Far below, weaving swiftly through the thick undergrowth, a group of soldiers left the great shadow cast by the huge rock monolith. Following on horseback, dressed in turquoise and white, they had watched and waited all night for the airship to leave its safe harbor.
Their patience, it seemed, had finally paid off.
* * *
With fresh gas in the airship’s balloon, the journey toward the mountain was a swift one. Desai told Rémy to put down before they reached the valley that stretched away from its foot. It would attract too much attention and be too dangerous, he said, to fly directly into the cult’s lair. They chose a small clearing quite some way from the valley’s farthest reach, where the sun still dappled the ground instead of refracting off the dense jungle leaves. Desai, Dita, and J took the scant equipment they had chosen and left the airship.
Then all that was left was for Thaddeus to bid Rémy goodbye.
“I hate this,” she muttered as he pulled her against his chest. “I should be coming with you.”
Thaddeus kissed the top of her head. “Everything will be fine,” he told her.
She pulled back and looked up at him. “You cannot possibly know that!”
He smiled. “Don’t be such a pessimist.”
“Don’t be such an idiot,” she retorted.
He grinned. “If I wasn’t, I don’t think you would love me quite as much.”
Her eyes gleamed for a second and Thaddeus knew she’d thought of a sharp comeback. He leaned forward and kissed her before she could say it. Rémy wound her arms around his shoulders and when they broke apart, they lingered there, their foreheads touching, until Desai’s voice broke the silence.
“My young friends, it pains me to separate you, but we should all be on our way,” he said, his gentle voice floating to them from the airship’s ramp. “If the landing of the airship was noticed, we do not want to be in the vicinity when someone comes.”
Rémy pushed out of Thaddeus’s arms with a nod. “Go,” she said, “and I will too — the sooner I follow this heading, the sooner I will come back for you all, yes?”
Thaddeus smiled. “Fly safely, Little Bird.”
“Do not lose your way, little policeman.”
They looked at each other for another moment, and then Thaddeus turned and left. He stood on the jungle’s soft earth and watched as Rémy winched the airship’s ramp back into place, hiding her from his view inch by inch until she disappeared completely.
Desai placed a hand on his shoulder. “You will see her again, Thaddeus, and soon. I am sure of that.”
The airship began to lift off as Thaddeus turned with a smile. “I know I will.”
He looked up to see that the airship — and Rémy with it — was already high above the tree line, sailing away into the blue, blue sky.
{Chapter 12}
AMBUSH
It had yet to reach nine o’clock in the morning, but the air was already hot. It beat down on the thick, silent jungle, turning the air into a heady, humid soup of smell and sensation. Thaddeus could feel his pack sticking to his back, his shirt already drenched in sweat, though they had barely begun their trek toward the valley. Below his feet, the soft ground was slowly beginning to slope up into the steep pass that marked the valley’s entrance from the direction they had chosen. Ahead, he could see the jagged lines of the rise they would have to navigate. It formed a landscape the Englishman had never seen before — a level line of cracked earth through which grew a line of trees so dense that their leaves seemed to gather darkness against their trunks. The trees stood like sentries at their posts: still, impenetrable, forbidding.
The legend was right about one thing. It was not anywhere Thaddeus would have chosen to go willingly.
The somber air seemed to have had a similar effect on his companions. J trailed behind Desai, who had taken the lead. The boy’s head was down and his shoulders were slumped. Even J’s usually rambunctious hair was subdued, plastered against his scalp in the haze of heat that surrounded them. Dita was quiet for a change, too, no sign of the constant bickering that usually typified her conversations with J. The little girl stared around her, her eyes flicking anxiously here and there as if trying to keep watch on the whole forest around them.
Desai, meanwhile, toiled stoically on ahead, and not for the first time Thaddeus wondered at the man’s endurance. Desai must have reached his sixtieth year, and actually had probably surpassed it, but he showed no signs of fatigue or physical distress. Although, the younger man reflected, perhaps that had more to do with what he knew was ahead for them.
Thaddeus, making up the rear, had spent much of his time thinking about Rémy. Her absence now was the first time they had been apart in all the months since their exodus from France, and even though he knew full well where she was and what she was doing, even though they had said goodbye just an hour or so before and he had seen the airship depart, Thaddeus still found himself, in those split-seconds between one thought and the next, looking up and expecting to see her. Her absence simply felt wrong. His body and his mind could not absorb it.
Things had changed between them over those past months. They had become easier, less fraught with misunderstanding and argument. They had got to know each other better, they had become accustomed to each other’s moods and daily routines, each other’s likes and dislikes. They fitted together better — they fitted together well, which wasn’t something either of them thought would be possible for two such disparate people.
What did it mean? If they fit so well that even an hour apart felt unnatural and strange, at least at first — what did that mean? Affairs of the heart, he reflected, were so much more difficult to navigate than a police investigation.
But he thought he knew. Thaddeus reached into his pocket, finding the tiny object that he had put there weeks ago and frequently taken out to look at since, without ever finding the right time to give it to its intended recipient.
Thaddeus pulled his fingers away from the trinket with a sigh. Of course, being apart may not feel at all odd to Rémy, who was quite possibly the most independent person he knew. It was one of the many things he loved about her, partly because he thought it boded well for him. She didn’t need anyone at all, really, and yet still she chose to stick with him.
The sharp snap of a twig brought Thaddeus out of his reverie in a second. The sound had come from behind him, and he turned, surveying the forest for any sign of movement. He could see nothing, but a renewed sense of unease poured fresh tension into his shoulders.
“Desai …” he called, keeping his voice low. “I think …”
The attack was upon them before he even managed to finish his sentence. Four men clad in the raja’s colors appeared from the undergrowth, teeth bared and fists clenched. Thaddeus backed up, keeping his face to them, realizing with a jolt that none of them had drawn their swords.
“They want to take us alive!” Desai shouted. “Do not let them get close enough — make for the valley, as fast as you can!”
Thaddeus saw J grab Dita’s hand and together the two children made a run for it. He hung back, hoping to give them a chance to get a head start, but two of the men peeled off from their group and followed them.
Thaddeus began to run himself, dodging under the lowest branches he could find in an attempt to slow down whomever might be on his trail. He saw Desai a little way to his left, doing the same. The men pursuing them were fast and nimble, but one-on-one, even if it came to a fight, they had a chance. He wondered why there were not more of them, and where their horses were. If the raja had sent them, they must have been following the airship and to do that would require —
Of course, he thought, darting around the thin trunk of a tree, the airship. That’s what the raja really wants. If there were more men like these, they will have gone after it. Godspeed, Rémy …
He felt a hand clamp on his shoulder,
heavy breathing just behind him as the touch spun him around. Thaddeus ducked under his attacker’s arm, swinging left and then dodging right around the man before kicking out one leg at his calf. The raja’s soldier was too fast, sidestepping the blow before it could connect and then aiming a swift hook at Thaddeus’s jaw. Apparently wanting to take them alive didn’t mean they had to arrive at the raja’s feet bruise-free. Thaddeus avoided the punch and then clasped both of his hands around the man’s slicing fist, bending his knees and throwing his weight back onto the forest floor. The momentum took the attacker by surprise and he went sailing over Thaddeus’s head, disappearing into the jungle undergrowth with a grunt and a rustle. Thaddeus was on his feet and running again in a second.
He could see Desai ahead of him, his own pursuer so close on the older man’s heels that it could only be seconds before he was caught. Of Dita and J — or the two men who had chased after them — there was no sign, which at least gave Thaddeus the breathless hope that they were still free. Perhaps they had even reached the valley and found somewhere to hide there. Its lip leered at them from just a few hundred yards away, its dusty jagged edge tantalizingly close. Thaddeus kept running, not even turning to see whether the man he had downed had recovered himself as yet. As he ran he ducked to scoop a handful of the soft, dry forest dirt into his hand. Clutching it, he made straight for the man on Desai’s tail, his lungs burning with the effort in the hot air of an Indian day.
He saw the soldier glance over his shoulder as he heard Thaddeus’s footsteps. Thaddeus lunged forward, narrowly avoiding a tree root that reared up to snag his leg and then shoved the fistful of dirt into the man’s face. He howled as the dust scratched against his eyes, immediately dropping back and doubling over with both hands to his face.
“Thank you, my young friend,” Desai called over his shoulder breathlessly. “Keep going — we are almost there!”
“And then what?” he shouted back. “Will there be somewhere to hide?”
“You will see!”
The ground was sloping sharply upward. Thaddeus’s legs burned with the renewed effort it took to climb the incline. There was a commotion ahead of them. Thaddeus brushed the sweat out of his eyes to see the two men who had followed Dita and J skittering back down the slope. One of them fell, rolling against a tree trunk before dragging himself up again. Thaddeus thought the two men would launch themselves toward them, but instead they simply seemed intent on getting back down the slope as fast as possible.
One of them passed him close enough for Thaddeus to see the look on the soldier’s face.
It was full of terror.
{Chapter 13}
A NEW HEADING
The compass was set on a southeasterly heading, which took the airship back along the river they had been able to see from the plateau. It cut through the jungle like a pure blue line, its waters far clearer than any river Rémy had ever seen before. Through the airship’s window she could see it twisting and turning through the trees as if it would never stop. Hours passed and the sun rose, and still all that Rémy could see below her were trees, punctuated by the rushing billow of that pure blue water. Several times she reached out to issue a sharp tap against the glass case of the compass, wondering whether perhaps it was broken. Or perhaps, she thought, since she didn’t know what she was supposed to be looking for, she could have missed something below her on the ground. But then, surely, the compass would have done something — changed, somehow — to tell her so?
She had no one to ask, and so she and the airship flew on. Rémy wished that Thaddeus were there with her — or rather, that she was wherever he was, with him. It seemed terribly wrong to be leaving him to deal with whatever he would have to face alone. It was only Thaddeus’s own words convincing her to go that kept her on her course. Otherwise she may have turned back, the puzzle box and its cryptic gift be damned.
As the day grew ever older, the landscape changed. Jungle gave way to open pasture that was dotted by only a few trees. Pasture gave way to more and more villages, all surrounded by neatly cultivated fields instead of unruly jungle. Then she saw towns and then, eventually, even a great walled city. Still there was no indication from the compass that Rémy had reached where it was taking her. It stayed resolutely on its southeasterly heading, not changing, not moving. As the shadows began to creep across the ground below her, Rémy grew impatient.
“Come on!” she exclaimed, picking up the compass and looking at it closely as if it might suddenly tell her something new. “Is this a trick? Hmm? If Desai had not believed in you, I would have tossed you over the side of that plateau! Perhaps I should have anyway! Where are we going? Why aren’t we there yet?”
The compass merely rocked slightly in her palm, its north and south hands shivering against her anger but the third hand holding firm to its course.
With a sigh, Rémy replaced the compass on the control panel and looked up to see a vast line of blue tinting her horizon. White flecks danced on its rolling peaks as it crashed toward her before breaking against the shore.
The airship had reached the ocean.
“Agh!” she cried, throwing her hands up in the air. “Now what? I am supposed to leave this place altogether? I am supposed to just fly out over the water? What?”
The compass refused to tell her anything different at all.
From the position of the burning bright sun and the shadows casting across the hot ground, Rémy thought it must be about four o’clock. Days were long here, and the sun would not set until at least eight. Four more hours to find whatever the compass was trying to show her.
Rémy sat down with a sigh and rubbed her hands over her face. “Well, I have come this far, yes?” she muttered to herself.
She flew on, planning to continue until sunset before turning back. If she kept on a reverse heading, she’d find her way back to the valley in time for tomorrow’s first light. She’d be a day behind the others, but Rémy was fleet of foot, especially when the occasion called for it.
Rémy had given up hope that she’d actually find anything out here on the ocean. Below her the waves bobbed and splashed against each other, stretching on and on in what seemed to be an endless body of water. There were no islands on the horizon, no curves of land unexpectedly showing from the sea. There was nothing and no one.
“Well, old woman,” Rémy muttered, leaning back in the chair and raising her shabby-booted feet to rest against the lip of the control panel. “You have played me for a fool, yes? I wonder where you are now, and how often you laugh at that lost little French girl who so wanted to believe you, eh?”
A sound pulled her attention back to the compass. It was moving — vibrating against the airship’s control panel so hard that it skittered between the knobs and dials, bouncing slightly on the hammered metal surface. Rémy picked it up and saw that the third hand was folding back into itself, sliding back into the tiny slot it had appeared out of that morning. In another moment or so, it was impossible to tell that it had been there at all. The compass was just a compass once again, with two hands telling her which way was north and south, and nothing at all out of the ordinary besides.
Rémy’s heart gave a slight judder and leaned over to look out of the window. This must be it. She must have reached her destination — the place the compass wanted her to find. But how could there be anything out here? Then, squinting into the glorious glare of the setting sun, she saw it.
Bobbing on the waves was a ship — three-masted, all of its sails proudly set out to catch the wind whipping across the churning waves that were burnished in amber as the sun sped toward sunset. Rémy flew toward it. Was this, finally, what the compass had wanted her to see?
As she neared, Rémy could see movement as the sailors realized what was coming toward them. Their shouts brought more men from below, until the deck was awash with them. None of them wore uniforms, Rémy noted — instead, they were dressed in
a vast array of styles that seemed to mix everything from coat tails to shabby cut-off trousers. It looked, Rémy thought, like an odd kind of circus, though what a circus would be doing out here on the ocean instead of performing in a town or city somewhere, she couldn’t imagine.
Putting down the compass, she flew around the ship in an arc, leaning forward to see what was happening below. The people on deck were shouting at her in a rather unfriendly way. She saw two of them run for the main mast and begin to haul on a rope there, hoisting a flag up its length, their huge muscles straining with the effort.
The flag unfurled quickly, the wind catching its roll and whipping it out to stand proud against the prevailing wind.
It was dark — black, in fact, with a skull and crossbones tattooed in white across it.
A Jolly Roger.
Rémy’s stomach clenched sickly and she fumbled for the controls. Pirates! She had to get out of there. There was no telling what —
Something hit the hull with a sharp thunk and instantly the airship began to list to the side, pulling the nose around toward the pirates’ bow. Rémy almost slid out of her chair as the airship juddered and she fought to pull her straight again, but without success. A moment later there was another thunk — this one hit toward the airship’s tail, and suddenly Rémy felt herself being hauled in, pulled lower and lower toward the ship that bobbed below her on the waves.
In a panic, Rémy fought with the controls — the airship bucked and weaved like a goat caught in a rope, but to no avail. Another thunk followed, and then another, and with each came an extra tug that pulled the airship closer and closer to the pirates’ boat.
She could hear them now, roaring as the airship got ever closer. Rémy had no idea what to do. The controls were all but useless, whirring hopelessly under her hands.
“Heave!” came a shout from outside, followed by a roar made up of many voices, “Heave! Heave! Heave!” Each jolt that brought Rémy lower was timed with a cry of Heave!, until the rhythm was as impossible to escape as the ship’s inexorable journey downward.
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