The Sapphire Cutlass

by Sharon Gosling

  The crackle of flame burst from behind them anew, and Rémy turned her head to see fire seeping through the walls as the planks burned through.

  “Go,” she shouted to Kai and Upala. “We have to go now! Go!”

  Upala leapt, disappearing into the smoke and fog swirling outside just a second before Kai followed her.

  Rémy battled her way across the airship’s heaving floor, clinging to the doorframe as the craft bucked and juddered. Its bones were showing now, the planks fracturing, separating, turning to cinders. Rémy thought about the ruby, still in its mooring, but it would have to rest in the ashes, for she’d never be able to reach it without burning herself alive. Outside the fog was so thick it was impossible to tell how far she would have to jump.

  The airship smashed into another tree, groaning as if it were in pain, and the cabin split in two.

  Rémy jumped.

  The fog swallowed her whole, cold and cloying as if she had leapt into a roiling ocean. She tried not to tense up — the only way to survive a plunge from the wire was to let every muscle and bone relax — but not knowing how far she had to fall made that difficult. Branches hit her first, scratching at her face and legs, but mercifully slowing her down.

  And then, the ground.

  She crumpled, ankles folding to her knees, knees folding to her hips, arms just managing to stop her head smashing hard against the earth. The breath was knocked from her lungs as surely as she’d been punched in the stomach. Rémy lay on her back, staring up into a mess of swirling gray, lit from above by the flames of the dying airship. They bloomed yellow and orange and red like a sinking summer sun, the colors diffusing through the mist until it felt as if they filled the sky.

  Winded and unsure of how badly she’d been hurt, Rémy realized she had to move. The airship was disintegrating above her, raining fire through the fog. A clod of burning plank thudded into the ground just inches from her head. She dragged herself up, feeling a sharp pain in her ankle but ignoring it. Rémy pushed through the mist, stumbling into tree after tree, blind in the gray-white gloom.

  “Kai?” she shouted, crunching into yet another tree. “Upala?”

  Her voice seemed to echo against the thick mist. Something brushed against her — not a branch this time. Something else. A hand? She spun, trying to follow the movement, but it disappeared before she could fix on it.

  “Kai?” she shouted again. “Are you there? Upala, can you hear me?”

  A hand clamped over her mouth from behind. She was dragged to the ground, falling against somebody who held her firmly from behind.

  “Ssh,” hissed a woman’s voice into Rémy’s ear. “Be quiet, anukarana. They will hear.”

  Upala! Rémy struggled against the pirate’s hand until the woman let her go. Rémy scrambled away, turning to face her. Upala held a finger up to her lips and then moved the same hand in a circling motion, indicating the fog around them.

  “They are out there,” she said quietly. “They are coming for us. They took Kai.”

  “What? Who? Where —”

  A look of irritation flashed across the pirate’s face. She leaned forward and clamped her hand over Rémy’s mouth, eyes flashing fire as surely as the airship through the fog. Then she froze. For a second neither woman moved at all, until Upala slowly turned her head. Rémy followed her motion with her eyes and saw a movement through the gloom, illuminated by the flames from the still-burning airship. It was barely there — a hint of a shape through the mist, the lithe movement of limbs disappearing into the fog. Upala looked back at her, then removed her hand.

  “I saw them take Kai,” she mouthed, her voice barely there. “One moment he was beside me as we looked for you, the next …” She flicked her fingers. “We will be next.”

  Rémy glanced around, detecting more shapes in the mist. Was that a face, there, in the shadows? She reached for the axe and found it gone. It must have slipped from her belt as she fell. Rémy, dismayed, looked at the ground around her feet in case it was there — without the axe she was entirely defenseless. There was nothing. It was gone.

  The shapes crowded toward them, closer and closer. There were so many of them, too many to fight, but that wouldn’t stop Rémy trying. She’d be damned before they took her so easily. She pushed herself slowly to her feet, feeling Upala move with her and hearing the sound of metal sliding against metal as the pirate drew both her swords. A second later Rémy felt something brush against her right hand. She jerked her fingers away, imagining a creature from the mist grasping at them.

  “Take it,” Upala hissed.

  Rémy looked down to see the woman’s hand outstretched, holding out the same blade she had offered her on the beach.

  “We will fight them together. Yes, anukarana?”

  Rémy didn’t need telling twice. She grasped the hilt of Upala’s sword. “Yes,” she said. “Together.”

  “Back to back,” Upala murmured, turning slowly so that their shoulders were touching. “Keep your head up. Do not let them see your fear. Understand?”

  The light from the airship was dimming, but even so it was enough to let the two women see what was coming for them. There were figures in the mist, many of them, a circle of bodies joining around them, layer upon layer of them all slowly moving forward. Rémy’s heart beat hard — even with Upala’s sword in her hand she could see no way of fighting off so many attackers.

  Then, above the crackle and spit of the airship’s dying throes, another sound grew into the air. At first Rémy thought it was just her heart, beating so hard and so fast that it had set the air alight. But the beat slowly grew: louder, faster, louder and faster.

  Drums. It was the sound of drums.

  The sound thundered through the forest, echoing between the trees and glancing off the mist. At the sound of them, the figures in the mist began to slink away. It was hard to tell at first, so hidden were they by the fog, but one by one, they vanished like wraiths into the forest.

  “They’ve gone,” Rémy said, speaking over the sound of the drums.

  “Yes,” agreed Upala. “But where?”

  The two women turned to look at each other, listening to the sound. It felt as if it were beating through them, vibrating the very ground on which they stood, filling their veins as surely as any rhythmic chant.

  “They were following that noise,” Rémy said. “The drums were calling them somewhere. To somewhere.”

  Upala nodded, her eyes glittering. “Then we must follow. Don’t you think?”

  Rémy nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I do think.”

  They took off through the trees, staying close to one another and allowing the beat of the drums to pull their blood in its direction.

  {Chapter 20}

  DESPERATE TIMES

  Over the sound of the incessant drone of chanting came another noise: the clang and rattle of metal. Thaddeus turned to see that down on the stone ramp below them, another cage was being readied for use. There came another shout: angry, indignant. A ripple of movement was passing through the rows of swaying cult members — someone was being dragged, kicking and fighting, to the cage. That someone had short dark hair and was dressed all in black. Thaddeus stared hard.

  The new prisoner fought hard, but whoever it was seemed to be hampered by an injured leg. In the end, the cult was too strong — four grabbed an arm and a leg each and carried the struggling figure the rest of the way to the cage and threw it inside. The cage was immediately winched into the air, jerking the prisoner around inside with each pull as it gradually rose to meet the others.

  “’Ere,” said J, “is that Rémy? ’As she got ’erself caught ’an all?”

  Thaddeus had been wondering the same thing, but as the prisoner drew nearer he saw that though the incarcerated may be a Brunel, it definitely wasn’t Rémy.

  The cage slid into place beside the rest of them. Fo
r sure, Thaddeus thought, it could have been Rémy. It was most certainly her twin. The man swinging beside them would have been her mirror image if not for the square stubbled jaw and the faint scars crisscrossing his weather-beaten face. He was bleeding from a shallow cut on his dirt-smeared cheek and his trousers were ripped, showing a nastier gash in his thigh. Breathing hard, the prisoner got gingerly to his feet and looked at them each in turn. Then he shook his head and busied himself by tearing a strip of cloth from his ruined trousers and using it to bind his wound.

  “An old man, two children, and a sunburned, threadbare vagabond,” he said with a bark of unimpressed laughter. “I should have known.”

  “Who are you?” Thaddeus asked.

  The man finished tying his bandage and put his hands on his hips. “Can’t you tell, Thaddeus Rec?”

  “You must be Rémy’s brother,” Thaddeus replied, “but beyond that you have the advantage over me, Mr… . ?”

  The man stared back at him with eyes that were disturbingly similar to Rémy’s. “Kai,” he said. “My name is Kai.”

  “Where is she?”

  Kai glanced around with narrowed eyes, taking in the room. “On her way here, I would think.”

  “As a prisoner? Or free?”

  Kai’s eyes met his again. “That’s to be determined. For our sakes we’d better hope that both she and Upala are still the latter.”

  “Upala?” It was Desai who asked the question this time.

  Kai flicked his glance toward Desai with a serious look on his face. “Upala. She’s a gem, that one. If they’re both still free, then we may have a chance.”

  “Wot about the airship?” J piped up. “Is she bringing that, too? I ’ave a feelin’ we ain’t getting’ out of ’ere without it.”

  Kai looked at him seriously. “You’re J,” he said. “She told me you built it. Was she lying?”

  J puffed his chest out, scowling. “No, she ain’t lying. I got it to work.”

  Rémy’s twin smiled. “I’m impressed.” Then his smile faded. “I’m also sorry to report that the airship is no more. We were brought down by fools with flaming arrows. The very last of it is probably still burning out there now.”

  J’s face turned pale and his shoulders slumped. “Burned?”

  “Aye. We came in like a sack of rice hurled from a cargo ship. We’re lucky any of us survived the crash at all.”

  “But — but you all did?” Thaddeus asked, fear curling like smoke around his heart. “Rémy wasn’t hurt?”

  Kai looked at him thoughtfully. “Actually, now you come to mention it … I didn’t see Rémy leap from the ship. But surely you know by now that she has more lives than a cat?” He grinned. “She and I, we both do. She’ll have made it.”

  Thaddeus rubbed a hand over his face, trying to swallow his distress. He felt Kai’s curious eyes on him, but Thaddeus didn’t meet his gaze again. A moment later, Kai turned his attention to Desai.

  “So you are the one who filled their ears with children’s stories, are you?”

  Desai raised an eyebrow at the implied accusation and then lifted one arm and swept it out to indicate the rows of swaying cult members below them. “Children’s story or not, I would say my prediction of trouble was accurate, wouldn’t you, Mr. Kai?”

  Kai followed his gesture and narrowed his eyes again. “It’s just Kai,” he said. “I’m no English gentleman and I won’t be treated as such.” He thrust his chin at the men and women below. “That armor. It’s not just armor, is it? There’s something … strange about it.”

  Thaddeus had to agree. “I think it’s grafted to their bodies,” he said, pushing his worries about Rémy to one side. “Look at where the rivets have been placed at their joints. I don’t think they can take it off.”

  “What’s the good o’ that, then?” J asked. “Won’t their skin just be all manky underneath, like? Why wouldn’t they want to take it off?”

  Thaddeus didn’t have an answer for that, except … “We saw something similar in France. And in England, come to think of it. Mechanical soldiers.”

  “But these ain’t mechanical,” J reasoned. “They’s people. Ain’t they?”

  “Maybe they are at the moment.” Thaddeus looked up at Desai with a frown. “But maybe they won’t be for long.”

  Desai’s face was serious as he nodded thoughtfully. “There is alchemy that can turn men to stone,” he said, “but as for turning them into metal …”

  “Why turn men into metal,” Kai asked, still looking out at the mass of people below, “when you can simply cover them in it?”

  “Metal men have no thoughts of their own,” Thaddeus pointed out. “They’ll do whatever they’re ordered to, however terrible the order. They are automatons.”

  Kai looked down at the chanting army below with a shrug. “You think those men and women down there won’t obey any command they are given?” he said scornfully. “Whatever minds of their own they once had are long gone. They are already automatons, Thaddeus Rec. And I bet real people are a damned sight cheaper to find than metal men.”

  “Then whose command are they taking?” Thaddeus wondered. “They look like worshippers, not like soldiers. Desai, I’ve been thinking. If you’re still telling me this is all for the raja and his mystic … I don’t think I believe it. Not now I’ve seen them.”

  Desai smiled at him thinly. “Ever the detective, Thaddeus Rec. I confess, I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Well, what then?” Dita’s voice made them all look toward her. She was pale, her face fearful. “What is happening here? And what are they,” she nodded in the direction of the people below, “going to do with us?”

  The rest of them had no answer for that. No good one, anyway. Below them, the dull droning of the chant went on and on. It felt like a drug, flooding Thaddeus’s mind until he couldn’t even think clearly.

  “Well, there’s no sense waiting around to find out,” Kai said, his voice cutting through the fog of noise around them. “We’ve got to find a way out of here.”

  As they watched, he climbed quickly and easily to the top of his cage. Thaddeus was reminded of Rémy again — Kai was almost as graceful in his movements as his sister. He shook the hatch at the top of the cage, but to no avail — it was locked fast.

  “Anyone got something I can pick this lock with?” Kai called down to them. “I suppose that would be too much to hope for, wouldn’t it?”

  “Pity Rémy ain’t ’ere,” J observed. “She’s always got that sort of fing on ’er.”

  Kai smirked. “And there she was trying to tell me that she was a reformed character …”

  The end of his sentence rang into silence.

  The chanting had stopped. Just like that, as if someone had snapped their fingers or flipped a switch, the noise ended. Every one of the hundreds of people below them fell silent in one single breath.

  The change sent a prickle up Thaddeus’s spine. The new quiet was so absolute that he could hear his heart thumping in his chest. Slowly he turned and looked down. No one moved. No one said a thing. The cult of the Sapphire Cutlass had lifted their chins and now stared up at the four prisoners in complete and utter silence, their wild eyes wide and unblinking as if they were nothing more than posed dolls on a child’s shelf.

  A drumbeat began to sound. It reverberated around the cavern in a rumble like thunder. Low at first — slow at first — it grew louder and faster with each stroke.

  Thump thump thump thump

  Thump-thump-thump-thump

  Thump-thump-thump-thump

  Thumpthump-thumpthump-thumpthump

  Thumpthump-thumpthump-thumpthump …

  Their cages began to move. They rattled along the track set into the cave roof above them, inching toward the raised stone stage set with the throne that Thaddeus had spied earlier.

  “Oi!”
J yelled. “Now what?”

  Thaddeus looked up at the track above them, illuminated in a way it had not been before the torches were lit. It wasn’t leading to the stage, he realized. It stopped short before that. It ended above the darkened pit sunk in the cavern floor, but he still wasn’t close enough to see what it held, though whatever it was moved restlessly in the dim light.

  “Desai,” he shouted to the front of the line of cages. “What is that? What’s down there?”

  Desai didn’t have a chance to answer. A piercing scream shattered the air, loud enough to drown out the drums.

  It was Dita. In the cage beside Desai, she was almost as close to the pit as he was. She pointed at what was below them.

  Thaddeus peered down as his own cage finally reached the lip of the pit.

  Snakes.

  The pit was full of thousands of writhing, squirming snakes.

  Dita had stopped screaming and slumped to the bottom of her cage, her knuckles white where they gripped the bars.

  “Don’t you worry,” J shouted to her, his voice almost lost beneath the sound of the drums, “Dita, we’ll get out of here before — before anyfin’ ’appens wi’ those snakes. You hear me? Dita? We’re all right fer now, ain’t we? They can’t get us up ’ere. Can they, eh?”

  The little girl didn’t answer — perhaps she hadn’t heard. She was still staring down into the pit as her cage came to a stop above it with the others sliding into place beside her.

  “This is getting worse by the minute,” said Kai. “We have to do something.”

  “Like what?” Thaddeus asked.

  Kai looked around. Then he threw himself to the other side of his cage. It swung wildly on its chain, bumping into the one in which Thaddeus was trapped.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  Kai took no notice. He scrambled to the other side of the cage just as it was swinging back into place, forcing it into further motion. This time it avoided bashing into Thaddeus’s prison, arching into a wider swing. Thaddeus saw Kai grin as he leapt to the other side of the cage again. The cage swung even more.