The Jackal's House

by Anna Butler

  He cocked an arching blond eyebrow at me when we were calm enough to discuss matters in a less euphoric and more rational way, and I repeated my distrust of the Stravaigor’s motives. “It’s a sensible move, from his point of view. If he’s so bally keen to show us how friendly his House is to ours, then of course he’ll do everything possible to ensure you can go with me.”

  Ned could appear blind to everything except his precious mummies and pyramids, and while this odd innocence of his was endearing, it wasn’t safe for him to think the Stravaigor was anything other than Machiavellian.

  “Ned, we’re talking money here. Money, and the Stravaigor willingly parting with it.”

  He shrugged, which was an interesting maneuver when he was draped over me, held between my thighs, his lips against my throat. It rubbed his chest against mine in a most exciting manner. “He’s investing in his House’s future. I understand perfectly.”

  “Trying to put you under an obligation.”

  “Whether it will influence my father and his advisers is dubious, but I am obliged to him. I am so very glad you’re coming with me to Aegypt. I have so much to show you! Pyramids, tombs, cities…. It’ll be wonderful.”

  I glanced at the bed and the wreckage of bunched-up silk sheets. Ned’s cock lined up against mine had an insistent hardness, its length smooth. A little wriggle on my part, and lightning was zinging over my skin and sinking into my bones, filling me with heat. Ned’s breath hitched. Perhaps the lightning had struck him too.

  I reached for him to pull him closer still. “Never mind Aegypt. I’ll show you something wonderful right here.” Another wriggle to grind my hard cock against his. “I’ve got this obelisk you might care to handle….”

  NED AND I drove to Friary Park the next day. I needed to get in some practice flights, unfamiliar as I was with civilian craft. I’d asked what kind of aeroship he owned. I thought he’d said it was a Brunel, but he had his mouth full at the time, and his speech was slurred and indistinct. Not to mention that I was a touch distracted.

  I was pleased to see, when we reached Friary Park, that the House Gallowglass aeroship was indeed a Brunel—a Brunel Imperial Sky King. You couldn’t get better. Top of the line.

  Aeroships are as aerodynamically efficient as a bumblebee: the miracle of flight is that it happens at all. The Brunel is no exception. It’s the shape of a shoemaker’s last, with a concave prow below the flight cabin curving down to a pointed snout. Behind sits the main body of the aerocraft, holding a central passenger parlor with transparent aluminum sides, a glasshouse in the sky bracketed by the enormous articulated paddles that move her along, and behind that the baggage hold, which also does duty as a hangar for a small two-seater scout craft. The steerage is all from the stern, twin fixed-shape sails acting as rudders. The engines run the length of the Brunel’s belly, venting their aether-steam mix through a system of vaporia and pipes snaking around the main body and leading to the three fat chimneys ranged along the parlor roof. This was a turbocharged model, each side fitted with an extra venting emissarium in the form of a tall, thin chimney with tulip-shaped pots chuffing out fat, round little clouds of smoke and steam.

  She was beautiful.

  When the ground crew used a couple of steam carts to pull her out of her hangar onto the road to the runway, I may have squeaked. It was as much as I could do to stop the trembling in my arms and legs.

  For the next ten days, this glorious beast was mine. I’d be making the journey daily to take her out to get used to how she handled. Ned had arranged for one of the flight instructors to coach me through the first half-dozen flights. A small browned man with an eye patch and a missing left hand, Cooper Haines—member of Minor House Castellan—looked like a pirate. All he needed was a parrot.

  “Have fun, Rafe. I’ll collect you in a couple of hours.” Ned was somber, on his way to pay a condolence visit to Mrs. Ellis. He managed a wry smile. “Try not to crash. I believe Papa paid a considerable sum for the Brunel, and I’d never hear the end of it.”

  Such confidence! I jeered, sent him on his way, and followed Haines up the aerostairs near the nose. The spacious passenger parlor with its fitted galley was to my right. It would seat twenty in comfort, and on long flights the armchairs could be converted into very reasonable beds. The cockpit was to the left.

  Haines operated by the book. The ship would be my responsibility, and so too was its airworthiness and the safety of the passengers. After inspecting the maintenance and fuel logs, our next task was to walk through the entire ship. Before he let me anywhere near the pilot’s seat in the flight cabin, we checked everything from the ties holding the scout ship in position to the cabin door locks to stowing away the teapot in the galley.

  I’d like to say that it wasn’t too intimidating once I’d had the chance to look over the control board, but I’d be stretching the truth just a tad. It wasn’t that different to my aerofighter. Less acceleration and speed, of course, but the principles were the same. Still, I was nervous. She was such a big bird, and I was flying with less than perfect eyesight. My spectacles helped, of course, but still it was one more thing to worry about. When he was sure I was reasonably confident about the controls—or at least when I could talk a good game—Haines spoke to the flight room through the ship’s wireless telegraph and obtained formal approval for liftoff. He’d already said he’d handle communications with the Friary Park control room for the first few flights so I could focus on flying. By the end of the first week, I’d be doing it all.

  “We have a thirty-minute window before there’s a commercial flight.” Haines gestured with his remaining hand toward the front window and the view of the aerodrome. “Shall we?”

  My mouth was dry. All the moisture in me was in my hands. I had to take my hand away from the control yoke—the joystick—to wipe sweaty palms against my trouser leg.

  She moved slowly under her own power down the access road to the aerostrip itself. Once at the end of the strip, I halted her, keeping the engine revs high. Haines tapped the gauge showing engine power. “She’s much heavier and bigger than your old aerofighter. You’ll need to be heavier on the throttle, push her hard until the power level hits the gold line, then pull her up sharp but smooth. Ready?”

  Why did people always ask you that just before you did something massively unwise? Still, onward for Queen and country. I took a rather shaky but deep breath and started her down the runway, listening to Haines’s instructions. Throttle in hard, watch the speedometer, feet on the rudder bar to control her yaw and keep her straight, keep the paddles at the right angle to catch the headwind’s lift and keep the airflow silky and fluid, listen to the quiet roar of the aether/petroleum engine at the stern, feel the shuddering of the frame in every atom of my body… and now! Now. The gold line on the power level monitor gleamed and glinted, and I pulled back on the joystick…. Keep it smooth! Keep it smooth… and up she went, whispering into the sky with the gentle fluidity of thick cream sliding over plate glass.

  Beside me, Haines kept up an unflustered monologue of encouragement. “Ease her back a trifle, let the wind catch her… good, good. Feel the turbos kicking in? That will give you all the throttle power you need. Five hundred feet… level her out now. Throttle back… bring her around to port… excellent, Lancaster. Well done. Very smooth.”

  I glanced down as the edges of Londinium slid away under us and we headed northwest, out toward St. Albans. Before us were the rising Chiltern hills and the browning quilt patch of Buckinghamshire’s rich farmlands basking in the mild sun of a clear late-autumn day. Behind us and to the left squatted the great black bulk of Londinium, huddled under its usual pall of smokes and steams. The air there was so thick with vapor that the buildings were little more than a dark mass in the murky brume. But here, out over the fields, we were far enough outside the city for the air to be cleaner and clear.

  The sky curved above us, a bright blue overhead fading to something yellower at the horizon, streaked with thin wh
ite clouds. The sun was climbing up toward noon a little to our left and to our stern, sending our shadow sliding and slithering diagonally up the hillsides. Beneath us, the engines throbbed, the heart of the ship beating out a gentle, monotonous thrum of mechanical life. When I touched the controls, she responded with all the eager energy of a thoroughbred in a race. The earth beneath me rolled away—remote, beautiful, an exquisitely detailed toy landscape of field and wood and little villages made by some great mechanic.

  The green-brown of hills and fields blurred for a moment, and I had to blink, every limb light and every sense sharp and clear, riding out the surge of joy that had me glowing as if the sun had taken refuge under my ribs.

  The skies were mine again. Icarus was reborn, thrusting aloft on wings of gold.

  And just for a moment, I was a god, striding through the heavens like a Colossus.

  GETTING AN archaeological expedition together was rather like preparing for war. We went over strategies and tactics, pored over maps and schematics, arranged training and deployed the troops in battle formation. Perhaps there was slightly less chance of being shot at, but as Hugh and I were now involved with the Houses at the highest level, we didn’t take that for granted. Hugh packed our arsenal along with the new linen suits and riding breeches. He was a master at fitting everything in, and I could only laud his skill when I found my spare aether pistols packed neatly inside my second-best riding boots. He blushed at my compliments.

  A week before we left, I was introduced to the others going on this merry little trip. Ned held a planning meeting at the Britannic Imperium Museum, so at least I didn’t have to walk far to get to it.

  Ned had gathered together a team of experts whose skills encompassed archaeology, anthropology, architecture and surveying, philology, expertise in hieroglyphics and hieratic, art, and conservation. That sounds a lot, but really it wasn’t. Most of the team had more than one role, but they all shared the same passion.

  They were drawn from several countries. Thankfully, each of them spoke excellent, idiomatic English, albeit with a range of accents. Friedrich Lansbach and Willem Baumann were German archaeologists-cum-anthropologists, both a good twenty years my senior. Their task would be to oversee the work crews digging at the site and conserve the artifacts found there. The tall American in the group, probably about my age, was Thomas Causton, a specialist in historical architecture. He would do the work of mapping the buildings and oversee some basic restoration. He had a strong grip when we shook hands. Indeed, I had to check that all my fingers were still there before I greeted the next member of the team, Frenchman Raoul Archambault, the oldest of us and someone Ned had worked with from his earliest days in Aegypt. Archambault was apparently a world famous philologist and a foremost authority on hieroglyphics, although he looked like a priest, all white-haired asceticism and the faraway expression of one who contemplates miracles. Archambault was also the expedition’s artist.

  None of them were taking wives with them, the way that Mrs. Petrie apparently always accompanied her husband on his excavations; no Frau Professerin or Madame la Professeur was traveling with us. I couldn’t say I was surprised. It required a special kind of woman to take on a scholar, and there were, it appeared, few Hilda Petries in the world.

  Ned laughed when I made this observation later. “I remember Archambault admitting to a severe disappointment in the distant past that made him forswear matrimony with anyone but the lost object of his affections, but I can’t say that I’ve heard of romantic entanglements for any of the others. The students are very young and the professors too, well, academic.”

  He was not jesting. They looked too obviously like scholars to be the subjects of any maiden’s dream. And by that I mean they had thin necks supporting large heads with obvious big brains. In this illustrious company of my intellectual superiors, I felt rather like, as the Mikado has it, the industrious mechanic.

  Oh well. At least I would be able to make myself useful with a shovel.

  IN BETWEEN training flights, I did everything possible to get the coffeehouse into good shape. Alan and Hugh cleaned the storerooms and overhauled all the coffee roasting and brewing equipment, while I brought all the office paperwork up to date, paid the bills, and set up a regular order for coffee beans for the next few months. I had to estimate usage for the winter, but if more or less were needed, Alan and Mr. Pearse were more than capable of handling it. For Mr. Pearse’s retirement, it appeared, had palled. Unlimited leisure made him fret, and he’d wearied of promenading along Eastbourne’s commodious beaches, admiring the bathing belles, or wielding a pin to eat cockles and winkles out of a paper bag. He had not so much agreed to the suggestion that he come back to look after the coffeehouse in my absence, as leapt at it.

  Two days before our departure, the Gallowglass himself motored down to Eastbourne to collect him. Mr. Pearse’s greeting, along with the surprising embrace he offered on his arrival, was eager and enthusiastic. He looked very much better than he had in March; he was hale, hearty, and tanned. A consequence of the sea air, he told me, which was excessively bracing and the reason he was glad to get back to the smogs and smokes of his native city.

  “Self-preservation, my dear boy, before I begin to resemble every naval man I’ve ever met. They all have hides of tanned mahogany leather.” He laughed, though, and looked around with bright, intelligent eyes, approving of everything I’d done. “Oh, excellent, Rafe! Excellent. I knew you’d be the right man at the helm. You’ve done wonders here. It looks very good indeed.” His smile grew a little crooked. “And don’t worry. It will still be here when you come home next spring.”

  I blushed. I’d thought I had a better game face than that.

  Various old friends of his had come to greet him, and he was soon whisked away for a series of reunions. Ned was there, of course, and Will Somers from next door, Abrams the apothecary from across the street, and Sir Tane Stafford, otherwise known as the Scrivener. While Mr. Pearse might never use his title, let it not be forgotten he was the Jongleur. My little coffeehouse was bursting at the seams with the Imperium’s Great and Good. I debated about developing a forelock, all the better for tugging in the presence of my betters.

  Perhaps not. I was better off as their resident iconoclast.

  The Gallowglass beckoned me to one side. “You look well, Rafe. Recovered from the summer’s adventures?”

  “Very much so, sir. And you?”

  He lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Yes. On the whole. I am relieved you’re going with Ned, though. I can trust you to do everything possible to keep him safe.”

  I just nodded. He most certainly could.

  “Ned’s decided he will take Harry with him after all, so I’ll be sending along extra guards in any event. They will help.”

  Ned had already told me. Several months with Harry’s hard stare for company was a daunting prospect, and since Harry would not be parted from Molly, I’d also be transporting the dog. I had no choice but to put on a brave face at Harry’s inclusion, but I had a fondness for Molly. “That’s wise, I think. Sam won’t want the distraction.”

  “Frank Sutton will be Harry’s permanent guard,” the Gallowglass said. “You remember him?”

  I did indeed. Frank was the Gallowglass guard so expert with Nobel’s blasting powder, it was said he could blow a hen off the nest without ruffling her feathers. A translatable skill, I was sure, when it came to watching over young Harry.

  “It’s sad that I have to assign someone to guard a child, but that’s the way of things. The rest will provide general security to the expedition.” The Gallowglass continued with something of a non sequitur. “I have had some correspondence from the Stravaigor.”

  And was I surprised at that? Not hardly. “Oh.”

  “A very delicately phrased and subtle letter, as one might expect. He wrote to assure me of his support and his gratification that he was able to supply House Gallowglass with his own reliable and loyal pilot.”

&n
bsp; I spluttered. So sadly vulgar, to show one’s skittish excitability like that.

  The Gallowglass laughed quietly. “You have some trouble swallowing that, I see.”

  “It sticks in the craw, to be honest.”

  “Your House has an equivocal reputation, but I do understand his motives. He seeks to secure the future of Stravaigor, and that’s no more or less than I would expect from any House Princeps. I can respect that.”

  That was generous of him. I fidgeted with the coffee and cakes for a moment to give myself time to work out what to say. “I can’t deny that he has made it possible financially for me to go with Ned. I have a House debt, and if he hadn’t been flexible about repayments, I wouldn’t be able to leave the coffeehouse. I’m grateful for that. But he had no influence at all on my wanting to go, sir. I’m not his pilot, and I don’t go to Aegypt for House Stravaigor.”

  The way his mouth turned up when he smiled was pure Ned. “Indeed, I considered responding to express polite surprise that he laid claim to your loyalty. I rather thought that belonged to Ned.”

  I looked him in the eye. “Body and soul, sir, and everything in between.”

  “I know, and I’m glad of it.” He raised his coffee cup in a mock toast. “Bon voyage, Rafe. And safe landings.”

  Chapter 11

  WE LANDED at Cairo’s aerodrome just before lunch on Saturday 3 November.