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

by Anna Butler

  “This is the one making the noise.”

  Ned nodded. “In the Verification Chamber, we were hearing it echo through the shaft and on up through the pyramid, I think. Yes. I believe you’re right.”

  “This may be the controlling machine for the pyramid’s defences, not the Antikythera machine in the Verification Chamber. But if they’re connected through the column with wires, or hidden cranks and pulleys, then…” I faltered. Stopped. Started again. “Perhaps the one upstairs is a mirror. If Thoth didn’t want to clamber up and down stairs all day, he could look at the machine in his laboratory and monitor this one. Or use it as a sort of regulator, with adjustments made on it echoed by the real machine here. Oh hell, Ned. I’m guessing.”

  “It’s all we can do.” Ned drew a deep, wavering breath. “Which one do we try and shut off?”

  “Both of them. To be sure, it had better be both of them.”

  We went to the edge of the pit. I don’t know about Ned, but I was wondering how in hell we would be able to stop the machine.

  The column descended into a gloom that defeated the eyes. I couldn’t see the base when I looked into the abyss. The air flowing up from the invisible depths blew cold against my face, thick with a sharp, metallic-foundry stink. Far, far below was a sound like rushing water and the sense of massive wheels and cogs, great valves and springs, chains and levers. Pale blue glimmers and sparkles flitted about, little corpse candles lighting the way for the dead. Aether? Could it be aether?

  I inched as close as I could, to illuminate as much of the machine as possible, playing the light up and down. Up and—

  What on earth? A glint above us where I wasn’t expecting one. Of course, I expected gleams and flashes from the metal of the machine itself, but this came from above it, from the stone column. I could not possibly be seeing what I thought I was seeing. My eyesight, never acute in such dim lighting, had to be playing tricks on me.

  “Is that a ladder?” I pointed to the column above the great machine.

  Ned’s mouth dropped open. “It can’t be.”

  I darted over the slab bridge, Ned on my heels. The great machine was so large and moved with such agonizing slowness, we were able to worm our way between the racked gears to reach a narrow walkway girdling the stone column. We were inside the machine now, which moved its cogwheels and shafts with ponderous gravity around us. Above our heads, dark metal rungs were set into the column.

  A ladder. It was a ladder. Well, blow me down with Gabriel’s trumpet.

  Ned frowned. “I didn’t see anything of this from above.”

  “Perhaps it’s not visible in the murk. Or—” I put my hand on the bottom-most rung, about level with my waist. “Or perhaps it retracts.”

  “No time to look right now.” Ned was practical. “Tomorrow, though, you and I are going to climb this column.”

  I’d been rather afraid he’d say that.

  We made our way out of the machine and back to the relative safety of the chamber.

  “It’s going to go off in a minute,” I said.

  He nodded, and we waited in silence for the next tick of the clock, or the next beat of the pyramid’s mechanical heart. It wouldn’t be long. We’d agreed we would try and observe as much as we could, both of what was in the pit and what this machine did.

  “Time.” Ned’s free hand found its way into mine again, two children clinging to each other against the dark.

  Chukkkkka-THUNK

  Oh. My. Dear. Lord.

  We weren’t just pounded and battered by the noise. With nothing to mute the sound, it roared its strength and power at us, hungry enough to rend us apart. I almost dropped my aether lamp, catching it at the last moment as the bellowing clamour of sound pulsed and quaked through me. I was breathing fast through my open mouth, trying to quell the choking aversion. A wave of prickly, icy cold surged down my spine. If I’d been a hairy sort of man, my back would have resembled a cat curving its backbone and spitting out its defiance and fear. Ned’s hand, as shaky as my own, closed on my fingers like a vice, squeezing in the same dreadful rhythm as the machine. Anyone seeing us might assume we worshipped Thoth’s great machine, that curling over ourselves to bow at the waist was the homage of the weak and feeble in the face of God. And right then, I wouldn’t have argued against such a conclusion. No man built that monstrous device.

  I managed one snatched glance into the pit. The pale blue wraith lights writhed up the column, faster and brighter. Just as the THUNK sounded, they flared like cold flames, illuminating the metal arc of a wheel here and a flash of a dark glass vessel there, before falling back again. That was what I had seen from above—not the machines in the abyss, but their pale aether wisp attendants.

  And then, silence. Silence falling on us with the same joy with which the shadows ravened on the light, plundering and despoiling it. This silence held no peace, no tranquillity. It left me feeling more fragile than a man made from blown glass waiting for the blow of a hammer. Ned and I clung to each other, as two drowning men would fasten themselves onto straws.

  “Out.” I forced the words past the fence of teeth I’d bared like an animal at bay. “Out.”

  And out we stumbled, legs shaking more violently than withered leaves in a tempest. Away from the great pit. Past the empty throne. Along the corridor and, growing less panicky and more our normal selves as we left the great machine behind, like men reprieved from the gallows just as the hangman was adjusting the noose, we lurched up the staircase, still hand in hand. When I glanced back, the shadows were reclaiming the stairs behind us, flowing in to swallow it up as the light we carried retreated.

  Two hundred steps up to ground level. Thigh and calf muscles burned, and aching knees were forced to bend and straighten.

  “Rest? Just for a minute.” Ned sat on the bottom step of the staircase to the Star Map Chamber, and put his head on his knees. “Ye Gods.”

  I plumped myself down beside him. “Ye Gods and little fishes.”

  My chest hurt with the effort we’d made. I rubbed at my ribs with one hand. It was ridiculous that a ribcage, held together by the slightest of muscles, should go into spasms of cramp. Ridiculous.

  Ned leaned back against the steps behind him. His breathing was levelling out rather faster than mine was. “Next time you get a bright idea about which bit of the pyramid would be good to explore, remind me about this. That should quell our enthusiasm.”

  I didn’t disagree. “Better we know, though. Not that we know much, but more than we did before. If we hadn’t gone down there, when we tried to leave we might have failed to shut off the pyramid, and that wouldn’t be good. Ned, I’d rather we didn’t say anything about this discovery yet. Let’s just you and I think about it first. All right?” And at his dubious expression, I added, “This isn’t safe, Ned. We need to talk about how much we tell others. Frankly, these machines frighten the daylights out of me.”

  “Don’t say anything now or don’t say anything when we return home?”

  “Both. For the moment. This isn’t as simple as Imperium-right-or-wrong. I trust you and me to think through all the implications of what we found today. I can’t say I trust the rest of the world.”

  His gaze was serious, and steady. “For now. We’ll keep it to ourselves for now. But I can’t promise forever, Rafe.”

  I nodded. It would do. “We’d better get back. Let’s take a quick look to see where the side corridor goes to. I hope there’s another door on this level, but even if there is, we should go back the way we came. We couldn’t explain it away, otherwise. Sorry. We need to go back up to the Verification Chamber, and then back down to ground level from there.”

  Ned made a little grimace and pushed himself to his feet. “Come on, then. I’d rather not be on this stair for the next… what shall we call them? Tick of the clock? Heartbeat?”

  “I don’t much care.”

  The side corridor ran straight ahead for about ten yards, before taking a hard right turn to the eas
t. We traversed the corridor in moments. Neither of us spotted any further passageways—which was a relief, I can tell you. This pyramid was enough of a maze without finding yet more labyrinthine halls to explore.

  It ended in what seemed like a wall, but the glint of metal gave the game away: a latch of brass or bronze. I raised it, as easily as its counterpart up in the Star Map Chamber, and the door opened towards me, leaving me to stare into the same narrow room the staircase from the Place of Verification gave onto, the one behind the outer Deliberation Chamber where Sam and the others awaited us. It was empty, but for the scent of Günter’s stew and the sound of voices from the guards drifting in through the open door to the Deliberation Chamber. I pushed the door to as quietly as I’d opened it, but I didn’t relatch it.

  “Shame we can’t use it.” Ned, too, checked the door and nodded when it held fast. “But I agree we shouldn’t tip our hand.”

  Back along the corridor, and up the spiral stairs to the Star Map Chamber on the top of the pyramid’s first step. A little slower than our wild scramble to escape the place below, but still we went at something between a trot and a canter, as if dogs snapped at our heels.

  Time was drumming on at a janissary’s swift marching pace, bringing peril and death with it. Match the pace, or die.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The northwest door leading to the shelf outside the Star Map Chamber framed deep night now.

  We slipped into the chamber, and I closed the door to the staircase behind me. It was invisible again, its outline hidden in the incised lines and patterns Thoth had used to create his images of the constellations. Clever old Thoth. He didn’t miss a trick.

  “There are all too many doors and stairs in this pyramid. I need a map.” I ran a hand over the carving. I couldn’t feel the door’s outline any more than I could see it.

  “They’re remarkable. Such sophisticated architecture is astonishing.” Ned leaned up against the Plough, the constellation the ancients had called the Bull’s Foreleg, and grinned at me.

  Our equanimity was somewhat restored after our arduous climb back to the second step. The next tick of the clock, or heartbeat or whatever Ned wanted to call it, was due at any moment, but with the stone doors closed and two staircases between us and the great machine in the pit below, I was feeling quite sanguine about the entire thing. I was far more moved by Ned’s smile. It was very come-hitherish.

  So I went thither, and kissed him.

  I rather suspect my kisses tasted of desperation right then. So much had happened. It was barely a day since I’d found Ned safe and well, and I’d had no time to catch my balance, to absorb the relief and emotion, before this extraordinary adventure with the Prussians tipped my world over again. We had no time to ourselves, to find our rhythm with each other again. I don’t mean in bed—there wouldn’t be time or opportunity for that this side of Cairo—but in the ordinary rhythm of our lives, the unhurried beat coming from a fleeting glance or touch or word, the calm, measured cadence born in moments of shared quiet and intimacy. Looking up from a book to see Ned across from me, head bent over an ushabti, say, turning it in his long fingers as he examined its inscriptions and prayers. Or glancing across the dinner table to watch him swallow a mouthful of wine, while the candles played their games with light and shadow over his cheekbones and throat. Laughing at the same jokes… Simple, shared moments that were the life-beat of our time together. Our joint pulse, so to speak.

  In the midst of chaos and disorder, Ned was my peace, my place of comfort and repose.

  That’s what I needed to recover: the quiet, still centre of myself I’d feared was lost.

  And that—damn it all to perdition!—was what I was denied. One hurried kiss as a sort of aperitif, a second leisured “let us remind ourselves” kiss as the joyous main course, and the scuffing of feet and the flash of a brimstone on the ledge outside the open door brought the chance of the best course, the sweet dessert of a third kiss, to an abrupt end.

  We sprang apart, just as Günter walked in from the outside.

  “Was zum Teufel!”

  Pins dropping in all directions would have sounded as loud as gunshots as we all stared at one another. How much had he seen? I took two steps away from the wall. The door was well hidden, but I saw no reason to draw Günter’s attention to the star map wall paintings. Although on second thoughts, rather the star maps than his focusing on Ned and me and what we might have been up to.

  “I was not expecting to see you.” Günter switched off his brimstone. “In here, you understand.”

  I glanced past him to where the chill night air flowed through the open door. “Were you looking for us?”

  “Ja. Herr Tatlock and I came up to find you. Supper is ready.”

  It took two of them? You’d think with his knee, he’d have been happy to wait for us downstairs. What on earth had he been doing out there? Surely he hadn’t seriously thought we were wandering about in the dark.

  Günter rubbed at his nose and frowned. “Were you outside? I did not see you.”

  “No.” Ned appeared as unperturbed as I wished I could be myself. “Rafe and I have just come into the chamber. We’ve been exploring.”

  “Ah. I did not see you in the Verification Chamber as I came through.”

  “We were on the staircase.” I kept it as devil-may-care as I could manage. With luck Günter wouldn’t ask which staircase. “Hoping to find more chambers on the other levels.”

  Günter nodded and seemed less strained, although I couldn’t quite fathom why. “Did you find anything?”

  “There is so much to explore.” Ned spoke with such earnestness that an entire host of angels singing “hosanna” couldn’t match him for innocence. “You can’t expect us to find everything on the first day, Günni! We’ll have years of work here, you and me, to search every staircase and landing to find all the hidden places. Years.”

  Goodness, this telling the truth while being as deceptive as Lucifer himself was a pretty effective tool to divert attention.

  Even for people as attentive as Günter. “You include me in this?”

  Ned blinked at him. “But of course. I thought we could work together on an excavation and consolidation plan.” His smile was radiant. “Good Lord, can you imagine how inundated we’ll be? Every archaeologist in the business will be on bended knee, begging us to let them in.”

  “It will be a new experience in my case.” Günter huffed out a laugh. “But for once I will not be the one begging for sponsors.”

  And on that happy note, we edged Günter out of the Star Map Chamber and back along the corridor to the Place of Verification. Ned engaged him in cheerful, rosy-spectacled planning for future years of toil on the pyramid. I chivvied them along from behind.

  Tatlock waited at the entrance to the Verification Chamber. “An hour, you said.”

  “I’m not so very late, mother. Did you wait up for me?”

  He snorted. “Comes with the wage packet. What were you doing?” His hard little eyes, reminiscent of the boiled-toffee effect my father managed, raked me up and down and then glanced in Ned’s direction. He added a belated, “Sir. If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I do, rather.” We stared at each other until I relented with another unspecific, “Exploring the staircase.”

  “Blow me! Haven’t you had enough of staircases today?”

  “Apparently not.” I nodded towards the one leading to the ground floor and followed Ned and Günter to the Place of Deliberation. Tatlock trailed along behind, sighing like a typhoon.

  I didn’t know why he was sighing. It wasn’t his knees crumbling to ruddy dust from overuse. If I never saw a staircase again, it would be several millennia too soon.

  As Günter had promised, the stew was first-rate.

  When we’d stocked up in Aswan, we’d crammed the ion-exchange cold box on the Brunel with fresh chicken and goat meat. Günter made the stew from goat, rich and succulent, more strongly flavoured than anythin
g we’d get at home, great heaps of rice saturated in its spicy juices. We scooped it up with flatbread, then lay around sipping Nell’s tea and complimenting our chef on his achievements. Günter accepted our acclaim with modest grace.

  Things grew quiet then. The small aether stove in the centre of the Deliberation Chamber threw out so much heat it had me and everyone else yawning so widely, jaws cracked all over Africa. It wasn’t surprising. We were all weary. It had been a bloody long and taxing day.

  Conversation soon faded into the odd quiet exchange between one or two people. Once it was loud enough to catch my attention, when Banger Bill let out a huff of frustration and pushed aside the screen he’d been studying for hours.

  “Do take this for a minute, George,” he said to Todd. “My eyes are dazzled.”

  George jumped on being addressed. I jumped myself. I suspect that like the rest of us, George had been sitting with his head nodding. But he stood, stretching, and rolled his shoulders, then took the small analytical machine from Bill’s hand. Bill put his head down on his knees.

  “We need some air.” I got up too fast, waited for the moment of white-out dizziness to fade, and adjusted the stove before it sucked every last atom of oxygen out of the chamber. “I’m going outside for a minute. Clear the fog from my mind..”

  Günter glanced up from his seat against one of the inside walls of the chamber. “Is that wise? In the circumstances?”

  I looked at George. “Anything?”

  “Not that I can see.” He rubbed at his eyes and returned his gaze to the screen before him. “Nothing has tripped any of the warning systems at the listening posts.”

  “I won’t be long. I need to collect Nell’s things from the Brunel, anyway. And some cushions for her to sleep on.”

  She blinked up at me, like a small dark owl. “Are we staying here tonight?”

  “We are.” I was still clear-headed enough not to want to risk her being outside the protective cordon of the Gallowglass guards.