“Yeah, I did. Because you pissed me off.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to get caught in some game of choosing sides and picking arguments depending on your mood. You want to keep playing mercenary, fine. But not under my roof. And if someone ever hires me to hunt you down…”
Shifrah sighed. “Look, Omar’s dead. So I’m done with this place and these people. I owed Omar, but not them. They’re all crazy anyway. And maybe I was too for a while. But this isn’t my life anymore. It’s not the life Omar raised me for either. So maybe…” She paused.
If I say this, am I committed? No. I can still walk away whenever I want. But maybe it’s time for a change. It can’t hurt to try. At least, it can’t hurt much, can it?
“…maybe it’s time for a little career change. Maybe I could partner up with you, like you said. You and me, hunting down bad guys. Shifrah Dumah, bounty hunter. No assassinations. What would you say to that?”
He was very quiet for a moment. “Maybe.”
Shifrah smiled. That’s a yes.
It took another half hour to walk into the Songhai Quarter, a long thin finger of land along the southern edge of Alexandria where the pilgrims and soldiers from the southwest congregated before moving on to the holy Mazdan sites deeper inside the Empire of Eran. The streets were just as quiet and dark here as elsewhere in the city, but Shifrah’s hand never strayed from her knife. And soon their destination loomed up in the darkness above the street.
The old arena had been built centuries ago by Roman slaves in the Roman style, and the cylindrical structure looked quiet alien next to the square blocks of the buildings to either side. The walls of the arena rose three levels above the street, each wall ringed with open archways and Hellan columns, and beside each column was a statue of an ancient Aegyptian god. Each had the head of a different creature. Jackal, Ibis, Falcon, Lion, Crocodile. But in the dark, the gods were all just creatures of dead stone.
The main gate to the arena stood open, rusting quietly into oblivion against the stone walls. No one loitered there or in the dark corridor beyond, but low voices and scuffling sounds did echo in the vast stone chamber of the arena itself. Shifrah nodded and they went inside.
The inner corridor offered many open doorways and branching halls to the market stalls where street vendors had once sold food and wine to the wealthy patrons of the games, but it was all dark and empty now. Past those spaces, Shifrah emerged again into the night air on the bottom level of the seats and stood beside a small stone wall looking down at the weedy field of the arena floor.
Three men armed with glowing seireiken blades circled each other slowly, shouting taunts and challenges at each other. The fiery swords drew blazing orange lines in the darkness. A dozen other men lounged on the benches at the edge of the field, but the pale starlight didn’t reveal any details of their dress or arms.
Mercenaries or soldiers, she guessed. Songhai, Bantu, and Kanemi, most likely.
Looking up into the stands above her, Shifrah saw a thin scattering of other people in the crumbling stone seats. Some of them were lying down, possibly homeless, with equal chances of being asleep or dead. Other people were also lying down, but were most emphatically not dead, judging by their grunting and gasping. But these were mere whispers in the darkness, shadow figures few and far between in the vast emptiness of the ancient arena.
“That’s him.” Kenan pointed down at the three swordsmen pacing about in the center of the field. One of the glowing swords whirled through the gloom, crashing and scraping across the other two blades, which retreated before it. “The one attacking.”
“How can you tell?”
“I have good eyes, remember?” Kenan started down the steps to the arena floor. “And besides, I recognize the fencing style. It’s Espani.”
Then it’s true. Shifrah followed him down. When Aker took the fencer’s soul, he somehow took his knowledge and skill as well. Or he can command the fencer’s spirit inside the blade.
She shivered at the thought of being trapped in a cell and forced to serve Aker’s whims. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed Aker’s whims even as a willing participant, back in the old days.
Down on the arena floor, the sound of the seireiken clashes seemed to shift between electric snapping and rumbling thunder. And she could see now that the man attacking the two others was indeed Aker El Deeb.
“Should we wait until they finish?” Kenan asked.
“No. With our luck, he’ll trip and fall on his own sword and we won’t have anything left to take back to Tingis. Best to collect him now.”
“Right.” Kenan drew his black revolver and strode out onto the field. The men lounging on the benches muttered to each other at this intrusion, but they didn’t get up.
Shifrah drew her knife and followed. All right, Kenan, show me how you do things.
The revolver barked once and a puff of dry earth flew up between Aker and the other men. The swordsmen paused, their burning blades seeming to hover unaided in the darkness.
“Aker El Deeb,” Kenan bellowed in a deep, booming drawl. “You are under arrest for the murder of Don Lorenzo Quesada. Drop your weapon. Get down on your knees and cross your ankles, and put your hands on the top of your head.”
Aker did not move, but the other two men backed quickly away, sheathing their bright blades and plunging their side of the field into darkness. Aker swung his sword toward Kenan and Shifrah could hear a soft hissing from the blade. The Aegyptian slurred, “You’re an idiot. First I’m gonna kill you, and then I’m gonna take your stupid gun. You hear me?”
He’s drunk!
“I hear you,” Kenan said softly. The hammer of the revolver clicked sharply in the dark.
Then a low woof-woof-woof sound drew their attention to the left as a bright seireiken blade came whirling out of the shadows, tumbling end over end. Kenan took a half step back and let the sword fly past harmlessly, and then he fired into the darkness. A man cried out. A second blade slipped free of its scabbard, illuminating the other swordsman, and Kenan fired again. The man toppled over as his leg collapsed beneath him. The bright sword spun from his fingers and fell on his arm. He screamed, but only for an instant.
Kenan cocked his gun again. “Aker El Deeb! Drop your weapon and get down on your knees!”
“You first!” Aker slammed his bright sword into its scabbard, dousing the blade and plunging the center of the field into utter blackness. The thrown seireiken continued to glow on the ground to their far right, and the dropped seireiken gleamed dully beneath the dead Osirian on their far left.
Shifrah squinted and blinked, trying to force her eye to readjust to the loss of light, but the blue after-image of the seireiken remained plastered across her vision and she couldn’t throw her knife. But before she could begin to wonder where Aker might be or what he might be doing, she heard the heavy footsteps thumping away across the weedy field and then echoing in the stone corridors of the arena halls.
Kenan was already running after him, his shadow-black figure fading swiftly into the distance. Shifrah cast one look over at the bright seireiken that had lodged in the ground to her right, and then at the twin blade lying under the dead man on her left.
I think I’ll leave those right where they are. Not worth the risk.
Not even slightly.
She ran after Kenan across the field and through the arena, and half a block down the next street she managed to come up alongside him. They ran with their entire bodies, arms pumping sharply, heads bobbing in unison, boots pounding the hard-packed earth of the dusty road. The cool night air blasted back through their jackets and hair.
Up ahead she could see Aker by the light of the stars. He was almost a block away, but his small black figure was definitely growing larger and she could see the uneven motion of his legs, and soon she could hear the heavy gasping of his wet and ragged grunting.
Between her own labored breaths, she glanced at Kenan and said, “So. That’s what you do. Yell at them. Drop your weapon? Down on your knees?”
“Yes.”
“Does it ever work?”
“Not as often as I’d like.” He grinned at her.
They ran harder, arms and legs flying like pistons, breath blasting through their lips and clenched teeth. Aker
