The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “Yeah. Kind of figured that telegram was more than just a piece of scrap paper.”

  “I should have told you last night, when you asked if there was anything else I’d… I just… forgot that one,” she finished lamely.

  Forgot that one. Because there had been so many other things she’d lied about.

  She pushed past it. There was no point in apologizing. The damage was done.

  “But you said it’s just a name. A myth, not a physical object.”

  “Apparently Dawson’s got other ideas.”

  The sound of another roar from the crowd outside broke her from the distraction of Adam’s news, and brought back her urgency.

  “You have to go along with it. Make him think you’ll help him. If you don’t, neither of us is of use to them anymore.”

  “I get that.”

  “And that you believe what he’s told you about me. You can’t be seen here.”

  He got up, running a hand through his hair—a sign that he was frustrated. It came as a small shock that she had learned to read his tells that well already.

  “Bates—”

  “I’m going.”

  “And when you see me in the camp, ignore me or pretend you can’t stand me. It shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve given you plenty of material to work with,” she added ruefully.

  He looked like he wanted to respond, but he stopped himself. Ellie was grateful. Whatever he would have had to say couldn’t have been good, and she had enough to ruminate over as it was.

  “Can I do anything for you before I go?” he asked. His eyes fell once again to her bound hands.

  She started to decline, then stopped.

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “What?”

  “If you’ve got friends in the camp, that’s the first thing you would’ve asked them to get you. You must have one.”

  Adam frowned, then pulled the small blade from his pocket.

  “Perfect. I was afraid it would be larger. Unbutton my trousers, please.”

  He went very still.

  “I’m sorry. What was that?”

  “I need you to unbutton my trousers. I can hardly do it myself at the moment. Quickly, please. We haven’t got all night.”

  She looked over at him, irritation rising, until she absorbed the shock in his expression and realized what her instructions must have sounded like. She felt the blood rise into her cheeks.

  “For the knife! There’s a pocket in my drawers. They’re less likely to find it there.”

  The word “drawers” had made him close his eyes, as though pained.

  “What do you need a knife for?”

  “At some point the time is going to come for us to make a run for it. I’ll need the knife to cut these ropes.”

  “When it’s time for that, I’ll come for you,” he countered.

  “And until then?” she pushed on, quickly calculating the best argument to win him over. “What if a snake got into the tent? Or one of those men decided to try something indecent? I am the only woman in the camp, and my position hardly makes it clear whether anyone would bother to protect me.”

  He muttered a curse and strode to her side. He hefted her upright, then, very determinedly and deliberately keeping his eyes somewhere roughly to the left of her face, tugged at the buttons fastening her trousers.

  It was an altogether more unsettling experience than she had anticipated. Adam himself seemed to have gone very pale, his mouth set into a thin, determined line. For her own part, the very near proximity of his solid, looming form and insistent fumbling at her waistband was evoking a riot of rather alarming responses, among them a distinct rise in body temperature and an extremely inconvenient ticklishness.

  “Stop. Squirming,” he ordered through gritted teeth.

  She gathered every shred of self-control she could muster, remained still, and at last the buttons were opened.

  “Which side?” Adam muttered, staring somewhere over her ear. She was keenly aware that only his grip on her belt was keeping Tibbord’s overlarge garment from sliding down past her hips.

  “Left,” she replied, throat rasping. It had gone quite dry. Then she leaped at the sudden heat of an unexpected touch, which sent a bolt of hot lightning down her thigh.

  “Other left. My left,” she stammered, and Adam cursed roundly. The knife found the pocket. He quickly restored the buttons and her belt, cinching it tightly. She stifled a protest, sensing that even that slight criticism might push him over the edge.

  He stepped back quickly and took a deep breath, as though he had been holding it. He ran his hands through his hair, disheveling it thoroughly. Then he looked at her, and she saw his features darken.

  “How the devil are you going to get it out of there again?” he demanded.

  “Don’t worry about that. I shall manage it.” She felt an urge to straighten her hair and clothes—not that she could have given in to it, with her hands still securely bound. “You should go now, before they come back. That fight can’t possibly have lasted so long.”

  The sound of another cheer belied her assumption.

  “Lavec must be drawing it out to buy us more time,” he said numbly.

  They stared at each other through the darkness, and Ellie was overwhelmed by a rather vivid notion of just what, precisely, they might be able to do with that time, no doubt incited by the riot of feelings the ordeal of the knife had sparked in her.

  Perhaps that hadn’t been the best idea. It seemed to be having an even more sensational impact on her than Adam’s Jamaican rum. She found herself momentarily thankful for the ropes that kept her bound to the tent pole.

  “I’ll tell you when it’s time.” Adam’s voice seemed to have gone a bit hoarse. “Until then, you stay quiet and keep out of trouble. Understood?”

  “Entirely. And, Bates?” she called as he moved to the exit.

  He looked back.

  “Thank you. For checking on me. I’m grateful for it, even if it is just for Neil’s sake.”

  “You have no goddamned idea,” he muttered as he pushed back out into the night.

  16

  THE ASCENT WAS FAST, much faster than Adam would have liked. The men handling their rigging let the ropes out around makeshift pulleys made from fallen tree trunks, sliding them between gloved hands. It still wasn’t quick enough for the balloon, which tugged for freedom as the ground spun away beneath them.

  Just don’t look down, he told himself. But where else was there to look?

  Finally their motion slowed and stopped. They were suspended high above the canopy, and the people of the camp looked like indiscernible dots. He felt vertigo threaten and forced it back. He needed to stay calm. At least he was doing better than Velegas’s assistant. The man was huddled on the floor, muttering prayers. It was enough of a spectacle that Adam felt confident no one would notice if his knuckles were a bit white as they gripped the edge of the basket.

  “Magnificent view, isn’t it?”

  Dawson had come to stand beside him, gazing out at the rolling, violently green landscape unfolding before them all the way to the hazy horizon.

  “Sure is,” Adam agreed evenly, grip tightening as a gust of wind rattled them.

  “If the map is right, we won’t see the city itself, even from this height. But there might be other patterns. Remnants of a road, perhaps. And just imagine the possibilities this would hold over open countryside. If we were to try it back in England…”

  Adam glanced over at the profile of his companion. Dawson’s cheeks were ruddy with excitement, his eyes bright. He felt an unexpected respect for the man. Using the balloon was a brilliant intuition. To recognize the value of that change in perspective took a creative and intelligent mind.

  He thought of what Ellie had said, that he should try to get close, learn what he could about this man and his past. Perhaps a bit of professional appreciation was exactly the conversation starter he needed.

  “When did you come up with this? A
t Saint Andrews?”

  “Yes. Years ago, but I never had the resources to put it to the test until now. Not that I didn’t try, of course. I applied for the funding several times. They weren’t interested.”

  “Well, your new employer is more open-minded.”

  “So it would appear,” Dawson answered cryptically.

  It wasn’t much of an opening, but Adam decided to push on. Talking took his mind off how very far away the ground was.

  “Is that why you left the university? I can see the attraction.”

  “Well,” Dawson said quietly, “that wasn’t quite how it went.”

  Adam sensed something behind his tone, a whiff of a deeper story, but his instincts told him this horse would likely shy if approached head-on.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.” He returned his attention to the view, being careful to look out instead of down. The cool and casual routine wouldn’t work so well if he passed out from vertigo. “Never had any interest in it myself,” he added.

  “In what?”

  “Teaching.”

  “No? And why not?” Dawson looked bemused.

  Adam rattled off the reasons:

  “Students. Schedules. Dress code. When do you get the time to get into the field in between all those lectures and meetings?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Dawson countered.

  “Oh, yeah? Come on—look at this.” He waved a hand, encompassing the balloon, the mountains, the wide stretch of sky. “You can’t tell me you’re not better off.”

  “Perhaps I am. But there are joys to be found in the lecture hall. Being part of a community of scholars, all those hungry minds… and you have the knowledge to nourish them.”

  “Suppose you didn’t mind having a comfortable place to come home to at night, either.”

  “No,” Dawson replied. His tone was clipped, and Adam saw something dark flicker through his expression. “I didn’t mind that at all.”

  The basket jolted as the ropes reached their limit. Adam tightened his grip instinctively and resisted the urge to yelp. Dawson glanced down and waved back at some signal from the men below.

  “End of the line.” He lifted his field glasses. “Let’s see what’s out there, shall we?”

  Adam scanned the distant ridges of the mountains as his brain chewed over Dawson’s words—and there it was.

  At first it seemed like a shadow, but a shift in the clouds brought with it a change of light that made it undeniably clear. Marking the exposed face of a distant cliff was a sinuous black line like a vein of night-dark stone running through the mountain.

  A river of smoke.

  That was what the abbot had described on his map, the last landmark on their route. At its base would lie the ravine that would take them to the White City.

  The mountain itself blocked any glimpse of what might lie on the far side, even from their current perspective, but that hardly mattered. The monk from the abbot’s story had clearly been here. If he had gone to that much trouble, and told the truth of what he found so far, then why would he lie about the end?

  It was no hoax. It couldn’t be, which meant that the dark line of stone marked the passage to a place that shouldn’t exist, a city out of myth.

  We found it, princess. It’s real.

  “Dear God.”

  Dawson’s tone was flat with shock, and Adam knew without looking that he was not the only one who had seen the landmark.

  They had found it, all right. But not alone.

  Dawson wrestled open a copy of Adam’s own map, complete with all of his hard-won measurements and markings. He held it in place against a gust of wind that rattled their basket, sending it for a sickening swing.

  “Help me confirm these peaks. This one to the left is here, correct?” he asked, glancing to the place he pointed out on the map. “So that outcropping is part of this elevation. And that means that our goal is… right here.” He traced a finger along the paper, then made two swift lines with his pencil. He looked over at Adam, face broadening into a boyish grin. “X marks the spot.”

  It couldn’t be more than three days’ walk, even at the expedition’s snail-like pace. Three days until they were there, inside that extraordinary place.

  Three days until Adam had to either help Dawson find his mirror, or find both himself and Ellie suddenly expendable. They would have to escape, and soon. But even thinking it, some part of him protested. And never see the city? Miss the chance to be among the first inside what could very well be the greatest archaeological find on this continent? Wasn’t that worth a little risk?

  The notion tempted him, until he thought of Ellie. She’d probably be thinking the same thing: that the opportunity to see what they’d already come so far to find was worth taking a chance for. And he’d be damned if he’d let her do that. Even if the place was El Dorado, complete with gold-plated streets, he was getting her to safety before any of them stepped foot inside. He might gamble with his own life, but hers was off the table. Whether she liked it or not, he was getting her out of this mess. As for what happened after that… well, they’d deal with that when the time came.

  He needed to come up with a plan—and quickly. Looking at that sinuous black line on the face of the cliff, with all that it promised, Adam realized that he was running out of time.

  Ellie was in the ruined city again. The great plaza was quiet this time, with none of the signs of violence that had haunted it before.

  It was also, incongruously, covered in snow. White flakes dusted the bare branches of sprawling tropical trees, collecting in drifts on the stones of the plaza like a winter morning in the English countryside.

  Except that it wasn’t snow.

  Ashes, she realized. It was raining ashes.

  The gray flakes continued to fall as she watched, thickening on the ground. The air was not crisp and cool. It was sweltering, like standing in the middle of an inferno.

  The dream woman waited for her at the bottom of a wide, low staircase. It sat at the foot of a grand facade, rows of white columns framing dark doorways.

  “Where have you been?” Ellie demanded. It seemed like a reasonable question, though it shouldn’t have been. Ellie had never developed expectations about the inhabitants of her dreams before.

  “You lost the key,” the woman replied simply.

  Ellie’s hand went to the place where the medallion should have been, but it was gone. Dawson had it now. Adam had made her give it to him.

  “Then why are you here now?”

  “Because you have gotten closer to it. Close enough to feel its influence.”

  The scarred woman extended her small, fine hand, fist closed. Something sifted from between her fingers. It was sand, fine grains of it in an alarming shade of red. It fell in a stream, then slowed, and finally ceased.

  “Time is running out,” she said. She opened her now empty hand, and on the ground below it lay not a mound of grains but a pool. It looked like blood.

  She raised her eyes, meeting Ellie’s gaze. “You do not need the key. There is another way. The path of kings. The road that leads through hell.”

  “But where does it go?” Ellie demanded.

  “To darkness—and hope.”

  The ash was falling thicker now. Where the flakes landed on the woman’s skin, her flesh seared and split. She was burning up, one tiny piece at a time, bits of red tissue and bone beginning to show through to the surface.

  A fat ash fell on Ellie’s arm and she heard the sizzle of it. The flakes swirled around her, obscuring her view of the woman, the palace, even the plaza itself. Her skin charred and smoked from a thousand places. Then the pain began.

  The scream tore out of her like it had been waiting, high and full of primitive terror. She carried it with her as the dream shattered apart and the sound of her fear pierced through the still night like a lance.

  Adam was awake in a breath, bolting upright in the hammock, senses instantly alert. Someone was screaming. As soon as
he realized he was hearing it, the sound died into an echo that stirred small birds from the trees.

  It had been a woman’s scream. And there was only one woman in this camp.

  He swung out of the hammock, ducking nimbly under the netting, and ran.

  He had marked the place where they’d set her tent earlier that afternoon, and navigated to it instinctively now. When he reached it, he saw two men at the entrance, rifles in hand. They weren’t the now-familiar figures he saw with her during the day, but strangers with the hard look of the men Charlie had warned him about, the ones Jacobs was paying tripled rates.

  Adam did not slow as he approached them, barreling toward the tent.

  “Stop—” the first began, but was cut short as Adam shoved aside the barrel of his gun.

  He whisked the guard’s machete from the sheath at his belt, then dashed inside even as the second of the pair shouted impotently behind him.

  Ellie cursed under her breath. Had she really screamed out loud? What had she seen in her dream that had been so terrible?

  Death, she thought, her pulse still racing.

  She heard arguing voices outside the tent and tensed. Then the flap flew open, and Adam burst inside, machete in his hand.

  “What was it?” he demanded.

  Ellie blinked at him, shocked into silence for a moment. She quickly collected herself.

  “You shouldn’t be here!” she hissed. “How are they supposed to believe you’re mad at me if you come barreling—”

  “What. Was. It,” he ground out.

  Ellie momentarily lost her breath. In the near darkness of the tent, with the gleaming knife in his hand and every muscle taut, Adam’s appearance was rather thrilling. Then one of the guards burst inside and leveled a rifle at his head.

  “A bad dream,” she explained hurriedly. “Just a nightmare. See? You shouldn’t have troubled,” she finished significantly, casting a quick look at the guard.

  Adam’s expression darkened, something she wouldn’t have thought possible given its already murderous state. He stalked toward her, oblivious to the man with the gun following behind.