“We’ll try there. Thank you, Master Rashaken.”
The old man quickly described how they could find their way from the small room down to a cellar and back onto the streets outside without encountering any more Osirians. Kenan stepped out into the hall and Shifrah was about to follow when Rashaken said, “My dear, I hope you do find young Aker and dispose of him. I would consider it a kindness to me and to the Temple, especially as it would gall Khai very much. And if you were to remove Aker from my city, I might be persuaded to overlook the fact that you’ve been whispering secrets to a certain Italian gentleman.”
Shifrah froze, an icy blade of shock slicing down her spine. It had never occurred to her that Salvator would ever piece together the tiny shreds of information she let drop over the years, and she never dreamed he might find his way to Alexandria, much less into a room with Master Rashaken. The dire consequences of her accidental betrayal made her hand shake. The Sons of Osiris were all too quick to dispose of anyone who dared to pull back their cloaks to reveal the truth of the Temple to the outside world. Even those within the Empire who knew of the Temple knew only what the Temple allowed them to know.
“I never told him anything,” she said.
“You told him enough. But take care of our mutual problem, Aker, and all will be forgiven. For now.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Well, that makes things simple. Either I kill Aker for Master Rashaken, or I capture Aker for Kenan. Once again, all roads lead to Aker.
She glanced across the room at the door to the narrow passage and the forge beyond where she had left Salvator. It didn’t matter whether he was alive or not, but somehow it did matter whether the Italian had been sealed away in Master Jiro’s blade. But even asking the question might sound like sympathy for the outsider and she did not dare test Master Rashaken’s largesse.
She slipped out and closed the door.
Shifrah and Kenan hurried down the hall and through a small cellar that housed nothing but spider webs and a dead rat, and after fumbling about in the dark for a few minutes they emerged into a small house two streets away from the Temple, and then they stepped out into the chilly boulevards of Alexandria beneath a vast sea of stars. Glancing up, she guessed the hour to be shortly after midnight.
“So what now?” Kenan asked. He walked beside her but kept closer to the shadows at the side of the road, and he threw a sharp stare over his shoulder every few steps.
“Relax. We’re going to get Aker, and this time you can take him wherever you want. Rashaken said we should try a place in the Songhai Quarter.” She gave him a wry smile. “You’ll fit right in. After all, you only patrolled that border, how long? A year? You didn’t kill too many Songhai soldiers, did you?”
“I didn’t kill any. I was the medic for my unit. I spent most of my time staring at empty fields and mountainsides, and a few terrified minutes running toward my friends to wrap them in bandages and watch them bleed to death.” The detective spat on the ground. “Good times.”
“You know, Zidane probably saved your life when he took you with him into the marshals.”
“I really don’t want to talk about the major, if you don’t mind. I can still picture you on top of him in that inn where we first met.”
Shifrah raised an eyebrow. “I thought you slept through that.”
“Only mostly, but not quite enough. Where are we going exactly?”
“An old arena. Apparently young fighters like to go there to kill each other.”
“More good times.”
They walked on in silence, traveling down one long straight road after another. There were still a few people out, and not all of them were hurrying home to get off the streets. Shifrah kept her hand near her knife and hoped the cut on her back really was as shallow as Rashaken had said. Her left arm throbbed but the bleeding had stopped.
“You know, I could have used a little more help back there with Sal,” she said. “You could have shot him. Just a little, at least.”
“Why? He hasn’t done anything to me, and he doesn’t seem to have any mixed feelings about finding Aker El Deeb,” Kenan said. “Maybe I should be working with him.”
“Are you serious?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. If I don’t catch Aker, I can’t go home. And that notion does not amuse me.”
“Well, I don’t have any mixed feelings about Aker anymore. Besides giving us all that trouble with Zahra, apparently he’s not too popular with Master Rashaken either. He’s asked me to get Aker out of Alexandria as a sort of personal favor.”
Kenan grinned. “Oh, so now we’re on the same side again?”
“We were always on the same side,” she said. “But now we have the same goal. See how life has a funny way of working out? So I help you take Aker back to Tingis and everything goes back to the way it was before, all right?”
“What do you mean, everything? You mean you and me? You said we were done.”
“Yeah, I did. Because you pissed me off.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to get caught in some game of choosing sides and picking arguments depending on your mood. You want to keep playing mercenary, fine. But not under my roof. And if someone ever hires me to hunt you down…”
Shifrah sighed. “Look, Omar’s dead. So I’m done with this place and these people. I owed Omar, but not them. They’re all crazy anyway. And maybe I was too for a while. But this isn’t my life anymore. It’s not the life Omar raised me for either. So maybe…” She paused.
If I say this, am I committed? No. I can still walk away whenever I want. But maybe it’s time for a change. It can’t hurt to try. At least, it can’t hurt much, can it?
“…maybe it’s time for a little career change. Maybe I could partner up with you, like you said. You and me, hunting down bad guys. Shifrah Dumah, bounty hunter. No assassinations. What would you say to that?”
He was very quiet for a moment. “Maybe.”
Shifrah smiled. That’s a yes.
It took another half hour to walk into the Songhai Quarter, a long thin finger of land along the southern edge of Alexandria where the pilgrims and soldiers from the southwest congregated before moving on to the holy Mazdan sites deeper inside the Empire of Eran. The streets were just as quiet and dark here as elsewhere in the city, but Shifrah’s hand never strayed from her knife. And soon their destination loomed up in the darkness above the street.
The old arena had been built centuries ago by Roman slaves in the Roman style, and the cylindrical structure looked quiet alien next to the square blocks of the buildings to either side. The walls of the arena rose three levels above the street, each wall ringed with open archways and Hellan columns, and beside each column was a statue of an ancient Aegyptian god. Each had the head of a different creature. Jackal, Ibis, Falcon, Lion, Crocodile. But in the dark, the gods were all just creatures of dead stone.
The main gate to the arena stood open, rusting quietly into oblivion against the stone walls. No one loitered there or in the dark corridor beyond, but low voices and scuffling sounds did echo in the vast stone chamber of the arena itself. Shifrah nodded and they went inside.
The inner corridor offered many open doorways and branching halls to the market stalls where street vendors had once sold food and wine to the wealthy patrons of the games, but it was all dark and empty now. Past those spaces, Shifrah emerged again into the night air on the bottom level of the seats and stood beside a small stone wall looking down at the weedy field of the arena floor.
Three men armed with glowing seireiken blades circled each other slowly, shouting taunts and challenges at each other. The fiery swords drew blazing orange lines in the darkness. A dozen other men lounged on the benches at the edge of the field, but the pale starlight didn’t reveal any details of their dress or arms.