Sinister Sentiments (10 page)

I check, remaining silent. Silas nods and thrashes forward, shattering glass over both of us. Some shards collect in the upturned rims of his denim overalls, the ones now stained forever with his dark brown blood. I’ll make a point of wrestling the sharp remnants free when we get home. As my master feels around to obtain the parts he desires for his next great project, footsteps come in vibrations under my steel paws. Two sets are approaching us. I give out a bark, the one designed to signify danger, turning sharply to face the oncoming threat. Officers of the law.

“What’s the bother, negro?” one of the Peelers asks, straightening out his uniform. His hand hovers gleefully over a baton.

His companion sniggers. “Trying to build yourself some eyes?”

Silas turns too with a frown. My frame seems heavier somehow as I realise that’s exactly what he’s trying to do. I have a moment before the officers as I watch them unveil their weapons, a moment just like the one back at the townhouse when Milady was still alive. Back then I hesitated, a fatal pause that changed the world. But now I lunge forth, teeth bared and razor sharp, the blind rage of my mechanics overtaking any pause for thought or feeling. I never hesitate anymore to protect what’s mine.

It’s the one mistake I’ve learned never to repeat.

The Bleeding Of The thief

I’d always supposed that being a scoundrel was going to catch up with me sooner or later. I’d just rather it had been later, that’s all, because young, strong wrists didn’t suit the tight, digging manacles that were drawing out my blood. My skin was tanned a deep caramel shade from weeks of labour in the sun, but where the manacles sometimes slid a little against the broken skin, I could still see slivers of white, untainted flesh beneath each thick iron band. A slim, crimson line trailed down from the heavy shackles into each of my palms as I lay on my back in the sand, looking up at my hands. I watched the blood line form small droplets on my fingertips before the liquid became too heavy, falling to the golden grains in soundless droplets.

By the shade of the great pyramid, the lack of sun left my wounds wet and stinging, but it soothed every other ache and ailment in my battered frame. When I was picking bar-fights back home, I thought I’d known a fair bit about pain. Now, I knew that rising by morning light on the losing end of a scuffle was far preferable to the baking, endless sands that greeted me whenever I opened my eyes. That’s why I was there, in the shadows, laid flat to gaze up at the sky. Staring into the azure depths and their streaky white clouds, I could almost believe that I was still in Texas, and that I’d never followed my feckless greed to the Arab lands in the first place.

“You should be working.”

His voice was a grunt, the English marred by a rolling tongue and an accent as heavy as lead. I slowly rose with manacles creaking, rubbing my sweat-soaked brow as I faced the Moor. His cocoa skin was enveloped by soft laundered robes of orange and beige, with a thick, bearded scowl and pinhole eyes peeking out of the folds. I didn’t need to see his covered brow to know it was furrowed in anger. I raised my hands, bloody palms showing as I bowed my head.

“I stopped to rest,” I pleaded in a dry, cracking tone. “The shackles are too tight.”

“You should be working,” the Moor said again.

He didn’t know much English, and even less American, which was just as well, considering all the names I called him whilst I was at work. I picked up my sledgehammer with a weary groan, feeling every sinew in my shoulders pull at its heft. The pile of unbroken stone lay at the foot of the pyramid’s wall, where a slit of agonising sun crept around its corner. I walked into the light, cursing the instant burn on my skin, and began to smash the stones once more. They would be reshaped into bricks for the Moor’s new dwelling; he fancied himself a great Desert Lord, and needed a palace to prove it.

A tiny squeak of leather caught my attention, and I barely had time to prick my ears up before the lash of the whip swiftly followed it to my back. White-hot pain seared through the newly-healed flesh, reopening tender wounds as easily as a hot knife slides through butter. Tears stung my eyes, but I didn’t fall or cry out. I didn’t even drop my hammer.

The Moor was already walking away, his wordless punishment serving as our prime method of communication. The message was clear enough. Don’t be caught slacking again.

The horizon beyond the Moor’s domain was nothing but Egyptian desert. A clear line divided the cerulean sky and golden sand with nothing to break it, save for the odd dead tree or a line of shackled workers passing by. I had come to this place on the promise of an Arab I had met back in Mercy, a rich man who told me that a young buck like myself could make a fortune robbing the huge pyramid-tombs of dead kings.

In all my wisdom, I had chosen this pyramid to make my first attempt: a two-hundred foot structure belonging to Abdul Kader, the Moor who now owned my life. Another of his prisoners once told me that his name translated as ‘Servant of the Powerful’. I thought it was a title that fit his slaves better than their master.

That’s what I was now, a slave to my own stupid greed. I had travelled alone to a distant land without sparing a word to anyone as to where I was going, for fear that they might want to tag along and share in my spoils. If they had, at least I’d have had someone else to bemoan the manacles with now.

I hated the sand more than anything, especially when the wind whipped it up and it dug deep into my bloodied wrists, leaving me safe in the knowledge that I would be painfully extracting the grains from my wounds later at the oasis. Worse still, the sand kept travellers at bay, and every day passed by with the Moor’s criminal cruelty hidden from the civilised world.

Until today.

Later, when I had broken nearly all of the rock assigned to me, I saw a shape emerge on the horizon. At first, I couldn’t be certain that I was really seeing it. The silhouette wavered in the lines of rising heat, flapping like birds’ wings one moment, and glinting like steel the next. Thinking it was nothing more than a mirage, I went back to work for a while, but hope made me turn my eyes to the horizon time and again. Whatever it was, it was real, and it was growing larger by the minute.

“You there!”

A female voice called out as the shape took proper form. There was steel in the craft, brass too, and several other metals that I didn’t recognise. The whole frame of the contraption blinded me with reflected sunlight, so much so that I had to retreat into the pyramid’s shade before I could really see what I was looking at. It seemed to be a bicycle frame, though its wheels were thick like railroad chains, and it had a pair of seats on its bough, one behind the other. Behind the second empty seat, a huge pair of sails rose up like the white wings of an angel, swinging into a vertical position that blocked the last remnants of the sun.

The woman who had spoken wore a bun of grey hair sticking out of the back of a wide sunhat. She was dressed in a cream long-sleeved blouse with gentlemen’s trousers made of coarse brown fabric, and across her chest was a leather bandolier containing a variety of boxed and bound supplies. Over the ageing lady’s heart, the bandolier held in place a slim, golden telescope patterned with rich, shining jewels. She clutched at it with a silver-lined hand as she surveyed me, eyes narrow and dark.

“I say, you do speak English, don’t you?”

She was British, maybe even aristocratic. I wondered what she was doing so far out in the Arab lands alone. I thought she ought to have been sipping tea somewhere in a London parlour, wearing crinoline and lace. The desert had beaten me down, and I was a young, strong man. This woman had no chance of survival if the Moor found her at his dwelling.

“You should run,” I said, surprised by how dry my throat was from the day’s grind. “There’s a slave master here. He’s strong. If he finds you, he’ll—”

“Ah,” the woman interrupted, tapping her chin with one long-nailed finger. “Then this is the Temple-City of Abdul Kader?” Her voice rose with a pleasant, excited inflection.

“Yes, but—”

“In that case, I’ve come to the correct place.”

The old woman dismounted her contraption with a satisfied smile, and I had to admit, I was impressed by her spritely leap. She kicked out a steadying stand on the metal frame, and the winged bicycle rested precariously beside my rubble pile. Rotating the bandolier on her shoulder, the lady retrieved a slim vial of yellow liquid and a single metal spoon from one pocket. The spoon shone impossibly bright against her tanned hand, a silver-white metal that put my dull, rusting manacles to shame. She approached me with a kind, unperturbed smile, as though we were meeting in some country garden.

“I’m serious,” I warned her. “Kader’s a wicked man. If he finds you—”

“He won’t,” she cut me off again. “Rest assured young man, your salvation is come.”

She took the chains that held my manacles and gently tugged them, forcing me to hold out my wrists. Crouching, the elegant lady worked on the underside of my shackles, applying tiny droplets of her yellow tincture with the tip of the bright spoon. I heard a hissing noise, and the woman suddenly took hold of the iron ring on my left wrist and flung it aside. I shook off the right as well, watching it land with a thud in the shady sand, where it slowly burned itself away towards nothingness. I looked back to the woman as she replaced the trappings in her bandolier.

“How come your spoon didn’t melt?” I asked, hardly daring to believe that the whole moment wasn’t some feverish dream.

“Iridium,” she said, her thin lips crinkling into a smile. “Please hold all further questions until after our impressive escape.”

She held out her hand to me.
Escape?
Is she insane?
Even if she was, there weren’t many options left open once my shackles had burned into contorted lumps of slag. If the Moor found me, there’d be more than a whipping in store.

I stepped forward and clutched her hand, a little lighter in the chest when I noted how she didn’t recoil from my soiled, bloody palm. She held me fast, like a mother with her charge, half-dragging my aching bones towards her bicycle. I threw myself into the back seat as she mounted the front, suddenly crying out when the open lash-mark across my spine connected with the hot copper rim of the seat.

“Lean forward and hold on,” she instructed with a shout. “I don’t want you falling off when we lift.”

“Lift?” I cried, doing as she commanded. “Are you saying this thing flies?”

She looked over her shoulder at me, dark eyes glittering. “Now, what did I say about questions?” The words were barely out of her mouth before we took off.

It didn’t so much fly as bounce. A small locomotive device sat under the bough between her seat and mine, which, once activated, enabled the winged cycle to leap into the air in the spirit of a flea. We travelled considerable distances above the golden sands, the wide sails at the vehicle’s rear helping us to steadily glide back to the ground after each assent.

The whole contraption had a lean to it, and I found I was clutching the back of the seat in front of me as my body shunted forward with every leap. However uncomfortable the journey seemed, I was thrilled to see the Moor’s pyramid fading to a distant speck on the horizon every time I turned my head.

When Kader’s Temple-City was out of sight, the old woman let the bicycle sink to the ground and began to pedal. The contraption’s thick tyres and heaving gears helped her to drive us on smoothly. Those angelic wings settled into a tail that trailed behind us, and I started to feel the heat of the afternoon sun sinking into my skin again. The wound across my back stung, and my forearms were tight with the strain of holding on during the flea-hops. When I let go of the seat before me, I was so shocked by the loss of feeling in my biceps, I nearly toppled clean out of my seat. I leaned forward again to keep my brow out of the sunlight, feeling my eyes grow heavy against my will.

“It’s not terribly polite to fall out of your rescuer’s vehicle in the middle of nowhere, you know.”

My eyes flickered open and closed as the woman spoke in that refined manner again. For all her lesson-like words, there was humour in her voice that stopped me from thinking she was haughty.

I was in the shade somewhere, with the rim of a bottle being pressed to my lips. I craned my neck, relieved by the trickle of water that filled my mouth. I swallowed the precious fluid and gasped, turning onto my back to get some air. I had forgotten about the lash mark again, but no sharp sting came when I put pressure on the wound. I felt around with a weak arm, twisting it under my body to find a thick, soft fabric held in place by taught straps of canvas.

“It’s just as well you were unconscious when I cleaned your wounds,” the woman said with a tut. “Ghastly things, whips.”

The shade was courtesy of the bicycle’s wings, which could be erected in the style of a breaker against the sirocco winds. I was lying on a thick blanket that dulled the heat of the blazing sands and the woman was seated in a cross-legged fashion. She looked down on me with a thoughtful pout in her wrinkled lips.

“Who are you?” I asked her.

“Mrs. Henry Crenshaw,” she answered, “but my given name is Maybelline.”

“Why were you looking for Kader’s place?”

Maybelline gave a little grin. “My, aren’t you a nosey one.”

“You said I could have questions after the escape,” I insisted. “So answer me. Why did you come to the pyramid?”

She reached out a tanned hand and put the back of it to my brow. She felt like warm leather against my dirty, sweat-soaked head, but there was something maternal to the touch that left me no desire to evade it.

“For you, of course,” she said.

I shuffled, lying there open-mouthed to take in another grateful breath.

“You know who I am?” I replied, not thinking it was possible.

“Not at all,” Maybelline answered.

A silence followed, and the old woman passed me some more water. As consciousness fully sank in, I was able to haul myself up and sit opposite her on the blanket. I rubbed my face all over with a little of the water, accepting a handkerchief from my saviour to wipe some of the grime from my skin.

“Would you mind if we dispensed with these short, cryptic answers?” I asked her. “Not that I’m not grateful for your help, but I find I’m having some problems trusting people after being tricked into being a Moor’s slave for the last six months.”

Maybelline raised her arms, patting the air down with a nod.