The Ruby Airship

by Sharon Gosling

  “Oh, dear,” Yannick’s voice sneered in her ear. “Not sure even your beloved policeman could get out of that, eh, Little Bird?”

  The fury was like a white-hot pain. She spun so quickly that Yannick’s knife didn’t even have a chance to cut her. Blind with rage, Rémy struck out, slamming her fist into his throat. Yannick gulped like a fish, eyes bulging in shock, and she kicked him hard in the ribs. His knife clattered to the tiles and slid away down the roof. The magician slumped to his knees, gasping for breath and holding his abdomen.

  “You tricked me,” he whined. “You lied. You said —”

  She spotted something hanging around the magician’s neck. Leaning forward, she hooked her fingers under it and wrenched it free. It was a small opal pendant, hanging from a slim gold chain.

  The rope tapped her shoulder. Above her, Claudette leaned out of the airship, urging her to climb. Rémy grasped the rope, shaking off Yannick’s hands as they pawed at her legs.

  The ruby airship lifted away and down the mountainside.

  {Chapter 40}

  THADDEUS

  The tower crumbled around Thaddeus, level after level giving way as the structure disintegrated. Flames licked at him as he plummeted through the ruin of wood and stone. He grabbed at some of the remaining floor as he fell. The plank broke under his grip, but it was enough to slow his descent. His feet hit solid ground, hard. He collapsed, rolling on cold stone, winded, aching, and with fresh burns.

  Thaddeus lay staring up out of the darkness. Above him he could see the flaming innards of the tower, the floors that the fire had eaten through starkly visible voids. More rafters began to fall toward him as the fire tore them from their couplings. He scrambled to his knees, flinging himself out of the way as hellfire rained down. Thaddeus screamed in pain as a burn on his left arm connected with rock.

  Crouching against the rough wall, Thaddeus blinked as his eyes adjusted to the uneven light. There were passages around him, leading in all directions. He remembered the caves he and Rémy had seen during their climb down from the airship. Perhaps the entire mountain was riddled with them, he thought: a honeycomb of passageways beneath the surface. If that was the case, there must be a way out. Struggling to his feet, Thaddeus picked up a shard of burning plank to use as a torch and chose a direction.

  He’d only gone a few paces when he heard something behind him. The sound echoed against the walls just a second before he felt something sharp touch his neck.

  “I should have known,” said the cold voice of the Comte de Cantal. “Only a peasant boy would abandon his sword.”

  Thaddeus turned, slowly, feeling the steel of the Comte’s sword bite at his neck. The nobleman stood silhouetted against the burning rubble of his castle. He was bloodied and bruised, his hair unkempt, and his trousers and shirt singed and tattered. But he still clutched his sword, and his scarred face still bore an air of infuriated arrogance.

  “Comte —” Thaddeus began, but was cut off.

  “Look what you have done,” hissed the Comte. “You will pay for this, all of you, I swear. Where is Arriete?”

  “Her name is Claudette,” Thaddeus told him, finding it hard to draw breath with the Comte’s blade still pressed against his neck.

  “Whatever,” said the Comte dismissively. “She can call herself what she likes as long as she hands over her fortune.”

  “She’s not going to marry you, Comte,” Thaddeus told him.

  “Well, it is up to her, of course,” shrugged the nobleman. “There is still the other option — for me to provide her body as proof of her death.”

  “The lawyers would know that you killed her for the money,” said Thaddeus. “They’d never let you get away with it.”

  “Oh, really?” The Comte turned to look at the burning wreck behind him. “You do not think they might believe she perished in the blaze?”

  “Look,” said Thaddeus, “It’s too late anyway. She’s miles away by now.”

  The Comte laughed. “Either you think I am an idiot peasant or you are actually one. She won’t go anywhere without her little whelp.”

  “She doesn’t need to,” Thaddeus said with as much conviction as he could. “We rescued Amélie earlier. They’ve already been reunited.”

  The Comte laughed again. “Impossible. Come, we must go. I suspect we will find the Comtesse at the girl’s cell. She will do as I say when she sees a knife at her baby’s throat.” He wiggled the sword, scraping at Thaddeus’s neck. “Go on — move.”

  Thaddeus stumbled slightly as the Comte pushed him down one of the stone passageways. “Not even you would really harm a child.”

  The Comte made a sound of disgust in his throat. “She’s a mute wretch conceived in some miserable circus hovel. Even if the Comtesse does as she’s told to keep her alive, do you think I’d have that living as my own kin? No, I’ll get rid of it one way or another.”

  Thaddeus swallowed the sick anger in his throat. Oh, how he loathed this man. When the moment came . . .

  “I saw you,” Thaddeus said, his words echoing off the tunnel walls as they passed swiftly through them. “In London — or should I say, under London. You might think it’s a secret, but I know about Abernathy and what he tried — and failed — to do. It’s what you need the Comtesse’s inheritance for, isn’t it? To buy his war machines. You’re trying to make them work for yourself. You’ll fail, Comte. Just as he did.”

  “Abernathy?” the Comte repeated with disdain. “Abernathy was nothing but a fool, a stuffed shirt who thought he could defy the cause and follow his own agenda. His achievements were nothing — a storm in a teacup, as you English say.”

  Thaddeus frowned. “The cause? What cause? What do you mean?”

  The Comte laughed, the sound unpleasant against the stony backdrop of the passageway. “Ahh. So, you do not know everything after all. Of course you do not. A child like you cannot possibly understand any of what you stumbled upon in London — how big it is, how important. How laughable it is that you, a mere London street boy, could dare to think you understand anything.”

  {Chapter 41}

  AMÉLIE

  Claudette, Rémy, J, and Dita watched the pandemonium below through the airship’s windows. The townsfolk from the two lower tiers were trying to flee the city as the castle burned above them. Clods of flaming brick and mortar were scudding down the mountainside, threatening to set their homes alight. All they could do was run.

  “I have to get to Amélie,” Claudette whispered tearfully, watching the continuing destruction below. “I have to at least try.”

  Rémy blinked dry eyes, trying to focus on what could be done instead of what couldn’t. Thaddeus was gone, she told herself, but Amélie could still be alive.

  “We have to go down again, J,” she said quietly.

  “What?” J asked, aghast. “Rémy, I can’t!!”

  “You don’t have to go near the flames,” she said, tiredly. “Take us down to the middle section of the city. You don’t even have to land — just get low enough for us to use the rope. We have to do this, J. We have to. D’accord?”

  J looked at Rémy, his young face grim in the shadows cast by the Professor’s instruments. For a second it seemed as if he would argue. Then he changed his mind and, with a brusque nod, began to bank the ship. None of the soldiers on the ground took any notice — they were too intent on fighting the fires that were destroying the Comte’s fortress.

  Rémy peered out the window as they sank lower. Already, two or three of the tall townhouses on this level were smoldering. Soon the flames would take hold in earnest.

  “This is close enough,” she said, as the airship floated level with one of the houses. She looked at Claudette. “Ready?”

  Her friend nodded, her face still streaked with tears. Rémy couldn’t remember seeing Claudette cry before.

  “Okay, then,” she sa
id, and lowered the hatch. “Let’s go.”

  The air outside was thick with heat, the stench of burning, and the screams of the desperate townsfolk. The dungeons were not hard to find. As Claudette had said, they were carved straight out of the rock and thus stood behind the last of the once-proud townhouses now cowering in the face of the fire. Two huge, solid iron gates proclaimed the entrance. There were sentry boxes on either side, but they had been abandoned by their soldiers. The gates, though, were locked fast. Claudette shook them, but they would not budge.

  “We will have to climb,” Rémy told her. She pointed to the top, where there was a small gap between the gate and its rock housing.

  “I don’t know if I can,” Claudette muttered, her face pale in the soot-smogged air.

  “You can,” Rémy told her. “You must.”

  The gates were as simple as a ladder for Rémy. She was up and over the top in less than twenty seconds, but Claudette took longer. The trapeze artist paused to help her friend, easing her through the gap, untangling her long hair when it became caught. By the time they had made it to the ground on the other side, one of the houses they had passed on their way in was fully aflame. The sick light of its destruction cast a patterned shadow through the iron gates, turning the ground to lace.

  Inside, sound echoed like unsettled ghosts. Screams and shouts thrown up from outside ricocheted around the enclosed space. There were torches burning on the walls, which seemed almost sedate in view of the inferno raging above them. They lit the way, but that didn’t help much. A dozen caves led into the rock from the entrance.

  “Which way?” Claudette asked, her voice nearing a sob. “I don’t know which way! Amélie!” she shouted, “Amélie!”

  The sound of hurrying footsteps clattered toward them from the passage on their left. A flustered soldier, wild-eyed and sweating, appeared. He hesitated when he saw them, as if wondering whether to go for his weapon. Then another of the castle’s towers crumbled, a distant whump overhead that shivered the mountain. Fragments of the cave roof rained down on them all in a flurry of choking dust. The soldier changed his mind about stopping them and went to charge past them instead.

  “Not so fast,” said Claudette. Together, she and Rémy grabbed at him, hauling him up against the wall.

  “Hey,” the soldier cried, puffing and sweating even more now. “I weren’t going to stop you. Let me go!”

  “Tell us where Amélie Anjou is,” Claudette growled, thrusting her face close to his cringing eyes.

  “Eh? Who?”

  “The little girl!” Rémy shouted, “The little girl you monsters locked up in this unholy place! Where is she, or I’ll —”

  “Oh,” interrupted the soldier, with a shrill laugh. “Her! She’s down there.” He pointed to the farthest cave mouth. Unlike the others, it was dark, with no torches burning to alleviate the gloom.

  Claudette and Rémy looked at each other. As one they let him go, the soldier almost stumbling to his knees as they moved away. Rémy grabbed the torch above them from its sconce.

  “You don’t want to go down there,” the soldier called, his voice fading behind them as they ran deeper into the passage. “No one who goes down there ever comes out. Not even us guards. It’s the Comte’s orders!”

  Rémy and Claudette took no notice.

  {Chapter 42}

  A TERRIBLE REVELATION

  Thaddeus’s head was spinning. What was the Comte talking about? How could anything be bigger than what he and Rémy had battled in Abernathy’s lair?

  “If Abernathy was such a failure, why did you want his machines?” he asked as they turned down another stone corridor.

  “So that some other poor, deluded idiot like him doesn’t try to use them. That would only risk more failure. I told them,” the Comte went on. “I warned them not to let Abernathy take the key, but they wanted someone in position in England. Water and air, that was what was needed on an island. And I must confess, Abernathy’s engineer had a certain genius, indeed. That airship of yours, for example; I look forward to adding that to my army.”

  “A-army?” Thaddeus stuttered, stopping. The policeman had the sudden sense that he was standing at the edge of an abyss. “Key? What —”

  The Comte shoved him forward roughly. He stumbled, steadying himself against the stone wall. The policeman coughed, his lungs stinging. There was now an acrid tang in the air, stronger than the stench of burning rubble they had left behind. It smelled like rotting eggs. He almost gagged as another wave of the noxious fumes rolled down the passageway toward them. Thaddeus heard a tearing sound and saw that the Comte was ripping off the front of his shirt, using the strip of fabric to cover his mouth and nose.

  Thaddeus stared at de Cantal’s bare chest. Over the honed muscle was an ornate tattoo of a short, curved sword — a cutlass. The hilt was shown with a cupped guard that crossed directly over the Comte’s nipple, which had been pierced with a pale blue, faceted stone.

  “Aha,” said the nobleman, with an amused nod at Thaddeus’s shocked expression. “Indeed, I imagine this is different from anything you have ever seen before, yes?”

  “A — a sapphire?” Thaddeus asked, his voice hoarse with fumes.

  “Well done,” said the Comte, pushing Thaddeus in front of him again. “Now move!”

  Thaddeus coughed again, staggering forward. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe. He held one hand up against his nose, trying to filter out some of the stench. Ahead of them, a bright glow lit the sides of the rocky walls. There were sounds, too, pounding loudly out of the semi-dark.

  “Is that sulphur?” he asked of the gas, his eyes watering so much that he could hardly see.

  “Again, you impress me, Englishman,” the Comte said as they came to another corner.

  He forced Thaddeus forward faster as the policeman coughed and spluttered. Thaddeus stumbled around a corner and found that the passageway ended on a lip of stone that jutted out over an open space. Half-blind, he almost walked straight over the drop, catching himself just in time. His heart pounding, Thaddeus threw himself back against the wall and then slid down it, his legs buckling beneath him as the fumes proved too powerful for his lungs. He could hear the Comte coughing too, now, the fumes defeating his makeshift mask. Thaddeus shut his eyes and rested his head on his knees, gasping in vain for air. He was surrounded by noise of all description — banging, hissing, creaking, whining, whistling — a conglomeration of sound that was too great to separate. Then there came another sound, much closer — the tinkling of glass as something smashed it.

  Something tapped him on the shoulder. He struggled to lift his head and saw the Comte holding something out to him. Thaddeus blinked at it blearily. It looked like some kind of mask with a leather front beset with two circular glass panels to see out of and a metal disk peppered with tiny holes covering the nose and mouth. There was a pipe leading from it, connected to a small cylinder that the Comte held in his other hand.

  “Put it on,” the Comte ordered. He passed Thaddeus the contraption and then pulled an identical mask over his own head.

  Thaddeus did as he was told — anything would be better than breathing more sulphur. He pulled the leather straps on around his ears so that the visor fitted into place over his face. It was tight, and his fingers fumbled around the edge of the mask, touching a cog he found there. Turning it, he heard a faint hiss, and cool air brushed against his skin. It was immediately easier to breathe, and Thaddeus gratefully sucked in a lungful of oxygen. He struggled to his feet, clutching the canister. His vision was clouded despite the viewing glasses. The Comte moved to stand beside him, still holding on to his sword. Over the man’s shoulder, he could see what had caused the sound of smashing glass — a cabinet, screwed into the wall. The Comte must have punched through its doors in his hurry to retrieve the masks.

  “You see, boy?” shouted the nobleman, lifting his a
rm and swinging it out in an arc over the drop beneath them. “You see how foolish your friends have been to cross me?”

  Thaddeus looked. He saw, in the base of the cavern in which they stood, a great hole cut into the rock of the mountain itself. In it bubbled molten fire, a furnace so hot that it could never be quenched.

  “It’s a — a volcano,” Thaddeus managed, staring at the sight below with horrified eyes.

  “Many mountains have the potential to be a volcano,” the Comte said, his voice muffled but the glint of insane pride in his eyes visible even through his mask. “It just depends how deep you drill into its belly. Get a move on, would you? These masks are so tedious.”

  {Chapter 43}

  DARKNESS

  “Amélie!” Claudette shouted, her voice echoing along the dank stone corridor and dying in its depths. “Amélie!”

  There was no sound, no indication at all that there was anything alive in the tunnel. Rémy hated to think of Claudette’s little girl being kept in such a place. Surely not even a man as cruel as the Comte de Cantal would do such a thing to a child?

  It was impossible to hurry — there was no light to see by, only a dim, gray glow. No, it was not even a glow — it was merely a sign that somewhere far ahead, the darkness was not as deep as here. Rémy and Claudette edged their way along, their hands against the uneven walls, their feet striking loose pebbles and kicking up choking plumes of dust. At least, Rémy thought, everything here seemed dry. She didn’t like being underground again, but it would have been far worse if it had been dank as the tunnels of Abernathy’s lair had been. Here, at least, there seemed no chance of a flood — no sign of any water at all.

  “Amélie!” Claudette shouted again, making Rémy jump. “Please answer, baby. We can’t find you. Please!”

  Rémy’s heart went out to her friend. She had never given up hope that one day Amélie would speak to her — that one day, she would be able to talk to her little girl. Amélie’s silence was perplexing and at times, frustrating. Here, it could also be the difference between her life and death.