“You speak Mazigh?” Taziri asked. She has a Tingis accent.
“I do now.” She winked and waved the fingers of the hand she had just extended to Taziri. “My name is Bastet. What’s yours?”
“Taziri. Nice to meet you, Bastet.” She glanced at the door one more time. Still locked.
“Oh don’t worry, they won’t be back. And don’t worry about Hasina. Her father is a bit set in his ways, but he wouldn’t hurt her. And even if he wanted to, I wouldn’t let him,” Bastet said. “I keep an eye on all the young ones around here.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Taziri said slowly. “I was actually wondering how exactly you came to be…in here.”
“I go where the aether goes,” the girl said. “And the aether goes everywhere, even if you can’t see it. You’re from Marrakesh, right? I’ve never been to Marrakesh. We used to travel more, my family and I, when I was younger. But my uncle is less interested in the world these days.”
Taziri started to speak but Bastet continued, “I like trains. I’ve seen lots of trains, but this one is different, isn’t it? Is it new?”
“Yes, it’s—”
“Where’s the engine? Usually the engine is right here.” She pointed to the floor in front of her. “But there’s nothing here.”
“The engine is very small.” Taziri thumbed over her shoulder at the nose of the Halcyon. “It’s up there in the front.”
“Is it fast?”
“Very fast.”
“How fast?”
Taziri smiled. “Fast enough to fly.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “This train can fly? Amazing.”
“Well, maybe just a little amazing.” Taziri leaned back. “What exactly did you mean about keeping an eye on the young ones? Do you live around here?”
“Of course. We’ve always lived here. I like to play with the girls around here, and I make sure that the boys aren’t mean to them, and their parents are nice to them.”
That’s not much of an answer. Taziri said, “I see you like cats.”
“Not really. But they like me.”
“But your dress, and that mask.”
“Oh.” She pressed the mask to her face and it stuck there without any ribbons or ties. The detail of the mask was so fine, from the slitted nose to the triangular ears to the subtle openings for the eyes, that it almost appeared as though the features might come alive. Then she took the mask off and said, “It was a present from my aunt. We all have one.” And she sat the mask on top of her head like a cap.
“I know a woman who wears a mask,” Taziri said. “She looks a little strange and people used to hurt her, and it made her afraid all the time. But when she wears the mask, she’s like a whole other person.”
Bastet nodded. “Sounds like my whole family.”
Taziri couldn’t imagine an entire family of Miraris.
“What was it you gave to Hasina?” Bastet asked.
“A compass. Just an old compass.” Taziri held up the little device, its wobbling needle flecked with rust.
“May I?” Bastet took the compass and turned it over and round and over again in her hands. “We used to have these, but they were bigger. Can I keep this?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.”
Taziri pointed at the girl’s necklace. “That’s an unusual pendant. Is it an egg?”
She touched the golden shape. “It’s my heart. It was a present too. We all have one.”
Her heart? Taziri shrugged. “So what does your family do?”
“Not much. They used to do funerals mostly.” Bastet sighed. “I don’t suppose you’re going to make this engine fly any time soon, are you?”
“No, sorry, I have to wait for my passengers to come back. And even then, we don’t have enough fuel to fly away. We’ll be hitching a ride with a train to get back to Marrakesh.”
“Oh. Marrakesh!” The girl’s eyes brightened. “I almost forgot. I wanted to ask you about Marrakesh. Have you ever met a man named Thoth?”
Taziri shook her head. “No, I’ve never heard that name before. Who is he?”
“My grandfather. We haven’t heard from him in a while and I thought he might have gone to Marrakesh.” Bastet frowned. “But he usually uses different names in different places. He called himself Bashir for a while, but I don’t know what name he might be using now.”
“Sorry I couldn’t help. I hope you find him,” Taziri said.
“Thanks.” Bastet stood up. “Are you going to be all right in here?”
“As long as my food and water hold out, I should be fine for another day or two.”
The girl nodded. “I’ll bring you something later. Thanks for looking out for Hasina. And don’t worry. No one will come nosing around here again. Bye!” She slipped her mask down onto her face and for a moment it looked as though the wooden cat mouth curled up into a feline smile. Then Bastet stepped toward the closed hatch and simply vanished into it in a swirl of silvery white vapor.
Taziri chewed her lip and then exhaled slowly.
That was strange even by Espani standards.
Chapter 18
When they returned to the little house where they had left Tycho and Philo, they found the two men sleeping in the shadows. But when they entered Qhora saw that Tycho was watching the door through slitted eyes. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” he said.
“You were right,” Qhora said. “The streets are not safe for us. So here we are. Would you still be willing to help us? Can you take us to the restaurant you mentioned before?”
Tycho sat up and glanced at Philo. The older man snored. The dwarf glanced at the rectangle of light on the floor falling through the single window. “It’s nearly evening. I suppose now is a good time to go there.”
“Because it’s supper time?”
Tycho grinned. “It’s not that sort of restaurant. I think it will be emptying out about now so everyone can go find some food.” He leaned over and shook the old man’s shoulder. “Philo? Philo, it’s time to get up.”
The old Hellan groaned and sat up. He blinked. “Ah, young ladies. Hello again.”
Tycho rattled off a short speech in Hellan and Philo nodded, saying, “Yes, well, then we should be off to this restaurant of iniquity before it is too dark out for us to move about safely.”
The Hellans stood and re-arranged their rumpled clothing. Qhora spotted the small breast plates covering their hearts and the armored greaves under the cuffs of their trousers and the bracers under the cuffs of their sleeves. They both dress for war, but neither one is suited to it. She sighed.
After a moment they were all ready and Philo led them out into the street. Qhora followed close behind him and nearly bumped into him when the old man stopped short and said, “Oh dear.”
Around his side, Qhora sighted a knot of five or six men standing at the end of the lane. Two were staring directly at her. They caught the attention of their fellows and then all of them were staring at her. And then they started striding down the lane with their hands on their belts.
“Oh dear.” Philo turned toward her and the others. “We may wish to step back inside.” The four of them shuffled back into the house, but Tycho tripped over the threshold and there was a delay as Mirari and Qhora helped him to his feet, leaving Philo standing outside in the lane.
A gunshot cracked between the narrow walls.
Qhora turned to see the tall Hellan spin and fall. He seemed to fall slowly, his face tight and lined, lips parted slightly, eyes closing. And then he crashed to the ground.
“No!” Tycho screamed. “Philo!”
Qhora saw the young man’s face flush red, every vein in his neck straining against his flesh as his arms reached out toward his fallen master. He screamed with a dry, hoarse throat as Mirari dragged him bodily into the house and Qhora stepped inside after them and barred the door.
“No, no! We have to help him, we have to get him!” Tycho cried, his eyes the color of sun-bleached san
d. He struggled against Mirari to reach the door, but the masked woman held him firm. Qhora slammed the shutter across the window and then dashed to the back of the house where there was another window, one completely boarded and sealed.
She crashed against the boards once, twice. They creaked but held.
A gunshot splintered the center of the door behind her, admitting a tiny shaft of pale evening light. Tycho cried out again, “Please let me go to him!”
Mirari lifted the young man and carried him closer to the window where Qhora was prying at the boards with her dirk. “My lady, if you please.” She put the sobbing Hellan youth into Qhora’s arms and then in an instant her hatchet was in her hand. Mirari attacked the boarded window with a series of lightning strokes and the wood shattered like glass and the soft red sunset light washed in on them.
Qhora held Tycho almost as easily as Mirari had, but the sounds of his gasping wails were unbearable.
“No! Help him! We have to help him! He’s dying out there! He’s alone! Please!”
More gunshots riddled the door behind them and heavy feet crashed on the portal. The wood groaned and began to crack and splinter inward.
“My lady!” Mirari leapt out the window as easily as a mountain ram climbing a cliff face, and once in the street held out her hands.
Qhora lifted and shoved the young man out into Mirari’s arms.
“No! You bitch! Let me help him! Let me go!”
Qhora scrambled out the window as the door burst from its hinges and she fell to the street as she heard a chorus of men barking orders in Eranian and another two gunshots ripped through the open window above the women’s heads.
“Run!” Mirari heaved poor Tycho over her shoulder, hiked her skirts up to her knee, and ran. Qhora grasped a knife in each hand and ran after her. They ran from alley to street to square, bumping against the rough stone walls and colliding with both angry and surprised-looking pedestrians making their way home for the evening.
Again and again, Qhora looked back for a sign or sound of their pursuers but never once did she see or hear them. And after they had been running for a full quarter hour she called a halt and Mirari jogged to a stop in a quiet side street as the sky was fading to a dusky violet. She set down Tycho and the young Hellan stumbled away, weeping openly. After a moment he wheeled about and pointed at the masked woman, “Don’t you ever touch me again! Not ever! Don’t you dare pick me up like that! Do you hear me?” he hollered, straining what little voice he had left. And then he collapsed to the ground and covered his eyes with his hand, his shoulders shaking.
Qhora gave him a moment, during which she went back to watch the street around the corner to be certain they were not being followed. Finally she came back to the others and squatted by Tycho. “I’m very sorry about your friend, but there was nothing we could do for him. He was dead before he fell. I’m sure it was over in an instant. Painless.”
She knew nothing of the kind. She hadn’t seen where he had been shot, and for all she knew the old man was still alive at that very moment, bleeding out the last of his life’s blood and gasping out his last breath, all alone in a little lane in a strange city.
Maybe. But he probably died quickly all the same.
For the next few minutes, they all just sat in the shadows as the shadows grew darker. They caught their breath and composed themselves and checked the street several times for pursuers. Finally Mirari said, “My lady, we need to be moving on.”
“Yes. Tycho, can you still take us to the restaurant where the Osirians meet?”
The young man looked up at her, his face calm but discolored and lined with misery. “Why? Your husband is as dead as Philo. Finding the killer will change nothing. He’ll still be just as dead.”
Qhora almost lashed out at him, but the empty and haunted look in his eyes was too familiar to the face she had seen in the mirror last night and the night before. She knelt beside him and said, “You’re right. My Enzo is dead, and nothing can change that. His soul is trapped in a seireiken blade, and maybe nothing can change that either. But the souls of the dead do live on, in their own way. And Enzo’s soul belongs with me, not with some killer. And that killer should be brought to justice, not left free to kill again. Enzo dedicated his life to peace as well as justice. I have to do this for him.”
“And what about Philo? What about his killers?”
“I don’t know who they were or what they wanted. It looked like they were waiting for us. Or maybe they were just waiting for anyone they could rob. I don’t know. But if you will help us, then we will help you.”
Tycho stared dejectedly at the ground.
“Tell me about Philo. Did you know him well?”
The dwarf nodded. “He saved my life. In Hellas, or at least in the province of Sparta, they don’t let the sick or the deformed live. I should have been killed as soon as I was born. My own parents would have killed me. But Philo was there. He was passing through the town and heard about my birth and came to pay his respects. And when he saw me and knew what was about to happen, he took me. He just picked me up, carried me off to Constantia, and raised me as his own.” Tycho looked up. “We’ve never been apart in all my life.”
Qhora put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I lost my father too, when I was very young.”
Tycho exhaled slowly. “I want to go back. I want to find him, to tend his body. But…I guess it’s not safe. And there are others back in the Hellan Quarter who will see to his body, I suppose. They won’t leave him out in the street. We’ve only been here a week, but we did make a few friends. They’ll take care of him.” He nodded and sighed. Then he looked up, his eyes clear and piercing. “I’ll finish what we started. We were sent to find a seireiken, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. For Philo.”
Qhora managed to smile at him. He’s trying to be brave. He’s trying to say the right thing, the brave thing, the noble thing. But it’s not what he wants. I can see it in his eyes. He wants to go home. He wants to run. But he won’t. He won’t run.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go find you a sword, and find me mine.”
They stood and hesitated a moment as Tycho realized that he must take the lead, but then he set out and the ladies followed. The sky was quite dark now, salted with a few bright stars and scarred with long thin clouds discolored in dark red hues. Candles flickered in every window and torches blazed on every street corner. Fiery cinders fluttered up from the brands amidst the smoke.
The small Hellan walked as quickly as he could, but Qhora grit her teeth and tried to will him to move faster. Night had already fallen and there was so much still to be done.
After weaving through the thin crowds and occasionally hiding in a shadowed doorway to avoid a particularly unpleasant group of men, they arrived at the restaurant. The windows were dark and there were no people loitering near the entrance. Tycho waved at the writing over the doors and said, “The Cat’s Eye.”
“You can read Eranian? And speak it too?” Qhora asked.
“Yes. Constantia is a city of many languages. And besides, if you want to interrogate the enemy or intercept their messages, you need to know their speech.” There was a quiet dryness to the young Hellan’s voice, as though his body and mind were simply going through the motions and doing what needed to be done without any feeling or passion or desire.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
Qhora walked up to the doors and knocked. After a moment, the door opened and a stern-faced woman in a conservative black dress stepped out.
“Do you speak Espani?” Qhora asked.
“We’re closed for the evening,” the woman said in a labored Eranian accent.
“I can see that. But I’m trying to find someone and I think you might be able to help me.”
“I said we’re closed. You can come back in the morning.”
Qhora tried to smile. “I would, but we’re in a bit of rush and we’re hoping to find our friend tonight.”
/> The woman did not smile back. “No one comes to The Cat’s Eye looking for friends.”
Qhora placed her hands on her hips, pushing back the tailored sides of her husband’s old army jacket to reveal the handle of one of her dirks. “Of course you’re right. We’re looking for one of the men in the green robes, from the Temple of Osiris. A young man who just returned from Marrakesh.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re looking for Aker?”
“Aker?” The man who killed my Enzo is named Aker.
“Aker El Deeb.” The woman nodded. “He’s here. He’s with my mistress.”
Aker El Deeb. Qhora swallowed and exhaled. “Can I see him?”
“Do you mean to kill him?” the woman asked sharply.
Qhora nodded. “Yes.”
“Then yes, please come in.” The woman stepped back inside.
Qhora and the others followed. “Is there some reason why you’re being so helpful?”
The woman paused. They were standing in the center of a large dining room, a darkened hall full of empty chairs and empty tables. “My mistress is a complicated woman. At her best, she is quite impressive. Intelligent. Cunning. Dangerous. Powerful. For the last year, business has been good. Very good. Then Aker returned.”
“They have a history. Aker and your mistress?” Qhora asked.
“They were lovers once. And judging from the noises coming from upstairs, they are again at this very moment. And that is a problem.” The woman sighed. “When they are together, she’s different. She drinks. She talks like an empty-headed child. She stops caring about anything but playing with her little toy, and that is very bad for business.”
Qhora nodded. “I take it you care about business.”
“I’m only a clerk now. But my mistress’s star is rising and I intend to rise with it. And that means no more Aker. I was beginning to think I would need to kill him myself, but if you would like the honor, I am happy to arrange an introduction. On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You will wait until they are apart, and then kill him alone. And you will leave no evidence that connects you to me.”
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