The Earl of Brass (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 1) (18 page)

“How do you keep it so warm here?” he asked as his clothing stuck to his chest while the heavily veiled workers seemed completely unaware of the stifling humidity.

“We keep the doors closed to trap the steam inside, but the moist air is sent up here by the boilers that heat our ovens and power the kilns.”

As Neuk spoke to a worker to retrieve some fruit for his guests, Eilian drew his lips near his companion’s ear, chilling her even in the heat of the arboretum. “I think we should build a greenhouse together just like this when we get back home,” he whispered as he wrapped his mechanical arm around her shoulder.

Letting her eyes drop, she embraced the flutter at his touch with a rebellious smile. “Yes, that would be a marvelous project.”

***

As they spiraled back down toward the library, neither Eilian nor Hadley could fathom the world they had seen. Hadley sighed. She could not wait to get back to camp to write down and draw all she had seen, but she knew she could never do her senses justice. The library’s entrance was modest compared to the great Gothic façade of the tribunal hall, but past the basilical front was a grand rotunda filled with shelves laden with scrolls and tablets. Littered around them were tables with bright fungal lanterns for the scholars to use. Branching off from the octagonal hall were barrel-vaulted arms that each contained two floors lined with shelves for tomes, books, and folios. Hadley smiled to herself as she heard Eilian gasp aloud. Suddenly his library and all the libraries in England weren’t nearly as impressive. Lord Sorrell suppressed the urge to run through the halls and explore each self. Neuk motioned for them to follow him as he efficiently searched a pile of scrolls under a shelf marked,
Roman
. Drawing out a long vellum scroll, he checked its contents and handed it to Hadley since holding it required two steady arms.

“You can borrow this and make some notes, but do I have your word that you will return it tomorrow?” the scholar asked sternly as his gaze traveled from one face to the other.

“Yes, sir,” Eilian grinned.

“Very good. I’ll show you back to the surface. Tomorrow, I hope you will bring the rest of your people to the cave entrance around sunset. We will hold a feast, and we hope that you and your companions will tell us more about your country and what has gone on in the world since we last had visitors.”

Apprehension and Avarice

Eilian beamed ear to ear. In the waning light as dusk quietly descended over the desert, he could barely make out the fluttering tents of the camp. “I’m still not certain if I didn’t hit my head as well. I keep waiting to wake up in the cave and find that this was all a dream. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it existed.”

“We can’t be dreaming. They say you cannot feel pain in dreams, and my head is still pounding. Somehow, this,” she paused to touch the already flattening wound, “was well worth it.” Hadley stopped midstride as her mind traveled to the people hidden within the plateau. “Do you really think we should tell Sir Joshua and Mr. Barrister about them?”

“Of course we should. Joshua will be thrilled. What reason do we have to not tell them?”

“I just—” She sighed. “They are just— I can’t put my finger on it, but I worry about Mr. Barrister. He already tried to break my hand and teeth. Imagine what he would do to them.”

He flashed a broad smile. “Don’t worry about Mr. Barrister. Joshua and I will take care of him.”

Through the flaps of his tent and the smoking campfire, Joshua Peregrine locked onto the two sandy figures as they made their way to the edge of the excavation trench. He bolted past the men as they ate their dinner, barreling toward the rogue archaeologists.

“Where have you two been all day?” he demanded reproachfully. “I sent the men out to look for you. We thought you had fallen in a pit or something! Your mother would kill me if any harm came to you on my watch.” When Henry came around to Eilian’s side, Joshua’s eyes fell on the stitched wound before moving to the yard-long scroll. “What is that?”

“It’s a map of all the Roman sites in the Negev Desert,” Henry explained as he handed it to him, “but we have to bring it back tomorrow.”

“Bring it back? My boy, you have been out in the sun too long. Whoever gave this to you must be pulling your leg. If they had this, they surely would have dug up anything of value already.”

Eilian shook his head. “You won’t believe where we got this from. We found people living in the caverns under the plateaus. The city is massive, and every surface glows and is decorated beautifully with tiles and murals. I can’t even describe it to you adequately without you seeing it. The people taught us their language, and what they used to teach us is amazing, absolutely amazing,” Eilian rambled. His mind was filled to the brim with things to mention, but the sights and textures of Billawra were already seeping from his memory.

Sir Joshua raised a thick, black brow incredulously. “Let’s go into my tent, so you tell me about this
city
, slowly and rationally.”

***

Henry watched in the cramped tent as Eilian animatedly recounted every detail he could remember and some his companion had even forgotten. He loved seeing Eilian’s face light up with excitement, but as he looked at Sir Joshua and Mr. Barrister, he noticed their countenances had darkened with skepticism. The Anglo-Indian had marveled at the map’s detail and even jotted down the location of some Roman sites, but when Eilian attempted to use it as evidence for their tale, Sir Joshua still held that the map was a forgery.

“These people live in peace because they are self-sufficient and don’t rely on outsiders to support their economy. There is no need for war or empires down there as there is no competition for resources. It seems there are no classes or difference between men and women. Everyone lives on an equal playing field, and they flourish under it. I wish England could have even a semblance of what these people have,” Eilian sighed as he finally slid into the folding chair beside Henry.

Edmund scoffed as he meticulously cleaned the barrel of his rifle. “It sounds like these people have no sense. Money drives the world, money drives progress. These people are stuck in antiquity. What they need is to get with the times like the other savages and at least pretend not to be backwards.”

Eilian shook his head. “You have been in business too long to even fathom what a world without money would be like, Mr. Barrister. When you see it, you will understand how much better it is. We are all invited to come to a feast tomorrow, so we can tell them about our world. They have been in isolation for two hundred years, and it seems they are eager for information. I hope you both will be willing to go and at least see how these people live.”

Edmund and Joshua’s eyes met for a moment before the nobleman answered, “We will go. I’m eager to see this discovery with my own eyes. It sounds too good to be true.”

As Hadley followed Eilian back to their tent, she couldn’t help but wonder if telling the men about Billawra was the right thing to do. Something gnawed at her gut as she helped Eilian take apart his arm for the night with tremulous hands, but she couldn’t figure out what about the other men made her so reluctant to let them into the Billawrati’s world. From the moment she arrived at the camp, Edmund Barrister had put her on edge, and her woman’s intuition, as her cousin called it, screamed to her that he was dangerous.
Maybe it was because he was holding that gun
, she told herself as she mechanically changed behind the screen and climbed into her cot.
No
, the realization hit her as she stared up at the tent’s canvas ceiling, unable to sleep,
he has eyes like a predator
. Hadley remembered seeing the tiger at the London Zoo with her brothers and feeling her pulse quicken as the massive Bengal cat roared and pounced at the visitors with only iron bars between them and his massive jaws. Despite all her clothing and padding, she knew he could smell her fear and sense the moment, as he locked his dull, yellow eyes on her, when her adrenaline stirred. To Edmund, she was prey, and it didn’t matter if she was a man or a woman because in his eyes she was the weakest one in the desert. If anything went awry, she knew she needed to be on her guard because he would go after her first.

***

The clouds above the Negev were dyed pink and blue as the four men made their way, scroll in hand, over the darkening hills and valleys toward the cave of books. Edmund walked with his arms folded across his ursine chest and a deep scowl etched into his countenance as Eilian politely knocked on the wall of the cave to signal their arrival. His thick nose crinkled as he sniffed the mildew-ridden air of the cave and indifferently kicked a fallen tome out of his way with a loud thunk as it ricocheted off the cave walls and skittered down the tunnel. Through the dim light of the cave, an orb loomed in the distance. It bobbed and swayed, growing larger until the fungal lantern was near enough to reveal Neuk’s tall, willowy form. In his other hand was the book the hunter had carelessly kicked, and as he placed it on the shelf, he turned with a smile to Eilian and Hadley.

“Welcome. I see you have brought your companions,” Neuk greeted them with a nod as he looked past Eilian and studied the two strange men gawking at him.

“Yes, this is Sir Joshua Peregrine, and this is Edmund Barrister,” Eilian replied in Billawrati as he gestured with his prosthetic hand toward each man respectively. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed how taken aback his friend appeared while Edmund feigned disinterest by staring at the spines of the books. “It’s an honor to be invited back to your beautiful city, Neuk.”

“It’s our pleasure. We are eagerly awaiting news of what has come to pass for the last two centuries. Ah, I see you have brought back the scroll, splendid. Please tell your companions to mind their heads as we descend. We wouldn’t want them to end up in the infirmary.”

Hadley moved closer and whispered into Neuk’s ear, “Could you please refer to me as Henry? That’s what they know me as.”

The scholar furrowed his brow in confusion but after a moment nodded and motioned for them to follow him down the corridor. Eilian and Hadley easily kept up with Neuk as he bent and slid through the narrow openings in the rock while the other Englishmen lagged behind. Edmund grumbled obscenities under his breath as his bulky frame scraped against the rocks and barely squeezed through the fang-like stalactites. Despite Neuk being several decades older than Sir Joshua, the Anglo-Indian was reminded of the stiffness of arthritis in his knees and back as he lowered himself onto the lower ledge. His knees popped in protest, and he wondered how the old man could still manage to slide and twist through the caves with snake-like agility. As Edmund roughly dislodged his shoulder from a crevice in the rocks, he watched as Henry gratefully took Eilian’s arm as the nobleman easily swung the boyish dandy down to the lower stones. The rough rocks soon gave way to a series of polished steps and finally a tiled path. After another quarter of a mile, the tunnel opened into the hall Eilian recognized as the one that led to the orchards and mines. At first, his companions seemed to be more agitated by the difficult descent than in awe, but as they were led around the curving path, their eyes widened in shock.

Sir Joshua’s heart pounded in his ears as he looked at the buildings all around him, grasping to fathom how vast the city was. His eyes didn’t know whether to study the houses or the mosaics first because his gaze was constantly pulled to the dull, blue glow which seemed to emanate from every surface. How had he missed this? A find so massive had been right under his nose the entire time, and he didn’t even know it. Edmund snorted at the gaudy houses and the floral decorations soiling every surface. The air stunk of fish, and when he moved closer to the luminous columns, he realized to his disgust that they were made of fungus.
Of course the savages would use things that live off excrement as decorations
, he thought as he once again skulked behind the nobleman and his popinjay. Joshua had talked him into going on this wild goose chase by reminding him that the natives might have something of value stored away, but thus far all he had seen were fungi and rocks.

The hulking man stiffened as they entered the banquet hall. Hundreds of eerily pale eyes fell upon them. He found their hideously white and nearly translucent skin repulsive, but what disturbed him most was how civilized they were. They were sitting at tables with cutlery and plates like a European, but they wore bizarre clothing and lacked all pigment except in their saucer-like eyes. The Billawrati all looked the same to him, causing them to blur into disorienting doppelgangers of each other. The hunter swept his head back and forth as they were ushered up to the head table, and as Edmund took in each person, he realized the creatures weren’t hiding anything of value, they were wearing it. Wrapped tightly around their bodies and draped over them in lavish patterns and colors were long bolts of silk that radiated a pale light. What wealthy lady wouldn’t empty her husband’s purse for a glowing, silk gown? He smirked as the calculations added up to a sum rivaling that of his ivory transactions. Men only needed so many billiard balls or decorative guns, but high society women would always be in need of new dresses.