The Emperor of Mars

by Patrick Samphire

  “I know,” Putty said brightly as we hurried in the front door. “Why don’t I go to bed! I am tired, and I’m quite young to be up this late.” She yawned theatrically.

  “Oh, no,” I said, taking her shoulder. “You’re not escaping.” This might be my fault, but I saw no reason to face Mama and Miss Wilkins on my own.

  Mama’s face was like stone. “What,” she demanded, “is the meaning of this?”

  I put on my most innocent expression. “Did no one tell you, Mama?” I said, trying to sound surprised.

  Mama drew herself up. “Tell us what, pray?”

  “That Putty was feeling sick so I decided to take her home.”

  “But—” Putty started. I kicked her shin. “Ouch! You kicked me! Mama, Edward kicked me!”

  “You should have come to me.” Miss Wilkins’s voice was colder than a glacier. “It would have been proper for me to have taken Parthenia home in the carriage.”

  I could have argued. I could have told them the truth, that Lady Harleston had kidnapped us and almost tortured Putty. But Mama would never believe us. Even I found it hard to believe.

  “Forgive us, Mama,” I said. “I didn’t want to interrupt the ball. I knew how important it was to you.”

  Mama’s eyes narrowed, but I kept my face downcast and my shoulders slumped. Eventually, she nodded imperiously, and we slunk away.

  Exhausted from the long day, I fell into bed without even bothering to get undressed.

  Which turned out to be a good thing, because it seemed like only a few minutes later that I awoke and knew there was someone in my room.

  * * *

  I rolled over, letting my hand drop over the far side of the bed. It closed around the cudgel clipped to the frame. The weapon had a lead core and was heavy enough to fell a charging fire-bull. I pulled it free and came up into a crouch.

  “Are you really going to hit me with that?”

  Whose voice was that? I recognized it, but … I snatched up my auto-flint and lit a candle.

  The thief was sitting in a chair a couple of feet from my bed.

  “Do you know you snore?” she said.

  I grabbed my sheet and pulled it over me, then felt ridiculous because I was still fully dressed.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How did you even find me?”

  The window was ajar, and the faint sounds of the Lunae Planum night drifted through: strange shrieks of hunting dart-bats, the low, distant singing of the native Martian boat crews, and the barking howl of a sand otter. Maybe that was what had woken me. The thief hadn’t made any noise, even though she’d crossed my cluttered floor and settled in my old chair. I grimaced as I caught sight of the piles of clothes heaped on the floor. The automatic servants had obviously gotten lost in the Flame House again and not tidied. Now I wished I’d taken a few minutes to do it myself.

  “You told me where you live,” she said. “And you have something of mine. You must do.”

  “Something of yours?”

  She looked away. “Yeah.”

  “Something you stole, you mean.”

  She looked back at me with those incredibly dark eyes, and I felt my mouth turn dry. “You have it, though, don’t you? It wasn’t where I must have dropped it. I went back to check.”

  I worked my mouth to bring moisture to my lips. How did she manage to make me feel like this? It had been the same last night. One look and I lost all my sense.

  “I was going to look for you,” I said. “To give it back, I mean.” Only I’d had no idea how to find her.

  She cocked her head to one side. “Really? Why? I wouldn’t have given it back to you.”

  I squirmed awkwardly. “It just … seemed like the right thing to do.”

  She frowned at me. “I don’t understand you. You’re different. Strange.” She shrugged. “So where is it? I tried searching your house while you were asleep, but it is kind of a maze. Did you know one of your rooms is missing a floor?”

  I looked at her curiously. Lady Harleston had said the key cylinder was just a toy, but the thief had gone to a lot of trouble to get it back. She’d even risked waiting for me to wake up when I could have turned her over to the militia.

  “What’s so important about this? I mean, it’s just an old key, right? What good is it to you?”

  She passed a hand over her face, and for a moment she looked exhausted. “I can’t tell you. Really. I can’t. I don’t even know.”

  “Someone paid you to steal it?”

  She shook her head. “Look, do you have it? Do you want me to pay you for it?” She looked around my room. “Although I don’t suppose I could pay you enough. You’ve got everything. You could fit a whole family in this room and still have spare space.”

  “I can’t imagine my mother being happy with that.”

  She laughed, then her hand flew to her mouth and she looked around guiltily.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “No one will hear.” Not since I’d stuffed a pair of socks in the speaking tube Putty had fixed between our bedrooms.

  “It must be strange,” the thief said. “Living with your family, I mean.”

  “You don’t?”

  She shook her head. “It was just me and my brother. We had a room in the orphanage, but when he got too old, they threw him out. He had to leave Lunae City to find a job. They wouldn’t let me go with him, so then it was just me.” She looked awkwardly away. “Until a few months ago, anyway. Then our dad turned up, but you know, it’s still just me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter. We had each other. You have to trust your brother, don’t you? Or your sisters, I suppose, for you. No matter what. Anyway, we did a lot better than most people. I’m not complaining.”

  “I guess.” I swung myself out of bed and padded across the room.

  When Sir William Flanders had designed the Flame House, along with all the other bad decisions he’d made, he’d forgotten to fit furniture until it was almost too late. He hadn’t left any space for a wardrobe in this room. He had, however, accidentally left an enormous empty space under the floor in the corner of my room. So my wardrobe was actually beneath my washstand. I hinged the washstand into a gap in the wall, then tugged on a pulley system to raise the wardrobe out of the floor.

  The key cylinder was no use to me, and after the way she’d acted, I wasn’t going to give it back to Lady Harleston. If the thief needed it, then as far as I was concerned, she should have it.

  I had buried the key cylinder beneath a pile of my clothes at the foot of the wardrobe so that no one would see it even if they glanced in. I dropped to my knees and pulled the clothes away.

  The key wasn’t there. I burrowed through the clothes, throwing them aside.

  Nothing. Damnation. What had happened to it?

  I turned back to the thief. She was gazing at me with a desperate, unguarded expression. My throat tightened. It actually hurt when I tried to speak.

  “I … I think it’s been stolen.”

  Her eyes widened as though I’d slapped her. “Are you trying to be funny? Is this just a game to you?”

  “No,” I protested, jumping up. “I left it here. Right before I went to bed. It’s gone.”

  The thief’s face whitened. “It can’t be.” Her hands clenched into fists. “I have to have it. I have to.”

  I stared helplessly at her. “Couldn’t you … I don’t know … pay back the person who paid you to steal it? I could help,” I hurried on. “With money, I mean, if you need it. If you can’t afford it.”

  She was already shaking her head.

  “You don’t understand. It’s not for a client. It’s for my father. He needs it.” She pushed her fists into her eyes. “He really needs it. I … I didn’t even know I had a father until a few months ago. I can’t let him down.” She shook her head. “You don’t know what it’s like not having parents.”

  I pushed the wardrobe back into the floor. It closed with a thunk tha
t sounded like my whole mood turning to stone and falling down between my feet.

  “I’ll find it,” I said. “I promise. I’ll get it for you.” Somehow.

  She took a deep breath and rubbed her hand across her face. “Thank you. You don’t have to. I know that. So thank you.”

  “Let’s meet again,” I said. “Tomorrow. If I’ve got it, I’ll bring it. Not here. How about outside the museum? At one o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  I was having trouble breathing, so I just nodded.

  On soft feet, she padded to my window and swung it open. She looked back at me.

  “I’m Mina,” she said.

  “Edward,” I croaked.

  “I know,” she said, and then she was gone.

  * * *

  The first thing I did the next morning—after having breakfast, anyway—was to go looking for the key cylinder, and I had a pretty good idea who might help me find it.

  Putty wasn’t in her room, and she wasn’t in the nursery. Eventually, I found her skulking under a cluster of mirror bushes near the wall where our small estate bordered the river.

  “If Miss Wilkins finds you’ve snuck out of the nursery again, she’ll use your skin for a new hat,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Putty said airily. “She went out on an errand. I have several alarms set up around the house in case she gets back, and a rope ladder up to my room. And this.”

  She pulled up a strange device. It looked like a spyglass that tapered to a narrow rubber tube, which in turn disappeared into the red Martian grass.

  “Er … good?” I said.

  Putty rolled her eyes. “You don’t recognize it, do you?”

  “Not personally.”

  She sighed, then passed it to me. “Take a look.”

  I put the device to my eye and squinted into it. It was like looking at a picture by candlelight through a dirty window. Except it wasn’t a picture, because it showed the gate to our estate, and the balloon-palm trees were swaying in the light breeze. Clouds drifted across the scene. When I moved the device about, the scene stayed fixed.

  “Is it a spyglass?” I said. “How does it stay fixed on the gate?” I lowered the device. “In fact, how does it even see the gate?” The house was between us and it.

  “Sometimes I wonder what you do with your time, Edward,” Putty said. “Papa and I have been working on this for the last three months.” She picked up the rubber tube. “This is an optical cable.” I must have looked blank—I did that a lot around Putty—because she went on, “You remember those threads of light in the dragon tomb and on Lady Harleston’s house? They’re made out of flexible glass that lets light travel along the inside. Well, Papa and I modified them so that the light wouldn’t come out the sides but would travel all the way down the cable.”

  I gave her a blank look. “What’s the point of that?”

  She stared at me. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re very exasperating. Think about it. When you look down this end, you see the light that’s come in the other end. You see what the other end is pointing at. We thought that it would be a good communication device. The person at one end writes a message on a piece of paper and holds it up to the lens. Then the person at this end looks in and can see the message. Only, the light seems to fade with distance, so it’s not much good after a couple of miles. We’re working on improving the glass.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” I said. “You and Papa spent three months inventing this incredible, magical communication system—”

  “It’s not magic, Edward. That would be ridiculous.”

  “And you set it up so that you could spy on our gate and see Miss Wilkins coming back. You know. Instead of doing something useful with it.”

  “Of course.”

  “And instead of spending your time in the nice, comfortable nursery with whatever books or inventions you fancy, you have to lurk in the bushes, peering at the gates through cloudy glass.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing. I’m not going to be beaten by her. This is war, you know.”

  I peered down the device again. The view was still fixed on the front gate. Putty was going to give herself eyestrain if she kept this up. It wasn’t even particularly well focused. But something looked off. Something looked different. I screwed up my eyes, trying to get a better look.

  Leaning against a tree, hidden by the shade beneath a balloon-palm on the far side of the road, was a man.

  He wasn’t doing anything much. Just leaning casually against the tree. But he was clearly watching the estate, and anyone who entered or left would have to do so right in front of him. I squinted harder. Although the view was murky, I could make out the wide hat and the dark brown skin.

  “That’s the man from the museum!” I said. My heart was suddenly pounding like I’d run a mile. “How long has he been there?”

  “Since I got up,” Putty said. “He’s not doing anything. He’s just watching.”

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” I demanded. “I might have walked out there without realizing.”

  He must have followed us back from the museum. If he’d been involved in Rothan Gal’s disappearance, maybe he thought we were onto him. I didn’t like that he knew where we lived.

  Putty looked at me in astonishment. “I didn’t think anyone used the front gate. I always climb over the wall.”

  “We could creep up on him,” I said. “Capture him. Ask him questions.”

  “He’d see you coming,” Putty said. “He’s in a pretty good position. He’s exactly where I would have stood. Anyway, he’s much bigger than you. He’d knock you silly. Most people do. I could probably capture him, but I’m busy defeating Miss Wilkins, and he’s not really doing anything much. We don’t even know that he’s got anything to do with Rothan Gal.”

  I shook my head. I’d worry about our watcher later. Putty was right. He wasn’t a problem just now.

  “Look,” I said. “That’s not what I want you for.”

  She perked up. “You wanted me for something? Are we off on an adventure? Are we sneaking into someone else’s house? I thought we did pretty well last night.”

  “We got caught. She was going to kill us.”

  Putty waved a hand. “I would have gotten us out. Anyway, it was only our first try.”

  I rubbed a hand across my face. “We’re not sneaking into anywhere. No. You see, I was up half the night wondering, and you know what I thought? I thought there was only one person it could possibly be.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Edward.”

  “My key cylinder was missing from my wardrobe,” I said, “and I couldn’t think of anyone who would be poking through my stuff while I was asleep except you. So hand it over.”

  Putty waved a hand. “Oh, that. It’s in my bedroom. I wanted to figure out how it worked. I knew if I left it with you, you’d just give it back to the thief before I had a chance, because you’re in love.”

  I turned red. “I am not! And her name’s Mina.”

  “Of course you’re not.” She peered into her device again. “Now you’d better get going. Your tutor’s on his way and he’s carrying lots of textbooks.”

  * * *

  We studied Latin verbs all morning.

  I’d never realized just how many of them there were. Hundreds and hundreds of them, like a swarm of dust moths all trying to eat their way into my brain and turn it to powder. Still, if I ever met an actual, live Roman, I would be able to conjugate verbs at him until he thought I was completely mad and left me alone. Which was more than could be said for Mr. Davidson, who seemed determined to stay around and plague me, no matter what.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock before my rumbling stomach and drooping head finally registered on Mr. Davidson’s consciousness.

  “Ten minutes,” he warned as I hurried for the door. “Then perhaps we can study some
Greek, if that would please you.”

  “Oh, that’s not what would please me right now,” I muttered, then headed for Putty’s room, taking the shortcut through the crawl room and along the hanging corridor that dangled on ropes above the ballroom.

  Putty’s bedroom was always a confusion of half-finished projects and dismantled devices. The automatic servants had been banned from it, to avoid unnecessary damage to their mechanisms, and Mama hadn’t dared enter any of Putty’s rooms for years. Even Miss Wilkins hadn’t made any difference to the chaos.

  Luckily, Putty hadn’t had time to start work on Mina’s key cylinder. It lay on her desk among a jumble of tools, hastily scribbled diagrams, and the dead body of a strange deep-river Martian fish.

  I shoved the key cylinder into my jacket pocket and hurried off to grab something to eat on the way back to my lessons.

  The fastest way to the kitchen took me into Putty’s closet, then down a pole between two walls. Gritting my teeth, I lowered myself through a tangle of squirt-spider webs, then pushed past a wormwood panel into the third-floor hallway, and straightened.

  Just along the hallway was the door to Papa’s study, and crouched in front of it was a man. He wasn’t knocking, and he certainly wasn’t just peeping through the keyhole. He was picking the lock.

  Bright light streamed into the hallway from the large window at the far end, making me squint, and the figure was dressed in a long coat and drooping hat, so I couldn’t make out who it was. The only thing I was sure was that it wasn’t Papa or any of my sisters.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  The figure jerked back, then spun and ran from me. I took off in pursuit.

  A servants’ staircase cut down from the far end of the hallway. The intruder snatched open the door and threw himself in. I was there in time to catch the door before it closed completely.

  The intruder was already leaping down the uneven stairs, taking them four at a time, risking his life with every leap. I raced in pursuit, one hand on the smooth banister.

  We were three floors up, and when the intruder reached the ground floor, he would have a direct route through the kitchen to the gardens. He was taller than me, and faster. If I didn’t catch him before he reached the gardens, he was going to get away.