Incredulous, Taziri stood and shuffled closer. Ghanima turned, looking lost and sick, and then she scrambled down the bench away from the prisoner. Taziri reached up and flicked the cabin light on. Hamuy grinned and coughed. Taziri kept the gun pointed at the man’s chest as she knelt down, still staring and frowning. Behind the wisp of smoke was a dark hole in Hamuy’s shirt, and behind the hole was a ring of light brown skin, and in that ring of flesh was a crushed bullet and the bright silver gleam of steel.
“What is that? What’s under your skin?”
“That?” Hamuy’s grin melted into a cold, flat stare. “That’s the future, girl. And it’s nothing compared to what they did to Chaou.”
Day Two
Chapter 8. Lorenzo
The hidalgo sat high in the saddle, his black greatcoat draped over the horse’s rump, the brim of his hat shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun rising above the rim of the Atlas Mountains on his left. After only a few minutes on the road, they were already beyond the last of the small cottages of Tingis. The cobbled street became a broad dusty highway where a glance to the right revealed the thin black line of the ocean beyond the hills but to look anywhere else was to stare into an endless sea of grass and dust. Stunted trees and gnarled shrubs clustered around the rocky dips in the hills and the occasional spoor on the side of road betrayed the recent passage of rabbits and wild dogs, but to Lorenzo Quesada the wind-stroked plain was as alien and treacherous as the jungles of the New World.
No snow, no ice. Animals everywhere, but no tracks anywhere. He sipped from his water skin and unbuttoned his coat, revealing his white shirt and dark blue vest to the warming air. The pommel and swept-hilt guard of his espada bobbed along at his hip, the blade sheathed in supple oiled leather with a tuft of fur at the mouth to protect the steel from snow and rain, though he did not expect either to fall anytime soon.
To his right and several paces behind rode Lady Qhora astride her monstrous Wayra. The Inca called them hatun-ankas, the great eagles. Striding as fast as a horse could trot and towering nine feet above the ground on its massive talons, the animal bore little similarity to any bird Lorenzo had ever seen. But the beasts were feathered and beaked, and they screamed like eagles well enough. Below the neck their plumage was drab browns and grays, but around the head they wore crowns and masks and collars of red and blue and green, as garish as they were hideous. He had once met a man from Carthage who claimed that there were similar striding birds in the east called ostriches, though they were thin-legged and clumsy. The thought of more of these creatures elsewhere around the world was not comforting to him.
Wayra was not clumsy or delicate. She moved with the same powerful grace as her rider, trotting proudly down the road, her head snapping from side to side so she could study the world with her massive black eyes. Lorenzo guessed Wayra’s beak to be three hand-spans long and half that in width, though he had never dared to measure it. In the Empire he had seen Incan warriors riding the hatun-ankas into battle, the feathered monsters screaming as they raced through the forests and across the hills, their stunted wings held tight against their bodies. When they leapt upon the Espani cavalry, the horses were crushed into the dust beneath talons as cruel as sabers and the riders were torn to pieces by iron beaks that could crush a skull or snap a ribcage in a single thrust. And then the hatun-ankas would feed, bright red blood streaming across their pale golden beaks.
Lorenzo nudged his nervous mare a bit farther to the left. In Espana, Wayra had been confined to a corner of a stable where he had rarely been forced near her. The journey across the Strait in the Mazigh steamer had been tense but brief, and the journey to the capital at Orossa should have been similarly swift aboard the train. But now he counted the hours and days of riding that stretched out before him, hours and days of sitting with his head only a few feet from Wayra’s beak.
With some satisfaction, he saw that Lady Qhora was wearing the dark green dress he had given her last winter. White silk and lace covered her neck and chest and rustled at her wrists, ensuring that no man might see more than was proper. But she refused to ride side-saddle, and so the skirts lay in wrinkled disarray across her lap, revealing her soft riding boots nearly to her knees. She had not cut her hair since coming to Espana and now it hung decadently past her shoulders to mingle with the brilliant golds and greens and blues of her feathered cloak. The princess glanced at him and he looked away quickly. I am not a boy any more. If Ariel could tend to thieves and lepers, the least I can do is not lust after Qhora. Love can be chaste and pure. I must try harder. I must pray harder.
Behind them both, Xiuhcoatl drove the wagon carrying their small bags, the two cages, and the sleeping saber-toothed cat. Atoq had leapt into the cart the moment Lorenzo brought it to the hotel, and after sniffing about in the straw and circling several times, the great cat had collapsed in a huff and was soon dreaming, his paws scratching gently at the floorboards.
The old Aztec warrior had shown little interest in the news that the train had been destroyed, or that the airship had been destroyed, or that dozens of people had been killed, or that they now faced a much longer journey across Marrakesh. Nothing ever seemed to interest or trouble the man, but Lorenzo didn’t think anything of it. Xiuhcoatl had left his homeland in some northern province to serve in the great wars in Jisquntin Suyu, and then pledged his service to a young Incan princess only days before she had been forced to flee the city, the country, and then across the sea to Espana. The Aztec did not speak Quechua, though he seemed to understand enough to obey Lady Qhora’s orders. And he certainly didn’t speak Espani or any other language of the Middle Sea kingdoms. Lorenzo didn’t think anything of that either. But he sometimes envied the solitude that the Aztec must have enjoyed behind the wall of his strange language and his jaguar-skin cloak.
No one gives him a second look, thinking him some dull savage. And no one demands anything of him, except for my lady, Lorenzo reflected. To have such clarity of purpose. To be truly free to ignore the world and all its base distractions, to be totally dedicated to a single task in life. What a paradise that must be.
Ahead, the road angled up slightly and Lorenzo nudged his mare into a canter to reach the top of the rise and look ahead. The highway speared across the plains with uncanny precision, drawn by proud engineers and carved across the land by even prouder engines.
Even their roads are unnatural.
A dozen yards to the right, the train tracks shadowed the road with the same precision, the two rails gleaming in the morning light. Lorenzo tugged the mare’s head over so he could look back at the short distance they had traveled already. Tingis still appeared on the horizon, the spires of the temple and the governor’s estate rising proudly against the pale pink sky. He watched the winds play through the tall grasses for a minute as Lady Qhora rode past, and he was about to turn and follow her when a shimmer in the grass caught his eye.
The wind gusted from left to right, from the sea toward the mountains, and the grasses laid down like willing supplicants, except for one place just a few yards from the edge of the road. Down in the drainage ditch, the grass was rippling from north to south. It was bending toward him. Toward his Qhora.
As the horse-drawn wagon rolled by, Lorenzo said in his broken and unpracticed Quechua, “Xiuhcoatl, there are men following us. Be ready.”
The old Aztec nodded ever so slightly as he drove past, and Lorenzo saw him lift the blanket off the seat beside him to reveal his sword. The hidalgo grimaced at the sight of it. It wasn’t a sword at all, only a wooden club studded with obsidian spikes to create a sort of crude blade along its edges. It weighed half a dozen pounds, requiring both hands even from its grim-faced master, and at its fastest it was still as slow as the moon compared to the shooting star of Lorenzo’s espada. But he had seen men dismembered by that sword, their bones crushed, their flesh shredded, their hot blood gushing in a dozen places at once. Lady Qhora called the obsidian sword a macuahuitl. He had never asked what the word meant.