The Emperor of Mars

by Patrick Samphire

  I headed for the back of the house. Maybe there would be a way down to the kitchens.

  The sounds of the party faded away. Apart from the odd echoing laugh or shout, and the faint music from the small orchestra in the ballroom, this part of the house was silent. Even the clockwork moths that flitted endlessly back and forth, carrying messages among the partygoers, were absent. I poked my head into various darkened rooms, even rooting around what looked like a private dining room, but there was nothing.

  Eventually, though, I came across a narrow servants’ door that opened onto darkness. I peered into the gloom, trying to see if it led down to the kitchens. If I didn’t get something to eat soon, I’d start gnawing on my own arm.

  Yes! That was the smell of something baking. I licked my lips hungrily.

  A single footstep sounded behind me, then a hand shoved me so violently I fell through the doorway. I stumbled, almost losing my footing. Steep, shadowed stairs dropped away before me. I teetered, grabbing for support, but before I could, more hands grabbed hold of me and pushed me back against the wall. My head bounced off the plaster, sending stars shooting across my vision.

  I tried to pull my arms free, but someone was holding them. I blinked furiously to clear my eyes.

  When I could see again, Lady Harleston was staring impassively down at me. Two of her footmen stood, one on either side of me, pinning my arms back.

  “Well,” Lady Harleston said. “I am impressed. I really had not expected to see your face again. You show courage, if not sense.” She smiled serenely. “Now I have you.”

  5

  A Desperate Plan

  There was hardly any room on this narrow landing at the top of the dark stairs. I was shoved against the back wall, held tight by the footmen, while Lady Harleston pressed in far too close. All they would have to do was give me a quick shove and I’d go tumbling down the steps.

  I’d probably break my neck.

  “What do you want?” I demanded. I was sweating and my chest felt tight. The footmen had forced my arms too high, and they hurt. I was half dangling like a badly stuffed scarecrow. It was hard to look innocent like that. I gave it my best shot, though. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

  Lady Harleston laughed. It didn’t much sound like she found it funny. “You know, because I am a woman, some men think that I must be weak or stupid, or that they can take advantage of me. I have had to teach those men some very painful lessons.” She leaned closer until I could feel her breath brushing against my cheek. It was hot and damp, like the breath of a trapdoor-wolf. “Do not take me for a fool, boy. I already have your accomplice.”

  “What?” I pulled against the footmen, but it was no good. I couldn’t get free.

  While I’d been wandering around like an idiot, looking for food, they must have isolated Putty somehow then grabbed her. Maybe she’d slipped away; she was good at that. Hell! I should have stuck to her like glue-ant spit.

  “I saw you both sneak in behind Professor Sullivan’s party,” Lady Harleston said.

  “Let her go!” I said, struggling uselessly.

  “I don’t think so. You stole some things from me, and I would very much like them back.”

  “You’re got it all wrong!” I said. “We didn’t steal anything. We’re not thieves. We’re…” I didn’t really want to say this, not here, like this. “We’re Professor Sullivan’s children. Ask him!”

  Lady Harleston’s face darkened. “You still think I’m a fool, don’t you? You still think you can take advantage of me. Maybe you think I’ll become distracted and you’ll get a chance to run. Or maybe you think I’ll just let you go.” She snorted. “Maybe I need to convince you how serious I am.”

  “It’s the truth. Fetch him and you’ll see.”

  “I have a better idea,” Lady Harleston said. “I will bring you your accomplice’s finger instead. How about that? The little finger first, I think. Then maybe you’ll believe that I’m serious.”

  “No!” I shouted, bucking against the restraining hands. “I’ll get your stuff. I will! I promise.”

  Lady Harleston tilted her head and gazed at me with cool eyes. “That’s better. Then go. Your time is growing short, and I am not a patient woman.”

  She stepped aside, and the footmen half pushed, half carried me toward the door. My feet scrabbled for the floor like I’d been electrocuted.

  “If you do not return, boy,” Lady Harleston called after me, “trust me, I will find you, and we will not have a happy reunion.”

  * * *

  The hulking footmen hauled me through a servant’s corridor, avoiding the party, and shoved me down the steps to the street outside. They stood with their arms crossed, faces impassive, as I picked myself up and looked around.

  There was no way past them back into the house, no way to tell Papa or even Olivia what had happened and get their help. Damnation! Putty and I should never have come. Why hadn’t we thought of a way out of it?

  Despite the noise spilling from Lady Harleston’s party, I felt like I was walking in an underwater bubble as I stumbled across the street. All the sounds were dulled and muffled.

  I wouldn’t be able to track down the thief in time, and even if I could, why would she hand over everything she’d stolen?

  And what if I found her, got everything back, and gave it to Lady Harleston? Would she just let Putty and me walk away? Any other Society hostess like Mama might. They’d probably hand us over to the militia, but that would be all right. Papa would sort things out. Lady Harleston was different, though. I couldn’t imagine Mama threatening to cut off someone’s fingers. There was a very good chance Lady Harleston wouldn’t let either of us go.

  An automatic carriage swerved around me, its cogs clashing. The driver shouted something at me. I had no idea what. I staggered out of the road and leaned heavily against the wall of a house.

  Why had I been so stupid? Why had I kept the key cylinder? Why had I stood outside Lady Harleston’s house chatting to Putty right after it had been burgled? Why had I stared up at Lady Harleston so she could get a good look at my face? What had I been thinking? This was my fault, all of it.

  Every window of Lady Harleston’s house was brightly lit, and the street was full of people coming and going. I’d lurched past them, hardly noticing them pointing and laughing as I went. Not a single one of them would believe Lady Harleston had kidnapped my little sister.

  I had no choice. I was going to have to rescue her all by myself.

  I slid into a darkened alley, then started to run.

  * * *

  It took me almost an hour to get everything I needed. The party was louder than ever when I got back. Several of the windows had been thrown open, and the sound of conversation and laughter, and the faint strains of music, drifted into the street.

  I was still in time. That might be my only stroke of luck. This plan was so full of holes, I could have used it as a sieve. If I’d had a week to prepare, maybe I’d be ready. But if I’d had a week to think about it, I’d never have had the courage to do something so stupid.

  I settled my sack on my shoulder, took a deep breath, and started up the steps to the house.

  One of the footmen was waiting. This one looked like he spent his spare time fighting with scorpion-bears. Either that or banging his face against walls. If I tried to hit him, I’d break my hand. Lucky my plan didn’t involve a punch-up.

  The footman grabbed my arm and pulled me into the shadows beside the door.

  “Show me,” he snarled.

  I opened the neck of the sack just wide enough to show him the key cylinder. If he asked to see more, this would go horribly wrong. I’d shoved a few of Papa’s old manuscripts in there to maintain the illusion, and I doubted the footman could read the ideograms on them. But I had no idea what else the thief had stolen, and there were things in there that I didn’t want the footman to see.

  He reached in and shoveled through the papers. I stood motionless, not daring to breathe
. There would be no point running. Not while Lady Harleston still held Putty.

  With a grunt, the footman let the papers fall back. “Follow me.”

  A servants’ staircase led up to the fourth floor. The footman followed close behind me.

  “If I was going to run away, don’t you think I’d have done it outside?” I muttered.

  The footman shoved me so hard I tripped over the next stair.

  “All right,” I said.

  I wouldn’t feel any sympathy for this one.

  I slipped on the brass goggles with the thick, dark lenses that I’d borrowed from Papa’s workshop. In the darkness of the stairwell, I could scarcely see a thing. I stumbled on.

  Lady Harleston was waiting for us in her study, sitting behind her desk, working on some papers. She looked up, removing a pair of eyeglasses, as we entered. At one end of the desk, the skeleton of a rotary eagle had been posed on a bare branch in a glass case. Its head moved jerkily under the control of a tiny clockwork motor, turning to follow my movements as I was pushed into the room. The walls were lined with polished wormwood shelves and every shelf was packed with manuscripts, books, and fragments of stonework carved with ideograms. A dozen mysterious Ancient Martian devices stood in cabinets and display cases around the room.

  Apart from a second footman, Lady Harleston was alone. When the heavy door closed behind us, the sounds of the party were cut off. No one would hear any shouts or screams through it. The windows were firmly closed and shuttered, despite the heat in the room. Lady Harleston didn’t want anyone to know what she was doing here. I shivered. That wasn’t good. It meant she had something nasty in mind.

  So did I. I just hoped it would work.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  Lady Harleston looked up at my goggles in amusement. “Is that supposed to be another disguise? It’s no better than your ridiculous hat. Have you brought my property?”

  I reached into the sack and pulled out the key cylinder. Lady Harleston nodded.

  “Good. Now the rest of it. Not the toys. The valuable artifacts and papers.”

  I kept my face blank. The key cylinder was just a toy? Maybe the thief hadn’t been after it at all. Maybe she’d just grabbed it on the way out. Maybe she didn’t even realize or care that she’d lost it. Blast.

  “Show me my friend,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. I’d spent the whole time while I was preparing for this worried about what they might be doing to Putty. I’d been scared that I might be too late. “I want to see she’s all right.”

  Lady Harleston’s expression didn’t change. “That’s not how this works. The way this works is that you hand over what you stole. What happens to you afterward is entirely up to me. You don’t really have any options here.”

  Yeah? We’d see about that. I moistened my lips. “This had better work.”

  Lady Harleston’s head rose. “What’s that?”

  I pulled back my hand. “Catch.”

  I tossed the key cylinder into the air. Lady Harleston came out of her chair, her eyes following the arc of the key cylinder as it flew across the room. My hand darted into the sack again.

  “Sorry, Putty.” I pulled out one of her experimental photon emission globes. It was dull and dark, but inside, the focused brightness of the sun had been captured. If I flicked the switch, it would send an electrostatic charge across the surface of the device, changing the properties of the enclosing glass, allowing the sunlight to leak out in a gentle glow.

  I didn’t flick the switch. As Lady Harleston grasped for the falling key cylinder, I flung the photon emission device against the wall.

  The glass shattered and the stored sunlight erupted in a single burst. Even through my darkened goggles, the light was painfully bright, but I was expecting it, and I was already racing across the carpet.

  Lady Harleston screamed and her footmen shouted in agony as the light burned into their eyes. The key cylinder clattered to the floor. I scooped it up as I ran.

  A small door had been cut in the wall behind Lady Harleston’s desk, then partially disguised with the same wallpaper as the rest of the room. It had clearly been meant for the servants, but Lady Harleston’s footman had brought me through the main door. That meant the servants’ door was used for something else.

  Lady Harleston stumbled past, shouting with pain. Her long dress tangled around her legs and she sprawled onto the floor.

  It was dark behind the servants’ door. I pulled off my goggles. Narrow stairs led both up and down. Which way? I’d only get one chance.

  Lady Harleston would want Putty as far from the party as possible. I muttered a prayer for luck. Up.

  I took the stairs three at a time.

  Behind me, I heard Lady Harleston shouting, and voices calling back, questioning.

  A door loomed out of the dark above, blocking the stairs. My shoulder thumped into it, and I bounced back. I grabbed the handle and shook it. The door was locked.

  I reached into the sack again.

  Papa had always refused to work on weapons, no matter how much pressure the British Martian government put on him, but with the right imagination, anything could be turned into a weapon.

  The mechanism I brought out had originally been designed as a safety device for workers on high buildings. It could clamp tight on to any surface and easily support the weight of several men. Unfortunately, construction bosses had little interest in spending money on safety. Labor was cheap and mechanisms were expensive, so Papa’s invention had languished in a corner of his laboratory.

  I fixed it over the lock and tested the seal. A land-whale couldn’t have pulled it free. Which was good, because on the strong ceramic ring that jutted from the back of the clamp, I fixed one of Papa’s other inventions. The elephant-lifter was no bigger than a football, but the tightly wound springs within it drove a propeller with such power it could lift a block of stone the size of a carriage.

  I stepped back, and turned the device on full.

  The elephant-lifter blasted away with the force of a cannonball. The thick wooden door was no match for it. The clamp ripped the lock from the door and the door half from its hinges. The blast of air made me stagger.

  The elephant-lifter crashed into the ceiling, then clattered and spun down the stairwell, smashing the wooden stairs, while its gyroscopes struggled to steady it. I heard a shout of alarm from below, but I was already running through the doorway.

  I came out into the attic. Old furniture, trunks, and packing cases were stacked nearly head high. And there, tied to a heavy chair, which itself was bolted to the floorboards, was Putty.

  Her eyes boggled as I came racing in.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded as I pulled her gag off. “Honestly, Edward. This is the slowest rescue I’ve ever seen. If I were rescuing you, we’d be home already.”

  “Well, we’re not,” I said, tugging at the knots binding her. “And we’re about to have company.”

  “I was starting to think I was going to have to free myself. Which I would have done, and with less noise.”

  “You never did anything with less noise,” I said.

  Putty shook her wrists as I finally freed her. “So, what’s the escape plan?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “About that…”

  I had planned to use the elephant-lifter to send us soaring out of one of the windows and away over the rooftops.

  “I didn’t exactly have much time,” I mumbled.

  Putty looked superior. “You should never enter a building unless you have your escape route planned.”

  “Did you read that in one of my magazines?”

  “Yes. And it wasn’t a very believable story. If I had been Captain Masters, I would—”

  “You do know we’re about to be captured?” I said. There were voices on the stairs now. Lots of them.

  “Throw something at them,” Putty suggested.

  “Let’s just look for a way out,” I said.

  There was a
shuttered gable at one end of the attic. Thin Martian moonlight slipped through the slats in dusty lines. I squeezed past the mounds of furniture and clambered up.

  The window protested as I hauled it open, and I had to kick the shutters to free them. The rooftops of the town houses stretched away to the north. To the south, the twisting, organic native Martian buildings looked like strange, thin arms reaching up to the dark sky.

  We were five floors up, and the street below was still full of light and people. Voices approached from the stairs.

  I had a steel-worm rope coiled in the bottom of my sack, but I’d intended to tie it to the safety clamp and attach it to a wall if we needed it, and the clamp was gone along with the elephant-lifter. I couldn’t see anywhere I would trust to support our weight.

  “They’re almost here, Edward!” Putty hissed.

  Our pursuers must have realized there were no more projectiles coming down the stairs at them. Feet thumped up the last few steps.

  I gave Putty a push. “Get out on the roof.”

  I pulled the last of my borrowed devices out of the sack. It was a metal container not much bigger than a jam jar. I flipped off the lid and tossed it into the attic.

  Cloud mites were another one of Papa’s inventions that had never really caught on. These miniature devices, almost too small to be seen with the naked eye, carried a powerful electric charge. As they erupted into the attic, they spread in a cloud, and the electric charge pulled the dust from every surface. They’d been intended to clean a room, but the effect as the dust was ripped into the air from packing cases and furniture was thicker than smoke.

  The last thing I saw before the room went dark was one of Lady Harleston’s footmen watching us from the entrance to the attic. Then the dust grew too thick, and our pursuers were hidden from view.

  6

  The Thief

  Unfortunately, we hadn’t gotten away with it quite that easily.

  When we finally reached home, Mama and Miss Wilkins were sitting in the entrance hall, perched stiffly on hard-backed chairs like a pair of furious dragon statues guarding a temple.