The Pyramids of London

THIRTY-THREE

Landing proved to be a great deal more difficult than taking off, mainly because of drystone walls and sheep. And a hedge of blackberries, which did interesting things to the swallow’s wings, and Eluned’s legs, and made her glad for the hand that did not feel when she used it to hook the anchor chain to the strongest-looking branches.

“So unprepared,” she said, hopping out of the thicket. “We didn’t even bring the wooden sword.”

“Could wait here. Leave it to the Huntress.”

“We could,” Eluned said, picking up the sturdiest stick she could see, and starting in the direction Lila was pointing. “But the sun’s well on the way to being up.”

Down on the ground, the Huntress would have more protection from the brightening dawn, and it was not as if she would turn to stone immediately, but Eluned was taking no chances. Whoever had stolen that airship surely knew something about the fulgite thefts. Eluned had a few important things to ask them.

They had not managed to land within immediate sight of the downed airship, but at least they could now see easily, and their hurried walk only involved startling the sheep and scrambling over the fences. Soon, they spotted pieces of the ballonet, strewn over the top of a grove of trees.

A high-pitched snarl made them quicken their pace, but they stopped dead at the rumbling growl that followed. Eluned had heard that sound before.

“Still want to go?” Eleri asked.

A thief was one thing, that hulking shape they’d seen on the grove wall another altogether.

Before Eluned could reply, a gunshot cracked above the sound of combat. Eluned and Eleri exchanged a glance, then moved forward, much more slowly.

The gondola had touched down not quite upright, a sapling crushed beneath it. The nose was facing Eluned, and the windows had shattered, but she could only see the door at a sharp angle. She had a much better view of the caracal, and a creature with a heavy snub head, weighted by wide, horizontal horns. Its shoulders bulged with muscle and its feet were great clawed plates. The thing Aunt Arianne called the bull-bear.

It clearly outmatched the much smaller caracal, even with the healing, speed and strength given to the Huntresses. It was only when a second shot rang out, scoring the caracal down one flank, that Eluned realised that part of the reason the Huntress was struggling was because she was using the bull-bear’s bulk to shield herself from the shots from the gondola.

At this angle, Eluned couldn’t see whoever was shooting, and sorted rapidly through their sparse options. A frontal approach through the clearing was out of the question: even if they did not draw the attention of the bull-bear, the shooter would easily see them and have a chance to fire before they reached the door.

Besides, no matter what they did about the person firing, there was not a thing they could do about the bull-bear. Intervening would get them killed as well.

“Stay here,” Eluned hissed to Eleri, and slipped away from the clearing to lessen the risk of being spotted as she circled to come up behind the gondola.

A glittering glass reef clung to the rim of the windows, telling Eluned that her initial plan of crossing the gondola to ambush the shooter wasn’t viable. She could see the person, though: a woman with light brown hair slipping from a loose braid, and with one sleeve of her tunic soaked with blood.

What now? If she couldn’t easily get close, could she distract the woman and then run? Or…

“Rocks.” Eleri had not stayed put, and now bent and collected a chunk of stone of the same grey as the walls they’d crossed.

Another shot added frantic speed to their efforts to gather enough ammunition, but it was difficult to gauge the progress of the battle over a rising roar that reduced even the bull-bear’s growl to an inconsequential undernote. The windstorm, giving the trees voice, thrashing branching, whipping the shreds of the ballonet’s skin into a flapping frenzy.

“On three,” Eluned said, cradling her armful of chunky stone.

Her first rock went wide, bouncing off the side of the doorway. Eleri’s hit a hanging piece of glass, sending glittering fragments spraying dangerously. But the stone still struck the woman’s back, and she turned in time to receive a second barrage in the face.

Eluned had never done that before. Never thrown a rock or a punch, and seen blood, a visible hurt, as a result of her actions. She could blind this woman, this stranger, could scar her, even kill her. And all of Eluned backed away from that, from the permanency. From someone, somewhere, feeling about this woman the way Eluned had about Mother and Father, sent on prematurely to Annwn, and perhaps out of reach forever.

Bright anger lent her the will to throw another stone, to aim it, to put all her strength behind it. To perhaps not even cringe when it struck with a hollow watermelon noise, and the woman dropped.

“Good shot,” Eleri said. “Don’t think that will work on that bear thing.”

“If we distract it enough, the Huntress might be able to hold out until the pursuit arrives,” Eluned said. “Hurry—the brighter it gets, the more she’ll slow—ah!”

A shard of window had been blown loose by the increasing gale, slashing across her chin. She lifted her hand, and brought it away red, but then Eleri pushed her forcefully down, and they both covered their heads as all the remaining glass became horizontal hail.

“Not sure we could even get its attention over this,” Eleri said, lifting her head cautiously.

The entire gondola was rocking with the force of the gale, and when they crawled to the fore to peer into the clearing, twigs, leaves and grit pelted them. It was by far the worst windstorm Eluned had ever experienced.

“Any airships sent after us won’t be able to fly in this,” she said, and studied the sky, searching not for rescue, but something less welcome. And there they were, coming not from the direction of the wind, but flying into the gale. Lion-bodied, with the faces of women, and wings of blue and black.

They were larger than Eluned had expected. One of those had fit into Aunt Arianne’s room at Sheerside House?

There was no question of battle after the sphinxes dropped down. One simply landed on the bull-bear, with the precise ease of a house-cat trapping an ungainly mouse, holding it still under stony front paws. The roaring gale immediately slackened.

“Really are statues.”

“Really are big,” Eluned replied. “What now?”

“Not throwing rocks at those. Just watch.”

But the caracal, returning to human form, wasted no time turning toward them and beckoning imperatively. Eluned and Eleri were slow to respond, for neither of the sphinxes looked anything but welcoming, their tails lashing and their expressions hostile. Even so…

“How can we help, dama?” Eluned asked, trying not to goggle as a bullet slowly emerged from a wound in the Huntress’ shoulder, and fell to the ground. She wondered if the Huntress wanted to drink from them—the Thoth-den blood that had allowed her to survive the loss of her arm should have filtered from her system years ago, meaning the strains wouldn’t clash. Though the Thoth-den had said Eluned and Eleri had one of the rarer types of blood, that only vampires with the same type of blood could drink.

That did not seem to be the Huntress’s reason, anyway, as she walked briskly into the gondola, stepping over the fallen woman. Eluned had to pause and check that the shooter was alive, though, because if she had killed someone, she wanted to know as soon as possible. Finding steady breathing, she prudently picked up the woman’s gun, then surveyed the interior of the airship.

In three rough sections, with the pilot’s fittings and side-benches at the front, heavy storage in the centre, and a privacy cupboard and the engine housing to the rear, the entire gondola was strewn with leaves, lurking fragments of glass, and an unexpected wash of water. This was coming from one of three barrels in the central storage area, which had escaped stowage to fall on its side. The Huntress lifted it upright and finished the job of breaking open the lid, releasing a final gush of water. What remained was familiar purple crystals.

Three barrels, three fortunes in fulgite. And one crate that made Eleri and Eluned gasp when the Huntress lifted away its lid to reveal a black and chrome figure curled into a ball.

“Father’s automaton!” Eluned could hardly believe it, touching the domed skull.

“Proof.” Eleri’s voice was low. “Proof.”

A much smaller head rose on the far side of the crate, the painted monocle turned in their direction, blank and yet impossibly aware. The Huntress lifted the converted mannequin and placed it with great ceremony in Eleri’s hands, then carried the larger automaton outside.

“Do you think it’s talking to her?” Eluned whispered as they followed.

“Must have had a reason to bring it to the airfield. Expect she was one of the Huntresses watching Forest House.” Eleri regarded the automaton she carried dubiously, and then started as the two massive sphinxes each lowered their fronts to one knee, and bent their stern heads. “Have a bad feeling I know who this is.”

“Hatshepsu.”

Eluned, who had been hoping very much that Dem Makepeace would arrive, turned at his words, and was even better pleased that he’d brought Princess Leodhild and Princess Aerinndís with him.

“The obvious possibility, once we knew what fulgite was,” Princess Leodhild said. “Though I could wish it was not the case. What an appalling mess.” She nodded her head formally to Eleri’s burden, glanced at Eluned, and then produced a kerchief and pressed it to Eluned’s chin. “You two look like you’ve been dragged through an entire hedgerow backward.”

“You two need to be put on a leash,” Dem Makepeace added sourly, and handed Eluned a statue of Sulis holding up the sun. “Don’t leave things like this about the Great Forest. You’ll upset the balance.”

“He was worried,” Princess Leodhild confided. “Really though, this is quite the result. Will this solve both the Wrack and the windstorm issue?”

The Huntress had seated the large automaton on a fallen tree, and then gone back into the airship for the three barrels of fulgite, which she emptied unceremoniously in a pile at the automaton’s feet.

“They were keeping it in barrels of water?” Princess Leodhild said. “Why?” Then, when the two sphinxes—taking turns keeping the bull-bear pinned—paced forward and coughed up some more purple crystals, she stifled a chuckle and added: “Not quite laying it, Comfrey.”

“The water is a logical extrapolation.” Princess Aerinndís was watching the scene dispassionately. “Amon-Re, like Sulis, is aligned with sun and wind. This Wrack already knew to escape me by going underwater. If they had encountered the sphinxes, they would have searched for methods of concealment.”

The automaton seated imperiously in Eleri’s arms raised one hand, pointing, and after a moment’s hesitation Eleri walked forward and placed it on the larger one’s lap. They made a mismatched pair: the rather plain wooden mannequin, worn in places, with metal only visible at its joints, certain features—hands, feet, face—only suggestions. Whereas Father’s automaton had been primarily worked in metal: much of it enamelled black, inset with panels of vivid chrome, every joint articulated, down to the tip of every finger and toe. And all of the enamel, every inch, decorated with the cloisonné arabesques that father had favoured in his work.

And yet there was a similarity, for Father had not attempted naturalistic features, but instead used the combination of enamel and chrome to add sharp relief to the planes of the face. The result was remote, but elegant as Father’s work always was.

The Huntress spoke, and Princess Leodhild said: “She wants the fulgite taken from the small automaton and placed in the large one, and for the transfer to be as quick as possible.”

This was no problem for Eleri, and she did so briskly, though with one involuntary glance at the two sphinxes, which stood abruptly in the middle of the process. Then she stepped hastily back, and they waited.

Eluned immediately became convinced that the transfer had been a mistake. The larger automaton did not react at all, but the two sphinxes did, rattling their odd wings, and shifting their weight restively. When movement came, it was not from the automaton, but the pile of fulgite at its feet. A thousand fragments of vampire, shifting, shuffling, fitting together.

A woman. Quite short, her cheeks broad, lips full. Hairless, covered in countless fractures. And missing one eye. She stood before them for only a moment, and then the body of Maatkare Hatshepsu turned to dust and was swept away on the slackening breeze.

Some fulgite remained. Glittering crystals that Eluned guessed were pieces of other vampires collected by the thieves. It crunched under the feet of the automaton as she stood.

Taking Latin instead of Egyptian in school had definitely been the wrong decision, though the brief exchange between the Huntress and the princesses had a note that suggested it was whatever polite formalities could possibly be appropriate to the occasion of the revival of one of history’s most famed rulers, after people had been using her as a battery.

Then all of them—Huntress, princesses, Dem Makepeace, and the automaton controlled by the ruler of the Egyptian Empire—turned toward the two sphinxes, and the creature pinned beneath one paw.

Princess Leodhild said: “Fair warning, dama. If you don’t surrender, this delightfully large creature intends to snap your spine.”

Completely overmatched, the bull-bear had long since given up attempting to struggle. Her transformation had an air of a shrug about it. Eluned hadn’t even realised that it was a person. A sturdy, blond woman, as battered as she and Eleri, and wearing a piece of black material on her head like a cap, cloth dangling down to cover her face to just above the mouth. Two golden lines bracketed the outline of an eye.

The sphinx lifted its paw fastidiously, then paced away as the woman sat up.

“Bow,” Dem Makepeace said, and pushed Eluned and Eleri lightly on the shoulder.

Eluned did as she was told, though not quite achieving the depth that he did. The princesses inclined their heads. And Egypt’s Pharaoh mounted one of her guardian sphinxes, and flew away.

“Well now,” Princess Leodhild said. “I do wonder whether the Nesweth will consider that arrival an improvement on the earlier news of the day? Obliging, at least, for her to leave this one alive.” She crossed to consider the woman sitting among the leaves. “Dane Dayson, I presume? Or should I call you Wrack?”

“Wrack?” The response was calm, unconcerned. “Yes. That will serve as well as anything.”

“Did you kill our parents?” Eleri said, sharply, before Princess Leodhild could say more. “Tell me.”

The woman—or the mask—turned slowly toward her. “Do you ask a boon of knowledge of me?”

“She does not!” Dem Makepeace said sharply. “It’s a god,” he added to Princess Leodhild.

“No.” Wrack again, a quiet correction. “Not such a small thing.”

Eluned was not the only one who stared. But before they could ask more, the woman reached up and pulled the cloth off her head, quietly sighed, and passed out.

“Unconscious,” Dem Makepeace said, not moving. “I won’t give odds on how much she’ll know when she wakes. A thief, definitely, but controlled by something vast and unknown.”

Did that mean that Mother and Father’s murderer wasn’t even human? Was something that could never be brought to justice? Eluned struggled with a crushing disappointment, glancing at Eleri and seeing the same reaction. But then she frowned.

“That mask.”

Dem Makepeace glanced at her. “What about it?”

“It’s a quartered eye.”

“Yes it is,” he said agreeably. “And a vampire in rept form is arguably an anchor on the soul of a god, and I do wonder what Wrack wanted with it.”

He looked up at the now very blue sky, at the leaves outlined with sunlight, and the leading edge of airships come to the rescue, and added: “Done with your adventures?”

Eluned started to respond, but realised the remark had been addressed to Lila, who lifted her head, then slid across to Dem Makepeace when he extended his arm.

“She won’t get into trouble will she?”

“For failing in her duty, and then co-opting you two into fixing her mistake? What makes you think that?” He turned away, inclining his head to Princess Aerinndís. “Anything further, Highness?”

“No. I will speak with you tonight.”

Dem Makepeace bowed again, then spoke to the exhausted Huntress, and walked into the shadow of the trees with her. Eluned, feeling defeated, sat down on the log by the remaining fulgite, and Eleri joined her, picking up the abandoned mannequin. This was as over as it would be then. Mother and Father were still gone, and nothing had really changed, and Eluned did not feel better at all.

The Crown Princess walked across to them. Trying to remember royal protocols, Eluned started to stand up, but the princess gestured for them to remain seated, and so Eluned reluctantly settled back down. Princess Aerinndís was such a grand and distant person, not nearly so likeable as the comfortable Princess Leodhild, and Eluned struggled to find the energy to deal with formal and proper when all she wanted was to curl up into a ball.

“The Processional made the Seaforth name famous throughout Prytennia,” Princess Aerinndís observed. “The whole world will know the name Tenning, for the form that Maatkare Hatshepsu will wear as she continues her journey into eternity. I believe she found it a worthy one.”

And that did change things, did make it better. Enough to go on with.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Eluned whispered, but the Crown Princess had already turned away.