The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) (31 page)

Astiza and I were sweating, but I felt moving air.

“I smell a lake,” Harry said.

“Clever little imp. Yes, almost there.”

A lantern shone ahead, and I saw the glitter of water. We came out onto a stone quay and gaped.

We were in an enormous cave, except this was a cavity built by man. It was an underground reservoir, a vast, barrel-vaulted cistern with a brick roof supported by classical pillars, probably recycled from old Greek and Roman temples. The cave floor was a dark lake, the columns rising out of the water like the trunks of a submerged forest. I quickly estimated a hundred of them disappearing into blackness, and supposed there could be hundreds more. The reservoir was as still and opaque as a pool of oil.

“An ancient Byzantine cistern, completely forgotten by the Ottomans,” Von Bonin said. “A reservoir to slake a city, but the old pipes filled and the old doors buried by rubble. Today’s fools drop buckets down narrow wells and never think to investigate why their water is so plentiful. But we realized this was the backdoor to Topkapi Palace, and the only way to sneak out the statue. So now our reunion is complete.”

“Reunion?”

“There.”

And with sinking heart I recognized who the ‘we’ fully was. Watching us from a
kayik
was a huge, hunched form with sunken eyes darker than the limpid water. Cezar Dalca waited in a boat like Charon, helmsman to Hades. He was no longer grossly fat and immobile but cadaverous, starved, like a snake that hasn’t eaten. His chest rose and fell as he stared greedily at Astiza. So he’d escaped his castle, escaped
Canopus,
and would escape Constantinople until he could crawl back down into some new lair, feeding on innocents and bloating like a leech.

Yet it wasn’t Dalca who the source of my surprise and disappointment. Do all nightmares have to return? Life is not just circular, it’s a treacherous, sucking whirlpool. Because there was a second person in Dalca’s boat, a nervous seaman, a cursed acolyte.

“Hello, little brother.” He sounded embarrassed.

“Caleb?” Astiza was astonished.

So my sibling had joined our archenemies, our rivalry complete. I stared in dawning realization. “How long have you been in league with each other?” It was Caleb, I remembered, who had mentioned some confederate in Dalca’s castle. Von Bonin? It was Caleb who had suggested to Sebastiani that I negotiate on the
Canopus,
where I’d been imprisoned next to Dalca.

“You told me you’d let them go,” Caleb protested to Von Bonin. “You told me Ethan would never know.”

“I needed them to carry the palladium, imbecile. Did you think I could manhandle it with one arm? That I would risk being blinded? And what do you care? Their usefulness is at an end.”

“You can’t kill them! You promised not to!”

“Do you want your money or not? It’s dangerous to let them live.”

Caleb looked frustrated, but not shocked.

“You deserted the Turkish fleet,” I accused.

“I had to, to get Dalca off
Canopus.
Lothar signaled, I came with a boat, and the Prussian said you’d never know.”

“Von Bonin tried to kill me.”

“As you tried to kill him, little brother. And yes, I betrayed you. You taught me that trick back in Philadelphia. We’ve all used each other, Czartoryski, Dolgoruki, Von Bonin, Izabela, and I. Things got out of hand. Lothar bargained with Dalca. No one was in real danger, not at first. It was a clever game. I’ve never had a life like yours, Ethan. I’ve never had a partner like Astiza. I’m not a bad man.”

“Yes you are,” Harry said.

“I bargained to protect you, nephew.”

“Protect us!” Astiza protested.

“It’s all calibrated—me missing Cezar when I shot at him at Balbec and pretending Ethan’s gun misfired, you getting into the harem by befriending Aimée, Ethan locked away with the British. Dalca would never have mummified you, it was a performance to convince you the icon was real and to set you on course to find it. But Dolgoruki was impulsive and your husband relentless.”

“You’re not just a liar, Caleb,” I said. “You’re a fool.”

“No, no, this is where it ends. We’re going to sell the statue together, Lothar, Cezar, and me, to the highest bidder.”

“A trinity of greed.”

“Of necessity, as you ally with your own villains. Napoleon. Czartoryski. Sidney Smith. Ambitious men. Powerful men.”

“You really think Dalca is going to let us go?”

“He promised.”

The words hung piteously above the black water. How had Caleb’s desire degenerated into insanity? How many missteps had he made?

“Put Athena in the boat,” the monstrous boatman finally rumbled.

The sound of his command cut off Caleb’s labored justifications. Dalca’s desire was our ultimate reality now. His was the voice of pure evil, fundamental evil, the kind of evil Czartoryski had warned about, and it filled me with despair. What folly was my vain attempt at a title! I’d doomed us all. Cezar looked tall and stooped, like a gigantic mantis.

“Yes, hurry,” the Prussian said impatiently. Dalca frightened even him.

We reluctantly handed the statue down to Caleb, who rested it on the thwarts while Dalca watched.

“We’re going to take the boat, Astiza,” said Caleb, who needed her forgiveness. “I’ll leave you with your family. Go back the way you came and leave the palace after the riot has ended. Call for help in the treasury or the harem. The Turks won’t care about you once the coup is complete.”

“You’re in league with Lucifer,” she said.

“No, I just look after myself.” He nodded. “And you, sister.” And with that my brother raised his arms to lift two pistols from his coat, one pointed at Von Bonin and one at Dalca.

“What are you doing?” Dalca growled.

“Imbecile!” hissed Von Bonin.

“See, I’m protecting you,” Caleb appealed to Astiza. “I used you, but only to get the statue.” Then he addressed his conspirators, his voice unsteady. “From now on you answer to me, Lothar. You too, Dalca. This is the end of our revenge. We have the palladium. The Gage family goes free.”

“Caleb, you can’t trust these creatures,” Astiza said.

“I never trust anyone.” He confessed this while looking at me. I learned at that heartbreaking moment that despite the creed of forgiveness my brother had expressed so many months ago, nothing is ever entirely forgotten in this world. Remembrance plagues us. Revenge poisons.

“Hurry, retreat up the tunnel,” he pleaded. “I’ll hold them at bay.”

“Yes, never trust,” said the Prussian. “Dalca!” And as my brother jerked toward the boatman, his pistol swung wide of Von Bonin for just that fraction of a second needed. The Prussian ignited his arm with a click and a flash, and a jet of flame shot out towards my wayward brother.

Caleb fired blindly just as he was set on fire.

CHAPTER 39

C
haos erupted. Caleb roared, a human torch, and toppled backward into the water. I snatched out the horse pick from behind my back, coat tails flying, and swung at the man who’d ignited my brother. Dalca, with the speed of a snake and impervious to a bullet, snatched at Harry and chopped free the rope holding him to the Prussian. My wife screamed and leaped for her son.

My pointed pick first knocked away my rifle barrel that Von Bonin had taken, the gun going off harmlessly. Then I swung it to come down like a lightning bolt on the Prussian’s head.

But the arc took time and Lothar was very quick. He stabbed upward to catch my chop, my horse pick jamming the nozzle hole of his prosthetic. Von Bonin howled from the impact against his stump, but he didn’t fall. We locked like two stags with antlers, struggling on the edge of the reservoir. He couldn’t eject more fire, and I couldn’t free my pick. I seized his throat with my free hand while the Prussian clung to my empty rifle with his.

Dalca was snarling in pain. Was he wounded? I twisted and saw Harry biting his hand while Astiza beat on his frame with her fists, her hair wild. The creature was half in the boat and half on the stone quay, trying to drag my son into the vessel, one of his hands held in Harry’s jaws and the other yanking the noose around his neck.

My son was being strangled.

The distraction allowed Von Bonin to ram the barrel of my rifle against the bottom of my jaw, snapping my head back. I fell with the Prussian on top of me. Now he let go the rifle and seized my throat as I had his. His prosthesis twisted the pick, his stump using the weapon’s leverage against me. Flammable fluid was pouring on both of us from the punctured flamethrower. My ear rang with the narrow miss of the rifle shot.

“We followed you like breadcrumbs,” Lothar gasped. “And now it’s over.” With a growl and heave he twisted the horse pick free of my grip, its point still stuck fast, its hammer jutting the other way. I tried to knee him, but was blacking out. I could hear Astiza and Dalca yowling.

“Harry.” It was a croak.

Von Bonin lifted the pick suspended in his arm, aiming its hammerhead in order to brain me.

And then there was a spray of erupting water and the Prussian was knocked aside. Caleb! My brother was burned, soaked, seared with pain, and enraged. He bodily picked up Lothar, hurled him across the stone quay, and staggered after him. “You said you’d let them go!”

“Why aren’t you dead?” The Prussian’s hand was pumping the pick handle with his left hand to work the wicked point free from his stump.

Caleb lunged. The pick popped out and Von Bonin turned it. The medieval weapon punctured my brother’s chest with a ghastly thunk, splitting his breastbone. He grunted. The hammer end thudded against Von Bonin’s chest. He gasped. They wrestled.

I dove at the boat where my family struggled. My leap knocked Astiza loose from Dalca’s grip and we all tumbled, the boat rocking wildly as it pirouetted into the reservoir. Harry landed hard, but the monster had let go of the noose. The Transylvanian struggled up, swaying like a grizzly bear, pointed teeth barred, hurt, furious, his hand bleeding, my bloody son unconscious, my wife sprawled on the floorboards, me looking for some kind of weapon.

“Ethan! Athena’s spear!”

Yes! The statue had its broken wooden stub. Even as Dalca pounced to wrap me with his arms, I aimed the palladium upward.

The spear shaft punched the hide of Dalca’s torso. The monster’s eye pits suddenly squeezed shut and his body writhed like a gaffed fish. Black blood spouted as the stake burrowed deep. His snarl changed to an oval of shock. And then he heaved backward, popped free of the stake, and with an agonized shriek crashed overboard with a mighty splash. There was an explosion of water and Dalca disappeared, sinking into watery blackness.

We drifted out among the columns. The water where Dalca had sunk began to steam and bubble.

Von Bonin and Caleb clutched and swayed on the stone quay, fighting for the horse pick buried in my brother’s chest. “You weren’t supposed to hurt them!” Caleb sobbed again, his flesh roasted red.

Then Lothar shoved, the pick sank deeper, and my brother finally sagged. Von Bonin heaved him aside like garbage. Caleb sprawled. The Prussian wrenched the pick out of Caleb’s chest, raised its hammer, and began bringing it savagely down on my brother’s head, again and again and again.

Someone was mindlessly yelling, the sound echoing terribly in this underground cistern.

I realized it was me.

My wife clutched, urging me to sit down in the pitching boat. “Ethan, you can’t help! It’s too late! We have to get Horus away!”

Von Bonin, his frenzy spent, staggered away from my mutilated brother, the Prussian hideously spattered with Caleb’s blood. His good eye rolled madly. He began frantically trying to load my rifle, clumsy and slow with one arm.

So we paddled with our hands, drawing away into the forest of pillars to get out of the light. The water was opaque and I feared that one of Cezar Dalca’s massive hands would somehow rear from below to seize us. But perhaps the palladium had finally finished him. The spear stub was blackened and smoking. The steam where the monster had sunk was dissipating. The pool was still.

I realized there were oars in the bottom and we switched to them. Harry groaned, but stayed prone.

“Gage!” Von Bonin’s cry of rage was a screech. We could no longer see him, and he could no longer see us. “Ethan Gage, I’ll follow you to hell!” There was a shot, aimlessly pinging off a stone column. Now he’d have to load again.

Instead, the light on the quay abruptly went out. The Prussian must have taken the lantern and disappeared back into the tunnel we’d come through.

We scraped a pillar and drifted in shock. At first we seemed entirely blind, lost on our own River Styx. But then we saw the faintest glimmer across the vast cistern, and cautiously rowed toward it, our oar tips scraping the pillars. The light grew. At the far end of the reservoir there was a blush of illumination as faint as shallow breath. A sluggish current began to carry us.

“It’s an outlet,” I said. “An overflow. Dalca and Von Bonin planned to use it to carry the statue outside. The ogre can barely walk.”

“Is he dead?”

“I’m not sure he was ever even alive. But he didn’t like Athena’s spear. That lance did more than just wound him.”

“So she does have magic.”

“Magic. Power. Punch. Poison. Don’t go blind.”

Now we heard the hiss of rushing water. “Ethan, this must drain the cistern when it fills too high from rain.”

“How did Dalca drag the boat up into this place?”

Yet even as we asked we passed a ledge at water’s edge and saw half a dozen bodies of Szekler workers. The henchmen had been used, and killed.

Like Caleb.

We scraped over the lip of the cistern and began sliding down a slimy ramp toward stronger light, like a toboggan in St. Petersburg. The few inches of water were just enough. We skittered out into a tiny underground harbor, a slippery stairway climbing from another stone quay to a door to a street above. Without knowing, no one would guess this outlet existed. An arch barely sufficient to squeeze the boat through led out to the Bosporus. We lay flat and floated through.

It was nearly dusk. Smoke drifted from Constantinople across the channel to Asia. The shooting had abated. We could see towers and minarets of the distant Topkapi palace, but the complex was dark. In the streets of the city, however, torches and lanterns lurched one way or another like agitated fireflies. Rebels and loyalists hurried this way and that.

Who would win?

We already knew. Sebastiani would have to flee because the Russian blockade and Janissary revolt had triggered Selim’s fall from power. Aimée would try to try to save her son Mahmud from Mustafa, the new sultan, and perhaps hide him in a chimney. The Janissaries had once more triumphed. And we at last had our prize from ancient Troy, the protectress of empires stolen by Odysseus, exported to Rome by Aeneas, and safeguarded by Constantine.

Would it protect the Ethan Gage family?

The current and wind was carrying us southwest toward the Sea of Marmara, and for a while we drifted in exhaustion. Harry was breathing but unconscious, Dalca’s blood in his teeth. My treacherous brother was dead from being unable to forget or forgive.

I was devastated. I’d failed to warn him of the implacable evil that Czartoryski had foretold. We’d treated each other as wary rivals when we desperately needed each other as brothers. Failure to trust had killed him and ruined me. I felt corrupted.

Harry moaned.

“I think Horus is sick, Ethan. Biting that monster poisoned him.”

“We’ll find a doctor.”

“His illness is like Prince Dolgoruki’s.” Her tone was frantic.

“Maybe we can hail a ship.” But from which side?

So now my boy was ill, my brother brutally murdered, and my career in tatters. I wouldn’t be a prince in Russia or a vizier in Constantinople. I’d not have a palace, or even a home. I was the possessor of a worn chunk of ancient wood and perilous freedom. I was as cursed as Odysseus, spent and bitter.

Except that I already had my Penelope and Telemachus, I finally realized. My wife and son were here. And that was enough, I conceded, more than enough. We could go anywhere. Do anything. We could stop pursuing absurdity. To the devil with Vesuvius and palaces! Our journeys had become our destination. Self-reliance had become our fortune. Love had become our home.

The moon rose over Asia.

At some point I began to pull the oars and make for the distant Dardanelles. Current and wind pushed us, but the Hellespont that led to the Aegean and safety was still a full night and day away. Yet I relished the labor. The rhythmic pull quieted our minds. Astiza and I took turns.

We’d go to Italy, perhaps. Malta. Cordoba. We left the city’s smoke behind and the stars wheeled. I landed at a village at dawn and managed to beg water and wine, which we dribbled on Harry’s lips. No one knew a doctor.

We rowed on, Astiza fretting. The sun grew hot. The water dazzled. The Russian blockade kept the sea curiously empty of ships. We wearily passed all the way through Marmara and into the narrow, forty-mile-long strait of the Dardanelles, pushed by wind and current. The day was waning again as I spied the familiar forts of Sestos and Abydos. Even from a distance they looked curiously lifeless. Where was everyone? The Russian fleet tacked back and forth in the Aegean just beyond, blockading.

Harry began to stir, groaning.

“Give him more water.”

Astiza did so. “He’s starting to wake.” Then, “Ethan, there’s a galley.”

I looked back. Following was a Turkish craft rowing furiously in the same direction we were, heading straight toward the Russians. The Turkish navy had been defeated, the capital was in new hands, the superior Russian fleet was lurking just outside the Dardanelles, and here came a lone ship hell-bent toward the enemy. What foolishness would bring Turks this close to peril?

My foolishness, of course. My enemy. My curse. I groaned, realizing what the ship was actually aimed at. “He’s still after the palladium.”

I looked over my shoulder, judging the distance to the blockading Russians. Past them, milky in the haze, far beyond the forts and their gigantic cannon on the Asian shore, I could see the plains of ancient Troy.

The very place where Athena had fallen from the sky.