It’s not my fault. Sal never told me what they looked like.
Then again, Sal didn’t know what they looked like. Still, he was the only person she had ever known who called himself a professional spy, and all that time on the road from Valencia he had called the Mazighs spies, and somewhere along the way she had come to assume they would be just like him. Slender, debonair, condescending, and vicious. They would be experts in language and fashion, able to slip into a local crowd and vanish as one of them. They would be masters with knives and poisons, perhaps even with rapiers and explosives. And they would be staying in the most conspicuous places possible, sleeping in the most expensive hotels and dining with mayors and wealthy friends in every city from Madrid to Tartessos.
Nope. Shifrah shivered in the early morning breeze as she crossed the street toward the barracks by the north gate of the city. No, they were just a couple of drunks in a tavern. The big ugly Italian led me straight to them and I didn’t even realize it. A big meat head and his pathetic little sidekick who couldn’t hold his liquor.
How was I to know? Although, I suppose he was the only man in this freezing hellhole with a shaved head. But he looked as light or dark as anyone else in there. In the dark.
She stopped cold in the street.
I should be back there right now, slitting their throats. That was the whole point. That was the job. So why am I out here? It’s not because I rode him. Wouldn’t be the first time. No. But if it’s not him, then it’s Sal. And damn you for that, Sal. I’m not hacking off a pair of heads and dragging them all the way back to Valencia for your precious mission or your ego.
Still she stood in the street shivering as the chill morning air seeped into her sweaty hair.
But I may still need Sal one day. No need to burn that bridge just yet. If I give them to the locals and then make up a story for Sal, that should be good enough. And then I can go south. I can go someplace warm.
Shifrah strode into the guardhouse by the city gate and pounded on the inner door. “Wake up, boys, you’ve got a few minutes of work to do.” Her Espani wasn’t perfect, and she knew she wasn’t pale enough to pass for local, but the stolen triquetra medallion displayed on her chest had proven a reliable passport before. Only in Espana would they care more about the trappings of faith than the genuine article.
The door opened and two pale children of seventeen or so stepped out in dark blue uniforms. Mottled little beards clung to their cheeks, which only made them look younger. “Yes?”
She sighed. “Do you have anything bigger in there? Because honestly, this Mazigh is going to eat you boys alive.”
“What Mazigh?”
“The big Mazigh staying at the Red Swallow. Two of them, actually, but I’m not too worried about the little one.”
The young soldiers looked confused. “Did they do something?”
“Haven’t you heard? There’s a manhunt going on across half the country for foreign spies, particularly ones from Marrakesh. And I just found two of them at the Swallow. Now get the real soldier boys out here before they leave.” She crossed her arms, nudging her breasts up higher, and she stared at the boys in blue. They both blinked at her chest.
“Let me go talk to the captain.” One ducked back inside, leaving his friend to stand in the doorway looking cold and nervous.
Shifrah smirked at him. “So, you ever kill a man, soldier boy?”
“What? No, no ma’am. No, I haven’t.”
She sniffed. “What about a woman?”
His eyes widened in horror and she laughed.
The door opened again and half a dozen soldiers spilled out into the street, their shining black boots clacking on the icy cobblestones. At least three of them were over thirty, and the one with the air of authority had a rather impressive mustache. He said, “Ma’am, I understand you’ve found some foreigners in the city?”
She nodded as she waved them after her. They followed in a loose knot with their rifles in their hands, and at the door of the tavern the captain set two of them to stand guard outside. Shifrah told them which room to check and then paced across the street to wait. It was still early and precious few Espani were hustling through the streets to wherever it was that Espani went to work. Churches, she guessed.
A sneeze caught her attention and she looked to her left. At the end of the street a lean figure was straightening up and wiping his face. A much larger figure grabbed him by the collar and hauled him around the corner and out of sight.
“Damn.” She turned to the two soldiers still outside the tavern. “Hey! They’re down there! End of the street! Left at the corner!”
Shifrah bolted down the icy street, hoping that any ice she stepped on would crack and shatter rather than slip under her weight. She skidded around the corner and saw a thickening crowd down the next road. The big Mazigh’s bare scalp bobbed among the sea of heads and she took off after it.
She felt her heart pounding in her chest and her blood thundering through her head. How much whiskey did I drink last night?
Shifrah crashed into the edge of the crowd and set to worming her way deeper and deeper into the press of bodies. They were in a large, open square bordered on two sides by a small cathedral and lined with clothiers’ shops on the other two sides. She saw the dummies standing behind the tall glass windows, stuffed and headless bodies in sharply tailored suits.
How Italian of them.
The tide of the crowd flowed toward the cathedral. A morning mass. The Mazigh’s head showed the big man wasn’t making much better progress cutting across the square and she focused on his stubbled crown and the bright puff of vapor streaming from his unseen face.
Shifrah grunted and began shoving people out of the way to close the distance to the big man’s head. The Espani around her made countless surprised and angry looks, but she didn’t give them a second glance.
They won’t do anything. They’re church people, just like the church people back in Rome. The only church people to worry about are in Constantia, and there aren’t any Constantians here.
The Mazighs broke free of the crowd and darted down a side street, and a moment later Shifrah burst out of the square and raced after them. The two men were only a few yards away now. The sounds of her boots slapping the ice and slush echoed off the stone walls and the Mazighs twisted their heads around to look over their shoulders.
Still running, she drove her bare first through the young one’s surprised face and felt his nose crack under her knuckles. When she saw him falling backward with the first glimmer of blood in his nostril, she knew he was no longer in this fight and she spun just in time to catch the big man’s open-handed strike to her neck. She grabbed his arm with both hands but still the blow threw her against the alley wall. Her boots slipped but she scrambled away before she fell and threw a fist and another fist and a boot at the hulking Mazigh’s face, but each time the man just raised his own fist and took the blow on his arm.
He’s a boxer. He’s used to pain. I won’t be able to wear him down.
Behind her she heard the younger Mazigh moaning, his voice distorted by his broken nose and no doubt one or both hands clutched to his face.
“Lady, who the hell are you?” the big man asked.
She backed away a few paces up the alley, careful not to let him corner her against the wall. She considered drawing her knives but she had seen the man’s fat hunting knife under the bed.
A boxer and a knife-fighter, and three times my size. This is not turning out to be one of my better days.
She straightened up and lowered her fists. “I was sent to kill any Mazigh spies I could find. I found you.”
“What for? You’re no soldier. Hell, you’re not even Espani, are you? I guess that makes you a freelancer, doesn’t it?” He nodded and lowered his meaty fists. “Fine, you want money? Let us get out of here and I’ll get you money. We’re not spies. We’re just trying to get home.”
The younger one staggered up, gingerly touching his face. “Major, she broke my nose.”
“Major?” Shifrah smiled. “A Mazigh officer who carries a knife instead of a gun. I like that.”
“Good for you.” The major spat on the ground. “So, do we have a deal? You cut us loose now and I pay you later. Name’s Zidane. You come find me in Tingis and we’ll settle up there. You’ve got my word. Okay?”
“It sounds like a very nice deal.” It did sound nice. Marrakesh, far across the Strait of Tarifa, would be warm, so much warmer than Espana or Italia. The only hiccup was the Mazigh warrant on her head, but that could be dealt with. “And I’d be happy to take that deal and walk away right now except for one little problem, major. I already told the soldiers where you are.”
Behind her at the mouth of the alley, she heard the Espani soldiers shouting as they slipped out of the cathedral crowd and ran toward the Mazighs. The big man glared over her head and muttered, “Damn.” He grabbed his companion by the collar and hauled him away at a dead run.
Shifrah smiled and bit her lip. She stepped back against the cold stone wall of the alley to let the soldiers fly past, and then she stepped back into the lane to watch them plunge into the slow-moving traffic on the main road ahead. With her hands on her hips, thumbs gently pressing against the handles of two of the knives hidden in her coat, she stood thinking.
So which is the better deal? Do I bag some heads to keep Sal happy in case I need him again, or do I save the big man, take the cash, and spend a few months in the sun?
The sounds of men yelling and the sharp, solitary reports of rifle shots echoed in the distance.
Sorry, Sal. You need to learn to be nicer to the ladies.
She turned and hurried back up the alley, across the now-empty square beside the large church, and then around the smaller streets back to the Swallow. Her horse was waiting for her.
It took several precious minutes to get the blanket and saddle in place, and though she’d done it a hundred times, she still rode out into the cold morning streets with the nagging doubt that she’d done something wrong. She dismissed it. When it came to horses, something was always going wrong.
Dumb animals.
She rode as swiftly as she dared back across the square and then began listening for the sounds of violence. Six soldiers with rifles against one man with a knife and one boy with a cold. Shifrah worked her tongue across her teeth as she listened to the quiet murmurs of the street, of people walking and talking and working.
Maybe this is a bad idea.
Three rifle shots echoed over the rooftops and she spurred her horse into a gallop, angling across the street and around the corner at the next intersection. People on foot scattered before her and it wasn’t long before she spotted a knot of chaos in the middle of the road ahead. People were shouting and scattering, dropping baskets and sacks in the middle of the street to make way for the squad of men in blue mechanically firing and reloading their primitive rifles. Shifrah grimaced. At least they’re only Espani rifles. If they were Mazigh weapons, they’d be spewing bullets non-stop. Never mind Mazigh revolvers.
She shuddered at the thought of bullets, weapons flying faster and smaller than the eye could follow, tearing down a strong woman, or even a man for that matter.
With a knife in one hand, she charged the back of the soldiers’ line and cried out, “For God and good Prince Valero!” in her best Espani, which sounded a great deal like her best Italian. But the soldiers all froze at the cry and glanced up at her as the horse clattered into the center of their loose formation in the street.
“Where are they? Where are the spies?” she shouted, waving her knife.
“Get out of the way!” The soldiers poured around her, surging on down the street. Only the mustachioed captain bothered to catch her eye and give her a properly dirty look.
She grinned back. “Let’s get them!” She kicked the horse into another dead run down the street and from her elevated seat she caught a glimpse of the major’s head darting to the right around a corner at the far end of the street. “They went left! Down there!” She pointed with her knife and to her relief three of the soldiers stumbled to a halt and then veered off to the left. The other three shouted back, “No, no, they went right! Right!”
The confusion was brief but real. Blank looks all around and uncertain fingers pointing in different directions. But the captain’s shouting soon had them back on the trail.
Unwilling to risk another transparent interruption to the chase, Shifrah turned down another street running parallel to the one the major took and emerged on the next avenue to find it almost completely deserted. Nowhere to hide. “Not what I wanted.”
She trotted down to the next street, the one the major should have been about to come out of, but she found it empty except for the echoing shouts of angry men. Halfway down the lane she saw a front door kicked in.
“What the hell are they doing?” She stayed on the wider avenue and headed south, peering down the narrow gaps between the houses and shops at the small gardens behind them.
A flash of brown leather.
A rifle shot.
“Hell, kid, keep your head down!” the major roared.
Shifrah squinted down the narrow alleyways and suddenly a flock of blue uniforms flooded through a small garden right in front of her and a half dozen male shouts echoed back out to her, “Shoot, shoot! He’s right there! Get him! No, the other one!”
She dashed down the avenue parallel to the men, separated from the chase by a row of houses that seemed to have no paths between them wide enough to admit a horse. Looking ahead, she spotted the next side street and raced around the corner. The men were still running through the back gardens, crashing through fences and tearing down laundry lines, shouting and shooting. Bullets ricocheted off brick and stone, and shattered glass windows. Every few seconds, a woman would shriek inside one of the houses.
Shifrah nudged her horse back and forth, trying to guess which house the two Mazigh officers would come barreling through.
To her right, the front window of a small house exploded in a rain of broken glass and wooden splinters. The major landed on his shoulder, rolled slowly, and stood up, clearly favoring his right leg. The kid tumbled out of the window after him, collapsing to the street and looking like a sweaty corpse, his face pale and bloodshot eyes set in dark eye sockets.
Zidane hauled the kid to his feet just as his eyes met hers. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you with them are not?”
“I might be with you, but now is not the best time to chat, major.” Shifrah jerked her head at the sound of the pursuing soldiers crashing through the house. She pointed down the street. “The south gate is that way, assuming you’re still heading for warmer places to run and play.”
Zidane hesitated a moment too long. Two faces appeared in the broken window just as the front door of the house swung open. The major dropped his friend and lunged at the two men in the window, grabbed their jackets, and hauled them out into the street where he dropped them on their heads and stripped them of their rifles. He tossed one gun to the kid as he spun around and cracked the butt of his own rifle into the head of the man rushing out the front door.
Shifrah spotted another rifle poking through the broken window and she screamed in her highest screeching voice, “My baby! Someone save my baby!”
The rifle jerked back inside, replaced a moment later with two more confused faces.
Zidane grabbed the sick kid and they both took off down the road, rifles in hand. Shifrah wheeled her horse around just as the Espani captain charged out the door, hollering, “Arrest that woman!”
“Oh, hell.” Shifrah kicked her horse and sped away in the opposite direction of the two Mazighs. “You’re on your own now, big man. But I’ll be seeing you soon enough.”