“Merda!” Salvator followed close behind her and together they plunged into the darkened hall.
Chapter 21. Taziri
She sat in the pilot’s seat, wearing her leather jacket with the long dirty tarp wrapped roughly around her shoulders. She’d toyed with the idea of turning on the electric heater, but with the Halcyon ’s wings folded shut the solar sheeting couldn’t recharge, and she didn’t dare risk draining the battery.
Taziri sat sideways in the seat with her legs over the arm rest so she could face the locked hatch. It had been a long boring afternoon sweating on the cabin floor, and when the evening shadows brought her some relief from the heat, she found the cold and the dark just as dull as the scorching light.
She rested her head on the top of the seat, forcing herself to keep one eye open and focused on the hatch.
If Bastet comes back, I’m going to see it. I’m going to see how she gets in, and how the aether works. Maybe she’s a ghost, or maybe she’s a scientist who uses aetherium to control the aether. Either way, I’m going to see how she does it.
Taziri was still muttering to herself in her mind when she saw the first pale wisp of vapor slide in under the hatch. She sat up sharply and leaned forward over the armrest to peer at the aether streaming into the cabin. She watched it flow in, and she watched it pool on the floor, and she was still peering at its ghostly ripples when a voice said, “Good evening, Taziri.”
She blinked and saw a figure sitting in one of the passenger seats, the last one farthest back in the shadows.
But…when did she…? Damn it.
Taziri smiled and pushed the old tarp off her shoulders. “Hello again.”
“I brought you supper.” Bastet stood up and came forward to sit in the nearest seat. She still wore the black dress with the tiny cats on the sleeves, and her mask rested on her head, and her golden heart hung on her chest. In her hand was a basket, which Taziri took warily. She squeezed the straw gently but found it very sturdy and common.
If this is a trick, I can’t see the trap doors and wires yet.
The ends of the straw poked her hands, and flakes of dirt fell from the basket as she moved it around and lifted the cloth from the top to look inside. She found a small loaf of bread studded with dates and coriander seeds, and beside it a pomegranate, a handful of pistachios, four dates, a freshly cut bunch of grapes, and a small earthenware cup. Taziri lifted out the cup and sniffed it. “Oatmeal?”
Bastet laughed. “Beer.”
“Ah. Well, thank you very much. Will you join me?”
“Just a little.” The girl took one of the dates and Taziri set to her meal. At first she was more than a little self conscious about eating with an audience, but Bastet seemed perfectly content to lean back in her seat and stare at the cabin walls. As loathe as she was to do it, Taziri started to make conversation while she was eating, but the girl waved her hand and said, “When you’re finished.”
So Taziri ate. She ate with her eyes on the food and not the girl and she relished every bite, including the Aegyptian bread and even the thick broth they called beer, which was nothing at all like the Espani ale she had tried once and everything like the Espani oatmeal she had eaten many times over. When she was finished, she set the basket on the floor and leaned back with a contented smile. “Thank you, again.”
“My pleasure.” The girl smiled. “I thought you could use it after sitting in this oven all day long.”
“You thought right.”
“So you’re still waiting for your friends? Your passengers?” Bastet wandered back to the end of the cabin, running her fingers over the metal plates and rivets and welds.
“I still haven’t heard from any of them. I hope they’re all right. We didn’t work out a schedule or anything for this trip. The plan was just that I wait here until they come back,” Taziri said. She chewed her lip. “Which is a really bad plan.”
Bastet laughed. “You’re right, it is. So these passengers are just visiting the city? Are they from Marrakesh too? Why did they come?”
Taziri sighed. “A friend of mine, Lorenzo, was killed the other day. He was murdered by someone from Alexandria, a man dressed in green carrying a burning hot sword.”
“Right, a Son of Osiris,” Bastet said.
“Oh. Is that who they are? You’ve heard of them. Of course you have, sorry.” Taziri nodded. “So Lorenzo’s wife and friends came here to find the killer. Actually, we went to Carthage first, but they escaped us. And then we came here. It’s so awful. Lorenzo was a good man. Handsome, charming, kind.”
“You liked him.” Bastet smiled.
“Yes, I did. He was easy to talk to. Things felt so much easier and simpler around him. He and his wife seemed to have nothing in common, but they were happy together. I could see that, and I envied that. Their marriage. It was strange, but it worked.”
“Not like yours?”
Taziri shrugged. “My marriage is more complicated. I think there’s more arguing in my house than in half of Espana. Everything has to be difficult. I mean, Yuba is a good man and a great father. He’s a talented artist. He’s tall and strong. I love him. I do. And things were easy back when we first got married. But then my career started to take off, and his career stalled, and we had Menna, so his career ended, basically. We had money troubles for a while. Menna had some trouble with her hearing, so there were doctors, and I was always away working. You know, it was just never easy. And I would come home and he would be angry about something. And the thing is, he was usually right about whatever it was, but there was never anything I could do about it. I couldn’t fix his job. I couldn’t change my job. I couldn’t make more money.” She sighed. “It’s been easier this last year. It really has. Since I resigned from the Air Corps, I mean. I’m home more, and we have more money, and he’s working again, and Menna is fine, thank God. Everything is better now. But it’s still never really easy.”
Bastet nodded as she curled up on the nearest passenger seat. “I can’t really tell whether most marriages work well or not. They’re all different. The people are different, the problems are different. Some seem happy, but aren’t. Some seem miserable, but aren’t.” The girl took her cat mask off her head and fiddled with it in both hands. “My family used to be happy, but everyone got older and grouchier and touchier. They fought a lot, for a while anyway. Things are quiet now, but not as happy. Not like they used to be.”
Taziri nodded back. “Sorry to hear it.”
“So your friend was killed with a seireiken? That’s rough. His wife must want to get his soul back, I guess.”
Taziri blinked. She hadn’t thought of that. In all the rush, all the planning, all the talk of revenge and killing, there hadn’t been a single mention of Lorenzo’s soul.
But of course, if the sword was made of aetherium, then it would have absorbed his soul. Stupid. I should have realized that.
She nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“That’s nice. For her, I mean. And for him, I suppose. I didn’t know that people in the west knew how to release a soul from a seireiken,” Bastet said.
Taziri shook her head. “I don’t. I don’t know of anyone who does. We only discovered aetherium two years ago.”
The girl looked up, incredulous. “Two years?! But it’s been…oh, right, the Sons of Osiris have been collecting it all this time. I suppose they got all the sun-steel in the west then a long time ago.”
“I guess so, maybe. We haven’t found any in Marrakesh that I know of.” Taziri leaned forward. “So, you know how to release a soul from a seireiken?”
“Oh, sure.” The girl nodded. “I mean, it’s very hard to do, but you can certainly do it.”
“How?”