Thaddeus, Kai, and Desai moved along the wide stone corridor as quickly and as quietly as they could.
“How do you know we are going the right way?” Kai asked Desai, glancing back the way they had come, the sword in his hand primed for trouble.
Desai indicated the narrow channel in the floor that had run beside them ever since they left the cavern. “This must lead somewhere, must it not?”
“That’s all you’ve got?” Kai asked, incredulous. “I was hoping for a little more.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know — you’re supposed to be the mystic!”
“What is that, anyway?” Thaddeus asked, indicating the channel.
“Looks like it’s been made to move somefing, if you ask me,” said J. “Whatever it is fits in the channel and gets tugged along, like.”
“Indeed,” agreed Desai, “exactly what I surmised, too, J. And since whatever it is seems to lead straight into that cavern — the meeting place of what seems to be the cult’s core …”
“… then whatever we’re looking for is probably at the other end of it,” finished Thaddeus.
“Exactly.”
“Give yourselves a pat on the back, lads,” muttered Kai, “with any luck you’ll be able to think us all out of our graves, too.”
They reached a fork in the corridor. The channel in the floor led down one avenue in the rock that curved out of sight some way ahead. There seemed to be a glow emanating from beyond this curve, a vague light illuminating the route. The other passageway had burning torches on its walls, spaced far enough apart to cast the rest of the route into deep shadow.
“I says we keep following the channel,” said J.
“Agreed,” said Desai.
“Seconded,” said Kai, “but I —” He stopped suddenly. “Footsteps,” he hissed.
He was right. Echoing toward them was the sound of running feet. Kai listened again and then pointed at the fork without the channel. “It’s coming from there.”
“What do we do?” J asked.
Thaddeus nodded to the other corridor. “If we keep going we can be out of eyesight before they get here.”
“But then what if they comes down ’ere too?” J asked.
Kai held up a hand for quiet and then listened with a frown. “That’s just one person — there’s only one pair of feet,” he said. “I say we bring down whoever it is. Maybe they can tell us what we need to know. You go ahead — get out of sight if you can.”
They did as they were told as Kai took a few steps toward the second passageway. Positioning himself in the center of the corridor, he assumed a fighting stance with his sword at the ready. The footsteps echoed closer and closer as the rest of them moved swiftly away from the fork, heading for the curve and the light that glowed beyond.
Thaddeus heard a cry of surprise behind him. He turned, afraid that Kai had been overrun. The pirate grappled briefly with someone in the shadows, but there was no sign of him raising his sword.
“Kai!” Thaddeus hissed, starting back up the corridor in the hope of being able to help.
“It’s all right,” Kai’s voice came back. Then he appeared with someone else by his side — the young woman Thaddeus had last seen across the cavern amid a blur of stone dust. “It’s Upala.”
The woman striding toward Thaddeus beside Kai was impressive — tall, dark skinned, dark haired, with eyes as bright as stars and wielding a sword as sharp as any he’d ever seen. Upala looked him up and down briefly, issuing a nod and a curve of her lips that could almost pass as a smile.
“You are Rémy’s policeman,” she said. “From England.”
“I am.”
Upala’s clear eyes bored into his. “She is a brave one, that girl.”
“Yes, she is. Is she — Where —”
“I lifted the cage. It was all I could do. The rest is up to her.” She turned to Kai. “There are more men behind me — I heard them. We should not linger here.”
Thaddeus looked back down the passageway. At the point where it vanished, J was standing, waving his arms. Desai was nowhere to be seen. The two men and Upala hurried toward him.
“You ain’t going to believe this,” the boy hissed when they reached him.
They turned the corner, and he was right.
The room they found themselves in was pure blue, as if they had walked into the sky itself. The stone around them glittered with a faint internal light, revealing layer after layer of facets stacked one upon the other. The entire room seemed to be one huge gemstone, still in its natural state.
“Sapphire,” Upala whispered in awe.
“It looks as if we’ve stepped inside one of those fings the Professor had knockin’ around his warehouse, don’t it Thaddeus?” J asked. “The crystal fings that looked like boring old stones on the outside, but when you smashed ’em open …”
“Geodes,” Thaddeus finished for him. “This looks like the inside of a huge geode.”
“Tha’s the one,” agreed J, his tones still hushed.
Kai moved farther into the sapphire cavern, stooping to reach for a pile of loose gems that were scattered across the ground.
“No,” Desai told him sharply from where he had been silently contemplating the room. “Do not touch a thing. Do not take a thing.”
Kai looked up at him. “You bring a pirate here and you expect me not to pocket at least one tiny stone?” he asked. “It’s not as if this place can’t spare one, is it?” He crouched to pick up one of the loose sapphires, a large oblong gem that almost filled his palm with its uneven cut. “Just one of these would pay for the repairs to my ship.”
Desai moved to him quickly, knocking the stone from Kai’s hand so that it skittered across the ground, chinking quietly as it rolled. Kai stood quickly, facing the older man with squared shoulders.
“Kai,” Upala said, her voice soothing, stepping forward quickly to put her shoulder between the two men. “I think we should listen to him, Captain. This place … it is so strange …”
Kai brushed his hands off on his breeches with a shrug. “True enough. Come on then, mystic. What do we do now? Upala says there are more men coming. We need to act or find somewhere to hide.”
“’Ere,” came J’s voice, echoing from some way off. Thaddeus realized that he’d wandered deeper into the stone room. The boy was looking past a towering crystalline formation of sapphire that masked whatever he was staring at. “You lot might want to come and take a look at this …”
The rest of them moved to where J stood. Beyond him was another, larger cavern of pure sapphire, but it wasn’t the sheer amount of the stone that had caught the boy’s attention. It was what was suspended at the middle of it.
“I don’t know about you,” J said to the collected group. “But that thing there gives me the right willies.”
In front of them was a large sphere, formed of metal filaments — thin arms of gleaming silver twisting against and around each other to create a pattern of abstract, many-cornered shapes. These shapes fitted together like the delicate segments of a stained glass window, though the space between each metal twist was empty. At the center of the sphere was a plinth, and from the base of the plinth it was possible to see conduits of similar metal plunging into the rock below. Another series of tubes led farther into the depths of the sapphire cave, twisting and tangling around each other.
“I have seen something like this before,” said Thaddeus. “Desai, this is what Abernathy used to power his contraptions. It’s why he stole the Darya-ye Noor in the first place. What is it?”
Desai’s face was the most troubled that Thaddeus had ever seen it. “It’s a Sakhi sphere,” he said, his deep voice somber. “I have never seen one, only heard the theory of them.”
Thaddeus stepped forward, looking at the empty plinth. “Rémy had to remove the diamond from it to stop it working,” he said, turning to Desai. “But there are no gems in this one.”
Desai shook his head. “Look around you, Thaddeus Rec,” he said. “Why would you need to place gems inside it when you can place it inside a gem?”
“What’s it for?” J asked. “What’s it do?”
“It is designed to harness the natural power of ancient stones,” Desai told them. “More than that, it will amplify them.”
Thaddeus looked around. “Abernathy only had the diamonds — the Darya-ye Noor and the one that Rémy’s parents stole from the raja,” he said. “He knew that would be enough to power his entire army. If this one is connected to all the sapphires in this room … it would be enough … enough to power …”
“Yes,” said Desai. “It would generate enough power to mobilize an army big enough to march on the world.”
A new fear bloomed in Thaddeus’s heart. “Desai, if there is one here, and if Abernathy had one, too …”
“Did you see one at the castle of Cantal?”
Thaddeus shook his head. “No, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one there somewhere. I only saw the main cavern. Abernathy had his secured away — we had to cross a chasm to get to it, remember? Desai, if every one of the people on that list of names you gave me in London has one of these … They are all over the planet, on every continent!”
Desai nodded, his face becoming grimmer by the minute. “Just so.”
“I might not have any idea what the two of you are talking about,” said Kai, “but I don’t like the sound of it. Tell us what to do, mystic, so that we can do it and get out of here.”
Desai shook his head. “It is not activated.”
Thaddeus knew what he meant. “Abernathy’s had power flowing all over it, through the sphere’s filaments, feeding from the diamonds. This one — this one seems to be dead. So where is the power that the cult already has coming from?”
Desai was examining the sphere with narrowed eyes. “Something is not right …”
J huffed a half-laugh. “You’re tellin’ me.”
“If this is the heart of everything, why is it not better guarded?” Desai asked. “They surely cannot be so confident, even here, that they would not post a guard?”
“I am liking this less and less by the minute,” Kai muttered. He turned to Upala. “I want you to go. Get out of here — I know you can, you’d be able to find your way anywhere. Get back to the ship and tell them to sail as far away from here as possible. Sail east — I hear the pickings can be good in the South China Sea.”
A frown like a cloud passed over Upala’s face. “And you? What will you do?”
“I’ve promised to help these people. To do whatever needs to be done. But I’m beginning to feel it’s going to have a price I don’t like. A price that I wouldn’t ask anyone else of my crew to pay.”
“You expect me to leave you here?” Upala asked. “With these strangers, to face Shiva knows what?”
“I expect you,” Kai said evenly, not dropping her gaze, “to follow orders.”
“We’re not on deck now, Kai.”
“I’m still your captain. I want you to leave.”
“Why? I can help. You know I can help. Why would you tell me to leave before I am able to?”
Kai’s gaze flickered over her face. “The men will need a new captain. I always intended that it should be you if it ever came down to it.”
Upala scoffed. “You talk as if you are dead already.”
“Maybe I am, Upala, and —” Kai paused, a twinge of something painful passing over his face. “I don’t want you to die with me.”
“You’re not going to die, and neither am I,” the pirate woman told him, reaching up with one hand to pull a chain from beneath her shirt. On it glinted a milky white stone, laced with ribbons of color — an opal. “I am your talisman, remember?”
Desai made a surprised sound and sprang forward, reaching out to gently grasp the pendant around Upala’s neck. “You have an opal!”
Upala backed away and Desai let the gem fall back against her chest. “Kai gave it to me. After the last time I saved his life. Because I am opal myself, yes?”
“Yes,” Desai breathed, a look of realization on his face as he turned to Kai. “Upala — opal.”
Kai shrugged. “I told you she was a gem, did I not, old man? Did you think I was just using a term of endearment? Do I seem like the type to you?”
“This is wonderful,” said Desai, his face ebullient with hope. “My friends, I knew there was a reason that Rémy was given that compass — why it was important she found you, Kai, now of all times. Now we do indeed have a chance.”
“A chance?” came a drawling voice from behind them. “A chance to do what?”
The sapphire room filled with soldiers. These were not wild-eyed, armored cult members, but liveried, rifle-bearing men with nervous faces and pagri-wrapped heads. In front of them stood a man they had all seen before, but only one of them had the misfortune to know of old. Sahoj stepped forward, looking at Desai with a lazy smile and a raised eyebrow.
“Forgive me if I speak out of turn,” he said with exaggerated courtesy. “But, Desai, I do believe your chances have just run out.”