Crown Phoenix: Night Watchman Express

by Alison DeLuca

Chapter 9

  The Argument

  he jungle path seemed stranger and more mysterious at night. Stripes of moonlight and darkness mottled their skin as Riki and Neil crept through the trees and vines. Riki led the way, and after a bit she said to Neil, over her shoulder, “You should really breathe, you know.”

  He let out his breath in a rush. He couldn’t help thinking that at any moment a guard as huge as the one they had encountered by the palace a few days ago could seize them and offer to cut off their ears.

  The thick jungle, filled during the day with the calling of the parrots overhead, was now quiet and dark. This made their footsteps sound particularly loud. Even Riki, who usually moved like a little silent spider, seemed to crash through the plants and vines. The only other sound was the hum of unseen insects and the slight lapping of water on the lagoon’s edge.

  Riki stopped and put one hand on Neil’s arm. “Look,” she breathed.

  Neil peered in the direction of which she was pointing and saw, dimly, the lights of the palace. At that distance, they appeared to flicker.

  “Come on,” Neil urged. Excitement prickled on the back of his neck as they neared the huge building, made even more beautiful by the glowing lanterns and candelabras that hung from porticos and windows. The lagoon reflected the entire sight, so that the palace was doubled as a mistier, rippling version of itself. Gosh, Neil said to himself, and beside him, he heard Riki sigh.

  “Nice,” she said. Turning away from the sight, she whispered to him, “We must go very quietly now, here.” She grabbed his hand and threaded her way down the path, nearing the area where the large guard had left them before.

  Neil nodded. He concentrated on walking as silently as possible, and he nearly bumped into her when she suddenly froze and squeezed his hand.

  He was about to protest when he saw a large shape silhouetted against the lights from the Palace. It raised one arm to its mouth, and a long puff of smoke followed. Neil could hear his own heart beat in his ears. Someone must have left the palace to have a cigar.

  The person moved and puffed again, and another shape joined him. More clouds of smoke. Now Neil could smell the strong tobacco. Yuck, he thought, as the smoke wafted towards him; blow me down if I ever take up that particular habit.

  One of the men spoke, and he forgot all about the smoke. Hadn’t he heard that voice before?

  “Majesty,” the person said, “we are working as quickly as we can. I appreciate that you want your own profits soon, but we have to abide by our country’s laws, my dear fellow. We must do research, refine the drug, and make it less addictive. We also have to find a way to produce it on a mass scale without losing the number of workers that we have. It all creates costs, Atol, old chap.” There was a pause and another puff of smoke wafted their way. “I say, decent bit of leaf, this,” the voice added.

  Atol! Neil nearly jumped. The first man was the king of Lampala! Of all the rotten luck, that the king of the entire bloody country should pick this night to go for a stroll in order to puff on a huge smelly cigar. And who was talking to the king? He knew that voice. He racked his brain, trying to recall, but the answer eluded him. The king and his companion were simply too far away.

  There was a rumble from the huge mountain that was Atol, and the first speaker sighed. “Atol! Dear chap! Would I ever try to cheat you?” There was another answering rumble. “I call that too bad of you, old man. Now, I know the stuff is easy to harvest, but the fact is, we’ve encountered some unforeseen problems with the processing-”

  The large, dark mountain interrupted and gestured with the cigar. Its glowing tip wrote fiery hieroglyphs in the night.

  “Now, now. It makes no sense to call this thing off,” the voice continued soothingly. “Once production is in place and we really get rolling, do you realize how rich we’ll all be? Some physicians are starting to suspect opium and laudanum of being dangerous drugs. And, that’s not taking into account the nasty tariffs and import costs and the recent wars in the Orient. If we can capture that market, all those bored society widows and out-of-work actors and artists, you can repave your palace in gold if you so desire, my dear fellow.”

  There was silence from the mountain man before he emitted a final rumble, evidently dismissing the talker. Whoever it was, he took his cue from this and tossed the cigar into the lagoon, breathed out a final cloud of smoke, and said, “Very well. We’ll talk more later. Ta-ra, Atol! Sleep well and all that!” A moment later they heard his whistling, growing fainter as he headed towards the palace.

  The mountain man stayed where he was, standing motionless by the lagoon. Neil, bursting with impatience, formed desperate, mental orders: Move on. Go away. Get out of here. Shake a leg.

  Out of desperation, he was about to urge Riki to try to slither past the king, when the large shape suddenly barked, “Kyoge!”

  A third shadow separated itself from the trees and glided over to the king. With a burst of horror, Neil recognized the huge guard who had accosted them the day of the first island tour. It was that huge guard, the one with the nasty knife on the end of his stick. Oh, wonderful, he groaned silently. We’re dead now, that’s all. Dead and buried, both of us.

  “Magano, Atol.” The guard planted the all-too-familiar spear on the ground beside him.

  The king grunted. “You heard?” he asked in Lampalan. Neil, beneath his terror, felt rather pleased with himself that he understood perfectly what the king was saying in the island language.

  “I heard, my king,” Kyoge replied.

  Atol breathed heavily for a moment. “What are your thoughts?” he asked finally.

  Kyoge bowed. “Your majesty has done much already for that man in the matter of the –” he mentioned something that Neil didn’t understand.

  Atol pondered again. “True,” he responded, “although it helps our –” again Neil lost the drift of the conversation. “Kyoge. What about the new import? What are your thoughts on this matter?”

  “I may speak honestly?”

  The king motioned in an exasperated manner. “Tell.”

  “We are being cheated by that company’s new owners,” Kyoge said.

  “But we will become rich. My best lawyers wrote the papers.”

  “I don’t mean money, majesty. I mean our people. There has been too much sacrifice already. Some of them have become diseased.”

  The king clicked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. “Oh, that,” he said. “Such things are bound to happen on the eve of great change, and great profit.”

  “But, Majesty, the worth of a nation is held in its people. And, those who have returned from the mainland become ever more desperate, according to the reports from my men.”

  Atol shook his head impatiently. “Pfft! A few sick girls. Not worth my notice. Come, escort me back to the palace.”

  The guard bowed, turned and the two of them moved off into the night.

  Neil stood for a few minutes, his thoughts whirling. Eventually Riki whispered, “You can breathe again, idiot.”

  Neil exhaled in a whoosh and asked, “Did you understand all of that?”

  “All of what?”

  “What they were talking about!”

  “Oh,” she answered. “I was bored, so I stopped listening.”

  “You stopped listening-” Words failed him.

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing his arm again. “Nobody’s here now. We can continue our expedition! Wonder what’s in that tunnel? Treasure? Secrets? Skeletons?”

  Hmm, Neil thought grimly. He knew exactly whose bones he would like to store in a tunnel at that moment. Giving it up, he followed her on the path, digesting the conversation he had just overheard.

  Drugs! Laudanum! What on earth? And – who was that first man, the one who had mentioned laudanum? He knew that voice; it teased him with its inaccessibility.

  And what had that large guard, Kyoge, meant when he talked about people being sacrifices? That had been an additional shock. The huge guard with the
evil weapon actually spoke like a decent human being. Of the three men who Neil had just listened to, the guard had seemed to make the most sense.

  The path widened and began to slope upward as they neared the hills that separated the palace from the marshes. Neil tried not to gasp as he ascended the slope. Days of swimming, fishing and running after Riki, however, had made him leaner and stronger, so that the climb wasn’t too difficult.

  “How much time until daybreak?” he asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Riki whispered. “Six, maybe seven hours.”

  “We’ve got to be back in our beds before that time.”

  “Oh,” she answered, “if we’re not, we’ll just say we went to watch the sunrise and see the flying fish off the three-fingered rock.”

  Neil nodded, impressed. It actually seemed like a valid excuse, and it was one that her parents would believe.

  They reached the spot where they had originally bumped into Kyoge, the huge guard, and Riki paused. “Do you think there are any guards down there?” Neil asked.

  She shrugged. “Bound to be.” Undeterred, she chose a wicked-looking descent towards the lagoon and started down.

  Neil slithered behind her, feeling the loose rocks slide under his feet. There was no moon, but the stars were as bright as lanterns, showing the lake below in sharp relief. Beside the water, spiky plants grew in thick clumps, and the ground under Neil’s feet felt mushy.

  “How are we going to negotiate that?” Neil asked, pointing to the lagoon.

  “We’ll just go around the outside.” Riki pointed to the perimeter.

  Neil nodded again. He slid down the last few feet of the path and gingerly tested the ground with one toe. It seemed safe enough where they were, but there was a strange smell rising from the ground around the water. As he paused, he heard a muffled ‘bah-blump’, and a bubble erupted from the surface two furlongs away from where he stood.

  Foul, he thought, following Riki. She had unhesitatingly started along the outside, and he hissed, “Hold on! Let’s stick together!”

  Riki hopped with impatience and pointed. “Look! I can see the opening, there!” She pointed up to the mountain.

  From that distance, the tunnel looked larger, but it was as dark as an unopened tomb. Brrr, Neil thought, suppressing that thought as unbearably cowardly. He forced himself to continue, trying to ignore the slimy feeling underfoot and the increasing smells from the swamp.

  The surrounding sounds were different here as well; the insect activity had ceased completely. Instead, they could hear odd plopping and wriggling from the inhabitants of the marsh, as well as the intermittent bubbles of escaping gas.

  “Yuck!” The loud exclamation in Lampalan came from ahead of them, and Riki and Neil stopped instantly.

  Someone replied, “I hate this job.”

  The first voice said, “We’re really supposed to be in the tunnel, you know.”

  “No bloody fear,” the second one responded. “I heard too many unknown things in there. Besides, how will Old Meatball find out that we didn’t stay in there? Will he climb down here himself?”

  There was an answering cackle of jeering laughter. “True. She’s not going anywhere. I just can’t wait to go home, have a bath and drink a big cup of wine.”

  “Amen to that, my brother,” the second voice replied.

  Well, Neil thought, we’ve encountered our second lot of guards. So they’re afraid of the tunnel, eh? All the better for us, although it doesn’t make our job any more appetizing. And how are we going to get around these fellows?

  As if reading his thoughts, Riki pointed into the muddy center of the marsh. Neil knew what she intended and his heart sank; still, it was the only option they had.

  He nodded and removed his shirt. He wrapped it around the bag Riki had brought and tied both to his head. Gagging from the stench, he got onto his stomach and began to crawl into the lagoon after Riki. She was already making her way to the tunnel.

  They had to stay as low as possible, out of the sight of the guards. The two men appeared to have taken out some dice and started a game. Their play involved much argument, and Neil silently blessed the one who had suggested it. Being so close to the ground, however, meant that they were breathing in the noxious fumes. Something hideous slimed its way over Neil’s ankle, and he bit his lip in order not to shout with disgust. A minute later, one of the mud bubbles burst in his face, covering him and his glasses with evil-smelling mud. Wiping as much as he could off his lenses, Neil began to curse steadily to himself as he inched along.

  At any moment, he knew that one of the men would shout and point in their direction. How could they not see two dark shapes moving along the ground in that bright starlight? Doomed, he thought, continuing his dreary chant to himself. Captured. Imprisoned.

  His hand touched something solid and warm, and with a start he realized that he was holding Riki’s ankle. She shook him off and pointed, and Neil climbed out of the ooze.

  They were at the mountains. They had reached the entrance to the tunnel.