They were speaking Eranian, Salvator was certain, but over the hammering on the anvil and the quenching in the water tub, he couldn’t hear more than two words clearly at one time.
So he stepped inside with his rapier drawn, and bowed. “Gentlemen, good evening to you both. My name is Salvator Fabris.”
The bearded man sitting on the left squinted at him and then burst out laughing. He turned to the smith and said, “It’s the Italian who scared Khai this afternoon! Ha! He’s still here. I told you, Jiro, I told you Khai was lying. He’s still alive!” And then he turned to Salvator and said, “Khai’s told everyone he found you and killed you himself. As if that old crow could chase down anything nimbler than a dead wildebeest. Ha!” He slapped his leg and leaned back with a smug smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.
Salvator smiled back as he shut the door behind him.
This may be easier than I expected.
“I’m pleased I could give you the satisfaction of being right, sir. You friend, Signore Khai, proved a less than hospitable host, I’m afraid. So I took my leave of him in search of better company.”
The older man’s smile faded somewhat. “Yes, well, that’s all well and good, but why have you come here at all? To steal our secrets? To kill us? Hm? Surely you don’t think you’re the first man to try.”
The tall smith set aside his half-formed blade in the bed of coals and turned to face the intruder. The smith had high cheekbones and strangely lidded eyes, and Salvator guessed him to be from some distant land in the east. He recognized the subtle grace in the smith’s movements, the way he shifted his feet and rested his empty hands at his sides.
A fighter.
“I have come for information, that much is true. I had not intended to enter your sanctuary in this fashion, but your receptionists, those fine gentlemen with the pistols outside the front doors, were less than helpful in directing me to someone with whom I could do business.”
“Hm.” The older man folded his arms over his belly. “This is not a place of business, young man. It is our home and our school. A place of learning. As you say, it is our sanctuary. We have other places away from the Temple for conducting business.”
“Then I apologize for the intrusion.”
“You killed several of our guards.”
“Then I apologize for the inconvenience. And the mess.” Salvator sheathed his sword and held up his empty hands in a tiny gesture of reconciliation. “But you seem like a reasonable gentleman, and I prefer to conduct civilized business with civilized men. Perhaps you and I can come to a mutually profitable arrangement, mister…?”
“I am Master Rashaken. My tall friend is Master Jiro.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintances, sirs.” Salvator arched an eyebrow.
Did he call me a young man a moment ago? He can’t be more than five years my senior. I wonder if hopes to intimidate me with those subtle remarks.
“As you say, I am a member of the Italian court and I am here to learn about this organization on behalf of my government. We have been aware of you for some time now through your contracted operatives.”
“And now you want to know where we stand. Our allegiances and alliances. Who do we like and who do we like to kill?” Rashaken said. “And no doubt, you wish to learn all about the seireiken, and perhaps even walk out of here in possession of one.”
“Or one hundred.” Salvator smiled.
“You spoke of mutual profit. What do you have, what does the king of Italia have, that could possibly be of profit to us?”
“Information. Money. Men. Ships. Land. We can negotiate the finer points later. Suffice it to say that his majesty is a man of business and is ready to be a friend and partner to anyone who stands by him.”
“Ah, the Italians.” A strange little smile twisted Rashaken’s beard. “Your king has many problems. Bad weather. Bad crops. Bad ships. And worst of all, he must share power with your priests, with your pope. Rome must be quite a dangerous place these days with the Guelphs shooting each other in the streets.”
“Yes,” Salvator said airily. “His Holiness seems to have no difficulty in raising funds for his cathedrals and his men-at-arms. And why should he? He offers eternal salvation with one hand and eternal torment with the other. The people don’t love him so much as fear his pronouncements. So I admit, he has an unfair advantage over His Majesty, who must actually work for a living to manage his nation.”
“It would seem to me that, if I were to seek a business partner in Italia, I should visit the Vatican instead of the royal palace,” Rashaken said. “The Temple of Osiris is, among other things, an institution of faith. Why would we ally ourselves with a beleaguered king when we could ally with a powerful pope? But this is all academic. The real question is, why would we ally with any Europans at all? You have nothing that we require or desire, and if you did then we would simply take it for ourselves. You have misjudged us, Mister Fabris, just as you have misjudged your own pope. We exist outside of worldly concerns, as you know them. We rule men’s hearts and minds, and with them follow great wealth and strength of arms. Politics is a game for children, Mister Fabris. When you are ready for a man’s endeavor, we will teach you to play at religion.”
Salvator frowned. “I’m disappointed, of course.”
Rashaken shrugged apologetically. “Of course.”
The Italian touched his sword hilt. “I could threaten to kill you. I could actually kill you, as well.”
Rashaken gestured to the towering smith, who had not moved and barely blinked throughout the conversation. “You’re welcome to try. But Master Jiro might prove an impediment to that.”
Yes, I believe he would.
Salvator sighed. “I can offer you one thing, in exchange for some small hint about these strange swords of yours. If you tell me about the aetherium, I will tell you the name of the contractor who betrayed your secrets to me.”
Rashaken inhaled slowly, cleared his throat loudly, and exhaled. “I suppose that’s worth knowing, so we can eliminate that leak. I’ll tell you a bit about the sun-steel. It costs me nothing to talk, and it guarantees that we will have to kill you as soon as possible, so please, have a seat.”
Salvator sidled over to a bench and sat where he could see both men as well as the closed door out of the corner of his eye.
“The sun-steel is not of our world,” Rashaken said. “It fell to earth several thousand years ago during the early dynasties of Aegyptus here, and the very first empire of Nippon, Master Jiro’s homeland in the east. Our records of the event are incomplete and riddled with myths and legends and prophecies, but we have pieced together a rough story with the ring of truth to it. It began with the sun. There was a flash of light in the midday sky, and for the following six nights men saw beautiful auroras all over the world, not just in the distant north and south. And nine days after that, the steel began to rain down on the earth. It fell in pieces of all sizes, most smaller than your fist, but some larger than a horse. At first glance it looks like ordinary gold, and it took time for anyone to discover its special properties.”
“You say the aetherium fell all over the earth? Then why haven’t we found any of it in Italia? Or Hellas? There had been no sign of it in Espana either, until recently. Why is that?”
Jiro chuckled and muttered something in his native tongue.
Rashaken smiled. “Because, dear boy, we gathered it up. Or I should say, our forebears did. The Temple of Osiris here in the west and the Temple of Amaterasu in the east have been collecting it for centuries. After all, it takes quite a bit of steel to make a single sword, and we have thousands of them. Every now and then some new bit of the steel still falls to earth, as it happened in Espana several centuries ago, but that is vanishingly rare.”
“I see. So the aetherium fell from the sun? The sun is made of steel?”
“We believe so, yes. It was at that same time, thousands of years ago, that the very first ghost stories began to emerge in the north. You know the ones, the old tales of jealous lovers and lost children and angry killers returning from the grave? Well, apparently, no one had ever seen a ghost before the steel fell. We suspect, but cannot prove, that no one had ever seen the aether mist before then, either.”