The Sapphire Cutlass

by Sharon Gosling

  “His plan does not include you, raja!” Desai yelled as he and the others were dragged away. “If it did, you would have the tattoo as well! Only those who have it will survive! She will only recognize those who bear the tattoo as her followers!”

  Ikshuvaku took no notice. A new drumbeat began.

  {Chapter 26}

  A POISONOUS TRANSFORMATION

  Rémy was still crouched on top of Dita’s cage, the little girl slumped across the bars at the bottom.

  “Dita!” Rémy cried. “Stay awake! Can you hear me? Try to stay awake!”

  The drums began to sound again. They echoed through the cavern, louder than ever before. The cult members began to move. They abandoned the pit and some left the raised stone stage, dropping back down to the ground level to resume their previous formation. Others remained on the platform, separating into two silent, impenetrable lines. One by one they all turned to face the center of the platform, a fresh chant beginning, droning on endlessly beneath the beating drums.

  There was movement behind the stage, too. Out of the darkness of the archway came another cascade of cult members, walking in two slow, solemn lines on either side of the channel etched in the stone floor. Each of these carried a drum, fastened around their necks with a cord woven of blue thread, beating it rhythmically as they walked slowly out of the gloom.

  Between them, apparently moving of its own accord within the channel in the floor, was a huge stone throne, patterned with ornate carvings. It was turned away from the cavern, its back so high that Rémy couldn’t see who was sitting in it. It slid smoothly in time with the drumbeat, tugged forward by invisible hands. To its left walked a lone man not dressed in the colors of the Sapphire Cutlass, but in white, with a golden cummerbund at his waist and a turban wrapped around white hair — Sahoj. His white tunic had been torn to reveal the tattoo of the cult, etched across his chest. He stared straight ahead, walking calmly in time with the throne until it reached the end of the channel. When it stopped, he stepped aside, turning to face it, a movement echoed by the drummers. They, too, turned inward to face the throne, still hammering out a slow, hypnotic beat.

  Rémy saw movement to her right, this time at the tunnel entrance near the winch. She looked over to see her friends being herded back into the cavern. Behind them were more soldiers, not wearing the colors of the cult this time, but those of the raja. Her friends were trapped, outnumbered, and surrounded, and Rémy’s heart sank. Surely, now, all hope for them — for everything — was lost.

  The drumbeat ceased, although the chanting went on. She looked back toward the stone stage just as the throne began to rotate, swinging on an invisible pivot.

  Rémy felt her breath run still in her chest.

  On the throne sat a woman clad in gold, her eyes shut as if she were sleeping. Her chest was encased in a breastplate that reached over her shoulders to end in spikes as sharp as a church’s spire. Her armor was etched with intricate patterns — whorls and loops like the waves of a churning ocean so that it seemed to ripple even though she was as still as the statues around her. Her waist was encompassed in a wide belt, also of gold, edged by strands of blue silk that fringed her thighs.

  The woman’s legs were bare, though at first it seemed as if they were clothed in the same blue silk as worn by her followers. But then, as they caught the light from the flaming torches on the walls, Rémy realized the truth. Her legs were not covered, but transparent, formed of a stone so clear and so blue that it would match the sky of a high summer’s day over Paris. Even from this distance, where she clung on top of Dita’s cage, Rémy could see how they distorted the shape of the throne behind them, refracting the image of the carved stone as if through a prism.

  Slowly, deliberately, the woman raised her hands and then lowered them to the armrests of her throne. She tipped back her head, opening her eyes.

  Rémy shivered. Behind the woman’s lids there was nothing but pure, bright sapphire, faceted to glint and shine the same unnatural, transparent blue as her legs.

  The Sapphire Cutlass pressed her palms into the stone arms of her throne. Rivulets of power began to dart from her form into its carvings, tracing from where her heart should be along the patterns that circled her armored torso and into the throne, as if the chair was part of her. She lifted her chin, and Rémy realized with dread that the supernatural woman was looking straight at the cage on which she crouched. The Sapphire Cutlass moved her head with one tiny flick, and the cage instantly began to move. Rémy felt it judder beneath her feet and then lift clear of the pit before swinging toward the throne and descending, just as smoothly, to land at the woman’s feet.

  Dita lost consciousness completely as the cage touched the stone. The Sapphire Cutlass stepped from her throne with silent, menacing grace. Rémy flexed her arms and rotated her shoulders, ready to fight. The goddess seemed not to notice her at all, her attention fixed on Dita instead. Rémy sensed her chance and leapt from the cage, left foot extended in a move she would usually use to mount a moving pony in the circus ring.

  She was knocked from midair by the metal-clad arm of one of the woman’s attendants. Rémy crashed to the ground, a forest of legs closing in around her. She sat up, her head ringing painfully from the impact, and rough hands grabbed her shoulders, dragging her to her feet.

  The Sapphire Cutlass seemed oblivious to the disruption. She raised one hand toward the cage, and two of her soldiers moved forward to grasp the bars. Another fluid movement of her hand, and they were pulling the metal apart, bending the rods, prying open Dita’s prison as if it were made of nothing more than paper. One of them reached in and lifted the little girl out, laying her at the foot of his goddess.

  “Dita,” Rémy shouted, struggling against the arms that held her. “Dita, wake up!”

  The girl didn’t move at all and Rémy feared that she was already dead. The Sapphire Cutlass looked down at the lifeless pile of rags that was Dita, examining her with cold blue eyes. Then, slowly, she crouched at the girl’s side and extended one hand to place it on Dita’s forehead.

  “Stop it!” Rémy cried, still struggling and still trapped. “Leave her alone!”

  She saw a tiny lick of blue flame dance around the woman’s arm. It circled the limb from shoulder to elbow, from elbow to wrist, from wrist to palm, before flickering out of sight. The Sapphire Cutlass withdrew her hand from Dita’s head and stood up. She remained at the girl’s side, looking down with her impassive, terrifying blue gaze.

  The drumbeat went on and on, crashing and echoing around the cavern. Rémy’s head ached and the flames from the ever-burning torches were beginning to hurt her eyes.

  Dita moved. She turned her head left and right. She sat up. She opened her eyes.

  They were of the purest, purest blue.

  They were sapphire.

  {Chapter 27}

  A NEW JEWEL

  Thaddeus struggled to hold on to J, who was fighting against him with everything he had.

  “Dita!” J cried. “What’s that monster doing to ’er?”

  Thaddeus felt helpless, watching as Rémy was held fast by two of the goddess’s guards. There was fresh movement behind him, and Ikshuvaku appeared, his terrified soldiers parting to let him through. As he looked down into the cavern, the smug look on the jeweled man’s face turned first to shock and then to fear.

  “What devilry is this?” The raja’s horrified voice was so hushed that it was almost lost beneath the pounding beat of the drums.

  “What’s the matter, raja?” Desai asked quietly. “Not entirely how Sahoj described it when he spoke of the Sapphire Cutlass?”

  The jeweled man opened his mouth to say something else, but no sound was forthcoming. After a second he shook his head and tried again. “He told me she would become another servant,” Ikshuvaku murmured. “That once she was awake, she would do my bidding and none other’s.”

 
Desai’s mouth twisted into a grim smile. “Does she look as if she’s likely to take your orders, Ikshuvaku? Does she look as if she would take the orders of any mere man?”

  The raja tried to say something, but managed only to stutter, “This … this power …”

  “It should not exist,” Desai finished for him.

  The raja fell silent again, continuing to watch as the Sapphire Cutlass turned her attention to Sahoj. The mystic stepped forward with a deep bow, and appeared to say something to the woman.

  “Are her legs truly made of sapphire?” Thaddeus asked, somewhat mesmerized by the play of flame-light that danced through the strange woman’s transparent limbs. This all felt unreal, somehow, and he wondered whether that was the point of the never-ending drumbeat, which now almost felt as if it were coming from inside his own skull.

  “She is becoming the stone,” Desai answered. “See the power that radiates from her even now? When the transformation is complete … she will be unstoppable.”

  “Surely you exaggerate, as always, Desai,” said the raja, his tone straining to achieve its usual languid mockery. “Sahoj clearly thinks she can be controlled, or he would not be so close to her.”

  Desai cast the raja a pitying look. “He does not seek to control her. He seeks to join her — to stand at her side and feed from her fortunes, even as he did with you all these years. Your power is almost spent, but hers is rising and it will be greater than the world has ever seen. What better place to enjoy such power but at its right hand?”

  “The tattoo,” Kai spoke up. “Is it really so important? They all have them.”

  “It is how she will recognize her followers and bestow her power upon them,” said Desai. “Any without it will serve as slaves — or perish.”

  “The Comte de Cantal had one,” said Thaddeus. “So we have to suppose that all those other people on the list do, too.”

  “Indeed,” Desai agreed. “They have been planning this for years. Decades, perhaps. It seems her followers are spread throughout the world, awaiting this awakening and the power of her true strength. With it, no mortal will be able to stand in their way. They will own the world.”

  “What do we do?” The words were spoken by the raja. When the eyes of the group turned to him, he squared his shoulders and set his jaw. “I do not have the tattoo. I will not serve and I refuse to die,” he spat.

  “The only chance we have now is in the opal,” Desai said, turning to look at Upala. “It may be the only thing that can stop the transformation.”

  Upala pulled her opal pendant from beneath her shirt as she looked down at what was happening below them. It glowed faintly in the dim light of the cavern. “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing,” Kai said forcefully as he stepped forward. “Whatever has to be done, I will do it.” He held out his hand to Upala. “Give me the stone.”

  “No,” said the pirate woman. “You gave it to me. It is mine.”

  “I will return it to you,” Kai told her, gesturing with his hand at the opal. “When this is done, you can have it back.”

  Upala looked at him steadily. “You are injured,” she pointed out. “Whatever has to be done, I am sure it will need to be fast. Tell me, old man,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the pirate captain even as she addressed Desai. “What must I do?”

  “The opal must drain her power,” Desai told her. “To do that you must press it to her forehead and hold it steady. For as long as it may take.”

  Kai spun to look at him. “You have got to be joking.”

  Desai shook his head. “I am afraid not.”

  “You are not doing it,” Kai said, turning back to Upala. “I am your captain — it’s my responsibility. Give me the opal.”

  Upala took a step back. “I will not,” she said calmly. “The gem is mine. You gave it to me. I accepted it and now I accept the responsibility for using it.”

  “But I didn’t know!” Kai burst out. “When I gave it to you, I didn’t know all this. I just wanted … just wanted to …”

  Upala moved closer. “You wanted to … what?”

  Color sprang into Kai’s cheeks. He looked away, putting his hands on his hips and adopting a swaggering stance. Upala lifted one hand and ran her fingers lightly along his jaw. He reacted quickly, reaching up to grab her wrist and clutching it tightly against his chest.

  “You are my captain,” Upala said softly, “and I am your talisman. I will do this. It is my duty. It is my right.”

  “You’ll never make it,” Kai said thickly. “They’ll kill you before you even reach the demon.”

  “Have a little faith, Captain Kai.”

  He tugged her a little closer. “If I have ever had faith in anything, then I have it in you.”

  Upala smiled, a spark of bright beauty against the backdrop of nightmare playing out below them. She stepped away from Kai, turning to face the rest of them as the captain’s hand released her wrist and slid down to grasp her fingers instead.

  “I will need a diversion,” she said. “Or Kai’s right, I will not make it. Fight like tigers, my friends, and we may still prevail.”

  “What about Dita?” J asked. “We can’t just leave ’er like that! We’ve got to ’elp ’er.”

  “Go for the girl first, if you can,” Desai told Upala. “Her transformation is new, and you may still be able to reverse it entirely.”

  Upala nodded. “All right. Now, enough talk. It is time for action.” She let go of Kai’s hand and drew her sword. “Carve a path that will make them think we are launching a full-on attack.”

  “And you?” Thaddeus asked. “What are you going to do?”

  Upala smiled at him. “I shall take a stealthier route.”

  She went to move away, but Kai reached out and pulled her back, spinning her toward him. They stared at each other for a split second, and in it Thaddeus felt his stomach drop. He knew that look — he had looked at Rémy that way so many times that it was impossible to count them all.

  “Don’t die,” Kai begged Upala quietly. “That’s an order. Don’t. Die.”

  Thaddeus looked away as their lips met. His eyes sought out Rémy instead, her black-clothed figure drowning in the impossibly huge sea of gold and blue that flooded the cavern below, and his heart turned over. These past days and hours had been about the fate of the entire world, and yet in the few seconds of yearning he had felt radiating from Kai and Upala, Thaddeus recognized a simple truth.

  None of it mattered to him without Rémy.

  {Chapter 28}

  LAST CHANCE

  Rémy found herself firmly trapped between two lines of the cult’s soldiers.

  “Dita,” she shouted, trying uselessly to push between the bodies in front of her. “Can you hear me? Look at me!”

  The little girl was on her feet now, her back to Rémy, her hands hanging loosely at her sides. The Sapphire Cutlass was walking back to her throne, and on her back was a new bloom of stony blue, creeping up toward her shoulders from beneath her armor, turning her flesh transparent. The stone in her nature was spreading steadily through her form.

  The unnatural woman sat down, more little arcs of blue electricity snaking from her form to hiss across the stone. She lifted her chin as if surveying the room, and for a moment Rémy thought she was going to say something. Instead, she lifted one hand and held it out to Dita, who began to move toward her.

  “No!” Rémy shouted. “Dita! Wait!”

  She struggled forward, trying to force her way between the soldiers. They were an impenetrable wall. Hands dragged her back, one arm twisted up and around her neck until she felt the breath struggle to reach her lungs. Rémy kicked out, aiming for her captor’s shin and hearing a sharp intake of breath somewhere near her ear. She’d obviously caused some pain, because the grip on her throat lessened a fraction — enough for her to take a lungful of
the cavern’s musty, stale air.

  Rémy dropped her center of gravity, becoming a dead weight as the soldier who had her in his grip tried to regain his composure. She slid farther out of his grasp, dropping to her haunches as his hands scrabbled to pull her back up. That was all the time Rémy needed. She twisted, flicking her hips into a spin just as she would on the trapeze, bringing her lead leg around so fast that the force was enough to pull even further on her captor’s upset balance. For a second, she was free, pivoting quickly to bring her left leg up and punch it forward into his unprotected sternum. She felt the crack under her foot as his bones gave way, but it didn’t give her pause. She lunged forward, dragging his cutlass from his belt as he slumped to the ground.

  Wheeling with a wild yell, she sliced the curved sword around her in a circular motion, sending more of the soldiers out of alignment. The drummers faltered, unable to defend themselves as Rémy leapt toward them. She didn’t try to go through them — instead she took a running jump, launching herself at the tallest of the line and planting one foot against his drum as she soared skyward. The leverage gave her enough momentum to take her over his head in a curling twist that landed her several feet in front of him more quickly than he had time to react.

  “Dita,” she cried again, but the girl acted as if she heard and saw nothing at all but the strange woman seated on the great, carved throne. Rémy ran forward and grabbed Dita’s shoulder, spinning her around.

  Where Dita’s eyes had once been there was only the transparent blue of stone cold sapphire. The rest of the girl’s face was entirely expressionless. Then she smiled, a gesture as chilling as the sight of her eyes.

  “Dita,” Rémy begged. “You must be in there somewhere. You must be! Whatever this is, fight it — I’ll get you out of here. I promised, didn’t I? And Rémy Brunel does not break her promises.”