Halcyon est-1

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “What’s happening?” Qhora stood up, her hand pressed to the dirk in her sleeve.

  “A riot.” Salvator grimaced. “Kanemi migrants. They come up from the south looking for work, and when they can’t find it they often protest by breaking things.”

  The mass of angry men drifted slowly across the square chanting nonsense phrases and slogans and calls to take action in Kanemi. Qhora didn’t need a translation. “We need to leave!” she shouted over the din.

  “We need to stay!” the Italian shouted back. “The boy will come. Trust me.”

  So they pressed back as far as they could behind the shrine of the smiling fat man and gripped their weapons, and waited.

  The mob surged left and right, sending little bands of men to shout at the merchants and overturn their tables, and knock down their awnings, and since the awnings were all lashed together soon the entire market was in chaos as every stall tumbled sideways and fell on the people beneath them.

  Glass shattered, pottery shattered, and stonewares shattered.

  Shouting and more shouting, and screams, and faintly some sobbing.

  Qhora made herself as small as she could behind the stone pillar of the shrine and wrapped her fingers tightly around Enzo’s triquetra hanging around her neck and asked his three-faced God to let her survive the next few minutes.

  Father, Mother, and Son.

  Slowly, and with several false starts in different directions, the mob moved on. They continued in the same direction as before, across the square and down the next street, and a quarter of an hour after it all began it was all over.

  Qhora stood up and surveyed the tattered remains of the market with a vague hatred of all the barbarian peoples of the east, of their mad selfishness, of their apparent inability to feed and clothe themselves without someone else giving them work to do.

  Stupid people.

  One by one, the merchants picked themselves up and shoved their awnings up and pulled their tables up, and soon the market was restored, albeit with a bit more jagged trash scattered under the kiosks.

  And then the boy came back.

  He chatted with Salvator for less than a minute before scampering off with a fistful of shining coins, leaving Qhora with a vague sense of unease. Her Espani was immaculate and her Mazigh was good, but her Italian and Hellan were terrible and she knew nothing of the many languages of the Eranian Empire. And even here in Numidia, the Mazigh accent was so different that she couldn’t tell what anyone was saying. She didn’t have to ask whether Mirari understood what the boy had said. The masked girl had spent most of her life alone in an abandoned Espani silver mine.

  “Well?” She squinted at Salvator.

  “Well, I was right. A one-eyed woman and a Mazigh gunslinger are easy marks, particularly to a young boy. Or more precisely, to several dozen young boys.” The Italian gestured to the street. “Our friends are in a cafe a few blocks from here, and apparently they are talking about finding transportation to Alexandria. But the riots have shut down the eastbound trains, so we may be in a bit of luck.”

  “Then we have to catch them, now!” Qhora put one hand on Salvator’s back, partly to make sure she didn’t lose him in the crowd and partly to propel him faster toward their destination. They wove around carts and oxen and zebras and even a pair of ostriches that momentarily reminded Qhora of her giant Wayra. But only a little. They wound through the crowds, choking on dust and spices, and stumbling around piles of dung and puddles of blood and sweat, until Salvator pulled them aside and pointed down the street. “There.”

  The cafe looked like any other building. Pale clay walls, a narrow door, and a single small window of tinted glass. Qhora gripped her knife. “Let’s go. And this time we don’t let anyone…”

  The door of the cafe opened and the one-eyed woman stepped out, slipping on her white jacket and flipping her long black hair out over its collar. The Mazigh gunman followed, squinting at the bright sky. The swordsman in green came out last and led the others away down the street.

  “Quickly!” Qhora jogged after them, narrowly avoiding the countless people and wagons and animals thronging the street. She closed the distance slowly, trying to form a plan of attack. The Aegyptian was farthest away with the other two obscuring him. She had to get around them. She had to get close to him. Qhora scanned the street ahead for some obstruction, some funnel, some distraction that might rearrange her field of battle.

  The Aegyptian turned a corner and his companions followed. As Qhora approached the corner, a piercing white light blinded her and she shaded her eyes with her hand.

  It’s the sun on the sea. The Middle Sea. We’re at the harbor. Boats. No!

  She dashed around the corner only to see that her prey had already crossed the road a block ahead and were striding down a long pier toward a small steamer. Qhora tore across the road with her knife drawn. She had no idea whether Mirari and Salvator were still behind her and she didn’t care. She ran as fast as she could, but the Aegyptian was too far away, already at the gangway, already boarding the steamer. She reached the foot of the pier drenched in sweat and turned to run toward the boat, but a pair of men with long rifles shoved her back and barked, “Private property.”

  “No! I need to…to speak to that man who just got on the boat! Please, I need to speak to him!” She folded her hand down to hide her knife in the fabric of her sleeve.

  “Private property,” one of the guards repeated. “Private boat. Go away.” Behind him on the pier, a third guard stood up from behind a barrel. He had a pair of old pistols shoved in his belt and a frowning squint on his face.

  “Get out of my way!” Qhora shoved toward them, but a firm hand gripped her shoulder.

  “My lady.” Mirari appeared beside her. “Perhaps this isn’t wise.”

  The third man with the pistols began sauntering toward them. A fourth man stood up even farther down the pier, one hand resting on his short-barreled rifle.

  “Your friend is correct,” Salvator said from her other side. “We should withdraw and not trouble these gentlemen anymore.”

  “But he’s getting away!” Qhora glared at the tiny figures on the deck of the steamer, straining to discern her husband’s killer from the others.

  He’s right there! So close! He’s right there! I’m looking at him!

  Qhora yanked forward out of Mirari’s grip, pulling the young woman off balance and stumbling into one of the armed guards.

  The guard barked something in Eranian as he dealt a backhanded blow to the side of Mirari’s head. The woman staggered, her face snapping to the side as the ribbons on her mask tore free and her painted porcelain features clattered to the ground.

  Both guards drew back as though from a poisonous stench, their hands rising to cover their mouths.

  Mirari stumbled backward, both gloved hands pawing at her bare cheeks and lips and nose as she whimpered, “My f-face, my face, need my face, where’s my face, face, need my face, need to be her, need to be her, need her, where is she, where is my face?”

  “Dear God.” Salvator winced.

  Qhora looked up past Mirari’s shaking hands at her silver-blue skin and her mangled, twisted ears. When Alonso brought the mountain girl to Madrid, he had explained that Mirari’s ears had been crushed during a difficult birth. And after years of torment from the people in her village, she had fled to live alone in an abandoned silver mine, drinking the tainted water running through the mine, permanently dying her skin with traces of silver. But in their two years together, Qhora had never seen her without the Carnivale mask. She had never seen her face at all.

  And now, as they stood together at the foot of the pier with three armed men standing over them, all Qhora saw was a friend locked in the prison of her own fractured mind, and shaking with terror. “Fabris! Get her mask!”

  The Italian swept into the foot traffic on the road and rescued the mask a moment before a camel’s foot would have crushed it and he returned it to her hand. Mirari stared at the i
nside of the mask as though she had never seen it before, lost and baffled.

  “Here, here.” Qhora gently took the mask and placed it against Mirari’s face, and slowly the woman stopped shaking and mumbling.

  She took the mask in her own hands, holding it in place, and she took a deep breath. Mirari straightened up, one hand pressed to the painted red lips of the mask, the other hand resting on the head of her hatchet in her belt. “I’m sorry, my lady,” she said in a calm voice. “I’m fine now. It won’t happen again.”

  Qhora blinked.

  The transformation is nearly instantaneous. Her body, her voice. Everything about her changes. She’s like two different people.

  Qhora nodded. “It’s all right. You’re all right now.”

  Salvator herded both of them into the road, into the streams of people and animals and away from the armed men on the pier. Qhora glanced back and saw the steamer pulling away from pier.

  The Aegyptian!

  “No!” Qhora reached out for the departing ship as though trying to pull it back to shore through sheer will and rage.

  “Be silent!” the Italian hissed. “Don’t provoke those men anymore. They will shoot you if you give them a reason. You see their belts? Look, do you see?”

  Qhora twisted to look and saw that the men wore no less than three belts each, one bound tightly around the waist and the other two sagging loosely with knives, pouches, vials, and metal boxes. “So?”

  “So? They carry too many exotic weapons. They’re assassins. I should know.” Salvator pushed her against the wall of a fishmonger’s shop and turned to look at the men again.

  “But what about the ship? It could go anywhere! I can’t just let them escape.”

  “We know where it’s going. It’s going to Alexandria,” the Italian said. “And we’re not letting them escape. We’re letting them lead us to their masters. This is better. You can still kill your husband’s murderer, but why stop there? If we follow them home, we can destroy their entire organization.”

  “I don’t care about that!”

  “But I do. And they’re already on the ship, and the ship is already away from the pier. So unless you want to jump into the harbor and try to storm the decks single-handedly, I suggest you listen to me. Listen to me!” He turned her head to face him.

  She jerked her chin out of his hand, but met his gaze.

  “You’re tired. You’re angry. You’re heartbroken. You’re not thinking clearly, so let others think for you. These people escaped you in Tingis and they’re just escaped us here. Running blindly about the continent is not going to bring you justice. But a sound plan will. Now, I suggest we return to the station and get moving ourselves.”

  Qhora was tempted to slap him for suggesting that she let him think for her, but she knew she still needed him. Needed his money. Needed his skill with languages. “Get moving where?”

  “Alexandria, of course. We can arrive long before that ship does, and have our own personal army of mercenaries at the dock waiting to greet them. We’ll take our time and do things properly. No more blind running. Agreed?”

  Alexandria? No, I should be heading back west, not farther east. I should be going home to Javier, home to Madrid and Enzo’s students, home to Atoq and Wayra. They need me.

  As much as she wanted the Aegyptian’s blood, she wanted her baby more. “How long? How long will it take?”

  A cruel smile spread slowly across Salvator’s face. “As long as it takes. And let me remind you, I am the one who chartered our private train, so I am the one who decides where it goes, and it is going to Alexandria. Whether you come with us is up to you.”

  A whistle split the air and she looked up. The steamer was gliding away across the harbor. Several dark little figures were moving around its deck. Qhora nodded. “Alexandria. Fine, we’ll go. But we go quickly. And then we come quickly home.”

  “I make no promises,” the Italian said.

  Qhora shrugged. “I don’t want your promises. Just your obedience.”

  Salvator looked amused, but said nothing, and they turned back down the road to the train station. She followed a pace behind.

  What would Enzo do? How would he deal with Salvator? How would he protect Mirari? How would he catch a killer? Tell me, Enzo, how?

  As they passed back through the market square, Qhora took some small satisfaction at seeing the shops all set to rights. Order had been restored. Civilization had triumphed, if only slightly. A high-pitched shriek drew her gaze to the left and she saw a stall filled with cages. In their wooden prisons, lizards hissed and snakes coiled and furry things slept in faceless balls. But to one side there was a crude perch, and on it stood a gray and white bird of prey.

  I don’t believe it!

  Qhora strode to the merchant and pointed at the bird. “Do you know what this is?”

  The old man shrugged. “It is an eagle,” he said in Numidian-accented Mazigh.

  “It’s a harpy! From Jisquntin Suyu, from the Empire, my homeland!” She forced her hand into a fist to keep from grabbing the old man’s shirt and shaking him. “Where did you get it? How did it get here?”

  Again the man shrugged. “There is an Espani who sometimes comes here. He sometimes brings things from the New World. He brings this bird last month.”

  “Set it free. Now!”

  The old man shook his head. “The bird is very expensive.”

  “Fabris, pay the man!” Qhora ordered.

  “Mm, I think not. My money will be better spent in Alexandria.” And the Italian sauntered away.

  Qhora passed her hands over her person in search of the money that she knew she didn’t have. She glanced at Mirari, knowing full well the girl’s only possessions were an old knife, a hatchet, and a mask. Qhora turned back to the merchant and slammed her Italian stiletto into his counter and left it standing there, embedded in the wood. “Trade.”

  The merchant frowned. “This is not enough.”

  He had barely spoken before Qhora slammed her Songhai dirk into the wood. “Trade!”

  The two knives stood glinting in the sun. Polished steel, pale ivory, stained teak, and silver rings. Qhora reached for her sleeve. “Trade, or the next one won’t go into the wood.”

  The old man nodded, his eyes wide. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

  Chapter 6. Taziri

  She had just finished the tiresome task of moving the Halcyon across the yard onto the turn table, swiveling it about, and rolling it off onto another line that would point them back to Marrakesh when Taziri saw her passengers trudging across the yard toward her. They looked tired and dusty, but not bloody. She took that to be a good sign. And there was a large bird perched on Qhora’s gloved hand. Taziri had no idea what to make of that.

  They filed on board through the narrow hatch and the Italian said, “A slight change in plans, captain. We’ll be continuing to Alexandria from here. As quickly as you can, thank you.”

  Taziri stared. “Alexandria? Why? What happened? Where is Kenan? Didn’t you find them?”

  “Suffice it to say, they boarded a steamer bound for Alexandria,” Salvator said. “And now we need to pursue them just a little farther.”

  “A little farther?” Taziri turned to Qhora. “Dona, what happened? Do you really want to go to Alexandria?” The Mazigh pilot swallowed, hoping for a retraction, for an argument that ended with her setting out for Tingis, back home, back to Yuba and Menna.

  This was supposed to be a short charter. Easy money. Why is nothing ever easy?

  “Just do what he says,” Qhora said sharply, rubbing her eyes. The huge bird sank its talons into the heavy leather glove on her hand and gazed up at the pilot with its huge golden eyes.

  Taziri shook her head. “But that’s inside the Empire of Eran. And besides, I don’t think I have enough fuel to get there and back again.”

  “You think or you know?” Salvator asked.

  Taziri frowned and sat down in her seat with her pad and pencil. She
tapped the fuel gauge, checked her maps for ranges, checked the almanac for wind conditions, and did the math. The answer made her smile. “Not enough. We can’t make it.”

  “How far can we make it, captain?”

  Taziri shrugged. “All the way to Alexandria, but then only a fraction of the distance back.”

  “Excellent.” Salvator smiled thinly. “You can fly us to Alexandria now so we can attend to our business, and then we simply chain this wonderful contraption of yours to the next train heading west and roll back home on the rails.”

  Taziri felt her heart sink. He was right. That would work.

  Damn it! I finally build something perfect, and this is the thanks I get.

  “All right, then, if that’s the plan, we’ll go to Alexandria,” she said. “But I need to be perfectly clear on this. When we arrive, I will be staying with the Halcyon the entire time we are there. I won’t go with you, I won’t stay in a hotel, and I won’t even leave the rail yard. In Eran, the railroads are all owned by the government and officials can commandeer them at any time for any reason, and other people have been known to steal, damage, and destroy them just to spite the government. So I will be here, inside this cabin, the entire time we are in Alexandria. And if there is some danger that I can’t talk my way out of, then I might just have to roll out, and fast.”

  Salvator frowned. “That would not be ideal, for us.”

  “Sorry, but that’s the deal.” Taziri stood as tall as she could and tried to look as cruelly apathetic as she could. She hated the idea of abandoning anyone, for any reason, but now that she was out of the Corps, she was on her own. And Aegyptus was very, very far from home and help. “I can’t let the Eranians take this engine, for obvious scientific reasons. And I can’t let them detain me, for the same reasons. And other personal reasons, of course.”

  The Italian nodded grimly. “Agreed. If not for your sake, then for the sake of keeping new technologies out of their hands for as long as possible.”