Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Shifrah smiled and bit her lip. She stepped back against the cold stone wall of the alley to let the soldiers fly past, and then she stepped back into the lane to watch them plunge into the slow-moving traffic on the main road ahead. With her hands on her hips, thumbs gently pressing against the handles of two of the knives hidden in her coat, she stood thinking.

  So which is the better deal? Do I bag some heads to keep Sal happy in case I need him again, or do I save the big man, take the cash, and spend a few months in the sun?

  The sounds of men yelling and the sharp, solitary reports of rifle shots echoed in the distance.

  Sorry, Sal. You need to learn to be nicer to the ladies.

  She turned and hurried back up the alley, across the now-empty square beside the large church, and then around the smaller streets back to the Swallow. Her horse was waiting for her.

  It took several precious minutes to get the blanket and saddle in place, and though she’d done it a hundred times, she still rode out into the cold morning streets with the nagging doubt that she’d done something wrong. She dismissed it. When it came to horses, something was always going wrong.

  Dumb animals.

  She rode as swiftly as she dared back across the square and then began listening for the sounds of violence. Six soldiers with rifles against one man with a knife and one boy with a cold. Shifrah worked her tongue across her teeth as she listened to the quiet murmurs of the street, of people walking and talking and working.

  Maybe this is a bad idea.

  Three rifle shots echoed over the rooftops and she spurred her horse into a gallop, angling across the street and around the corner at the next intersection. People on foot scattered before her and it wasn’t long before she spotted a knot of chaos in the middle of the road ahead. People were shouting and scattering, dropping baskets and sacks in the middle of the street to make way for the squad of men in blue mechanically firing and reloading their primitive rifles. Shifrah grimaced. At least they’re only Espani rifles. If they were Mazigh weapons, they’d be spewing bullets non-stop. Never mind Mazigh revolvers.

  She shuddered at the thought of bullets, weapons flying faster and smaller than the eye could follow, tearing down a strong woman, or even a man for that matter.

  With a knife in one hand, she charged the back of the soldiers’ line and cried out, “For God and good Prince Valero!” in her best Espani, which sounded a great deal like her best Italian. But the soldiers all froze at the cry and glanced up at her as the horse clattered into the center of their loose formation in the street.

  “Where are they? Where are the spies?” she shouted, waving her knife.

  “Get out of the way!” The soldiers poured around her, surging on down the street. Only the mustachioed captain bothered to catch her eye and give her a properly dirty look.

  She grinned back. “Let’s get them!” She kicked the horse into another dead run down the street and from her elevated seat she caught a glimpse of the major’s head darting to the right around a corner at the far end of the street. “They went left! Down there!” She pointed with her knife and to her relief three of the soldiers stumbled to a halt and then veered off to the left. The other three shouted back, “No, no, they went right! Right!”

  The confusion was brief but real. Blank looks all around and uncertain fingers pointing in different directions. But the captain’s shouting soon had them back on the trail.

  Unwilling to risk another transparent interruption to the chase, Shifrah turned down another street running parallel to the one the major took and emerged on the next avenue to find it almost completely deserted. Nowhere to hide. “Not what I wanted.”

  She trotted down to the next street, the one the major should have been about to come out of, but she found it empty except for the echoing shouts of angry men. Halfway down the lane she saw a front door kicked in.

  “What the hell are they doing?” She stayed on the wider avenue and headed south, peering down the narrow gaps between the houses and shops at the small gardens behind them.

  A flash of brown leather.

  A rifle shot.

  “Hell, kid, keep your head down!” the major roared.

  Shifrah squinted down the narrow alleyways and suddenly a flock of blue uniforms flooded through a small garden right in front of her and a half dozen male shouts echoed back out to her, “Shoot, shoot! He’s right there! Get him! No, the other one!”

  She dashed down the avenue parallel to the men, separated from the chase by a row of houses that seemed to have no paths between them wide enough to admit a horse. Looking ahead, she spotted the next side street and raced around the corner. The men were still running through the back gardens, crashing through fences and tearing down laundry lines, shouting and shooting. Bullets ricocheted off brick and stone, and shattered glass windows. Every few seconds, a woman would shriek inside one of the houses.

  Shifrah nudged her horse back and forth, trying to guess which house the two Mazigh officers would come barreling through.

  To her right, the front window of a small house exploded in a rain of broken glass and wooden splinters. The major landed on his shoulder, rolled slowly, and stood up, clearly favoring his right leg. The kid tumbled out of the window after him, collapsing to the street and looking like a sweaty corpse, his face pale and bloodshot eyes set in dark eye sockets.

  Zidane hauled the kid to his feet just as his eyes met hers. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you with them are not?”

  “I might be with you, but now is not the best time to chat, major.” Shifrah jerked her head at the sound of the pursuing soldiers crashing through the house. She pointed down the street. “The south gate is that way, assuming you’re still heading for warmer places to run and play.”

  Zidane hesitated a moment too long. Two faces appeared in the broken window just as the front door of the house swung open. The major dropped his friend and lunged at the two men in the window, grabbed their jackets, and hauled them out into the street where he dropped them on their heads and stripped them of their rifles. He tossed one gun to the kid as he spun around and cracked the butt of his own rifle into the head of the man rushing out the front door.

  Shifrah spotted another rifle poking through the broken window and she screamed in her highest screeching voice, “My baby! Someone save my baby!”

  The rifle jerked back inside, replaced a moment later with two more confused faces.

  Zidane grabbed the sick kid and they both took off down the road, rifles in hand. Shifrah wheeled her horse around just as the Espani captain charged out the door, hollering, “Arrest that woman!”

  “Oh, hell.” Shifrah kicked her horse and sped away in the opposite direction of the two Mazighs. “You’re on your own now, big man. But I’ll be seeing you soon enough.”

  Chapter 16

  The night in Ariza passed without incident, though they did keep everyone together in one farmhouse and rotated guards in the dining room throughout the night. As long as everyone was within sight of someone else, Lorenzo wasn’t worried. Even Salvator Fabris was only one man, and they wouldn’t pass by any forts before reaching Zaragoza, so the Italian was unlikely to find help before then. More importantly, Atoq stayed close that night and it was easy to feel safe and secure with eight hundred pounds of saber-toothed cat sitting just outside the door.

  All day he had worried about the boys’ morale after leaving Enrique behind, but they appeared to rally quickly, especially when Qhora and the Mazigh pilot told them about their little adventure with the water-woman.

  At least I was right about this trip being an experience the boys won’t soon forget.

  The following day, the weather turned and they made poor time against the heavy sleet and freezing winds. Still, they pressed on for the full day and reached Zaragoza shortly after sunset. Deep within the city, the familiar arches and towers of the Cathedral of San Salvador rose above the surrounding buildings like an ancient, crumbling mountain. Many claimed that
once this massive cathedral, often called La Seo, had been adorned by the most elegant of carved buttresses topped with stone gargoyles and marble angels and bronze saints, and each façade had been covered in triquetras of every size and style from Vlachian to Numidian. But now, after centuries of exposure to the screaming north wind and driving snow and shattering ice, there was precious little beauty left outside the cathedral. And what limited money and manpower there once had been to protect and maintain the building had sailed away to the New World and never returned.

  Lorenzo led his wife and the others along the road that followed the River Elbro to give them what he had hoped to be a grand introduction to the La Seo, but the evening sky was dark and dreary, and a light needling of frozen mist stung their eyes whenever they lifted their heads to look about. They reached the grand entrance to the church, were brusquely directed to the side entrance for travelers with animals, and then began the long ritual of climbing down, unpacking, explaining what exactly Wayra was and how she was to be cared for, and all the other arrangements for their stay.

  Atoq had been a concern when they reached the edge of the city, but Qhora simply climbed down and stroked his head and whispered in his ear, and the giant cat had padded off into a snowy field beside the road. When Lorenzo asked her about it, she simply said, “Don’t worry about him. He knows how to deal with a city.”

  When they finally reached the cathedral’s guest quarters on the upper level, Lorenzo called a quick gathering in the hall outside his room. It felt strange to speak to his wife, his students, and his guests all at once with his natural inclinations to be familiar or formal warring as he looked from one face to the next. “Well, here we are. Home away from home. Alonso, Gaspar, and Hector, there is an empty store room in the cellar that we’ve been given permission to practice in. Feel free to explore, as we have the run of the cathedral, more or less. Don’t disturb the priests, of course, and if they ask you for help doing anything, anything at all, you will do it. Yes?”

  The boys nodded solemnly.

  “As for you three,” he said to the pilot and her two passengers, “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay inside the building, and probably keep away from the public spaces where the townspeople might see you. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about soldiers storming La Seo, but if the mayor demands it, then the bishop will definitely hand you over rather than risk a fight in a house of God over a handful of spies or criminals or whatever it is they think you are. The priests here are good men, but they have their own priorities and their own problems.”

  “Don Lorenzo, might I just say,” Dante said, his voice almost civil for the first time that Lorenzo could recall. “Thank you for bringing us here to this sanctuary. I’m sure you have delivered us from being suddenly discovered by any soldiers from Valencia who might have been pursuing us. However, I’m sure you’ll agree that we’re now well out of danger. From what you told us, I think the man you fought in Algora was more interested in you and your private affairs than any of us. Assuming that’s true, wouldn’t it be reasonable for me, and perhaps the young lady from Eran, to head east to Barcelona and sail back to Italia as soon as possible?”

  “Maybe,” Lorenzo said. “But I think it’s best if we all stay indoors for a day or two and get a sense of the ground under our feet first. I’ll speak to the bishop tomorrow and see what he has to say about the military here in town. If everything is quiet here, then maybe you and your friend can leave.”

  Dante pressed his lips tight for a moment and sniffed. “All right. A day or two.”

  They said their good-nights and retreated to their rooms. Lorenzo sat on the hard pallet he was to share with Qhora for the next few weeks. It was easily one of the three worst beds he had ever felt, and one of those others had been a prison cell floor covered with straw to soak up his urine.

  Qhora closed the door and slipped off her heavy coat. She was still wearing his re-tailored army coat, the belt cinched tight to accentuate her tiny waist. He remembered wearing that coat while slaughtering Incan warriors on the beaches of the New World, his uniform covered in mud and gore.

  And now it’s covered in satin ribbons. Life is strange.

  She said, “Well, here we are. I suppose it could have been worse, this little journey of yours. Enrique could have died.”

  Lorenzo sighed. It’s going to be one of those evenings. “Yes, yes, we all could have died. They would have told stories about it for a hundred years and our ghosts would have roamed the countryside, knocking over milk buckets and frightening small children.” He smiled at her. She worries about death at all the wrong times, but it’s nice that she worries. “But at least we would have been together, my dear. I’m sorry you’ll have to settle for us all being very much alive, here in the grandest cathedral in northern España.”

  “Ah, yes, our life of luxury.” She glanced around at the bare walls and floor of their cell. The only objects in the room were the bed, the pegs for their clothing, and the triquetra hung from the wall above the bed. The narrow window was completed obscured by icy grime on the outside. She smiled.

  Lorenzo laughed. “It will get better, I promise. This is just the first night. We’re all tired and cold and hungry. Everything will look better in the morning.”

  A door creaked in the hall and both them looked sharply at their own closed door, listening. The soft shuffle of footsteps chuffed away down the corridor.

  “It must be Shahera looking for the toilet,” Qhora said.

  Lorenzo didn’t answer. He focused on the cadence of the footsteps, quick and precise. No, the Eranian girl moves more slowly and less certainly. He stood up and slipped his sword belt back on. “I’ll just be a moment.”

  Qhora narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

  He peeked out into the hall and saw no one there. With his left hand holding his weapon still and silent on his hip and his injured right arm aching with every jostle of his body, Lorenzo slipped to the end of the corridor just in time to look down the stairs and see a shadow moving below.

  Well, he isn’t looking for the toilet.

  Down the stairs and around the corner he spotted the hooded figure striding through a narrow doorway, and then down another hall, through a door, across a courtyard, and out into the open starlit streets of Zaragoza. Lorenzo stood in the shadows, watching the figure in Italian boots hurry away down the lane.

  Seriously? You couldn’t wait a single night? Some of us have wives to undress.

  The hidalgo followed Dante through the cold city streets, seeing and hearing no one else outside though he saw and heard many people in their homes, eating and laughing and generally looking warm and comfortable. His injured arm ached fiercely.

  Dante followed the river east and Lorenzo guessed he was looking for some sort of transport on the Elbro itself. Though it was frozen solid and all hulled ships were locked to their moorings, the river’s banks were lined with ice-sailers. The slender canoes rested on long blades on the Elbro’s frozen surface and tall sails carried them flying before the wind from Zaragoza along the mad snaking paths of the river all the way to Amposta on the shores of the Middle Sea.

  There was nothing and no one to be found along the banks of the Elbro, though the wind shrieked mightily and Lorenzo heard bats squeaking in the dark, their leathery wings fighting valiantly against the icy gusts.

  “What are you planning to do, Lorenzo?” a woman’s voice whispered in his ear.

  “Gaaa!” The hidalgo stumbled sideways into the iron chain along the river’s edge that prevented pedestrians from slipping on the ice and falling down to the Elbro’s white face. He clutched his chest as adrenaline burned through his brain and arms.

  Dante!

  He looked up and saw that the Italian had stopped and was looking around, snapping his gaze from one side to another. He looked back at Lorenzo once, directly at him, but the shadows were deep enough and he was huddled low enough to remain unseen. Dante resumed his quick march into the night.

&
nbsp; Lorenzo stood up, glaring at the pale ghost in the street beside him, her silvery outlines shuddering before the wind like a thousand pennants in a fresh morning breeze. “I don’t mean to tell you your business, sister, as I have almost no experience being dead myself, but could you please try to appear in front of me instead of behind me? Even just once in a while? Just for the novelty of it?”

  “I am sorry, Lorenzo,” Ariel said. “But I go where the aether lets me and you have an uncanny knack for standing with the thickest clouds of aether behind you. It’s almost as though the aether sweeps along behind you in a tide wherever you go.”

  “Well, just try harder next time. Please.” Lorenzo exhaled and shuddered away the last of the sudden fright. He set out down the street again. “What did you say?”

  “I asked, what are you planning to do? That is, when you catch up to this silly man?”

  Lorenzo smiled. “You know, I’m not really sure. I suppose I should stop him before he finds someone to talk to.”

  “To drag him back to La Seo? To hold him against his will?”

  Lorenzo frowned. “Well, no. It’s for his own good. We know that Magellan’s sent at least one agent to kill the Mazighs, and there may be others, and by now they may know about Dante and Shahera. Dante’s life is in danger, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.”

  “Ah. So you are out here, tonight, in the cold and the dark, while your lovely wife waits for back in a warm bed, because you are so very concerned for this Dante’s welfare?”

  Lorenzo exhaled slowly, watching his breath curl and spread in a vaporous cloud. “I’m concerned for the lives of all men.”

  The nun shook her head. “Lorenzo, I know you want to believe that, but I also know that you don’t. Not yet, anyway. You love your family more than your friends, your friends more than your countrymen, your countrymen more than strangers, and strangers more than enemies of the faith. Universal love sounds grand in the pulpit, but men are only men. God won’t hate you for not loving this Italian as well as your wife.”