Taziri slipped through the back of the crowd, discovered the dark corridor of an alley, and hastened down it, plunging into shadows where the air was a bit cooler and the gentle starlight allowed her eyes to rest from the fiery glare of the lanterns and lamps behind her. The song ended, but only for a moment, as the crowd went on stomping and chanting, the musicians began again from the top. She had to cross a half dozen streets before the sound of it finally faded into the night, leaving Taziri alone in the dark, trudging along unfamiliar roads in the general direction of Ghanima’s favorite bed-and-breakfast. Along the way, she turned the words of the song over and over in her head, wondering why lyrics she had never heard before could sound so familiar. Until she remembered.
On her brief layovers at home, she sometimes read the papers, trying to have some sense of her own country between the long spells in the Halcyon. Among dozens of other things, she saw the tiny, almost marginal notes about recent industrial accidents. The railway. The mines. The factory. Each verse of the song had described an actual event, a man maimed or killed, in just the past few months.
Tomorrow I’m going to find the Espani doctor, Medina. Then I’ll take Evander to Orossa. And then I’ll go home to my family. Things are bad, worse than I thought. I should be home doing something about it.
If I had kept working on my batteries instead of hiding them in an airship, I could have made the world a safer place. Bright clear lights at night, out on the streets to keep people safe and in the factories to keep workers safe. More telegraph lines. Better clocks. Electric safety shut-off switches. So many things I could have been building all this time.
But I didn’t. And now the pastoralists are ready to burn the country to the ground. Innocent people will die. Innocent people have already died.
I could have stopped this.
This is my fault.
She stopped under a streetlight and looked around at the unfamiliar buildings, their dark windows offering only dim reflections of the cobbled road.
I can’t just go to bed now. I need to do something. I need to fix things. I need to find that doctor. Medina.
Slowly, Taziri turned and headed back toward the marriage celebration still roaring its strange and angry songs into the night.
If they know so much about people getting hurt, then I’m sure someone there will know about the local doctors, especially an Espani doctor.
Chapter 22. Lorenzo
There had been a brief uncomfortable moment in the bedroom as he set the bags down in the corner when Qhora had stared at him with a strange softness in her eyes. She parted her lips as if to speak, but after a brief hesitation she merely thanked him and turned away. So after depositing the cubs and other luggage, and pausing in the kitchen long enough to stuff his pockets with a few rolls, a chunk of cheese, and two apples, Lorenzo returned to the train station.
Standing on the deserted platform, he was grateful for the quiet and the stillness. No people. No fighting. No yelling. No games. Just a broad wooden deck and little dark office, a smattering of early stars in the evening sky, and two iron rails pointing out through an old neighborhood to the vast wilderness beyond the city where two beasts from the far side of the world were slowly making their way south toward their mistress.
A cool breeze rippled through the grassy plains and stirred the dust in the streets. He counted four blocks of small houses between himself and the end of civilization. Four cross-streets and a few hundred homes, but precious few lights and no voices. The hidalgo tugged his hat down firmly on his head and gathered his long black coat tighter around his belly, but he needn’t have bothered. It was only a lifelong habit as the night drew closer, but here in the south the night was scarcely colder than the day. At least to an Espani.
Feeling foolish, he relaxed his shoulders and let his coat flap open as he pulled out one of his apples and began to eat. For a time, he considered walking out beyond the houses to the very edge of the plains to try to catch sight of Atoq and Wayra before they came too close to the city. No, he reasoned, this is where Qhora stepped off the train. This is where her scent will be strongest. This is where they will come.
The sky faded from slate blue to violet to black. As the last glimmer of color vanished from the northern horizon, he thought he glimpsed a small dimple, a tiny black figure that hadn’t been there before.
Well, either it’s them, or it isn’t.
He tossed the gnawed core of his apple off the edge of the platform and began alternately biting off chunks of his cheese and bread. The rolls weren’t as dark or rich as the bread at home and the cheese was far less pungent, leaving the meal somewhat tasteless and hollow. The last apple beckoned from his pocket, but he refrained. His eyes had adjusted to the brightening starlight and now he was certain he could see something in the distance, a hard black shape far out on the train tracks, still small but distinct in the silvery sea of grass that rippled and shivered in the rising wind.
It was a train. He heard it huffing and clacking before he could see the trail of steam above it. Maybe ten minutes away now. Did they send someone to get the other engine from the crash site? He glanced around the empty platform again. If they did send someone out there, they sure forgot to leave anyone here to meet them. No. What if it’s the woman in white?
Lorenzo rested his left hand on the pommel of his espada. I only cut her hand. I didn’t mean to hurt her much, but maybe I should have hurt her a little bit more. Enough to scare her away. He took his hand off his sword. No. No more blood today.
When the train rolled slowly into the station, the trail of steam from the funnel had already been reduced to a few pale wisps in the night air. The wheels hardly squeaked as the brakes were applied and the locomotive halted at the edge of the platform. It was too dark to see much of the boiler but the twisted and broken outline of the cab was distinctive enough. Lorenzo strolled down to meet it, but stopped well away from it. “Hello?”
The woman in white stepped out of the crushed and mangled remains of the cab. In the half light, he couldn’t make out the details of her face, only the pale gleam on her nose and cheeks, and the white bandage wrapped tightly around her left hand. She gave him a long, tired look before shrugging and saying, “You again.”
“Are you all right?”
She held up her bandaged hand. “You’re better than Salvator Fabris.”
He blushed and was grateful for the darkness. “I doubt that.”
“He could never cut me.”
“You were lovers. I doubt he wanted to.” Lorenzo exhaled slowly, praying for a visible trace of his breath, but his prayer went unanswered. It was too warm. Still, he touched the medallion beneath his shirt and tried to imagine what a kind and saintly person would say to this woman. “Why did you attack us?”
“For the money.”
“Our money? Whose money?”
She shook her head. “No names. I still have my knives, Espani.”
“And I have my sword. We both have things. How nice for us.” He gestured down the platform, inviting her to walk with him. “Your name is Shifrah, yes? I’m Lorenzo.”
She stared at him and then at the platform. Slipping her hands into her pockets, she began walking slowly parallel to him, never closer than three yards. “Why are you guarding that savage girl, Lorenzo? For her gold?”
A flicker of anger in him wanted to slap her. But only a flicker. “In her country, she is a princess. And no, she has nothing but her cloak, her animals, and her name,” he said. “She had one other friend, but you killed him today.”
“I did indeed. Will you kill me for that?”
“I don’t know yet.” He really didn’t know and that question loomed large in his mind, not only for his bodily safety but that of his soul as well. “Do you believe in God?”
Shifrah laughed. “Whose god? Yours? The one with the happy little family that came down from heaven to learn what it means to be human?”
“God comes to different people in different guises. You’re a Persian, aren’t you?”
“No,” she said sharply. “I’m a Samaritan.”
