Page 5 of Company of Thieves
“Right. At Kasserine, Mahdia, and Sousse,” I said, naming the towns that were mentioned in Jack’s journal.
Mr. Mowen nodded.
“But those towns are in the middle and north parts of Tunisia.” I stood waiting, giving him my best “eyes filled with hope” expression.
“Aye, they are. It’s said that the Moghul prince has a camp to the south, around the town of Tozeur, where he makes periodic strikes upon those Black Hand scum.”
“Tozeur,” I said thoughtfully. From what I remembered of the map I’d studied, that wasn’t very far from our first stop. “Thank you, Mr. Mowen.”
“You’re welcome, lass, although I hope you’re not planning on doing anything that would upset the captain.”
“Of course not,” I told him, mentally planning the notes to Jack and Octavia, apologizing for any concern I might cause them, and one further note to the prince, informing him that I had a proposition that he would be sure to find mutually agreeable. “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything that would cause problems.”
“I’m sure that is the furthest thing from your mind.”
I glanced at Mr. Mowen, but despite his voice being full of amusement, his face was impassive.
The next twelve hours were spent sorting through my things, packing a small bag with essentials, and fighting with the damned autonavigator.
By the time we landed at Kasserine, I was ready. I left a note to Mr. Mowen asking him to please take over the autonavigator duties, and another addressed to Jack and Octavia, which I placed on my bunk while the crew was unloading cargo. After making sure the coast was clear, I slipped out of an escape hatch on the far end of the airship with my bag in hand. No one saw me leave, and given that I’d told everyone earlier that I had a headache and was going to try to sleep it off, I doubted if my absence would be discovered before morning.
“By then,” I said from where I squatted behind a couple of large wooden crates filled with salted beef, “I should be making a deal with the prince.”
When theEnterpriserose in the air and gently chugged off to the northeast, I felt a moment’s qualm at my audacious plan. My last tie to the world in which I’d grown up was sailing off into the distance with his beloved, but after a few minutes of panicked fear, I managed to remind myself I’d been through much scarier things in my life. This was the right course to take.
“After all,” I told myself four hours later, when I sat on a transport airship heading from Kasserine to points south, “I’ve been dragged to this world without my consent, and now I’m stuck here with no way to get back home. I refuse to live a life of uselessness. I refuse to forever be a stranger who is always on the outside looking in. No, sir! This is take-charge Hallie, and take-charge Hallie says we fulfill our destiny, and all that crap.”
The woman sitting opposite me, who had appeared more than a little scandalized when I sat down on the red brocade cushioned bench across from her, now looked like she might just fall over into a faint.
“You should probably loosen your corset,” I told her, taking in her highly starched white blouse, the long navy blue cotton skirt with fanciful embroidered scroll, her bright red belt, and a little straw boater that sat on top of an elaborate coiffure. She looked so much the epitome of a late Victorian-era lady that I knew I shocked her by speaking in public of such things as corsets. “It’s just a foundation garment,” I told her. “It’s not like it’s a sexual aid or something that is in bad taste to mention in mixed company. Far be it from me to judge what’s right and wrong with your society, but at the same time, I begin to think that maybe a social revolution is in order. If I was to suggest you abandon your corset and free your ta-tas, what would you say?”
She weaved, a handkerchief held to her mouth, and I worried she really might faint. Luckily, at that moment two other ladies entered the cabin, which had been set aside for women and children, and their unexceptional chatter seemed to reassure my seatmate that she was safe from my heathen corset-less ways.
I spent the bulk of the flight making mental lists of things I wanted to learn. Swordplay was a must, since a lot of the people in this world used swords rather than those weird plasma-shooting guns they called Empyrean Disruptors. Naturally, I’d have to learn how to shoot those, too. “But I rather fancy myself a bit of a swashbuckler,” I told the starchy woman when our companions took themselves off to the observation deck for a few minutes. “There’s nothing more kick-as—er ... kick-bustle than being able to slash around with a sword, you know? Or oooh, maybe a pair of daggers. If Jack would teach me his stealthy black ops skills, I could sneak up behind people and wham! Bam! Stab, stab, stab! I’d be a dagger-assassin rogue rather than a warrior!”
The woman gurgled something, and toppled over on the bench seat, clutching a lace hankie to her face.
“I don’t know—she just seemed to have some sort of an attack,” I told the two ladies when they returned and asked me what happened to the other woman. I added an innocent smile for good measure.
The starchy lady squeaked, and allowed herself to be helped from the row of seats with vague little gestures toward me.
No one sat by me for the rest of the trip.
The airship steward told me that Tozeur was an oasis town, located on the edge of the Sahara desert, part of the caravan route that Berbers and Bedouins used when traveling north to the sea. The town itself was surrounded by thick date trees, a line of which also clustered around a pool of greenish-blue water fed by a waterfall that poured out of a curved wall of rock edging one side of the pool. Beyond, a few more date trees were dotted through sparse scrubland, the vegetation thinning with distance from the oasis until there was nothing but small, knee-high dusty, hardy shrubs. The land rolled in soft waves to the south into the Sahara, from whose distances periodic trains of camels and merchants emerged on their way north to the coast cities.
I disembarked (much, I suspect, to the relief of the inhabitants of the ladies’ cabin) to find facing a small inn, a few scattered mud buildings, and not a lot else.
“The word ‘inn’ is a bit of a gross overestimation of the word,” I said aloud when I hoisted my bag and entered the curtained doorway. Inside, three round tables dotted an earth floor, each table hosting four silent men bearing huge mustaches, all of whom sat nursing drinks. At one table, clearly inhabited by a livelier bunch, the men played a game of dice, their movements slow and studied as they tossed the dice, peered at the results, then took a long pull at their respective drinks before a few coins were exchanged.
For a moment, all eyes were on me, and although I’m not an exhibitionist by nature—or even terribly extroverted—I reveled in the sensation that I was on a grand adventure. For the first time in the year I’d spent in this world, I felt fully alive, possessed with a mission, a plan, a goal toward which I was actively working. It was as if I’d woken up after a yearlong sleep, full of energy and enthusiasm, and I embraced the experience even though a few of the men made scandalized faces at my corset-less silk tunic and lounging pants that was my favorite outfit.
“Good afternoon,” I greeted a laconic man who oozed his way over to me, his hair slicked forward in an obvious attempt to cover a balding top. “I should like some information, if you please. I understand that Prince Akbar is located near this town?”
The low murmur of voices and occasional clink of dice came to a sudden halt as thirteen pairs of eyes considered me.
“Madame?” the innkeeper asked in a French accent. He looked like he had turned into a human-sized version of the stuffed big-mouth bass that hung in my father’s study.
“Akbar. The Moghul dude. He’s supposed to be in this area.” I glanced around the inn, wondering if I’d said something untoward. “Did he leave? I hope not, because I spent a lot of money getting out to Tozeur, and I have to save the rest of what my brother gave me.”
