The pieces of the magnet sat on the seat next to him. The battery, the wires, the switches. They were a bit dusty and dented, but all still intact.
The sun continued westward and the day’s heat began to fade, though the heat and noise inside the Halcyon made it difficult to enjoy the view. While the mechanical camouflage made the Halcyon appear to be a common steam-powered locomotive, it was in fact still driven by the same diesel engine that spun the propeller when the craft took to the air, and that engine, for all its marvels, was loud and dirty and hot.
“Are you all right back there?” she asked.
He grunted, arms still folded, head still bowed.
I’ll take that as a yes.
Taziri increased their speed as they left the small homes of Alexandria behind them and struck out southward from the city, speeding along the rails across the lush green plains. The railroad ran parallel to a wide dusty highway and to either side of them she could see vast tracts of farmland, huge fields of green growing things in carefully plowed lines, with dozens of women and children out among them, checking their crops and pulling weeds and fending off birds.
“It should only take another half hour or so to find this place,” she said over her shoulder. “Bastet’s directions were pretty clear, so I’m not worried about getting lost.”
Jiro grunted.
“So I take it that you’ve never been to this House of Geb before?”
Jiro sighed and rubbed his eyes. “No.”
“No.” Taziri nodded. “I got the impression from Bastet that it was one of her grandfather’s secrets. Someplace old that no one uses anymore. Does that sound right to you?”
Jiro did not answer.
Taziri shrugged.
We’ll find out when we get there.
They chuffed on down the line, beyond the softly rolling hills of the farmland and into a sparse forest of short trees and thick shrubs where Taziri saw all manners of flowers on the ground and in the bushes, and she wondered what sorts of berries they might grow in the weeks to come. Eventually, they reached the branch line that Bastet had described and Taziri turned off the main track to head east, and they rolled on through the woods, slower now, and more quietly.
Half an hour later than she had hoped, they arrived. Taziri let the Halcyon coast to a stop and she shut down the engine so she could peer out the windows in silence. “Now that is interesting.”
The branch line emerged from the woods into a clearing where the tracks ended at a pile of leftover ties that lay rotting on the ground, covered in mushrooms. And beside the tracks stood the house. It was a stone house, ancient and cracked, but well-scrubbed by the rain and wind, and the stone was bright gray. The house itself was round, shaped like a huge cheese wheel, and from its center rose a short roofed tower, just barely large enough for a single person to stand inside, and someone was standing inside it now. Taziri only had a moment to focus on the pale dots of the eyes staring back at her before they disappeared, and she heard the muffled sounds of movement inside the building.
“Someone’s in there, and they’ve seen us.” Taziri unlocked her safety harness and climbed out of her pilot’s seat. “Bastet didn’t say anything about there being people here. Do you suppose they’re friends of hers, or her grandfather’s, or maybe…”
Jiro stood up sharply, but paused to place one hand against the metal wall of the cabin to steady himself as he rubbed his eyes one last time and swallowed loudly. Then he slipped past her and opened the hatch, saying, “Wait here.”
Taziri watched him step out into the grass and dash across the overgrown lawn to the door of the house. “Wait here? It’s a house, not a war zone.” Shaking her head, she climbed down from the hatch and closed it behind her, and then walked softly across the lawn to stand beside the tall smith.
He frowned at her. Then he pointed back at the house and held up two fingers.
“Two of them, huh?” Taziri nodded.
He glared and placed his hand over her mouth.
She shook him off, and gave him a tired look. “Listen, I came here to do a job for a friend, not to play games in the woods. We’re all civilized people.” She stepped away from the wall to stand in front of the door and called out, “Hello? Is anyone home? We were sent to collect some materials here. Hello?”
The front door swung open and banged lightly against the frame. Taziri peered into the darkness within the house, and two angry orange lights sprang to life. The burning swords hummed softly in the shadows, and cast a faint gleam on the faces of the men holding them.
Seireikens! The Sons of Osiris. But are they here to guard the house, or to loot it?
Taziri took several steps back from the doorway and saw Jiro, still flattened against the wall where the two men couldn’t see him, drawing a steel knife from his sleeve.
Taziri held out her empty hands. “I’m not here to fight you gentlemen. I was sent here to pick up some supplies. It’s very simple. I was sent for a bar of aetherium. I mean, sun-steel. Sun-steel, you have some here, yes?”
The blazing orange swords seemed to float in the darkness and they emerged slowly onto the lawn with the grim Sons of Osiris robed in dark green. Jiro now stood behind them, his knife ready. The two men raised their swords, still exchanging curious looks with each other and studying Taziri’s knee-high boots, buff trousers, and leather flight jacket. The men whispered something, and one of them nodded as he raised his sword.
Taziri grabbed the cuff of her left jacket sleeve and shoved the warm leather to her elbow. “You gentlemen should know, before you do something that you might regret, that I have a friend, well, he used to be a co-worker and now he’s more of an acquaintance, really. Anyway, he taught me something once that seems very, very appropriate to this situation.”
She got her sleeve up to her elbow, revealing the brass and aluminum medical brace that covered her forearm, protecting her old burns. Two sturdy rods connected the brace to the glove on her left hand, providing the strength and support that her wrist could no longer offer. She reached over and pulled back a small switch and the top half of the brace swung open, allowing the modified revolver to rise and click into place, and a small metal arm swung up into her left hand, placing the gun’s trigger against her finger.
“He taught me to always bring a gun to a knife fight.” She pointed the revolver strapped to her arm at one of the swordsmen, and then the other. “Now I’ll ask you one last time. I would like one rod of sun-steel. Please.”
The Osirian with the raised sword grimaced, and charged at her.
Taziri fired twice and both men fell to the ground, groaning and wailing. The seireikens tumbled into the grass, which began to smoke and crackle with fire. She circled around them and walked up to the doorway where Jiro was looking at the fallen men as he slipped his knife away.
“I thought the Mazigh people disapproved of killing,” he said.
“We do, generally,” she said. “Which is why I shot them both in the knee.”
Jiro frowned.
“Fine, you watch them while I find the aetherium. Sun-steel. Whatever.” Taziri ducked inside the house and found it a rather pleasant and airy place with wide open windows and a tidy arrangement of small tables and chairs and beds. Spartan as it was, everything appeared to be in good order, right down to the spoons and knives laid out beside the wash basin to dry.
A wooden ladder in the center of the room led up into the little watch tower, and near the base of this ladder was a door in the floor. She flipped the door up and found a wooden staircase leading down into the cellar. From the bottom of her medical brace, Taziri pulled out a small flashlight, turned it on, and set it between her teeth as she started down the steps with both hands on the rails to guide her.
In the cellar she found a single dirt room, also just as neat and tidy as the room above, with two long crates stacked against the wall. She opened the top crate and found a half dozen rods of golden aetherium nestled in a bed of straw. After taking a moment to fold up and lock away the revolver into her brace, she picked up two of the rods and went back upstairs.
Never hurts to have a spare.
Outside she saw Jiro standing over the grim-faced Osirians clutching their bleeding knees. The smith held both of the sheathed seireikens in his hands.
