Many Words

“It wouldna happen to be a straight line, would it?”

“Looks like it is. Man-made?”

“Aye.” Iseabail smiled. “Dinna worry, cap’n, ye’ll be out a jiffy. What d’ye weigh?”

“About a hundred and seventy pounds.” Beyond his mouth, Cannon moved as little as possible. “Why?”

“Ye’ll see in a moment. Wha’s that in stone?” For a few seconds, Iseabail mouthed numbers. “If somethin’ happens tae make ye have ta move, give a shout an’ dinna fall forward, aye?” Cannon nodded. “The rest of ye, grab rocks from yon other pile an’ pass them here.”

Burr and di Giacomo lined up, and after a moment, Masaracchia caught on and finished the chain. Isea hefted each piece of rubble carefully before setting it in a growing pile next to Cannon. Eventually, she held up a hand at Burr, and said, “Gingerly, now, cap’n.”

Cannon shifted his weight backward, straining his ears for any slightest noise of the plate shifting. None came, and he stepped fully off of it. “Remind me to get you something nice.”

“We’ll call it even if ye can get me inta Jimmy Ellis’s club.”

“In San Francisco?” Cannon raised his eyebrows. “Maybe. We’ll work it out later. For now, we have a job to do.”

Iseabail shared a put-upon look with Burr. “Well, at least ye dinna pay me badly.”

They pressed onward, Cannon leading at a more measured pace. In fifty yards, they came to a door, decorated with pictograms, in the center of a brick wall across the tunnel.

“What do they say?” said Burr.

“These are more decorative than the others.” Cannon frowned, looking from row to row. “I don’t know this style. There’s Amen-ta again.” Here, the glyph was brilliantly colored: an orange half-circle, at the same time somehow both dusky and luminescent, over the midnight blue lines of the river. “There’s Osiris.” The glyph bore a strong resemblance to the statue in the gallery, though here Osiris still had his pale green coloring, and it was obvious that his legs were wrapped in linen. Cannon knelt to finish the last few lines. “That’s all I can make out. How do we get it open?”

The others followed him across. Burr pointed her light down the tunnel. “Is that a door?”

Cannon took a step toward it. “It could—”

The floor beneath his foot shifted, and a click echoed down the hall. Instantly, Iseabail said, “Dinna move a muscle, cap’n.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Cannon said, already standing stock still.

Iseabail took charge. “Aim tha’ light at the ground there, and dinna the rest of ye move either.” Standing in place, she leaned toward the campaign and shifted her light back and forth. Shadows danced across the floor, and she saw the outline of the plate Cannon had triggered. It ran across the whole hallway, and only a hair’s width separated it from the natural floor. It would have been nearly impossible to see even if they’d been more careful.

Fine workmanship, Isea thought, but not a useful place to look. Where did it connect? “Now, the mechanism must be rou’ed under the floor,” she mumbled, shining her torch on the plate, then the walls, then the ceiling. None of it struck her as out of the ordinary. “Alrigh’, what did ye do, ye crafty ancient gits…” Whatever she’d said earlier, there weren’t many ways she would count on to store power for millenia. Rocks, mainly, and gravity. That meant things high up, triggered by the plate somehow. Stepping on it lifted a support above a set point, perhaps, and removing pressure let it fall away, so that a heavy weight could turn on an axle. Surely something along those lines—otherwise, they would have set off the trap the moment the captain had blundered into it.

Iseabail spent a minute or two more before she expanded her inspection. Further down the hall, two yards past Cannon, was a suspicious-looking crack in the ceiling. It rain straight across, directly from wall to wall, and beyond it by a yard was its twin.

Iseabail turned her flashlight on the cave-in, but the angle was wrong to look at the ceiling. “Amelia, can ye see the edge where tha’ cave-in stops?”

Dutifully, Burr leaned over as far as she could and had a look. “What do you want to know?”

A grisly tableau met them. On the left side of the passage, two dessicated corpses sat propped against the wall. Scavenging insects had done their work some time ago, leaving the bodies eyeless. Dozens of small lengths of reed littered the floor around them.

Iseabail ignored the corpses—she may have been a newcomer to adventuring, but squeamish she was not—and aimed her flashlight further up the hall. “There’s a tripline a foot past yon second poor laddie,” she said. Turning her light on the walls to the right, she added, “An’ the darts came from yon holes in the wall.”

Cannon squatted a yard away from the nearer corpse. It wore an empty holster, and its shirt had a name tag—van Ruytjens. “van der Hoek’s men,” he said.

Iseabail wrapped her hand in a rag, then knelt a foot past Cannon. Gingerly, she took one of the reed darts. “Poison.” She turned it over. “It wouldna be enough tae kill a man otherwise.”

Burr, standing with the Thompson half-raised, had a look up the hallway. “Has it been reset?”

“The trap? I cannae say, but yon door was closed, remember.”

Cannon stood. “But who reset it? Cultists?”

“Unless they’re still here,” said Masaracchia, crossing his arms, “does it matter?”

“No.” One hand on the butt of his pistol, Cannon took slow steps forward. “I don’t have to repeat it, but be careful. di Giacomo, mark that wire.”

The Italian pirate put his pack down and took two squat candles from a side pocket. While the others waited, he lit the candles and slid them beneath the wire, lining them up with it. He stood, and together, they continued further in.

The hall took a square turn to the right to run directly into the hill again. Just pas the turn, the ceiling had seen a small cave-in—debris in a waste-high pile covered the floor. Cannon stopped in front of it and pointed his flashlight up at the gap in the ceiling. Thanks to Panama, he knew enough about collapsing tunnels to know the signs. Here, he saw none of the telltales. “You’re not a geologist or a miner, too, are you, brother monk?” Masaracchia shook his head, and Cannon shrugged. “Worth a shot. We’ll chance it.” He clambered over the rubble, then turned around when he reached the other side. “Seems okay.”

She didn’t look up when she answered. “Nae, cap’n, yon electric torch is fine.”

Burr glanced over her shoulder before returning to her vigil, watching the far end of the passage and the temple entrance by turns. “What’re you looking for, anyway?”

“Wha’ever it is, I’m nae finding it.” Iseabail stood abruptly. “Some grea’ mechanism turned wi’ the door, but I cannae tell even where it is.”

“How do you know it turned something?”

“Made a sound like God’s own ratchet.” Iseabail took her flashlight back from di Giacomo.

“That would explain why it stuck when it started to open,” said Cannon. “What could it have been doing, though? It’s been more than a thousand years since this place was important. What lasts that long?”

“Dinnae underestimate the dry. Wi’out anything tae rust it, a spring or a chain could ha’ weathered the centuries.” Iseabail smiled. “Tha’ was a bonny turn of phrase. Wha’ever way, though, it was nae broke when yon Dutchman came through.”

“You’ll have to run that by me again.”

“Use your heid, cap’n. Ye dinna think they closed the door behind them, aye?”

“Probably not,” Cannon conceded.

“An’ if the door’s past me ken, I’d nae pu’ grea’ stock in me for the traps,” said Iseabail. “Keep your eyes open, and dinnae break any trip-wires or pu’ your feet on any stane wha’ looks like it might move.”

Cannon nodded and pointed his flashlight toward the far end of the passage. “You heard the lady—be careful. I don’t want anyone taking a pine box home.”

“Pine’s all we rate, skipper?” said Burr.

Cannon shrugged. “I’m not made of money.”

They came to the natural stone and followed the carved hall to a square left turn. Cannon rounded it first, and immediately held up his hand for a halt. The others stopped, then edged around the corner to join him.

Most of the spectators watched as Joe pulled the phone from its hook, looking for some excitement fresher than the familiar thrill of the card tables.

“Copeland, hangar,” said Joe.

“Blake, bridge,” the caller replied. “Sir, one of our scouts reports contact with a Royal Navy flying boat, seventy miles south-southeast.”

Joe recalled what he’d seen the last time he’d looked out the launching hatch: rolling desert, a few rocky cliffs. “We’re over Palestine?”

“Just south of British territory.”

Joe needed only a moment’s thought. “Turn us west-northwest and sound battlestations. I’ll be up in a minute.” He returned the handset to the hook, and addressed the pirates watching him expectantly. “You heard me. Battlestations. Looks like we may have a scrap with the British after all.” They began to cheer, but Joe cut them off. “Enough of that. We’re gonna give them the slip if we can. Get the Kestrels and the Falcons ready to fly.” A moment passed, and he added, “Get to it!”

That spurred the pirates to action. Some—loaders, gunners, and engineers—ran toward the fore and aft hatches, while pilots and deck crew pounded toward their stations in the hangar. Joe watched them for a few beats, then turned and headed forward toward the bridge as the battlestations alarm rang out over the speakers.

di Giacomo held a light for Iseabail while she examined the inner side of the door. The ground team waited in the narrow, unadorned passage which the door’s opening had revealed. Iseabail, kneeling behind the door, marked the outward extent of the hall, while the far end met a passage hewn into the stony hillside against which the temple stood.

Cannon squelched the desire to go on ahead. “Isea, should we get out a torch?”

Masaracchia brushed his hands off and examined his work. The open door revealed a yawning blackness.

“Wha’ kind of monk are you?” Iseabail said, eyebrows raised.

Masaracchia coughed. “The body is to be a temple.”

“Nae one o’ those old, run-down ones, is it?”

“Eighty-six the flirting, Isea, he’s a man of God,” said Cannon.

Iseabail gave him a cross look. “Ye dinna have tae make a wisecrack abou’ everything.”

Cannon played his light around the space past the door way. “It’s how I show I care. Let’s go.”

Silence filled Inconstant’s hangar. A breeze blew through the open launching hatch, but Charlie Henderson, sitting across the card table from Joe Copeland, was nevertheless sweating bullets.

Joe was happy to see it. His cards laid face-down on the table—a full house, and guessing from Henderson’s repeated hopeful glances at his hand, he wasn’t nearly as well off. On the table between them was strewn the stake, a collection of small-time pirate treasure, from antique coins and modern banknotes to pocket-watches, rings, and other little bits of lucre. Joe had a small pile of his own. Henderson had just put his last earring into the pot. For better or for worse, this was his last hand. Thirty or forty other pirates stood around the table, some of them players who had been knocked out earlier in the afternoon.

“One,” Henderson said, barely louder than a whisper.

Joe slid a card from the top of the deck and flipped it off the table. “Can’t bet,” he said, a smirk showing at the corners of his mouth. “Let’s see—”

The sound-powered phone on the forward bulkhead rang. “Full house,” Joe said, turning over his cards as he got up. Henderson threw his hand at the table, and a few cheers went up from the peanut gallery—as well-liked as Henderson was, for the last month or two he’d been on a good run at cards, and like all pirates, the rest of the crew hated to lose booty they had rightfully stolen.