“I’m tired, Bashir!” Nadira threw her sword down. It bounced and clattered on the frozen earth. “So damned tired. I’m tired of watching the same human filth crawling through my city, stealing and raping and killing people, century after century. It never changes. It never gets any better. I thought that maybe, one day, I would see Damascus become the paradise that it should have always been. But it’s still the same pile of rocks, full of the same predators and vermin.”
“I know,” Omar said softly. “I know all of that. I feel the same way about Alexandria. And believe me, Alexandria is not nearly as pretty as Damascus. At least, not that I recall. But it sounds to me like your little crusade to save your city needs to stop. You need to find something else to do with yourself.”
“Like you? Wander about turning people into your immortal servants trying to unlock the secrets of the universe for you?” She spat in the snow. “How is that going, by the way? Have you met God yet?”
“Not yet.” Omar sighed. “Nadira, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re unhappy. And I’m sorry that I put you in this position. But I’m not going to help you die. What I will do is help you find something else to do with your life.”
Nadira laughed. “Like Yaga and Koschei? Like Gideon?” Her smile vanished. “Like Lilith?”
Omar shook his head and sat down on a rock. It was cold and sharp, and he shifted his buttocks. “I’m not a god, or even a priest. I’m just a very old man with an obsession.” He nudged a chunk of ice with his boot. “I don’t have any real answers for you. Just ideas. Places you could visit, people you could meet, or even help. Someone like you could do a lot of good in the world.”
“What’s the point? Those places, each one is just another Damascus, isn’t it?”
“Maybe you’re right. So maybe you don’t need a change of scenery,” Omar said. “Maybe you need a change of vocation. Maybe it’s time to put that sword away and learn some new skills and find some other way to pass the time.”
“I don’t want to pass the time. I want out.”
Omar frowned at the ground. “There are ten thousand places out there that are nothing like Damascus, or here, or anywhere you’ve been. Ifrica, Rajasthan, Jochi, Ming, Nippon.”
“I’m not listening to this.” Nadira picked up her sword and started walking.
Omar sighed again, planted his hands on his knees, and pushed himself back up to follow her. “I’m not going to just let this go. I’m not going to disappear on you again. I’m here and I’m staying right here.”
“Shut up.” Nadira stopped. Her breath steamed away from her mouth as she stared off into the distance. She began to draw to her sword.
“What is it?” he whispered. He heard nothing.
She drew out her long, silvery saber. Its damascened face writhed with spidery etchings in the moonlight.
Omar hesitated, then drew out his seireiken. The blade’s light washed up the high walls of Constantia and far out over the snowy fields. He held the sword high over his head to let the cold white light reach a bit farther out into the darkness. “There’s nothing out there.”
Nadira whirled on him and slashed at his sword hand.
Omar barely had a moment to feel the adrenaline surge of fear in his chest before the ghost of Ito Daisuke seized control. Omar leapt back and dropped into a low fighting stance with the seireiken held back away from the woman. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?” Nadira dashed forward. “If you won’t kill me, I’ll just have to do it myself.”
“I won’t let you!”
“You’ll have to kill me to stop me!”
The Syrian saber flashed in the starlight as Nadira’s hand spun faster and faster until her sword became a flat shining disc of steel whirling at her side.
Omar grimaced. “Nothing is ever easy for me.”
Nadira attacked and Omar retreated, stomping and stumbling through the frozen snow. He swept the ground around him with the tip of his blazing seireiken and the ice became shimmering water and the snow began to rise in waves of steam.
“I’m better than you, old man.” Nadira slid to a halt in the soft warm mud.
“You’re not better than my sword.” Omar lowered his seireiken to his side.
“But I only need to be better if I want to win.” Nadia loosened the clasps on her armor and let her breastplate crash to the ground. “I want to lose.”
She lunged at him and brought her saber down in a vicious slash at his shoulder. Omar raised his seireiken in a simple square block and let the blades crash together. The scorching sun-steel burned straight through the Damascene sword and the broken tip flew through the air and clanged on the stone wall beside them.
Nadira stumbled away and then straightened up to look at the twisted, melted ruin of her saber. “I’ve had this for a very long time.”
“And as I tried to tell you, I think it’s time you put it aside.”
“I will, in a moment.” She hurled the handle at him and charged again, empty-handed.
Omar swatted the broken saber out of the air, shattering it into half a dozen pieces, and then he slipped his seireiken back into its clay-lined scabbard just as Nadira tackled him to the ground. They crashed into the soft mud and slid into the sharp edges of the nearby ice.
Her hands instantly went to his belt, clawing at the shark skin grip of the seireiken. Omar grabbed the handle to hold it in place and the ghost of Ito Daisuke appeared off to one side, staring down dispassionately at the two figures rolling about below him. The samurai said nothing and did nothing.
Nadira kept one hand on the seireiken, straining to pull it free, as her other hand went to the neck of her shirt. She pulled out a slender steel chain and yanked it up over her head. Omar saw the little golden heart dangling from the chain.
“No!” He twisted sharply, throwing her off his chest and sending the tiny pendant skittering across the icy snow.
Nadira dove for her sun-steel heart.
Omar stood up and backed away toward the wall with both of his hands clutching his seireiken, pressing it tightly down into the scabbard so not even a sliver of the deadly blade was exposed.
She really wants to die.
Omar took a moment to catch his breath and he watched as Nadira found her pendant and got back up on her feet.
“If you do that, you won’t be free,” he said. “Your soul would be trapped in my sword. Forever. I don’t think you want that. It’s just another sort of immortality, and frankly I don’t think you’d find it an improvement over your current situation.”
Nadira looked at him. Her face was pale and shining with sweat, and for the first time that night he didn’t see any of her casual bravado in her narrowed eyes or frowning lips. She just looked tired.
“Then I’ll find another way to die,” she said softly.
“I imagine you’ve been trying to find another way to die for a very long time.” Omar moved a little closer to her. “The only way out is to destroy the sun-steel heart, and the only thing that can melt it down is the heat of another sun-steel object. I’m sorry. It’s a trap, I know. It wasn’t something I ever thought about in the old days. I don’t have any answers for you.”
She nodded and sighed, and slipped her pendent back inside her shirt. “So what do I do?”
“Whatever you want. But whatever you do, you need to do something new, something different,” he said. “This soldier-of-fortune routine of yours is tearing you to pieces.”
“I’m not the same person you knew back in Damascus,” she said.
“Neither am I. You know, it’s funny, the nature of our immortality is that our bodies can’t change because our souls are inside these pendants, yet our souls seem to go on changing all the same.”
“It’s not funny at all.”
“Sorry.” Omar wiped his hand across his mouth. “Well, we’ll figure it out. Come on, let’s get back into the city and call it a night. All right?”
She nodded and they started walking again. She paused by her dented armor lying in the snow.
“Leave it,” he said. “That’s in the past now.”
She nodded again and they continued along in the shadow of the wall. They eventually found another smaller gate and a quick flash of Omar’s seireiken convinced the guards to let them enter.
