The Forbidden City: Book Two of Rogue Elegance

by K A Dowling

  What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?

  All around him, the silhouettes of the trees glint with crystalline crimson glares. The day is getting late. They will not be able to find their way back in the dark.

  He allows the ambient noises of the jungle to fade into the background as he listens to the shivering ring of his cutlass against the thick blades of grass before him. After a while, the hilt grows sticky in his palm, slick with sweat. He pauses; switching hands, and continues forward. He steps immediately into the outstretched arm of the Hawk. The pirate holds a free finger to his lips, his golden eyes sharp with warning.

  Alexander peers past him, staring into the dense undergrowth. From somewhere to his left, its owner concealed by the long-fingered ferns that sprout up in dark green masses, leaks a guttural growl. Primitive and feral, the very sound pierces Alexander through to his core. Goosebumps rise upon his arm in spite of the heat. With a startled cry, a raven takes flight from a fallen tree that lies several yards before them. Its black feathers shimmer from blue to black again as it beats its wings with startling urgency.

  “Keep moving,” the Hawk suggests, his voice a whisper. Even he cannot keep the unease out of his words. His golden eyes flicker back and forth from the source of the sound to the path before them as the two pirates continue forward.

  Alexander resumes slicing through the grass, his shoulders tense. He keeps his ears open, listening for any sort of sound that would indicate they were being followed.

  They do not walk for long before the Hawk draws up short, causing Alexander to collide directly into his back. He curses, stumbling back and glancing over the lanky man’s shoulder to locate the cause of the delay.

  There, upon a mossy rock ledge, paces a restless panther. Its fur, a sleek coat of darkest black, catches in the fading light. Its yellow eyes study them with fearless attention—a hunter surveying his prey. Its midnight haunches swing languidly from side to side as its padded paws press against the muffled rock. A quiet rumble emanates from its chest as it paces—gaze unwavering. Its long, cylindrical tail flicks back and forth with disquieting control.

  “Go back,” Alexander says, his lips barely moving. He takes a tense step backwards upon the trampled earth as he speaks. As though in response to his action, the panther’s jaw drops open to reveal sharp, yellowing fangs. A snarl rises in the back of its throat. It echoes with a bone chattering rumble, the sound pervading the oppressive heat of the afternoon. Alexander freezes where he stands, one still foot suspended in mid air.

  He peers at the cat, feeling something strange prickling at the back of his mind. Something is off. The great creature is only feet away from them. They have no place to run—no chance of survival should it choose to leap from its prime position above their heads.

  And yet, it continues to pace, the lean musculature of its legs tightening and releasing beneath the weight of its torso. He glances upwards towards the treetops and is surprised when the panther follows his gaze. Above their heads, the birds are still watching. They seem to have grown closer as the jungle thickened, the trees leaning together in the suffocating vegetation. From here, Alexander can make out the lines of their beaks, the curves of their winged backs. They leer at him silently through glossy eyes.

  Another deep growl, louder this time, and Alexander’s gaze snaps back downward. Besides him, the Hawk has drawn his pistol. He hears the click as Evander pulls the hammer into place. Something within him is screaming out that this is wrong—all of it. The jungle cat ceases its pacing. Its jaw drops again as it let out a voluble roar. The sound reverberates against the trunks of the trees, taking root in the earth and rattling Alexander’s bones.

  “Don’t shoot,” he commands. The Hawk gives him a brief sideways glance before snapping his gaze back to the panther.

  “Are you mad?”

  “Maybe. Lower your gun,” His confidence is growing. Reluctantly, the Hawk returns his pistol to the holster at his waist. The panther drops down upon its haunches, its great tail twitching across the moss. Its ancient eyes, rimmed with streaks of coarse black fur, stare unblinkingly into Alexander’s own.

  “Very wise,” says a voice to their right. “Very wise, indeed.”

  From behind a rotting trunk steps a stout, muscular man. His unwashed hair is pulled into a hasty knot at the back of his head. His face is pocketed with scars.

  “Tyde.” Alexander inclines his head. The panther lets out a quiet purr as Tyde nods.

  “I was foretold of your arrival.” He jabs a crooked finger at the cluster of ravens that peer down from the trees. The mass of black feathers have almost completely blocked out the remaining sun. They are, all of them, cast in formless grey obscurity. The green leaves close in around them, the oblong shadows stretching ominously across the pungent foliage underfoot.

  “You are the captain of the ship Rebellion?” Tyde asks.

  “I am.”

  “And you are here to play one of my games?”

  Alexander pauses. “I am.”

  “Very well.” Tyde gestures towards the panther with a flick of his index finger. “This beast is the guardian of the object you seek.”

  Alexander pauses for the breadth of a heartbeat, surprised. “You know what it is I’m looking for?”

  “Tsk,” Tyde admonishes. “I prefer to speak in riddles, good Captain.”

  Next to Alexander, the Hawk takes a step forward, opening his mouth to speak. He is silenced immediately by a low snarl. On the rock outcropping, the panther bares its teeth, lips curling back from yellowed fangs.

  “He is obedient to my commands,” Tyde explains. “He will not kill you so long as you do not advance without my permission. To shoot him would have been certain death for you both.”

  Alexander peers past the hulking figure of the cat, straining to see into the darkness beyond. Lush green vines stretch down upon the rock wall. He cannot see anything beyond the tangled growth.

  Tyde’s feet dance across the ground in a swift rat-tat-tat. “The object you are after is of great importance to my people. My instructions have been to refrain anyone from passage at all costs.”

  His caveat hangs in the air before the pirates.

  “So you can’t help us?” Alexander asks, frowning.

  Tyde waves his finger back and forth, tutting quietly. “No, no, no.” He giggles, his voice turning shrill. “I am to send you away. So says the birds, you see?”

  The sun has dropped low in the sky beyond the trees. Little light reaches them where they stand. The yellow eyes of the panther glow like circular disks in the fading remnants of day.

  “At day she comes without being fetched. At night she is lost without being stolen.” Tyde cups his hand over his brow and gazes directly into a narrow burst of sunlight that glistens through the leaves.

  “The sun is setting.” Another giggle. The panther rumbles again. Its tail flicks languidly across the stone. “Once she is lost beneath the horizon you will be at the mercy of the jungle.”

  “What do we need in order to gain access to the object?” Alexander asks.

  “Nothing. Or perhaps, suffer pain of death. I am not to let anyone through.”

  Alexander grimaces. “What if I were to make you a deal?” He thinks of Ha’Rai and the instructions written on the map. He thinks of the questions written there in blood. Before him, the smile falls away from Tyde’s face.

  “What kind of deal?”

  “Your riddles are said to be impossible to solve. If I can crack your hardest riddle, Will you call off your animal and allow us to pass through?”

  “And permit you to claim the object for your own?”

  “Yes. If your riddles are as impossible as you say, there should be no risk on your part.”

  Tyde’s eyes narrow dangerously. His tongue darts out from between his lips and disappears. “What reward is there for me if you guess incorrectly?”

  Alexander hesitates, aware of the terrible gamble he is about to ta
ke.

  He must have confidence in the map. Why else would the answer be written there—the words inscribed in red? Why else would his father go to such trouble to bind the answers in blood?

  “If I guess incorrectly, you may set your beast upon us and leave us to die.”

  The Hawk stammers indignantly. “Us?”

  “Both of us,” Alexander repeats.

  Tyde giggles, a phantom of his echo catching in the sticky evening ether. “You are either a very wise man, or you are a fool who only thinks you are.”

  One corner of Alexander’s mouth twitches. “We’ll find out, won’t we?” His body feels suddenly cold in spite of the heat. At his side, the Hawk scuffs his boot against the soil, looking restless.

  “Very well,” Tyde assents at last. “My most impossible riddle.” He claps his hands together. The sound is jarring against the inundated murmurs of the jungle. Leaning in close, he gesture for them to listen. His red lips are cracked and peeling. His tongue darts in and out from his mouth, wet and pink and hungry. “Out of the eater, something to eat,” he says, his voice low. “Out of the strong, something sweet.”

  Alexander feels instantly lighter. He fights the urge to smile as the words on the map dance before his vision. He spent hours studying it—obsessing over it—certain that it was a question to which he did not know the answer. Now, he is positive that it must be the other way around. Just as he proclaimed to Emerala that day in his quarters, the question is the answer to the riddle.

  He pauses, pressing his toes firmly into the front of his shoes. The leather is hot against his feet. He does not want to seem too eager—too confident. It would be infeasible for him to muddle through the riddle and come up with an answer immediately. If Tyde suspects foul play, he will surely loose the panther on them regardless of their deal. He can feel Evander the Hawk’s watchful eyes boring a hole into his skin.

  Alexander allows his gaze to rove upwards as he pretends to mull over the perplexing riddle. He studies the panther. It has resumed its slow pacing, growing restless. He watches as the pointed bones of the animal’s shoulders rise and fall with each step it takes. In the shadows brought on by the sun’s descent, Alexander notices the stark rib cage of the animal protruding from its side. Its heavy tongue lolls out across its bottom set of teeth, curling upwards into a pink yawn. Alexander allows a small smile to play across his features as his eyes drop back towards Tyde. The man studies him impassively across the shadowed expanse.

  Alexander clears his throat, those blood-inked words dancing in the forefront of his mind.

  “What is sweeter than honey?” he asks. “What is stronger than a lion?”

  Silence falls upon the jungle. Before them, Tyde’s face is unreadable. His lips purse together, causing the scars about his mouth to deepen.

  “Impossible,” he whispers. “You can’t know such an answer.”

  “Was I correct?”

  “You must have cheated.”

  “I disagree,” Alexander says. “How could I have possibly known what you were going to ask?”

  Tyde’s lower lip trembles. His skin adopts a sickly green pallor beneath the murky dusk. “Was it Argot?” he demands. A thin sheen of gleaming sweat dampens his face.

  “Who?” Alexander asks, caught off guard by the question.

  “Charles Argot—the mapmaker. It was he that told you, wasn’t it? He gave you the answer. He’s the only outsider that knew.”

  “I’ve never met a man named Charles Argot,” Alexander answers honestly. He thinks back to the port of Caros, where they had traveled to find the old mapmaker only to find him dead. He feels a strange foreboding within him as another piece of the endless puzzle clicks into place. He had sought Argot out because he needed someone adept at translating dead speech. He hadn’t known that the red writing scrawled across the curling parchment belonged to the corpse they found on Caros.

  But the Hawk knew.

  Evander the Hawk knew, damn him.

  Before them, Tyde’s stammering is becoming increasingly unintelligible. He points a crooked finger at Alexander, his gaze accusing. “You’ve deceived me. No one has ever solved that riddle.”

  “Except for me.”

  Tyde gapes at him, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

  “I’ve answered correctly, and now you’ll honor our deal.” Alexander takes a steady step forward. With alarming dexterity, Tyde whips a dagger from within his sleeve. He raises it above his arm, the whites of his eyes visible as he stares at Alexander.

  “I am not to let anybody pass,” he whispers. He is about to loose the weapon from his grasp when a single gunshot fills the air. With a thousand frenzied shrieks, the black birds that roost in the treetops take to the skies. The forest comes alive with the sound of rustling wings as the last of the sunlight is engulfed in shadow.

  Tyde lies dead upon the ground. Blood oozes out from his chest, pooling in globules below his chin. Next to Alexander, the Hawk reloads his pistol, his golden eyes already trained upon the panther.

  “I was wondering when I was finally going to get to shoot something on this godforsaken island,” he grumbles.

  Before them, the animal has taken its eyes off of its prey, staring instead at the body of Tyde. Enticed by the smell of blood, it lets out a low, hungry rumble. The slick black hairs upon its haunches rise as its lips curl back in a hungry snarl. Alexander makes silent note of this, gesturing for the Hawk to follow him. They veer to the left, diving into the bushes and out of the panther’s sight. It does not notice their departure. Released at last from its bondage and hungry for fresh and easy meat, it pounces down upon the corpse.

  Alexander swings himself up onto the ledge from the side, careful to keep his movements as silent as possible. Directly behind him is the Hawk. His pistol remains constantly positioned on the feasting panther below. Alexander moves towards the vines, keeping his hands out in front of him to feel for an opening against the sheer face of the rock. He moves carefully, taking small, quiet steps along the stone. Again and again, his fingers push through tangled leaves and jab against damp rock.

  Finally—just as he is about to give up—his fingers fall into a small hollow. He casts around blindly, patting the moss-covered surface until at last he feels the outline of a manmade shape beneath his fingers. He pulls at it, watching as a black rectangular box emerges from the opening. The vines fall back into place as he withdraws his arms from the hollow.

  “This is it,” he whispers. This is the object for which he has traveled so far and so long. This is the object that stole a father away from a mother and son—the thing that made an old man go nearly mad with searching. Whatever lies inside is the answer to every question he has, he’s certain of it. His fingers tremble and, for a moment, he considers ripping the black box open then and there.

  Below the rock ledge, the gruesome sound of the panther feasting on flesh rises into the night. Alexander’s euphoria begins to abate, replaced instead by a pressing sense of urgency. He casts his gaze around the clearing, his eyes searching for the Hawk in the growing darkness. His companion has already headed away from the rock, his lanky frame slipping in and out of shadow among the pressing trees. Pistol in hand, the Hawk gestures for Alexander to follow him. He does so, hopping off the rock ledge and landing with a dull thud on the forest floor. Stepping carefully, the pair picks their way back into the depths of the jungle.

  They do not make it far before a terrible roar rents the dense, dusky air.

  Alexander glances over his shoulder to see a pair of hungry, yellow eyes staring back at him in the twilight. Even from where he stands among the ferns, Alexander can see the animal’s instinct worming its way in in place of hunger. The scavenged meat before the beast will no longer satisfy. It wants to hunt. The panther crouches low, the sharp blades of its shoulders angling upwards as its haunches stretch above its head. Its black lips curl back over yellow fangs in a silent snarl.

  This time, it’s Alexander’
s turn to draw his pistol.

  “Run,” he mouths to the Hawk. The pirate takes off after him, needing no further instruction. There is another roar—muffled with exertion—and a shiver runs through him. The predator has begun to give chase. They were granted a head start, but little good it will do them, now. The undergrowth is dense and dark, and it will not be long before the surefooted cat catches up to them as they stumble through the putrid fungi underfoot.

  He darts to the side, watching as the Hawk follows suit. Taking in his surroundings with a calculating eye, he searches for a tree to climb.

  If we can only get high enough, he thinks, cursing the stifling jungle. Surely, then, the panther will be forced to relinquish its chase. Leaning shadows—long and thin—blur together as he passes them by. It is no use. The branchless trees that served as his protection from the hot sun earlier in the day are now condemning them to a slow death upon the jungle floor. He hears the furtive panting of the great beast at his back, and he knows without seeing that the animal is gaining ground.

  There is a strangled commotion to his immediate right and the ferns shift as the panther’s dark face breaks through the foliage. Alexander lets out a shout in spite of himself, his heart pounding in his chest.

  “Here!” he calls to the Hawk, tossing him the gleaming, black box. The golden-eyed pirate catches it, still running. Alexander grips his pistol with both hands, leveling it between the panther’s eye.

  The beast lunges. Alexander stumbles backwards, losing his footing. The pistol fires aimlessly—reeking powder wasted on the empty night sky—just as he feels claws slicing through the flesh of his leg. He lets out a hoarse shout, feeling the sticking heat of his own blood saturating the leg of his trousers. His spine smashes against something hard—far harder than the mossy undergrowth of the jungle. Somewhere nearby, his pistol clatters against a solid surface. The panther pads slowly towards him, eyes bright. Its footfalls, no longer silent, echo against the ground. The rhythm of its measured pace is hollow. Alexander pulls himself backwards across the earth, grasping uselessly for his pistol.