“Perhaps I will.” The water-woman shook her black coat and she collapsed to the ground in a flourish of feathers, and suddenly five black ravens leapt forth into the air on midnight wings, screaming, “Blood!”
Qhora pinwheeled her arms through the air, slashing as the birds dove at her face.
“QUOORK!” Wayra crashed into the clearing, dry pine branches bursting from the trees as the huge eagle slid through them across the loose needles on the ground. Her massive beak tore one of the ravens out of the air and crushed it into bloody mass of black feathers and hollow bones.
A second raven tumbled to ground where it flapped and screamed over the gash in its belly from Qhora’s knife, and Wayra stepped back and crushed it beneath her long shining talons. The last three ravens flapped up and roosted overhead for a moment to screech and dance in the pine boughs, their wings raised like clawing hands. Wayra lowered her head, her full crown of blue and green plumes bristling tall, and she hissed.
The ravens dove again with beaks and talons open.
As Qhora readied herself to strike again, a terrible thunderclap shook her ears, echoing through the wood, and two of the ravens tumbled out of the air at her feet. The last raven flapped up through the branches, cawing and crying as it fought its way up through the green needles into the open sky beyond.
Qhora stared down at the two dead birds on the ground before her, their singed feathers smoking darkly. And then she looked up at the woman walking toward her from the direction of the road. It was the Mazigh woman, the pilot. And there was a cloud of black smoke rising from her left arm. Her metal arm.
Chapter 13. Taziri
Her arm buzzed with a strange ringing pain that shivered up and down her bones. The recoil from the shotgun was worse than she imagined, far worse than the flare she fired over the trees south of the Halcyon. As Taziri walked toward Dona Qhora, stepping carefully over rocks and fallen branches, she inspected the brace on her left forearm.
It covered her bandaged skin from elbow to wrist, and it was bolted to the special glove on her palm to hold her hand in position. Without the brace, her hand hung limp from her arm like a dead fish. Her fingers moved well enough on their, even the two little ones that had gone numb and never recovered, but the wrist was a lost cause. The burn had taken months to heal, but even now, almost two years later, she had regained no sensation or control. The damage was done. The flesh shriveled and scarred, muscle atrophied, and skin permanently discolored. But she still had her hand, and that was something.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Qhora nodded and slipped her knives away. “What is that thing?” She pointed at the brace and the open mechanism on its back.
“There was a fire. I almost lost my arm, but I was one of the lucky ones. Actually, I was the only lucky one that day. Anyway, this brace protects my arm and helps me control my hand so I can work,” Taziri said. She touched the open mechanism, a brass tube half a foot long that popped up from the top of the brace on a small spring to point down her arm over her thumb. “And this is a little storage compartment we added where I can keep my smaller tools. Screwdrivers, pencils, that sort of thing. But, in a pinch, it’s also a perfectly good flare gun, or even a shotgun.”
It’s not perfectly good. It’s not good at all.
Even with the heavy reinforcement around the back of the brace, it scared her to death to think of the explosive force being released just an inch from her elbow. But it did work.
Qhora nodded again. “Well, thank you. Why are you out here? Did you follow me?”
“After you rode away, I talked with Don Lorenzo for a while. We found the place where your tracks went off across the field. Your husband didn’t seem worried. He said there wasn’t anything out here that you couldn’t handle. But I had one of those feelings,” Taziri said. “Like when an engine knocks or my little girl coughs. So I came out to look for you. I guess I’m just used to worrying about women traveling alone.” She thought of a certain alleyway, long ago and far away, where she had found a young man about to swing a brick at a woman’s head. Her new brace hadn’t concealed any weapons back then, but it had proved a decent enough bludgeon at the time. And here I am, still finding new ways to hurt people with it.
“Well, that may be a problem for women in Marrakesh, but it isn’t here. This is a civilized country, captain,” Qhora said. “Men are still honorable here, and the women can take care of themselves.”
You’re welcome. Taziri frowned. “Why were those birds attacking you?”
Qhora raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Taziri held up her arm as she slid her tools back into the brass tube and snapped it closed into her brace. The springs creaked and the latches clicked into place. “You’d be surprised what I would believe.”
The lady took the reins of her giant bird and they began walking back through the woods toward the spot where Taziri had left her horse at the edge of the snowy field. Over the next few minutes, the hidalgo’s wife described an encounter with flame-haired woman, a boiling pond, and a flock of ravens, all of which had apparently married a local farmer and given birth to a baby boy.
Taziri pushed through the brush, untied her horse, and climbed up into the saddle. The buzzing pain in her arm was almost gone. “Well, if someone had told me that story anywhere else, I wouldn’t have believed it. But here in Espana? I suppose that’s downright normal.”
Qhora swung up onto the bird’s muscular shoulders. “I’ve lived here almost three years now. Would you believe this was only the second time I’ve seen a ghost or a…whatever it was?”
They began trotting briskly across the field, not westward back to the road but northward, hoping to find the road again somewhere closer to the rest of the group.
“Aloja. I wonder what that means, exactly,” Taziri said. “Scientifically speaking. I mean, I’ve never heard of a ghost that could so much as touch water, let alone move it, or anything else you saw. There are natural laws governing the spirit world, but this sounds like something very different, very strange.”
“Alonso sings stories about them. He sings all the time, playing his guitar. He must know a thousand stories,” Qhora said. “This country is full of stories. There are water-women in every lake, river, well, and pond in the country, to hear him tell it. They’re women who drowned, but didn’t quite die. Some mixture of the water and aether changes them, makes them immortal, and makes them insane. Half their soul drowns but the other half stays in their flesh, or something like that. But whatever they are, in the stories every last one of them is desperate for love and attention. They never love the men back, though.”
“Isn’t that always the way in stories?” Taziri smiled. “Although, I try to only tell Menna the ones with happy endings.”
“Menna? Is that your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“You must miss her, always traveling the way you do.”
“Yes.” Taziri looked away as the chilly breeze lifted a handful of ice crystals from the field and cast them in her face. “I keep meaning to quit, but it seems like there’s always a reason to keep working just a little longer. There’s always one more project to finish. One more person to help. A little more money to make. Sometimes I think the only way I’ll ever get to stay at home is if I get pregnant again.”
“We’ve been trying for over a year.”
Taziri heard the weary resignation in the woman’s voice. She wanted to console her, but it had happened for her and Yuba almost instantly once they made the decision to try, and she wasn’t sure what to say. “It can take some people longer than others. Just give it time, and be grateful for the quiet evenings until then. You will definitely appreciate a full night’s sleep after the baby comes, I promise.”
Qhora glanced at her with a pinched frown.
They rode on across the field, picking their way over a small frozen stream in a ditch and around a low stone wall, and eventually they came back to the main road to Zaragoza.
“Do you think we’ll see more ghosts on this trip?” Taziri asked, hoping the air had cleared. Please don’t make any more enemies on this trip. I already have the Espani navy and an Italian assassin hunting me. I don’t need to add a New Worlder to the list.
“Almost definitely. It’s only going to get colder the farther we go.”
