Mercenaries or soldiers, she guessed. Songhai, Bantu, and Kanemi, most likely.
Looking up into the stands above her, Shifrah saw a thin scattering of other people in the crumbling stone seats. Some of them were lying down, possibly homeless, with equal chances of being asleep or dead. Other people were also lying down, but were most emphatically not dead, judging by their grunting and gasping. But these were mere whispers in the darkness, shadow figures few and far between in the vast emptiness of the ancient arena.
“That’s him.” Kenan pointed down at the three swordsmen pacing about in the center of the field. One of the glowing swords whirled through the gloom, crashing and scraping across the other two blades, which retreated before it. “The one attacking.”
“How can you tell?”
“I have good eyes, remember?” Kenan started down the steps to the arena floor. “And besides, I recognize the fencing style. It’s Espani.”
Then it’s true. Shifrah followed him down. When Aker took the fencer’s soul, he somehow took his knowledge and skill as well. Or he can command the fencer’s spirit inside the blade.
She shivered at the thought of being trapped in a cell and forced to serve Aker’s whims. She hadn’t particularly enjoyed Aker’s whims even as a willing participant, back in the old days.
Down on the arena floor, the sound of the seireiken clashes seemed to shift between electric snapping and rumbling thunder. And she could see now that the man attacking the two others was indeed Aker El Deeb.
“Should we wait until they finish?” Kenan asked.
“No. With our luck, he’ll trip and fall on his own sword and we won’t have anything left to take back to Tingis. Best to collect him now.”
“Right.” Kenan drew his black revolver and strode out onto the field. The men lounging on the benches muttered to each other at this intrusion, but they didn’t get up.
Shifrah drew her knife and followed. All right, Kenan, show me how you do things.
The revolver barked once and a puff of dry earth flew up between Aker and the other men. The swordsmen paused, their burning blades seeming to hover unaided in the darkness.
“Aker El Deeb,” Kenan bellowed in a deep, booming drawl. “You are under arrest for the murder of Don Lorenzo Quesada. Drop your weapon. Get down on your knees and cross your ankles, and put your hands on the top of your head.”
Aker did not move, but the other two men backed quickly away, sheathing their bright blades and plunging their side of the field into darkness. Aker swung his sword toward Kenan and Shifrah could hear a soft hissing from the blade. The Aegyptian slurred, “You’re an idiot. First I’m gonna kill you, and then I’m gonna take your stupid gun. You hear me?”
He’s drunk!
“I hear you,” Kenan said softly. The hammer of the revolver clicked sharply in the dark.
Then a low woof-woof-woof sound drew their attention to the left as a bright seireiken blade came whirling out of the shadows, tumbling end over end. Kenan took a half step back and let the sword fly past harmlessly, and then he fired into the darkness. A man cried out. A second blade slipped free of its scabbard, illuminating the other swordsman, and Kenan fired again. The man toppled over as his leg collapsed beneath him. The bright sword spun from his fingers and fell on his arm. He screamed, but only for an instant.
Kenan cocked his gun again. “Aker El Deeb! Drop your weapon and get down on your knees!”
“You first!” Aker slammed his bright sword into its scabbard, dousing the blade and plunging the center of the field into utter blackness. The thrown seireiken continued to glow on the ground to their far right, and the dropped seireiken gleamed dully beneath the dead Osirian on their far left.
Shifrah squinted and blinked, trying to force her eye to readjust to the loss of light, but the blue after-image of the seireiken remained plastered across her vision and she couldn’t throw her knife. But before she could begin to wonder where Aker might be or what he might be doing, she heard the heavy footsteps thumping away across the weedy field and then echoing in the stone corridors of the arena halls.
Kenan was already running after him, his shadow-black figure fading swiftly into the distance. Shifrah cast one look over at the bright seireiken that had lodged in the ground to her right, and then at the twin blade lying under the dead man on her left.
I think I’ll leave those right where they are. Not worth the risk.
Not even slightly.
She ran after Kenan across the field and through the arena, and half a block down the next street she managed to come up alongside him. They ran with their entire bodies, arms pumping sharply, heads bobbing in unison, boots pounding the hard-packed earth of the dusty road. The cool night air blasted back through their jackets and hair.
Up ahead she could see Aker by the light of the stars. He was almost a block away, but his small black figure was definitely growing larger and she could see the uneven motion of his legs, and soon she could hear the heavy gasping of his wet and ragged grunting.
Between her own labored breaths, she glanced at Kenan and said, “So. That’s what you do. Yell at them. Drop your weapon? Down on your knees?”
“Yes.”
“Does it ever work?”
“Not as often as I’d like.” He grinned at her.
They ran harder, arms and legs flying like pistons, breath blasting through their lips and clenched teeth. Aker was only three buildings ahead now and he’d been reduced to a stumbling jog. And he was shouting in Eranian. “Gold! Twenty gold darics for the woman’s head! Silver! Ten silver shekels for the man’s gun!”
“What’s he saying?” Kenan asked.
“Nothing good.” Shifrah squinted as the cold air whipped in her eye. A shadow moved on her left. And then another. “Stop-stop-stop!” She grabbed Kenan’s arm and hauled him to a staggering halt. She stared across the street where the shadow had moved.
Just twenty yards away, Aker continued walking drunkenly down the street, shouting.
“Which way did we go?” she asked quietly. “From the arena. Which way?”
Kenan glanced at the stars. “East. Why?”
Shifrah took a step back as two shadows emerged from a distant alley and started walking toward them. “Feel like running some more?”
“Why? Who are they?”
“We’re in the Bantu district.”
“So? I’ve got plenty of bullets.” Kenan leveled his revolver at the shadow men.
“So Aker over there has just put out a contract on us. And the Bantu like bounty hunting. They like it a lot.”
Kenan shrugged. “Are Bantu bounty hunters bullet-proof?”
“No.” A small thundercrack across the street erupted from a small puff of smoke. Shifrah heard the bullet whip by her head and thump into the stone facade of the old shop behind her. “But neither are we.”
A second pistol fired, and then a third.
“Suddenly I feel like running some more,” Kenan said.
They turned and ran. But Shifrah grabbed Kenan’s arm and yanked him sideways into an alley. As they sprinted down the narrow corridor, she said, “Don’t worry. We’re not going to lose Aker again. We’re just going to have to do things the hard way.”
“What’s the hard way?”
Shifrah grimaced. “Bloody.”
Chapter 23. Qhora
She nestled inside her dead husband’s old coat, teasing out the faint smells lingering in the fabric. Wine. Cheese. Beef. Sea salt.
They had followed Shifrah and Kenan through the dark corridors of the Temple as far as the cellar, almost certain that they had not been noticed. They had seen Shifrah and Kenan leave through the shop upstairs, but at the cellar Salvator had insisted that they wait for a daylight crowd outside rather than try to escape as two running figures in the deserted streets in the night. With her injured leg aching and her arm throbbing, Qhora had agreed. The Italian had proven a deft field medic in dressing the gunshot wound, which was only a graze, and as she lay in the dark, the pain had faded.