left they were talking about killing Fabris just for arresting her.”
Don Lorenzo stepped back, one hand over his mouth. He stared out over the frozen Elbro. “If we did go back, there would be a lot of questions to answer. Fabris might have a chance to make his case to your commander. And I suppose, regardless of what’s said, Fabris would probably walk out of there alive and well, and this whole business would just repeat at the next town and the next until we’re all injured or dead.” The hidalgo exhaled slowly and peered at Alonso. “You’re certain that’s what she said? To go get the stone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What stone?” Taziri asked, but Lorenzo didn’t even look at her.
The hidalgo exhaled slowly, his breath vapor streaking away on a sudden icy wind. “And you’re certain your soldier friends won’t harm her or the others?”
“I’ve known most of them since I learned to walk. I was an altar boy with five of them. All decent lads, I swear it. Your wife isn’t so much a prisoner as a lady with a private army, at the moment.” Alonso was shivering continuously now.
Lorenzo frowned and stroked his chin a bit longer. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. But she has a point about the stone, and I’d rather put my trust in a company of Espani soldiers than in my own, solitary sword.” He sighed and shook his head. “All right, we’ll do it her way.”
“So what now, sir? And what stone did she mean? The stone in the message. What is that?”
“I’ll tell you all about it. All of you.” Lorenzo glanced around the street. “But first we need to get indoors. It must be past midnight now. We need sleep and heat.”
“I agree, but where?” Dante asked. “If you have more friends in Zaragoza, I hope they’re more trustworthy than the priests at La Seo.”
“I know a place,” Alonso said. “The church by my parents’ house. We can sleep there tonight.”
“More churches.” Dante scowled. “There must be a hotel or inn or something civilized in this frozen bunghole of a city.”
“No, it’s perfect,” Alonso said. “Tiny. Dingy. Empty. No one will see us. And I can get us breakfast from my parents in the morning.”
“Hot food?” Dante raised an eyebrow. “Free hot food?”
“I suppose that’s decided then. We’ll get the horses from the cathedral on the way,” Lorenzo said. “We’re going to need them tomorrow.”
With the hidalgo giving commands, and admitting that she knew nothing about this city or their options, Taziri followed the group back up to La Seo and helped to quietly steal back their horses from the cathedral’s stables. Back on the road, Alonso led them across the river and into a neighborhood of tiny stone houses and snowy streets. Every window was dark but smoke rose steadily from most chimneys to scatter on the surging winds racing across the rooftops. They stopped at the front door of a building that looked just like the houses to either side of it except for the large wooden triquetra carved over the door.
Father, Mother, and Son.
Taziri grimaced at the sight of the dark ruin before them, thinking of the bright and beautiful Mazdan temples back home in Tingis.
Everything is better in Tingis, in Marrakesh. The food. The weather. Even God.
Don Lorenzo led his horse straight through the open door and Taziri followed on her own mare. When they were all inside, the single room of the church was overflowing with bodies and horseflesh. But with a few simple directions, Lorenzo had the horses bedded down in the front to block the door and the rotting, overturned pews had been dragged into the outlines of beds.
Inside and away from the wind, the temperature seemed to rise quite a bit. And after half an hour in a small room with four other people and three horses, the temperature rose a bit more than that. Taziri made a hard, lumpy pillow out of her bag and lay down on a carpet of decaying hymn book pages. She closed her eyes, intending to think about little Menna’s face, to wonder what her little girl was doing, what she was learning, what she was thinking. Instead, Taziri fell asleep.
She woke in black silence. Still hours until morning. What was that noise?
Taziri squinted in the gloom, trying to remember the sound that had roused her. A voice? Was it Shahera? She rolled over.
A white face stared down at her, a man’s face, thin and drawn, a face of swirling silver mist that rippled out in the vague shape of hair floating on water. The ghost hovered over her, nose to nose, grinning a terrible toothless grin. “Bah!”
Taziri screamed and scrambled back against the closest wall. The ghost vanished, its aether fading into the darkness. She sat against the cold stones, shivering, listening to her heart pound in her chest.
“Are you all right?” Alonso propped himself up on one elbow, squinting around the dark church.
“It was nothing. Just a ghost. Sorry.”
He nodded. “Probably the old priest. Sorry. I should have mentioned it. I forgot that you folks aren’t used to ghosts.”
Taziri crept back down to her blankets. “How can anyone get used to that?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a face and a voice,” Alonso said. “Nothing dangerous. Not like Marrakesh. I hear in Marrakesh you’ve got a place called a factory.”
She frowned. “Yeah, lots of them.”
“Are they really full of giant machines that tear off men’s arms and legs?”
She paused. “Yeah. Sometimes.”
“Yeah, well, that scares me a lot more than any ghost. Good night.”
“Good night, Alonso.”
When morning came, she heard the crackle of a fire and she sat up in a daze, trying to remember where she was and why. A horse whickered by her foot and she remembered it all instantly. Looking around, she saw Alonso and Lorenzo sitting beside a small fire with an open tin of biscuits, white cheese, salted ham, and moldy black bread.
Breakfast of conquistadors. She crawled over to them and began eating.
A few minutes later, Shahera and Dante had joined them and Don Lorenzo was telling a confusing and disjointed story about his journey through a jungle, a dead nun named Ariel, and a burning hot ball of metal lost somewhere in the Pyrenees Mountains.
“That’s fantastic. A magic stone.” Alonso grinned. “And we’re going to go find it?”
“But what is it? What is it really?” Dante asked. “I may not be much of a chemist, but I’ve studied my craft a bit and I’ve never heard of any such metal.”
“Neither have I,” said Taziri. “Metal heats when you heat it and cools when you don’t. It doesn’t stay hot for no reason, and I for one don’t believe in magic. Sorry, Alonso.”
“I don’t know, I really don’t.” Lorenzo shrugged. “But I’ve seen it. I watched those priests use it to kill those men in the river. And now Salvator wants it, maybe for Magellan or maybe for himself. But I don’t intend to let either of them use the skyfire stone as a weapon. It’s a gift. It’s an opportunity. Whatever it is, I’m going to use it to heal this country, to soften the winter and help the crops, maybe even to power our cities as the Mazighs do with their steam engines. But most of all to show the people something good, something hopeful, something to revive their faith. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone use it to kill a single person. I’d rather see it lost in the depths of the ocean than that.”
Taziri cleared her throat. “That’s all very well and good, but I still have two passengers I need to deliver to Tingis, and a home and family to get back to. I came this far because I believed you could hide us from the military. But now we have this Fabris person just half a step behind us with the Espani army at his beck and call, and you’re setting out to find some magic stone. I think it may be time for Dante, Shahera, and I to head down the river to the sea.”
“Yes, finally, thank you,” said Dante.
“No, please, you can’t do that,” Lorenzo said. “It’s not safe. We can’t afford to stay in the city another hour. I know I’ve kept some private matters from you, but I didn’t think I needed to tell you. I planned to leave you safe and sound in the cathedral while I went to find the stone. But here we are and I think I know where to find the stone. It’s near a town called Yesero, a prospector village at the foot of the mountains. We can be there well before midnight tonight if we ride hard all day. And tomorrow, if I’m lucky, and I am very lucky, I will have this stone in my
