Asha. He smiled a crooked smile.
He inhaled and exhaled. And again. And again. He did not cough. He waved down to the others and a soft cheer rose among them, followed by a fresh bout of hacking and coughing.
So for the next two hours, Asha stood on the hot boiler and violently yanked the black slime from the men’s lungs, slowly filling her bucket nearly to the brim. But each man stood up from the ordeal with a relieved smile and climbed down in good spirits. And an hour before noon, she was done.
As Asha climbed down the ladder, she saw Sebek striding across the yard toward her. He met her just as she set the bucket of black sludge down on the ground, and he said, “Well? I hear you’re done, and ahead of schedule.”
“I am. See for yourself. They’re all fine now.”
“Good. They’re all needed. That’s a clever trick of yours with the steam and the bellows. Who taught it to you?”
“No one. It was my idea.”
Sebek nodded. “I’d be willing to pay you a decent wage to stay here as our camp physician. I need someone like you to keep the men on their feet.”
Asha shook her head. “Thank you, but no. My friend and I need to be moving on when the train leaves for Herat.”
“Ah. Pity.” He began walking slowly back toward his office.
Asha followed. “May I ask about your sword? I saw you use it yesterday. The wound was so small and there was no blood, but that man died instantly. Why?”
Sebek smiled briefly and patted the blade on his hip. “Magic.”
“No, really. What is it?”
He stopped abruptly to frown down at her. “It’s something deadly. Something dangerous. Something you should ignore, lest I draw it out for another demonstration of its properties.”
Asha nodded slowly.
“You kept your end of the bargain,” Sebek said. “The injured men will be fed until they can work again. And you are welcome to ride the train back to Herat tomorrow. It will leave at noon. Be on time. It will not wait for you.”
“I understand. Thank you.” Asha watched the man in green return to his office and then she paced slowly back to sit beside Priya in the shade of their tent near the injured men.
“What’s wrong?” the nun asked.
“How do you know something is wrong?” Asha said.
“You breathe slower when something is wrong.”
“Oh.” Asha sighed. “Well, I’ll tell you. In my bag, there is a special needle-”
“The one with the three notches?”
Asha looked at her sharply. “How do you know that?”
“I went through your bag once and handled all of your tools.” Priya smiled.
“Why?”
“In case you were ever in trouble and needed me to hand you something. I thought it best to be prepared if there was such an emergency. And because I was curious.”
Asha shrugged. “Well, yes, the needle with the three notches. It’s an aether siphon. I insert it under the skin to draw out excess aether in the blood. When I was taught to use it, I was told that if I ever drove the needle in too deep, or left it in for more than a few seconds at a time, it would kill the patient.”
“Is the needle poisonous?”
“No. But it is made of a strange metal that looks like copper, or gold.” Asha reached into her bag for a sliver of ginger, which she poked into the corner of her mouth. “But now I’m beginning to wonder. What if the siphon can draw out more than just aether? After all, aether can move with or cling to a soul. So what if the needle could draw out a person’s soul? That would kill them instantly.”
Priya nodded.
“Sebek’s sword.” Asha frowned. “It gives off a strange light. And it kills instantly without making a fatal wound. What if his sword is one giant aether siphon? What if it’s made of the same metal?”
“That would be terrible. No one should have such a weapon. You should speak to him about it right away. He may not understand what he has.”
“No. He didn’t appreciate my curiosity just now. And I got the impression he understood just fine. So it might be better if I take a look on my own. Tonight.”
6
After a long afternoon of adjusting splints and changing bandages, and after a bland supper of flat bread and some sort of flavorless paste, Asha sat in her tent and waited for darkness. Priya stretched out on her blanket with little Jagdish on her stomach, and soon both the nun and mongoose were fast asleep. When the sky was black and the camp was silent, Asha stepped out into the pale starlight.
She made a wide circle around the camp, quietly hiking up the southern hillside to come around behind the wooden houses and offices. Sebek’s office had no windows, but the light of his lantern shone through the cracks in the walls. So Asha waited.
Eventually the lantern in the office dimmed and Asha saw Sebek emerge on the far side of the little buildings and make his way down the row to another identical house. Once inside, his lantern again shone through the cracks where the boards were warped and no longer fit together, but after only a few moments the light was extinguished and the house was dark.
Asha crept down the hillside, moving with excruciating care to prevent the loose dusty pebbles from rolling down the slope and revealing her presence. Her poisoned ear brought her the low hums of the souls of men scattered throughout the camp, but she focused on the one right in front of her. Sebek was alone.
When she reached the bottom of the slope, Asha sat down in the shadows against the back side of Sebek’s bunkhouse. She sat in the cold and the dark, listening to the man behind her as he undressed, moved about the room, lay down on the creaking bed, and then slowly, very slowly, fell asleep. Then Asha knelt and peered through the narrow cracks in the walls, willing her tired eyes to focus on the dim shapes inside the room. A bed, a trunk, a chair. She shifted to another crack and studied the room again, but she could not see the sword.
Easing down to the ground, her eye passed over a smaller crack and a black shape caught her attention. Peering through the tiny gap, she saw the outline of the sheathed sword lying on the floor beneath the bed.
The little house stood on four thick wooden blocks, leaving a narrow gap between the floor and the ground. Moving slowly and quietly, Asha crawled under the bunkhouse, squeezing through the small space between the freezing earth and the warped boards. Peering up through the dark cracks she saw the sword above her lying diagonally across the boards. With a pair of plain steel needles, she reached up through the gap and pushed the sword over until she could see the point where the scabbard ended and the hilt began. Then she pressed the tips of her needles into the gap and pulled them apart. The sword edged out from its scabbard by a hair, and then a hair more. And suddenly a warm golden light was shining down into her eyes.
Asha grabbed the hem of her sari and pressed it up over the gap in the boards to smother the light pouring down onto her face. Through the cloth in her hand, she felt a dry heat radiating from above.
With her sari in one hand and a needle in the other, she exposed a tiny section of the sword and carefully touched the bright blade. Instantly the needle grew hot in her fingers and her hand shook. The tip of the needle scratched her other thumb as she pushed the slender steel tool back up against blade.
Suddenly, a chorus of voices rose in her mind. She heard men and women muttering and whispering, perhaps to each other or perhaps to themselves. They spoke Eranian as well as two or three other languages that Asha did not know, but as she lay still trying to understand what she was hearing, an image appeared in her mind. She saw a city, an ancient city of huge stone fortresses and shining marble temples, wide avenues teeming with people and animals and carts, a long harbor full of sailing ships and heavy barges that belched steam just like the black train engine, and in the center of the harbor an enormous lighthouse towered above the sea, its powerful lantern
