Halcyon The Complete Trilogy (114 page)

“Look alive, people, we have a visitor.” Shifrah pointed back at the platform.

Taziri turned and saw a young man trotting toward them. He wore green and he appeared to be unarmed, but the two taller gentlemen jogging behind him both had single-shot pistols and long knives in their hands. She leveled her revolver at them. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Aker El Deeb.” Kenan nodded. “Watch yourself. He has anger issues.”

“I want my sword!” the man in green yelled.

Shifrah held up the sheathed blade and called out, “This sword?”

“Careful,” Kenan muttered. “He’s got friends.”

“Only two,” Taziri said.

“No.” Kenan pointed at the station platform. “More than two.”

Taziri watched as a small battle of at least three dozen men raged into view and began creeping closer to the rail yard. The men were yelling and punching and wrestling and grappling. Fists were flying, knives flashed in the sun, and the occasional tooth or spatter of blood flew through the air. A frightened crowd of gawkers had formed a ring around the violence, all of them pressing back a good distance from the fray, all of them pale and wide-eyed, but none of them trying to flee.

“My sword! Now!” Aker pointed at Shifrah. Both of his Shona associates aimed and fired. One bullet twanged off a freight car by the woman’s head, but the other struck her square in the shoulder and she dropped the seireiken as she stumbled back into Kenan.

The detective caught her as she fell and quickly helped her back around the freight car and out of the line of fire. Taziri fired two shots back at the men, missing both by wide margins, and then she too dove out of sight behind the freight cars.

Bastet hovered at the corner, peeking out. “He got the sword…and now he’s leaving!”

Kenan looked at Taziri. “You didn’t pick up the sword?”

“I was a little busy covering you!”

“I’ll get him!” Bastet grinned as she hopped out into the open.

“No, get back here!” Taziri reached for the girl, but she was already too far away.

Bastet yanked the curved bronze sword off her shoulder and swung it around in a lazy arc through the air, and then swung it down sharply into the gravel at her feet. A tiny shockwave raced through the earth, but from behind the freight car Taziri could only listen to the small rocks pelting the men and the men roaring obscenities back. Bastet scampered back to the others and said, “Okay, that made them really mad. And bloody. They’re coming back here. Should I get the cats back here?”

Taziri shook her head at her as Kenan leaned Shifrah against the wheel of the freight car. The woman was clutching her shoulder, her eye half-lidded, her lip trembling.

Taziri guessed the bullet had shattered the one-eyed woman’s collarbone, or something equally important and painful. The detective moved in front of his companion, raised his revolver, and whispered, “We open fire the moment they step into view.”

Taziri frowned. “I’m really not keen on a gunfight at point blank range. Get her into the
Halcyon
.” She pointed at Shifrah. “Those gunmen out there are carrying single-shot irons, so they are out of bullets for the moment. Let me deal with this.”

Kenan didn’t hesitate or argue. He scooped up Shifrah and jogged her back to the
Halcyon
’s hatch, and began heaving her up into the cabin.

Bastet grabbed the pilot’s sleeve. “What are you going to do? I don’t want you to die.”

Taziri smiled. “That makes two of us. Come on. Time for a little science.” They dashed back to the
Halcyon
just as they heard the crunch of gravel rounding the end of the freight car. Taziri yanked on her heavy leather gloves and pulled her flight goggles down over her eyes. Then she grabbed her hose and nozzle and waved the girl up into the cockpit. “Just like I showed you. Engine on, throttle to one quarter. Go!”

Bastet leapt through the hatch as the man named Aker yelled out, “Looks like all your friends left you here alone to die!” He stepped into the narrow corridor between the long shining locomotive and the dirty old freight cars. His two associates hung behind him, blocking the path back into the rail yard. Aker drew out the seireiken, the blade rippling with fiery colors, bathing the sides of the cars in an angry orange light.

So that’s what we came all this way for. Impressive.

“I hope not.” Taziri glanced at the little revolver poking out of her arm brace, briefly wondered if she could handle both the hose and the gun at the same time, and decided that she probably couldn’t. “I don’t want to hurt you or anyone else!” She paused as the
Halcyon
’s engine rumbled to life and the propeller began to roar inside the makeshift cowl. The hose flexed and shuddered in her hands and she felt the air blowing out the nozzle. “Well, that’s not true. You killed my friend. I want to hurt you a lot, actually. But I’ll settle for the sword. Put it down and walk away and no one gets hurt.” She glanced back at the open hatch behind her where she could just barely see the one-eyed woman’s slumped head. “No one else gets hurt.”

Aker swung his burning sword in quick vicious circles and demonstrated a short lunge. “I’ve killed women before. But I don’t think I’ve ever killed an engineer. I’m interested to see what I’ll be able to do after I’ve added your soul to my collection. Maybe I’ll be able to drive my own train.” He settled into a fencer’s stance. “I’ll try to make this quick and painless, but if you start fighting back, well, I can’t make any promises.”

Taziri placed her finger over the switch that would connect the current to the electrode on the nozzle, and she picked up the loose wire from the ground. “Bastet! Half throttle!”

The engine growl rose to a low droning and the hose jerked in her hands. She clutched it tightly, praying that the horse gut would hold together just a little longer. The tips of her fingers could feel the blast of air coming through the nozzle.

Now or never.

Taziri hurled the loose wire at the bright sword and she flipped her switch closed. A sharp sizzling hiss erupted from the electrode as a tiny snapping arc of energy appeared in the center of the air jet. The tiny bolt of lightning twisted and writhed along the wire, which had fallen across the seireiken and promptly melted onto it.

Aker grinned. “Stupid woman.” And he leapt forward, sword raised to strike.

“Full throttle!” Taziri shouted over the drone of the engine. The
Halcyon
roared louder and the hose yanked her to the left as it tried to straighten itself out with the increased air pressure, but she wrestled it down, falling to one knee to hold it steady. The jet of air shooting through the nozzle, through the electric arc, began to flash and woof as tiny fire balls formed in the compressed air stream. “Come on, come on! Now! Now!”

Aker winced at the blast of air in his face, but he took the last step toward her and swung his fiery blade at her neck.

The jet of compressed air fully ignited, transforming from an invisible wind into a jet of electric blue hellfire almost as long as the seireiken itself. The flash of light was so bright and hot that Taziri jerked back from it instinctively, falling back and to her side even as she pushed the blazing plasma torch up and away from her face. The scorching plasma stream blasted through the seireiken as easily as a knife through water, and the liquefied aetherium blade first bloated outward in soft metallic bubbles and then twisted apart as the end of the sword fell away from the hilt to drip and plop and splatter on the ground. Aker dropped the seireiken’s hilt as he threw up his hands to protect his face, and Taziri swung the plasma torch down to drench the entire sword in blue flame. The golden steel shriveled and faded to a dark gray puddle in a matter of seconds as a hot, foul cloud steamed up into the air.

For a moment, Taziri stared at the boiling puddle of aetherium on the ground and the roaring plume of scorching plasma in her hand, all dimmed and discolored through the thick lenses of her goggles. And then the
Halcyon
’s engine sputtered and died.

The hose fell limp in her hands as the air jet whistled away to nothing.

Taziri released the switch and the hissing electric arc vanished. She dropped the melted nozzle and stood up, brushing the dust from her pants. Aker sat on the ground a few yards away, clutching his face and gasping for breath. His two men remained at the end of the train, frowning.

Bastet poked her head out the hatch. “What happened?”

“Get back inside!” Taziri pointed her brace-gun at the men. “And you two. You can go. Forget about your boss here and forget everything you just saw, too.”

The men didn’t move.

Bastet called out in Eranian to them.

Oh right. Wrong language
. Taziri grimaced as the weight of her brace-gun began to ache in her shoulder.

Still the men didn’t move. One of them started to reload his pistol.

“No! I warned you!” Taziri yanked the trigger of her revolver. No bang. Not even a click. The trigger had jammed. Taziri stared at the useless lump of steel on her arm, and then she started banging her free hand on it as she pulled on the frozen trigger. “No, no, no! Dammit!”

The bounty hunter snapped his pistol shut and looked at her. Taziri blinked.

They’re both standing awfully close to the
Halcyon
. Maybe close enough.

“Bastet!” Taziri kept her eyes locked on the pistol rising to point at her heart. “Pull the big lever!”

“But you said—”

“Pull it now!”

A sharp clang echoed inside the locomotive and the outer wall of the
Halcyon
clicked and hissed and slammed outward on its hinges, right down onto the two bounty hunters. The unfolding wing smashed both of them in the heads and shoulders, sending them sprawling to the ground. They moaned and rolled over, crawled out from under the wing, and scrambled away across the rail yard.

Taziri blew out the breath she was holding. “Thank you! All clear. You can push the lever back into place now.”

As the
Halcyon
’s wings slowly retracted to restore its train-like camouflage, Kenan jumped down from the hatch and walked over to her. He nudged the gray puddle on the ground with the toe of his boot, and the entire puddle shifted as a solid mass. “Already cold,” he said. “What does that mean?”

“It means the souls are all free,” Taziri said. She looked up, half expecting to see faces or heavenly lights all around them, but there was nothing but the freight cars and the clear blue sky. “Don Lorenzo is free.”

“If you say so.” Kenan paced over to the man in green and kicked him in the leg. “Hey you. Get up. You’re under arrest for the murder of Lorenzo Quesada.”

A deep thud shuddered through the earth and Taziri turned to see a tall slender man with jet black skin standing by the
Halcyon
’s nose. He wore a simple white tunic belted with gold, shining gold arm-bands, gold rings, gold hair-beads, and a small golden heart on a cord around his neck. His face was hidden behind a black mask sculpted like the face of a dog or jackal. The straight black staff in his hand rested on the ground. “I see you have all arrived safely,” he said. “My task is complete.”

“Anubis!” Bastet leapt from the hatch. “You idiot! You brought the wrong ones!”

But the young man thumped his staff on the earth and his entire body burst apart into a cloud of aether that vanished on the hot wind.

“Oh no you don’t!” Bastet glanced over her shoulder as she pulled her cat mask down over her face. “Good bye, captain! It was nice to meet you!” And she rippled apart into a sparkling white mist.

Taziri waved to the girl who was no longer there, but a cry of pain drew her attention back to the yard. She jogged to the end of the freight cars and looked out at the station. The Bantu and the Songhai were still trading punches, but had left a trail of bodies across the platform. Behind and around the station office she could still see the crowd of gawkers watching the morning’s entertainment.

Then a shout went up among the onlookers. They all turned to the east end of the street, some pointing, but most shuffling in the opposite direction. Then more and more of them began backing away from the east end of the street, moving faster and faster out of sight.

Taziri squinted where they were pointing and called over her shoulder. “Hey Kenan! You might want to reload your gun.” She pulled a screwdriver from her pocket and started fiddling with her brace-gun to unjam the trigger mechanism.

“Why?”

“It looks like your prisoner has some more friends.”

Chapter 28. Qhora

They hurried along the edge of the street, trailing Khai and his column of green-robed swordsmen. The Aegyptians broke into a sprint shortly after leaving the library, and now they all raced across the city, crashing through the early morning press of people and animals.

“My lady,” Mirari said, “should I run ahead to warn the captain? She may be in danger.”

“No. These men might follow you, or they might hear you once you arrive.” Qhora grimaced at the thought of Taziri alone in the rail yard, unprotected and unsuspecting. “If the captain sits still and remains quiet locked inside the
Halcyon
, she probably has a better chance of remaining hidden.”

I hope
.

“And what exactly are we going to do when we arrive at the yard and find a company of Osirians, and the Bantu, and the Songhai, and God knows who else between us and the train?” Salvator asked. “There are only four of us.”

A high-pitched cry drew Qhora’s gaze up to the pale blue sky and she squinted at the tiny black shape wheeling high overhead. “Five.”

“We need a plan,” the Italian insisted.

“You’re welcome to make one,” Qhora said. “But we’re going to save the captain, one way or another. She and I are both going home to our children.”

They ran on, and Qhora found herself dashing through markets and past fountains that she had no memory of. On the night they arrived in the city, Salvator had led them to the docks to hire his thugs and to await the steamer from Carthage, and she had been in no mood for sight-seeing. But now she had no idea how far they were from their destination, nor what landmarks would announce their arrival.