It had yet to reach nine o’clock in the morning, but the air was already hot. It beat down on the thick, silent jungle, turning the air into a heady, humid soup of smell and sensation. Thaddeus could feel his pack sticking to his back, his shirt already drenched in sweat, though they had barely begun their trek toward the valley. Below his feet, the soft ground was slowly beginning to slope up into the steep pass that marked the valley’s entrance from the direction they had chosen. Ahead, he could see the jagged lines of the rise they would have to navigate. It formed a landscape the Englishman had never seen before — a level line of cracked earth through which grew a line of trees so dense that their leaves seemed to gather darkness against their trunks. The trees stood like sentries at their posts: still, impenetrable, forbidding.
The legend was right about one thing. It was not anywhere Thaddeus would have chosen to go willingly.
The somber air seemed to have had a similar effect on his companions. J trailed behind Desai, who had taken the lead. The boy’s head was down and his shoulders were slumped. Even J’s usually rambunctious hair was subdued, plastered against his scalp in the haze of heat that surrounded them. Dita was quiet for a change, too, no sign of the constant bickering that usually typified her conversations with J. The little girl stared around her, her eyes flicking anxiously here and there as if trying to keep watch on the whole forest around them.
Desai, meanwhile, toiled stoically on ahead, and not for the first time Thaddeus wondered at the man’s endurance. Desai must have reached his sixtieth year, and actually had probably surpassed it, but he showed no signs of fatigue or physical distress. Although, the younger man reflected, perhaps that had more to do with what he knew was ahead for them.
Thaddeus, making up the rear, had spent much of his time thinking about Rémy. Her absence now was the first time they had been apart in all the months since their exodus from France, and even though he knew full well where she was and what she was doing, even though they had said goodbye just an hour or so before and he had seen the airship depart, Thaddeus still found himself, in those split-seconds between one thought and the next, looking up and expecting to see her. Her absence simply felt wrong. His body and his mind could not absorb it.
Things had changed between them over those past months. They had become easier, less fraught with misunderstanding and argument. They had got to know each other better, they had become accustomed to each other’s moods and daily routines, each other’s likes and dislikes. They fitted together better — they fitted together well, which wasn’t something either of them thought would be possible for two such disparate people.
What did it mean? If they fit so well that even an hour apart felt unnatural and strange, at least at first — what did that mean? Affairs of the heart, he reflected, were so much more difficult to navigate than a police investigation.
But he thought he knew. Thaddeus reached into his pocket, finding the tiny object that he had put there weeks ago and frequently taken out to look at since, without ever finding the right time to give it to its intended recipient.
Thaddeus pulled his fingers away from the trinket with a sigh. Of course, being apart may not feel at all odd to Rémy, who was quite possibly the most independent person he knew. It was one of the many things he loved about her, partly because he thought it boded well for him. She didn’t need anyone at all, really, and yet still she chose to stick with him.
The sharp snap of a twig brought Thaddeus out of his reverie in a second. The sound had come from behind him, and he turned, surveying the forest for any sign of movement. He could see nothing, but a renewed sense of unease poured fresh tension into his shoulders.
“Desai …” he called, keeping his voice low. “I think …”
The attack was upon them before he even managed to finish his sentence. Four men clad in the raja’s colors appeared from the undergrowth, teeth bared and fists clenched. Thaddeus backed up, keeping his face to them, realizing with a jolt that none of them had drawn their swords.
“They want to take us alive!” Desai shouted. “Do not let them get close enough — make for the valley, as fast as you can!”
Thaddeus saw J grab Dita’s hand and together the two children made a run for it. He hung back, hoping to give them a chance to get a head start, but two of the men peeled off from their group and followed them.
Thaddeus began to run himself, dodging under the lowest branches he could find in an attempt to slow down whomever might be on his trail. He saw Desai a little way to his left, doing the same. The men pursuing them were fast and nimble, but one-on-one, even if it came to a fight, they had a chance. He wondered why there were not more of them, and where their horses were. If the raja had sent them, they must have been following the airship and to do that would require —
Of course, he thought, darting around the thin trunk of a tree, the airship. That’s what the raja really wants. If there were more men like these, they will have gone after it. Godspeed, Rémy …
He felt a hand clamp on his shoulder, heavy breathing just behind him as the touch spun him around. Thaddeus ducked under his attacker’s arm, swinging left and then dodging right around the man before kicking out one leg at his calf. The raja’s soldier was too fast, sidestepping the blow before it could connect and then aiming a swift hook at Thaddeus’s jaw. Apparently wanting to take them alive didn’t mean they had to arrive at the raja’s feet bruise-free. Thaddeus avoided the punch and then clasped both of his hands around the man’s slicing fist, bending his knees and throwing his weight back onto the forest floor. The momentum took the attacker by surprise and he went sailing over Thaddeus’s head, disappearing into the jungle undergrowth with a grunt and a rustle. Thaddeus was on his feet and running again in a second.
He could see Desai ahead of him, his own pursuer so close on the older man’s heels that it could only be seconds before he was caught. Of Dita and J — or the two men who had chased after them — there was no sign, which at least gave Thaddeus the breathless hope that they were still free. Perhaps they had even reached the valley and found somewhere to hide there. Its lip leered at them from just a few hundred yards away, its dusty jagged edge tantalizingly close. Thaddeus kept running, not even turning to see whether the man he had downed had recovered himself as yet. As he ran he ducked to scoop a handful of the soft, dry forest dirt into his hand. Clutching it, he made straight for the man on Desai’s tail, his lungs burning with the effort in the hot air of an Indian day.
He saw the soldier glance over his shoulder as he heard Thaddeus’s footsteps. Thaddeus lunged forward, narrowly avoiding a tree root that reared up to snag his leg and then shoved the fistful of dirt into the man’s face. He howled as the dust scratched against his eyes, immediately dropping back and doubling over with both hands to his face.
“Thank you, my young friend,” Desai called over his shoulder breathlessly. “Keep going — we are almost there!”
“And then what?” he shouted back. “Will there be somewhere to hide?”
“You will see!”
The ground was sloping sharply upward. Thaddeus’s legs burned with the renewed effort it took to climb the incline. There was a commotion ahead of them. Thaddeus brushed the sweat out of his eyes to see the two men who had followed Dita and J skittering back down the slope. One of them fell, rolling against a tree trunk before dragging himself up again. Thaddeus thought the two men would launch themselves toward them, but instead they simply seemed intent on getting back down the slope as fast as possible.
One of them passed him close enough for Thaddeus to see the look on the soldier’s face.
It was full of terror.