back through the long bustling streets of Constantia, across the Galata Bridge to the Golden Horn peninsula. Since the beginning of the siege, the masons and the smiths had been working round the clock on the defenses, repairing walls and weapons, and their apprentices and porters and messengers clogged the streets with bundles of supplies and urgent letters and mule-drawn carts loaded with clay, or iron, or coal. The children were out in force, as always, though they tended to avoid the main thoroughfares to congregate on street corners and in alleys, playing dice and watching rats fight. Tycho caught a glimpse of two young boys boxing in a circle of their peers, and he grimaced.

  Fighting is all we know anymore.

  By the time they reached the gates of the Sunken Palace, Tycho had only looked back through the tiny rear window of the carriage a handful of times, and each time Salvator had said, “Ah ha ha, no.” And pointed forward until Tycho turned back around.

  They dismounted the carriage and turned toward the small mausoleum that led down into the cisterns, but a young Vlachian archer held up his hand and called out in broken Hellan, “Major Xenakis? If you are come for new prisoners, I am to tell you they are not being here. His Highness Prince Vlad and Lady Nerissa did summon them to the court half an hour ago this.”

  Tycho frowned at Salvator. “What the devil is going on? Who are these new prisoners?”

  The Italian merely cocked an eyebrow. “A Turk and a Rus girl. They say she’s a witch. And the man. Well, what else can I say? He had a seireiken on him.”

  Tycho’s eyes widened. “The Osirians really are here? Quickly, quickly, you old fart, go, go!”

  They dashed to the carriage and galloped back to the Palace of Constantine, where the driver deposited them at the steps of th
e Chamber of Petitions in the Third Courtyard. The two men ran up the steps as fast as Tycho’s legs would allow and slowed down only when they approached the doors of the audience hall. The servants opened the doors, and Tycho entered the hall.

  As he strode forward with one hand on his revolver to keep it from clinking, Tycho saw the usual faces standing by the light of the windows and the torches. The merchants, the councilors, the soldiers, the tradesmen, the guildsmen, and the ambassadors from all across southern Europa and northern Ifrica turned to watch him pass. By the midday light streaming in through the glazed windows, they examined their documents, prepared their petitions, consulted with their lawyers, and cast suspicious looks at everyone else around them. But in the center of the hall, around the grand dais and the royal thrones, there was no one.

  “Officer!” Tycho hailed the guard near the throne. “Where is Lady Nerissa? Have you seen or heard anything about a pair of prisoners brought up from the cisterns?”

  “Yes, sir. Her Grace and His Highness are speaking to the prisoners in the council room, in private,” the young man said.

  Tycho hurried back behind the thrones to the double doors and began a heated argument with the officer guarding the room about whether he and Salvator should be allowed to enter. Barely a minute into the exchange, the doors flew open and Prince Vlad strode out with a fierce glare, which only grew fiercer when he saw the dwarf. “So it’s you making all the noise out here.” He glanced back into the room, and then out at them again. “Come in. You might as well see this now.”

  Tycho and Salvator followed the prince into the room and the guards closed the doors behind them. It was a small room with a tiled floor and unadorned walls. A heavy oak table dominated the space, and it was surrounded by straight-backed armchairs. Vlad sat down beside the Duchess and gestured to the two people who stood manacled before them, flanked by Vlachian soldiers.

  Tycho stared.

  The man appeared to be Aegyptian or Numidian, and in his middle age judging by his salt and pepper hair. He was well-dressed in a slightly wrinkled and stained but well-tailored Mazigh coat and shirt and boots, and he only glanced at his captors briefly before returning his gaze to the tall windows beside them that overlooked the palace walls and the waves of the Bosporus beyond.