Omar sat at the edge of the bed, gently petting Riuza’s hair. She had fallen asleep almost as soon as he had coaxed her into lying down properly, and now he guessed by the steady sound of her breathing that she was truly at ease, for the moment. He thought back to their time together, the three years between the ill-fated flight of their airship and the ill-fated construction of Ivar’s Drill.
Riuza hadn’t been the easiest woman to get along with, even though they were stranded together on a strange island at the top of the world surrounded by huge Europan barbarians. She’d been so impatient, unwilling to learn the language, unwilling to make friends, unwilling to consider the possibility of being in Ysland one minute longer than necessary. For her, there had only been the mission of finding a way out, a way home to Marrakesh.
Omar leaned down and kissed her forehead.
And nothing I said was ever good enough for you, was it? I was never clear enough, never stern enough with Ivar, never persuasive enough with the smiths or the miners. I just didn’t want to leave as badly as you did. Maybe I should have been. If we’d sailed away instead of digging up the mountain, none of this would have ever happened.
He sighed.
She looked very different. It wasn’t just the sunken cheeks and veined hands and thin arms. She had always kept her head shaved. The hair made her look like another person altogether. And she’d been so strong, too.
Halfdan brought them food, and Omar tried to wake Riuza and feed her, but the woman was too weary and too dazed to eat. He grasped his seireiken and summoned his dead friend the Indian physician, who could only sigh and shake his ghostly head and tell Omar what he already knew. There was little chance of Riuza surviving very long, much less recovering at all. Even now, eating too much could burst her stomach.
So he sat beside her, holding her hand, trying to remember their better nights together when they had stumbled, laughing and drunk, into their little stone house. And she had stripped off his clothes with the speed and skill of an engineer dismantling a machine, and she had ridden him as though he might carry her all the way back to Marrakesh, if only she squeezed him hard enough and clawed him deep enough, and grunted loud enough. But when morning came they were always still in their little stone house in the cold wasteland of Rekavik.
It was very late in the morning when Omar noticed the noise coming from outside. For a time he just sat still, listening, trying to sort it out. It was voices mostly, male and female, and laden with all sorts of emotion. Anger. Fear. Surprise. Confusion. There was even some laughter. He’d lived in many cities in many lands, and he had come to know them all by their voices. The gentle chanting of Jaipur, the wailing songs of Damascus, the rumbling chaos of Alexandria, and the mechanical cacophony of Tingis. Rekavik had always been a quiet place, true to its fishermen’s roots, a place punctuated by sudden laughter and sudden anger, both usually the result of some fishing mishap. But the city was not quiet now.
They sounded like separate arguments. A few shouts here or there. Some angry, some scared. The crack of a stone as it hit a house. The metallic clang of a hammer on stone. It should have been more scattered and less urgent. But it wasn’t.
Damn my curiosity. It’s going to get me into trouble some day.
Omar went to the narrow window and saw nothing but the inside of the castle wall, so after tucking the blankets carefully around Riuza, he slipped down the hall with his hand resting on the grip of his seireiken. He received a few strange looks from the men in the dining hall, and a sympathetic smile from one of the cooks, but he hurried by them, eager to see what was amiss outside and to return to Riuza’s bedside.
He wasn’t far from the castle gate when he found the first group of shouters. A dozen angry men and women were pressing in against a young woman with a small girl in her arms and a small boy clutching her skirts. A rock was thrown.
Omar drew his seireiken and called upon the dead samurai in the blade, but the ghost of Ito Daisuke was already there, already guiding his hand. Together they plunged forward and slashed the rock out of the air, sending two jagged shards of stone clattering to the ground. The pieces glowed red and steamed quietly in the icy road at his feet. Omar raised the bright sword to let its light sear the eyes of the mob as he herded the mother and the two children behind him.
“What’s going on here?” he said softly.
Another rock flew and again the dead samurai flicked Omar’s wrist, smacking the stone aside.
“I asked what you’re doing here,” Omar said. “We can stand about all day playing hit the rock, but I’m not going to let you hurt this woman and her children. So you might as well start talking.”
“Get away from them,” an older woman snapped. “They have the plague! Get them out of the city before they kill us all!”
Omar glanced back into the terrified eyes of the mother. The little girl on her chest peeked out with huge golden eyes, and Omar saw the reddish hair standing on the girl’s tall ears. The boy’s ears were even larger and redder, the hair sweeping up to two little tufts above the points of the canine folds.
Omar turned back to the mob with a smile. “We’ve lived with the plague for five long years. You all know the signs of it. What is the first sign of the plague?”
The old woman and the young fisherman at her side glared. “The sweating. The shivering.”
“Yes, exactly!” Omar angled his body to let them see the mother and her children. “And you can all see quite clearly that these poor little ones are not suffering from the sweats at all. And if they are trembling, it’s only in fear from you. Look at them again! Yes, their ears and eyes have changed, but these children are not infected with the plague. They aren’t in pain, they aren’t confused.”
“They will be soon enough!” the old woman shouted.
“I don’t think so,” Omar said calmly. “These children have not been infected with the plague. Look at them. Do you really think a bloodthirsty reaver snuck into the city, sank its huge filthy fangs into their tender flesh as they slept in their beds, and then simply walked away, leaving them to grow ill? Of course not! If a reaver had found these two, they’d have been eaten in two gulps. They’re deliciously tiny!”
A nervous titter ran through the crowd.
“No, this is not the plague,” Omar continued. “This is a miracle. You all know what happens with other plagues, like the pox. Some people never grow sick. Some people grow sick and die. But many people grow sick, and then survive bearing the scars of the plague, never to grow sick again. Don’t you see? These children bear the scars of the plague, but not the plague itself. They’re healthy. And better still, that means they can never be infected by the plague at all, even if a reaver did bite them now. Look at this boy! Look at this little girl!” He pointed to them. “Trust your eyes. This is not the feverish, sickly beginning of their transformation into beasts. This is the clear-eyed, iron-strength of two Yslander children who will live long, happy lives in Rekavik, fishing its waters and defending its walls!”
He scanned the eyes of the crowd and saw the distrust and the misgiving and the fear, but where it had been sharp and vicious a moment ago, now it was muddled with doubt and even hope. Slowly, a few of the younger women came forward to look at the children, and then the younger men, and finally everyone was gathered around the mother and her two little ones. They tugged at the tall hairy ears and peered at the bright golden eyes, but there was soon no doubt among them that the boy and the girl were not stricken with the plague.
“But, how did it happen?” asked the mother. “I mean, if they were never bitten by reavers, then how did they come through the plague at all with these… scars?”
Omar smiled as he sheathed his sword. “Every plague has sown within it the seeds of its own undoing. Somewhere in the world there is some plant or fish or flea, some humble little thing that can defeat these reavers. And that’s what your little ones have stumbled upon. Tell me, have you eaten anything strange in the last week?”
“No.”
“An oddly colored fish, perhaps? Or overripe herbs?” he prodded.
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you killed a spider with a cooking spoon, and accidentally mixed it in with-”
“Never!” The mother frowned indignantly. But then her face softened. “But this morning… this morning there were bloodflies in the house. I thought it strange for winter, for such a dry season. And they did bite the children. Could it be that?”
Omar clapped his hands. “It must be that, you clever young thing. Everyone, did you hear? There are bloodflies in Rekavik, bloodflies in winter, no less. You would think the poisoned blood of the reavers would kill off such fragile little things, but no! The bloodflies have survived the plague, and now they are the cure, they are our salvation. So go back to your homes and wait for the flies. Suffer their tiny, painless bites. And soon we will all be saved from the plague!”
The crowd murmured.
“Are we all going to get big ears like that?” someone asked.
“Probably,” Omar said breezily. “And it may last a day or a year or the rest of your life, but which is the greater sacrifice? To have the keen ears and eyes of a proud fox, or to become a slavering, mad reaver beast that lives naked in the wilderness?”
It took a bit more prodding and reassurance and even threats, but eventually he managed to send everyone home with the notion that the bloodflies were a blessing from the Allfather and that soon they would all be saved from the long darkness of the reavers. But even then, there were more fights to find and more mobs to pacify, and so Omar spent the day wandering the streets, brandishing his bright sword, teasing the truth of the bloodflies from whoever had been bitten, and then convincing the angry and the fearful to go home and embrace their strange new fate.
By the time the sun was setting, Omar had been struck by rocks four times in the head and seven times in the back, but not a single man, woman, or child had been killed or exiled. Even the most skeptical of the house carls and squinting crones had been forced to concede what they saw with their own eyes-that the bloodflies had left their victims stronger and healthier than ever before, at the meager cost of their tall ears and golden eyes. And more than a few children had run home, eager to find a bloodfly of their own, to be the first of their friends to gain the sharp hearing and night vision of a fox.
Finally, Omar shuffled into his room in the castle and flopped down beside Riuza. She was wheezing quietly and trembling slightly. He touched her cheek. “If I thought a bloodfly could bring you back to me, I would run out and catch one for you right now. But I’m afraid not even this mad experiment of mine would help you, dear lady. It won’t be long now.”
The leather curtain in the doorway burst aside and Skadi dashed into the room, a storm of black skirts and scarves and blood-red hair. She caught Omar around the throat as he was still in the process of standing up, and she shoved him back down flat on his back. He choked, struggling to breathe. The knowledge that he couldn’t be strangled to death was a small comfort as the pain in his neck and chest grew sharper.
“What did you do?!” the queen shouted in his face.
He twisted his fingers under and between hers, and pried them off his windpipe. She straightened up, but remained kneeling on his arm with her painted nails hovering over him like bloody claws. As he blinked and massaged his throat, Omar noted that Thora and Leif were standing behind their mistress wearing grim faces.
Omar smiled weakly. “Highness, yes, you may come in. Please make yourself comfortable.”
She slapped him. “What did you do?”
“I take it you’ve heard about the miracle sweeping through the city,” he said, rubbing his cheek.
“Those damned flies of yours.” Her hand flew at his face again, but this time he caught her wrist and held it tight as he sat up, pushing her back. She tried and failed to yank her hand free.
“Oh no, not of mine,” he said sharply. “They’re yours, Highness. Those are the same bloodflies that you unearthed with your damned drill, the same bloodflies that turned a good king into an insane monster.”
“But you did something to them. What did you do?”
He was about to answer when he suddenly realized that all three of his guests were wearing hoods or scarves over their heads. And then he saw the flash of gold in Skadi’s eyes. Omar grinned.
“Rejoice, Highness. You too, miss, and you, young murderer. You are all saved from the reaver scourge. The plague will soon be nothing but an unpleasant memory, and with any luck, so will I, assuming you let me leave in peace.”
“Saved?” Skadi yanked the scarf from her head to reveal the tall fox ears nestled in her hair. “We’re monsters! We’re deformed!”
Omar laughed. “You know, the children outside were a bit more sanguine about this. They were excited about having super-human hearing and what not. They think they’re demigods, or some such. Do you people have a fox-god? If not, you should, or you will very soon, I imagine.” Omar stood up.
The queen stood as well, rising half a head taller than the southerner. “When the people realize what you’ve done to them, there will be civil war! The city will tear itself to pieces and the children will drown in the rivers of blood in the streets!”
“I’ve already told the people what I’ve done,” Omar said. Then he shrugged. “More or less. Anyway, they’re quite content about it. Maybe not everyone is thrilled about the ears, but they seem willing to embrace a few little changes since it means they are now immune to the reaver plague. As are you.”
Skadi stepped back, her face twisted in disbelief. “Immune?”
“Yes. Immune.”
“So you were telling the truth after all.” The queen stood a bit easier, relaxing her shoulders. “You really did spend all those years trying to find a cure.”
“I did, although I must confess, I only succeeded in finding this remedy a day ago. And I have you to thank. If you hadn’t sent that lovely young lady into the wild, to find me and remind me of the drill and the flies, I would probably still be in my little cave, dreaming of warmer climes.”
“And the people all know about this? And they accept it?” Skadi touched one of her hairy ears and winced at the sensation.
Omar sighed. “They know as much as they need to know. The bloodflies are the cure, and the ears are the price of their good health. All you need to do now is keep them calm and quiet a few more days and everyone in Rekavik will be saved. Wait a few more weeks for the flies to find the reavers in their dens, and everyone in Ysland will be saved. The hard part is done, Highness. By the time spring arrives, it will all be over. And if you like, you may take all the credit for it, however you wish.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “And what price will I pay for this generosity?”
“Nothing at all. A good deed is its own reward.” Omar smiled briefly.
“Just like that? No blood feud, no vendetta for what I’ve done to you?”
“No.” Omar gazed down at Riuza. She was hardly breathing at all. He said, “I’m no Yslander. Gods, I’m barely even human anymore. And Riuza was always going to die, whether in five years or fifty. If I hadn’t boarded her ship eight years ago, she probably would have returned safely to Tingis, only to be killed in some other airship accident or even in a war with the Songhai Empire. Death is a universal constant, just like me.”
Skadi smirked. “Is that really how you see the world?”
He looked up at her. He remembered the stained and patched black dress she had worn as the vala of Hengavik, and the way her young eyes had lit up when he talked about airships and the city of Tingis, and his travels around the world. “You were just like me, once. So eager, so curious. But you had the same curse as me, too. Obsession. It’s such a pity because you had such good intentions. Grand intentions! A machine to warm the land, to make the earth fertile, to bring back the forests of Ysland. It was a beautiful dream you had. And I was so caught up in helping you that I missed the little signs along the way. When you replaced the vala of Rekavik. When you seduced Ivar. It was such a subtle and insidious ambition.”
“There’s nothing wrong with ambition,” she said haughtily.
“Nothing at all,” he said gently. “But that ambition led you to a precipice. You climbed so high and grasped so much that you became terrified of losing it. And when you saw Ivar turning into a monster right before your eyes, when he tore those three men to pieces and hurled their shredded flesh in your face, that was the moment when you decided that what you had was more important than truth or life. And you told Leif to kill everyone to hide your failure, just so you could wear a little crown and sit on a little throne.”
Omar’s shoulders shook and his lip curled, and slowly the laughter built up inside him until he was roaring and crying.
“What’s so funny?” the queen asked.
He wiped his eyes, but the grin remained. “I’ve stood in the grand halls of the Aegyptian kings, the Hellan temples to the Olympian gods, the imperial bathhouses of the Persian lords, and the royal gardens of the Rajput princes. I’ve walked on polished marble, through gilded halls of towering alabaster statues, through the rainbow light of delicate stained glass windows, gazing up at the frescoed panels of soaring domed ceilings.” Omar exhaled the last of the giggles, and he gestured at the room around them. “You people live in stone caves with dirt floors, and the only remaining wood in the entire country is in your bedroom, which stinks of mold, by the way. And this,” he giggled, “is what you’ve been fighting so hard to hold on to. There are beggars in Aegyptus who live better than you do.”
She scowled at him in silence.
He sighed and glanced down at Riuza again. He couldn’t see her breathing anymore. Omar knelt down and touched her neck, and then stood back up. “She’s gone.”
“Then I’m a very lucky woman that you’re so far above matters of life and death,” Skadi said. “You can go now. Leave the city. Leave the country. No one will stop you.”
Omar didn’t move. “You know, if you had just executed Riuza or exiled her to some hovel in the hills, I probably wouldn’t care at all, now. But you threw her into the darkness and held her on the brink of starvation for five years. Five years. Until her body broke down, and her mind broke down, and she died in pain and confusion and fear, just now. Right here at our feet, when we weren’t even looking. And you did it just because you were angry at your own failure, didn’t you? But she didn’t deserve this. She just wanted to go home. And if the universe was a just and fair place, you would be punished for this.” He looked the tall queen in the eyes. “But the universe isn’t a just place, and life, as we all know, isn’t fair. But then, I suppose… I suppose that I can be fair, can’t I? I can be just.”
Omar drew his seireiken.
The blade flashed in the dim room, the walls erupting into a thousand shades of silver for the barest fraction of a moment.
The light was extinguished. The blade was already back in its clay-lined sheathe. The ghost of the samurai hovered in the corner of Omar’s vision, and then vanished as he took his hand off of the sword.
Thora gasped.
The queen fell to the floor in a heap and the top half of her head slowly separated from the bottom, tearing apart on a diagonal line from the bottom of her jaw to the top of her ear, opening up her skull and spilling her charred brains on the cold stone floor.
Omar looked past the disgust on Leif’s face to the horror in Thora’s eyes. “I hope you’ll remember this sight every day for the rest of your life, young miss. You’re the vala of Rekavik now, for whatever that’s worth. They may even make you queen as well. Whatever power you ever come to hold, always remember why you hold it. Because if you abuse that power, then one day, eventually, someone with nothing to lose will come for you, just as I came for your mistress, and he or she will stop at nothing to destroy you. The grand high vala and queen of Rekavik, the great and powerful Skadi, is just a pile of rotting shit now. So take a good long look, young miss. Take a very good look.”
And then he left.