by Anna Butler
“Thank you. Yes.” My own watch wasn’t nearly so grand, but it still kept time admirably. “I’d prefer not to land in the dark on an unlit aerostrip. I’m grateful for the loan of the autocar.”
“It is our pleasure to be of assistance.” The Pasha rose, and we shook hands again. He walked with us to the courtyard, where our transport waited, an attention I took as a compliment. “Ah, I have one other piece of information to convey to you. The Gallowglass got word to us from Londinium, via closed diplomatic channels, to alert us to the sad news that the health of the Queen-Empress is giving cause for serious concern. I do not have details, but as soon as we have definite information, I will get word to Professor Winter. If Her Majesty’s health fails, he will doubtless be recalled.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to think about the possibility of Victoria’s death. The Queen (God bless her) had ascended to the throne when my grandfather had been a lad. She’d always been there at the head of the Imperium—indomitable, remote, the epitome of the age. She was the Imperium. But then, the Imperium had survived several changes of royal house from the Tudors onward. It would survive this.
It appeared the Pasha shared my confidence. “It will be the end of an era, but I suspect the Imperium will continue to thrive.”
“Thank heavens.” I grinned at him. “We may not be greatly loved by the other nations of the world, but political stability counts for something, I suppose.”
The Pasha’s answering smile was rather sly. “And all the Houses will continue to thrive with it.”
Alas, every rose has its thorn.
BANGER HAD the hangar doors flung wide when Todd and I arrived back to the aerodrome, and three steam carts had been attached to the anchor points at the front of the Brunel, ready to pull it out onto the strip. I went through the preflight checks posthaste—running flat-out from one item to the next and gobbling down a sandwich in lieu of a proper luncheon, in between clamping the two-seater into its tiny hold above the main engine exhaust chamber—and then checked and rechecked everything from the rotator paddles to the control cable for the rudder arrays.
We took off in the early afternoon, and I pushed the Brunel as hard as I dared all the way south. The skies were clear and the weather fair. Even Boreas was working in my favor by blowing a sharp, strong tailwind that helped us along our course, due south to Asyut. The brown-yellows of the desert bowled along briskly beneath us, the narrow dark green ribbon of the Nile to our right, where the sun, slowly curving toward the west, sent our shadow glissading over the dry brown lands as if over sheer ice. The shadows were crisp and clear, the twin paddles turning visibly and the two fixed sail rudders sharp as sharks’ fins. Even the shadows of steam and vapor chuffing out of the three main chimneys were unmistakable. We slid through the sky, and our dark alter ego slid across the land beneath us.
At Asyut I crossed the river and turned our course to the southeast, running broadly parallel to the Nile. Now our shadow skated over the fringe of the Western Desert, slithering over the mounds covering the necropolises and palaces of the oldest of Aegypt’s pharaohs. The Nile had retreated a little more to the east, and we flew between it and the same wide canal that Seti had once used to visit his temple and oversee the workers laboring to drag its immense stones into position. In its northern reaches, it was much choked with reeds and silt until a point only a couple of miles north of Abydos when it cleared into open water.
We arrived back at Abydos just before four, an hour before sunset. I swung the Brunel around in a circle, passing over the temple, and brought us onto a course to land into the wind. Luckily the little aerostrip ran north-south, allowing me to use the prevailing north wind to slow us. I hit the internal Marconi communications.
“That’s the dig coming up, where all the activity is, on our left as we turn.”
Normally the workmen would be strung out in long lines. The diggers at the coal face, as it were, carefully spaded loose sand into broad-necked baskets, ready to be lifted away by the teams behind them. Much of the sand had compacted and hardened into mud baked hard as rock—Nile water from countless inundations, Ned had said, because the Osireion was below the water table and prone to flooding—and the workers used pickaxes with a delicacy a surgeon might envy. Causton, an architect by trade, followed along behind the diggers, starting the work of restoration and rebuilding. It was slow work, but gradually the passageway was being cleared, its flat-stoned roof shored up with pit props, and its carved, decorated walls seen by human eyes for the first time in centuries.
But instead of the lines of men passing the baskets hand to hand to the new spoil heaps a hundred yards from the tunnel mouth, the tiny figures boiled and knotted at the tunnel entrance, like ants at the nest. As I banked the Brunel around the turn, we could see their faces turned upward, a mass of pale ovals, and their hands pointing. A figure broke free of the melee and ran for the landing strip to the west of the temple.
Todd, sitting in Hugh’s usual seat, gave me a bewildered look. “What’s going on, do you think?”
“Maybe they’ve found something. I don’t know. Keep quiet a minute while I take her in….”
I rechecked our airspeed and throttled back the engines. The roar in the aeroship’s belly muted as we descended, the paddles angled to bring her down vertically. She landed lightly on the compressed sand covering the desert marl beneath. A moment to be certain the strip beneath us was hard and stable, and I closed down the engines altogether. On either side, the blurred shapes of the paddles came back into focus as they slowed to a stop, and the two rudder sails drooped and retracted. The roar of the engines whispered into silence.
Hugh, breathing hard, was waiting when I lowered the aerosteps. “Thank God!”
“What’s happened?” I grasped his hand hard. “Hugh? What?”
He sucked in an enormous breath, then got out the words in short bursts. “Props… dunno how… came down… tunnel’s down… just happened….”
For a lifetime I stood while he clutched my hand and fought to get his jagged, ragged breathing under control. The entire world rushed at me, dark and primal, sinking into my chest to press against me, smothering thought and breath together. Something in my chest hammered hard against the wall of ribs holding it into place, battering and fluttering, a prisoner beating his fists on the walls of his prison until they were red and raw, desperate to get out.
My mouth was drier than the high desert. I swallowed, more than once, to get my voice working. “Ned.”
Hugh’s gaze slid away from mine. “Yes.”
Ned. Oh, Ned.
Chapter 23
NED, SAM, and Lansbach had been a hundred feet inside the tunnel when three of the props had snapped between them and the tunnel mouth.
Osman Eldegheidy had been closest. “There were flashes. A little bang. Then… pouf!” He threw up his good hand to mimic the sudden rush of air and sand and rock. He cradled his left arm against his chest, the hand dangling oddly from the wrist. He and his brother Ibrahim, who stood close by, were red with dust and sand. He used the edge of his half-unwound turban to dab at his watering eyes, still reddened thirty minutes after the disaster. Mr. Bakhoum stood beside him translating, stoic and dignified, despite being dirty and disheveled.
We were as far into the tunnel as we could get. A prop leaned drunkenly behind us, Causton working another in beside it. In front of us, the roof stones had crashed down into a wall of tumbled stone, blocking the tunnel. Sand dribbled around the edges.
They had heard nothing from the trapped three since.
Mr. Bakhoum shook his head when I asked, his hands bleeding. “Nothing. There must be thirty feet or more of tunnel. There is no knowing how much rock came down.”
“Sam’s Marconi?”
It was Hugh who answered. “Nothing, Captain. No answer.”
Nausea roiled and boiled like lava. I choked it down, gulping in air to cool my stomach, wiping my mouth.
Mr. Bakhoum went back to what he’d be
en doing when we’d arrived. He clambered back up onto a wooden sawhorse used by the carpenter in the manufacture of roof trusses and props. He carefully edged out stones at the top of the fall, at the roofline of the tunnel, and slid in a long thin rod, using it as a probe to gauge how much of the tunnel had come down. At the very least, we needed to open up a way to get air into the constricted space behind the rockfall.
If there was a constricted space.
No. Don’t think about that.
“We’ll have to go slow.” Causton stepped back from the new prop. “The tunnel is carved into the marl that makes up the desert floor. It’s not the densest of rocks, but we’re more than twenty-five feet down at this point. That’s a lot of rock above our heads, and I don’t want to make things worse than they are already. I’m going to have to get a helluva lot more props and bracers in here.”
“It’s going to take hours.”
Causton wouldn’t meet my gaze any more than Hugh. “It will take time, if we’re to get them out without bringing the rest down around their ears. And ours. Slow and steady, Rafe.”
I let Causton hurry out to find what he needed to start bracing up the roof and allow us to start removing rockfall. My hands itched to get in there and throw the rockfall aside to reach Ned. I closed them around one rough stone, feeling its weight and density, the sharp edges of new breaks, the sheer adamantine mass keeping me from Ned. The prisoner inside wailed and beat his fists against my chest wall until it hurt to breathe.
“Where’s Harry?” I asked.
“Frank hustled him straight up to the house, out of the way. Mr. Archambault went with them. He’s too old for this sort of thing.” Hugh hesitated, then patted my arm. “It’ll be all right, sir. I’m sure of it.”
“Of course.” I let him pat me. It seemed to comfort him.
All I could do was wait for Causton to have enough props and supports ready for us to start working on removing the fall. I looked away from the rocks, still mapping out one of them with my hands, looking at Hugh or Osman or Mr. Bakhoum. But each time I looked for them, the hard, jagged wall of rocks was there instead, pulling my gaze toward it.
Time was slow and sticky, stretching and contracting, muffling the voices around me, blurring the edges of sight. I tilted my head to look more closely at the rock face. There. Just there on the edge of a stone, a gleam of blue. Something caught there, thousands of years ago. Lapis lazuli, maybe? Or faience? A bit of an amulet perhaps, lost by one of Seti’s workmen. Or a piece of decorated stone from the passage roof. Ned would know. I’d have to remember to ask him.
“Are you cold?” Hugh asked.
What?
“No,” I said, slowly. “I’m not cold.”
“You’re shivering.” Hugh closed one hand over my shoulder.
It was an amulet, once trapped in the compacted mud that had been laid down above the tunnel roof by countless inundations of the Nile, now loosened from its ancient prison by the rockfall. The compacted mud was hard as stone, but I managed to prize the amulet loose with my nail. For a moment I worked on cleaning it, scraping away the trace of smothering mud.
“Captain, sir…. Rafe!”
“I’m not cold. It’s all right, Hugh.”
I turned the amulet to the light. I had to swallow a harsh laugh. I might have guessed. I might have bloody guessed.
A scarab.
I was fated to be haunted by the damned things. This was a small faience scarab, half an inch long, the hieroglyphs on its underside as sharp and clear as when they were carved. I put it into my trouser pocket.
Baumann appeared at my shoulder, offering me a mouthful of schnapps from a silver hip flask, his eyes red and voice gruff. “To help with the shock, Rafe.”
The schnapps made me cough, the heat searing through me. “Osman needs to have that hand seen to. I think his wrist is broken.”
“We’ve sent him off,” Todd said from behind me somewhere. “Banger’s well trained in field medicine, and he’s taking care of the wounded. There are a few others with cuts and bruises. We’re organizing everyone into work crews to start getting this stuff out and shore up the roof as we go.”
“It must be done with great care.” The voice came from behind us, piercing through the fog in the slash of a knife blade.
Fouquet.
Laurent bloody Fouquet.
He and his companions were picking their way into the tunnel. Harper and Symington were there too, both of them looking grave. But all I could see was Fouquet, and even though the Pasha had shot holes in the budding thought that the Frenchman was behind everything, had been the one who tried to get me killed, I was certain I could pin one offense on him. I didn’t care about the flimsy grounds for my suspicion. And if it were one, why not all?
One instant I was staring at the rockfall that may have taken Ned from me, and the next I was slamming Fouquet up against the tunnel wall, my left forearm against his throat, my right hand balled ready. “You! Did you do this, you bastard?”
A confused noise echoed in the tunnel, cries of surprise and shock.
“Captain!” Hugh leapt at me, grabbing my fist as I reared it back for the blow that would punch the living daylights out of the bastard.
At the same moment, Todd caught me around the chest and pulled me bodily backward. Fouquet choked and ducked away, gaping at me, his mouth imitating a fish gulping air, jaw dropping. Even in the odd lighting in the tunnel, his face darkened as he flushed.
“You sent that bloody letter! Don’t deny it!” I tried to pull away, but Todd grunted, and I was the one slammed up against the wall, his body blocking me hard.
Fouquet put his hand to his mouth and wiped it. He looked… regretful. Sorry. His mouth turned down, and the red flush settled into hectic patches on his cheeks. “Yes, I sent the letter to Maspero….” He stopped, shook his head. “We will talk about this later, Captain. But the letter is all. I have not done anything else to harm Winter. Je le jure! You have my word.”
“We need his help, Rafe,” Causton said, tone urgent. “He’s one of the best excavators around. Let it go for now.”
Fouquet and I locked gazes. His slid away first. I gave Causton a jerky nod.
Todd let me go. “If it was him, I’ll hold him for you later.”
It had been foolish for me to give way like that. What mattered was getting through the pile of rock and debris and getting Ned and the others out. Nothing else. And if bloody Fouquet had skills we could use, then I’d hold off until we had Ned safe, and then Fouquet would feel my bunch of fives, right on that clever mouth of his.
I’d kill the bastard with my bare hands.
FOUQUET AND Causton captained our efforts, with Mr. Bakhoum in close consultation. Causton had rigged up lights. The village carpenter hewed out a constant supply of props and flat planks; the rest of the men formed lines through the tunnel to the open air to transport out the stones as we moved them. The space was confined but allowed us to work three abreast at the rock face, using crowbars and chisels to prize the rocks free from the roofline down. Fouquet and Causton stood at each side on small tables to reach the roof, sliding in planks, while Symington and Hugh worked in props to hold up the roof. As soon as each prop and brace was in position, we could attack the rocks below it, still working carefully and slowly, levering it out rock by rock.
We paused often, hands on the rock shard we were working on, checking there was no tremble or vibration that signaled that removing it would bring down the roof on our heads. Often, easing out one larger rock brought down a shower of smaller stones and a cloud of dust, and every man there froze and stared, waiting quite literally for the dust to settle before moving on.
As soon as a rock was clear, the man behind the front workers lifted it away. The larger ones were transferred to wheelbarrows and trundled quickly to the tunnel mouth and a new spoil heap started to one side. The smaller ones were tossed or spaded into baskets and handed from man to man.
Time rolled on in a very smal
l circle, a wheel marked in cold, dark letters saying, Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t… just don’t. Raise the pick and bring it down on the ragged edge of rock, worm it into place, and tug it toward yourself. Jump back before it lands on your feet. Breathe when it’s clear the rest of the fall is stable. Let the men in with their spades to lift away the loose rubble. Go back in for the next rock. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Raise the pick….
The wheel rolled on. Again and again. As soon as one vertical layer, one stone thick, was removed, Causton and Fouquet moved to put in the bracers and props for the next. And so we went wearily on, trapped on Time’s treadmill in a new circle of Dante’s Inferno. Unbearably hot, the air thick with red dust and heavy on the lungs, lit with stark aether light, this circle was pain and weariness and endless labor. It was aching arms, shoulders, and backs as we pulled the rocks aside, passed them from man to man, bent again and again to scoop up the rockfall and reach our comrades. Muscles tightened sharply with each new effort. Demons or damned? I don’t know. But we were of Hell: faces and arms streaked with dust and dirt, eyes reddened, hair on end, dancing in and out at the rock face, a band of Lucifer’s angels raising picks and crowbars rather than pitchforks and spears, casting distorted shadows on the tunnel walls that slid over the ancient carvings to smother them.
The close heat was crushing. Causton had more than doubled the usual number of aether lamps, bathing the tumbled wall of rock in a bright white light, and the backwash of heat from the lamps made the working conditions steamier than a Turkish bathhouse. Within ten minutes, we had all shed jackets and shirts, and within thirty we were down to underclothes. Our only saving grace was the cool water brought to us by the older boys, who took it upon themselves to be our water carriers, given they were too young to haul stones and rock. Bless them, they ran constantly to and fro to keep us supplied.