The Emperor of Mars

by Patrick Samphire

  When I looked up, the throne room was a mess. Bits of broken bull and shattered machinery littered the floor for twenty feet. Broken glass spread all around me. And on the other side of the throne room, the scorpion was still pursuing Rackham, Mina, and Rothan Gal.

  I got to my feet, shaking off bits of glass and fragments of cogs. Most of my bones seemed intact, although I couldn’t quite be sure under all the bruises. I’d managed to smack my chin against the glass tube when I’d run into it, and from the way it was throbbing, I knew it was going to swell.

  Carefully, I picked my way back across the floor, cursing myself with every step for having lost my shoe.

  The scorpion slashed at Mina with its stinger. She dodged, but she must have been exhausted, because she was too slow. It caught her a glancing blow that sent her to the floor. Rackham lunged for it. Its great claws slapped him away. The scorpion scampered over to Mina, drawing its tail back for another blow.

  I broke into a run and launched myself onto the tail. It whipped forward, carrying me with it. My shoulders screamed in protest. Mina rolled aside. I wrapped my arms tighter and held on. The tail lashed back and forth as it tried to shake me off.

  Rackham grabbed one of the bull’s swordlike horns that had been blown free by the explosion and attacked. The scorpion’s giant claws snapped at him, fending off the sword. Slowly, jabbing and cutting as he went, Rackham retreated, drawing the scorpion away from Mina.

  “Anyone got any ideas?” I yelled as the scorpion thrashed its tail again and my arms slowly began to rip out of my shoulders.

  “There’s a gap just behind its neck,” Putty shouted back. “I can see it. You’ll be able to disable it there. Just stick something in.”

  “Really?” I muttered. “That’s great.”

  How on Mars was I supposed to get close to its neck?

  The scorpion slashed at Rackham again. He ducked under its claw and hammered his sword against the scorpion’s carapace.

  It didn’t even slow the monster.

  The tail pulled back, then snapped forward. This time, I let go.

  I crashed onto the scorpion’s body. My fingers slipped on smooth metal. My feet scrabbled for a grip. I slid down. Then I found a crack and held on.

  The scorpion spun, trying to reach me with its claws. Its stinger rose above me, glittering and bright in the light of the photon emission devices. It stabbed for me.

  Rackham swung his sword into the tail with all his might. The sword shattered, but the force was enough to turn the stinger. It hit the creature’s own body to my left.

  I grabbed the back of the scorpion’s head. I wanted to sob as every muscle in my arms protested. This was agony. It was going to tear my arms from my body and my fingers from my hands.

  The scorpion twisted and scuttled, jerking this way and that. Its stinger rose again in a whine of cogs.

  I squeezed my eyes shut against tears of pain and heaved myself up. Something popped in my left arm. Pain flared like a foot-long needle. I forced my eyes open and blinked them clear.

  There was a gap between the plates on the scorpion’s back just below my elbow. I saw cogs whirring frantically in there, and below them, a large spring. Jam that, and I’d ruin the mechanism, but I didn’t have anything to put in there except my fingers. The cogs would chop them to bits.

  I liked my fingers.

  “Catch!” Putty shouted. My head shot up as she tossed a shard of broken metal through the air. Instinctively, I grabbed it. Its edges were sharp, but it was long and narrow.

  The stinger came plunging down at me again. With a shout, I shoved the shard into the gap.

  Metal clashed and screeched as the shard jammed in the mechanism. Cogs jumped and splintered. The scorpion shuddered under me, bucked, and ground to a halt. Very carefully, I unhooked the stinger from the back of my shirt, where it had come to rest, and let myself slide loosely to the floor.

  I was dead. No one could have survived that. Except it didn’t hurt this much when you were dead. Did it?

  I groaned. Why wasn’t everyone gathering around me in sympathy? I really could do with some sympathy right now. Someone telling me how heroic I was would have been great, too.

  The flying platform lurched.

  It felt like we’d run into the side of a mountain. I rolled over and pushed myself up. My arm was still in agony. I must have torn something in it. Dr. Blood and Papa were sitting in front of the throne, arms locked, frozen in the act of wrestling.

  “What have you done?” Dr. Blood demanded. “What have you done?”

  “Can’t you tell?” Papa said. “Can’t you feel it? The electrostatic release has started a chain reaction. It will tear the platform apart.”

  I grimaced. This was my fault?

  The platform shook again.

  “Fix it!” Dr. Blood screamed, pulling free of Papa. “I know you can. Stop the chain reaction.” He stumbled up the dais steps and onto his throne.

  “No, Archibald,” Papa said. “It is over.”

  “Then I’ll fix it myself,” Dr. Blood raged. “I was always the better mechanician.”

  He grabbed a lever and shoved it forward. The entire dais tilted down and, with a whir of copter blades, swooped toward the banks of machinery.

  Putty darted past me. Instinctively, I made a grab for her, but she was too fast. She snatched the dragon’s egg from the sarcophagus, scattering dust behind her, and raced back. She looked outraged.

  “Look what they’ve done to it!” She thrust the egg at me. The dull scales that had covered it now looked wet, as though oil had soaked into surface. A crack ran from the tip, halfway down one side. “They’ve broken it.” She glared at me. “This is your fault.”

  The floating dais landed with a thump. Its glass-and-steel walls fell away as a larger shock juddered through the platform.

  “We need to find a way off,” Papa said, clambering from the dais. “Fast. The reaction will grow quickly in strength.”

  I turned to Mina. “Can we reach the airships in time?”

  She looked apprehensive. “Maybe.”

  “Then let’s move. Putty, come on.”

  With Rackham helping Rothan Gal, we hurried to the doors at the back of the throne room. When we reached them, Papa turned. Dr. Blood had pulled a panel from the banks of machinery and was reaching inside.

  “Archibald!” Papa called. “Come with us. There’s still time.”

  Dr. Blood didn’t answer.

  The platform rumbled. Deep in the workings, a spring burst. The platform lurched again, slipping sideways. Mina stood in the doorway, gazing back at Dr. Blood. I didn’t know what to say. She’d thought the man was her father. He’d used her, made her cheat and lie and steal for him, then he’d discarded her. I had thought Mina had betrayed me, but she was the one who’d been betrayed.

  Then she looked away, and we fled the disintegrating platform.

  24

  Awakening

  The airship dropped away from the flying fortress, pushed hard by its propellers. Immense chunks of metal ripped away above us and spun to the desert below as explosions tore through the platform.

  By the time we’d reached the docking bay, Dr. Blood’s men had made their escape. All I could see of them now were distant shapes against the lightening morning sky as they escaped in airships and fliers of their own.

  I was so exhausted and bruised that all I wanted to do was collapse on the seats at the back of the airship’s cabin and let myself slump into unconsciousness. Instead, I stood with Mina, flanking Rackham as he guided the airship, looking out for falling debris from the platform and cradling my sore arm.

  We came out from under the shadow of the platform as another great explosion sent it tilting and sliding down toward the rock walls of the valley. The vast propellers that helped support the platform had stopped turning, and it was sinking slowly.

  “We’re clear,” I said, glancing out the side windows.

  Rackham angled the airship up, and
I watched as we rose past the platform. When we’d first approached it, it had looked like a flying fortress. It still looked like that, but now it looked like it had come under assault from half of Napoleon’s armies. Great rips and craters had appeared in it. Smoke and steam rose from gashes torn deep in the metal. The glass dome of the palace was no more than a skeleton, the supports twisted, the glass gone. Even as I watched in the airship’s mirrors, another explosion erupted from the platform, tossing metal high into the air.

  Rackham leaned on the controls, pushing the airship on faster, away from the dying fortress.

  Then the platform simply shattered. One moment it hung there, suspended by its balloons. The next, it was gone. It was as though the platform had been nothing more than an illusion, a cluster of giant flies hovering together that had burst apart as one. Lightning crackled and raged between the spreading fragments of metal.

  Chunks of platform rained down on the desert, and we were free, flying through the clear Martian sky.

  With a sigh, I retreated to the seats and let myself fall into one.

  “Did he escape?” Papa asked, absently polishing his eyeglasses on his filthy sleeve.

  I shook my head. I hadn’t seen any other flying machines leave the platform. Dr. Blood had still been on board when it had been destroyed.

  Papa nodded, then lapsed into silence.

  Putty looked like she was about to cry.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She shook her head and lifted her dragon’s egg. She’d wrapped it in the remains of my jacket, but I could see the crack in it had widened and spread, spawning dozens of new cracks across the hard stone surface.

  “It’s falling to pieces. It was the only one there was, and he ruined it.”

  A fragment of egg fell away.

  “Maybe we can glue it back together?” I said hopefully.

  Putty just looked more miserable.

  “Are you sure it’s breaking?” Mina said, joining us.

  Putty gave her a pitiful stare. “Look at it.”

  Mina peered closer. “I am. And you know what it looks like to me? It looks like it’s hatching.”

  Putty’s head jerked down and she peered into the crack. “It can’t be. It’s almost two thousand years old. It’s turned to stone.”

  “My father—Dr. Blood, I mean—he was going to hatch it.”

  “He was crazy,” I said.

  Mina’s mouth turned down. “I know. But he was sure he could do it.”

  “He was right,” Rothan Gal said. He’d been sprawled so motionlessly on a chaise longue I’d assumed he was asleep. “I have read many old documents and many ideograms from the dragon tombs.” He pushed himself painfully up. “A dragon’s egg can last for millennia. It does not die like a common egg. Scholars among my people have known this for a long time, but it was not known how to awaken one, and, indeed, we have done all that we could to destroy any clues. We would not willingly allow the dragon emperors to rise again. Somewhere in Patagonian Mars it seems Dr. Blood found the secrets we had tried to wipe out, and with the information from the tablet in the museum, I do not doubt that he knew how to awaken the egg.”

  Putty peered closer. “I can’t see anything.”

  A crack sounded, sudden and sharp in the stillness of the cabin. A section of egg fell away.

  Something moved in the darkness of the egg. It curled and stretched, sliding like a snake.

  Nervously, I inched back.

  Then a head arose on a long neck. Black eyes glittered beneath jewel-bright scales. Two small horns curved from the back of the head. A slim mouth widened, showing tiny teeth as sharp as pins.

  Putty gasped in delight and reached out a finger toward it.

  “Careful!” I warned. Those teeth might be small, but they’d easily draw blood.

  A long tongue snapped out, licking across the end of her finger, then drawing back.

  “She likes me!” Putty said.

  Papa had joined us. He frowned over it. “It is … remarkable.”

  The tiny dragon pushed its way out of the remains of the egg. Narrow wings ran the length of its body. It stretched them as it arched its back. They looked as delicate as fine silk.

  “You can’t have her,” Putty said, wrapping her arms protectively around the creature as Papa bent over it, squinting. Its tail whipped up, curling around Putty’s arm. “She’s mine.”

  “If I were you,” Rackham called from the controls, “I would keep very quiet about that creature. The first dragon in nearly two thousand years. People will want to get their hands on it.”

  “Does that mean someone else will try again?” I said. “I mean, Dr. Blood succeeded. There really is a live dragon now.” It felt absurd to say it, but it was true. It was right there in front of me. “Does that mean someone else will try to make themself the Emperor of Mars?”

  “They’d better not try,” Putty said fiercely.

  “From what I have read,” Rothan Gal said, “the dragons were fearsome weapons by themselves, but it was not the dragon that would have allowed Dr. Blood to conquer Mars. He could only have done it with weapons like that flying fortress. Dragons were a symbol of the Martian emperors, but if he thought my people would greet him as a new emperor because he had such a symbol, he gravely misunderstood us. It would have set us against him.”

  “He was mad,” Papa said. “He truly was. His was a fever dream.”

  I peered down at the little creature. “And, um, do they grow fast?”

  The preserved dragons in the museum were as big as this airship.

  “I believe so,” Rothan Gal said. “I have read that they can grow quickly enough for a man to ride in no more than a year.”

  I stared at Putty. This was going to get … interesting.

  * * *

  The water had risen visibly in just the day that we’d been away. The Martian Nile had spilled over its banks and was spreading across the desert in a thin, mirror-bright layer. Rackham’s ship still lay aground on the sandbank, but it had risen and leveled out with the water.

  “I’ll have to anchor it,” Rackham said as he swung the airship around and down toward his ship. “Otherwise it’ll be carried away.”

  There were figures on the deck staring up at us as we descended. Olivia and Jane had armed themselves from Rackham’s stores, and I couldn’t help but feel nervous as we sank toward them. As far as I knew, Jane had never fired a gun before, and I could see this all ending badly if her finger twitched on the trigger at the wrong moment.

  But I needn’t have worried. By the time we were in range, they were waving. Soon, the airship was tied above the boat, and Rackham had lowered a ladder. Putty and I climbed down first.

  Miss Wilkins was waiting next to Mama. Her eyes were fixed thunderously on Putty.

  Putty looked mutinous. “I’m not putting up with it, Edward. Not anymore. I’m going to tell Mama about her letters.”

  And Mama would have no choice but to fire Miss Wilkins. She’d never get another job. We’d be taking away her livelihood and her chances. Maybe it was stupid of me after how harshly she’d treated Putty, but I didn’t want to be responsible for that, not for anyone.

  But if she stayed, Putty wouldn’t be able to take it anymore. Sometimes Putty needed to run wild. And sometimes she needed someone to hold her back, just a little. Miss Wilkins was completely the wrong person for Putty.

  “Just give me a moment,” I said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  As Papa stepped awkwardly from the rope ladder, I drew him to one side.

  “Papa. Putty and I discovered something about Miss Wilkins.” I took a breath. “It turns out she is married.”

  Papa peered at me through his smudged eyeglasses. “I see? Ah.” He looked confused. “Should we invite the gentleman for tea, do you think?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. “No!” I sighed. “She can’t stay on as Putty’s governess.”

  Papa looked surprised. “Can she not?”

>   “Put it this way,” I said. “Do you want to be the one who tells Mama that Putty’s governess is secretly married? How well do you think that would go down?”

  “Ah … Ah! I see what you mean.” He scratched at his ear. “Well. I’m sure you’ll figure out something. Now, if you don’t mind—”

  “I have figured out something. Actually, it was Putty’s idea originally. Your business is … unstable.” I held up a hand. “Oh, I know you’re doing well right now, but you have to admit it’s all a bit chaotic. You spend so much time in your workshop and so little running the business that other mechanicians are the ones who end up profiting from your work. I think you should hire Miss Wilkins to organize things. If there’s one thing Miss Wilkins is good at, it’s organizing things.” Frighteningly good. “And you’ll be able to spend more time in your workshop and at the museum. It’ll be good for everyone.”

  Papa frowned. “I … ah … will certainly consider it. Only—”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Here she comes now.”

  Miss Wilkins was stalking across the deck toward Putty like a thundercloud that had caught sight of a tea party. I gave Papa a little push toward her.

  * * *

  It didn’t take us long to collect our small amount of luggage. Within half an hour, we were gathered on the deck, ready to board the airship for the trip back to Lunae City.

  Rackham emerged from the depths of the boat, pushing Mr. Davidson ahead of him. He untied the ropes that had bound my former tutor so that Mr. Davidson could climb the rope ladder to the airship, but it was clear that Mr. Davidson was still a prisoner. His head was bowed, and he didn’t look up as he passed us.

  Mina touched my arm. “Can I have a word, Edward?” She was fidgeting nervously.

  For some reason, my breath caught in my throat and my chest felt tight.

  “What is it?” I managed. I kept wanting to wet my lips with my tongue, but that would look weird.

  “After Rackham has taken you all to Lunae City, he’s going to bring back a repair crew to fix his boat.”