The Sapphire Cutlass Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication Page

  {Chapter 1} THE TIGER AND THE BIRD

  {Chapter 2} PUZZLES

  {Chapter 3} THE JEWELED MAN

  {Chapter 4} A JUNGLE PALACE

  {Chapter 5} BREAKING IN

  {Chapter 6} BREAKING OUT

  {Chapter 7} ESCAPE BY AIR

  {Chapter 8} THE PAST RESURFACES

  {Chapter 9} A SORRY TALE

  {Chapter 10} A NEW CULT

  {Chapter 11} THE PUZZLE UNDONE

  {Chapter 12} AMBUSH

  {Chapter 13} A NEW HEADING

  {Chapter 14} INTO THE VALLEY

  {Chapter 15} ANUKARANA

  {Chapter 16} THE REUNION

  {Chapter 17} INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN

  {Chapter 18} A JOURNEY BY NIGHT

  {Chapter 19} TAKEN BY SPIRITS

  {Chapter 20} DESPERATE TIMES

  {Chapter 21} DESPERATE MEASURES

  {Chapter 22} A DIVERSION

  {Chapter 23} A BRIEF REPRIEVE

  {Chapter 24} A FAMILIAR DEVICE

  {Chapter 25} THE SAPPHIRE CUTLASS

  {Chapter 26} A POISONOUS TRANSFORMATION

  {Chapter 27} A NEW JEWEL

  {Chapter 28} LAST CHANCE

  {Chapter 29} DONE FOR

  {Chapter 30} A SAPPHIRE TIDE

  {Chapter 31} OPALS AND BONES

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Back Cover

  In loving memory of Andy Sears, who always looked good in a green jacket.

  {Chapter 1}

  THE TIGER AND THE BIRD

  The jungle fell silent.

  A sudden hush dropped over the verdant foliage as if someone had trapped it inside a glass jar. The birds huddled closer to their branches, concealing their bright jewel colors beneath the sun-dappled leaves. The chattering hordes of black and white monkeys deserted their overhead perches, carrying their cries — and their babies — with them until the echoes faded into the distance. Even the insects ceased to buzz and skitter. The searing hot air of midmorning became still and empty, a strange sense of expectancy hanging in it.

  The chital froze and raised its head, the white dots that peppered the little deer’s reddish brown flanks quivering as it sniffed the air.

  Rémy cursed silently. Crouched beneath a bush just a few feet away, she was hot, cramped, and tired of this hunt, which had been going on all morning without success. Whatever had scared the fawn at this crucial moment was in danger of depriving her of her dinner. The loop of rope that belonged to the makeshift trap she had set hours before lay just beyond where the creature now stood.

  Go on, Rémy urged it silently. Just a little farther …

  The chital turned, head still up, ears flicking this way and that, and took a step toward Rémy’s hiding place. No, Rémy thought. Not this way!

  The deer, oblivious and still afraid, took another step in the wrong direction. It looked as if it were preparing to bolt.

  Sensing a last chance, Rémy stood, but the deer was already moving. It leapt toward her, its small but powerful back legs kicking up the dust of the forest floor. Rémy lunged forward, arms stretched wide as if she could herd the creature in the right direction, but the chital flicked sideways in midair, black eyes wide with fright, nostrils flaring.

  If, in those briefest of moments, Rémy had time to wonder why the deer had chosen to run at her rather than away, the question was swiftly answered. Something surged out of the undergrowth behind it, a flash of orange and white striped with black, massive and muscular with a gaping maw and yellowed teeth as large and sharp as carving knives. The huge creature sliced through the clearing, bathing Rémy in a wash of air that rolled over her as it passed.

  The cat caught the chital, one massive bite from those fangs crushing the deer’s neck before the beast rippled to a halt at the edge of the clearing, giant paws as silent as slippers on the jungle floor.

  The tiger turned to look at Rémy Brunel.

  The cat’s head was enormous, almost half the size of the deer between its teeth. The tiger’s body easily dwarfed Rémy’s, and even now, from several feet away, she could see the rippling muscles beneath the bright beauty of its glossy tri-colored coat.

  Blood dripped from the tiger’s razor-sharp teeth, peppering the earth with scarlet. Nothing else moved. The tiger watched her with huge, sepia-colored eyes, as if waiting to see what she would do. Rémy herself didn’t know. The tiger already had prey to occupy it, but the chital was small. She would make a bigger meal. If she moved, would it come after her? If it did, Rémy knew that as swift as she was, she’d never outrun a tiger in full flight.

  The Little Bird was no match at all for a Big Cat. Not on the ground, anyway …

  The tiger twitched, lifting one huge front paw and setting it down again. She could see its claws, shining like opaque, slivered jewels through the feathery white fur of its feet.

  The tiger growled, the muscles along its nose wrinkling like waves on the ocean, its whiskers quivering. Rémy turned and ran. She made for the nearest tree, throwing herself at it and scrambling skyward up the parched bark at breakneck speed. She felt the tiger coming at her, its bulk disturbing the still air as it crossed the clearing in one leap. It thumped against the tree, shaking the trunk with its full weight so that Rémy almost lost her grip. She clung on, digging her nails into the bark, feeling it give under her fingers as she pulled herself up. The tiger leapt after her, paw outstretched and body extended, so big that she was sure she would feel its claws in her legs. Rémy kept going, scrambling higher and higher until she was out of the creature’s reach. Breathing hard, she allowed herself a pause to look down.

  The tiger was climbing the tree, using its needle-sharp claws to drag itself upward. It snarled, the sound dispersing like the low rumble of thunder through the trees.

  Rémy ran quickly along the narrow branch, balancing even as the tiger’s movements shook and shuddered it beneath her booted feet. It began to bow beneath her weight, but by then she had lined up a jump. Taking a fraction of a second to center herself, Rémy flung herself into midair, the colors of the jungle whipping past her like circus streamers as she reached for a branch of the neighboring tree. Her hands gripped and held the rough bark like the bar of a trapeze and she swung there for a moment, testing its strength. To her relief, it held. She bounced there for a second, then used the momentum to twist one hand over the other, turning to see what her hunter was doing.

  The tiger snarled again and dropped back to the ground, too clever to follow her along the narrow branch. It moved to stand beneath her instead. Rémy hung there, nothing but the strength of her arms and several feet of empty, hot jungle air between her and the angry cat. It hunched itself backward on its hindquarters.

  She swung out of the way as the tiger leapt, snapping its jaws around empty air. She hooked her legs over the branch and heaved herself onto her stomach, just as she would have done on the trapeze, then found her way to her feet. She moved higher, where the branches were thinner but out of the reach of the tiger’s questing claws. Still the creature stood below her, those great yellow eyes watching every movement, just waiting for her to make a mistake.

  Rémy, out of breath, realized that she’d have to take the monkey’s highway if she wanted to escape in one piece. It’s just as well, she thought as she scanned the trees around her for her next move, that I have kept up my training, even though there has been no prop
er audience to watch me for months.

  She set off, zigzagging from branch to branch through the trees, hands protesting at the rough nature of the holds she reached for over and over again. The tiger padded along beneath her for a long way, snarling every now and then, waiting for her to make a mistake. Rémy Brunel, however, rarely made mistakes — at least, not on the trapeze. She climbed, she jumped, and she swung, as nimble and light as a bird — or a monkey.

  Rémy didn’t see the tiger go. One minute it was there, following below her like a flash of orange flame. The next it had melted back into the jungle. Most likely it was returning to the clearing to reclaim the chital before a pack of dhole came across it.

  Still, she stuck to the trees. Just in case.

  {Chapter 2}

  PUZZLES

  It took Rémy more than an hour to get back to the airship. Her crew had set her down in a small clearing that housed an ornate ruined temple. Rémy had been reluctant to take the swiftest route in case the tiger followed her, and besides, she hadn’t wanted to return empty-handed. As it was, when she finally walked into the camp, Rémy carried over her shoulder a brace of rabbits — not quite the venison of the chital, it was true, but at least there would be something for the pot that night.

  “Rémy!” Dita’s voice danced out of the trees toward her. She looked up, just in time to see the little girl jump down from the lowest branch of the nearest tree. “You’ve been ages! I thought you were lost!”

  “Lost? Me? Never!” Rémy told her with a smile. “Just a little waylaid, that’s all.”

  “I have been practicing,” Dita said proudly, “while you were gone. I can almost get all the way to the end without falling now.”

  Rémy looked at the taut rope that she and Thaddeus had strung between the two sturdiest trees that edged the clearing. It was four feet from the ground and at least eight feet long. “That’s very good indeed,” she said, genuinely impressed, making a mental note to adjust her next few lessons to accommodate Dita’s apparently natural skill on the wire. “Especially since you’ve only been learning for a few weeks.”

  “Well, it is wichtig,” said Dita, who still had the habit of peppering her English with words from her native German language. Her face took on a solemn look. “When we return home to Europe, I want a proper circus job.” She wrinkled her nose. “No more sweeping up after the messy elephants. If I can walk a rope, then I can do anything. Like you, ja?”

  Rémy grinned, as much at the girl’s enthusiasm as the compliment. “I’m not sure about anything,” she said, pulling her catch from her shoulder and holding it up. “I’m still not too good at cooking.”

  “Pfft!” exclaimed Dita, her hands on her hips. “But that is a good thing! It means the boys have to do it. They have to be useful for something!”

  Rémy smiled again and then looked around. The clearing was very quiet. “Where are they, anyway?” she asked.

  Dita nodded toward the silent airship, at rest between two crumbling yellow walls with its balloon fully inflated, which it hadn’t been when Rémy left. “J, he is hard at work on the ruby mechanism,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “He thinks it is not working quite as smoothly as it should. Honestly, even if there were nothing wrong with it, he would find something to tinker with. Boys with toys, ja?”

  “What about Thaddeus?” Rémy asked, walking to the area that had been designated as their “kitchen” and dropping the rabbits in a heap beside the remnants of the previous night’s fire.

  “The other side,” Dita said, indicating the airship again. She grinned wickedly. “He is an Englishman, no? He must hide from all this terrible sun!”

  Rémy skipped quickly over a pile of fallen yellow wall, retrieved her bag from inside the airship, shouted a hello to the out-of-sight J, and went to find Thaddeus Rec. He was sitting in the dappled shadows cast by the dense forest behind him, a large map spread out over his knees and his old policeman’s notebook and pencil in one hand. His feet were bare; his trousers rolled up to his calves. His white shirt, although clean, was looking somewhat worse for wear after months of travel and was pulled up to the elbows and open at the throat. Rémy paused to watch him for a moment, smiling at the look of utter concentration on his face. Thaddeus’s skin had darkened to a rich bronze tan in the sun that had followed them ever since they had reached the coast of India.

  “Afternoon, Monsieur,” Rémy said softly as she approached. She knelt down beside him and kissed him on his cheek, which bore a prickle of dark stubble.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Brunel,” said Thaddeus, accepting the kiss with a smile. “I was beginning to wonder whether I should form a search party to come looking for you.”

  She shrugged with a grin, leaning against the tree beside him and stretching out her legs beneath the map. “This little bird had an encounter with a big cat.”

  Thaddeus raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “A tiger. A big one, too — much bigger than me.”

  “A tiger? Good grief — are you all right?” He looked horrified, and she laughed.

  “I am fine, as you see. Though tonight I think we should all sleep in the airship and seal the hatch. Just in case.”

  Thaddeus touched her cheek and nodded. “Good idea. I want to move on tomorrow, anyway — I don’t like staying in one place for too long. It’s too risky, with the airship.”

  Rémy glanced at the craft that had flown them all the way from Europe to the heart of England’s colonial empire. They had been forced to dodge the curiosity of the British army a few times since they’d arrived, but that had mainly been near the coast, where their ships clustered in the teeming ports. Farther inland, beyond the big cities, they had seen fewer colonial uniforms.

  “Surely here, in the jungle, it is safe?”

  Thaddeus frowned. “Perhaps. But I just have this feeling that it’s better to keep on the move. The airship would be a rich prize for anyone, and without it we would be completely stranded.”

  Rémy nodded. “True enough. So, where to next, then?” she asked, indicating the map. “What has it told you, Monsieur Englishman? What are you looking for?”

  He sighed. “I know we said we’d steer as clear as we could of the palace J remembers from his visit with Desai last year, but I think we’re going to have to try there next. The trail has led us in that direction anyway. We can’t be more than twenty miles from it now.”

  Rémy traced her eyes over the map and his open notebook, which was full of the notes Thaddeus had kept throughout their journey. The airship had been in this clearing for the past three days as her crew tried to work out where to take her next. They had followed every lead they’d been given and it had brought them here, to this lush jungle that reached up from the coast southeast of them to cut a huge swathe through the center of the massive continent of India. Now the trail had run cold.

  “Have you asked J what we can expect if we do go there?” she asked. “It would be good if we could prepare a little for what might greet us.”

  Thaddeus shook his head. “J says that Desai made the final journey to see the raja himself — he wouldn’t let J or his friend Tommy accompany him.”

  Rémy frowned. “Why not?”

  “J said Desai didn’t think it would be safe for them.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Not sure I like the sound of that.”

  “No, me neither,” agreed Thaddeus. “But what else are we to do? We’ve tried everywhere else.”

  “Perhaps we should visit the nearest town with a telegraph?” Rémy suggested. “Send one back to Desai’s men in London, to ask if they can tell us anything else?”

  Thaddeus shook his head. “We’re a long way from anywhere big enough for that,” he said, “and besides, I think they’ve told us everything they can. They don’t know where he is any better than we do.” He sighed, leaning back against the tree and shutting his do
uble-colored eyes. “It’d be easier if I could speak some of the languages and dialects, ask people more than just what Satu had me write down. Perhaps we should have prepared better before we came on this trip.”

  Rémy rested a hand on his arm. “I do not think so,” she said softly. “After all, we may already be too late. Delaying — that could not be a good thing.”

  It had now been some months since either Rémy or Thaddeus had seen their friend Maandhata Desai, who had been such an ally in their strange battle against Lord Abernathy and the war machines he had built beneath England’s capital city. Desai had journeyed back to his homeland, leaving his network of operatives in London under Thaddeus’s command and telling the then-policeman that he was returning to India to deal with something called the Sapphire Cutlass. None of Desai’s people had been able to give Thaddeus any more information about this curious name. Thaddeus, however, had a horrible suspicion that it was linked to the mad mechanical trail that had started in London with Abernathy and continued in France with the Comte de Cantal. While imprisoned in the Comte’s monstrous volcanic dungeons, forced to listen to the man’s ramblings about his power, the young man had seen for himself the peculiar tattoo that graced the Comte’s chest — a short, curved sword with a glittering sapphire imbedded in the hilt: a sapphire cutlass. How could something so strange be a coincidence? Thaddeus — and Rémy too, once he had explained it all — had been worried, not just for their friend, but also for the wider implications. If the Sapphire Cutlass — whatever it was — was behind the mania of the Comte de Cantal, where else did it have influence? The Comte’s insanity had resulted in the destruction of an entire mountain that took with it a whole town, but if both he and Abernathy had had their way, things would have been much, much worse. If there was a driving force behind these desires, stoking them — what was coming next?

  The problem was that Desai seemed to have disappeared completely. His men had given Thaddeus as much help as they could via telegram, whizzing typed messages back and forth across the vast distances from London to cities such as Bombay, Madras, and Bangalore. They had suggested towns he might have visited, routes he might have taken, people he might have been to see, but each time the airship had arrived somewhere new, its crew full of expectation, their hopes had been dashed. No one had seen Desai or knew where he was.