Halcyon The Complete Trilogy (68 page)

Qhora closed the door and slipped off her heavy coat. She was still wearing his re-tailored army coat, the belt cinched tight to accentuate her tiny waist. He remembered wearing that coat while slaughtering Incan warriors on the beaches of the New World, his uniform covered in mud and gore.

And now it’s covered in satin ribbons
.
Life is strange
.

She said, “Well, here we are. I suppose it could have been worse, this little journey of yours. Enrique could have died.”

Lorenzo sighed.
It’s going to be one of those evenings
. “Yes, yes, we all could have died. They would have told stories about it for a hundred years and our ghosts would have roamed the countryside, knocking over milk buckets and frightening small children.” He smiled at her.
She worries about death at all the wrong times, but it’s nice that she worries.
“But at least we would have been together, my dear. I’m sorry you’ll have to settle for us all being very much alive, here in the grandest cathedral in northern España.”

“Ah, yes, our life of luxury.” She glanced around at the bare walls and floor of their cell. The only objects in the room were the bed, the pegs for their clothing, and the triquetra hung from the wall above the bed. The narrow window was completed obscured by icy grime on the outside. She smiled.

Lorenzo laughed. “It will get better, I promise. This is just the first night. We’re all tired and cold and hungry. Everything will look better in the morning.”

A door creaked in the hall and both them looked sharply at their own closed door, listening. The soft shuffle of footsteps chuffed away down the corridor.

“It must be Shahera looking for the toilet,” Qhora said.

Lorenzo didn’t answer. He focused on the cadence of the footsteps, quick and precise.
No, the Eranian girl moves more slowly and less certainly
. He stood up and slipped his sword belt back on. “I’ll just be a moment.”

Qhora narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

He peeked out into the hall and saw no one there. With his left hand holding his weapon still and silent on his hip and his injured right arm aching with every jostle of his body, Lorenzo slipped to the end of the corridor just in time to look down the stairs and see a shadow moving below.

Well, he isn’t looking for the toilet.

Down the stairs and around the corner he spotted the hooded figure striding through a narrow doorway, and then down another hall, through a door, across a courtyard, and out into the open starlit streets of Zaragoza. Lorenzo stood in the shadows, watching the figure in Italian boots hurry away down the lane.

Seriously? You couldn’t wait a single night? Some of us have wives to undress.

The hidalgo followed Dante through the cold city streets, seeing and hearing no one else outside though he saw and heard many people in their homes, eating and laughing and generally looking warm and comfortable. His injured arm ached fiercely.

Dante followed the river east and Lorenzo guessed he was looking for some sort of transport on the Elbro itself. Though it was frozen solid and all hulled ships were locked to their moorings, the river’s banks were lined with ice-sailers. The slender canoes rested on long blades on the Elbro’s frozen surface and tall sails carried them flying before the wind from Zaragoza along the mad snaking paths of the river all the way to Amposta on the shores of the Middle Sea.

There was nothing and no one to be found along the banks of the Elbro, though the wind shrieked mightily and Lorenzo heard bats squeaking in the dark, their leathery wings fighting valiantly against the icy gusts.

“What are you planning to do, Lorenzo?” a woman’s voice whispered in his ear.

“Gaaa!” The hidalgo stumbled sideways into the iron chain along the river’s edge that prevented pedestrians from slipping on the ice and falling down to the Elbro’s white face. He clutched his chest as adrenaline burned through his brain and arms.

Dante!

He looked up and saw that the Italian had stopped and was looking around, snapping his gaze from one side to another. He looked back at Lorenzo once, directly at him, but the shadows were deep enough and he was huddled low enough to remain unseen. Dante resumed his quick march into the night.

Lorenzo stood up, glaring at the pale ghost in the street beside him, her silvery outlines shuddering before the wind like a thousand pennants in a fresh morning breeze. “I don’t mean to tell you your business, sister, as I have almost no experience being dead myself, but could you please try to appear in front of me instead of behind me? Even just once in a while? Just for the novelty of it?”

“I am sorry, Lorenzo,” Ariel said. “But I go where the aether lets me and you have an uncanny knack for standing with the thickest clouds of aether behind you. It’s almost as though the aether sweeps along behind you in a tide wherever you go.”

“Well, just try harder next time. Please.” Lorenzo exhaled and shuddered away the last of the sudden fright. He set out down the street again. “What did you say?”

“I asked, what are you planning to do? That is, when you catch up to this silly man?”

Lorenzo smiled. “You know, I’m not really sure. I suppose I should stop him before he finds someone to talk to.”

“To drag him back to La Seo? To hold him against his will?”

Lorenzo frowned. “Well, no. It’s for his own good. We know that Magellan’s sent at least one agent to kill the Mazighs, and there may be others, and by now they may know about Dante and Shahera. Dante’s life is in danger, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.”

“Ah. So you are out here, tonight, in the cold and the dark, while your lovely wife waits for back in a warm bed, because you are so very concerned for this Dante’s welfare?”

Lorenzo exhaled slowly, watching his breath curl and spread in a vaporous cloud. “I’m concerned for the lives of all men.”

The nun shook her head. “Lorenzo, I know you want to believe that, but I also know that you don’t. Not yet, anyway. You love your family more than your friends, your friends more than your countrymen, your countrymen more than strangers, and strangers more than enemies of the faith. Universal love sounds grand in the pulpit, but men are only men. God won’t hate you for not loving this Italian as well as your wife.”

“Love him as well as I love Qhora? I doubt she’d put up with that for very long.” Lorenzo smiled. “So what then? Are you suggesting that I leave him to his own devices? Abandon him to his fate?”

“I’m suggesting that he is the sort of person who is going to get himself into trouble, even if the finest diestro in the land is at his side. But your arm is injured and you’re alone in a strange city. It may be his path to walk into danger and not come out again.” Sister Ariel brushed his arm with her insubstantial hand. “And it would be a terrible loss if you died for him.”

“Died for him?” He smiled a little wider. “You sound positively cynical now, although to be fair, you are dead. Look, Dante’s just a rude young man in need of a little seasoning. And the truth is that he’s probably only walking into a short fight with a drunken oaf in an alley. A broken nose and bloody lip, that’s all.”

“If you think so, then you haven’t spent as much time in Zaragoza as I have,” the ghost said. “This is not a quiet northern city. This is an angry place.”

“An angry place?” Lorenzo squinted into the wind.
Half of España is angry these days, and the other half is staring into a black void of a future, wondering if they’ll survive the winter without their husbands or sons or brothers to help them. Father’s letters say that Gadir is already on the edge of disaster. People are starving. People are dying. The war ended three years ago, but it’s still killing us.
“What do you mean, exactly?”

“I mean the people are angry. Look.”        

In the distance, Lorenzo could see a circle of men beneath a pair of torches at the top of the bank. The firelight danced on the frozen face of the Elbro below. A few shouts echoed down the dark lane.

“Is it a fight?” He looked to his right when she didn’t answer, but the nun was gone.

Lorenzo hurried toward the men and soon saw Dante hovering at the edge of the group. The Italian was leaning forward, pointing, gesturing, and talking to some of the men around him.

A boxing match?

Two huge brutes stripped to the waist were swinging their bloody fists at each other’s faces and connecting more often than not. They had been at it quite a while judging by the extensive sheen of blood on both their faces, blinding them and filling their mouths. They were staggering and spitting and drooling, lurching into one another and hanging on each other’s shoulders even as they tried to throw one more punch, one more jab, one more gouge.

The hidalgo sidled up to the Italian and said, “Nice night, isn’t it?”

Dante only scowled at him, not a trace of surprise on his face. “It’s as nice as any other. Do you have any money on you? They won’t take my florins.”

“No, we’re not betting here. Come on, let’s go back.” Lorenzo touched his arm.

“Get off me.” Dante jerked his arm away, lost his balance on the icy cobblestones, and crashed into the three men on his right. The men roared curses in three languages as they all fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs and coats. Dante was the first on his feet but instead of offering to help the others up, he kicked them and swore back in Italian.

Suddenly half of the spectators around the boxing match had turned their attention to the angry men behind them. They laughed and jeered at the fallen men, particularly at the one who had planted his face in another’s crotch. The three men scrambled up and found themselves being shoved and mocked by the crowd, and Lorenzo saw them turn toward Dante with knives drawn. The Italian did not see them at all as he was trying to worm his way back into the knot of men still watching the boxers.

“No, no, no!” Lorenzo burst into motion only half a step ahead of the raging drunks. He grabbed Dante’s collar and hauled him away from the spectator’s circle. The Italian didn’t even turn to look before he began shouting and trying to throw the hidalgo off. Struggling and stumbling backward, Lorenzo felt the cold chain fence at the edge of the bank digging into the back of his knees and as he tumbled backward he prayed,
Dear God, I swear I will do anything humanly possible to glorify your boundless love and grace if only you will refrain from breaking my neck right now.

He crashed onto the hard stone slope with Dante on top of him and they slid together, accelerating down the icy incline to the frozen river. He kicked at the stoneworks frantically to turn around and managed to get his feet halfway round before they hit the Elbro. They slid apart in a light cloud of snow dust across the hard ice.

Lorenzo rolled over and pushed himself up to all fours.
Nothing broken. Thank God! Oh right, God. I guess I owe you a holy stone and the renewed faith of an entire nation. Well played, Lord. Well played.

He stood up to see the three men with their knives running across the embankment toward the old stone stair that would bring them safely down to the river. “Dante? Dante!” He grabbed the Italian and pulled him up.

“What in God’s name is wrong with you?” The Italian shoved him away.

“Them!” Lorenzo pointed at the three men rushing down the stairs.

Dante looked. “Oh.” He was up and running in an instant with Lorenzo only a step behind.

The ice underfoot was treacherous but solid and it could be managed by someone used to running on it. Lorenzo had no trouble and Dante seemed to actually be pulling away ahead of him. But behind them, he could see the three men had reached the river and were only a long stone’s throw away.

“The boat! Get to that boat!” Lorenzo yelled.

Dante angled right and leapt into the ice-sailer tied to the nearby dock. He dove to the front of the canoe and began wrenching the frozen ropes off the cleats that held them to the pilings. Lorenzo charged up a moment later and hacked viciously at the ropes with his espada. The lines cracked and broke apart in a burst of icicles and frost. Both men grabbed the mast ropes as high as they could and then dropped with their combined weight to raise the sail. The canvas rose half the height the mast and the easterly wind gusting up the river snapped the sail taut, hurling the boat away from the dock.

The armed men were still closing.

“Again!” Lorenzo and Dante leapt up to grab the line and hauled it down again. The sail cracked against the upper pulley and now the full height of the canvas caught the wind. The two men fell back into the canoe as the ice-sailer skidded and sliced across the Elbro, tipping up to the left at a precarious angle. Dante threw himself to the right and the sailer crashed back down level on its skates.

Lorenzo looked back. The three armed men were slowing, stumbling to a halt, doubling over, and gasping for breath. The hidalgo grinned. “You see? All we needed was to borrow a canoe on skates with a sail and we were perfectly capable of escaping. Nothing complicated about it.”

Dante collapsed into the bottom of the canoe on his back and laughed. “We stole this boat, Quesada, fair and square.”

“No, no.” Lorenzo shook his head. The wind blasted through his unbound hair and he used his free hand to hold up his collar to protect his face. “We’re just taking it out for a bit of exercise, to keep it limber for the owner, and then we’ll leave it tied up a mile or two upriver.”

The icy banks of the Elbro streaked by for several minutes until Lorenzo pointed out the dark silhouette of La Seo against the blue-black clouds roiling beneath the pale stars. They lowered the sail and let the boat glide to a halt beside an empty slip beside several other sailers. Lorenzo tied up the boat as best he could with the remains of the frozen lines and then the two men trudged up another long stone stair to the top of the bank.

When they reached the street again, the hidalgo paused to stretch his back. “Are we done running about for tonight?”

Dante nodded. “Yes. And thanks.” He grinned, but as his eyes strayed to the left his grin faded. “Or maybe not.”