“Will not.” She shrugged. “And I see Qhora is still quite slender.”
Lorenzo winced. “No blessings yet, I’m afraid.”
“Patience. Although, you too might benefit from pushing yourself harder in that arena.”
The hidalgo jerked upright, eyes blinking in the cold night air.
“Don’t look so surprised. I may have died a virgin, but I probably know more about lovemaking than most prostitutes. After all, I spent decades caring for them. God knows I heard more than my fair share of their exploits.”
“Anything you’d care to share with me?” he asked. “Something to make me blush?”
“Mostly things to make you vomit.” She stepped closer to him, her feet passing effortlessly through the unbroken snow. “So which is bothering you so much tonight? The practice room or the bedroom?”
“The library, actually.” He paused with a twinge of guilt, feeling that he was about to confess a terrible failing. “A man stole my journal containing all of my notes about the skyfire stone. This man knows what the stone is capable of, what it can be used to do. He’s a commander in the navy, and now I’m afraid he’s going to send his men up into the mountains to find the stone before I can go myself.”
For a moment, Sister Ariel’s shade appeared to sag and fold in upon itself, her clothing of silver smoke shuddering as the wind rose and tore through the image of her body. As the air stilled, her face grew more distinct, more lined and pitted, older and sadder. “That’s a shame. I know how much you were looking forward to your expedition.”
He shook his head. “That’s the last thing I’m worried about. If the skyfire stone is the same metal I saw in the New World, then whatever is left of our navy will suddenly be powerful enough to challenge anyone, even Persia. Eran, I mean. Whatever they’re called, the war will devastate the kingdoms of the Middle Sea. Millions could die.”
The nun nodded. “Possibly. We’ve spoken of this before. We’ve always known that this stone might be used for war. And if the military finds it first, then that will be its fate.”
“But the stone can be used for so much more!” Lorenzo said. “You’ve traveled. You’ve seen the new steamships and the tractors in the south. Clocks and watches and mills and trains. A machine can make a single man stronger than twenty. These machines are changing everything in Marrakesh and one day they’ll be here as well. But in Marrakesh, the men are little more than machine parts themselves. Worked to exhaustion, maimed and killed, and all in the name of progress and profit. It will happen here too, eventually. The Mazigh lost their faith. So will we. It’s already begun.” He thought of the empty churches, the pews where the men should have been if they hadn’t died in the New World and the pews where the women should have been if they weren’t working to exhaustion to support the remains of their families.
The nun gazed up at the sky. “And you think you can change all that with the skyfire stone? Will this stone make countless thousands of people turn away from the modern world? Will they choose God over their new machines, over the promise of easy wealth, just because you parade a hot rock in front of them and call it a holy relic? A relic so-named only because a nun was one of the hundreds of people who saw it fall from the sky hundreds of years ago?”
He smiled sadly. “You have a horrible way of putting things in perspective.”
“Regardless of how it’s used, it’s only a rock.”
Lorenzo straightened up. “But what if it isn’t? What if it is some crumb of paradise, some splinter of heaven? What if it can cure the sick, make the wicked lay down their arms, or even restore the dead to life? On the night that it fell from the sky, you described strange auroras above the mountains, and the witnesses you talked to heard voices singing on the wind.”
“Just random nonsense, Lorenzo. There’s a holy miracle or relic in every town in every province, and a dozen old men to tell you that they saw it themselves. Over the centuries, I’ve tried time and again to walk those mountain paths, to find another ghost who knows of the stone. I’ve never found a single one.” She folded her bare hands drawn in starlight and shadow. “Look, Lorenzo, I don’t know exactly why the good Lord keeps throwing me into your path, but I do know you’re a fine young man and I’m trying to help you live a good life. That means real work and real family. It means making the world a better place, too, but it doesn’t mean saving the world from all the evils in the human heart. There were wars before Lorenzo Quesada walked the earth, and there will be wars when you’re dead and forgotten. Your legacies, your real legacies, are your children and the things you leave behind. Your students. Your school. Your philosophy and teachings.”
Off in the western hills, two wolves howled to each other in long mournful cries.
Lorenzo sniffed the cold and lifeless air. There was nothing to smell, no scents of fruit or flowers, no animal odors, not even the char of burnt wood.
She’s right, of course. Her precious stone is probably just a rock, perhaps a strangely hot rock, but a rock nonetheless. And it probably doesn’t matter who finds it first. Even if I had it in my hands right now, Magellan and Faleiro would hear about it sooner or later and take it. I couldn’t possibly stop them.
Lorenzo stared at the ghost figure of smoke and chalk and moonlight quivering in the cold night air just beyond his reach. She had lived and died generations ago, and returned with stories of ancient Espana and the voices of angels and the gates of heaven. Lived and died. Died, and still here, still trying, still working. He felt a sudden lightness in his heart, and he grinned.
“You’ve convinced me,” he said.
“To focus on your real commitments? You’ll give up the stone?”
“Not exactly.” He shrugged. “It’s more of the opposite, really. I’m going to go find the stone myself. And I think I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“What? Why?”
“Because of you, sister. I can’t believe I only just realized it. Most people in the world don’t even believe in ghosts, let alone see them. But we take them for granted here, so much so that we’ve forgotten what they mean,” Lorenzo said. “You stand there, proving the immortality of the human soul, proving the existence of some greater power, some grand design for the universe, proving that there is more to this world than what most people see. Marrakesh and the rest of Ifrica is a land powered by machines and science. Qhora’s empire is a land powered by enormous beasts and nature. Maybe it’s time that Espana took its place in the world as a land powered by God and faith. But faith is a fragile thing. It needs to be shepherded and nurtured, trained and tempered in the right hands. Hands like yours. And maybe even hands like mine. So I’m going to find this stone, whatever it is, and I’m going to use it to save our country, and our faith, and our future. And then, if there’s time, I’ll make some babies and teach my students how to parry and lunge. I promise.”
She shook her head slowly. “You’re taking a terrible gamble. Ambitious military men are dangerous, and the mountains in winter even more so. A terrible risk to cross either.”
“It’s not so terrible. Just a little walk up to the glaciers to look for a rock. I’ll even take a few of my better students along and try to whip them into shape in the mountains. Meanwhile, the others can stay here to practice or go home to rethink their decision to be here in the first place.” He held up his empty gloved hands. “Everybody wins.”
“And Qhora?”
Lorenzo grimaced. “Well, I have all night to figure out how to tell her, don’t I?”
Day Three
Chapter 7. Qhora
It was close to noon when she caught the boys saddling the horses. They were muttering in low voices and stumbling around in the dark. A single open window or door would have flooded the stable with sunlight and snow glare, but every window and door was closed. She only found them because she was going to check on Wayra, who had been trilling and squawking in her pen all morning.
When she threw open the door and a bright rectangle of light fell on them, the two boys froze with expressions of extreme guilt.
“I expect this sort of thing from you, Gaspar, but you, Alonso?” She crossed her arms. It wouldn’t be the first
