Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Thirteen

Shortly after the Mary Lee turned from the stunning expanse of blue ocean into the mouth of the Sibun River, Ellie glimpsed the reality behind Bates’s warning. She had already returned her limbs to the boat when a rotting log suddenly raised a pair of beady yellow eyes out of the water. The crocodile watched her passively as the steamer chugged past.

Though the creature was significantly smaller than the one in Bates’s closet, Ellie still fought the urge to move closer to the middle of the boat.

The world around them had narrowed to a band of muddy brown water framed by a seemingly endless expanse of mangrove swamps. Ellie didn’t mind the change. Everything she had seen—from the shocking blue clarity of the sea to the manatee that had startled her that morning—was profoundly, delightfully different from the gray monotony of the world that she had known for the last twenty-four years.

Beyond the coast, the landscape quickly descended into wilderness. There were no farms or villages situated on the banks of the Sibun—only low palms, mangroves, and sea grapes tangled into a wall of brush that extended for miles to either side. Long-legged birds perched in the water along the banks, dipping their beaks into the mud for fish. Insects hopped along the surface of the water, and the sun beat down relentlessly overhead.

As Ellie moved to the shade of the canopy, Bates pulled another hat from the shallow hold under the floorboards of the deck. This one was a battered straw Stetson that had clearly seen better days. He plopped it onto his messy, sun-gilded hair, leaning back against the rail at the stern with the handle of the rudder braced comfortably under his arm.

His eyes were an even more startling shade of blue out here in the wild. The color rivaled the hue of the clear, open waters that they had left behind.

Ellie brushed the thought aside. She hardly needed to waste any of her attention on that particular aspect of the scenery.

She wished she’d had a bit more time during her escape to examine the notes that Dawson had made on the map—or perhaps to simply steal them. She couldn’t know for certain how much of the route the professor had deciphered before she had stolen the parchment back. Ellie comforted herself with the notion that he and Jacobs would need to acquire a boat and likely other supplies before they could hope to come after her. Dawson didn’t strike her as the sort to travel light. So long as she and Bates kept making good time, they should be able to stay ahead of any pursuit.

By mid-afternoon, the unrelenting monotony of the palms and mangroves began to give way to the ripple of low foothills. The trees lining the banks grew taller, sometimes reaching out to form a leafy green canopy over the muddy width of the water.

The river was low. The Mary Lee handled the sluggish current with ease. By the time the sun began to drift toward the horizon ahead of them, Ellie had not seen so much as a rickety dock for hours. Fat lizards draped across the branches of the trees overhead, accented by the bright flicker of the birds. Thick walls of green served as the boundaries of Ellie’s world.

As the sky began to change its blue for purple, Bates rounded another bend in the river and drew the Mary Lee closer to the bank. With an echoing rattle, the launch’s engine slowed to a stop. The sound raised a cacophonous cry from a flock of birds that startled out of the branches of a massive overhanging oak. They rose up—dark, fluttering shapes calling in irritation to one another against the richly colored dusk.

“Are we stopping already?” Ellie asked, feeling a little jolt of alarm at the prospect.

“Can’t pilot a boat in the dark,” Bates replied. “Not unless you wanna risk putting a hole in your hull on some stray rock. Don’t worry. If your friend is trailing us, he’ll have to stop too.”

Reassured, Ellie rose and stretched her limbs. Her muscles protested against the long day of inactivity.

As Bates set about banking the fire in the boiler, Ellie moved to the bow.

A break in the foliage ahead of them offered her a glimpse of the mountains. The peaks rose, low and hazy, over the rich green of the trees… and looked far closer than they had from the veranda of the Hotel Rio Nuevo.

Ellie traced the shape of the medallion through the fabric of her shirt. She was so much nearer to the place where it had come from.

If that place is even real, she reminded herself.

Bates hopped up onto the rail and neatly jumped from there to the river bank, carrying a line from the boat with him. He tied it to one of the thick-trunked ceiba trees.

Pulled taut by the current, the rope gracefully swung the Mary Lee into a little hollow in the curve of the river, which put them out of the way of any debris that might float past in the night.

“How far have we come?” Ellie asked as he came back on board.

Bates sat down on the deck and pulled his rucksack into his lap. He rifled through it and tugged out a tin cylinder. Unscrewing the top, he shook loose an oilskin.

The waterproof bundle held another map. Unlike Ellie’s parchment, this one was obviously modern. It was covered in notations and markings. Ellie studied them over Bates’s shoulder as he unrolled it across the deck.

“We’ve come about fifty miles,” he replied. “Which puts us right… about… here.”

He dropped his finger to a point on the curve of the river that was not far from the dotted line that marked the edge of the Cayo District.

Ellie knelt down for a closer look as Bates rose to light the lantern using an ember from the box of the boiler.

He pulled a pair of unlabeled cans out of the hold and set about opening them.

“Looks like beans tonight,” he concluded as he peered inside.

Bates plucked a tin pan from a hook on the frame of the canopy and set it on the flat top of the boiler. He dumped the beans inside.

Ellie’s gaze drifted to the fist-sized gray rock on the shelf beside him. It was shaped roughly like a sleepy hedgehog. She wondered what possible function it could serve.

Before she could ask, Bates plopped down beside her, sitting a bit closer than was strictly polite.

He took his half of the seventeenth-century parchment from the oilskin and laid it beside the modern map. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled with focus.

“Tomorrow, we’ll follow the river up here…” He traced a curve of blue ink. “And then we go off my map.”

Bates tapped his finger on a line that broke off from the right side of a fork in the river—and simply stopped.

“Does the water end there?” Ellie asked, confused.

“Nah,” he replied as he hopped to his feet to stir the beans. “It just goes through a mountain.”

“Through a mountain?” she echoed, alarmed.

“Maybe not a mountain,” Bates hedged. “More like a big hill.”

“How does the river go through a hill?” she demanded. “How do we go through a hill?”

“There’s a cave.” Bates poked his finger into the beans and immediately yanked it out, shaking it off. “Ow!,” he muttered. “The river runs through it. The water was always too high for the Mary Lee to get inside when I’ve been here before, but right now, the level is as low as I’ve seen it. Getting through the tunnel might be tight, and it’s probably a terrible idea. Boating through a cave is all kinds of risky. You might hit rock formations under the water and put a hole in your hull. Or get in, only to have it narrow on you so you have to back out again. It’ll be chock full of creepy-crawly things. Of course… we might not need to go that way at all if you showed me the other half of your map,” he finished casually as he dumped the beans into a pair of bowls and carried them over.

They had only been on the Mary Lee for a day. A day didn’t feel like quite enough distance from the boat back to England that he might happily stick her on once he knew how to get where they were going. Ellie would show Bates her half of the map after they were safely away from town.

“Why should we go off-track when it might be entirely possible to press forward along the map’s course?” she offered.

“You,” Bates replied, pointing at her with a spoon full of beans, “are stalling.”

He ate the beans.

“So what if I am?” Ellie retorted defensively. “You will recall we had an agreement.”

“You actually afraid I’m going to drop you in the swamp and go on without you?” Bates challenged. “I told you, if I was out to take advantage of you, your corset isn’t about to stop me.”

He froze.

“From—uh—stealing your map,” he continued. “If I wanted to. Which I don’t,” he finished firmly and shoved more beans into his mouth.

“I am… mostly confident you do not mean to drop me in the swamp,” Ellie offered carefully. “But I would appreciate your patience for another day, if that is not too unreasonable.”

He considered it while he chewed.

The night was settling in more thickly. Bates’s face was softly gilded by the glow of the lantern. The scruff of his beard had grown more pronounced along his jaw. With his rolled-up shirtsleeves and disheveled hair, he looked decidedly disreputable. Ellie was surprised to realize she found that oddly comforting.

“Why not?” he concluded with a shrug.

They were quiet for a moment as they ate—which didn’t take very long. Ellie devoured her humble dinner as though it was the best thing she had tasted in years. Taking part in an expedition through the wilderness was apparently good for her appetite.

After she had scooped out every last legume, she set down her bowl.

“Thank you,” she said. “That was very good.”

Bates’s spoon paused on the way to his mouth.

“The mystery beans?” he prompted with a skeptical glance down at her empty bowl. “Do you need any more of them?”

“Er—no,” Ellie assured him. “I’m quite well, thank you.”

“We’ll have canned grub while we’re on the boat,” Bates went on as he pushed to his feet and plucked up her dish.

He leaned over the rail, reaching down to the water to give both bowls a rinse. Ellie realized that she was paying more attention to the maneuver than was strictly necessary.

She forced herself to study the dark line of the bank instead.

“I can’t imagine it would be sensible to carry tins into the wilderness,” she commented.

“I’ll bring some dry goods for emergencies, but for the most part we’ll have to find what we need,” Bates confirmed. “There’s usually fruit this time of year. Plenty of tubers. And I’ll try to catch us some game, but it probably won’t be what you’re used to.”

There was a note of challenge in his voice.

“How so?” Ellie prompted archly.

“Iguana,” Bates replied. “Armadillo. Gibnut. You know what a gibnut is?”

“Large rodent,” Ellie replied automatically. “Grows to as long as 30 inches or one-and-a-half stone. Indigenous to Central and South America. The males are known to attract mates by spraying them with urine,” she added distantly as her brain popped up another tidbit.

“Uh—right,” Bates said awkwardly. He stared at her for a minute before tossing the bowls into the hold and grabbing the pan. “They taste like a greasy rabbit. How about termites?”

He pointed the pan at her.

“I’m not sure I have an opinion on them,” Ellie replied with a frown.

“They’re all right,” Bates conceded as he swished the pan in the river and hung it back up on the canopy. “Kinda minty.”

“I see,” she returned uneasily.

With dinner settled, Bates set about fixing their hammocks and dropping the mosquito netting back into place. He worked with an easy air of long habit as he tightened straps and fixed ties.

The sight reminded Ellie of the question that had been lurking in the back of her mind since the moment she had seen the glorious chaos of Bates’s room, with its stacks of equipment and the detritus of years of explorations. In the casual intimacy of the boat, under the purple sky of a place miles from the nearest outpost of humanity, Ellie found that she had little motivation to resist the urge to ask it.

“How did you come to this?” she demanded.

“What—eating termites?” Bates asked.

“No,” she corrected him. “This.” She waved her hand over the thick trees arching overhead, the still length of the river, and the chirp of the evening frogs and insects. “Did you always want to end up in a place like this?”

“I mostly just knew where I didn’t want to end up,” he countered.

“And where is that?”

“Doing what my father does,” he returned flatly.

“What terrible thing does your father do, exactly?” Ellie asked.

“Making money,” Bates replied as he leaned against one of the poles for the canopy. “My dad makes money.”

“Is he some sort of criminal?” Ellie was a little alarmed at the notion.

“More or less.” Bates chuckled darkly. “He’s in insurance. Robinson, Bates, and MacKenzie of San Francisco. Senior partner.”

“But I’ve heard of them,” Ellie blurted out, surprised by the realization. “My father is an actuary. That’s the terrible fate you were running away from—working for an insurance company?”

“Yeah, well. You asked,” he said as he turned away from her.

He tugged the cord to vent the last bit of steam from the boiler. The long, low hiss sent something rustling away through the brush on the nearby shore.

Probably just a gibnut, Ellie thought uneasily.

“Is making money really so terrible?” she asked.

Bates ran a hand through his hair, tangling the cropped length of it a bit more than it was already.

“I don’t like pretending to be something I’m not,” he finally replied, his tone short. “I don’t like looking for ways to take advantage of people. When I get to the end of my day, I don’t want to worry about what connections I should be making or which of my friends might be out to get me. I just want to take off my boots and watch the sky change for a little while.”

Ellie hesitated before she replied, thinking of how she had come across Bates in his chair on the veranda that first night at the hotel, looking out over the golden sprawl to the west. The memory tugged at her chest in an unexpected way.

“That all seems entirely sensible to me,” she finally concluded.

“Does it, now?” he replied.

His words had a harder edge, and Ellie wondered if this was a topic he was accustomed to battling over.

She raised her head to meet his eyes.

“I know a thing or two about having dreams the rest of the world thinks are madness,” she quietly declared.

The tenor of Bates’s gaze shifted as he looked back at her.

“Maybe you do,” he conceded thoughtfully.

The night air seemed to grow a little thicker. Ellie shook off the sensation as she sat down on the bench in the stern.

“Why British Honduras?” she prompted neatly, pulling off her borrowed hat and tossing it onto the deck.

“I don’t know that I really cared that much where I ended up, as long as it was far away from San Francisco,” Bates replied. “I heard there was an opening here when I was leaving Cambridge, and I wrote to the Colonial Office to apply.”

Ellie straightened a bit.

“I’m sorry, did you say Cambridge?” she asked. “As in Cambridge University, in England?”

“Hinc lucem et pocula sacra.” Bates recited the familiar tones of the university’s motto automatically. “Et pocula profana—plenty of profane draughts as well. I even strapped an oversized bird to one of the spires of the King’s College Chapel with a few of my friends, per tradition.”

The husk of a long-neglected memory sparked to life in Ellie’s mind.

She had been fourteen, crouched on the stairwell of the house in Canonbury, listening with secret delight as her stepmother’s shrill tones had echoed up from the parlor.

And now this! A letter from the dean reprimanding you for behavior unbecoming of a Cambridge scholar!

It was just a harmless bit of fun! It’s the sort of thing one does at university.

A written reprimand, Neil Acton Fairfax! A written reprimand over some monstrous stunt with an—

“Emu,” Ellie blurted softly.

“Huh?” Bates returned. “How’d you know it was an emu?”

Ellie vividly recalled her quick, whispered exchange with her stepbrother as he had passed her by, pausing briefly to ruffle her hair in that way he knew irritated her.

Eavesdropping—eh, Peanut?

You’ve really done it this time.

It was the cowboy’s idea!

The cowboy.

Neil had occasionally mentioned his university friends during his visits home. Ellie knew there had been a little cohort of them, thick as thieves with each other. Neil had mentioned Lord Scardsale, as well as a charming, well-off Cornishman, Trevelyan Perry. Ellie had heard that Perry had gone to Hong Kong with the diplomatic service.

And then there was the American—the one Neil had habitually referred to as ‘the cowboy.’

Neil had spoken of that particular friend with easy affection. He had sounded like a source of both fun and regular trouble.

Of course, Ellie never had an opportunity to meet him or any of Neil’s other university friends. She had been too wrapped up at the time with her urgent efforts to excel at her studies and qualify for university.

Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was some hope that she had not inadvertently run off into the wilderness of a remote colony with her stepbrother’s old school chum.

“Is that a regular occurrence?” she asked weakly. “Strapping an emu to the spires of the chapel?”

Bates frowned.

“Well, it’s something of a gag to stick stuff up there…” he admitted.

Ellie felt the tension in her stomach start to relax.

“...though there was only the one bird,” he finished.

“Oh dear,” Ellie said.

She leaned forward to rest her head against her knees and hoped the boat would stop spinning.

“You don’t need to worry about the emu,” Bates quickly cut in, mistaking the cause of her abrupt anxiety. “We didn’t hurt it. It was kinda beyond that. Somebody had stuffed it. Badly. Thing looked like an overlarge turkey on stilts.”

Neil was going to kill her. Neil was going to kill both of them.

If he ever finds out, Ellie corrected herself silently. As far as Adam Bates knew, she was Eleanora Nitherscott-Watby, a widow from London with no connection to anyone he knew.

There was absolutely no reason it shouldn’t stay that way.

Bates was still talking.

“Anyway, I don’t think the Colonial Office was exactly overwhelmed with applicants. They couldn’t have been, or I can’t imagine they’d have given the post to an American who dropped out before graduating.”

“Dropped out?” Ellie echoed. Surprise momentarily overwhelmed her horror at discovering that Bates was not, in fact, a total stranger but a dangerously close connection. “Why on earth would you do that?”

“Spite, mostly,” Bates replied.

“Spite?” Ellie rose to her feet, unable to keep a note of dismay from her voice. “You dropped out of university out of spite? Spite for what?”

“Spite for whom,” Bates corrected her. “And the answer is—my father.”

“I see,” Ellie replied—but she didn’t, really. Not at all.

She paced away from him toward the bow of the boat.

“You don’t approve,” Bates noted with a deceptively lazy ease.

Ellie took a breath, trying to be reasonable.

“I can’t say that I do,” she admitted flatly. “I don’t know your situation. It’s probably not particularly fair of me to judge, but…” Her hands reflexively clenched into fists. “You must not have had to fight very hard for your education if you could walk away from it for the sake of a grudge.”

There was a bitter snap to her words. Ellie closed her mouth and turned away, directing her attention out to the chirping, rustling wilderness around them.

She had to bite her tongue. She needed Bates. She couldn’t afford to alienate him… but his casual explanation for leaving university had quietly, thoroughly infuriated her.

“Where did you go?” he asked.

The question startled her.

“Go where?” she returned in a clipped tone.

“University,” Bates elaborated.

Ellie blinked at him in surprise.

“I… How did you…” she stammered.

“You read German,” he said. “Latin. You rattle off the names of Aztec deities like old friends. You knew where to access a set of historical maps. Casually referenced the collapse of the Mayan civilization. Where did you go?”

“University College, London,” she replied.

“And how hard did you have to fight for it?” he gently pressed.

Ellie looked back out into the darkness—but she could feel him quietly, patiently waiting for her answer.

“There was little question that I could be accepted. My scores were frankly too high for them to deny me. But I needed a scholarship. We had just finished paying for school for… my brother,” she elaborated awkwardly. “There weren’t any additional funds left for me. I suppose that even though I’d been talking about going to university since I was a child, everyone simply assumed it was a fantasy.”

Ellie kept her voice even, but so much roiled beneath the calm surface of the story.

She remembered looking into her future and watching it narrow precipitously. Feeling the dreams she had nurtured as a child grind to dust under the weight of the reality of her position.

Ellie steeled herself against the old hurt and pressed on.

“I applied for all the funds open to female candidates. Some rejected me immediately by letter despite my examination scores. At several of the remaining interviews, I was asked whether the trustees would be wasting their money on me when I inevitably married and gave up my occupation. Whether I could reasonably be expected to demonstrate the mental fortitude required to keep up with a strenuous course of study. Whether I would be a distraction to my male classmates. One of the committee members told me that university wasn’t the place to try to find a rich husband.”

Ellie wasn’t able to keep that bit calm. Bitterness snapped through her voice. She stopped it by clamping her mouth shut.

“I was finally able to secure funding through a private trust and complete my education,” she finished flatly.

Of course, that had been far from the end of it. After the battle for the funds, she had faced the constant, snickering remarks from her fellow students. The flirtations that felt more like threats.

Comments about ‘taking up space in the library’ that were meant to be overheard.

If you’re going to be here, you might at least pretty yourself up a bit…

“I’m sorry,” Bates said.

Ellie was startled to realize that he had come to stand beside her.

“Why? You weren’t part of it.” She took another deep breath. “And it is hardly fair of me to judge your decisions based upon my experience, which must necessarily have been very different from your own.”

Bates braced his arms on the frame of the canopy and leaned out from it. The low, orange glow of the lamp gilded his form.

“Naw. Don’t do that,” he said.

“Do what?” Ellie demanded.

“Let me off the hook that easy,” he replied. “It was a stupid move. My old man showed up during my last semester and told me he hoped I’d wised up. Handed me a ticket back to San Francisco for the week after graduation so I could take up my position with the firm. So of course, I told him to go to hell.” His mouth twisted into a thin smirk. “My buddy Fairfax never lets me hear the end of it. Says I could’ve made something of myself.”

“But you never wanted to make anything of yourself,” Ellie quietly protested, fighting back a wince at his casual mention of her brother again.

“Careful,” Bates returned, his eyes flashing darkly. “You might be starting to get to know me.”

“What did your father do?” Ellie asked.

“Disowned me,” Bates neatly replied.

“Excuse me?”

Bates pushed off the frame and strolled back to the stern.

“With full pomp and circumstance. I am officially no longer a legal descendant of George Bates Jr.,” he reported as he plopped down on the bench.

“In a fit of pique over university?” Ellie pressed, feeling a sympathetic outrage.

“I think it was more the culmination of a whole lot of things, but yeah. More or less. My mom still writes. My younger brother, Ethan, is being groomed up to wear the mantle of Robinson, Bates, and MacKenzie. He’s not a bad guy, and better suited to the job… though I do wonder how long he’ll be able to stay decent living in that snakes’ nest.”

Bates rose.

“We should probably call it a night,” he announced. “We’ve got another long day ahead of us. Once we’re past that fork—assuming we actually make it through the cave—you’re gonna have to start watching for that Black Pillar from the map. And trust me, hunting for a needle like that in this haystack is gonna be exhausting.”

“Yes. I suppose retiring early would be sensible,” Ellie agreed awkwardly.

They climbed into their hammocks—Bates swinging up into his with the lazy grace of practice, Ellie half-falling into her place. She managed to settle herself after a bit of precarious adjustment.

With her head resting against the rolled blanket that served as her pillow, she looked over at where Bates lay beside her. His arms were behind his head, his eyes already closed. He had turned the lantern down to a bare glimmer, leaving just enough light for Ellie to pick out the dim lines of his face.

“Bates?” she said as she suppressed a yawn.

“Yeah?” he replied without opening his eyes.

“Thank you.”

He frowned.

“For what—the beans?”

“For coming out here with me,” she corrected him a little irritably.

He looked over at her, but the details of his expression were lost in the gloom of the night.

“Get some sleep, Princess,” he said.

Ellie let herself fall into the darkness.