Secrets of the Dragon Tomb (26 page)

Freddie nodded. “We're nearly there. That must be the Lan-Kaltar Valley up ahead.”

I saw a faint stain of blood on his waistcoat. His wound had reopened during the night. He twitched his jacket across, hiding it.

Putty and Olivia joined us. Olivia looked so exhausted she could scarcely hold herself upright, but her face was determined. Putty looked as fresh as though she'd just awoken.

“Look,” she said, pointing. A faint trail of smoke was rising over the western cliff.

“Machinery,” Freddie said. “A steam engine of some sort.”

“It's Sir Titus, isn't it?” Putty said. “We've found him.”

Freddie led us along a narrow path that ran up the side of the valley, among boulders and cracked rocks. I stayed close behind, ready to grab him if he stumbled. Now that we were close, I felt tense. I clenched and unclenched my fists. We'd come so far to rescue my family. We'd almost died. We couldn't be too late. We just couldn't.

“There,” Freddie whispered. He sank down behind a boulder.

Sir Titus had set up camp two hundred yards down the valley. His airship was tethered on the ground close to a dozen large tents. Its shadow stretched across the sandy valley floor. Two great metal contraptions, puffing steam and smoke, dug into the side of the valley. Iron blades spun, flinging sand and small rocks behind them. This whole area had been torn and ravaged.

Dozens of men stood nearby, watching. When the tomb was uncovered, the machines would stop and the men would move in, and it would be over.

Freddie eased himself up, grimacing at the pain in his side. “We need to know where they're holding your family. I'm going to scout.”

“Wait here,” I whispered to my sisters. I took Freddie's arm and led him off several steps. “Freddie, you can't do this. You're too weak.”

“Someone has to,” Freddie said. “We can't walk into this blind.”

“Then let me.”

“Edward. You're brave, but this is what I've been trained to do. You have to look after your sisters. Now let me go.”

Reluctantly, I released him and watched him hike painfully away into the rocks. I didn't know if he could make it, but what else could I do? I couldn't be everywhere.

The low sun was rising through the thin early-morning mist. Already the air was growing hot. Up here, with only the rocks for shelter, it would quickly grow unbearable. The sky above us was as blue as the Valles Marineris in high summer. I stared up at it, waiting.

Freddie had been gone for about half an hour when Putty, who had been peering around our boulder, stiffened.

“Look!” she whispered.

Moving carefully so as not to draw attention, I came up next to her.

“There.” She pointed.

Two figures had emerged from one of the tents and were now heading toward the airship. One of them was a guard. The other was Jane.

 

21

Swords on the Sand

“Come on!” I said. “We have to save them.” Sir Titus must be holding them in the airship.

“What about Freddie?” Olivia said.

“We can't wait,” I said. I hadn't seen Freddie since he'd gone. He might have collapsed out there, but I couldn't go looking for him now. We might not get another chance. “If he's watching, he'll come. We can circle around through the rocks, then come up behind the airship.”

The slope below us was rough with tumbled boulders and fractured rock. We angled down, keeping a low, broken ridge between Sir Titus's camp and us. The clank and roar of the digging machines covered the sounds of our progress. Halfway down, the ridge ended. Putty and Olivia scrambled up behind me. Olivia's walking dress was ripped on one side and covered in dust. She'd shed her spencer jacket as the day's heat had risen. Her face was red from the exertion, and her hair had come loose again.

She gave me a tight smile. “Where now?”

Just below us, the slope disintegrated into a chaotic jumble of rocks and boulders the size of houses, which threw deep, long shadows in the early morning sunlight.

I pointed to a gap between two of the larger boulders. “This way.”

I waited until the men in the valley moved out of sight, then led my sisters into the rocks. We emerged five minutes later with the bulk of the airship between Sir Titus's camp and us. The passenger gondola rested on the sands, but I saw figures moving beyond it. I wiped the fine line of sweat from my forehead. If they would just move out of sight …

The smell of hot oil and coal smoke drifted from the steam engines, turning the clean desert air bitter and sharp.

There! The men near the tents were heading for the excavating machines.

I lifted a hand to alert Putty and Olivia. A few more paces and the men would be gone.

“Four, three, two…” I whispered.

“One,” a voice said behind me.

*   *   *

Sir Titus's guards were standing a few feet away. They'd crept up behind us, hidden by the noise of the excavation. Two grabbed Putty and Olivia. Putty tensed.

“No,” I said, before she could try anything. I raised my hands.

“Sensible boy,” a guard said. “Sir Titus said you'd be arriving. We expected you earlier. We were starting to worry something had happened to you. Take them to the cells.”

The guards led us across the sands and up into the airship. The interior was dark after the bright sunlight. A corridor cut through the middle of the airship. Our guards pushed us along until we reached a sturdy door with another guard standing outside. He jerked open the door and we were shoved in. Inside the cell, only a tiny, narrow window let in light.

“Edward?” someone said as the door was locked behind us. “Parthenia? Olivia?” It was Jane's voice. “What are you doing here?”

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw Mama and Papa sitting on a bench.

“We're rescuing you!” Putty said. She ran to Papa and threw her arms around him.

“Why on Mars would you need to rescue us, child?” Mama demanded.

“Because Sir Titus is going to kill you!” Putty said.

“Why would he do such a thing?” Mama said. “He has simply been driven mad by jealousy!”

“You know that's not true, Mama,” Jane said wearily. Somehow, Jane looked older than she had just two weeks ago. Sir Titus's prison had changed her.

“Why do you say that, child? Do you think your mama no longer capable of driving men mad with jealousy? I was the Crystal Rose of Tharsis. Every man admired me! Sir Titus himself intended to ask for my hand in marriage. When his father sent him away on business, it broke his heart!”

“I am sure that's all true, Mama,” Jane said with a sigh. “But you know as well as I do that Sir Titus's only interest is in finding his dragon tomb.”

I groaned and rested my head in my hands.

“Do we have to rescue them?” Putty whispered.

I turned to Papa. “I take it Sir Titus forced you to build him a new abacus?”

Papa nodded. “He threatened your sister and mother. I looked that man in his eyes, Edward, and I took him at his word. I did not like his eyes.”

“You were right,” I said. Sir Titus would have killed both Mama and Jane if he'd thought it would get him what he wanted.

“I did tell him it wouldn't work,” Papa added.

I blinked. “What do you mean, ‘it wouldn't work'? You're here, aren't you?”

Papa peered at me over the top of his eyeglasses. “The water abacus is a fabulous calculating machine, Edward, and I made some quite sensational improvements in the model I made for Sir Titus. You might easily use it to break any code. But the ideograms are not a code. They are not mathematical puzzles. They are a language. You could run a million combinations through the abacus, and you would still never understand the text. You must know how to combine the ideas within each ideogram to reach meaning. Without knowing the key, you have no hope. Not with a thousand water abacuses. You might as well write sums in the sand.”

“But if the water abacus couldn't decode the map…”

I sat with a thump on the wooden floor as the realization hit me. Sir Titus had threatened Mama and Jane, so Papa had lied. He'd chosen somewhere at random and claimed it was the location. This was the wrong valley. When Sir Titus found out, his rage would be murderous.

“You made it up,” I said. “You bought time, hoping for rescue.”

Except the rescue had failed.
I
had failed. Soon, Sir Titus's machines would finish excavating. He would know there was no dragon tomb. He would come and he would kill someone, as a lesson, to prove to Papa that he meant business.

Papa stared at me. “Made it up? Of course not! I deciphered the map.”

“But…” I spluttered. “You said…”

“The water abacus could not decode it,” Papa said. “Of course not. I decoded it myself.”

“That's impossible,” I said wearily. “Sir Titus has been trying for years. Cousin Freddie has been trying for over a month.”

“Actually,” Papa said, looking a little smug, “it was quite easy”—his voice dropped—“when you realize that the key was not missing at all.”

“I don't understand,” I said. I'd seen the ideograms on Freddie's map. Putty and Freddie had explained them to me. There had been no key.

“The absence of the key is the key itself!” Papa said. “There is no ‘key' symbol because the key is void.”

Putty let out a little squeak of excitement that made everyone jump. “Then—”

Papa nodded, although I still had no idea what he was talking about. “The ideograms relate through void.”

I frowned. “You mean the ideograms don't relate to each other at all?”

“No, no, no,” Papa said. “Think of the void. The space between the worlds. That is the key. At first, I thought it meant there was no distance between the ideograms, nothing to modify the ideas, just as the void itself is empty, so the ideograms should be read individually. But that was too simple.”

Simple? I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Then I remembered the dragon paths,” Papa continued, excited. “The dragon paths join Mars to Earth, but not in a straightforward way. Mars and Earth are uncounted leagues apart. When ships sail dragon paths through the void, they should take years to arrive. Tens of years. But they don't. They only take weeks. Somehow, the dragon paths compress the void between the worlds. That was the key! It was not that the ideograms had no distance between them. They had less than that. They overlapped. Once I realized that, it was easy.”

“Easy,” I repeated.

“Yes! All I needed to do was work out how the idea within each ideogram overlapped with its neighbor, and the meaning became clear. But…” Papa's brow wrinkled. “The key of void has never been used before. I had never even heard of it. It can only mean one thing. This is a dragon tomb like no other.”

He had scarcely spoken the words before the low, constant rumble of the excavating machines cut off. In the silence, a loud cheer sounded.

“They've found it,” Putty said. “They've found the dragon tomb.”

*   *   *

Sir Titus came for us an hour later.

We'd sat in silence, listening to the shouts of Sir Titus's men and the sound of pickaxes and shovels on stone. I'd wondered how he would do it. Would he shoot us or leave us out on the desert sands with no water and no shade? I couldn't let him. If I jumped him, maybe someone would get away.

Footsteps approached in the corridor outside. I scrambled to my feet. There was nothing I could use as a weapon.

The door slammed open, and I leaped forward. Too late. Sir Titus had already taken a step back and drawn a long sword from his belt. I skidded to a halt.

“Take them,” he said. Half a dozen of his men pushed in and seized us. I struggled, but it was no good. They tied our hands behind us.

“What are you doing?” Papa demanded. He was much shorter than Sir Titus. His glasses had been knocked half off and he was unarmed, but he stood glaring at Sir Titus. “You have your dragon tomb. No one will stop you. Let us go.”

“Let you go?” Sir Titus raised an eyebrow. “But I had so hoped to hold a family reunion first. Bring them!”

“I do not understand what has happened to you, Sir Titus,” Mama said. “You loved me once. I know you did. Why are you doing this?”

A tight laugh escaped Sir Titus's throat. “Loved you? The only thing any of your suitors cared for was your father's fortune. Did you think we enjoyed taking part in your ridiculous salons?” He shook his head. “Didn't you wonder why so many of your suitors suddenly found urgent business elsewhere when your father lost his money?”

Papa lifted his chin. “I, sir, never cared for her lack of fortune. I cared only for the brilliant woman I saw before me.”

Mama turned toward Papa, her eyes suddenly wide.

Sir Titus sneered down at Papa. “You? You are only a tradesman.”

“And he is a better man than you ever were,” Mama said defiantly.

Sir Titus gestured to his men. They dragged us out onto the burning sands. The excavating machines lay nearly silent, emitting only trickles of steam from their stoked boilers. The sharp metal blades gleamed, polished by cutting through the sand and rock. The machines were at least four times the length of a carriage and humped like a sand dune. Dozens of long brass pipes ran up their sides.

Smaller than a dragon,
I thought.

A dark hole lay exposed in the side of the valley, not far from the excavators. As we were dragged out, Sir Titus's men came over to stand in an arc behind him.

He lined us up, then drew his sword again. He strode over to Jane and lifted his sword to her throat. She looked pale, but she stared bravely ahead. Was this it? Was this how he was going to do it? I tensed. I didn't think I could reach Jane, but I had to try.