she added.
“Aye, a rare fellow, that Tangeni.” But to her disappointment, he didn’t follow up. Instead, he narrowed his glazed eyes and then looked away to hide his grief. He seemed so lonely, so sad, she hadn’t the heart to press him further just yet. But that time would come.
“Hey, speaking of adventures, I met Quatermain once.” She tugged his vest.
“Really?” He blinked rapidly. “Pray tell.”
“Two summers ago he was leading an expedition into Kukuanaland. We flew over on our way to supply a team of mineral surveyors when he lit a distress lamp. One of his trail guides was crippled with fever, so we had to land and take him back to hospital.”
“Wasn’t contagious, I hope.”
“No. And the best part is…the guide had performed heroics along the way…saved a friend of Quatermain’s. And so Quatermain gave him a parting gift. In case the guide didn’t survive, we were to pass the gift on to his family. You’ll never guess what it was.”
“Not a diamond the size of a cricket ball, by chance?”
Verity halted him. “How in God’s name did you know that?”
“I’m good.” Rubbing his stubble, he teased her with a smug-but-really-rather-cute pout. “And it made all the papers in London.”
“No joking?”
“No.” Embrey thumbed his braces, seemed more boy than man. Verity’s heart warmed. “To English ears, any tale involving Quatermain or Horace Holly is like rumours of Heracles’s exploits to the ancient Greeks. Storytelling ambrosia. And when King Solomon’s diamonds are involved-”
“I know.” She tipped her helmet back and suddenly felt more exposed than she was comfortable with. To hell with comfort. This concerns Quatermain. “It was all we could talk about for weeks after. Tangeni even traded with him-gave Quatermain a spare canteen in exchange for one of his rifle bullets. I don’t know how the deuce he plucked the courage to do that.”
“Did you speak to him?”
Verity leaned in and whispered in his ear, “Don’t tell anyone, but I went as weak as a schoolgirl with a crush.” The heady excitement of being this close to him, close enough to taste his natural, intoxicating scent, dizzied her for a moment.
He whispered back, “What did you say?”
“That I…that I…”
“That you what?”
“That I loved-”
A crash of thunder ripped them apart, spun them toward the last building on Parliament Street. Thick dust jets shot out of the windows and open crevices while the structure collapsed. First the rear, then the upper north wall caved in with a rumble. Finally, the entire front of the building buckled and spilled forward onto the road, its mammoth roar making Verity cover her ears. She flinched and stumbled back.
They watched as the dust and debris fizzed out and settled on the asphalt and the guts of the building were laid bare. Men came running. One or two rummaged through the rubble to reach three or four crushed bodies. Embrey ran to help them. The other men pointed away toward the northwest tree-line, where the upper branches swayed violently. One gent ran back to camp, waving his arms in distress.
Verity’s vision blurred. Her mouth went dry. Metal? Why did her saliva taste of…metal? A red fingertip after brushing her lips suggested she’d bit her tongue. Then why did-?
She traced a line of blood up to her nose, then up her nose to her brow. Finally she located an aching gash, where the brim of her helmet should have been if she hadn’t tipped it back. The wound bled slowly but constantly. She didn’t have the strength or the wherewithal to cry for help. Only a memory of strolling about the quarterdeck seemed to keep her from falling.
Suddenly her eyes filled with diamonds, and she lost consciousness.
Too many surprises all at once caught up with Embrey as he sat on the kerb near Reardon’s clock parts and rubbed his tired eyes. Four aeronauts kept vigil around the professor, while one rushed to the Empress for bandages and antiseptic ointment. Djimon stayed with Verity in the shade outside the factory. Luckily, she’d come round almost right away after fainting, and Embrey had nursed her in his arms until her men had arrived. How intimate they’d become in so short a time. That talk of Quatermain had cut through their animosity nicely. But how? Why was she so well disposed to him all of a sudden? Because he’d saved her life and she his? Or perhaps Reardon and Tangeni had talked some sense into her after all, made her realise that the British legal system had more holes than a sinking sloop, that his family hadn’t had a hand in her sister’s death.
Whatever the reason, he loved the change in her. Beneath the prickly Amazon warrior, Verity Champlain had a lasting crush on Quatermain, and the way she’d tugged at his vest, like a little girl wanting to spill a secret-she had a vibrant, playful side he’d like to see more of. When she recovered he would see about resuming their conversation. If she didn’t turn on him again, that was. But in any event, he would not allow a woman who enjoyed adventuring as much as he did to slip through his fingers. No, ma’am.
“What’s this talk of a royal found in the rubble, old chap?” Reardon called over.
Yawning, Embrey looked up into the professor’s intense gaze. “That’s correct. Carswell insists we’ve found the Duke of Kent. His face was smashed and he’s dressed casually, but Carswell recognized two of the other men from the duke’s royal entourage. They all died during the time jump. We haven’t found them until now because they’d been buried in a collapsed upper room. Died drinking port, apparently. Not the worst way to go.”
Reardon blinked twice and then returned to his work.
“How goes it, Professor?”
“Like clockwork.”
“Anything I can help you with?”
“No.”
“Anything I can get you? A beverage? A bite to eat?”
“No.”
“Want to be left alone, huh.”
Reardon grunted.
Cantankerous old bugger. Embrey put on the spectrometer goggles he’d borrowed from the workshop, and lay back on the concrete, feeling wonderfully superfluous. A flock of pterosaurs streaked in front of the sun, their silhouettes no bigger than dragonflies-far, far above-and they didn’t appear to be circling. Nothing to worry about. He folded his arms behind his head, closed his eyes and soaked up the sun’s warmth.
An hour or so had passed, judging from the sun’s shifted position in the sky. Reardon was still hard at work under the parasol they’d erected, adjusting his mirrors and lenses, checking the angles of sunlight refracting through his various prisms. At least he’d cobbled the pieces together into a few substantial parts now-sizeable, complex mechanisms. One resembled a large Leonardo Da Vinci cryptex filled with several long shafts and rotating lenses. When the professor lifted it, its insides appeared to form a beautiful, multi-chambered kaleidoscope.
Embrey sat up, yawned and stretched. He saw no sign of Verity. She’d probably returned to her cabin on the ship. He would visit her presently. Polperro’s posse had already laid the five new corpses on Speaker’s Green and was busy digging fresh graves. How many more would there be? Despite Reardon’s unflappable confidence in his machine, could it ever whisk them through time with any degree of accuracy? The professor maintained the first mis-jump was nothing more than a hiccup, but Embrey and Verity had seen his face turn white when confronted with the inexplicable spider’s web. Garrett Embrey was no scientist. Whom, then, should he defer to? The man who’d invented time travel, or the woman whose job it had been to make sure he didn’t invent time travel?
Both were barking mad.
It’s all beyond me. I’d better consult with Verity and Tangeni instead. He grinned. Yes, sharing a cabin with the captain might at least help my…perspective.
He spun at the sound of a high-pitched whistle. But where exactly had it “Lord Embrey! Protect the professor!” one of the aeronauts yelled from Speaker’s Green. “We’re under attack!”
Polperro’s posse fled from what looked like multi-coloured streaks darting about on the lawn. Several inhuman shrieks wrenched him to full alert. He drew his steam-pistols and shielded Reardon, who picked up his own rifle. The four aeronauts formed a protective line.
