Asha frowned and looked back down the alleyway. Out in the dusty street she could see the soldiers now, picking their way over the debris and helping a few coughing, limping people away from the ruin. “Normally I would agree with you, but help has come for the injured already. And I don’t want those soldiers to see this girl and her ears. They may not be as understanding as we are.”
“Ah.” Priya nodded sadly. “Then perhaps we might find a quiet place to continue our conversation, somewhere away from the street. Perhaps a place that serves tea?”
Omar smiled, but there was a strange exhaustion and sorrow in his eyes.
“What about the temple?” Wren asked. “What about the Osirians?”
Everyone looked at her, and then looked back down the alley at the mountain of broken stone and wood lying in the street in the gathering shadows.
“Shouldn’t we be worried about the Sons of Osiris?” the fox-eared girl asked.
“I rather think not,” Omar said. “I was only being poetic when I suggested that we raze the place to the ground. But it would appear that some sort of earthquake took my meaning more literally. I hardly see any need to go back there now. Do you?”
“But…” Wren frowned. “I guess not. You really think it was an earthquake? Because I-”
“I think I saw a place earlier where we can talk,” Asha said a bit loudly. “It isn’t far. Perhaps we should go there. If that’s all right with you.”
“Certainly, kind lady.” Omar helped Wren to her feet and they followed Asha and Priya to the back end of the alley and out into the quiet evening traffic. Most of the large animals and carts were gone now and the only people in the street were dusty laborers heading home and wealthy merchants heading to supper, with a few armed soldiers and book-laden scholars here and there among them. Many of them stood in the road, talking excitedly and pointing in the direction of the fallen temple, and several thin streams of people were jogging toward the corners and the alleys to investigate the disaster.
Several minutes later, the foursome sat down together around a small round table in the corner of a small cafe that Omar described as “a rather Mazigh” sort of establishment. A steaming teapot was placed on the table with four small cups, and they sat for several moments, sipping their tea and brushing the dust from their clothes and hair.
Asha stared into her cup at the dark liquid swirls.
I didn’t plan. I didn’t even think. I just walked up to the temple and pulled it down. I pulled it down on this girl, Wren, the girl I was trying to save.
I was lucky no one else in the street was hurt. But how many people inside the temple died? How many are trapped and dying still? And what if there were other slaves inside?
I didn’t think. The dragon came free and did what it always does, what it always wants. Death and devastation. And I let it happen.
Ash set down her cup and looked at the two strangers. “You asked about the immortals we met. In Babylonia, there was a man named Gideon.”
Omar looked up. “Gideon! Really? Everyone’s seeing Gideon these days. I haven’t seen that boy in ages. How is he?”
“He’s fine. Better than fine, he was one of the happiest people I’ve ever met,” she said. “We helped him in the mountains, and he helped us with a small problem of our own. We were only together a few hours.”
“Oh.” Omar nodded. “Well, it’s good to know he’s still doing well. I worry about him.”
“A few weeks later, we met an immortal woman named Nadira when we were passing through Damascus,” Asha continued.
Omar’s face was a mad blend of astonishment and amusement. “Nadira, too?”
“We spent the night together in the hills, dealing with a… local problem,” Asha said. “She seemed like a very sad person. I wanted to help her, but she left in the morning. I think she went north to some war.”
“She did,” Omar said. “I saw her in Constantia just over a month ago.”
“So she’s all right?”
Omar shrugged. “The last time I saw her, she had decided to give up being a soldier and to try doing something else with her life. But then she wandered off and I haven’t seen her since, and I don’t know if I ever will again.”
“I see.” Asha glanced at Wren. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, thanks.” The girl in black smiled nervously as she sipped her tea.
Out in the street the traffic was growing a bit heavier again, and it was all flowing back toward the temple. The words Osiris and Demon were on every tongue, and half the heads in the cafe were glancing nervously out at the road, and at the red-clad soldiers who strode by every few moments on their way to the temple
“You said something back in the alley,” Asha said. “About the temple. About razing it to the ground. But I saw you walking up to the doors. Tell me, what were you doing there? Do you have any idea what those Osirian people do?”
The girl in black glanced at the Aegyptian man.
Priya laid her hand on Asha’s in one of her unnerving displays of spatial awareness. “I think what Asha means to say is that we have some concerns about the Sons of Osiris, and we’re curious about why you were going to see them.”
Omar cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, Wren began to speak. “We came to Alexandria to find and destroy certain dangerous objects. Things made from a metal called sun-steel. This metal has the ability to-”
“Trap and enslave human souls,” Asha said. “Yes, I know about it. It’s what those little golden heart pendants of yours are made of, and the seireiken swords.”
The girl held up her gloved hands, displaying the eight silver bracelets on her wrists. A shallow groove ran around the center of each bracelet, and in each groove was a dark golden wire. Wren said, “In the north, we call the metal rinegold, and it’s used to preserve the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors. The wise-women, the valas, give their souls to the rinegold willingly.”
Asha frowned. “I suppose that’s the least offensive use for it that I’ve seen yet. But Gideon had the right idea. He has a sun-steel sword himself, but he uses it to destroy other such weapons, and when he has destroyed them all, he has vowed to destroy his own as well.”
“Good for him,” Omar said quietly with a faraway look in his eye.
“So it’s true?” Asha looked at him suspiciously. “You’re both sun-steel hunters like Gideon? How long have you been doing this?”
“Actually, we’ve only just started,” Wren said. “We decided to do this after the war in Constantia ended.”
“That’s very noble of you,” Priya said.
Wren blushed and smiled. “I guess. I just… I just don’t understand what happened back there at the temple. We have earthquakes in Ysland, my country, but they’re nothing like that. The ground didn’t even shake. It was like the temple just broke apart and collapsed on us.”
Asha sipped her tea and kept her eyes down. Had the topic of conversation been anything else, she would have looked her accuser in the eye and denied nothing, but the dragon was something else. Something she still could not fully control.
I should be stronger by now. I need to be, for Priya’s sake.
For everyone’s sake.
“No, I doubt it was an earthquake. I saw something back there just before it happened,” Omar said. “I saw a figure, like a person in armor, climbing the side of the temple. Someone did this intentionally. Whoever it was, we owe this person a debt for taking care of the temple for us.” He gave Asha a long, steady look.
Asha sat up straight and sighed. “Yes, I did it.”
Wren looked at her sharply in surprise. Omar sipped his tea calmly and let his eyes wander in the direction of their young waitress.
“How?” Wren asked. “How could you possibly destroy something so large all by yourself?”
Asha paused, and then said, “As I told you, when I was a little girl, something bit me. It was an infant dragon.”
“And it gave you that lovely ear?” Omar said, still looking at the waitress.
