expect to see you again so soon,” he said.
“You were right,” Qhora said. “The streets are not safe for us. So here we are. Would you still be willing to help us? Can you take us to the restaurant you mentioned before?”
Tycho sat up and glanced at Philo. The older man snored. The dwarf glanced at the rectangle of light on the floor falling through the single window. “It’s nearly evening. I suppose now is a good time to go there.”
“Because it’s supper time?”
Tycho grinned. “It’s not that sort of restaurant. I think it will be emptying out about now so everyone can go find some food.” He leaned over and shook the old man’s shoulder. “Philo? Philo, it’s time to get up.”
The old Hellan groaned and sat up. He blinked. “Ah, young ladies. Hello again.”
Tycho rattled off a short speech in Hellan and Philo nodded, saying, “Yes, well, then we should be off to this restaurant of iniquity before it is too dark out for us to move about safely.”
The Hellans stood and re-arranged their rumpled clothing. Qhora spotted the small breast plates covering their hearts and the armored greaves under the cuffs of their trousers and the bracers under the cuffs of their sleeves. They both dress for war, but neither one is suited to it. She sighed.
After a moment they were all ready and Philo led them out into the street. Qhora followed close behind him and nearly bumped into him when the old man stopped short and said, “Oh dear.”
Around his side, Qhora sighted a knot of five or six men standing at the end of the lane. Two were staring directly at her. They caught the attention of their fellows and then all of them were staring at her. And then they started striding down the lane with their hands on their belts.
“Oh dear.” Philo turned toward her and the others. “We may wish to step back inside.” The four of them shuffled back into the house, but Tycho tripped over the threshold and there was a delay as Mirari and Qhora helped him to his feet, leaving Philo standing outside in the lane.
A gunshot cracked between the narrow walls.
Qhora turned to see the tall Hellan spin and fall. He seemed to fall slowly, his face tight and lined, lips parted slightly, eyes closing. And then he crashed to the ground.
“No!” Tycho screamed. “Philo!”
Qhora saw the young man’s face flush red, every vein in his neck straining against his flesh as his arms reached out toward his fallen master. He screamed with a dry, hoarse throat as Mirari dragged him bodily into the house and Qhora stepped inside after them and barred the door.
“No, no! We have to help him, we have to get him!” Tycho cried, his eyes the color of sun-bleached sand. He struggled against Mirari to reach the door, but the masked woman held him firm. Qhora slammed the shutter across the window and then dashed to the back of the house where there was another window, one completely boarded and sealed.
She crashed against the boards once, twice. They creaked but held.
A gunshot splintered the center of the door behind her, admitting a tiny shaft of pale evening light. Tycho cried out again, “Please let me go to him!”
Mirari lifted the young man and carried him closer to the window where Qhora was prying at the boards with her dirk. “My lady, if you please.” She put the sobbing Hellan youth into Qhora’s arms and then in an instant her hatchet was in her hand. Mirari attacked the boarded window with a series of lightning strokes and the wood shattered like glass and the soft red sunset light washed in on them.
Qhora held Tycho almost as easily as Mirari had, but the sounds of his gasping wails were unbearable.
“No! Help him! We have to help him! He’s dying out there! He’s alone! Please!”
More gunshots riddled the door behind them and heavy feet crashed on the portal. The wood groaned and began to crack and splinter inward.
“My lady!” Mirari leapt out the window as easily as a mountain ram climbing a cliff face, and once in the street held out her hands.
Qhora lifted and shoved the young man out into Mirari’s arms.
“No! You bitch! Let me help him! Let me go!”
Qhora scrambled out the window as the door burst from its hinges and she fell to the street as she heard a chorus of men barking orders in Eranian and another two gunshots ripped through the open window above the women’s heads.
“Run!” Mirari heaved poor Tycho over her shoulder, hiked her skirts up to her knee, and ran. Qhora grasped a knife in each hand and ran after her. They ran from alley to street to square, bumping against the rough stone walls and colliding with both angry and surprised-looking pedestrians making their way home for the evening.
Again and again, Qhora looked back for a sign or sound of their pursuers but never once did she see or hear them. And after they had been running for a full quarter hour she called a halt and Mirari jogged to a stop in a quiet side street as the sky was fading to a dusky violet. She set down Tycho and the young Hellan stumbled away, weeping openly. After a moment he wheeled about and pointed at the masked woman, “Don’t you ever touch me again! Not ever! Don’t you dare pick me up like that! Do you hear me?” he hollered, straining what little voice he had left. And then he collapsed to the ground and covered his eyes with his hand, his shoulders shaking.
Qhora gave him a moment, during which she went back to watch the street around the corner to be certain they were not being followed. Finally she came back to the others and squatted by Tycho. “I’m very sorry about your friend, but there was nothing we could do for him. He was dead before he fell. I’m sure it was over in an instant. Painless.”
She knew nothing of the kind. She hadn’t seen where he had been shot, and for all she knew the old man was still alive at that very moment, bleeding out the last of his life’s blood and gasping out his last breath, all alone in a little lane in a strange city.
Maybe. But he probably died quickly all the same.
For the next few minutes, they all just sat in the shadows as the shadows grew darker. They caught their breath and composed themselves and checked the street several times for pursuers. Finally Mirari said, “My lady, we need to be moving on.”
“Yes. Tycho, can you still take us to the restaurant where the Osirians meet?”
The young man looked up at her, his face calm but discolored and lined with misery. “Why? Your husband is as dead as Philo. Finding the killer will change nothing. He’ll still be just as dead.”
Qhora almost lashed out at him, but the empty and haunted look in his eyes was too familiar to the face she had seen in the mirror last night and the night before. She knelt beside him and said, “You’re right. My Enzo is dead, and nothing can change that. His soul is trapped in a seireiken blade, and maybe nothing can change that either. But the souls of the dead do live on, in their own way. And Enzo’s soul belongs with me, not with some killer. And that killer should be brought to justice, not left free to kill again. Enzo dedicated his life to peace as well as justice. I have to do this for him.”
“And what about Philo? What about his killers?”
“I don’t know who they were or what they wanted. It looked like they were waiting for us. Or maybe they were just waiting for anyone they could rob. I don’t know. But if you will help us, then we will help you.”
Tycho stared dejectedly at the ground.
“Tell me about Philo. Did you know him well?”
The dwarf nodded. “He saved my life. In Hellas, or at least in the province of Sparta, they don’t let the sick or the deformed live. I should have been killed as soon as I was born. My own parents would have killed me. But Philo was there. He was passing through the town and heard about my birth and came to pay his respects. And when he saw me and knew what was about to happen, he took me. He just picked me up, carried me off to Constantia, and raised me as his own.” Tycho looked up. “We’ve never been apart in all my life.”
Qhora put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I lost my father too, when I was very young.”
Tycho exhaled slowly. “I want to go back. I want to find him, to tend his body. But…I guess it’s not safe. And there are others back in the Hellan Quarter who will see to his body, I suppose. They won’t leave him out in the street. We’ve only been here a week, but we did make a few friends. They’ll take care of him.” He nodded and sighed. Then he looked up, his eyes clear and piercing. “I’ll finish what we started. We were sent to find a seireiken, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. For Philo.”
Qhora managed to smile at him. He’s trying to be brave. He’s trying to say the right thing, the brave thing, the noble thing. But it’s not what he wants. I can see it in his eyes. He wants to go home. He wants to run. But he won’t. He won’t run.
