“Did Faleiro say why he was going to meet this Lorenzo?”
She grinned a little wider. “To hire him.”
“To do what?”
Shifrah turned her smile on him. “To replace you, of course. I told you they didn’t like you. I told you they were unhappy with your progress teaching the sailors to fence. But as I recall, you said it was nothing to worry about.”
“Replace me? He must be a diestro, then. A diestro named Lorenzo.” Salvator leaned back and studied the skies again with wider eyes. “Ah! Don Lorenzo Quesada. Yes, I’ve heard of the man. A religious idiot, I think.”
Shifrah looked at him sharply. The swordsman in Marrakesh! The duel on the road, and the chase at the train station. “Quesada? I know that name. That’s the bastard who sliced up my hand on the road to Arafez! Didn’t I tell you? He wanted me to run away with him.”
Salvator raised an eyebrow. “Run away with him?”
Her grin returned. “To a nunnery.”
“Oh, yes. That sounds like him. He’s a zealot, from what I hear. Spends too much time in church talking to the dead, and he won’t kill a man for any reason. I suppose he wants to keep his soul nice and clean for Judgment Day.” Salvator scowled. “And you saw him in Marrakesh. He must be working with the Mazighs.”
“On what?”
Salvator shrugged. “I have no idea. But when I bring Magellan a platter of Mazigh heads and Quesada’s skull for a centerpiece, I don’t think I’ll need to worry about my job for quite some time. And then I can return to business of sinking his precious warship.”
Shifrah shivered. “So we’re going north then?”
“Don’t you want to catch him?” He studied her for a moment. “Or are you afraid Quesada will lock you away in a nunnery after all?”
“The fencer doesn’t scare me. He was good, but he didn’t beat me. If I hadn’t been outnumbered both times, I would have stuck him like I stuck his ugly friend.” Her voice was low and husky, and a bit congested. “It’s the Mazighs I’m worried about. They fight dirty. Guns. Bombs. They’re crazy.”
“This is about the eye, isn’t it?” he asked. “You lost it in Marrakesh, but never said how, exactly.”
She nudged her horse gently over to his, and when they were sitting side by side, she slapped him. “It’s not about my eye. And I am not afraid of anyone. But there are plenty of tracks going south, so I am going south. You can go north and kill whoever you like. I hope you enjoy your cold, empty bed.”
He shrugged. “As you wish. Track them down, whoever they are. If you find any Mazighs, do be so kind as to bring back their heads for me.”
She rolled her eye. “Really? Heads? You’re serious about that? I’m an assassin, not a butcher. How am I supposed to cut off a man’s head with one of these?” She whipped out one of her slender stilettos, twirled the blade across her fingers, and slipped it back into her coat.
“Don’t over-think it and I’m sure you’ll do just fine. Good hunting, my dear.” Without so much as a smile, he turned his mare to the north road and trotted away through the thick snow, quickly plunging into the shadowed lanes between the other large country houses and the rows of small pines that lined the road.
Shifrah glared at his back for a moment, then turned her own horse to the south and hunched down under her coats, praying that there would be a warm inn with a warm fire and warm food and a warm bed just over the next hill. She knew there wouldn’t be, so she prayed a bit harder.
Lewis, Joseph Robert
Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy)
Day Four
Chapter 10. Syfax
They got back on the road heading south first thing in the morning. One of the students named Diego led the way, followed by seven other boys and the hidalgo’s cook, maid, and footman. Kenan and the major brought up the rear. It was freezing cold, a light sleet was falling, and the sky was three shades of iron partly veiled by threatening clouds. Over night the snow had piled up to knee height and a thin glaze of ice glistened on it in the early sunlight. Every footstep was painful work, plunging through the ice and dragging through the snow. The freezing wind stung every patch of exposed skin and the day promised to be very long and twice as miserable.
Syfax grinned. A perfect day.
Last night’s quick march from the hidalgo’s house to the inn in Parla had been bracing for everyone, and they slept soundly enough. Shortly after leaving Parla the maid left them, veering off to the east toward her mother’s house. The cook and the footman left at midmorning, off to stay with their own families in some town around to the west of Madrid. Soon it was just Syfax, the lieutenant, and the eight pale-faced boys trudging down the highway to Toledo.
The countryside marched by slowly, one white hill after another, each landscape as bleak and colorless as the last. A stand of pine trees weighed down with fresh snow. A circle of identical stone houses around a well. Wooden fences and stone walls. And the frozen mud ruts of the road itself.
There were plenty of other people on the road and none seemed at all concerned with the cold or the threatening clouds. Children leading cows. Women leading mules laden with sacks. Men driving wagons behind horses and oxen. They were never completely alone on the road, always within sight of the next traveler or the last one, and every few moments a voice would rise across the snow. Children playing. Mothers shouting at the children. Men shouting at each other. Voices cracked and echoed across the great white plains and hills and iron skies.
They found Toledo just after noon, but long after the first boy had begun grumbling about his empty belly. Syfax slapped the boy on the back, remembering what it was to be sixteen and forever hungry, forever looking ahead to the next meal, and then greedily eyeing the table for seconds and thirds.
The best years of my life. Nothing but eating, sleeping, and working myself to death every day.
The town in front of them looked very much like the one they had left the evening before. The Espani seemed quite expert at dragging gray stones together to create what they called towns, but looked more like small, lumpy hills on the plains. Thatched rooflines formed ridges beneath their blankets of snow, and icicles hung from every eave like an armory of glistening spears. Nothing was clean, nothing was smooth or straight. Toledo was a city of soft curves and broken edges, of rough stone and frozen water. As the men entered the first gully between two tall houses, with muddy slush crunching underfoot and vicious winds whipping down the lanes, Syfax felt the first pang of unease.
Back home in Marrakesh, in any city, he could stand in the middle of the road and look for a hundred yards in every direction, seeing all the people, seeing the doorways and alleys, the vehicles and animals, the solid walls and fragile windows. In a Mazigh city he knew the terrain, its assets and liabilities, where to hide in a firefight, who to protect first, and which way to run. But here he couldn’t see more than a dozen yards before the street curved aside, or uphill or downhill, and the snow hid everything. Every step and gutter, if these people even have gutters. Every movement sounded exactly the same, like crunching snow. There was no distinguishing a child from a woman from a man, or even from a dog or a horse. And sometimes a block of snow or a wall of ice would simply break free of a roof and tumble into the road of its own accord.
He couldn’t trust his ears and his eyes were nearly useless, hemmed in by the crooked walls and snow drifts. Syfax began looking back over his shoulder and checking to either side more and more as he trusted his peripheral vision less and less.
There was no way to know if the Espani were really looking for them yet, but this was their fourth day in the country. If they weren’t hunting the Mazighs yet, they would be soon, or not at all. And he was betting on soon.
He grabbed Kenan’s arm. “Hey kid, we might want to think about splitting up or spreading out. I don’t like how bunched up we are in these streets. It’s too crowded. No exits. If things go sideways while we’re in town, we’d be screwed before we even saw the first soldier.”