Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “We’re fifty feet underground, near the edge of the empty field.”

  “Very good,” said the Duchess. “With nothing on the surface, there’s no reason for the airships to bomb this area. Good thinking, major.”

  Tycho nodded. He was too tired and too worried to feel any pride in the compliment.

  Salvator hobbled out into the room and sighed loudly. “Well, if we must, we must.”

  For the next ten minutes, Tycho watched the Duchess direct the clerks and porters and other servants carrying in the machinery of government, hauling chests and desks and tables and an endless supply of paper into the dingy, dark hall. Torches were set and lit, furniture was arranged, and within half an hour the center of the ancient hall resembled a large office ringed in fire light, already bustling with the mundane business of reconciling numbers and reports and issuing new orders. Couriers began jogging out the door, heading for the surface to deliver their new papers to the officers outside.

  Toward the center of the room was a round table with a square map laid on it with the corners drooping over the edges. Wooden figures of soldiers, marines, horses, archers, and ships were scattered over the map to show the last known positions of every defender in the city. They were scattered very thinly.

  “You see, this would have been an ideal moment for two forward thinking gentlemen to be on a ship sailing away across the placid Sea of Marmara toward the Ionian coast,” Salvator said from his chair. “Have you ever been to Palermo? It’s quite picturesque in the winter. And when spring comes, those two gentlemen might take a leisurely journey up to Rome to seduce foolish young women and kill arrogant young priests. For money, of course.”

  “How are your stitches?” Tycho asked, his eyes never leaving the map.

  “Holding, for the moment. Your common Hellan surgeon is no match for even the lowliest Italian tailor, but I suspect I’m going to survive.”

  Tycho said nothing. He stood by the map, his arms folded, his foot tapping, as he waited for the runners to start bringing fresh reports so the map could be updated and he could offer the Duchess some new idea, some new tactic that might help save Constantia from the airships. But as he stood waiting, his mind was a blank. His eyes traveled up to the young woman in black, to her long red hair cascading around her shoulders in wild tumbling locks, her tall red ears poking up in front of the black scarf that was slipping back over her head, and to her pale white hands with the jangling silver bracelets.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked her. “Can I get you anything?” He frowned as he glanced around the makeshift office in the dank cavern.

  That was stupid. What the hell can I get her? A handful of dirty water?

  “I’m fine.” She flashed a brief, tired smile and came over to stand beside him and look at the map of the city. “Just restless. I don’t like standing still, waiting for something to happen to me. I spent a long time with my first teacher, Gudrun, in this one little village, just listening to old stories and learning about herbs. And toward the end, I couldn’t even leave the tower for more than an hour or two. It wasn’t safe. But then when I did leave the tower, it was nothing but running and fighting and arguing and more running. Even after I left Ysland with Omar, it’s been nothing but moving and moving. We sailed across the Sea of Ice in a ship made of steel, and rode through frozen forests on huge shaggy horses, and then crossed the glaciers on sleds pulled by dogs.”

  “It sounds like it was hard. And cold.”

  “It was, but it was wonderful. I saw new places, met strange people. I talked to ghosts hundreds of years old and visited tiny villages in the mountains that can barely survive, but somehow do, generation after generation.” Wren stared up at the shadowy ceiling as she spoke in soft, reverent tones. “And then we reached Vlachia and saw the walking corpses, and fought them, and escaped here, and the war, and Yaga…”

  “Not a moment to rest?”

  “Not a one.” She glanced at him. “I guess I’m starting to like it that way. I don’t like just standing still like this, especially in the dark. Waiting in the dark. It brings back bad memories.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s only for a day or two,” he said. “But at least we’ll be safe from the bombs.”

  “Right, the bombs.” She nodded absently. “If they ever drop any bombs.”

  He sighed. “If. When.”

  Wren looked sharply to her right. “Did you hear that?”

  Tycho turned to peer into the deep shadows at the far end of the hall. He heard people murmuring and papers shuffling and pens scratching, and faintly, he heard water dripping. “What was it?”

  Wren’s ears twitched, jerking left and right in tiny increments. “It was like footsteps. Tapping, but irregular, not like the dripping. And scraping, like boots.”

  Tycho frowned a bit deeper as he started walking through the office space and out beyond the perimeter of torches across the wet tiles toward the dark corners and sealed doors. He heard nothing. Still, he drew his white-handled Mazigh revolver and pointed it at the shadows and stood very still, listening.

  Wren followed a moment later and stood behind him. “I hear it. Scratching.”

  “It could be rats in the walls,” he said quietly.

  “Maybe.”

  One of the sealed doors in front of them banged against its hinges and the deep wooden thump echoed across the room. A dozen clerks looked up from their papers.

  Tycho pointed his gun at the door and took a few more steps forward. “That wasn’t a rat.”

  “What else could be down here?” she asked. “Are there other parts of this palace used for other things? Could other people be down here for shelter too?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  But probably not.

  Tycho waved to two of the soldiers to follow him and they crossed the room through cold puddles and over crackling, uneven tiles to the door that had banged. It was a double door hung in a thick frame of carved pillars crowned with stone leaves and flowers.

  “Hello?” he called.

  The doors banged, and banged again. Something heavy was striking the wood panels, and the doors shook on their hinges, rattling against the old iron locks that held them together. They banged a third time and the left door cracked apart a bit, splintering just enough to reveal a sliver of darkness on the far side.

  And from that darkness a pale blue hand clawed into the light.

  “Guards! Get over here!” Tycho grabbed Wren’s hand and pointed his gun at the door.

  I have six bullets. I can kill six of them, at most. Six, and then we’re all dead.

  He squeezed Wren’s hand and grimaced.

  Palermo is sounding very nice right about now.

  Chapter 22

  Omar stood on the banks of the Bosporus and gazed up at the beautiful towers of the Mazdan temples beyond the tiled roofs of the ancient villas and mansions and princely estates of Stamballa. It was late in the morning, nearly noon, and the droning of the approaching airships reverberated across the pale winter sky.

  “We’re certain the entire district is empty?” Omar asked.

  I can’t believe I’m about to be a party to this.

  “My scouts have been to the top of the hill,” Vlad said. “Half a league or so from the water. The houses are all empty.”

  Omar nodded grimly. “Then I suppose we should get started. Those airships will be overhead in just a few minutes.” He paced up the cobblestone lane to the first house and plunged his seireiken into the joint between the top of the wall and the bottom of the roof. The stones began to glow a dull red and the old timbers of the house burst into flame.

  As he stood there, making certain the house was well and truly on fire, Omar noticed the dim shade of Ito Daisuke standing beside him. “Yes?”

  “This is your side of the border, isn’t it? Imperial soil?”

  Omar sighed. “Yes.”

  “And you’re setting fire to this city to save that other city?”

  Omar stifl
ed a glare. “Yes.”

  “Ah.” The dead samurai paced along the front of the house, looking up at the burning roof.

  Omar pulled his seireiken free, walked to the next house, and plunged the blade up into the roof. A second fire crackled to life.

  “I know you said you would help the Hellans with their little witch problem, with the walking dead and such,” Daisuke said. “And I respect that. But that task appears to be complete. Koschei is free, Yaga is under control, and the army of corpses was defeated.”

  “So?”

  “So why are you now helping the Hellans to fight the Turks?” The samurai gestured to the street around them as the Constantian marines and Vlachian archers strode by, tossing torches onto roofs and kicking in doors to ransack the abandoned houses. “This has nothing to do with you, or your promise. This is barely even warfare. This is simple barbarism, and you appear to be on the wrong side of it.”

  “If the airships bomb Constantia, thousands of innocent people will die. But if they bomb us here, only a few soldiers will be in danger.” Omar moved on up the street.

  “This is about saving lives?” The samurai frowned. “You’ve spent the last forty-five centuries searching for arcane knowledge to overcome death, to transcend humanity, and to meet the Divine face to face.”

  “Your point?”

  “Your confrontation with the witches and the corpses might have advanced your knowledge, and helped your search for truth. It didn’t, but it might have. But this little enterprise?” Daisuke paused. “It profits you nothing.”

  Omar pulled his sword free and continued up the lane. The burning roofs behind him crackled merrily as the flames danced higher, and the beams inside began to snap and buckle. “I suppose not. But it’ll make the world a slightly better place. Less dying, and so on.”

  “Perhaps.” Daisuke nodded. “Except for the people who live in this neighborhood. They’ll be homeless.”

  Omar sighed. “Except for them, I suppose.” He continued up the lane, occasionally cutting through alleyways parallel to the water, and always poking his blazing seireiken up into the eaves of the little fishermen’s houses, setting fire to the district and hoping the smoke would catch the eyes of the airship pilots and bombardiers.

  The ghost of Ito Daisuke appeared again, and behind him ten thousand other dead faces hovered in the distance. Omar sighed. “What?”

  “When this is over and you finally returned to Alexandria, what then?” Daisuke paced along the street, his shadowy wooden geta sandals clacking silently on the cobblestones.

  “I don’t know.” Omar smiled. “I really don’t.”

  A sudden outbreak of men shouting and boots pounding drew Omar’s gaze up the hill where he saw the marines and Vlachians running across an intersection.

  “Hm.” He sheathed his bright sun-steel blade and jogged up the road, and cut across two lanes to find the Hellans arrayed in a loose formation across a narrow street with Vlad at their center. Above and beyond them, Omar saw another company of men forming, this one dressed in blue uniforms and light armor, with Numidian rifles in their hands.

  Damn. Just what we wanted to avoid.

  Prince Vlad held his own seireiken high over his head and shouted, “Radu! Where are you, Radu?”

  Omar sagged and slouched and wished Wren was there to share an exasperated look with him.

  What the hell is that fool thinking?

  “Radu!” the prince cried.

  The Eranian troops continued to trickle into the street and the long rifles in their hands were leveled at the ragged band of Hellans and Vlachians with their varied assortment of knives, pistols, swords, and bows.

  Omar faded back against the wall of a house.

  This is not going to end well.

  He slipped around the corner onto a side street, out of the field of fire, took several backward paces to be sure no one had noticed him leaving, and then turned and nearly ran face-first into a very broad and hairy chest. Koschei looked down at him, confused.

  “Grigori! What is happening?”

  Omar glanced over his shoulder. “I think Vlad is about to have a pissing contest with his little brother, and lose.”

  “Ha! This should be fun. We watch them fight and we get to kill all these stupid little Turks too, eh? Oh, so sorry, Grigori. I forget sometimes that these are your people. You don’t have to help me kill them, I can do this alone.” The hulking Rus warrior frowned at the crowd of soldiers at the end of the street, wavering as though uncertain whether he wanted to join them. Then he looked back down and said, “But I think they’ll have to do without us for now. Vlad is a man, and he can die like one if he likes. There is other business for you and me.”

  “What business?”

  Koschei turned and strode away.

  Omar ran after him. “What business?”

  Koschei didn’t answer. He continued down the deserted street past the burning houses. The sounds of fire woofed and roared and crackled all around them as the bright yellow cinders fluttered down from the black pillars of smoke creeping up into the sky.

  They turned several corners, moving up higher away from the water, and finally Koschei pointed across the road to a gated estate. Omar gave it a quick glance and was about to ask his question for a third time when he looked back sharply at the gate. A slender figure shuffled out from the shadows and walked smack into the gate, knocking it halfway open on its creaking hinges.

  “Some sort of graveyard,” Koschei said, waving at the gate. “The soldiers tell me, back in the boats, that the dead are rising, yes? Is no problem. I see this all the time in Rus, just not so many. So I get you to help me.”

  “How many?” Omar glanced up at the sky. The sun was shining and the breeze blowing through the street was almost warm as it carried the heat of the burning houses through the winter air.

  How can they still be rising? The aether should be melting, and Wren took Yaga’s bracelets! Damn it!

  He drew his sword and the blade’s light fell on the black and blue face of the corpse in the gateway. “Can’t we just lock the gate and keep them in there?”

  “There is no lock,” Koschei said. “And I have no rope.”

  Omar grimaced. “I don’t have time for this. I should be helping Vlad stop this idiotic war.”

  Koschei shrugged. “Is fine. Let me borrow your sword. I can do this.”

  Omar gave the warrior a tired look. “Have you ever held a seireiken before? Do you know anything about them?”

  “What’s to know? Blade is hot, don’t touch. This I know.”

  Omar’s shoulders sagged. “Your mother never taught you how to contain and subdue a captive soul, did she?”

  “No, why?”

  Omar tightened his grip on the seireiken, wishing he had something precious to smash on the ground to express his true feelings about the situation. “Fine! Fine, I’ll stay and deal with this. Let’s just be quick about it, all right?”

  Koschei smiled a hideous grin of cracked lips and broken teeth. “Whatever you say, Grigori!”

  They jogged up to the graveyard gate and Omar saw that the corpse standing in their way was barely moving now, and its skin had none of the icy sparkle of the ones he had seen in Targoviste or at the north gate of Constantia.

  The aether is melting after all. Just not fast enough for my taste. If only we had a chain for this gate! This is all so uncivilized!

  Omar cut down the dead man and stepped inside the graveyard. It was a small place full of stone mausoleums and paved walkways, a tiny city for the wealthy dead. But most of the stone doors had been pushed open and several dozen crooked men and women stood scattered across the area, moaning softly and dragging their feet along the paths.

  He rubbed his forehead to ward off the imminent headache. “All right, just grab a stone or brick or something and knock them down as fast as you can.”

  “Of course.” Koschei jogged away to the left and snatched up a rock on his way to attacking his first corp
se.

  Omar moved more slowly. In broad daylight, the faces of the dead were far clearer and in the heat of the sun they were all in far worse states of decay. Their dried flesh hung in tatters from their cheeks and arms like shredded clothing. The immortal Aegyptian squinted and held a handkerchief over his mouth and nose as he worked his way down the paths, hacking apart the barely moving bodies at arm’s length as quickly as he could without getting bits of them on himself.

  The dead people offered no struggle. They didn’t run to attack him or to escape him. They simple stood there and let him cut them down.

  When he was done, Omar returned to the gate where Koschei was sitting, picking his nose. “You’re sure you got them all?”

  The Rus man nodded. “Pretty sure.”

  “Good enough.” Omar glanced back one more time at the quiet little necropolis of neatly built stone houses and neatly arrayed stone paths, and the dismembered corpses scattered all over them. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  Chapter 23

  Wren stayed back as Tycho fired his gun again and again into the dark gap in the broken door. Every time a pale face or empty eye socket lunged into view, the little major’s revolver would bang and the rotting skull would burst apart and disappear.

  “I’m almost out,” Tycho said.

  There were two other soldiers beside them with rifles aimed at the doors, but neither of them had fired. Wren glanced at the young Hellans and saw their hands shaking and lips moving with silent prayers.

  “We can barricade the door with the tables and things!” Wren pointed back at the office furniture in the middle of the room.

  “Yes, a barricade!” Tycho fired again. “Go, go!”

  Wren let go of his hand and ran back to the office area where the makeshift war room had frozen in the middle of its business as every bloodless face stared in horror at the doors slowly cracking apart from the outside.

  “The tables! Get the desks, grab everything, use it to block the doors!” she shouted.

  One by one, the clerks and servants blinked back to life, cast frightened nods at one another, and began lifting the tables and scrambling like drunken crabs to carry the furniture to the doors. The pale Italian slowly stood up, drew his golden rapier, and staggered after them.