The Sapphire Cutlass by Sharon Gosling

Author:Sharon Gosling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Switch Press; fiction; Mysteries & Detective Stories; Historical/Europe; Action & Adventure; Steampunk; Romance; 9781630790417; 9781630790424
Publisher: Switch Press
Published: 2015-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

{Chapter 17}

INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN

He was on a trapeze, and he didn’t like it.

Thaddeus could feel himself swinging in midair — back and forth, back and forth — but around him was only darkness. He couldn’t see the ground, or even the contraption that was holding him up. He felt queasy and wrong, but he didn’t know how to stop the swinging. Back and forth, back and forth …

Thaddeus!

A voice soared to him out of the darkness. He had heard it before, he realized as he heard it again, but it was farther away this time. Or perhaps he was the one who had been farther away — perhaps they were both on a trapeze.

Thaddeus!

Who did he know who would be comfortable on a trapeze?

Thaddeus!

Rémy Brunel! It could only be her up here, swinging with him in the darkness. Wherever “here” was — at the moment he couldn’t tell, because everything was so dark, and the trapeze just would not stop moving … He tried to twist around and see what was behind him, but in doing so, he almost slipped from the swing completely. He flailed with his arms, clutching at anything he could. His hands found cold, hard rungs and he held on.

“Thaddeus!”

The voice shouting at him suddenly got much louder. Thaddeus frowned. It wasn’t Rémy after all. It was —

“Mr. Rec! Would you please just bleedin’ well WAKE UP!”

J!

Thaddeus jerked awake and immediately wished he hadn’t. Pain smashed into his temple as if someone had cracked it hard with a rock. He clutched his head, wondering for a split second if he’d been in The Grapes the previous night, before remembering that he hadn’t been at the Limehouse drinking spot for months.

“Thaddeus!”

“All right, all right,” he mumbled back. “I’m awake, I’m —”

He turned around, slipped, and fell. He cried out before something abruptly broke his fall a second later, or rather, two somethings that were part of a larger something all together. Thaddeus blinked, trying to clear his head enough to focus. He could feel his legs dangling into thin air, and there was that infernal swinging again — back and forth, back and forth — through chilled air.

Even with his eyes open, it was dark, although not quite as dark as it had been in his dream. There was a faint light coming from somewhere — yellow, like a burning torch. It gave enough of a glow to show him where he had fetched up.

Thaddeus Rec was in a cage.

“What the —”

“Are you all right?” he heard Dita’s voice call from behind him. Thaddeus turned his head and saw that she was in a cage, too, hanging beside him, her small hands clutching at the golden bars that imprisoned her as she stared anxiously at him.

“Thaddeus? Are you hurt?” That was Desai, on the other side of him, in another cage, peering through the dim light and the obstruction of yet another barred prison, this one holding J.

Thaddeus looked down at himself, still dazed from the pain of whatever blow his head had encountered.

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