The others all moved closer to see. The compass seemed very old — a hand-painted dial set in a glass-faced gold case with two filigree hands pointing north and south that looked almost too delicate for their task. Rémy held the device in her hand, and as she did so, something on the dial began to move. A tiny flap opened and a fold of gold popped up through it. It didn’t seem to be affixed to anything, but instead wavered for a few seconds, whisking up and down the arc that represented north and south. Then it stopped, turned around on itself once, and began to unfurl. As they all watched, a third hand, smaller than the first two and even more delicate, unrolled out of itself like the frond of a new fern. It wriggled for a moment or two in its new state before setting firm.
“Cripes,” said J, after a moment of silence as they all continued to watch the compass, waiting to see if it would do anything else. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that.”
“Do you know what this is, Rémy?” Desai asked quietly.
Rémy shook her head, still staring at the compass in her hand, transfixed. “No, monsieur. Like J, I have never seen such a thing. I am sure that none of us have. Except maybe you, of course?”
Desai nodded and then, being careful not to touch the compass, pointed to the new hand. “You see this? This is your direction, Rémy. This is the direction you must follow.”
She looked up at him with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“You will find your truth — and possibly, with it, your twin brother — on this bearing. Moreover, you must follow it immediately, for the third arm will lose its direction as the sun sets on the day it is activated.” He paused and looked up at the sky, into which the new sun was gleaming joyfully. “You are lucky, Rémy Brunel. Today will last a long time.”
“But — wait,” said Rémy, her mind spinning. “I — I cannot follow it now. We — we must help you deal with the Sapphire Cutlass first.”
Desai smiled at her gently. “No, my dear girl, I do not believe that is your true course. If it were, the hand would point toward the mountain, would it not? And see here — it points to the southeast, which is very nearly in the opposite direction.”
“But — no,” said Rémy, still perplexed. “I cannot follow it, then. Not now.”
“If you don’t, you will lose your chance to know the truth.”
“I — I will take a note of the new heading, and follow it another time,” said Rémy, shrugging with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. Her stomach was churning, her heart beating in an unsteady patter. “D’accord? I have promised to help you, Desai, and Rémy Brunel does not abandon her promises so easily.”
Desai smiled again and reached out to take her arm in a firm but gentle grip. “There is a reason the heading only lasts for a day, Rémy. Tomorrow the truth — or at least where it is situated — will be different. If you do not follow it, you may never find it at all.”
“But — but I don’t even know if this is about my brother!” Rémy exclaimed, frustrated and infuriated, though she didn’t really know why. “It could be about anything!”
“Indeed, that could be true,” Desai said, a gentle smile still in his eyes. “But somehow, I think not. Boxes such as these are rare, Rémy, and to find them gifted even rarer. Be honest with me now. What do you think most about these days? What have you thought most about since you arrived here, in India, the place where you know you were conceived?”
Rémy couldn’t help looking at Thaddeus. He was watching her with eyes that, though they were shadowed with worry, were still full of the gentle reassurance she always saw there when she took the time to look. He smiled at her, and she wanted to say that she had spent most of her time thinking about him — which was almost true, or would have been if something else hadn’t always been lurking in the back of her mind.
“To find out about my family,” she said softly, still looking at Thaddeus. “To — to find out if I really do have a brother.”
“Quite,” said Desai, dropping his arm with another smile. “This is enough to tell me that the truth you seek — the truth that is indicated along that heading — is about exactly that.”
“You knew,” she said. “You knew what was going to be inside the puzzle box. Why would you have me open it now, when there are so many more things to worry about? How can I go and follow my own path when there is so much that needs to be done?”
“You imagine that these things are unconnected, Rémy Brunel,” Desai told her. “But you are the common thread that has run through this story from start to finish, and I cannot believe that your twin is not a similar part of the weft and weave. If we are nearing this tapestry’s completion, it seems to me that if you can find him, it is of as much importance to the pattern as anything else we may encounter from here on.”
“He’s right,” Thaddeus said softly, stepping closer. “After all, if you do have a brother and if he’s even half as wonderful as you are, Rémy Brunel — well, I for one would like him by my side in whatever fight may be coming.”
Rémy looked down at the compass, still resting patiently in her palm. “How far will I have to go?” she asked Desai, her voice rasping against her suddenly dry throat. “How long will it take?”
“I don’t know,” Desai told her. “These, too, are truths that will only be revealed along the way.”
“Take the airship,” J piped up. “You’ve sailed it yerself enough to know ’ow to handle ’er, Rémy. That’ll speed things up, eh?”
“I can’t do that — if everything you have told us is really so, Desai, you will need it, yes? You will need to be able to escape quickly.”
Desai shook his head. “Arriving by air will draw too much attention. We must use stealth from here on. Besides, Sahoj has seen it, has he not? He’ll be looking for it. Better that he does not see it coming. You can fly us as far as the farthest reaches of the valley and drop us there. That way we may even fool him a little — make him think we have contemplated entering the valley and turned back out of fear, as many a person has before. Any small advantage we can garner will be a help of incalculable worth.”
“But — but —” Rémy looked from one to the other, until her gaze rested on Thaddeus, who, with a smile, reached out to pull her into a soft embrace. Rémy turned her head so that it rested against his chest. The others moved away, leaving them to it.
For a few minutes they said nothing, only held each other. Then Thaddeus pulled back slightly and Rémy raised her head to look at him.
“You have to go,” he told her. “You know you do, Rémy.”
“I’d be leaving you again,” she murmured. “I promised myself last time that I would never do that again.”
“I told you — I’ll come with you. Whatever’s out there, Rémy, we’ll face it together.”
She shook her head. “You can’t come with me, Thaddeus. You heard what Desai said, about what could be waiting in that mountain. He will need all the help he can get — J and Dita won’t be enough, you know that. If I really am to go — then you must stay.”
Thaddeus thought for a moment, his eyes scanning the horizon over her head. Eventually he sighed and nodded. “You’re right, of course.”
“I wish I’d never opened the box,” Rémy said miserably. “I wish I’d left it to the raja, and good riddance. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave any of you, but you most of all, Thaddeus Rec.”
Thaddeus smiled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ll be back. You and I — we’re like that compass of yours,” he said, nodding to where she still held it in one hand. “You’re my north, Rémy, and I’m the arrow that points to you. We’ll always swing back toward each other in the end.”
He kissed her again, this time on the lips so that her words died away amid a blur of happiness tinged with worry and guilt. They parted after a moment, and Thaddeus rested his forehead against hers.
Eventually Rémy looked up at him, still hesitating even as the sun rose higher and higher on her back. As usual, time seemed to be running out, and she wondered how it could always be the case that, however old the universe was and however long it had existed, whenever something important had to be decided, it actually turned out there was no time at all.
“Go,” Thaddeus whispered. “There’s no choice to make, Rémy. Find this brother of yours and bring him back to fight with us.”
She nodded reluctantly, and then, before he had a chance to move away, pushed herself up on tiptoe and kissed him deeply. Thaddeus took her hand as they broke apart, turning to Desai, J, and Dita.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Desai nodded, striding forward. “It is the right decision, Rémy. The only decision, truly. But now I must ask you for a favor.”
“Of course,” said Rémy, “I will do anything I can.”
“I must ask you for the loan of your opal,” said Desai. “I know that it is precious — the only memento you have of your parents. But it is possible that if we are to defeat the Sapphire Cutlass, the stone may be able to help.”
Rémy put her hand to her neck, a reflex reaction returning her to an old habit she’d harbored for years. Until just a few months ago, the opal necklace given to her by her mother had been her constant companion, always hanging on a thin gold chain at her throat. But now, beneath her black shirt, her neck was bare.
“I’m so sorry, Desai, but I do not have it. I have not had it for months. I gave it to Claudette, so that she might speak to Amélie …”
Desai’s face clouded with fresh worry for a moment, before he dispelled it with a wide smile. “Ah, well. It was just a thought. Come, my friends, we must be about our business, and let Miss Brunel be about hers.”
Dita and J kicked dust across the remains of the fire as Thaddeus and Rémy readied the airship for flight. Rémy was at the controls as the ship rose into the air, turning her nose to head for the one patch of jungle that steadily refused to be lit by the sun — a valley so steeply banked and so densely packed with foliage that it gave off a darkness greater than that of the night they had so recently left behind.
Far below, weaving swiftly through the thick undergrowth, a group of soldiers left the great shadow cast by the huge rock monolith. Following on horseback, dressed in turquoise and white, they had watched and waited all night for the airship to leave its safe harbor.
Their patience, it seemed, had finally paid off.
* * *
With fresh gas in the airship’s balloon, the journey toward the mountain was a swift one. Desai told Rémy to put down before they reached the valley that stretched away from its foot. It would attract too much attention and be too dangerous, he said, to fly directly into the cult’s lair. They chose a small clearing quite some way from the valley’s farthest reach, where the sun still dappled the ground instead of refracting off the dense jungle leaves. Desai, Dita, and J took the scant equipment they had chosen and left the airship.
Then all that was left was for Thaddeus to bid Rémy goodbye.
“I hate this,” she muttered as he pulled her against his chest. “I should be coming with you.”
Thaddeus kissed the top of her head. “Everything will be fine,” he told her.
She pulled back and looked up at him. “You cannot possibly know that!”
He smiled. “Don’t be such a pessimist.”
“Don’t be such an idiot,” she retorted.
He grinned. “If I wasn’t, I don’t think you would love me quite as much.”
Her eyes gleamed for a second and Thaddeus knew she’d thought of a sharp comeback. He leaned forward and kissed her before she could say it. Rémy wound her arms around his shoulders and when they broke apart, they lingered there, their foreheads touching, until Desai’s voice broke the silence.
“My young friends, it pains me to separate you, but we should all be on our way,” he said, his gentle voice floating to them from the airship’s ramp. “If the landing of the airship was noticed, we do not want to be in the vicinity when someone comes.”
Rémy pushed out of Thaddeus’s arms with a nod. “Go,” she said, “and I will too — the sooner I follow this heading, the sooner I will come back for you all, yes?”
Thaddeus smiled. “Fly safely, Little Bird.”
“Do not lose your way, little policeman.”
They looked at each other for another moment, and then Thaddeus turned and left. He stood on the jungle’s soft earth and watched as Rémy winched the airship’s ramp back into place, hiding her from his view inch by inch until she disappeared completely.
Desai placed a hand on his shoulder. “You will see her again, Thaddeus, and soon. I am sure of that.”
The airship began to lift off as Thaddeus turned with a smile. “I know I will.”
He looked up to see that the airship — and Rémy with it — was already high above the tree line, sailing away into the blue, blue sky.