by Неизвестный
“That will be Bells,” I said.
Ying took a deep breath of air. “I can smell the children.”
“Then let us divide the tasks: you retrieve the family while I find Bells.”
We headed in our different directions. The tunnel soon gave way to a set of cells, all of them eerily empty. Each was barely six feet by three feet, recessed into the walls and fronted by solid iron bars. I passed by them, searching for the source of the music – there!
Bells leapt up at the sight of me, interrupted from the Russian folksong he was playing.
“My lady,” he said. “Have you come to rescue me, then?”
“Stand back,” I said, aiming my short staff at the bolt across the door.
The report of the weapon discharging was unbearably loud in the enclosed space but it did the job. When the smoke had cleared I barged into the cell and grabbed Bells by the arm.
“Hurry, we do not have much time.”
“This is certainly unexpected,” he said, but he seemed pleased to see me. As I hauled him out of the cell he added, “And it seems I was right after all.”
I ignored the hint of triumph in his voice and said, as we ran down the narrow confines of the tunnel: “I am surprised they let you keep the instrument.”
“William and I cannot be separated,” he said, baring the huge, reassuringly boyish smile of his. And I was suddenly glad that I was there at that moment, doing what I was doing. It felt right.
Bells pushed past me and took the lead as we continued. “Follow me,” he said. “I know where Uncle Lee’s family is being held.”
“You seem to know a lot about this place,” I said. “One might suspect you have a certain amount of familiarity with it.”
His returning smile was small and mysterious.
We rounded a corner and came full-tilt upon Ying leading the children behind her, accompanied by Uncle Lee and a younger man and woman I did not recognize. The children squealed in delight. “Bells!”
“There may be a problem,” Ying said. “There were armed guards posted to their cells. I may have inadvertently triggered an alarm.”
“Inadvertently?” I closed my eyes. If the entire Palace was on alert there was no chance of us reaching our planned jungle escape route without encountering trouble. “We need to think of a better way out of here.”
Bells laughed. “It is fortunate, then, that some of us have more foresight than others.”
He produced William and shook the instrument. Out of the sound hole came tumbling a small, round device, made of brass and adorned with a single glowing light. It looked like an emitting device of some sort.
“Much as I am fond of Lord Louis, I never intended staying the night.”
Uncle Lee, too, seemed to know what it was. “If your ship is coming, then we should go,” he said.
We resumed our run towards the hillside egress.
There came from behind the sound of metallic feet, a regular, ominous clank-clank-clank that could only mean one thing: we had run out of time much faster than we thought.
“Take the family and go,” I instructed Ying. “I will hold them off.”
Bells did not follow them. “You might find me handy in a fight,” he said. I did not have time to argue. From behind us came marching a pair of mechanical minions made of blackened metal and much taller and wider than the regular gatekeepers and guardsmen. Unlike the lightly armed guards I had incapacitated earlier, these two were armed with repeating pellet guns. Behind the twin monstrosities I glimpsed the silhouette of Lord Louis, looking even smaller than ever, framed as he was between automatons.
“You must be quite something to warrant this much personal attention,” I muttered to Bells.
“Fear not,” he whispered back. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve.” Then he leapt forward towards the marching minions and shouted, “By my command, I instruct you to halt!” He held William aloft. “I have a ukulele and I know how to use it!”
Amazingly, the two mechanical men stopped in their tracks. Their bevelled heads turned towards each other as if confused. “Seize them,” Lord Louis commanded but the machines made no move to do so.
Bells tucked the tiny instrument into position and started dancing a jig right in front of them. Perhaps he was completely mad after all. “Oy, polnym polna moya korobushka, yest’ i sitets i parcha ...”
“What are you doing?” Lord Louis yelled at the immobile constructs. “Seize him!”
The walls of the tunnels suddenly shook with distant thunder – bombardment from above. Bells’ airship had arrived.
“That’s my cue to go!” Bells said, and quick as lightning struck the immobile machines with his ukulele. There must have been steel backing in the tiny instrument because he knocked their heads clean off.
Lord Louis marched towards us, coming out of the shadow. “I should have known, James. You were always up to childish games!” He drew a pistol from its holster.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake!” I exclaimed, rolling my eyes and without further ado discharged my short staff right at Lord Louis. The electrical beam arced, hit him in the chest and he fell over. Having had quite enough, I grabbed Bells by the hand and started running towards the exit.
“Good shot,” he told me as we ran.
“How did you stop those mechanical men?” I asked. “Only royals can command them by voice! Oh, never mind, I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”
He grinned.
“Did you really mean it when you said you could help Ying with her affliction?”
“Of course! The formulation for the serum is exceedingly simple, if you know the right ingredients.”
“And you would happen to know these ingredients?”
He laughed. “What do you take me for?” and laughed even harder when I answered, “A madman?”
We burst out of the tunnel and were greeted by the magnificent sight of Bells’ ship filling the sky, a marvellous confection of brass and steel and striped canvas, gigantic thrust rotors angled downwards, allowing the ship to hover in position while in battle mode. The firing batteries mounted on the side of the ship spoke and bolts of electricity seared the air over our heads. I smelled ozone on the wind whipping in a frenzy across the beaten ground.
Ying and the Lee family were clustered underneath as a rope ladder was lowered towards them.
“Bells!” the boy hollered, waving frantically. We ran to join them.
“Captain!” came a shout from above. A young woman – a girl, really – was perched dangerously on the edge of the ship, an ankle hooked around one of the ropes anchoring the ship’s balloon to its wooden frame as she lowered our salvation. “The cannons are running low on charge – hurry!”
Bells tapped everybody on the head in turn. “I grant you all asylum on board the Discordia,” he said perfunctorily.
“Now come on!” and he started ascending the rope ladder.
The deck of the Discordia seemed to be engulfed in chaos, but perhaps that was the fault of the mad wind, the powerful back draft created by the airship’s giant thrusting propellers blasting higher off from the ground. The ladder-girl leapt off the ship’s edge and landed securely on deck.
“I’m going below in case we get followed,” she said, before she vanished down a hatch in a flourish of linen and leather.
The first mate stood straight as a rod at his station, hands firmly on the wheel as he kept the ship steady. His glance towards Ying and me was narrow-eyed and squinty. I could not tell if it were due to suspicion or the wind that was cutting into everything, making it hard to speak or listen or think.
Bells clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Come on, Howie, let us get away from this blasted place.”
The first mate nodded. “Engines at maximum, captain”! he shouted over the commotion. “Everybody hold on to something.”
Behind us the main rotor kicked into action with a massive roar. Howie spun the wheel and the ship swung away from the ground in a huge, sweeping arc.
Bells ran towards the ship’s prow. “Sarah may need help with the cannons,” he hollered, gesturing in the direction of the hatch the ladder-girl had vanished through.
“I’ll go,” Ying said, and she too vanished into the darkness of the hold.
Bells jumped up onto the prow, seized one of the ropes and leaned forward as far as he could. I joined him and looked downwards. The ground was rapidly receding into darkness, swallowed whole by the night. A report from the ship’s electrical cannons threw the ground below into sharp white light and shadow, revealing the slow tiny dots that were the Imperial Guard marching out from the Palace. Firing batteries smoked on the hillside, having been reduced to smouldering ash by Discordia’s cannons.
“It does not appear that we are being pursued,” I said.
“Mmm,” Bells mused. “It must be chaos down there, Lord Louis being temporarily incapacitated and all.”
I considered him as he stood on the prow of his ship. He should have been triumphant yet all I sensed from him was an air of calm contemplation.
“Lord Louis called you James,” I said.
“Did he, now?”
“Is that your real name?”
“Real or not, what does it matter? It is not the name I go by these days.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I suspected this. You are a royal, are you not?”
Bells rubbed his chin. “I suppose I must have been,” he said playfully. “But that was such a long time ago, another lifetime.”
I nodded. That explained a great deal about him to me, even as it explained nothing.
Our eyes met and an indefinable warmth passed between us. Then Bells leaned forward as if to kiss me. I held up a hand to stop him. “I apologize if I have given you the wrong impression,” I said. “But I am not interested in pursuing a romantic relationship. I have everything I want in Ying.”
He laughed, unperturbed by this. “It was worth a try at least.” Then he sighed, taking one of his signature turns in conversation. “I broke William’s neck in all the excitement. I will have to make myself a new instrument.” He leapt off the prow of the ship and landed on the deck.
“Where do we go now?” I asked after him, looking out at the horizon. Clear of clouds, the sky was filled with stars from one end of the horizon to the other. I imagined I could see the shapes of the Riau Islands in the distance. I had not been home in so long.
Bells looked thoughtful. “We’ll have to lie low for a while, I suppose. There are some friendly ports in Indochina that may be willing to shelter us. A time to catch up with old friends and make new ones!”
He seemed cheered by the prospect. Then he winked. “Fret not, we will be back soon enough.”
The hatch opened in the deck and Ying and the ladder-girl emerged. Sarah, Bells had said her name was. Ying gazed at our surroundings, taking in the sudden calm filled with the deep hum of Discordia’s engines. I went to her side.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked, slipping a hand around her waist.
“I’ve never felt better,” she said with a smile and leaned her head against my shoulder. I took a first look at our sudden and unexpected new home: across the deck of the ship sprawled large crates, discarded bicycle parts, stacked rolls of engineering plans and contraptions of metal gearing. The first mate was shouting instructions to members of the Lee family, who evidently had some familiarity with the ship. The young man ran down a flight of steps, flung open a door and yelled something into the engine room. The two Lee children were already running across the deck, shrieking and chasing each other, clearly enjoying their new-found freedom. It was chaos, pure and wonderful.
Bells leaned against a long, tall crate and grinned.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sovereign State of Discordia.”
J Y Yang is a scientist-turned-writer-turned-video-journalist who really should know better. With short stories published in local and international outfits alike, she is passionate about gender and sexual equality, new media trends, and really, really fast cars.