The Emperor of Mars

by Patrick Samphire

  The ship’s enormous screws were still turning, driving the ship at an angle across the river. Up ahead, another rattle of shots and a bone-shuddering thump announced that the others had more serious things to worry about. Light flared behind the forward chimney, and a sea serpent shrieked. I didn’t know how much more battering the boat could take.

  The deck at the front of the boat was smashed and torn, as though it had been pummeled by falling rocks. Papa lay at the rear of the deck with Jane bent over him. At least he was moving. Putty, Mina, Olivia, and Mr. Davidson crowded behind the remains of the guardrail, watching the river. I hurried up and crouched with them, grabbing a flare.

  “We took out one of them,” I said.

  “Just leaving two then,” Olivia said grimly.

  “We lost the rudder.”

  “We guessed,” Mina said. She nodded toward the looming riverbank. “Unless Rackham’s steering is really bad.”

  Behind us, with a rush, the body of the unconscious sea serpent slipped off the ship into the water. The ship bounced up, released from the great serpent’s weight, and surged forward. The sudden motion threw us all to the deck.

  Then the engines cut out.

  Too late. The front of the ship plowed into a hidden sandbank beneath the water. The impact bowled us forward. Iron groaned and bent beneath us. The deck smashed into my back, tossing me up again. It was like being kicked by a fire-bull. I hit a stanchion jutting up from the deck and clung on. Mina thumped into me. I wrapped an arm around her.

  Water and wet sand rained down on us. The ship seemed to tremble. Slowly, the current caught the stern and swung it around. For a second, I thought we might pull free to be thrown helpless out into the river’s clutches again. Then the ship scraped over sand and settled. It tipped to the port side, threatening to tumble us all into the river.

  I hugged Mina tight against me and hoped my sisters had found somewhere to hold on.

  “You can probably let go now,” Mina said breathlessly. “I mean, unless you’re planning to do what the serpents couldn’t and crush me to death.”

  I suddenly realized just how tight and close I was holding her. Where we were touching felt like I’d brushed up against one of Putty’s scientific experiments: tingly, like an electric charge, and hot. I let go with a jerk.

  “Thanks,” she said. “For all of it, I mean. Catching me and all.”

  “Yeah,” I said, red-faced. My ribs ached like I’d been shot, and I was too scared to touch them in case they’d broken.

  Putty and Olivia stood further along the railing, while the bedraggled figure of Mr. Davidson struggled up just beyond them.

  “Edward! Olivia!” Jane called. “Watch out!”

  Two arrowheads of water were slicing across the river toward us.

  “Ah, blast,” I muttered.

  The remaining sea serpents were coming back, and we were stuck.

  * * *

  Something whirred beneath my feet, just above the waterline. Bent metal complained, then gave. Something clunked loudly.

  “What’s going on?” I said, backing away. Were we sinking? God only knew what damage the serpents had done to the ship.

  Of course, we wouldn’t be around to worry about it, because those sea serpents would have us for dinner long before we could sink beneath the Martian Nile’s slowly rising waters.

  I could see the serpents now, not twenty yards distant, their long, sleek bodies outlined in the silty water.

  The ship leaped back. A cluster of iron spears as long as two men erupted from its side, spreading through the air almost faster than I could follow. They plunged into the water just ahead of the serpents, turning the water to foam. Blood bloomed like spilled ink, and then the bodies of the sea serpents were gone and the water ran calm and flat.

  “Why the hell didn’t you do that before?” I demanded as Rackham emerged from the interior of the boat. “We were almost all killed fighting those things off, and you just…” I waved my hand helplessly at the river.

  Rackham shrugged. “Couldn’t get the weapons low enough until the boat tilted over. Now get everyone ashore. We don’t know if there are any more serpents. Your father and I will inspect the damage.” He glanced back at where Papa sat slumped against the wall. “That is, if you are well, sir?”

  “I’m well enough,” Papa said, struggling up with Jane’s help. “A knock, that’s all.”

  “Good.” Rackham turned to the rest of us. “Hurry. Take only what you need.”

  * * *

  We set up a small camp on the sand a hundred yards from the river, far out of reach of any sea serpent. Putty insisted on bringing her fossilized dragon egg in its canvas bag, and Jane lugged the bag full of books and papers, but otherwise we brought only a few supplies.

  The sun was already sinking onto the distant mesa far to the west, and the heat of the desert day was slipping away. If we were stuck out here, it was going to be a cold night.

  Jane settled herself on the sands with her books and papers around her, studying them in the fading light and occasionally scribbling in a notebook, while Mr. Davidson stood resignedly behind her, not contributing at all. I didn’t know if Jane had even noticed. I’d never seen her in such a mess. Her hair had been tied back in a loose knot, but strands had come free to dangle around her face. Her cheeks and forehead were streaked with ink.

  I slumped next to Putty, Mina, and Olivia, while Mama and Miss Wilkins sat primly on a spread-out blanket. I felt battered and so drained that my bones wanted to fall out of my body and leave me as a limp bag of skin on the cooling sands. Someone could have rolled me up and stuffed me into a sack for all the strength I had left in me. At least my ribs didn’t actually seem to be broken. Just horribly bruised. Which was almost like a victory for today.

  “I thought that was quite fun,” said Putty.

  Luckily for her, before I could summon the energy to strangle her, Rackham and Papa clambered down from the boat and trudged across the sands toward us.

  “What’s the damage?” Mina called as they approached.

  Papa looked exhausted. He wasn’t a big man, but with his shoulders slumped and next to Rackham’s enormous frame, he looked like he was sinking away into the desert sand. His eyeglasses were askew, and he hadn’t bothered to straighten them.

  “Do you want the good news or the bad?” Rackham said.

  “Good,” I said, just as Putty said, “Bad.”

  “The good news is that the hull is intact,” Rackham said. “A few dents and some sections I wouldn’t want to trust in an ocean storm, but she’s tough. She’ll float.”

  “And the bad?”

  “The rudder,” Rackham said. “Without it, there’s no way we can risk this river. In any case, the engines took a battering. I’m surprised they kept going so long.”

  “And the springs are unsettled in their casings,” Papa put in. “I would not run them. They could unwind catastrophically. They would tear the boat apart. We might run the engines on coal, but it would be slow, and we cannot rely on the engines not to fail.”

  “So we’re stuck,” Olivia said.

  “Until we can get a crew from Lunae City,” Rackham said.

  I frowned, trying to figure out how far we’d come. “That must be twenty miles away.”

  “More like thirty.”

  Too far to hike. We’d walked through the desert before, me, Putty, Olivia, and Freddie. We hadn’t walked anywhere near that far, and it had been too much. There was no way we could make it.

  “I have a small land-crawler,” Rackham said. “We might get three, maybe four, of us back to Lunae City, except…”

  “Yeah.” The realization hit me before he finished speaking. I looked down at the sand between my feet. “Except that Lunae City is exactly where we’re fleeing from.”

  We might go back and look for help. But Dr. Blood’s men would be waiting. We’d lead them right to us.

  “In other words,” I said. “We’re not going anywhere.�
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  18

  Betrayed!

  “Well I, for one, do not intend to spend the night here,” Mama said. “Hugo, you must do something about it.” She lifted her chin and glared at Papa.

  Papa rubbed at his eyeglasses. “Ah. I am not sure what you expect, my dear.”

  “Make this man take us home. Pay him or something.”

  “Also,” Putty said, “we might be eaten by sandfish.”

  “Parthenia!” Miss Wilkins barked, rising from the sand like a sea serpent coming out of the Martian Nile.

  Mama’s eyes widened. “Hugo! I refuse to be eaten by sandfish. It would be a quite improper way to end one’s days.”

  “And how exactly would you like to go, Mama?” Olivia said sweetly. “I do not believe you have informed us, and we would hate to be improper.”

  Mama gave her a suspicious stare. “I wish to end my days in my bed, with my loving family around me, having finished my tea. As any proper lady would. Not eaten by … sandfish.”

  “Sandfish don’t eat people,” I said wearily. After everything that had happened to us these last few days—with everything that might happen to us over the next few hours—I wasn’t in the mood for my family’s squabbling. It just didn’t seem worth it.

  “As far as we know,” Mina said with a grin. “I don’t know if anyone’s actually tested it. Maybe we should try. In the interest of scientific investigation, of course.”

  I gave her a baleful look.

  Shadows spread across the red sand as the sun finally slumped behind the western mesa. I rubbed my arms against the chill. Maybe we should go back to the boat and get blankets and warmer clothes for the night. But I was too exhausted to get up. I wondered if Dr. Blood was done with us. We were out of his way, stranded in the desert and unable to interfere with his plans.

  That depends on what he wants us for, I thought.

  If all he wanted was to get us out of the way, he’d succeeded. We couldn’t rescue Rothan Gal. We couldn’t stop whatever he was planning. He might leave us alone.

  But if he wanted something else, something more, we were sitting ducks. I had no proof that he did, but something felt wrong. It felt off. He’d put too much into chasing us down and wrecking Rackham’s boat.

  Maybe I was just tired.

  “I’ve got it!” Jane leaped up, scattering papers around her. My heart jumped almost as high as it tried to escape out my mouth. Why was she trying to frighten me to death?

  “Ah … Got what, my dear?” Papa asked.

  “The answer!” She waved a piece of paper in the air.

  “Jane!” Mama snapped. “Control yourself. What will people think?”

  Jane looked confused. “What people, Mama? We’re in the middle of the desert.”

  Mama drew herself up. “It does not matter. A true lady acts as a lady whether there are people to see her or not. How can you expect to attract a suitable husband if you let your … passions … get the better of you?”

  Jane shot her a mulish look. “I am not seeking a husband, Mama.”

  Papa stepped between them. “Answer to what, my dear?”

  “Edward’s ideograms. You know, the Ancient Martian writing? The ones Edward wanted translated. I worked out what they say.”

  Papa smiled gently at her. “I am sorry, my dear, but that is impossible. You see, each ideogram influences the meaning of those on either side of it. When ideograms are missing or badly damaged, the meaning is lost. It is not like English or French or German, where a missing word can be guessed at. The whole sentence changes with the change of a single ideogram.”

  “I know that, Papa,” Jane said, cutting him off with one hand. “But you are mistaken.”

  Papa frowned at her over his glasses.

  “You’re right that each ideogram influences the meaning of its neighbor,” she said. “But it’s also true that the neighbor therefore passes on a secondary influence to its neighbor, so it’s possible to infer through a suitable regression which ideogram is missing. With a given key, there are only a limited number of options that make any sense, and within the context of the text, we can in fact narrow down the possibilities to a tiny selection.” She brushed back her loose hair unconsciously. “I have picked up some things over the years, Papa.”

  “I have no idea what she just said,” I commented to Mina.

  “It’s simple, Edward,” Jane said. “Either this text is a commentary on the ball gowns worn by young gentlemen while burrowing for worms, or…”

  “Or what?” I said.

  “Or it says something like this: ‘The dragon’s egg may only be awoken when the casket is activated in the dust of a dragon.’”

  There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes over you when you realize that every one of your siblings is a genius and you are not. Especially when the sister you’d always thought was empty-headed and silly solves a problem that has stumped generations of scholars.

  Papa was frowning and blinking furiously as his superbrain whirred away. Mr. Davidson was gazing at Jane, mouth hanging open, as though he’d just been hit over the head with a large stick.

  Jane noticed and started toward him, her hand rising from her side as though to reach for him.

  “Mr. Davidson…”

  His body twitched, like he’d trodden on a glass scorpion. “I have much to think about. Much.” Then he strode away, his movement, as jerky and sudden as a rusty automatic servant.

  Jane stared after him, her hand frozen in midair and her face reddening in the falling light.

  “Mama was right,” she whispered. “I should never have let him know I was cleverer than him.”

  “No,” I said. “She wasn’t. If he doesn’t want to know you because you’re cleverer, he’s not worth knowing at all.”

  Jane didn’t answer. She just kept staring after him.

  “Are they talking about my dragon’s egg?” Putty demanded. “Edward, do they mean my dragon’s egg?”

  “And what’s all that about ‘the dust of a dragon’?” Olivia said.

  “The last part of the puzzle,” Mina murmured.

  My head snapped around to stare at her. “What?”

  She shook her head. “Forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything. All of it.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Mina rubbed a hand across her face. She looked completely exhausted. “I wish your sister had failed. I really do.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Why did she want Jane to fail? Why was she sorry?

  Around us, the desert sands began to shake. Grains of sand danced like tiny balls on a drum skin.

  “What’s happening?” Mama cried, clutching at her chest. “What’s going on?”

  I twisted around, all tiredness forgotten, and scanned the darkening sands. From here, I could see hundreds of yards in every direction. There was only the desert and the rising Martian Nile. There weren’t even any boats on the river, except Rackham’s grounded ship.

  But the ground was shaking like a giant land-crawler was about to run over me. For one wild moment I wondered if Dr. Blood had figured out how to make his machines invisible. Then Putty shouted, “It’s under us!”

  The next moment, the sand was rising in a hump, cascading back like water, as something pushed its way through the dunes. Whatever was beneath the sand was the size of a whale, but it was moving as fast as I could run, and it was coming toward us.

  “Back,” I shouted, reaching Mama and pulling her to her feet. Miss Wilkins stumbled after us, losing her reticule as she fell and scrambled up again.

  I racked my brains trying to think what kind of creatures lived beneath the sands of the Lunae Planum and what on Mars you could do about them, but all I could think of were the monsters that Captain W. A. Masters had battled in Thrilling Martian Tales. In issue eighty-five, The Riddle of the Ant Queen, Captain Masters had been chased by a giant sandworm. He’d only escaped by scrambling up its side and riding
it to attack the ant queen’s fortress. But I was pretty certain giant sandworms were made up.

  Sea serpents couldn’t swim in sand, could they?

  Rackham loaded his rifle as we retreated, but whatever was coming was far too big to be hurt by a bullet.

  The vibrations coming up through the sand were turning it liquid beneath my feet. It was becoming quicksand. I sank to my ankles and there was nothing to get purchase on. Mama slipped, and as I tried to pull her up, I only sank deeper.

  What was it you were supposed to do in quicksand? I’d read it somewhere. Were you supposed to lie flat and swim, or was that what you were meant not to do? Would it even work without actual water in the quicksand?

  And where was I going to swim to? The whole of the desert around me seemed to be liquefying. Ten yards away, Olivia, Mina, and Putty were wading through the heavy sand, but they weren’t making any progress. Even Rackham was struggling.

  Maybe I could make some kind of balloon out of my shirt and float on it, or …

  The sand exploded in front of us.

  A giant metal screw burst into sight, still spinning. Like a sleepy animal hauling itself from its burrow, a colossal machine lurched out to lie vibrating on the surface of the desert.

  “Get behind me!” Rackham yelled, waving us back.

  Slowly, the screw stopped turning. A crack of light ten yards long appeared along the top of the machine, spreading down as a ramp levered out and thumped onto the sand. The moment it hit, a dozen figures in clockwork armor leaped out.

  I threw myself down, dragging Mama with me.

  We were too far from Rackham’s boat, even if the machine hadn’t come up between us and it. The armored men would be on us before we were even halfway. That was if they didn’t just shoot us down; every one of them was armed. Rackham had his rifle trained on them, but no matter how good his aim, he would only get one shot.

  We would have to surrender. We didn’t have any choice.

  I hoped surrender was an option.

  “Who are these people, Edward?” Mama demanded. “What do they want?”

  “That’s who,” I said grimly as Dr. Blood and Apprentice followed their men out of the machine.