The God's Eye (Lancaster's Luck Book 3)

by Anna Butler

  I didn’t break the silence so much as push against it, the way a man might push against a flood of treacle. “That is the most disagreeable sound.”

  “Oh, ja.” Günter’s voice had a tremor to it he didn’t attempt to hide.

  I leaned over the edge. I suspected Thoth had his power source down in the deep, deep pit. Not that I had a notion of what it might be or how it generated aether. Perhaps even more than a machine that brought aeroships down out of the sky, that was the secret which would set the world on fire between the German empire and our own.

  Many would think it a price worth paying.

  I didn’t know what I thought. It was safer.

  We returned to our exploration of the Place of Verification. If we had a mere twenty-eight minutes or so before the machine moved again, then Ned was determined to make the most of them. He and Günter went back to scrutinising and assessing the mechanism, while I explored the rest of the room, working my way around the different furniture groups encircling each of the standing lamps scattered around the chamber.

  I’d seen similar stools in tomb paintings, and the fragments of them in museums—backless, with gilded lion legs embracing elegant, curved seats. On the other side of the room from the laboratory table, facing the worm wheel, the golden throne stood beneath a lampstand, a small gilded table in front of it, its back embossed with images of the gods, its wide arms ending in golden baboons’ heads. Despite the furniture’s inconceivable age, every piece was good as new, as pristine as though Thoth had carved them the previous week. They were still solid and untouched by time. At least, the stool I tried out didn’t collapse under me. I didn’t sit on the throne. I’m not so great an iconoclast as that.

  More papyri lay scattered on the floor beneath stools or piled onto low, gilded tables. I collected them as I reconnoitred, taking a glance at each as I went. They were all of the same kind Ned had found already: short, narrow, precise papyrus rectangles, covered with exquisite hieroglyphs and the meticulous drawing of some machine or other. Some were dense with hieroglyphs, some a mere few lines. Perhaps the more Thoth had written, the more important the machine? I couldn’t read them—I was learning to read the ancient writing, but it was slow work, and I was the merest tyro—but the diagrams caught at the imagination.

  I amused myself by glancing from each papyrus to the laboratory table to try and spot the machine Thoth had written about, and speculate about what it did. Not that I had much idea of the latter. I took the papyri to Ned. “Nothing here on the big machine that I can see. More of those.” I nodded at the long table. “I’ll go and see how Theo and Nell are doing. Tatlock hasn’t come back, either. Providing he hasn’t fallen down an Aegyptian oubliette, I’m assuming they’ve found something interesting, but without usable Marconis, they can’t tell us.”

  “What? Oh. Yes, of course. Good Lord, Rafe, that’s a lot of papyri.”

  “Thoth must have been an industrious sort of god. I’ll be back soon.”

  He grinned, waved me away, and went back to arguing with Günter about something arcane and mysterious, the pair of them stalking around the central column, gesturing at the machine. George lounged off to one side, watching with tolerant disinterest.

  From the vestibule, I entered the right-hand corridor. Within a few feet, I was forced to take the brimstone from my belt and relight it to see my way. The corridor ran straight and true for several yards to a sharp left corner, then went on a few feet before plunging down another staircase. A straight one, this time. I counted the steps as I went—just under two hundred from top to bottom. Distances were hard to estimate, but when I’d taken the final step, I calculated I was at ground level and the stairs descended the entire height of the first step of the pyramid, a little over one hundred and thirty feet. Not too bad descending, but the thought of climbing back up had my knees aching in anticipation.

  Ahead came the sound of voices. Nell’s for certain, and the rumble of deeper, masculine tones. And—Good God. Hugh!

  I pelted along the short corridor and into a narrow room beyond, a mere widening of the corridor. Before me was a thick stone door, opening into the room, and beyond that…

  “Oh, there you are, Rafe!” Nell was as bright as a shiny brass button when I burst into the outer chamber Ned and Günter had been exploring only that morning. The chamber they’d decided was a meeting place, the Place of Deliberation, without a doorway into the pyramid itself. She leaned a hand against the door. “Look what I found!”

  Tatlock gave me a speaking look from where he lounged against a wall, his glance employing the sort of language a gentleman normally wouldn’t use in the presence of a lady. Not that Nell saw it or that Tatlock was a gentleman. And not that I blamed him for a moment. I rather expected he’d be sharing his opinion later on the tomfoolery that was modern archaeology, when expert Aegyptologists couldn’t even find a simple door.

  Hugh waited until I’d finished expostulating, which was kind of him, given I hadn’t managed much more than a few splutters. “We heard them opening the door, and came running to see what was going on. Gave me quite a turn, to see Mr Tatlock.”

  Quite understandable. Tatlock gave me turns, too.

  “Opens from the inside. It has a lock, see?” Theo pointed to an elaborate bronze bolt on the inside face of the door. The outer face appeared to be just like any other bit of decorative ancient Aegyptian painting. Clever old Thoth had hidden the outline of the door inside the incised frame of a wall panel. “Once we got the bolt back, it took some force to pull it open. The hinges were a trifle stiff.”

  A trifle stiff? After five millennia, I’d be rusted solid.

  “Isn’t it exciting?” Nell would put an entire nunnery to shame when it came to innocence, but her eyes sparkled and her treacherous mouth kept curving up at the corners. While Theo and the others agreed it was a momentous find, we two cynical Lancasters looked at each other and managed not to laugh outright. I fought my baser instincts, but Nell added, still with that impressive, bright, deceitful guilelessness, “I do look forward to telling Professor Winter and Herr Reitz!”

  I could hardly wait to see their faces, myself.

  Hugh went back up with us, keen to see the inside of the pyramid for himself. I allowed Theo and Nell to go on ahead to spread the glad tidings to our two resident experts, while Hugh and I took our time to ascend those two hundred steps. Progress was slow and Hugh had to rest a couple of times. I was glad he’d made the effort but sorry to have missed seeing Ned’s reaction on being told about the door to the Deliberation Chamber below.

  “I suppose this bears out what everyone says about you, Ned,” I said, after Hugh and I arrived in the Verification Chamber and Hugh had exclaimed and wondered at it all.

  Ned looked spectacularly cross, lips pinched so tight even I’d be hard pushed to kiss that mouth, chin pulled high, arms crossed over his chest. “Oh?”

  I suspected Nell’s gentle raillery had struck a nerve or two, because she smirked at me before turning away to explore the room, taking Theo with her.

  “Need an expert on mummification? Talk to Ned Winter. Just don’t ask the man about doors.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  By late afternoon, it looked like we’d need Nobel’s blasting powder to persuade Ned to leave the Verification Chamber. He looked up from scribbling in his notebook only to take more measurements of the Antikythera machine. He’d reached the stage of mumbling to himself constantly, giving a sterling imitation of a demented Greek chorus.

  Günter had taken a break from his labours after a couple of hours. “I am not claustrophobic, you understand, but I would like to breathe some fresher air for an hour or two. Perhaps walk for a little while.”

  Go for a walk? In his shoes, I’d have had enough exercise for the day. He limped more than usual after the taxing demands made upon his gammy knee. Nell, Theo, and I went down to the Deliberation Chamber with him to find something for a very late luncheon. En route, he took the ribbing we gave h
im for not finding the door there earlier with rather more grace than Ned had managed.

  “All serene?” But I knew the answer. Sam was rigid with tension, the big harquebus on his knees trained on the tent opening. “Forget I asked. What’s happened?”

  Banger Bill spoke up. “Jim Baxter just reported seeing some lights.”

  “Lights?” I took my watch from its pocket. Coming up to three. Even in the bleak midwinter, it wouldn’t be dusk here on the roof of the world, so close to the equator, for another three hours. “In broad daylight?”

  “A flash or two, he said. To the northeast.”

  “Signals?”

  “If it was a signal, it wasn’t anything he could understand. It could be the sun flashing off something glassy and metallic. He wasn’t sure.”

  Code, perhaps. Nell slipped her hand into mine. Theo and Günter had both tensed.

  I squeezed Nell’s hand in reassurance. “No sign of them getting onto the plateau?”

  “No, not yet, but we can only watch a small area. They could try anywhere. That bloody beak alone is about three miles long. We’d need an army to watch every bit of it.” Banger Bill raised the small-screened portable analytical engine he held in his hands. “The listening posts are spread thin, too, but they’re our best chance of spotting their approach. Nothing’s showing up yet.”

  Sam growled something inarticulate, but with the requisite amount of menace.

  “Can we spare four guards to stand watch from the top of the first step of the pyramid?” I asked him. “They can get out onto the shelf from the vestibule upstairs, the way we got in. Send one out onto each face of the pyramid, and they might be able to give us warning if they see anything moving. At least, in daylight.”

  “Worth a try, I suppose. I could do with George down here.” He slapped his outstretched left leg, encased in the rough wooden splint. “I need him to organise things for me since I’m so bloody helpless. I’m going to trust Ned’s safety to you inside the pyramid.”

  “Send for George. Tatlock will help out up there.”

  Sam glanced at Tatlock, who was, as ever, close by. “Yes. He knows all about trying to guard First Heirs who have no thought at all for their own bloody safety.”

  I had no idea what he could mean. Tatlock, of course, smirked.

  We sent one of Banger Bill’s guards to replace George, while Banger and I walked to the northeast edge of the plateau, a few hundred yards through head-high scrub brush. Tatlock condescended to allow me to go without him, already conferring with Sam about improving our defences. We found one of the guards watching the hillsides on the other side of the river. Jim Baxter, I assumed.

  Banger greeted him with “Anything new?”

  “Thought I heard something about ten minutes ago. Now it’s as quiet as hell.”

  “Can they cross the river?” I scanned the steep gorge falling away beneath my feet.

  Small trees clung to its vertiginous sides, their roots clamped between the tumbled rocks. Steep, but not sheer. More difficult than climbing the pyramid, perhaps, but it was no Mont Blanc. A man wouldn’t need to be an Alpine mountaineer. Three or four hundred feet below me, one of the Blue Nile’s tributaries foamed and boiled, spumes of white water thrown up wherever it surged into and over rocks in the river bed. The rushing noise of hungry, insatiable water eating at the land was all I could hear, other than the faint scree-scree of a hawk high above us.

  “We’ve been down to the riverside all the way around the plateau. The river’s fast running, and there are rocks everywhere.” Banger leaned over at a perilous angle. “All they need is a strong enough swimmer who can cope with being swept downstream before hitting this side of the river, carrying a rope with him. They could do it.”

  “I hope they wash up in bloody Khartoum if they try it.” I turned my attention to the watchful guard. “Any more flashes?”

  “Not a thing. They’re there, though.” Jim hefted his harquebus. “Any special orders, sir, if I spot them?”

  “No. You know what to do to protect your First Heir.”

  He gave me a level look and a nod. “I do, sir. No quarter given.”

  No, none at all.

  Günter met us as we walked back. “Fräulein Lancaster and Theo went for a short walk. I felt, as our French colleagues put it, de trop. I left them to it.”

  They had better not have gone far. Theo knew better than to risk Nell when the Prussians were close. My expression must have been speaking strident-voiced volumes, because Günter raised a hand and added, in a placating tone, “They are close to the pyramid, and Theo’s guard is with them.”

  “Good.”

  “Want me to send someone along with you, sir?” Banger asked.

  Günter laughed and waved Banger off. “I will not go far. Not on this knee.”

  Well, he couldn’t go far anyway. Not without falling off the plateau edge.

  Banger watched him go, running a hand over his chin in thoughtful fashion. “Not sure we should let anyone wander around on their own, not with them Germans on the loose.”

  “I’m not sure, either.”

  “Mr Edward’s known him years. He wouldn’t want anything to happen to him. I’ll call someone up.”

  “You do that.” I turned and watched as Günter meandered away into the brush. If he was conscious of my scrutiny, he gave no sign of it. “Warn Jim to keep an eye open for him.”

  I left Banger to arrange an escort for Günter and jogtrotted back to the pyramid. Nell and Theo were indeed close by, sitting on rocks near the tent. I waved but left them alone and got back to work. George had joined Sam and Tatlock in their discussions. I ordered everyone in the tent to retreat into the pyramid’s Deliberation Chamber. “It’ll be easier to defend.”

  Sam gave me the twist of the lips that on him passed for an approving smile. “You aren’t as daft as you look.”

  “I couldn’t be.”

  He forbore to destroy my illusions. “I’ve sent men up to Ned. Bert told them how to find the door to the shelf outside. Clever bastard, whoever built this place.”

  “Damnably so.” I glanced at Tatlock. “Give Miss Nell ten more minutes, then send her upstairs. I want her in the safest possible place.”

  “I’ll bring her back with me,” he promised, and I left them to it. They were better at that kind of thing than I was.

  Hugh had stayed in the Verification Chamber, and I took his luncheon with me, toiling up those bloody steps. I took Ned’s too, but he was rather too abstracted for ordinary human concerns such as food or rest, still busy on his attempt to understand and analyse the machine. He grabbed Günter when he returned with Nell, Theo, and Tatlock about fifteen minutes later, and the pair of them settled onto a couple of those ancient backless stools—like me, neither had quite enough arrogance to sit on Thoth’s throne—and got back to sharing ideas and theories. In between the Antikythera machine’s regular chukkkkka-thunk-ing, the Verification Chamber was quiet but for the low murmur of their voices.

  In the circumstances, I don’t consider anyone could complain that Hugh and I ate Ned’s luncheon, too.

  While I bolted down lunch, I found myself watching the machine. I had to wonder how the tiny version dredged up from the shipwreck had ever come into being. Perhaps it was a copy of a copy of a copy of the toy that, according to the God’s Eye legend, Thoth had given to the wandering goddess to tempt her home. We would likely never know. More unsettling still, were more of Thoth’s toys hidden in the world, waiting for us to find them? God help us if there were. I didn’t believe man was a fit guardian for anything Thoth might have left behind.

  But that was a sobering thought for another time, when Altenfeld was no longer an issue and we’d found a way to escape this plateau. It was time to get back to work, to take up my part of the quest to understand the Antikythera machine.

  The smaller mechanical objects on the table were not operational. You could manually spin some of the wheels and get cog teeth to bite at each ot
her, but the moment you took your hand away, the machines stopped. They were, perhaps, closer to the presents Thoth had made for the Goddess—more ephemeral than the Antikythera machine, less weighty, more insubstantial, less significant. Oh, since we didn’t understand anything about them, of course, even the smallest of the toys had the significance of having sprung from a mind infinitely superior to our own, an inventive genius we couldn’t begin to fathom. But I was beginning to think that to Thoth they had been playthings, of little real consequence.

  The Antikythera machine was of a different order altogether. It ticked on, doing whatever it was it did.

  I pulled Hugh to one side and went over the theory Ned and I had discussed earlier.

  He blew out a long breath. “Never simple with you two is it? What are we looking for?”

  I drew him over to the shaft. The Antikythera machine was due another of its momentous hiccups, so we bore the discomfort of the wheel click while staring into the depths. Neither Ned nor Günter noticed us, too intent on their discussion. Over at the south wall, our two lovebirds were in a far corner admiring the wall paintings and each other. Nell leaned against Theo, who put his arm around her shoulders, but I suspected both were taking advantage of the situation rather than Nell being in need of true comfort. Tatlock and Whelan hung about, implying competent murderous violence if provoked, watching over the others. Odd how quickly we’d accustomed ourselves to the machine.

  “It’s like a clock ticking,” I said, “whose every second is half an hour long.”

  “I see what you mean, sir.”

  “You saw it?”

  “I saw something.” Hugh leaned over the edge of the pit. “It’s a long drop.”

  It was indeed.

  “Thoth must have had a way to get down there. He must. If the power source isn’t at the bottom, I’ll eat every hat belonging to the expedition.”