Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Renata!” the man cried.

  But the woman in black only had eyes for Qhora. “Is this the bitch you told? Did you bring her here to mock me, Aaron? Did you think I would allow that, you pig?”

  Qhora drew her curved Eranian dirk and held both blades at the ready. “Who are you?”

  The woman looked sharply at the man. “She doesn’t know? How many people did you tell about me, Aaron? How many? HOW MANY!?” A blast of water full of ice shards burst from the pond and slammed the poor farmer to the ground, where he lay soaked and shivering.

  “Renata, please! Let me explain. You don’t understand. I don’t know this woman. She just came here a moment ago. I told her to leave, but she didn’t. Please, listen to me!”

  “Yes, listen to him,” Qhora said as she edged sideways toward Wayra, who was standing quite still at the edge of the wood and peering strangely at the woman called Renata.

  The woman in black strode swiftly over to Aaron and grabbed him by the throat. “It was a simple promise, wasn’t it? Don’t tell anyone. That was all I asked.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” the man sobbed. He grasped her wrist with one hand and covered his eyes with the other. “But you don’t understand what it’s been like.”

  “What it’s been like?” She pushed him down and stood up straight. Behind her, the shattered surface of the pond began to steam, the remaining ice breaking up and floating across the surface, then melting and vanishing all together. “I chose you, Aaron. Of all the men who have come to this pool, I chose you. You were honest. You were faithful. You were deserving of love, of my love. I gave you a son. I made you happy. Why was that so terrible?”

  Qhora lowered her knives.

  “It wasn’t terrible at all. It was wonderful.” Aaron rose to his knees and wiped the water from his face. “But it was hard, too. What was I supposed to tell people? Where did this son come from? Why did my wife never come to mass? Why was my wife never at home when the neighbors came to call?”

  “Small questions from small people.”

  “They’re good people. My friends,” Aaron said, rising to his feet. “All I ever wanted was what everyone else had. And you, you were so much more than I had ever hoped to have. But I suppose that’s not what I needed. It’s not what our son needs. He needs his mother during the day as well as the night. And I need you too. Maybe it would have been all right, but the questions turned to rumors. They were saying awful things. They said I was liar. They said I stole the boy and killed his mother. They even said it might be some missing girl from Sauca. They were going to arrest me. They were going to take our son away. I had to say something to someone. So I told my brother Phillip, not that he believed me.”

  “Oath breaker!” the woman screamed, and a column of boiling water whirled up from the pond, arched through the air, and crashed down on the farmer. The man screamed and scrambled back from the pond to plunge his face and hands into the snow at the edge of the trees.

  “Stop!” Qhora dashed forward, slashing with both daggers at the woman’s chest.

  But Renata seemed to fade back from each attack without moving her feet. She was always just a hair’s breadth out of reach and Qhora stumbled to a halt at the edge of the pond. The woman in black stood a few paces away on the surface of the rippling pool.

  Wayra leaned her long neck over the water, blue and green plumes bristling around her head, and hissed at the woman.

  “What are you?” asked Qhora. This is no ghost. A ghost is just an image in a cloud of aether, but this creature is real. She can touch him and she can control the water. I know I’ve heard of this before, but where?

  “One of the aloja. She’s a water-woman,” said Aaron from behind her. “And my wife. And the mother of my son. And my love. But it’s too hard. It’s too hard, Renata! I can’t live like this. No one can. Don’t you understand?”

  “I have lived in this pool for four hundred years, Aaron.” Renata turned to pace across the surface of the boiling water. “I understand men all too well.”

  A marriage to a spirit? A bargain? Rules? Yes, it’s like those folk tales that Alonso sings about. And I know how those tales all end. Badly. “You asked too much,” Qhora said. “You gave him an impossible ultimatum. If he had kept your secret, he would have lost his son and his life. He may lose them still! If you ever loved him, how could you blame him for trying to save his family? Your own child?”

  “He knew the terms of our marriage,” Renata said. “And he knew the price of breaking faith with me.”

  Another column of hot water spun into the air, but Qhora kept her eyes on it as she raced back to grab the farmer and pull him out of the way just as the boiling torrent crashed down on the earth. The snow and ice on the ground vanished in a cloud of steam and a sharp hiss of scalded soil.

  As they stood gasping by the trees, Qhora grabbed the farmer’s coat and forced him to look at her. “Aaron, you have to leave! Get away from here, away from this farm, away from this town, right now. Take your son and leave.”

  “But…” The man turned a mask of sorrow toward the pool and the woman in black. “But if she would only come home with me, we could be a family, and it would be all right again. Everything would be all right.”

  “No, it won’t,” Qhora said. “It will never be all right. She’s not a woman. She’s a creature, a ghost, a demon. Whatever she is, she doesn’t love you or your son. Only herself. Look at her. Look at her, Aaron.”

  The man blinked and looked again. Renata had stopped pacing and was staring down at the last remaining pane of ice on her pool, staring down at her reflection as she stroked her bright red hair.

  “But she’s my wife. She loves me.”

  “She only loves herself!”

  The farmer quailed in her arms for a moment, his miserable eyes downcast. Then he whispered, “I’ll go, I’ll go.” And he scrambled up and dashed away into the woods.

  “Aaron!” Renata stormed across the pond. “Come back here, you worm, if you ever want to hold me in your arms again. Come back here this instant!”

  Qhora stood up and presented her mismatched knives in a boxer’s stance, something she learned from a young Hellan in Gadir. “Spirit, go back to your pool. Your husband and son are gone. They’re free of you now.”

  “They are mine,” the water-woman said. “And you do not command me.” She raised her hands and the boiling pond erupted into a shining wall of water. For a moment, the water hung in the air, a shimmering curtain of silver like flowing glass, and then it shattered into a screaming hail storm of frozen daggers flying toward Qhora.

  She dove behind the nearest tree and listened to the heavy thumping and airy tinkling as the icicles crashed into the trees and shattered all around her. In an instant it was all over and Qhora leapt to her feet to face the creature again, but she stayed in the shadows of the trees. “I’m not afraid of a little rain, spirit. And I’d be happy to leave you to your puddle but for the next poor soul who finds you here, and the next child you leave motherless for your vanity.”

  Renata smiled. “Come out of the trees, little girl.”

  “No, I think I like it just fine in here. Why don’t you join me?”

  “Perhaps I will.” The water-woman shook her black coat and she collapsed to the ground in a flourish of feathers, and suddenly five black ravens leapt forth into the air on midnight wings, screaming, “Blood!”

  Qhora pinwheeled her arms through the air, slashing as the birds dove at her face.

  “QUOORK!” Wayra crashed into the clearing, dry pine branches bursting from the trees as the huge eagle slid through them across the loose needles on the ground. Her massive beak tore one of the ravens out of the air and crushed it into bloody mass of black feathers and hollow bones.

  A second raven tumbled to ground where it flapped and screamed over the gash in its belly from Qhora’s knife, and Wayra stepped back and crushed it beneath her long shining talons. The last three ravens flapped up and roosted overhead for a
moment to screech and dance in the pine boughs, their wings raised like clawing hands. Wayra lowered her head, her full crown of blue and green plumes bristling tall, and she hissed.

  The ravens dove again with beaks and talons open.

  As Qhora readied herself to strike again, a terrible thunderclap shook her ears, echoing through the wood, and two of the ravens tumbled out of the air at her feet. The last raven flapped up through the branches, cawing and crying as it fought its way up through the green needles into the open sky beyond.

  Qhora stared down at the two dead birds on the ground before her, their singed feathers smoking darkly. And then she looked up at the woman walking toward her from the direction of the road. It was the Mazigh woman, the pilot. And there was a cloud of black smoke rising from her left arm. Her metal arm.

  Chapter 13

  Taziri’s arm buzzed with a strange ringing pain that shivered up and down her bones. The recoil from the shotgun was worse than she imagined, far worse than the flare she fired over the trees south of the Halcyon. As Taziri walked toward Dona Qhora, stepping carefully over rocks and fallen branches, she inspected the brace on her left forearm.

  It covered her bandaged skin from elbow to wrist, and it was bolted to the special glove on her palm to hold her hand in position. Without the brace, her hand hung limp from her arm like a dead fish. Her fingers moved well enough on their, even the two little ones that had gone numb and never recovered, but the wrist was a lost cause. The burn had taken months to heal, but even now, almost two years later, she had regained no sensation or control. The damage was done. The flesh shriveled and scarred, muscle atrophied, and skin permanently discolored. But she still had her hand, and that was something.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Qhora nodded and slipped her knives away. “What is that thing?” She pointed at the brace and the open mechanism on its back.

  “There was a fire. I almost lost my arm, but I was one of the lucky ones. Actually, I was the only lucky one that day. Anyway, this brace protects my arm and helps me control my hand so I can work,” Taziri said. She touched the open mechanism, a brass tube half a foot long that popped up from the top of the brace on a small spring to point down her arm over her thumb. “And this is a little storage compartment we added where I can keep my smaller tools. Screwdrivers, pencils, that sort of thing. But, in a pinch, it’s also a perfectly good flare gun, or even a shotgun.”

  It’s not perfectly good. It’s not good at all.

  Even with the heavy reinforcement around the back of the brace, it scared her to death to think of the explosive force being released just an inch from her elbow. But it did work.

  Qhora nodded again. “Well, thank you. Why are you out here? Did you follow me?”

  “After you rode away, I talked with Don Lorenzo for a while. We found the place where your tracks went off across the field. Your husband didn’t seem worried. He said there wasn’t anything out here that you couldn’t handle. But I had one of those feelings,” Taziri said. “Like when an engine knocks or my little girl coughs. So I came out to look for you. I guess I’m just used to worrying about women traveling alone.” She thought of a certain alleyway, long ago and far away, where she had found a young man about to swing a brick at a woman’s head. Her new brace hadn’t concealed any weapons back then, but it had proved a decent enough bludgeon at the time. And here I am, still finding new ways to hurt people with it.

  “Well, that may be a problem for women in Marrakesh, but it isn’t here. This is a civilized country, captain,” Qhora said. “Men are still honorable here, and the women can take care of themselves.”

  You’re welcome. Taziri frowned. “Why were those birds attacking you?”

  Qhora raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Taziri held up her arm as she slid her tools back into the brass tube and snapped it closed into her brace. The springs creaked and the latches clicked into place. “You’d be surprised what I would believe.”

  The lady took the reins of her giant bird and they began walking back through the woods toward the spot where Taziri had left her horse at the edge of the snowy field. Over the next few minutes, the hidalgo’s wife described an encounter with flame-haired woman, a boiling pond, and a flock of ravens, all of which had apparently married a local farmer and given birth to a baby boy.

  Taziri pushed through the brush, untied her horse, and climbed up into the saddle. The buzzing pain in her arm was almost gone. “Well, if someone had told me that story anywhere else, I wouldn’t have believed it. But here in España? I suppose that’s downright normal.”

  Qhora swung up onto the bird’s muscular shoulders. “I’ve lived here almost three years now. Would you believe this was only the second time I’ve seen a ghost or a…whatever it was?”

  They began trotting briskly across the field, not westward back to the road but northward, hoping to find the road again somewhere closer to the rest of the group.

  “Aloja. I wonder what that means, exactly,” Taziri said. “Scientifically speaking. I mean, I’ve never heard of a ghost that could so much as touch water, let alone move it, or anything else you saw. There are natural laws governing the spirit world, but this sounds like something very different, very strange.”

  “Alonso sings stories about them. He sings all the time, playing his guitar. He must know a thousand stories,” Qhora said. “This country is full of stories. There are water-women in every lake, river, well, and pond in the country, to hear him tell it. They’re women who drowned, but didn’t quite die. Some mixture of the water and aether changes them, makes them immortal, and makes them insane. Half their soul drowns but the other half stays in their flesh, or something like that. But whatever they are, in the stories every last one of them is desperate for love and attention. They never love the men back, though.”

  “Isn’t that always the way in stories?” Taziri smiled. “Although, I try to only tell Menna the ones with happy endings.”

  “Menna? Is that your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must miss her, always traveling the way you do.”

  “Yes.” Taziri looked away as the chilly breeze lifted a handful of ice crystals from the field and cast them in her face. “I keep meaning to quit, but it seems like there’s always a reason to keep working just a little longer. There’s always one more project to finish. One more person to help. A little more money to make. Sometimes I think the only way I’ll ever get to stay at home is if I get pregnant again.”

  “We’ve been trying for over a year.”

  Taziri heard the weary resignation in the woman’s voice. She wanted to console her, but it had happened for her and Yuba almost instantly once they made the decision to try, and she wasn’t sure what to say. “It can take some people longer than others. Just give it time, and be grateful for the quiet evenings until then. You will definitely appreciate a full night’s sleep after the baby comes, I promise.”

  Qhora glanced at her with a pinched frown.

  They rode on across the field, picking their way over a small frozen stream in a ditch and around a low stone wall, and eventually they came back to the main road to Zaragoza.

  “Do you think we’ll see more ghosts on this trip?” Taziri asked, hoping the air had cleared. Please don’t make any more enemies on this trip. I already have the Espani navy and an Italian assassin hunting me. I don’t need to add a New Worlder to the list.

  “Almost definitely. It’s only going to get colder the farther we go.”

  “Why does the cold matter?”

  Qhora sighed. “You’re the scientist, you tell me. All I know is that ghosts are souls that appear in clouds of aether. Aether is everywhere, but it can only coalesce where it is very cold. It also helps to be very dark, but apparently water-women don’t play by those rules.”

  “I guess that’s why we never see any ghosts back home. Too warm,” Taziri said. “It’s just as well. Things are hectic en
ough these days without seeing dead people walking around.”

  “I’m sure. I’ve been to Marrakesh. There were enough dead people lying on the ground, as I recall, and far too many lining up to fall down beside them.”

  Taziri looked over at the little woman on the huge strutting bird. “Are you talking about the assassination? I know you were there. I probably saw you there, on the airfield, but I don’t remember much of that day. It’s a pity you couldn’t save the queen.”

  Qhora sniffed. “I saved her children. And I hear the new queen has already begun cleaning up the mess her sister left behind. Isn’t that true?”

  “You could put it that way,” Taziri said. Did everyone hate the old queen? Was I the only person who thought she didn’t deserve to die? “Tell me, what was it like on that airfield? What did you see? The last thing I remember is crashing the Halcyon into the queen’s skybarge.”

  The smaller woman didn’t answer right away. They rode several paces, long enough to listen to the whistle of the wind, the clopping of hooves, and the scratching of talons on the frozen mud. Then Qhora said, “When I walked out onto the field, the first thing I saw was a huge black cloud in the sky, spreading out on the wind. Then I saw the people running and screaming, grabbing each other, servants dropping bags of luggage and trays of food, soldiers with rifles, children crying. I sent Enzo to round up the children. I didn’t know what was happening, not exactly. My Mazigh wasn’t very good so I couldn’t understand what people were saying. But I knew there were people trying to kill the queen. I found the queen’s family in the wreckage. And the assassin as well. I threw my knife at her and the bomb went off.”

  Taziri nodded. “That’s what I heard. It was in all the papers. Did you see the queen there too? She must have been close by.”

  “What is this all about, captain?” Qhora snapped. “I told you what happened. Maybe if you had done something more constructive than crash your airship that day, the old queen would still be alive. I did more than my share, considering how miserably I was treated by your people.”