Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Qhora nodded. “What else do you know about this Temple?”

  “The cult of Osiris is very old,” said Philo. “And if you keep your eyes open, you can find their agents everywhere in the world. It is a sort of assassins’ guild, but much more besides. We have seen them used in war, along the borders of Vlachia, in Rus, and at the walls of Constantia itself, of course. Always in the hands of these men in green robes, never anyone else’s. That is why Lady Nerissa sent us here. We are to procure a seireiken for the prince of Vlachia to seal a new alliance between his nation and Constantia.”

  “I thought Constantia was in Hellas,” Qhora said. “You make it sound like it stands alone.”

  “Constantia has always stood alone. It stands on the border of Eran. Hellas won’t claim it because they fear it will offend Emperor Darius and provoke a new war between the east and west. So the city stands alone, supported by whoever chooses to serve the Constantian Church and stand against the Mazdan Temple.”

  “It’s a beautiful city,” Tycho said. “The palaces and temples and cathedrals are ancient and massive, built by all the great emperors who conquered it in the past. I would invite you to see it, it if were safe to do so.”

  “Why a sword?” Qhora asked as the sweat tricked down her neck into her shirt. “Why do you need a sword to secure this alliance?”

  “As a symbol,” Philo said. ”The prince of Vlachia is a devout soldier and he believes in our cause, but he is afraid of these unholy swords. The power to steal a man’s soul is, well, terrifying. But Lady Nerissa believes that if we can put that power into the prince’s hand, he will master his fear and rekindle his confidence, and join us to push back Darius’s army.”

  “It is terrifying,” Qhora said softly. “It wasn’t enough to kill my Enzo, to take him from me, from our son, from all the people who love him and need him. That wasn’t enough. They had to steal my Enzo’s soul, to cage him, to torment him, to abuse him for all of time.” She blinked and focused on Tycho. “Is there any way to free a soul from a seireiken?”

  The Hellan shook his head. “I don’t believe so, no. They say if you pierce a man’s flesh with a seireiken, it rips the soul from his body and he falls dead to the ground in an instant, even if the wound itself isn’t fatal. A stab to the arm or leg is all that’s needed. The sword merely needs to touch the soul within you.”

  Qhora closed her eyes and tried to banish the image in her mind’s eye of Enzo standing in the hotel lobby, transfixed with that searing blade in his chest and little tongues of flame licking the wound in his back. “I need to find one. The one that killed my husband.”

  The young man’s eyes widened. “I’m so sorry. When did it happen?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Two days without Enzo. And two days without Javier, beautiful little Javier with his fat pink cheeks and fat little legs.

  Qhora swallowed. “It sounds like the best place to find these followers of Osiris is at their Temple. Can you take me there?”

  Tycho nodded. “I can. But you can’t go in. You can’t even talk to the guards. Well, you can talk but they won’t answer you. We tried for an hour, asking questions, offering to pay for their time, offering a king’s ransom to purchase a seireiken. The Osirians never answered. And they never took their hands off their guns, either.”

  “I don’t care. Just take me there. I’ll make them talk.” Qhora felt her chest constricting and each breath was a little harder to draw than the last. She wrapped her fingers around the knife in her belt and imagined herself killing the ugly Aegyptian and smashing his sword in a flash of fire and lightning, and then Enzo would be free, he would step out of the light and hold her and everything would be just like before. They would be together.

  “My lady, please listen to me,” Mirari said. “You know I will follow you and serve you faithfully to the ends of the earth, and no cause could be more just than to avenge the death of Don Lorenzo, but we are alone, blind, and toothless here. We cannot fight an army, and we cannot hope to triumph through sheer will or even faith. If we are to find this man and his sword, then we will have to work as Señor Fabris does, by talking and bribing and watching. But not by charging into battle at every opportunity. If we did that, you would soon deprive your son of both his parents, and I would never forgive myself if that happened, my lady. Please listen. If we are to save the soul of Don Lorenzo, we must move carefully and quietly and strike as a serpent does. My lady?”

  She’s right. Whenever she opens her mouth for more than a yes or a no, she’s always right.

  Qhora clenched her teeth, forcing her face to be as still as stone.

  No tears now. No sobbing, no shaking, no weakness now. Later, but not now. Not until it’s over. Not until we’re home.

  She nodded. “You’re right. You’re right, Mirari. Yes. Fine. Then we need to find Salvator and start finding some answers.”

  The older Hellan shifted his injured leg with much wincing and hissing through his teeth. When he was done he said, “I wouldn’t advise it. This is a dangerous city at the best of times and for the best of people. But it’s far worse for strangers, for foreigners. We ourselves have been accosted by thieves and bandits four times since we arrived, and that was openly in the middle of the day where all could see. These brigands have no fear because there is nothing to fear, no law and no lawmen. But for you, a pair of foreign women, alone on the streets of Alexandria, I shudder to think what might befall you out there. There are many in this city who would take you, use you, and kill you without a second thought. And even your great courage and your knives and your bird would not save you. Tycho, I’m sorry, but I fear our mission is to end in failure.” The old man sighed. “We will stay a few more days and try again, but it would seem we are fated to return to Constantia empty-handed.”

  The younger Hellan nodded gloomily.

  “What about other places outside of the Temple?” Qhora asked. “Other places where the Osirians can be found? There must be some. This is a city of vices, isn’t it? Places to drink and whore and gamble. Can we find the Osirians in one of these places?”

  Tycho suddenly looked quite thoughtful. “Probably. In fact I think I’ve heard of a place like that, a restaurant where the gangsters do business. I thought it sounded like a place we’d want to avoid. Normally. Should I go look for your Italian friend first?”

  “No. I will.” Qhora stood up.

  “My dear, please,” Philo said. “I must insist. Let Tycho go. You would not be safe, perhaps not even here in the Hellan Quarter.”

  Qhora narrowed her eyes. “I go where I want. You should rest. I’ll be back soon with Salvator.”

  She stepped out of the old house into the sundrenched street with Mirari at her side. “What do you think of our new friends?”

  “They’ve saved us a little time and work looking for Don Lorenzo’s killer, but they don’t know much else,” the masked woman said. “I doubt they are of any more use to us. Certainly not as warriors, at least.”

  An old man and a young dwarf. No, not much help there.

  Qhora led the way down one narrow lane after another until they reached one of the larger streets at the edge of the Quarter. There wasn’t much traffic though it was still the middle of the day. Men streamed past in both directions, but all on foot. There were no mounts or carts here. She turned right and kept walking.

  Out of the corner of her eye she watched the street beside her, scanning for hints of green robes, searching for weapons, looking for trouble. She found it a moment later. There were three men standing on the far side of the street, most likely locals judging by their hair and clothes. All three men were middle-aged, tall, and muscular. And they were all three staring at Qhora and Mirari.

  Qhora quickened the pace and saw the men step boldly into the foot traffic in the street, angling to intercept the women. She looked up to the roof line but there was no black silhouette perched against the pale blue sky and no black silhouette gliding on wide wings above the str
eet.

  Turi! Stupid bird. Oh Atoq, if only you were here now…

  “My lady?”

  “I see them.” Qhora turned into a narrow alley, hoping to run to the end of the building and slip away on the next street. But a stone’s throw from the entrance the alley ended in a wall of garbage, rotting crates, broken barrels, and chunks of old brick and stone. “Back!”

  They turned and saw the three men at the mouth of the alley. The men glanced around the street and then stepped into the shadowed corridor between the two buildings.

  Qhora drew a knife in each hand. The lead man, the one with the black beard, glared at her and grunted something in Eranian. He lashed out, trying to grab her wrist. Qhora pulled back. Mirari stepped forward. The men said something and laughed. The masked woman pulled her long dirk and hatchet from the back of her belt and said, “Leave us alone.”

  The bearded man stepped forward quickly, hands raised to grab the woman’s arms or weapons. His larger body crashed against her, but Mirari’s legs lashed out from behind her long Espani skirts. She kicked him viciously between the legs and when he stumbled back she leaned back to smash her boot into his face, sending him reeling against the two other men.

  Shouting in Eranian, the bearded man pulled a small rusty pistol from inside his shirt.

  Qhora blinked. She’d been watching Mirari struggle with the thug as though across a great distance, as though there was nothing she could do to help her friend, as though she were watching a dream. But the sight of the gun brought her back, and the alley no longer seemed a hundred miles long and Mirari was no dream-vision but a young woman who was trying to save their lives.

  The Incan princess whipped her small body around in a half-circle and hurled her two knives at once. Both knives went wide, slicing the through the air just a hand-span to either side of Mirari’s head, and plunged into the throats of the two men closest to the street. They both fell to their knees with their hands groping their necks awash in blood. And then they dropped to the ground.

  There was a moment of stunned silence when both Mirari and the gunman looked down at the two men dying at their feet and the rapidly spreading pool of blood on the paving stones. The man looked up first, no longer glaring, eyes a bit wider and more confused than before. And then Mirari’s knife came up, slashing aside the man’s hand holding the gun. As the man hissed and grabbed his bleeding hand, the mountain girl leapt up on a pile of old boards and then jumped down in the same heartbeat, letting gravity add its force to her swinging hatchet. The blade sank into the side of the man’s neck, and the man collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Mirari gestured past the bodies. “My lady. If you will step out, I will clean up.”

  Qhora nodded and paced out to the mouth of the alley and stared at the tide of human bodies streaming past in the street. No one gave her a second look. If anyone had seen the flash of steel or splash of blood or the dying men, no one cared.

  She’d barely stood there a moment when Mirari tapped her on the shoulder and handed back her two knives, both blades shining and clean. Glancing back, Qhora saw that Mirari had dragged all three bodies into the shadows and arranged the refuse there over them, and then scattered a few small boards around the blood to discourage anyone from going too close by accident.

  Alonso could never have done that so quickly and calmly. He wouldn’t have even thought to do it at all. He’s too kind, too gentle. I suppose that’s what brought him to Mirari. Endless kindness, endless patience. And some of that Espani chivalry, too.

  Qhora paused to look at the masked woman. Her dark red hair was all loose and raggedy around the edges of her gleaming white mask with its black-rimmed eyes and bright red lips and little pink roses painted around the cheeks and forehead. To one side, a hint of silvery-blue skin poked out and Qhora reached up to gently arrange the woman’s hair to hide her twisted ear. “Are you all right?”

  “I wasn’t hurt, my lady. He barely touched me.”

  “No. I mean, are you all right? Are you really?”

  The Espani woman hesitated, and with the mask hiding her features it was impossible to guess what emotions might have played over her lips or eyes in that moment. “I don’t like this place. I miss home. I miss the cold, and the quiet. I’ll be grateful to be done with this business and back in Madrid again. But don’t let that concern you, my lady. I’ll be by your side until Don Lorenzo’s killer is brought to the Father’s justice.”

  The Father’s justice? But what if the Father is dead and all desire for true justice died with him? And what if the Mother, who is supposed to be the cradle of all life, is out hunting for the killer? And what if the Son, the voice of mercy and love, is far away in a strange land where no one can hear his cries?

  Qhora touched Lorenzo’s triquetra medallion on her chest.

  How did you ever make sense of your faith, Enzo? These images, these virtues. Peace and mercy. They make no sense in the real world.

  She glanced back into the alley and tried to remember the faces of the two men she had just killed. She couldn’t. They were simply gone along with the dozens of other men she had killed over the years.

  Men.

  For so long, through the long war back home in the empire and then in Marrakesh and even in honorable España there had always been a need to kill men. It was simply a part of life. Killing predators before they could kill her.

  But now, as she stared back into the alley looking for the hidden bodies, instead of men she saw boys. Little boys. Boys who had been babies. Babies with mothers.

  They all had mothers, once. Then I killed them. Those poor women. I killed their babies.

  Javier.

  I need to go home to him. Alive.

  “We couldn’t walk a hundred paces without being attacked. If there had been more of them, if there hadn’t been an alley, if someone had seen us…we might be dead now. We should be dead now,” Qhora said. “We have to be smarter. You were right. I’m sorry. Let’s go back to the Hellans. It would seem we do need them after all.”

  “Indeed, it never hurts to have more eyes and hands in a dangerous place.”

  “No. But it’s not their eyes or hands that will protect us while we’re walking about in broad daylight in this place,” Qhora said. “They may not be great fighters, but they have their uses. We’ll work with them until we can find the Italian again. If we ever find him again. He might be dead too by now, for all we know.”

  They started back toward the Hellan Quarter.

  “I doubt Salvator is dead, my lady,” Mirari said. “He doesn’t strike me as the sort of man who would die easily.”

  “If Lorenzo had been another sort of man, he would have killed Salvator easily enough.”

  “Maybe. But then he wouldn’t have been our Don Lorenzo.”

  Qhora smiled sadly. That’s true enough.

  Chapter 16. Shifrah

  “This could take days.” Shifrah stood on the corner surveying the marketplace. Across an ocean of heads and hair and scarves and eyes, she saw only meaningless movement without faces.

  “Do you know his usual haunts? Where does Aker live when he’s in town?” Kenan asked. “Who are his friends? What does he do for fun when he’s not working?”

  Shifrah rolled her eye at him. Aker had been so much simpler than Kenan. Sure, they’d both been younger and simpler all around back then, but even still, Aker had never shown much depth in his virtues or his vices. “I suppose we should start with the brothels.”

  “Brothels? Here? I thought they frowned on that sort of thing.”

  Shifrah pushed away from the wall and led Kenan into the slow stream of bodies moving east down the boulevard. “In general, yes. The Aegyptians and their Eranian masters both frown on the sex trades, but not everyone here is a Mazdan, and not all the Mazdans are good Mazdans. So what happens when you make something illegal?”

  “It goes underground,” Kenan muttered. “Are we talking about basements, back alleys,
abandoned warehouses, and condemned mansions?”

  “Only for the poor people.” Shifrah grinned at him over her shoulder. “Hey, get up here and walk next to me, not behind me.”

  He quickened his pace to come alongside, which made it a bit harder to slip through the crowd but it couldn’t be helped.

  “How long were the two of you together?” the detective asked.

  “A year or so. We ran little jobs for Omar here in the city. We would pose as brother and sister, or newlyweds, or vagabonds, whatever was needed to get the job done.”

  “To kill people?”

  “Yes, Kenan, to kill people. I think it’s time you moved past all that.”

  He was quiet for half a minute. “I thought you had moved past all that.”

  “Of course not. In Tingis, I took my cues from you. I set up my own business. People hired you to find lost loved ones or to find evidence of wrong-doing, and people hired me to kill their enemies. If it makes you feel better, I usually only killed bad people. You would have approved of most of my jobs, I think.”

  “No, I wouldn’t!”

  “Really?” She ticked them off on her fingers. “A factory supervisor who pushed a worker into a furnace. A father who beat his son to death. An importer who doubled his sales volume by cutting his wine with toxic chemicals. A mother who locked her children in a basement to starve them to death. I saved the children, by the way. A student who bullied three schoolmates into committing suicide. I was surprised. I really was. After everything I had heard about it, I didn’t expect Marrakesh to be such a cesspool.”

  “Shut up.” Kenan rubbed his eyes. “Just stop.”

  “Why? Because it turns your world upside-down to think your society isn’t pure and beautiful? That your civilized people are just as cruel and monstrous as us dirty barbarians?”