The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by Lewis, Joseph Robert

  “The tunnels are ancient. The walls, crumbling.” Ochs frowned. “It’s possible someone might break through into other chambers, onto forgotten paths, or even to the tunnel back to the front gate on the far side of the mound.”

  “Damn,” Bettina whispered. She looked at her husband and nodded curtly. “Mister Ochs, I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you here and continue inside. We can’t risk having our quarry escape.”

  “Of course.” The starcaster waved them away with a frail hand. “Go, and may the stars guide you.”

  Bettina pushed herself up on her cane and opened her bag to search for her electric torch. But her husband laid a heavy hand on her wrist to make her pause.

  “You should stay here,” Arjuna said. “Stay with him and guard the tunnel mouth, in case they get by me and try to circle back.”

  “And let you go in there alone?” She stared into his eyes and shook her head slowly. “Absolutely not. Kaiser may not be dangerous, but Strauss will kill you in a moment if she gets the chance.”

  “Then I won’t give her that chance.” Arjuna took the torch from her bag as he drew his coilgun. The torch came alive with a crackle and hiss, and his weapon whined as the capacitor recharged. “Look at that tunnel. It’s tiny. You’re exhausted and in pain, and in no condition to be crawling through the dark. I can do this.”

  She gazed up into his eyes. A part of her spirit was already at the brittle edge, at the limit of her will power to keep going, to keep fighting through the pain and the fatigue, and that part of her heart wanted to sink into him, flush with gratitude, eager to let him carry the burden for her. But standing in the center of her heart was an iron spike, a steel resolve of pride and will that made her say, “No. I’m coming with you.”

  But her body couldn’t do what she needed it to do, and she leaned heavily on her cane as her husband kissed her deeply, slipping his warm tongue between her lips and cradling her soft cheeks in his warm hands. And then he was gone, loping across the grass, stooping down, and crawling into the tunnel in the mound.

  She stared after him longingly, with fleeting thoughts of their massive bed strewn with soft pillows and downy blankets and silken ties. But the moment was brief and she heaved a sharp breath as she turned her attention back to the gray-haired starcaster lying on the ground and staring up at his muses.

  “Mister Ochs, I need to ask you a few questions about what happened to you tonight.”

  “A man threw you,” he said abruptly, his eyes still scanning the stars. “You were a child, very young, very small. He ran up to you, and he threw you.”

  Bettina froze, her fingers clutching the head of her cane, but she did not tremble and her voice did not waiver. “Yes. I was seven.”

  “You were playing,” the starcaster said softly, as though reading a book to a child. “You were playing someplace green, with other children, and parents. And then this man ran across the green. He was a bad man. Other men, good men, were chasing him. But the bad man grabbed you, lifted you up, and threw you into a road.”

  Bettina pressed her lips tightly and nodded.

  “And before anyone could reach you, an animal stepped on your foot,” Ochs said. “An animal with iron shoes.”

  “A horse trampled my leg,” Bettina said calmly. “The bones were shattered and healed badly. Nerves were damaged. I nearly lost my leg, I’m told, but the owner of the coach was a surgeon, a very skilled and very kind surgeon. He saved my foot, such as it is.”

  “And the man who threw you?”

  “He was a thief trying to escape the police,” she said. “He thought that hurting me would delay the police long enough for him to escape. He was wrong. But he only served a year in Torghast for petty theft. Since I wasn’t killed, and I didn’t even lose my foot, the courts deemed his attack on me to be inconsequential. So he went free, and I live like this, every day, in pain. There are days when my entire leg is on fire and I can’t even see clearly, let alone walk. But he only served one year.”

  Piven Ochs sighed and nodded sadly. Now her tore his gaze away from his precious stars to look into her eyes. “You hate this man?”

  “I did, for a very long time I did.” Bettina blinked. “But he was stabbed to death in a bar fight two years ago. I take no small measure of solace in that fact.”

  Again the starcaster sighed and nodded. “You are a keen woman, but you refuse to accept your limits.”

  “Please do not presume to know my limits,” Bettina said icily as she turned her back to him. “I know them all too well.”

  “I suppose you do,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  Bettina paced slowly toward the mouth of the cave and paused to listen, but there was no faint echo of her husband’s progress, and so she paced back to her charge. Her coilgun weighed heavily in her hand, and the cold metal made her fingers ache. She paused again, this time to stare at the pale wrinkles bunched tightly around the old starcaster’s eyes and frowning mouth.

  “You predicted that thieves would come here from the city? From, what do you call it, Dunalow?”

  He nodded. “Two nights ago. I couldn’t be sure if I had read the signs right, but I came and waited all the same tonight. I’m trying to be glad that I was right, and glad that I could assist you, but…” He coughed and grabbed his ribs, his eyes squeezed shut, and he gasped for breath. He opened his eyes and blinked rapidly. “Well, I’m not entirely glad right now.”

  “I’m sorry. Here, take this.” She produced one of her little pills and pressed it into his palm. “Swallow it whole. It will help with the pain.”

  “Thank you.” He swallowed the pill, but looked no more comfortable than he had before.

  “So, can you tell me what will happen now?” Bettina glanced back at the dark tunnel. “Will Arjuna find them? Will he be all right?”

  “The stars cannot tell me anything about the ossuary. They never have.” Ochs shifted his hips and the strain around his eyes faded a bit. “The ossuary is home to more than just bones. There are other things in there, in the earth, in the dark. Things put to rest long ago. Things that cloud the stars for me.”

  Bettina’s stare hardened a bit more.

  What is this old fool babbling about? Who cares about some ancient bones? My Arjuna is alone in a cave with only a light and a tiny gun to keep him safe.

  All around them, the soft yellow glows of the angler bugs lit the trees and gentled the night’s darkness. Bettina shivered, and tightened her grip on her cane.

  Chapter 15. A Dirty Fight

  Arjuna scrambled down the tunnel as fast as he could, crawling and hunching with the dirt roof scraping at his shoulders and dry roots clawing at his hair. The light of his electric torch flashed left and right, illuminating dark earth and a few pale stones, and even a handful of ancient wooden beams in the walls and crossing the roof. The detective saw everything, felt everything, but raced on without pause. He didn’t care about ancient tunnels.

  Where are you, Kaiser?

  The tunnel ended abruptly at a large chamber where he could stand up and stretch his back for a moment and brush the prickly bits of dirt and splinters from his hair and neck. A quick survey with his light revealed a dozen round stones set into the walls, all at chest height.

  Graves. Must be centuries old. But nothing is broken. I guess Kaiser didn’t think his treasure would be here. What’s he looking for? A king’s necropolis?

  Thick white cobwebs blanketed the corners and walls, and a ragged, wispy breach in the webbing revealed the path the thieves had taken across the room. Arjuna spotted three enormous brown spiders sitting on their silken lines, and more than a dozen tiny bundles wrapped in sticky webs hanging overhead.

  He shuddered and pulled the collar of his shirt tight against the back of his neck.

  Spiders… it just had to be spiders.

  Arjuna glanced once at the small tunnel behind him, and then turned to the larger tunnel ahead, and he strode deeper into the vast tomb. He kept his light on the floor
and his charged coilgun pointed at the ceiling. His feet danced along the dusty floor, chuffing lightly in a sideways jog in near silence. And he listened for the distant echo of thieves at work.

  The second chamber was another ring of circular grave stones in the walls, but one of these had cracked and shattered, leaving its remnants scattered along the dirt floor. Arjuna knelt and flashed his light into the opening and saw the length of the narrow alcove still intact, with the thin gray shards of a few bones still lying on the bottom.

  He scanned the dusty floor and found a few marks, a sharp scrape here, a round heel there. The trail led straight on, and so the detective followed.

  How big is this tomb?

  Arjuna jogged along a bit faster now and aimed his torch a bit higher on the wall.

  They must be close now. Probably trying to dig some stone box out of the walls with their bare hands. I may get lucky. I may surprise them. Two shots, nice and neat. Strauss first, naturally.

  Or maybe I should leave Kaiser conscious so he can help me drag Strauss out of here. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

  Just ahead he sighted the next chamber and he quickly lowered his electric torch and reduced its light to a faint glimmer. Kneeling in the center of the chamber, illuminated by the flames of a burning stick, was Ranulf Kaiser. The thief’s back was to the tunnel, and he was busy trying to free something large and heavy from the earthen floor. His grunts echoed softly through the tomb.

  Right. So where is his lady friend with the pretty biceps?

  Arjuna leveled his gun at Kaiser’s neck and crept to the edge of the chamber. A freezing shock ran down his arm as a sudden thought flashed threw his mind, and he pulled back half a step.

  She’s there. Right there, just around the corner, waiting for me, using Kaiser as bait to lure me into the open. I can hear her breathing, just barely, between Ranulf’s huffing and scuffling. But which side is she on?

  Arjuna peered at the dirt floor on either side of the tunnel, watching the shadows dance with the flames of the guttering torch.

  I can’t tell. So I guess I’ll just leave it up to fate.

  He grinned, briefly.

  Good thing Betty isn’t here to see this.

  The detective paused, tensing his legs and back, focusing on the lone thief in the room, feeling the subtle weight of the coilgun held lightly in his fingers. And then he ran.

  Arjuna took three powerful sprinting steps down the end of the tunnel and dove into the chamber headfirst. He twisted his body as he fell, turning his shoulders to crash backwards into the still unsuspecting Kaiser, while he looked back toward his feet and raised his gun, searching for his enemy, searching for his target…

  He smashed into the thief’s back with his full body weight. Kaiser cried out as he was thrust forward over the stone box in the floor. Arjuna felt his shoulder screaming with a searing pain as he struck first the bony man and then the rocky floor. His body twisted and rolled a bit, wrenching his shoulder and neck. His elbow struck a stone and sent a jarring vibration down his arm, making his fingers buzz into numbness.

  Arjuna kicked at the floor to shove his legs under him as he threw his left hand back to claw and clutch at Kaiser even as his unsteady right hand raised his coilgun and swept the muzzle of the weapon across the dirt walls.

  Where is she? Where…?

  A rock the size of his fist smashed into the back of his hand, sending the coilgun flying across the chamber to clatter against the stony wall. Arjuna looked up as he grabbed his aching hand and saw the dim figure of Magdalena Strauss emerging from another tunnel on his right. She was a powerfully built woman and her simple white shirt and blue jacket were straining to contain her upper arms. Her shining blonde hair was pulled back in a short braid tucked tightly against her skull, and her wide thin lips scowled beneath her narrowed eyes.

  She wasn’t waiting for me after all. She wasn’t even in here. Damn my luck.

  He hurled himself to the left, shoving the lanky Kaiser off balance as he snatched up a rock of his own and snapped it across the room into the mouth of the second tunnel. The missile had barely left his fingers before he grabbed a second one from the dirt floor and flicked it after the first. The woman dodged the first stone, but not the second, and it clipped her in the temple. She spun to the side and stumbled against the wall, clutching her head as it began to bleed.

  In that moment, the lean Kaiser in his gray suit rose to his feet and quickly joined his associate on the far side of the room. Arjuna lunged to catch his jacket, but missed.

  “Quickly, quickly!” Kaiser grabbed his bodyguard’s arm in one hand and their flickering torch in the other, and the two of them dashed down the tunnel.

  Arjuna snatched up his fallen coilgun, leveled it at their retreating backs, and fired.

  The weapon exploded in a shower of sparks that lit up the earthen chamber as though it were noon on a snowy day. He flinched as he threw the damaged gun aside and then pulled out his electric torch to see what had gone wrong.

  His gun lay on the floor, cracked and bent in half a dozen places. Sickly green and yellow acids were oozing from the battery case, tiny screws lay gleaming in the dirt where they had popped free of the housing, and the coilgun itself was blackened and smoking.

  I take it back. I have no luck at all.

  He pointed his light to illuminate the tunnel where the thieves had fled. If he held perfectly still, he could just barely hear their footsteps pattering and echoing in the distance.

  Grimacing, Arjuna sighed and glanced down at his useless coilgun one last time. As he did so, the light of his torch fell on the stone box half-buried in the floor, the box that Kaiser had been so intent on opening. A bright gleam flashed up from inside the box where the lid had been partly pried open.

  The detective reached down and hauled the heavy stone lid of the box aside a bit more and peered inside. The bottom of the case was filled with dust and small rocky lumps that may well have been human bones long, long ago. But the metal object that had caught his attention stood up high above the debris.

  Whatever it was, it was curved and hooked, and it looked to have some heft to it.

  Any weapon is better than no weapon.

  Arjuna reached in and yanked the ancient, rusty thing out. A cloud of dust followed it into the open air, swirling through the light like a tiny storm. But the dust settled quickly, leaving the detective awestruck.

  It’s beautiful.

  It was a bow, a long slender curve of steel that swirled back in on itself at both tips, and in the center there was a cold brass grip molded to fit a man’s left hand. Above and below the grip were stunning artistic flourishes, sharp fangs and talons bared outward at anyone foolish enough to oppose the archer, and a pair of limbs like arching dragon tails baring tiny horns and barbs down their backs, all captured in metallic miniature shining in silvery steel and warm copper tones.

  It must be ceremonial. A metal bow couldn’t possibly be used to…

  His gaze traveled down to the lower limb and the thin braid of wire hanging from the tip. He set his light down and grabbed up the bow string. Wrapping his leg around the lower limb, he bent the upper limb down and neatly strung the bow. Holding it in his left hand, he plucked the ancient string.

  A deep note sounded throughout the chamber and a small avalanche of rust and dirt burst from the bow’s limbs and riser and tumbled to the floor, leaving the ancient weapon bright and clean.

  Maybe I have a little luck left after all.

  Arjuna reached down into the box a second time and felt around in the soft dust, and a moment later he pulled out three slender arrows made not of wood but steel, and fletched not with feathers but with copper vanes. The arrow heads were long and narrow, made for piercing deeply.

  With these, I can make my own luck.

  He hung the electric torch on his belt, clutched two of the arrows along with the bow in his left hand, and nocked the third arrow to the string. Taking a slow breath, he jogged down the t
unnel after the thieves.

  The light from his torch swung and bobbed wildly as it banged against his thigh, but this had the strangely useful effect of rapidly illuminating the walls and floor ahead of him on all sides, if only for an instant on each patch of ground. He made no effort to keep quiet now and let his thumping feet echo around him.

  For a brief moment he recalled the summers he spent as a child with his brothers living in the forest with their uncle, training with the bow, learning to hunt, learning to track. They left city life behind them, from their food to their shoes, and lived as their ancestors had. Arjuna smiled at the memories of running through the dark corridors of the mountain woods beneath a crescent moon and a sea of uncounted stars in search of deadly cats and wolves.

  If only my brothers could see me now, hunting men with a bow, in a cave deep inside a flying island. They’ll never believe this one, even if Betty tells them it’s true.

  Stony clunks and clatters reverberated from somewhere up ahead, and Arjuna raised his bow and began to draw back the string. He eyed the steel string warily.

  This thing is going to tear the flesh off my arm if I’m not careful.

  He turned the last corner and saw that the tunnel widened out slightly before ending abruptly in a flat stone wall. The rocks had been carefully fitted together at every conceivable angle and slope, but no mortar held them together. Only their expert arrangement, and the weight of the earth above them, appeared to hold the wall together.

  Strauss and Kaiser stood together at the center of the wall, each of them pounding on the wall with a rock grasped in both hands. Strauss’s rock was much larger than Kaiser’s.

  “Stand down!” Arjuna shouted. “Drop the rocks! Hands on your heads!”

  Ranulf promptly dropped his rock on his toe, and then yelped and stumbled backward against the wall. Magdalena heaved her rock toward the detective, but the huge missile slammed down to the floor well short of his feet.