Powers (10 page)

He shook his head, not saying either yea or nay. The air stayed chilly. Nothing to do with physical temperature—the kitchen felt warm enough with toaster and stove going, the mingling reinforcing aromas of sausage grease and cinnamon toast weaving their perfume and stirring his taste buds in anticipation—but the psychic temperature Legion had left behind . . . nerves jangling, tension and distrust in full force. Albert skirted her personal-space to reach and turn on the radio for its distraction. It offered him Mozart. Flute. Probably Jean-Pierre Rampal playing, by the distinctive tone of the instrument.

He recognized it by the first few bars in the middle of a movement, one of the strange things his memory did. He could remember some things for centuries. Others slipped into fog within a month—like that demon-blade and who had wanted it. Damned annoying.

Mozart was good. Soothing, bright, no thunderstorm drama of Brahms or Beethoven or praise to whatever-Name-of-God-you-chose Wagner there to crank the friction higher. He’d never liked Wagner. Disliked the story lines as much as the music. If Ms. Detective Melissa el Hajj or Noshaq or whatever the hell her name was didn’t like Mozart with breakfast, she could walk her Afghan émigré ass out of his life forever any time she wanted.

They ate. He savored the lamb and sage with a touch of coriander, the toast thick with butter. Various thoughts crossed his mind, like how he’d intended to add the sausage to dried beans and onions and tomatoes and basil, long-baked to mingle and take on each other’s savor. Stretch the costly meat into dinners for three days or four, rather than squander the whole of it on a single breakfast. But he kept those words behind his teeth. She didn’t seem to feel like talking, either.

Lamb sausage and the way she’d seared it brown and then started to move the skillet to the edge of the “fire” to cut back the heat set off memories. Habits die hard. She hadn’t learned to cook on a stove . . .

“Oh ye who believe! Eat of the good things that We have provided you with, and give thanks to Allah if Him it is that you serve.”

She stared at him, gaze like a knife pinning him to the wall behind. “Sura II, verse 172. Are you of the
umma
or the
ulema?
”

The Islamic faithful or the clergy. Why the
hell
did those words slip from my memory into the open air? Muslims behave differently towards believers and unbelievers. That difference can be very good or very very bad, either way. I don’t even know if she is Sunni or Shia.

Tell the truth. It’s simpler.
“No. Neither. I lived with a Muslim family for some years. The head of the family would recite that before we ate.”

“In
English?
”

“He had served with the English army. He would say the words in Arabic and then translate as a courtesy to a guest.”

“Some scholars say that the Holy Qur’an must not be translated.”

Again giving no hint of her own beliefs, no mention of
imam
or
ayatollah
or Sufi sage . . .

He quoted her own words back at her: “Allah is more beneficent and merciful than the beards want us to believe.”

Let’s not discuss how long ago Ali Akhbar Khan served with the British. The gaunt silver-bearded patriarch had carried a Snider rifle, while the Kipling Tommy privates in the next column carried Martinis. Nineteenth-century military metal.

A hint of a smile touched the corner of her mouth. At least she had
some
sense of humor . . .

Then she shoved her empty plate toward him. “I cooked. You clean.”

Not something he’d ever expect to hear from a Muslim woman. Yet, she wore a veil of a sort, never showing her true face to him. Or maybe one of those sets of nested Russian dolls, each one a
different
face, smile or fierce scowl. Or sometimes, a derisive grimace with tongue sticking out.

If she wished to shame him by handing him women’s work to do, she failed. He’d
prefer
to wash up, particularly that cast-iron skillet with its baked-on “seasoning” from a century or two of use. She’d probably feel the need to scour it with steel wool and ruin the finish.

Or look around for some sand, scouring agent of choice in her water-poor hills. He’d eaten enough sand in those years, it had been coming out his pores.

He started to gather dishes in the sink, then turned to her, with a thought. She was headed for the bathroom,
his
bathroom, without asking. Just move right in, take over. Like Mother—the only boundaries that mattered were
hers.

Turn about is fair play, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Gender. Whatever. “You asked if I was
umma
or
ulema.
Are you?”

She paused in mid-stride. “I ask questions. I don’t answer them.” Then, over her shoulder, “Telling you will make life easier for
me.
The answer is the same as yours. No. Neither.”

Hence her thirst for a cold beer at the end of a long day’s work in the ash-stink of a burned-out hulk.

“Well, you
can
identify two sentences out of thin air by chapter and verse. In translation.”

He saw the back of a shrug. “Scripture—Muslim or Christian or Jew, it’s useful to throw their own holy words back at them. Even Shaitan can quote scripture for his own purposes. Which
isn’t
scripture. I haven’t found a holy man yet who obeys every single word. Or a holy woman, either.”

Then she vanished behind the bathroom door.

He remembered scripture easily, too. One of the few things he
could
remember with precision, one century to the next. Funny thing, that, with him not believing it. It had to be those three—Jewish, Christian, Muslim. He couldn’t remember Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh writings worth a damn.

Belief could be useful, could have kept Legion the hell out of his apartment, if Albert had faith. Crosses, the mezuzim of the Jews, graceful flowing Arabic calligraphy from the Qur’an—they guarded home and hearth for believers. Symbols and belief hold power, great power, even over the hidden world. Every opening into Albert’s building showed crosses to the outside, even the plumbing vents through the roof, remembrances of previous owners. They hadn’t had much effect on Legion. Just as those six-pointed stars, Solomon’s own Seal, hadn’t kept a salamander out of that abandoned synagogue.

The salamander had been able to enter the synagogue because believers had abandoned it. The faith had left, decades ago. Legion had gotten into Albert’s apartment because Albert wasn’t a believer.

Oh, yeah, he
knew
gods and demons and angels haunted the world. That wasn’t faith, that was personal witness. What he didn’t do was worship them. He’d consign them all to their own particular hells if he could. The best of them acted like spoiled brats if they didn’t get every whim satisfied, right down to the brand of toilet paper you used and whether you washed your right hand first or your left, and the worst turned nastier than Caligula with a hangover and bad hemorrhoids.

That wasn’t even considering the way humans had warped religion to serve their priests and kings and tribal elders. After a few centuries of perspective, he’d started noticing things like that.

So crosses and the like didn’t do him any good. He’d take the trade and call it even.

Those thoughts saw the dishes stacked in the drainer and his skillet back drying over the stove’s pilot light. He was swabbing the counter and kitchen table with a rag when she came out. Hair damp, bleeding from her scalp wound stopped. He touched his own head, tested his nose. Same thing. No blood. Maybe they were cousins, improbable though that seemed.

That name Legion had used for her, Noshaq or however you spelled it, that was a mountain in the wilds of Afghanistan if he remembered right. He’d seen it once, far on the horizon, menacing. A
serious
mountain, in serious wilds, one of those kill-you-as-soon-as-look-at-you high places ruled by a bitch storm goddess, the weather and the rocks and the ice as much as the people.

Whereas he was some kind of northern European, as best as he could tell. Simon Lahti, the one name out of hundreds that Legion had chosen to use . . .

“Simon.” Yeah, Mother used to call me Simon among other things, pretending we were Christians, but the last name . . . I have no idea what my father’s name might have been. I never knew him, don’t know if she had more than a few minutes’ acquaintance with the man or if I shared his genes with my brothers and my sister.

The “Lahti” part, that just means I was born in a dark smoky room on some back alley of that town of the Troll-King’s Finnish realm. Or so Mother told me—I’m not in any position to say. I can’t tell you which king or even the dynasty. We weren’t Saami. We didn’t care. We left there when I was so young the memories merged into dreams. Not true Gypsies, outsiders even to them.

“You. Wake up!”

He shook himself out of those thoughts. She’d vanished her pretty-pretty knife somewhere in her coveralls and was staring at the note and pheasant feather, still lying on his table. Something about her face, her eyes and the squint-wrinkles around them, made the hair on his arms prickle—she seemed to be focused about ten miles beyond the table-top, somewhere deep in the earth below.

“Arm yourself. We’re going pheasant-hunting.”

“We?”

“We. Legion won’t let me kill you, and I’m not going to chance you talking to your so-called mother. I want to know where you are. Safer.”

So-called? Not many places where people would raise doubts about your
mother.
Father maybe, but motherhood is usually not an item of dispute.

Not that he really cared. Legion wouldn’t let
him
kill
her,
either, and people usually thought killing was the proper response to that kind of slur. As if knowing his father or his mother changed who
he
was.

People were strange. Albert shrugged.
Arm yourself? That implies some interesting things about her “pheasant hunt.”

Arm yourself. He thought about this and that and the other thing. His cane, of course. Nothing else that people could see—walking out the door into maybe a swarm of cops? He checked the street-side windows, saw two police cars angled into the curb with flashing lights, saw one officer scanning rooftops and sidewalks and windows, talking to a microphone on a long coiled cord reaching back inside the cruiser he leaned against. Leaning rather casually, not crouching to use the car for cover.

That wasn’t the body-language of fear and a sniper-hunt, there. Looked like he’d already decided they’d been called out for firecrackers or an engine backfire.

Ms. Detective el Hajj should be able to talk him past that, being a fellow cop and all—as long as he wasn’t carrying a rocket launcher over one shoulder or some other obvious threat.

Which eliminated the katana or any other kind of long blade. Well, he wasn’t much of a swordsman, anyway. Being short suited him better for close-in fighting. Cut ’em off at the knees, then you can reach the throat.

Short blades he had in plenty. Weapon only, or something shaped for utility use, prying and cutting and splitting as well as stab and slash? He didn’t know where they were going, what they would face . . .

The front room closet gave him a choice of cloth-wrapped bundles. One felt comfortable in his hand, balanced, well remembered, even while still hidden. He’d custom-forged many of his blades for others—they’d never felt
right
to him, even though his hammer and anvil knew they were right for the man or woman who would carry and swing that metal.

This one, though, he’d felt growing to his own hand as he formed the glowing steel. He’d started in to make a blade for sale to some stranger, needed the money. Ended up with something that carried more than the usual splinter of his own soul bound within its working.

And it wanted to come along on this hunt.

He unwrapped it while walking back to the kitchen, then laid the sheathed knife and the linen wrapper on the counter and turned away to dig a padded jacket out of the closet. A little warm for the season, but no need to advertise his weapon.

A quiet gasp behind him made him turn back. She was staring at the knife like a mongoose waiting for the perfect moment to pounce on a cobra. He studied the knife like it was a new thing, trying to see what had caused her reaction.

He’d formed the hilt as a traditional
aikuchi tsuka ito,
including the Japanese-style
kumihimo
raw-silk braid wrap, patterned black and red, that would give him a firm grip even soaked with sweat or blood. Not like that stone on
her
knife. Minimal dark bronze guard and pommel: simple, smooth and flush with the sheath, just a single rune cast into the guard on each side of the blade—
Þurisaz
for “Thor” on one side, giant-killer, god of the hammer even if not known as a smith;
Tiwaz
for “Tyr” on the other, god of single combat, victory, and heroic glory. Bits of Nordic, consciously
ironic
whimsy when he was carving the lost-wax forms for casting.

Her hand reached toward the grip and then pulled back, once, twice, doing a shy dance as if outside her control.

“May I?”

First time she’d
asked
for anything. He nodded, reluctant. Knives were personal, weapons were personal, if they had any value at all. Touching his knife was moving inside his personal space, too much like touching
him.

She grasped the hilt and the matching
kumihimo
of the black-lacquered wooden sheath. Drew the blade—seven inches, eight inches, he’d never measured it, it was what it was, what it had asked to be, fitted to
his
size. Straight, edged partway down the back, heavier and broader than his sword-cane blade, he could clamp the tip in his vise and support his whole weight on the hilt, no spring to it. Closer to
yoroi toshi
—“armor-piercer”—than the slim blade of a traditional
aikuchi.
The Japanese language used great precision in naming blades and other parts of weapons. Told you things about a culture and its history.