Secrets of the Dragon Tomb

by Patrick Samphire

  “Still,” Putty said brightly. “At least we know where they’ve gone.”

  There was a stunned silence. Then Freddie leaned in close. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Lan-Kaltar Valley,” Putty said.

  Freddie stared at her. “Don’t tell me that you’ve deciphered that blasted map, too? Did you have your own water abacus secreted away all this time? Where have you been keeping it? In your pocket somewhere?” He was going rather red in the face.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Putty said serenely. “It’s what Sir Titus’s men said.”

  “Sir … They said…” Freddie put a hand to his head. “I think I need to sit down. I’m feeling faint.”

  “Perhaps we should continue this conversation back in the hotel,” Olivia said. “You look unwell, Freddie.”

  With a great effort, Freddie pulled himself upright. “You’re right. Come on, then. I want to hear everything.” He threw a glance at Putty. “Even if it finishes me off once and for all.”

  * * *

  Putty and Olivia had been hard at work while we were locked up. They’d obtained new clothes for me and Freddie, sturdy shoes for all of us, water bottles, a length of rope, a couple of lamps, and even a map.

  Freddie blinked at them in astonishment. “How…? You didn’t have any money…”

  “Olivia is very persuasive,” Putty said. “You should watch out, Cousin Freddie. When she fixes her mind on something, she’s very hard to stop. And you owe money to half the merchants in the city.”

  “We thought we should be equipped,” Olivia said.

  “I’m starting to think we should have stayed in our cell,” Freddie said to me. “Your sisters appear to have managed rather well without us.”

  He sank into a low native Martian chair and let out a sigh as he relaxed carefully back. His face was pale beneath the dirt.

  “Get him some water,” Olivia told Putty. While Putty was fetching it, Olivia peeled away Freddie’s jacket and waistcoat. Her face reddened as she removed his shirt, and she kept her eyes firmly fixed on her work. Even though she wetted the bandages, Freddie still grunted as she pulled them free, and thick, tainted blood welled up.

  Through gritted teeth, Freddie said, “Tell us what you’ve been up to.”

  “It was Parthenia’s idea, of course,” Olivia said.

  “Of course,” Freddie murmured.

  “We only meant to follow the Martian when he was released. We were going to hurry back and have you released, too. We knew he wouldn’t take many precautions, with you and Edward locked up. He’d never suspect two young ladies would follow him.”

  “The poor, innocent fool.”

  “I think Cousin Frederick is feverish,” Putty said. “He keeps interrupting in a most odd manner.”

  “No, no. Forgive me,” Freddie said. “Please go on. I shall say no more.”

  “In any case,” Olivia continued, sluicing water over the wound, “when we reached Sir Titus’s house, we knew we were too late. The airship was almost loaded, and the grounds were full of Sir Titus’s men. There was no way we could get back to you, have you released, and return to the estate in time. If we lost Sir Titus, we might never find him again.”

  Putty bounced out of her chair. “So I rubbed some dirt into my clothes and face—”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” Freddie muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?” Putty said.

  “Nothing! Nothing!”

  Putty smiled triumphantly. “Then I shimmied over the wall and mingled with Sir Titus’s men.”

  “That’s insane!” I exploded. “Livvy, why did you let her? She could have been recognized. She could have been captured!”

  “It’s not me who gets captured!” Putty said. “Anyway, they were hardly going to suspect I would be there, were they? I listened to what Sir Titus’s men were saying. I think I might become a burglar. I could have walked off with a fortune.”

  “And you heard them say ‘the Lan-Kaltar Valley’?” Freddie said. “You’re sure.”

  “Of course!” Putty said. “And they were loading some interesting-looking machinery.”

  I groaned.

  “I didn’t go and investigate!” Putty protested. “Not much. Anyway, Sir Titus was supervising the loading himself, so I thought I’d better stay away. Even though I was tempted to give him a good kick in the shins.”

  “The Lan-Kaltar Valley is about fifteen miles northwest of here,” Freddie said. “In the desert. I wouldn’t have guessed it was the place from the map. There must have been landslides since Sir Titus’s map was first drawn.”

  “Don’t worry, Cousin Freddie,” Putty said. “We’re completely prepared.” She pulled a small rock axe from the pile of equipment she and Olivia had gathered. “We’re ready to uncover your tomb.” She swung the axe. “Or hit Sir Titus.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t call it my tomb,” Freddie said. “It makes me nervous.”

  “Fifteen miles is a long way in the desert.” I looked at Freddie, slumped there in the chair. “I don’t know if we’ll make it.”

  “We’ll walk at night,” Freddie said. “And we won’t need to walk the whole way. We can make half the distance on the Martian Nile.”

  “If we had a boat,” I said. “We don’t have the funds to hire one.”

  “Captain Sadalius Kol will help us,” Putty said. “He said that if I ever needed anything, I should just ask. He said he would make me a sailor.”

  Olivia shuddered. “Please don’t let Mama hear you say that.”

  “I expect he was just being polite,” I said.

  “No,” Freddie said. “Parthenia is right. We’ve traveled with Captain Kol and his men. We’ve eaten and drunk with them. By native Martian custom, we’re part of their family. They’ll help us. I’ll go to the docks and talk with them.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Olivia snapped. “You can hardly walk. Edward will go to the docks. Your wound is infected and you need to rest. Edward, ask the concierge to send up some strong wine for the wound.” She fixed Freddie with a stern glare. “This is going to hurt.”

  “Oh,” Freddie said faintly. “Good.”

  “I’ll go with Edward,” Putty said, attaching herself to my arm. “He’ll need me to translate. I’m sure Cousin Freddie will hurt himself again some other time. I can watch then.” She smiled up at me. “Shouldn’t you be getting changed, Edward? You smell like a dead fish.”

  * * *

  Captain Kol’s boat dropped us on the shore of the Martian Nile at midnight. The moons were high and the sky clear. The rocky mesa was a dark shadow against the dark sky.

  For the first hour, we followed well-worn paths through the fields and floodplains of the Martian Nile. But soon we had left them behind and entered a narrow valley that cut into the mesa. It was difficult to walk here. Stones and rocks had slipped from the cliffs and lay jumbled across the valley floor. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out where I was putting my feet, and I had to feel out each step. We seemed to be moving at a crawl.

  I was worried about Freddie. He’d slept most of the afternoon and evening, and he looked better than he had, but he was still pale, and I could tell his wound hurt.

  “Do you know how many types of poisonous snakes there are in the desert?” Putty’s voice drifted from behind as we trudged along the valley.

  “No,” Olivia said. “And we don’t want to.”

  “Seventeen. Can you believe it? Seventeen!”

  “Well, now we know,” Freddie muttered.

  “And then there are scuttlebugs, which are even more poisonous,” Putty said, “and swarm moths, and—”

  “We don’t want to know, Putty,” I said.

  “I’m just trying to be helpful,” Putty said. “Some of them are so poisonous that you’d be dead before you could fall over.”

  I closed my eyes for a second.

  “We’ll have to hope we don’t meet any of them,” Freddie said. “Now we should keep quiet. Sound
carries a long way in the desert at night, and we don’t want any sentries to hear us.”

  “Maybe they’ll be eaten by scuttle moths,” Olivia muttered.

  “Swarm moths,” Putty corrected her. “They’re about the size of your fist and they—”

  “Hush!” Freddie said.

  * * *

  The first light of dawn caught me by surprise. I’d dropped into a hypnotic routine: put a foot forward, test the ground, step, repeat, over and over again. My body was numb with exhaustion, and my newly healed blisters had burst again. It was only when I noticed I could actually see where I was putting my feet that I realized dawn was arriving. Great red cliffs rose on either side of the valley, still deep in shadow. Ahead, our valley seemed to spread and open, and beyond, another high cliff rose dark and sheer.

  I stopped, resting my foot on a large rock. There was more sand in the valley now, spreading like water around the stones. Freddie had fallen behind during the night. Now he came up beside me.

  “It’s almost light,” I said. The sky was turning clear above us, the night retreating like an ink spill washed from cloth.

  Freddie nodded. “We’re nearly there. That must be the Lan-Kaltar Valley up ahead.”

  I saw a faint stain of blood on his waistcoat. His wound had reopened during the night. He twitched his jacket across, hiding it.

  Putty and Olivia joined us. Olivia looked so exhausted she could scarcely hold herself upright, but her face was determined. Putty looked as fresh as though she’d just awoken.

  “Look,” she said, pointing. A faint trail of smoke was rising over the western cliff.

  “Machinery,” Freddie said. “A steam engine of some sort.”

  “It’s Sir Titus, isn’t it?” Putty said. “We’ve found him.”

  Freddie led us along a narrow path that ran up the side of the valley, among boulders and cracked rocks. I stayed close behind, ready to grab him if he stumbled. Now that we were close, I felt tense. I clenched and unclenched my fists. We’d come so far to rescue my family. We’d almost died. We couldn’t be too late. We just couldn’t.

  “There,” Freddie whispered. He sank down behind a boulder.

  Sir Titus had set up camp two hundred yards down the valley. His airship was tethered on the ground close to a dozen large tents. Its shadow stretched across the sandy valley floor. Two great metal contraptions, puffing steam and smoke, dug into the side of the valley. Iron blades spun, flinging sand and small rocks behind them. This whole area had been torn and ravaged.

  Dozens of men stood nearby, watching. When the tomb was uncovered, the machines would stop and the men would move in, and it would be over.

  Freddie eased himself up, grimacing at the pain in his side. “We need to know where they’re holding your family. I’m going to scout.”

  “Wait here,” I whispered to my sisters. I took Freddie’s arm and led him off several steps. “Freddie, you can’t do this. You’re too weak.”

  “Someone has to,” Freddie said. “We can’t walk into this blind.”

  “Then let me.”

  “Edward. You’re brave, but this is what I’ve been trained to do. You have to look after your sisters. Now let me go.”

  Reluctantly, I released him and watched him hike painfully away into the rocks. I didn’t know if he could make it, but what else could I do? I couldn’t be everywhere.

  The low sun was rising through the thin early-morning mist. Already the air was growing hot. Up here, with only the rocks for shelter, it would quickly grow unbearable. The sky above us was as blue as the Valles Marineris in high summer. I stared up at it, waiting.

  Freddie had been gone for about half an hour when Putty, who had been peering around our boulder, stiffened.

  “Look!” she whispered.

  Moving carefully so as not to draw attention, I came up next to her.

  “There.” She pointed.

  Two figures had emerged from one of the tents and were now heading toward the airship. One of them was a guard. The other was Jane.

  21

  Swords on the Sand

  “Come on!” I said. “We have to save them.” Sir Titus must be holding them in the airship.

  “What about Freddie?” Olivia said.

  “We can’t wait,” I said. I hadn’t seen Freddie since he’d gone. He might have collapsed out there, but I couldn’t go looking for him now. We might not get another chance. “If he’s watching, he’ll come. We can circle around through the rocks, then come up behind the airship.”

  The slope below us was rough with tumbled boulders and fractured rock. We angled down, keeping a low, broken ridge between Sir Titus’s camp and us. The clank and roar of the digging machines covered the sounds of our progress. Halfway down, the ridge ended. Putty and Olivia scrambled up behind me. Olivia’s walking dress was ripped on one side and covered in dust. She’d shed her spencer jacket as the day’s heat had risen. Her face was red from the exertion, and her hair had come loose again.

  She gave me a tight smile. “Where now?”

  Just below us, the slope disintegrated into a chaotic jumble of rocks and boulders the size of houses, which threw deep, long shadows in the early morning sunlight.

  I pointed to a gap between two of the larger boulders. “This way.”

  I waited until the men in the valley moved out of sight, then led my sisters into the rocks. We emerged five minutes later with the bulk of the airship between Sir Titus’s camp and us. The passenger gondola rested on the sands, but I saw figures moving beyond it. I wiped the fine line of sweat from my forehead. If they would just move out of sight …

  The smell of hot oil and coal smoke drifted from the steam engines, turning the clean desert air bitter and sharp.

  There! The men near the tents were heading for the excavating machines.

  I lifted a hand to alert Putty and Olivia. A few more paces and the men would be gone.

  “Four, three, two…” I whispered.

  “One,” a voice said behind me.

  * * *

  Sir Titus’s guards were standing a few feet away. They’d crept up behind us, hidden by the noise of the excavation. Two grabbed Putty and Olivia. Putty tensed.

  “No,” I said, before she could try anything. I raised my hands.

  “Sensible boy,” a guard said. “Sir Titus said you’d be arriving. We expected you earlier. We were starting to worry something had happened to you. Take them to the cells.”

  The guards led us across the sands and up into the airship. The interior was dark after the bright sunlight. A corridor cut through the middle of the airship. Our guards pushed us along until we reached a sturdy door with another guard standing outside. He jerked open the door and we were shoved in. Inside the cell, only a tiny, narrow window let in light.

  “Edward?” someone said as the door was locked behind us. “Parthenia? Olivia?” It was Jane’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

  As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw Mama and Papa sitting on a bench.

  “We’re rescuing you!” Putty said. She ran to Papa and threw her arms around him.

  “Why on Mars would you need to rescue us, child?” Mama demanded.

  “Because Sir Titus is going to kill you!” Putty said.

  “Why would he do such a thing?” Mama said. “He has simply been driven mad by jealousy!”

  “You know that’s not true, Mama,” Jane said wearily. Somehow, Jane looked older than she had just two weeks ago. Sir Titus’s prison had changed her.

  “Why do you say that, child? Do you think your mama no longer capable of driving men mad with jealousy? I was the Crystal Rose of Tharsis. Every man admired me! Sir Titus himself intended to ask for my hand in marriage. When his father sent him away on business, it broke his heart!”

  “I am sure that’s all true, Mama,” Jane said with a sigh. “But you know as well as I do that Sir Titus’s only interest is in finding his dragon tomb.”

  I groaned and rested my head in my han
ds.

  “Do we have to rescue them?” Putty whispered.

  I turned to Papa. “I take it Sir Titus forced you to build him a new abacus?”

  Papa nodded. “He threatened your sister and mother. I looked that man in his eyes, Edward, and I took him at his word. I did not like his eyes.”

  “You were right,” I said. Sir Titus would have killed both Mama and Jane if he’d thought it would get him what he wanted.

  “I did tell him it wouldn’t work,” Papa added.

  I blinked. “What do you mean, ‘it wouldn’t work’? You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Papa peered at me over the top of his eyeglasses. “The water abacus is a fabulous calculating machine, Edward, and I made some quite sensational improvements in the model I made for Sir Titus. You might easily use it to break any code. But the ideograms are not a code. They are not mathematical puzzles. They are a language. You could run a million combinations through the abacus, and you would still never understand the text. You must know how to combine the ideas within each ideogram to reach meaning. Without knowing the key, you have no hope. Not with a thousand water abacuses. You might as well write sums in the sand.”

  “But if the water abacus couldn’t decode the map…”

  I sat with a thump on the wooden floor as the realization hit me. Sir Titus had threatened Mama and Jane, so Papa had lied. He’d chosen somewhere at random and claimed it was the location. This was the wrong valley. When Sir Titus found out, his rage would be murderous.

  “You made it up,” I said. “You bought time, hoping for rescue.”

  Except the rescue had failed. I had failed. Soon, Sir Titus’s machines would finish excavating. He would know there was no dragon tomb. He would come and he would kill someone, as a lesson, to prove to Papa that he meant business.

  Papa stared at me. “Made it up? Of course not! I deciphered the map.”

  “But…” I spluttered. “You said…”