Her companion came to an abrupt stop as another cook stepped out in front of him. At first Rémy thought that Desai was about to be challenged, but instead the man offered the same nod of respect the first had given. This time Desai responded in kind — they obviously knew each other. Desai leaned forward and spoke rapidly into the man’s ear. The cook’s gaze flicked to Rémy’s for a second and then back to Desai before nodding quickly and turning. Desai looked over his shoulder at Rémy. Evidently they were to follow.
The cook led them to another circular flight of stairs, also lit with a burning torch. They descended quickly and found themselves on the lower level, though this area was far darker than the one Rémy had failed to gain access to earlier. Passageways led in two directions, left and right, and both were lined with the sturdy doors of many cells. Silently, the cook pointed left. Desai clasped his arm firmly in thanks, and without another word the man had gone, vanishing back up the steps to resume his work.
Desai and Rémy moved quickly along the passageway. Rémy glanced in through each of the barred doors as they went, searching for Thaddeus, Dita, and J. Some of the cells were empty, but others held pitiful-looking prisoners, thin men with protruding ribs and long, straggly hair, who all seemed as if they had been there for a long, long time. Desai glanced left and right, seeing but passing on just as quickly.
They found their friends in neighboring cells: the soldiers had separated Dita from Thaddeus and J and imprisoned her beside them. J and Dita were kneeling on the filthy floor, grasping each other’s hands through the bars. Rémy, still concealed by her “cloak,” felt her heart leap in relief at the sight of Thaddeus with his back against the cell wall, his forearms resting on his drawn-up knees.
Thaddeus barely showed any interest as Desai and Rémy appeared in front of him. He merely glanced up at Desai before dropping his gaze briefly to Rémy and then looking away again. A second later, though, his double-colored eyes flashed wide with recognition and he scrambled to his feet.
“My god! Desai! What are you —? How —?”
“No time, my friend, no time. Rémy, quickly, can you free this lock?”
“Rémy!” Thaddeus exclaimed again as she threw off the sheet and stepped forward, once more reaching for her lock picks.
Rémy smiled at him through the bars. “You didn’t think I’d leave you behind, did you? Where you go, I go. Don’t you know that by now?”
Thaddeus smiled back, fixing her with a look of such intensity that she found her heart leaping again, though for an entirely different reason.
“Can’t you get Dita out first?” J pleaded as she turned her attention to the lock. “I ’ate ’er bein’ in there alone.”
“Better for us to get out first, J,” Thaddeus said softly, moving to the bars and looking down the passageway. “That way if there’s trouble, you and I can deal with it while Rémy frees Dita.”
Rémy caught J’s nod of agreement in the corner of her eye as she worked. These locks were more difficult than the one on Desai’s cuff. She cursed under her breath as the barrel refused to turn.
“How long?” Desai asked, his quiet voice strained as he, too, kept an eye out.
“I will be as quick as I can,” Rémy murmured calmly, keeping her concentration entirely on the lock.
“I’ll be back,” said Desai. “Be quick, Rémy. You must be the swiftest you have ever been, my dear.”
He vanished up the passageway. Rémy half expected to hear the sounds of fighting echo out of the darkness that flowed into his wake, but there was nothing but silence. Still she worked, rotating the barrel again and again, until, at last —
Click.
She heaved a sigh of relief. The door opened, creaking on its rusted hinges so loudly in the quiet that she winced. Thaddeus grabbed the bars to hold it still, waving J out ahead of him as Rémy swiftly moved to the lock on Dita’s cell. The little girl wrapped her hands around the bars, eyes wide as she watched Rémy’s nimble fingers get to work.
Desai returned a few minutes later. “If we are quick now, we will have a clear route to the outer courtyard,” he told them. “But we must be fast.”
“I have to find the jeweled man — the raja you spoke of,” Rémy said, her eyes fixed on the second lock.
“What do you mean?” Desai asked, appalled. “We have to leave, Rémy. We are vastly outnumbered, and —”
“He has my puzzle box,” she told him, still concentrating, twisting the barrel, testing the lock. “I can’t leave without it. I must get it back.”
Desai made a sound in his throat. “Whatever he has taken from you, Rémy, I guarantee it is not worth the risk.”
“It is to me,” Rémy said. “I must have it back, Desai. I must. You take the others and go — get the airship. You said yourself, I can scale these walls. I’ll follow once I have it.”
“You must be joking,” said Thaddeus. “Rémy, that’s crazy. They weren’t looking for you before, but once the alarm is raised …”
“I will not leave without it, Thaddeus,” said Rémy, “I will not. Understand?”
“Then I will stay, too.”
“No,” she told him, “I will be faster — safer — on my own.”
“You will be the death of me, Rémy Brunel,” Desai muttered.
“Is that so?” she answered tartly. “And here I was thinking I had freed you once already tonight.”
Desai sighed. “All right. Give me a moment. But we are running out of time!”
He vanished again, moving up the passageway and back toward the stairs that led to the kitchens.
“D’acccord, d’accord,” muttered Rémy, still working on the lock. It clicked suddenly, the door springing open more quietly than the first one. Dita slipped out, and J instantly clasped her in a brief, powerful hug.
Thaddeus was at Rémy’s side as she straightened. He took one of her hands and squeezed it. “Please don’t do this,” he said softly. “Let it go, Rémy — let the puzzle box go. Only this morning you were saying you thought it was all a trick.”
Rémy gave him a faint smile and squeezed his hand back again. “But what if it is not a trick? What if it really can tell me where my brother is?”
Thaddeus opened his mouth to reply but by then Desai was coming back along the passageway. He wasn’t alone — with him was the cook Rémy had encountered earlier. He was carrying a silver tray bearing small bowls of food that smelled delicious enough to have Rémy’s stomach rumbling, despite their plight.
“Go with Arund,” Desai told her, picking up the sheet and thrusting it toward her. “He will help you. Now, the rest of us must go, or we will all be caught again.”
Rémy squeezed Thaddeus’s hand once more, and then let go. Seconds later, she was following the man she now knew as Arund. Rémy thought he was taking her back to the kitchen stairs, but instead they hurried past them, down another darkened passageway to a different set of steps entirely. Arund didn’t pause as he led her up them. These went higher than the first two flights she had encountered, and when they emerged, it was on a very different type of floor. Where the servants’ level had been dusty stone, this was a sparkling-clean mosaic of black and white marble tiles, spread with intricately woven carpets. The walls were adorned with colorful tapestries and paintings, and unlike the empty corridors directly below, ornate furniture stood here and there against the walls: wooden cabinets carved with intricate scenes of the jungle, backless chairs draped with more of the rich fabrics Rémy had seen in the tailors’ room on the floor below.
Arund moved quickly and silently with Rémy close in his wake, her cloak wafting in the breeze they created through the otherwise still and silent halls. Then, suddenly he stopped and turned, picking up the silver jug from his platter and holding it out to her. Rémy hesitated for a second, confused, and then took it, careful not to spill any of the water contained within while still h
olding her cloak closed. They moved off again, turning a corner, and as she glanced up, Rémy saw a large door at the far end of the corridor, its hammered gold gleaming in the fiery lamplight, flanked by two guards.
At first Rémy thought the platter and jug were for the inhabitant of the room behind the door, but instead Arund greeted the two soldiers and held up the silver tray. It only took a brief glance for her to see the grins on the men’s faces. Arund drew them away from the door until he could place the platter on an ornate table a few feet away. He beckoned to Rémy, taking the water jug from her when she moved closer and then waving her back.
Stepping away, Rémy found the guard’s shoulders turned away from her, intent on their welcome mid-shift snack instead of on their posts. She knew it was the only opportunity she was going to get. Arund ignored her, laughing and joking in whispers with the guards as she moved silently backward until her back was against the door.
And then, in another moment, she was through it.
The room inside was dark, no light visible apart from the pale wash of moonlight through the large window at the far end of the room. Even so, Rémy could make out the shape of a huge bed at the center of the space, its canopy hung with heavy, opulent cloth. Rémy crept closer, her eyes adjusting to the renewed dark. The room was airy, far bigger even than the kitchen she had seen downstairs. Compared to the servants’ quarters, this was a different world, a world full of beautiful wonders, the colors of which she could only imagine in the gray-toned hue of night.
Rémy crept toward the bed and the tangled mass of sheets that lay at its center. As she moved closer, she saw that it was indeed the jeweled man — seeming, as such men so often did, far smaller and less significant in sleep than in life. But he wasn’t what she was interested in. All Rémy wanted was her puzzle box.
Beside the bed stood a table, cluttered with trinkets that gleamed even in the faint light. And there, discarded like a toy, was her puzzle box. She picked it up, careful not to dislodge any of the other items on the tabletop, moving slowly and silently as her fingers gripped its whorled surface.
A sound echoed through the window — it was just one shout at first, but then it was a violent tide of noise: yells, screams, the echo of rifleshot cracking against stone, the sound of booted running feet pounding against the dirt.
The jeweled man’s eyes flashed open, and they looked straight at Rémy.
{Chapter 7}
ESCAPE BY AIR
Thaddeus couldn’t fathom how, but the gate they had been led through when they had entered the cells was open. Not only that, the passageway that led to it from the palace’s lowest level was empty. Thaddeus looked around, wondering if he was mistaken and they were actually leaving by a different route, but Desai clamped a hand to his shoulder, urging him onward.
“Hurry, we have lost much time already,” his friend muttered.
“But how —?” Thaddeus began, only to be cut off by a shake of Desai’s grizzled head.
“I will explain later. For now, we must take full advantage of the lull. It will be only minutes before our time is up.”
“There’s four guards on the airship,” J pointed out as they approached the gate. “What do we do about ’em? We ain’t armed.”
“All we have is the element of surprise,” said Desai, adding, “Four of us, four of them. We take one each and do our best — this is our only hope.”
“’Ang about,” J protested. “You can’t make Dita fight! She’s half the size of any of ’em!”
Dita slapped J’s arm, hard enough for the sound to ricochet off the stone walls around them. “Speak for yourself, dirty boy,” she said in a loud whisper. “I will take mine down quicker than you will yours!”
“Pfft,” J spat back, “I’d like to see you —”
Thaddeus, already through the gate, turned on the two bickering youngsters. “Now is not the time!”
“Thaddeus is right,” said Desai. “Do what you can, all of you — and do it … now!”
They burst from the archway, crossing the courtyard at a flat run. The moonlight bounced off the white flagstones beneath their feet, sending shimmering bursts of shadow undulating across the marble as their running bodies blocked its shine. Desai was ahead, moving far faster than Thaddeus would have thought possible. They were lucky that the guards were positioned in such a way that only two were facing their position. Desai was on the first before he could even level his rifle, and Thaddeus was close behind with the second. Their cries echoed across the courtyard, bringing the other two swinging around the airship, lifting their loaded guns as the sentries on the four corners of the palace walls turned to see what the commotion was about.
Thaddeus wasn’t much of a fighter — he’d always avoided the brawls his fellow street children had reveled in when growing up — but there had been plenty of times he’d needed to be handy in a scuffle as a copper on the streets of London. The guard moved to discharge his rifle, but the weapon was too cumbersome to be useful in a close-quarters fight. Thaddeus swung his left arm in an arc that knocked the weapon far enough away that the shot, when let loose, flew wide, striking one of the outer walls in a shower of glinting marble dust. Before the soldier could regain his balance, Thaddeus had punched him hard in the lower gut, finishing with a hard jab of his locked elbow to the man’s chin. He went down and Thaddeus grabbed the gun as another shot echoed out of the dark. The sentries on the wall had seen what was happening and were responding accordingly, shooting down at them from above. Thaddeus swung around, trying to reload the rifle. He saw that Desai had dropped his guard, too.
Together they ducked around the airship as more rifle bullets tore up the stone around their feet. Dita and J were struggling with their guards — Thaddeus felled J’s with a blow to his solar plexus as the boy struggled to swing the rifle away from the airship. Dita writhed in the grip of the last man as he lifted her clear off the ground, her legs kicking out but too short to do enough damage. J dragged the gun around and slammed its butt into the final guard’s knee. The man yelled in pain and dropped Dita. J lost no time in whacking him over the head and he slumped to the ground, out cold.
“Get her up, J!” Thaddeus rasped, struggling for breath.
J ran for the airship’s ramp, pulling it down and scrambling inside just as more noise began to echo across the open courtyard. Desai fired another rifle bullet in the direction of one of the sentry posts and began to reload as Thaddeus turned to see more soldiers pouring out of the barracks toward them. He hefted his rifle up and fired above their heads. The soldiers ducked for a second and then kept coming, wielding swords rather than guns. Thaddeus felt a movement and looked down to see Dita beside him holding another rifle, a look of grim determination on her face as she sent a bullet into the surge of men coming at them.
“Desai, there are too many!” Thaddeus yelled. “Dita, get inside …”
A rifle bullet whistled past his head from the wall again, narrowly missing Thaddeus and smacking into the wooden body of the airship. Thaddeus glanced at the damage — minimal, thank god — and then heard a hissing sound above him. He looked up to see the balloon filling, replacing the gas he’d released to land a few hours earlier. His heart pounded in relief as the craft, buoyancy restored, began to lift off.
Thaddeus, Desai, and Dita leapt for the ramp, rushing up it and into the ship as she lifted away from the cold white marble. Within seconds they were rising out of reach of the soldiers on the ground, although rifle bullets still thudded against the airship’s wooden hull.
“One of those bullets hits the balloon and we’re all done for!” J yelled, sitting at the airship’s controls as he brought her about. “She’ll go up like a firecracker!”
As if someone outside had heard him, a rough yell echoed from the palace. Thaddeus, in the process of pulling the ramp up, paused and saw through the chink still left open, the jeweled man leaning out of a hi
gh window just above them, screaming at his men below.
“Do not harm the ship of the sky,” he was shouting. “Death to any of you who damage her beyond repair!”
Thaddeus’s blood ran cold, not at the man’s commanding voice, but at the sight of who else stood at the window with him. It was Rémy, her throat caught beneath his crushing fingers. She was gasping for breath, struggling against his grip but obviously losing the fight.
“J,” he shouted to the front of the cabin, “hold the ship still!”
“What?” J shouted back. “Are you mad?”
Thaddeus dropped the ramp. It fell back on its hinges, jerking the airship sharply to one side. The airship was still rising, the end of the open ramp just feet from the palace walls, almost close enough for anyone to reach out and grab them, but not quite. Thaddeus could see soldiers crowding against the lower windows, aiming to do just that — leaning out as far as they could but still unable to touch their fingertips to the escaping craft.
They were almost level with the jeweled man’s window, his long fingers still digging into the moon-pale skin of Rémy’s neck. Her struggles were becoming weaker, her knees buckling.
“Put her down,” ordered the man, his eyes glinting cruelly in the moonlight. “Put the ship of the air back down, or I will squeeze every last breath out of this whelp before you can turn away.”
At that, Rémy forced herself around to face Thaddeus, her eyes defiant though she could clearly hardly breathe. She moved one arm and something sailed toward Thaddeus, dropping with a thump onto the airship’s wooden floor.
Her puzzle box.
Thaddeus leveled the rifle in his hands at the jeweled man’s head. “Let her go,” he said, more calmly than he felt, “or I will take your head off, here and now.”
The Sapphire Cutlass Page 4