Halcyon The Complete Trilogy by Joseph Robert Lewis Read Free Book Online

Something wooden cracked and the splinters clattered on the ground. And then all was silence.
    Lorenzo emerged from the gloom, his sword sheathed and hidden within the folds of his long black coat. “It was nothing, my lady. Atoq must have smelled an animal or the garbage. Although, I…” He looked back.
    “You what?”
    “I’m sorry. I could have sworn there was someone in that alley,” Lorenzo said.
    She saw the strange glint in his eyes as he stared down the street and over the harbor. “You mean your guardian angel said so?”
    He exhaled slowly, his breath no longer visible in the darkness. “I thought I might have heard her whisper something, but with the rain and Atoq growling, I suppose I just heard what I wanted to hear. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen Ariel.” He straightened up and folded his hands behind his back, and suddenly he was her hidalgo again. “I’m sorry, my love. Let’s get you out of the rain.”
    Atoq trotted out into the street where he stood and stretched, licking his teeth.
    Ariel. What use are ghosts if they cannot even warn you of an enemy? Qhora shrugged and resumed walking. She’d only taken a few steps when three men stepped out from the next alleyway down the street. Through the rain and shadows, the three figures appeared only in shades of gray, charcoal men in colorless clothes. Lorenzo’s espada whisked through the air as he drew it and the young hidalgo stepped in front of her for the second time. Qhora yanked her dagger from her belt and glanced behind them. Two more men stepped out with long jagged clubs in their hands.
    “Five of them, Enzo,” she said. “We’re surrounded.”
    Atoq growled.
    “Yes, we are.” Lorenzo called out to the men in Mazigh, “What do you want?”
    One of them yelled back over the hiss of the rain, “Everything you have. On the ground. Now. Or we kill you.”
    Qhora barely understood the man over the noise. The Mazigh language was not difficult, but after mastering four tongues of the Incan Empire and then Espani, she was finding it harder and harder to learn new ones. And she hadn’t even tried Hellan or Persian yet.
    “We have nothing to give you,” Lorenzo answered. “No money. No jewelry.”
    The men didn’t answer. Qhora moved to stand back to back with Lorenzo. Atoq paced forward and the two men on the high side of the street hesitated, glancing at each other. Without turning her head, Qhora said Lorenzo, “Can you fight three men at once?”
    “Yes.” There was no pride in his voice, only certainty. In España, the young hidalgo was counted among the finest diestros of his generation, a fencing prodigy. She had seen him duel and acknowledged his skill with the tiny espada, but this was no duel and an espada could be snapped by a man with the courage to grab it. For a moment, Qhora wished that Xiuhcoatl had been the one to follow her to train station. Even after two years together, and despite everything else she felt for him, she still hesitated to trust Enzo’s skill over other men’s strength.
    Lorenzo dashed from her side down the street but she didn’t dare look back. The two men above her raced forward, both angling toward Atoq with their clubs raised. The beast crouched, snarling, and then he leapt. The man on the right vanished under eight hundred pounds of wet fur and fangs. The man on the left stumbled around the cat and swung his broken board at Qhora’s head. With practiced grace, she whirled her soaking feathered cloak at his face to blind him with a sudden spray of water, then whirled back in the opposite direction, ducking under the club and burying her dagger in his throat as he stumbled past. He collapsed to the ground, choking and clawing at his neck. A moment later he lay still and Qhora yanked her dagger free, unable to tell the blood from the black puddles of filthy street water in the darkness. She looked up to see Atoq padding away from his kill with blood dripping from his fangs and she