ear, a scream that was more than inhuman, a scream beyond rage or hate. It was a herald’s cry. A god’s cry.
Qhora raised the tip of her knife to point at Aker’s face, and the man glared at her and then up at the sky. Instantly his face was transformed into a mask of wide-eyed terror and the man spun and took three running steps before the enormous vengeful mass of feathers and talons streaked out of the sky and smashed into his head and shoulders. Aker twisted and fell to the ground with the eagle’s claws sunk deep into his face. Turi hunched his shoulders and lifted his wings for balance, screening the man’s upper body from view, but Qhora saw the harpy’s head strike down again and again as the blood trickled over his talons.
Aker jerked and rolled from side to side and wrapped his arms around his face to shield himself from the viciously darting beak. But the more he flailed and kicked and thrashed, the deeper Turi’s talons sank into his flesh. And then the eagle’s head shot down and stayed down, and Aker screamed. “Oh God! Help me! Please, God, somebody help me! Help me! PLEASE! HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”
Qhora almost smiled. Instead she cleared her throat and held out her arm. “Turi. To me.”
The harpy lifted his head to look over his shoulder at her with one luminous golden eye, and then he hopped and flapped into the air, glided across the few short yards between them, and perched heavily on her arm. He wrapped his bloody talons gently around her arm, and Qhora watched the blood drip from his beak. “Good boy.”
Aker curled up on his side, his hands pressed to his eyes and painted in blood. He gasped and shuddered and sobbed quietly in the dust. “My eyes…my eyes…God, please…my eyes…”
“He’s all yours now, detective,” Qhora said.
Kenan holstered his gun and sauntered over to inspect his prisoner with a squint and a grimace. “Thanks. I guess.”
Qhora walked past him and paused beside Taziri. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. You?”
“I’m fine.” Qhora glanced back once across the rail yard over the dead men and the crying men, over the burning swords and scorch marks, over Mirari and Salvator and Tycho, and finally over Kenan squatting beside Aker. “I’m ready to go home now, captain.”
Lewis, Joseph Robert
Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy)
The days that followed…
Chapter 29. Shifrah
“Are we there yet?” Shifrah smiled across the compartment at Kenan.
The detective glanced over at her, shook his head, and went back to staring out the window. Shifrah sighed and looked at the other bench seat in their little private room of the Eranian passenger car.
Aker lay very still, but his snoring was quite loud. Perhaps he was faking, but Shifrah doubted it. The Aegyptian had whimpered and moaned all through the long hours in the rail yard as Taziri arranged for the Halcyon to be hitched to a west-bound train.
Tycho had strapped his new sword across his back and gone in search of a doctor, and returned with a distinguished Hellan surgeon. The surgeon had clucked his tongue at Aker’s missing eyes and burnt scalp, but pronounced them relatively superficial and that he would be fine, though blind barring some extraordinary advance in Mazigh optical prosthetics.
The surgeon had then bound Qhora’s arm, stitched Shifrah’s arm and reset her shoulder, collected Salvator’s money, and left with a song on his lips.
By mid-afternoon the Halcyon had been coupled to the end of an Eranian train, the aging steam locomotive had rumbled to life, and they had all watched Alexandria clatter past the windows and shrink into the distance behind them. All except the Italian and the dwarf, who had watched the train leave from the platform.
Tycho had waved.
Salvator hadn’t.
Time to see where we stand. Shifrah sighed again. “I suppose I’ll need to get a private detective’s license when we get back. Who do I see about that?”
Kenan looked at her. “So you’re serious? About that? About us?”
She nodded.
“You’re just going to give up your old life, just like that?”
She nodded. “It was just a job, Kenan. People change jobs all the time.”
“Murder isn’t a job.”
“But executions are? But war is?”
He was silent.
“People kill people, Kenan,” she said. “Sometimes for money, or orders, or passion, or just by accident. In the great scheme of things, the death itself is always all the same. People die. The only thing that matters is why. What was in the killer’s heart? Hate and greed? Or honor and duty?”
“What was in your heart?” he asked.
She shrugged. “That I needed the money, and that the world would probably be a better place without my marks in it. It’s not like I was hired by sadistic monsters to kill innocent children. I was hired by monsters to kill other monsters. At least in the old days. In Marrakesh, I was mostly hired by the victims to kill the monsters. I tried to tell you this before.”
He nodded and looked away. “Yeah, you did.”
“So? What do you say?”
Kenan moved over next to her and looked her in the eye. “No more killing?”
“No more killing.” She smiled.
He’s cute when he tries to lose an argument gracefully.
“All right then. Agyeman and Dumah Investigations. We’ll give it a try.”
She kissed him. “Dumah and Agyeman.” And she reached for his belt buckle.
He glanced across the narrow compartment at their snoring prisoner. “Here? Now?”
She grinned.
I think I’ll name our daughter Ziva.
Shifrah pulled him to her. “Here. And definitely now.”
Chapter 30. Salvator
The customs inspector at the pier had fixed an unpleasant eye on the sword strapped to the dwarf’s back and to the second sword rattling on Salvator’s hip, but the Italian quickly allayed the official’s concerns with a fistful of coins and a few choice words in Eranian that might have been misconstrued to mean that both of the travelers were close personal friends with a certain Master Rashaken.
The two men climbed the gangway and paced along the deck of the Hellan steamer to stand near the bow and watch the other passengers board.
“Is it very cold in Constantia?” Salvator asked.
“Cold-ish.” Tycho shrugged. “Why? Thinking of visiting? I thought you had a sword to deliver to your king in Rome or somewhere.”
“This?” Salvator patted the second blade sheathed below his rapier. After seeing the brilliant white blaze of the dwarf’s sword, he had taken the brightest of the surviving seireikens scattered around the rail yard before the local scavengers arrived to pick the bodies clean. The Italian shook his head. “I can hand this off to another agent in Athens when we change ships. There’s no need for me to deliver it in person.”
“You’d let someone else take the credit?”
“Of course not. I’ve already sent five letters to my associates at court to inform His Majesty that the sword is
