Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “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 inside 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

  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.”

  Taziri rolled her eyes. “Thank you so much.” She took one last look at Qhora and her feathered companion, and then she sat down in the pilot’s seat for her last few preflight checks. Minutes later, the Halcyon was clacking down the westward track out of Carthage. When they were clear of the city, she pulled the big lever and the machine was once again transformed from locomotive to aeroplane and they clawed their way high into the midmorning sky. Taziri brought them around in a wide arc to point eastward along the northern coast of Ifrica, and pushed the throttle forward.

  I hope this is a very brief detour.

  The flight from Carthage to Alexandria was only slightly longer than the flight from Tingis, but she had only gotten a brief reprieve from the pilot’s seat at the rail yard. One hour? One and a half? How long can I go until I absolutely need to sleep? Even after we land, will it be safe for me to sleep at all?

  Taziri tried to wiggle her toes and stretch her legs, and roll her shoulders and massage her neck while flying the plane, but the flight stick, throttle, and control pedals all required constant attention so there was no real escape from the droning stress of the task at hand. Fortunately, she had plenty of food and water stashed in the small compartments and cubbies and nets all around her and she could buy herself a few moments of distraction by eating dried fruit and spiced nuts, and drinking lukewarm tea splashed with mint.

  Eventually, she told her passengers about the food stashed under their seats as well.

  Hours passed. The sun drifted effortlessly across the sky, shifting from slightly ahead of them to slight behind, and then directly behind as the afternoon grew later. Taziri kept one eye on the ground below, always keeping the Halcyon directly on the coast with the continent on her right and the Middle Sea shining on her left. But even if luck wasn’t with her, the weather certainly was. It was a bright clear day with only a few white, puffy clouds and there was no danger of a storm or fog to throw them off course or otherwise threaten their journey.

  After six hundred miles, Taziri frowned.

  Over halfway now. This is it. I’m committed to the plan. Not enough fuel to get back to Carthage even if I wanted to. Damn, this is stupid. We didn’t need the money this badly. It was only a few months’ income…

  From time to time, they passed over a tiny village or a small town on the coast, and each time Taziri consulted her maps and fuel gauge, checking to see whether the Trans-Eranian Railway entered the town itself. But each time the rails ran past to the south and she was reassured that they had not yet found Alexandria.

  It was very late in the afternoon when she saw the railroad tracks sweep in closer to the coast and a dark blot appeared on the ground, studded with fiery lights. The city sprawled more than five miles along the edge of the Middle Sea, and another mile inland. The harbor was divided by a long hammer-head peninsula, and just east of that and to the right a circular lake marked the southern edge of the city. Huge stone towers glowed red in the light of the setting sun, and huge windmills turned slowly in the sea breeze. Hundreds of ships, from tiny fishing dories to sleek xebecs to massive ironclad steamers drew bright wake trails through the harbors.

  Here we are. Taziri grimaced. Alexandria.

  She circled about onc
e to line up with what seemed to be a less important-looking railroad track on the west side of the city and she landed the Halcyon with a sharp clang and shudder using the guide clamp. With the wings folded up, she was confident that no one would think the machine was anything other than a locomotive, but she had no idea what sorts of flying machines were common in the Empire and no idea how curious the locals might be. She kept up their speed as they clacked along the rails past farms and houses, past shops and temples, past warehouses and factories, and didn’t stop until they had passed straight through a small train station and rolled into a wide, shadowy rail yard where a dozen old freight cars and one ancient steam engine sat in dusty silence.

  Taziri shut everything down quickly and then locked down the engine’s starter, the fuel cap, the folding wings, and the propeller. Even if they capture this thing, she thought grimly, they won’t be able to do anything with it.

  Finally, she unstrapped herself from her seat and turned to watch her passengers stand and stretch and mutter to each other. “Dona Qhora,” she said, “I should tell you that you will not find the people here, that is, the men here, as chivalrous as those in España. There are two kinds of men in Eran. Those who have been well-educated in all things, and those who have been educated only in one thing. Ego. The former will ignore you. But the latter may treat you poorly for being a foreigner, and for not upholding their faith, and most of all just for being a woman.”

  The Incan lady stood up, imperious in her military jacket with her hulking eagle on her arm. “What would you suggest then?”

  Taziri frowned and glanced at the Italian. “Stay close to Salvator. As long as people think you are with him, they will probably ignore you.”