Qhora turned the knob and silently opened the door. As the gap widened to reveal the hall, she caught a glimpse of the man outside and the gun in his hand. “No!” She slammed the door as the gun barked once, twice, three times. The bullets thumped against the heavy door but did not break through. Then a heavy boot kicked the door so hard the jamb cracked.
Mirari and Tycho threw themselves against the door beside her, and Qhora found herself face to face with the masked woman. “Don’t say it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, my lady.”
Qhora glanced over her shoulder at the room. It was furnished only with a small bed meant for a single person, a small writing table, and a thin-legged chair. Through the glass of the window she could see the lights of some distant quarter of the city. “The window?”
Mirari nodded and raced across the room. She shoved the window open and looked down. “A sheer drop to the street. But we can try to jump to the roof of the next building. It’s close. Sort of.”
Qhora shared a look with Tycho that told her the small man was even less enthusiastic about the idea than she was. “Fine. You go first!”
As the heavy boot crashed against the door again and the jamb cracked apart a bit more, Mirari climbed out the window and vanished from view. A moment later her voice echoed up from the darkness, “It’s safe! Hurry!”
“Go!” Qhora yelled.
Tycho nodded and dashed to the window, catching the flimsy chair as he ran and he used it to climb out onto the sill. And then he vanished.
The boot smashed into the door a third time and the jamb splintered apart, swinging the door inward a few inches before Qhora could shove it back closed. And then she ran for the window, partly climbing and partly diving to shove her body outside onto a very narrow ledge. The door crashed open and the gun fired again. With a sudden stinging plume of burning pain in her arm, Qhora leapt away from the ledge toward Mirari’s outstretched arms. The alley between the two buildings was very narrow, so narrow that only one or two people might squeeze down it at the street level. Qhora sailed across the gap easily but in the darkness she couldn’t tell the exact moment when she would land on the roof and her feet struck down an instant before she was ready.
She crashed drunkenly into Mirari and the two women fell, nearly knocking down Tycho as they toppled over. Before Qhora could lift herself to all fours, Mirari had surged up beneath her, half carrying her away across the roof top with the Hellan running close behind. Over the far side of the roof they saw a pile of trash in the next alley. “Here, my lady. I’ll go down first.” The masked woman slipped over the side and lowered herself as far as her arms would reach and then dropped to the top of the trash heap. “It’s safe. Hurry!”
Qhora knelt at the edge beside Tycho and exchange another brief look of uncertainty before they both lowered themselves down and dropped to the alley below.
Qhora landed hard, her foot slipped on something wet, and she fell on her backside. She gasped. The pain in her arm had blossomed ten-fold when she hung from the lip of the roof and now it was throbbing and pulsing between hot and cold flashes. She heard men shouting, their voices echoing and distorted by the empty streets and the high rooftops. Mirari reached down and hauled Qhora up to her feet, but her right ankle refused to take her weight. Her foot wobbled and she gasped again as she fell to her knee.
“My lady!”
“Go on, run, both of you,” Qhora said. “Leave me here. They won’t find me. I can hide in the trash and you can lead them away. It’ll be safer that way. I can’t run and you can’t carry me. So go, now!” She sat back and started to pull a rough splintered board up over her legs.
The masked woman hesitated and glanced at Tycho, who had run to the end of the alley to survey the street. The Hellan waved back at them. “We have to go now!”
“Go!” Qhora hissed as she pulled a filthy old tarp over her head. “Go!”
Mirari nodded. “Yes, my lady.” She ran to the end of the alley in a flourish of blue Espani skirts, and then she disappeared with Tycho around the corner. The sounds of the men shouting continued to bounce up and down the streets, but faded quickly.
Qhora counted to fifty and hoped that would be enough time. She shoved off the filthy tarp and the splintery board and stood up on her weak ankle. With one hand clutching the bloody wound in her shoulder and her teeth grinding against the pain in her leg, she limped out to the mouth of the alley and into the street. She shouted, “I’m right here! Take me to your boss. Now!”
And she prayed they understood Espani.
After a moment, a man stepped out of the shadows at the end of the street. She could see the gun in his hand. Qhora raised her arms at her sides to display her empty hands. “I surrender!”
The man started toward her but stopped abruptly as a high-pitched scream split the cool night air.
What on earth?
Qhora looked up just as the harpy eagle crashed down onto her extended arm and sank his massive talons into her unprotected flesh. She grunted both at the pain and the weight of the bird on her arm.
Damn it, Turi! Not now!
The man started toward her again and as he came closer she could see the smirk on his face. He waggled his gun at her and said something in Eranian that she took to mean she should go with him and she started walking back up the street toward the restaurant with Turi perched proudly on her aching arm.
When she reached the intersection there were two other armed men and the stern-faced woman in black waiting for her. Qhora managed to smile at the woman while the men roughly searched her and took her knives. “A pleasure to see you again, madam.”
“It won’t be for long,” she replied. “My mistress wishes to speak to you.”
As the men shuffled her inside, Qhora had to wrap her free arm around Turi to keep him from shifting his talons and flapping his wings. “Your mistress? And the man, Aker?”
“He isn’t here.” The woman raised an eyebrow. “That was a lie. I lied to you.”
“Yes, thank you, I see.” Qhora felt the earth fall out from under her heart.
He isn’t here? I gambled and lost. There’s nothing for me here. If they shoot me now, I’ve left Javier an orphan. And if they kill me with a seireiken, even my soul will be denied to my poor son. I’ll be imprisoned with the souls of whatever trash these people kill on a regular basis.
She was led to a table in the large dining room and shoved into a chair. She laid her forearm on the table to give her shoulder a rest, but her other arm was still bleeding. She could feel the warmth trickling down her skin, plastering her sleeve to her arm.
After a few minutes of waiting in silence, another woman joined them. This one was younger than the grim lady in black and she carried a small lamp, which she sat on the table in front of her. “Who are you?”
Qhora paused. For over five years she had grown accustomed to being recognized on sight throughout Espana and parts of Marrakesh. In some corner of her mind she had assumed that here too the people of influence and means would know her.
Is there a benefit to lying? Who should I claim to be?
“I said, who are you?” The woman produced a small Italian pistol from her sleeve and set it on the table in front of her.
“I am Dona Qhora Yupanqui Quesada, wife of Don Lorenzo Quesada de Gadir, first cousin of Manco Inca, Emperor of Jisquntin Suyu, and exile from the land you call the New World.” She rattled off the answer almost without thinking. A lifetime in one court or another had accustomed her to certain titles and pronouncements and introductions, and the answer produced itself unbidden and on instinct.
“Inca?” The woman frowned and nodded. “That explains the bird. I’ve heard some interesting things about your people, but the fact remains that they’re simply too far away to enter into our affairs here in the real world.”
“That’s probably just as well. Most visitors from the east don’t fare well in the empire. Only a tiny percentage of you Old Worlders tend to survive the Golden Death.”