“You have to be roasting in those clothes.”
He shrugged. “It’s only for another day, and then we’ll be on our way home.” He was about to reach for his swordbelt and espada when there was a sharp knock at the door.
“Must be the maid again,” he muttered.
“Or the manager with another bill. If it is, you have my permission to stab him. A little.” She smiled as she stepped into her shoes.
Lorenzo opened the door. A short man in loose green clothing stood in the hallway. He spoke in a strangely accented Mazigh, “Good evening. Are you Don Lorenzo Quesada de Gadir?”
“Indeed, I am.” Enzo stepped back toward the chair for his discarded blue vest. “What can I do for-”
The man dashed into the room with a short straight sword in hand. Qhora glimpsed a flash of deep orange on the blade, a gleam like smoldering coals, like a burning torch in the darkness.
Aetherium!
Her hands leapt to the mismatched knives she had dropped by the side of the bed when she undressed, and she hurled the first two with barely a glance for where she was throwing them. The Persian dirk and Aegyptian dagger flew past the stranger’s head with less than a hair’s breadth to spare and both blades lodged in the open door behind him. As the man jerked away from the knives, a hint of gold swung out from the neck of shirt.
A pendant. An ankh. He’s Aegyptian!
Lorenzo drew his espada from the sheathe hanging on the back of his chair and slashed at the assassin, twice grazing the man’s sword-arm, but the Aegyptian leapt back into the hallway. The blazing aetherium sword glowed like molten gold in the shadowed corridor. Lorenzo dashed through the door after the man as Qhora stood up with two more knives in her hands and she shouted, “Alonso!”
The door to the next room burst open and for an instant Qhora could see young Alonso Ramos de Zaragoza staring wide-eyed from the far side of the adjoining room with tiny Javier cradled in his arm. But then a whirling dervish of blue skirts and shining blades raced through the open doorway, obscuring the young diestro completely.
The masked Mirari ran through the room like a wild cat, leaping over the overturned chair, planting one foot on the edge of the bed and then leaping through the open doorway down the hall after Lorenzo with her long pale knife in one hand and her long cruel hatchet in the other.
“What is it?” Alonso yelled. The young man reached for his espada in the corner, knocking his guitar off his knee onto the floor as he struggled to keep the baby safe against his chest.
“Stay there!” Qhora yelled back. “Stay right there and lock the doors!” She darted around the bed with her Songhai dagger and Italian stiletto held low and ran down the hall after the others. At the end of the landing, she looked down across the hotel foyer at the long curving stairs where Lorenzo had caught up to the Aegyptian with the blazing sword.
Compared to the Espani master, the assassin was slow and clumsy with his blade. Most of his slashes flew wide, hacking small wooden chips from the banister or chunks of plaster from the wall. But everywhere the aetherium blade landed, a charred and smoking black mark was left. Qhora saw a handful of people downstairs in the foyer near the reception desk, all staring open-mouthed at the strange duel on the steps above them.
“Who are you?” Lorenzo shouted as his espada whisked and needled at the killer’s arms and legs. “Who sent you? What do you want?”
The shorter man stumbled as he backed down the stairs, nearly losing his footing as he tried to swat the nimble fencer’s blade away. His smoldering short sword crashed left and right like a butcher’s cleaver, smashing and hacking at everything within reach.
Mirari stood just a few steps above and behind Lorenzo, her blades at the ready but she was unable to move around him to get near their attacker. So the masked girl crouched and shuffled forward as Lorenzo advanced.
Qhora stood at the top of the stair, wanting to help them as much as she wanted to run back to their rooms and hold her baby boy.
No. Javier is fine. Alonso is with him. There are four of us between this Aegyptian and my child, and the Aegyptian is already retreating. This will be over in a moment. Enzo will end it just as soon as he’s finished toying with this ugly rat.
The assassin reached the bottom of the stair and scrambled back into the open space of the foyer. Lorenzo dashed down the last few steps as Mirari hurled herself over the banister and crashed down onto the worn Persian carpet behind the would-be killer. The Aegyptian took one look back at the strange woman in the Carnivale mask wielding a hunter’s knife and hatchet, and he lunged at Lorenzo again.
The diestro smiled as he sidestepped and slashed at the man’s face, but the Aegyptian ducked, and, being short, slipped inside Lorenzo’s attack and the two men came within an arm’s length of one another.
Qhora felt her heart leap into her throat and she dashed down the stairs, her stiletto raised, ready to hurl it the moment she could get a clear line of sight around her husband. But Enzo merely grabbed the man’s shirt with his empty hand and shoved him down as stuck out his boot to trip the man. The Aegyptian flailed as he fell, and his blazing aetherium blade came down sharply on Lorenzo’s espada.
A loud hiss and a trail of white smoke rose from the floor as a dozen little tongues of flame licked up through the carpet. Lorenzo yanked his sword free, but only half of it came away in his hand. The lower half of the blade remained on the floor, and only a melted, twisted thread of steel clung to the end of the broken espada.
The assassin was on his feet in an instant and Lorenzo raised what little remained of his sword in a defensive stance. The killer lunged and the fencer parried, but the aetherium blade shattered the burnt remnant of the Espani steel with a single blow and the stroke flew straight on into Lorenzo’s chest.
Qhora stumbled into the banister, staring, unable to breathe.
Lorenzo gasped, his hand fumbling at the smaller man’s face, but the back of the hidalgo’s shirt was already burning where the tip of the aetherium sword had pierced him and a dark, dirty tendril of smoke was rising from the wound.
Enzo!
Qhora blinked. “Enzo!”
Suddenly Mirari was there, wrapping her arms around her master, pulling him back off the burning sword with her own blades crossed over his chest to shield him. Lorenzo slumped against her, silent and still.
“Enzo!” Qhora flew down the stairs, her eyes darting from the man falling to the floor to the other man running out the door into the road. The bloodlust in her head and hands screamed at her to run down the assassin and butcher him in the street and bathe her hands in his blood and tear the last screams from his throat. But the icy panic and terror in her heart turned her feet the other way, toward Lorenzo, to his still body now lying in a very small puddle of blood on the carpet. A thin line of smoke rose from the black wound on his chest where his white shirt had been shredded and scorched.
Mirari stepped back from the body, her gloved hands shaking, her clean blades shaking in her hands, her masked face turning slowly from side to side, and an unintelligible whisper on her hidden lips.
Qhora staggered to her husband’s side and fell to her knees, her knives clattering to the floor. She stared at him, unable to breathe, unable to speak, unable to think. A blazing knot of bile rose into her throat as her eyes burned and her hands shook.
“I’ll get him, my lady!” Mirari dashed out the hotel doors into the street.
Qhora didn’t notice her go. She didn’t notice the two dozen people standing around the room, and the upper landing, and the back hallway all staring at her.
She stared at Lorenzo, his pale face even paler than before, his eyes dull, his mouth gaping.