Halcyon The Complete Trilogy (51 page)

“Shhh, my love.” Qhora stroked the beast’s head between the eyes. “Soon it will be summer again and we’ll go running over the hills and through the forests. I promise.”

By the time she returned to the house, supper was nearly over. Not that the evening meal was a formal affair, indeed she preferred to avoid too much familiarity with Enzo’s students. They may have been only a few years younger than she was, but they acted like children. They were in turns boastful and shy, awkward and smarmy, anxious and proud, and generally thoughtless, though Enzo insisted these youths were no different from any others in España. Qhora allowed him his fantasy.

As the diestros-in-training filtered out of the dining room, she sat beside her husband and smiled at him as he wiped the last of the sauce from his plate with a crust of black bread. He raised an eyebrow. “If you stare long enough I might start to think that you like me.”

“Can’t I admire the finest swordsman in the country? I have to do it now, before the novelty wears off and I have to find someone else to admire.”

He winked at her. “How are your walks coming along?”

“Still cold.” She frowned at the crumbs and stains on the old table. “And lonely.”

“Mm.” He patted her leg. “Well, I wouldn’t worry. Most Espani don’t spend their time standing around in empty fields hoping to make conversation with passing strangers, so there’s really no need for you to put in so much practice at it.”

“Thank God for that.” It still felt strange to say.
God. One god with three faces. Father, Mother, and Son
. The triquetra medallion around her neck, however, was far less uncomfortable than the words. After all, it was only a piece of jewelry. That was the price of marriage in this country, and she had paid it willingly, if not happily.

Lorenzo pushed back from the table and stood up with his plate in his hand and a frown wrinkling his forehead. “Have you seen the commander? Faleiro? The Medici boy scampered down for a quick bite before running back to his room to sulk, but I haven’t seen Faleiro since the match this afternoon. He must have fallen asleep. I guess I should go see if he wants anything to eat.”

Qhora felt a small knot in her belly. Her little victory over the naval officer suddenly felt hollow and foolish. It was difficult to remember that politics and honor and gossip were more powerful in España than actual strength or reputation, and that the wrong word to the wrong person might hurt her Enzo’s future.
Still, I was more honest than boastful and I didn’t stab him at all. Surely an important man like Faleiro wouldn’t bother with a tiny fencing school over a few angry words.

She was just about to go to the kitchen and put together a plate of something less greasy than the men’s fare, perhaps yesterday’s soup of red peppers, eggplant, onions, and peas, and a handful of almonds if she could find them. But Enzo strode back through the room and cast her a worried glance. “He’s not in his room. And his things are gone, if he ever put them there. I think he’s left.” And the hidalgo swept down the hall toward his study.

For a moment she debated whether she wanted food in her hands when she explained to her husband what she had said to the fat man from the navy, and she finally decided against it. Better to enjoy her meal later, in peace. When she stepped into the doorway of his study, she found him frozen in place standing over his desk, his hands hovering over his papers. He looked at her, his eyes tense. “It’s gone. My journal with all my notes, everything Ariel told me, it’s gone. The maps. The drawings. Everything was in that journal. It was right here.” He patted the corner of the desk.

“You think Faleiro took it?” she asked innocently.

“You talked to him, didn’t you?” He narrowed his gaze at her. “You told him about the stone.”

“What do you mean?” She swallowed, wondering whether it was helpful to play the naïve housewife for a few moments while he calmed down or whether she should just tell him and get this little scene over and done with.

“Or was it someone else, sometime earlier?” He rubbed his eyes. “In Tartessos last month, wasn’t it? You told one of your new friends about the stone. Of course you did.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back for a moment. “I told you, I asked you, to keep this private. I told you there were people who might try to get to the stone first. Treasure hunters, thieves. And you told some officer’s wife, and she told her husband, and he told his commander. And that’s why Rui Faleiro was here today.” He turned to stare out the window.

“He didn’t come for the skyfire stone, Enzo,” Qhora said, mildly annoyed at the strange tangent of her husband’s logic. “He came to recruit you to train his sailors to fence. He told me so right after your little match with the Italian brat.”

Lorenzo turned. “What? Why didn’t he say anything to me?”

“He came to me first to feel you out. He asked me what you might say.”

“I hope you told him I’d say no.”

“That’s exactly what I told him.” Qhora’s stern look melted a bit and she felt her resolve to win this pseudo-argument fading quickly. “And then he insulted you a little, so I insulted him a little.”

The hidalgo’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, Qhora. Did you really?”

“Yes. And he said something about how you couldn’t read, I think, so I bragged about your book, and your research, and then your
other
research, and somehow the stone may have come up in passing at some point.” She paused to wet her lips. “I’m sorry, Enzo. I was angry and he was a bastard and he’s lucky I didn’t stab him, to be honest.”

“And now he has my book. And he’s been missing for hours. Gone for six, maybe eight hours. I can’t catch him now. It’s gone.” Lorenzo dragged his hand down over the thin black beard around his mouth while he stared at her. She knew the look. He was measuring the situation, calculating his options, and practicing each of them to see where they might lead. He was probably practicing what he would say to her to sound angry but not too angry. She knew how much he hated fighting with her.

Lorenzo exhaled and sat down at his desk. “My God, Qhora. Didn’t I tell you the stone was dangerous? That it could be used as a weapon?”

She hesitated, suddenly unsure of his meaning. “Well, yes, but it’s just a rock that fell from the sky, Enzo. How dangerous can it be? It’s just a political weapon, right? Or a religious one. I mean, I know how pious some of your people are, but would they really kill or die for a holy relic like that?”

He looked up at her bleakly. “Qhora, the skyfire stone isn’t just a relic or a symbol.”

“Meaning what? You want to melt it down to make swords? Or shoot it out of a cannon? What else is it good for?”

“Sit down.” He played with the pen on his desk. “I never told you exactly what happened after we escaped from Cusco, when we were separated on the way to Cartagena.”

She shrugged. “You got lost, you were hurt, your horse died, and you crawled out of the jungle with some filthy bandages wrapped around your ribs a few days after I reached the coast. What didn’t you tell me?”

He stared dully at the bare spot on his desk where his book should have been. “I was riding along a steep hillside in the rain when my horse slipped and we fell down the slope, sliding through the mud into trees and rocks. My horse was dead before it reached the bottom. I only survived because I landed on the horse, but my ribs were cracked, my arm was broken, and soon after a spider gave me a nasty bite on my hand,” Lorenzo said. “I was probably only a day or two from death when someone found me.”

“Who?”

“I’m not really sure. I think they were priests, but not like the priests in Cusco. Different hair, different clothes. Just men, no women. They lived in a small stone building on the edge of a river, which is where they took me. It took a couple days to recover from the spider bite and to get my ribs on the mend. The day after I woke up, I was still very weak and sick. I lay in my little room, sweating and listening to the priests singing or chanting. Suddenly they stopped. They were shouting in some sort of Quechua that I didn’t know, so I had no idea what they were saying. Then I heard more voices outside and I stood up to look out the window of my room.”

“What did you see?”

“Espani soldiers. Probably Pizzaro’s men,” said Lorenzo. “The soldiers were on the far side of the river, and they were demanding that the priests use their boat to bring the soldiers across the water. The priests refused. And then the soldiers began wading across the river. That’s when I left my room. I meant to talk to the soldiers, to call them off, but I never made it outside. I collapsed in the large common room outside my doorway, still too weak to do anything. Lying there, I saw the priests run past. They carried a sort of litter or stretcher between them. Whatever was on the stretcher was covered with a cloth. The priests ran outside and a moment later I heard the soldiers screaming in agony, and through the high narrow window of my room I saw steam rising from the river. Soon the screaming stopped and the priests returned. This time the stretcher was uncovered and I saw what was on it. A stone. It was about the size of a man’s head, mostly round but a little lumpy, and a dark fiery orange color, like copper, or red-gold.”

“What happened to the soldiers?” Qhora asked.

“I learned later that they were boiled alive when the priests placed the stone in the water.” Lorenzo shook his head. “It’s unlike anything else in nature. This stone, this metal, can be perfectly cool from just a few inches away but still burning hot to the touch. It can melt steel, scorch the earth, and boil the water just by touching it. The only way to handle the stone safely is with clay, as the priests used on their stretcher.”

“So, the stone only had to touch the river to kill all the soldiers in the water?” Qhora felt a sick twisting in her belly.

Lorenzo nodded. “Over the next few days, I managed to learn a few things about the priests and their stone. Not much. They said it fell from the sky, and made certain sounds and lights across the heavens as it fell. It matches Sister Ariel’s description of the skyfire stone in every way.”

“I see.” Qhora looked down and began smoothing her Espani skirts across lap. Her hands trembled and she rolled them into fists.
I should have killed Faleiro. I should have slit his throat when I had the chance. Now there’s going to be more war and death. More killing. More innocents being killed
. “So your little hobby, this rock, this skyfire stone, whatever it is, is actually a deadly weapon. And you couldn’t tell me that?”

Lorenzo shook his head. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t think of it that way. It’s really so much more than a weapon. It could help rekindle our faith, and it could help to rebuild our cities or improve crops for generations to come. How many ways might España benefit from something that provides endless warmth to anything it touches?” He sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to, really. But this had to remain a secret, and I know how much you enjoy talking to other people about…me.”

Qhora stared at him.
Only because no one has any interest in discussing me and my homeland. Did it ever occur to you that they all see me either as an invader or the spoils of your conquest?
“And why shouldn’t I talk about you? You’re a warrior and a hero, despite all your Espani modesty. You’re as fierce in battle as you are wise in counsel and pure of heart, and most of the men on this continent aren’t fit to lick your boots!”

He smiled a little. “I don’t know if I would phrase it in quite that way.”

She exhaled and looked away, one hand massaging her forehead. She said, “So now this stone of yours is a weapon, and Faleiro and Admiral Magellan are going to use it to slaughter people all across the Middle Sea. They might even take it back across the Atlanteen Ocean and start the wars with my people all over again.”

“Well,” Lorenzo said, “only if they find it before we do.”

Chapter 3. Taziri

Winter in Rome was far colder than she had remembered. Taziri stood in the little office at the edge of the airfield with her bare hands wrapped around a steaming cup of some noxious sludge that the Italians called coffee. The three young men stationed at the field were babbling in Italian, which was, as far as she could tell, exactly the same as Espani except much faster with more violent hand gestures. A light flurry of snow was falling outside on the yellowed grass and the gravel roads, and two men in orange Mazigh flight jackets identical to her own were trudging in long slow circles around the hangar across the lane. Trails of pale vapor streamed from their faces as they talked. Taziri wondered how they could stand the weather. And then she realized that her fellow officers had left the airfield office immediately after the Italians had started talking, and suddenly the bitter cold didn’t seem so uninviting.

“Do you know the time?” She raised her voice to interrupt them.

The Italians all turned to glance at her, glance at each other, shrug, and then resume their conversation.

“How can you run an airfield without a clock?” she muttered as she paced the length of the room. This was her fifth flight to Italia and she had to admit that it was actually going better than the others.
At least so far there hasn’t been a fight between the Italians and the major, and Kenan hasn’t gotten lost in town, and the weather hasn’t grounded us. Yet.

Taziri set her steaming drink down on the little table, which drew a few confused frowns from the Italians. She turned and wandered back to the windows for the hundredth time and there, up the lane, she saw two figures coming down toward the field. “Finally.”

Through the light flurries, the two figures resolved from dark blurs into a tall man and short woman, both dressed in several layers of coats and cloaks and hats with scarves and veils all fluttering and streaming about them like a regatta taking sail. From a muddle of grays, their dress took on brighter and brighter hues as they approached. The man wore blue and silver from his tricorn hat to his laced boots and woman was checkered in violet and pink from headdress to corset to bustle and skirts. Each of them carried a single small bag in one hand.