eyed woman. “If you’d care to help, you’ll find a pair of knives just beside your head.”
Qhora turned and saw two Italian stilettos embedded in the wooden door. She ripped them free and charged after the one-eyed woman in white. Dimly, she noted the two other men in the room, the older one sitting in the corner and beside him a taller man in a heavy leather apron. They both seemed to be watching the fight in mild amusement.
The woman in white whirled to catch Salvator’s rapier on her slender knife, and Qhora glided up behind her to stab her through the upper arm.
The woman screamed and threw a powerful back-hand punch, catching Qhora in the side of the head and sending her sprawling to the floor, her vision broken by flurrying specks of black and white and red.
“Kenan!” The one-eyed woman bolted away from Salvator, and the Italian deftly slashed her across the back, but only deep enough to shred her white jacket and draw a thin red line across her scarred shoulders.
She stumbled to the corner with the young man in black on her heels. Together they grabbed the old man seated in the shadows and crashed through a narrow door in the far wall.
As Qhora pushed up to her feet, Salvator was already vaulting over the anvil in pursuit, but then the tall man in the apron stepped forward to block his path.
“Stand aside!” the Italian snarled.
The man reached to the small of his back and drew a small, straight knife with a single edge. It was barely length of his own hand, but the blade shone as bright and white as the sword Khai had shown her a few moments ago.
Salvator slid to a halt. “I’ve no wish to hurt you.”
“You have no skill to hurt me,” the man said. He held the small knife out in front himself at arm’s length, the blade level to the floor. “You were free to fight the Samaritan and the boy. But not Master Rashaken. I know they will not harm him. But you will not pass. And per Master Rashaken’s orders, it falls to me to see that you do not leave this place with the answers you have found.”
Qhora looked down at the one poor knife left in her hand. “Salvator?”
The Italian did not move. “That man just now, the old one they took, he knows all about the aetherium steel. He knows all about this place. He can tell you how to find Don Lorenzo’s soul, I’m sure of it! This one here might, too, but he’s more likely to put up a fight, I think.”
A shiver ran up her spine. Again her hands longed to wrap about the throat of her enemies and tear the life from them, but every other shred of her flesh and heart and spirit turned her away.
But do I still want the sword? Khai said a soul cannot be freed from a seireiken. Do I want Enzo’s soul trapped in my home, reminding me of what I’ve lost, of what Javier will never know?
Qhora shook her head.
Whatever I want for Enzo, or even for myself, Javier needs more than a ghost.
She said, “You can’t fight this man. You can’t fight that blade. One touch of it would kill you. If he threw it now, you would be dead in an instant. We need to go. We need to get out of this place. Now.”
Salvator kept his face to the stranger and his back to her, but she saw him nod. He backed toward her and the door, and Qhora saw the shining white blade move.
She hurled her stiletto at the tall man’s throat even as she bolted for the open door, and the last thing she saw was the white steel rising to catch the stiletto, and the stiletto dissolving into a pale cloud of vapor as the two blades touched.
“Merda!” Salvator followed close behind her and together they plunged into the darkened hall.
Chapter 21. Taziri
She sat in the pilot’s seat, wearing her leather jacket with the long dirty tarp wrapped roughly around her shoulders. She’d toyed with the idea of turning on the electric heater, but with the Halcyon ’s wings folded shut the solar sheeting couldn’t recharge, and she didn’t dare risk draining the battery.
Taziri sat sideways in the seat with her legs over the arm rest so she could face the locked hatch. It had been a long boring afternoon sweating on the cabin floor, and when the evening shadows brought her some relief from the heat, she found the cold and the dark just as dull as the scorching light.
She rested her head on the top of the seat, forcing herself to keep one eye open and focused on the hatch.
If Bastet comes back, I’m going to see it. I’m going to see how she gets in, and how the aether works. Maybe she’s a ghost, or maybe she’s a scientist who uses aetherium to control the aether. Either way, I’m going to see how she does it.
Taziri was still muttering to herself in her mind when she saw the first pale wisp of vapor slide in under the hatch. She sat up sharply and leaned forward over the armrest to peer at the aether streaming into the cabin. She watched it flow in, and she watched it pool on the floor, and she was still peering at its ghostly ripples when a voice said, “Good evening, Taziri.”
She blinked and saw a figure sitting in one of the passenger seats, the last one farthest back in the shadows.
But…when did she…? Damn it.
Taziri smiled and pushed the old tarp off her shoulders. “Hello again.”
“I brought you supper.” Bastet stood up and came forward to sit in the nearest seat. She still wore the black dress with the tiny cats on the sleeves, and her mask rested on her head, and her golden heart hung on her chest. In her hand was a basket, which Taziri took warily. She squeezed the straw gently but found it very sturdy and common.
If this is a trick, I can’t see the trap doors and wires yet.
The ends of the straw poked her hands, and flakes of dirt fell from the basket as she moved it around and lifted the cloth from the top to look inside. She found a small loaf of bread studded with dates and coriander seeds, and beside it a pomegranate, a handful of pistachios, four dates, a freshly cut bunch of grapes, and a small earthenware cup. Taziri lifted out the cup and sniffed it. “Oatmeal?”
Bastet laughed. “Beer.”
“Ah. Well, thank you very much. Will you join me?”
“Just a little.” The girl took one of the dates and Taziri set to her meal. At first she was more than a little self conscious about eating with an audience, but Bastet seemed perfectly content to lean back in her seat and stare at the cabin walls. As loathe as she was to do it, Taziri started to make conversation while she was eating, but the girl waved her hand and said, “When you’re finished.”
So Taziri ate. She ate with her eyes on the food and not the girl and she relished every bite, including the Aegyptian bread and even the thick broth they called beer, which was nothing at all like the Espani ale she had tried once and everything like the Espani oatmeal she had eaten many times over. When she was finished, she set the basket on the floor and leaned back with a contented smile. “Thank you, again.”
“My pleasure.” The girl smiled. “I thought you could use it after sitting in this oven all day long.”
“You thought right.”
“So you’re still waiting for your friends? Your passengers?” Bastet wandered back to the end of the cabin, running her fingers over the metal plates and rivets and welds.
“I still haven’t heard from any of them. I hope they’re all right. We didn’t work out a schedule or anything for this trip. The plan was just that I wait here until they come back,” Taziri said. She chewed her lip. “Which is a really bad plan.”
Bastet laughed. “You’re right, it is. So these passengers are just visiting the city? Are they from Marrakesh too? Why did they come?”
Taziri sighed. “A friend of mine, Lorenzo, was killed the other day. He was murdered by someone from Alexandria, a man dressed in green carrying a burning hot sword.”
“Right, a Son of Osiris,” Bastet said.
“Oh. Is that who they are? You’ve heard of them. Of course you have, sorry.” Taziri nodded. “So Lorenzo’s wife and friends came here to find the killer. Actually, we went to Carthage first, but they escaped us. And then we
