Chaou blinked and swallowed.
“All that blather about foreign people and money and machines? You think I haven’t heard that before?” Syfax grimaced. “You’ll be caught, and probably killed. By now, half the country knows you’re missing and half of them probably suspect you caused the mess in Tingis. Dozens dead. Train blown to hell. Airship blown to hell. People don’t like being scared, you know. They’ll crawl through sewers to rip your head off just so they can all sleep better at night, knowing they got their precious justice. You’re living on borrowed time, ambassador. And your little toy can’t hurt what you can’t touch.” He rolled his hand into a heavy fist and smashed it into Chaou’s forearm, grabbed her wrist, and twisted her arm up behind her back nearly to her neck. She gasped and squealed.
Syfax tightened his grip and felt the ambassador weakening, losing her balance. When Chaou’s legs buckled, both of them stumbled forward and Syfax bumped Chaou’s hand against the railing. Instantly, a dozen sharp wails filled the air and Syfax shoved the ambassador away to scan for the source of the cries. It was the elderly couples. All of the little old men and women, the barefoot couples, who had been walking nearby had fallen to the deck, shuddering and wailing, their limbs flopping and twitching.
And then it was over and dozens of horrified and baffled onlookers were bending over the shaken couples, babbling and pointing, passing bottles of water and blankets among them.
“Back away, major.” Chaou stood panting, one hand massaging her neck while the other hovered over the metal railing. “I hated every instant of that, and I hate you for making me do it!” She screamed through a raw throat.
“Get away from the rail!” Syfax pointed at the woman’s hand. “Don’t touch it. You could kill them!”
“You’re the one killing them, major.” Chaou began edging backward, closer to the lifeboat. “Don’t come near me. Don’t do anything. As soon as I’m gone, you can take care of those poor old grannies. That would be best. But if you do anything, anything at all to stop me, I will shoot you.” She touched the bulge of the gun in her pocket.
Syfax raised his empty hands and watched the woman in black glance nervously at the little crane holding the lifeboat. She shook her head and banged her palm on the railing, making Syfax wince. “No,” she said.” You, over the side. Now. Into the water.”
The major cocked an eyebrow, then shrugged. He stepped to the railing and glanced down. Twenty feet into dark churning waters thick with algae and oil stains. Above them, the slick walls of the canal rose ten sheer feet above the water, and it was more miles than he could guess until the next landing or lock. Crap.
“By the time you find someone to fish you out, everything will be over,” Chaou said. “You’ll be working for a very different crown, and nothing you report will matter to anyone.”
His instinct was to make a smarmy retort about how her plan would fail, how stupid it was to leave him alive. Then again, maybe she’s planning to shoot me after I fall in the canal so she won’t have to deal with my body. Glaring at Chaou’s smug smile, he grabbed the railing, hurled himself over, and plunged boots first into the cold black slime of the Zemmour Canal. His last dry thought was, I think she was reaching for the gun.
When his head broke the surface, he felt the trickles of thick pond scum sliding down his scalp and neck. He tried not to think about the other things that might be thriving in the filthy, sluggish waters of the canal. Syfax reach across the oil-stained surface and began swimming, dragging himself up the canal toward the huge paddle wheel churning away to the east. His long red coat quickly swelled and clawed at the water like a sea anchor, and his boots became concrete blocks on his feet keeping his legs down beneath him. Unwilling to shed the weight, he fought across the canal to the sheer stone wall and jammed his fingers into the cracks between the blocks. But the cracks were only a hair deep, clotted and mortared with slick mossy gunk that denied him any hope of climbing out. The major pulled his broad knife from his boot and stabbed at the wall here and there, looking for a few spare inches of purchase. He worked his way left and right, and finally began lurching up out of the water to jab at the higher cracks that were drier and a bit deeper. Each time Syfax fell harder and deeper back into the canal. The stench of rotting wood and bird droppings and spent engine oil burned his nostrils and eyes.
He kicked about and found a sludgy bit of footing somewhere down in the dark at the wall’s edge. Planting his feet deep in the muck, he leapt up one more time. When he jammed his knife into the wall, it slid in to the hilt and stuck fast between two stones, holding the man up with only his legs dangling in the water. Syfax wiggled his naked toes in the cold water and rolled his eyes. “Damn it. I liked those boots.”
After several minutes of swearing and scrambling, he levered himself up on his knife handle and leapt for the top of the wall. He caught it on the second try and hauled himself up onto the warm dry grass. As he lay there, he tugged off his belt and then rolled back over to start fishing his knife out of the wall. It took several minutes and the knife nearly fell back into the canal at the last moment, but he caught the blade between two fingers and pulled it up. Well, that’s better than nothing.
He shrugged off his soaking, stinking coat and squeezed out as much of the canal as he could. Then he slung the coat over his shoulder on the hook of his finger and started walking. He’d only taken a few barefoot steps before he stopped short and looked across the canal at the outline of Port Chellah, far in the distance. Port Chellah, full of horses and trains. Port Chellah, on the other side of the canal.
“Aw, damn it!”
Across the water, a wide dirt road ran parallel to the canal and to his right Syfax spotted two young boys coming toward him. “Hey! Hey, kids!”
The boys stopped and waved. “What?”
“How do I get across?”
The boys looked at each other and shrugged. One of them pointed back toward the ocean and yelled, “Train bridge!”
To the west, the entrance to the canal at the mouth of the Bou Regreg River looked to be at least five miles back, judging by the hair-thin line of the Atlanteen Ocean beyond it. There was a faint arch across the canal back there that might have been the bridge.
An hour to run back there, another hour into town to get a horse, and then over sixty miles on winding roads from Port Chellah to Nahiz. The ferry probably only has forty miles to go.
But how far to the first lock?
Squinting into the east told him nothing except that the paddle wheeler was rounding a slight bend and bearing a bit to the south, judging by the trail of steam and smoke drifting above the canal. How fast do those things go?
He didn’t imagine he could outrun the ferry, especially barefoot. But if the lock is slow enough, then maybe…
Syfax balled up his coat around his belt and slung the whole bundle over his shoulder, and he took off running along the canal using the top of the stone wall as a path. The blocks were warm and smooth, with only the occasional pebble or rusty fish hook to make him swear and stumble. From time to time he would glance at the murky water below and glare.
Twenty years ago you could wade straight across the river in the summer. And now, this.
Chapter 19. Taziri
A steady westerly wind sped the Halcyon on its way and Taziri landed in a grassy field just outside Nahiz a little more than an hour after leaving Port Chellah. Kenan had lingered by the windows, staring down at the murky lane of the canal and the rustling tree tops, peering intently at the ferry as they passed over it. If he had seen anything, he did not mention it. The rest of the flight had been quiet.