“I see something,” she said. There was a light up ahead, a break in the tunnel. “It must be the next station. We’re getting close.”
Without breaking his stride, Nicholas reached into the bag and pulled out the harmonica. He put the instrument to his lips and blew softly.
The note was nothing but a faint gasp of sound. In return, they were showered with such clapping thunder and monstrous shrieks that Etta instinctively pulled back against him, trying to escape it. They had come up just short of what had to be the Elgin Marbles. Indeed, he saw the top of a white chiseled head over its wooden shelter, the lifeless eyes tracking their path through the thick darkness.
“Stop!” the man cried.
Never.
“There! Right there.” She pointed toward the wall, where the air seemed to ripple in the darkness. The rattling screams reached a fevered state, making the blood pound inside of his head as he crossed through first, Etta at his back.
The momentum launched him out through the gate at the other end of the passage. He felt his breath catch, the hammering pulse of his heart. The world dissolved into pure darkness, the squeeze of air around him popping the bones in his stiff back. And, as quickly as he had leapt into it, Nicholas was spat out through the other side.
BIRDS AND INSECTS SCREECHED FROM THEIR PERCHES IN THE FLESHY green trees and brush around him. There was always a moment of blindness as his eyes adjusted to being inundated with light. He pressed his face against the wet earth, trying to clear the fog in his mind. No sooner had he started to get up, when a weight crashed into his back and sent him sprawling down into the mud again.
“Sorry!” Etta gasped, rolling off him. “Oww—”
He sat up, his vision swinging back toward the passage’s entrance. When it became clear that the other man wasn’t about to follow them through—that if he was indeed a Thorn, he was a guardian, rather than a traveler—Nicholas began to look beyond it. Jungle—a vast, thick shield of green and brown around him. The air was heavy with the contradictory scents of rotting vegetation and floral blooms, lit green by the screen of bright leaves and tangle of thin branches overhead.
“Are you all right?” he asked, the words scratching out of his dry throat. “Etta?”
She was flat on her back, the sky-blue dress splattered with mud. Before he could stop himself, he began to pluck the long, green leaves out of her hair, flicking them away as the girl groaned, shaking madly.
“You’re all right,” he told her. “Look at me, just for a moment—just a moment, pirate.”
It had taken him at least five trips through the passages during his training before he’d worked the last of the traveler’s sickness out of his system. He knew too well how she was feeling: the weakness, the way every sound was battering her skull, the blood that was turning to ice in her veins. Etta opened her eyes, but they were unfocused. A soft sigh escaped her lips, and her eyelids fluttered shut.
“’S fine,” she said. “Just…need…moment.”
They didn’t have a moment, and they wouldn’t, until he figured out where the passage had brought them and whether more guardians were near. The man in London would report what he’d seen to any nearby traveler, and he or she would be sent to follow them. They’d need to find the next passage immediately, and be gone before they could be tracked again.
Nicholas would bring Ironwood his damned astrolabe, but he wished to do it on his own terms, and keep Etta well out of Ironwood’s grasp. He needed to keep her from sensing that this journey would have a very different end than the one she imagined.
He looked down at her grimacing face, and swallowed the burn of bile in his throat.
After another look around to ensure there was no one nearby, and that the only immediate threats were hunger and dehydration, Nicholas gathered her up into his arms and began to walk.
There was no trail, no evidence of human touch. He strained his ears, trying to hear above the rattle and buzz of the insects, and—there—he heard what he hoped was the sound of rushing water.
Etta’s weight felt good and solid in his arms; but the feel of her in his arms, Nicholas thought with some uneasiness, was getting a bit too familiar. He stepped over the powerful arm of a root jutting up out of the soft soil. He let the branches blocking their way do what they would to his neck and face, and did the best he could to shield Etta.
“Where…?” she asked, already coming around. He fought a smile. The next time would be easier on her, then.
“Not entirely sure, to tell you the truth,” he said.
“Put me down,” she said. “I can walk, I promise.”
His hands tightened around her waist, her legs. The air had grown warm, and he knew he must smell worse than whatever ungodly rotting stench the jungle was belching out, but reluctance tugged at him even as he set her down on her feet.
She can look after herself. Etta knew herself well enough to know what she could and couldn’t fight through.
But that, of course, didn’t preclude him wanting to take care of her.
Etta looked around, taking in the knot of green foliage, the way the canopy shielded them from the sun’s glare. “Well…this is different.”
He snorted. “Come, let’s see what we can find in the way of water and food.”
His ears hadn’t failed him—there was a stream nearby, and it moved quickly enough for him to feel mildly comfortable drinking it. Whenever he and Julian had tried to survive in the wild, they’d carried packs stuffed with supplies. Pots for boiling water and cooking. Blankets for freezing nights. There had been matches to start fires, hooks and lines for fishing. It had been Hall who’d taught him how to survive with none of these things.
He had a small knife he’d carried with him from New York. That would have to be enough.
“Wait here a moment,” he said, gesturing toward a stone on the bank of the stream. “I’ll be right back. Shout if you see or hear anything.”
She nodded, distracted by something in the distance. He walked back the way they had come, veering right when he saw a tower of pale green out of the corner of his eye. Bananas—none of them ripe, but food all the same. He sent up a prayer of gratitude to whoever might be listening as he began to pull them from the tree and stow them in the bag. The most pressing issue now was finding some kind of container in which to boil water, and locating wood and brush that were dry enough to strike up a fire.
He ran a hand along the spine of a downed tree, considering. Using his knife, he cut away a section of it and brushed off the dirt and insects. The tree was mostly hollowed out inside, and if he carved it right, it could be used as a small bowl.
Nicholas stripped off his wilted shirt, surprised to find it was already damp with sweat as he stowed it in his bag. The air had taken on the quality of the swamps down south in the colonies, pregnant with the potential for a raging storm. Perhaps they wouldn’t need to boil water at all, only catch it.
His knife chipped and cut away at the tree, and Nicholas lost himself in the good feeling of accomplishment, stopping only to relieve himself in the privacy of the leaves and eat half of a banana. He felt better for all of it, and knew she would too, once he gave her something to fill her stomach.
But when he returned to the small stream, Etta was nowhere to be found.
Disappeared.
He closed his eyes, which was a mistake. All he saw was Julian’s face, how he’d looked just as he was swallowed by mist and distance.
“Etta?” he called, his voice cracking. “Etta!”
Gone. Had she slipped somewhere? Fallen? Drowned? Panic flared in him, white-hot, leaving him dizzy with it. He charged around the clearing, straining his ears for any hint of her footsteps, any sign of her.
He had a feeling Etta hadn’t shown him whatever her true intentions were with the astrolabe—how she wanted to confront Ironwood—but she wouldn’t have just left, would she? Gone on ahead?
She did it before, a cruel part of his mind whispered, in New York.…
The brush behind him rustled and Etta stumbled back out, eyes wide. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
For a moment, the residual terror was enough to choke him, make his heart start pounding in his chest. Her hair was mussed, and there was a streak of dirt across her cheek that matched the bruise and scratch on the other. She straightened the skirt of her dress, and he had a sense of why she had momentarily disappeared.
“I—” he managed to get out. “I told you to stay put!”
Her brow furrowed at his anger, as if she couldn’t possibly understand why wandering off in the middle of a jungle could be dangerous.
“You agreed!” he said, feeling ludicrous, but a fire was blazing in his chest that he couldn’t seem to put out.
“Okay,” she said slowly, “I’m sorry—”
“You’re sorry?” Nicholas knew he should accept it, that he should move on to the business of starting a fire, but he couldn’t bring himself to move past the fear just yet. “What if something had happened? How would I have found you? When I ask you to do something, please endeavor to listen to me!”
She rose to her full height, and for the first time he noticed that she’d removed her jacket and was cradling something in it—a severed head—
Of a statue. His heart settled back into its rightful place as he took in its serene smile. It made a perfect counterpoint to the look of irritation on her face as she set it down. “I was going to say, I think I know where we are, but since you clearly know everything, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.”
Etta stormed along the stream; Nicholas waited for her to come back and laugh after a moment, so the band of tightness around his chest would fray enough for him to breathe again. Only she didn’t, of course. She tripped, but caught herself handily, against—was that a stone wall?
It was. More than that, there were steps, and more statues that had been knocked over or absorbed into the thick bodies of trees. Most of these stone figures bore a similar face to the one Etta had found, but some had been left with no features at all. Time, and the forces of the jungle, had worn them away.
The thunder that shattered the jungle brought her up short, made her press her hands to her ears. The insects and birds became almost frantic, the latter launching themselves from the trees at the first small drops of rain.
“Oh my God,” Etta gasped, turning to look back at him. Her arm was outstretched, pointing at something orange and white a short distance away, half-hidden by foliage.
Nicholas’s eyes were fixed only on what was at her feet, and watched as its head rose up out of the mud behind her, scales glinting and slick as its hood flattened out. She must have stepped right on it and been none the wiser.
“Don’t. Move.” Terror thrummed inside of him, fast and desperate, as another burst of thunder exploded over their heads. Etta started to step back, turning to look at him, and the snake bobbed in the air, poised to strike. “Don’t move!”
He didn’t trust his aim with the knife just then; any slip, any gust of wind, and the blade would be in her leg and not in the damned snake. Before he could question himself, the revolver was in his hand, the snake lashed forward, and he fired.
THERE WAS A SMALL EXPLOSION BEHIND Etta, an instant before heat seared the back of her left calf and she was thrown forward onto her hands and knees. She looked up in time to see the tiger’s tail flash as it turned and ran deeper into the trees. Her ears were ringing, aching, as she turned around and saw the head of a cobra staring up at her, a short distance away from the long, coiled muscle of its body. Both the head and the body were still moving.
Etta stared at it, unable to so much as feel the rain that suddenly burst down, shaking the leaves, pounding the mud.
Nicholas stood a few feet back, the revolver still in his hand, looking as if he’d been the one shot, not the snake.
Etta reached down, touching her left calf muscle and coming away with blood. She stared at it long enough that the rain began to wash it away, long enough for Nicholas to snap out of his own shock. He rushed forward, kicking the snake aside.
“Did it bite you?” He took her leg in his hand, trying to see for himself, and she was right—he was shaking. “Etta! Did it bite you?”
No; but on its path to the snake, the bullet had grazed her skin, cutting close enough to leave a red, angry mark. She had been that close to getting bitten, and she hadn’t had any idea.
“Christ,” he said, pressing his hand against it. He tore the sleeve off the jacket she’d been carrying and dug through the bag for the scissors. As gently as he could, he dabbed the blood away and wrapped her leg with another, cleaner strip of fabric.
But where is the tiger? Etta wondered. When she’d spotted it, at first she had felt surprised and delighted. Its luminous eyes had tracked their progress forward with keen interest. Only then had she realized that there was no barrier between them.
Nicholas’s hands were smoothing down her wet hair, and kept moving over her shoulders, down her arms, and back up again to cup her face. He slowly came into focus, and she realized he’d been speaking to her this whole time.
“Can you stand?” he asked her. The ground had turned into a river of mud beneath them, and she was eager to get out of it. She nodded, accepting his help up, and gingerly tested whether or not she could bear to put weight on her leg. Her hands stayed on his bare shoulders as she looked up into his face.
“All right?” he asked, his voice still sounding odd to her ears. Etta nodded again. Standing was easy; speaking was not. “Do you want to walk?”
She nodded, hugging her arms to her chest.
Nicholas nudged them forward, but a thought spun in Etta’s mind, and she tugged him back. “Wait—we should take it—”
“It?” he repeated. “The snake?”
“Yeah.” Etta shook off the last bit of shock blanketing her mind. “What if…what if we need to eat it? Shouldn’t we take it with us?” Thinking about this further, she added, “Maybe not the head, though.”
Flanked by a curtain of green that glowed vibrantly, even in the silver overcast light, with rain pouring down over his face, his shoulders, the scars that crisscrossed over his chest, Nicholas blinked and started to laugh. He tilted his head back, catching the rain across his face; and when he finally leaned down to kiss her, the sweetness of it lingered on his lips.
It seemed to end before it even began. He pulled back, looking equally abashed and afraid, studying her face. Her hands itched to smooth the lines of worry away from his forehead, from around his beautiful, dark eyes. But he wasn’t the type to like being soothed—she knew that—and she also knew that this concern was more than just stupid eighteenth-century propriety. They were beyond that now.
She set her shoulders back, meeting his gaze with a challenge. “You call that a kiss?”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “We haven’t the time for a proper one, pirate. Now tell me, where precisely are we?”
AT SOME POINT BETWEEN THE TIME WHEN NICHOLAS HAD LEFT to…to do whatever it was that required him to be shirtless…and her finding the Buddha statue’s decapitated head, a suspicion had begun to take root in the back of her mind. And as she’d walked, glimpsing the dark peaks of the temple in the distance, she’d had a single moment of relief at having been right before the anger began to pump through her again.
New York.
London.
And now, Cambodia.
It was too much to be a coincidence. She’d taken out the letter, rereading the first clue they’d been able to ignore, as it came before the passage in New York: Rise and enter the lair, where the darkness gives you your stripes. It must mean the Taktsang Palphug Monastery in Bhutan, called the Tiger’s Lair or the Tiger’s Nest, where her mother claimed to have gone into one of the caves to meditate on what to do with her life. Which now seemed, in a word, unlikely.
Her mother had told her how to decipher the letter. She’d told her any number of times, under the guise of bedtim
e stories, about her life and adventures—she’d even painted the scenes, hanging them on the wall of the living room in the correct order, which made Etta feel like an idiot for not making the connection right away. Each clue had been carefully disguised to hide the reality of her life as a traveler; each was hiding in plain sight.
Now Etta was sure that the painting of the British Museum hadn’t been meant to lead her to the museum, but to the painting’s other subject: Alice. And Etta was willing to bet that, if she double-checked, she’d find that her mother’s supposed first apartment in the city, the one she’d painted to show a glimpse of the lights of Midtown East through one of the windows, was in the same location as the Dove Tavern.
Are you listening, Etta?
Etta, are you paying attention?
Let me tell you a story.…
Rose had planted the seeds, watered them again and again by repeating the stories over the years. She had given Etta what she needed to find the astrolabe; Etta only had to make the connection.
Etta had never been to the Tiger’s Nest, let alone Bhutan, but she knew someone beside her mother who had.
She and Nicholas walked side by side, her eyes trained on the ground, his on the path in front of them, until more of the dark stones and statues rose out of the foliage and marked their path forward. From her mother’s apparently half-true stories, Etta knew that both cities—Angkor Wat, and their present location, Angkor Thom—had, in her time, been largely cleared of the jungle’s ever-reaching overgrowth to allow for tourists to explore the spread of temples and structures. But whatever year or era they were in, it was clear it was after it had been abandoned by the Khmer Empire, but before it had come to the attention of Western civilization.
“We’ll need to swim,” Nicholas said, the first words he’d uttered in nearly an hour. They’d come upon what Etta thought might have been part of the moat that surrounded the remains of the grand city. The moat had naturally filled up with earth and wildlife over the years, but with the rain lashing down around them, the water level was high enough that they couldn’t wade their way across.