Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Fifteen

Adam eyed their options as they reached the fork in the river an hour later. The southern branch—the one he had navigated before—was broader. The tributary to the north—the one that Ellie’s map said would lead to their Black Pillar, whatever the hell that was—flowed narrower and faster, channeled between high banks lined with lush foliage.

Adam cocked a challenging eyebrow at Ellie, who was perched primly in the bow.

“Still wanna wait to show me the rest of that map?” he prompted. “Remember, that cave’s probably full of spiders. Might be I could find us a way around it.”

“Stick to the plan, Mr. Bates,” Ellie replied firmly.

“If all the girls were bells in the tower,” Adam sang cheerfully as he swung the rudder around. “And I was a clapper I’d bang one each—”

She gave an awkward cough. Adam grinned as they chugged into the narrower branch of the river.

The wilderness drifted past them, thick and tangled. The motion of the leaves dappled the sunlight as it sparkled against the water.

Ellie tossed aside her hat, apparently determining that it was shady enough not to require it. As Adam watched, she dipped a hand over the side, then smoothed her damp fingers over the back of her neck where the fine tendrils of her chestnut hair curled beneath the mess of her bun.

Adam’s thoughts involuntarily flew back to earlier that morning—to the unexpected sight of her softly curved form suspended on the rippling water with her hair loose around her. Those plain-as-toast underthings of hers had left very little to the imagination.

Adam’s imagination had charged on regardless. It wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge.

He’d deliberately antagonized her with his cannonball off the deck, and maybe it hadn’t been strictly necessary for him to strip off his shirt and toss it back onto the boat like a sopping wet missile. But he hadn’t been kidding about needing a dip. Give him three or four days in the bush without a wash, and Adam wasn’t sure he’d want to keep company with himself—never mind inflict that kind of stink on a woman.

Besides, he had to admit there was a certain kind of joy in getting her mouth to turn into that pretty little scowl.

He’d have to keep a careful watch on those impulses. If the woman was a widow, then she definitely wasn’t the kind they wrote the racy songs about—and honestly, Adam had some doubts. In the extremity of the moment back in his room at the Rio Nuevo, it had made sense to buy her story and get them moving before that smooth-faced bastard who’d tied her up came poking around for another look. Now that they were out in the wild, he had no interest in adding shameless debaucher of ladies to his resume.

He had best play it safe—enticingly practical underthings aside. And that was what he would do. He would be the safest player that had ever played.

Just watch him.

After three more miles of winding water, the Mary Lee rounded a bend and faced the obstacle that lay in their path.

The hill rose up before them, draped in an impenetrable veil of green. The river disappeared into a black mouth at the base of it framed by tangles of falling vines.

Adam cut back on the throttle and lazily looped a line around the handle of the rudder before moving to join the woman at the bow.

Beyond the arch of the cave, the water disappeared, swallowed by a thick darkness.

“Looks a little tight, but I think we’ll make it,” he concluded.

“Think we’ll make it?” Ellie echoed, slightly aghast.

“I’ll take us in nice and slow,” he replied as he moved back to the boiler.

“Are you sure there aren’t any additional precautions that might be prudent?” she demanded.

Adam considered it.

“Now you mention it, there is something,” he said. “Lemme just rig up the plank.”

“Plank?” she said weakly as her eyes widened with alarm.

“It’s great,” Adam promised her. “You’ll love it.”

The preparations took only a few moments. First, Adam waded to shore to harvest a likely-looking sapling with his machete. After stripping it of all of its leaves and branches, he was left with a long, slender pole.

Next, he pried a loose board up from the deck of the Mary Lee and set it down on the bow rail.

“Hold that,” he ordered.

Ellie just managed to catch the plank and keep it from toppling into the water as he walked away.

Adam kicked the toolbox by the boiler in its favorite spot. The lid flew open, just as it was supposed to. He pulled out a hammer and a handful of rusty nails.

“Why are we nailing this board to the bow?” Ellie demanded.

“So you’ve got something to sit on,” he replied.

“You expect me to climb out onto this thing?” she protested.

“How else are you gonna sound our way forward?” he returned before popping the nails into his mouth.

Ellie eyed the chipped gray paint of the plank nervously.

“How old is this board?” she asked.

“Hoff ffould I ffhow?” Adam replied around the nails. He plucked one out and drove it into the rail with an easy thunk of the hammer.

“Are you sure it’s entirely sturdy?” she pressed.

Adam drove in another nail and plucked the rest from his lips as he shot her a skeptical look.

“Exactly how much do you think you weigh?” he pushed back.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” she retorted, folding her arms crossly.

Adam eyed her critically.

“I give you a hundred and forty pounds, tops.” He shoved the nails back in his mouth. “Bwoard ffhould holw you juss ffine.”

Ellie watched him with an expression of muted horror as he knocked in a few more nails, then gave the plank a few rough pushes with his hands. The far end of it bounced a bit, but the near side stayed good and fixed, which was what really mattered.

“Aren’t you going to test it properly?” she asked a bit desperately.

“What—do you want me to jump up and down on top of it?” Adam retorted, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “I’m a hell of a lot more than a hundred and forty pounds. I’d snap the damned thing in two. Just get on out there—don’t worry about it. Oh, and take the stick.”

He tossed the sapling to Ellie. She caught it awkwardly.

“What about crocodiles?” she demanded a little desperately, holding the tree like a weapon.

“You hardly ever see them this far from the coast,” Adam assured her.

“Perhaps they will make an exception if I am dangling over the water like a piece of bait,” she snapped.

“You wanna do this or not?” Exasperation crept into his tone.

Ellie’s mouth firmed into an entirely dissatisfied line—but without further protest, she crawled out onto the board.

Now that Adam could see her out there, he had to admit that it did look a little dicey.

Ellie tried scooting out on the plank while sitting upright, but quickly decided that was less than stable. Instead, she lay flat along it with her elbows and knees on either side for balance.

“Keep the low end of that stick in the water and shout at me if it hits something,” Adam instructed as he relit the oil lamp and hung it off the bow near to where she was suspended.

“I am familiar with the concept of a sounding pole,” she bit back.

“Great. This should be a piece of cake, then.”

Adam untied the line that anchored them to the bank. He set the throttle to a little more than a crawl and eased them forward, resting his hand on the control for the rudder.

The boat crept toward the mouth of the cave. Adam kept a careful eye on the stack of the boiler as they approached it, keenly estimating their clearance.

It was definitely going to be close.

The Mary Lee moved against a change in the flow of the current, shifting to the side. Adam neatly adjusted their course—and the tendrils of overhanging foliage brushed against the smoke-stained iron of the boiler as they passed inside.

Gloom settled in around them, turning the bright gold of morning to a dim twilight. The orange glow of the lantern illuminated the place where Ellie was suspended over the water with the sapling in her hand.

The dark, damply glistening walls of the passage were worn smooth almost to the ceiling. The space must fill completely with water at the height of the flood. The only rock formations Adam could see dangling down from above were either minuscule or truncated by the debris that must come flying through when the river was high.

Here and there, the glow of the lantern flickered across quick, shifting forms—the dart of a lizard, the skitter of a fist-sized cave spider.

Adam gave a little shudder at the sight of those. He’d been jibing Ellie about the spiders, but the truth was that the damned things had always spooked him a bit. Something about all those scritchy legs made his skin crawl.

He focused his gaze and worked to penetrate as much of the gloom before them as he could. Occasionally, breaks overhead allowed little spills of light to penetrate down to the water. Those areas were thick with growth. The river below them shifted from black to a startling turquoise.

Adam glanced up to see a log at least fourteen inches in diameter jammed into a crevice of the ceiling. He was uncomfortably reminded of just how hazardous this waterway would become once the rains kicked in and the river rose.

As the slick walls of the cave slid past, Adam considered the wisdom of what they were doing. It was pretty damned close to the start of the rainy season. If he and Ellie didn’t make it back through the tunnel before the rains began, they could very well be trapped on the other side. They’d be forced to abandon the boat and try to make their way overland across fifty miles of tropical forest and swamp.

That was not an enticing notion.

But what was the alternative? If they went back to town now—assuming he could convince the woman that was the right move—the guy from the veranda could still be waiting around for her.

Or they might run into him on their way.

If that was the case, it was entirely possible that Adam would have to kill him.

He’d never actually killed anybody before. He was perfectly comfortable with handing out a good, old-fashioned pummeling or two—but outright bloody murder would be a new line for him, and he wasn’t all that sure he wanted to cross it.

Of course, he could just demand Ellie get over it and show him the rest of her map. This whole expedition could get a lot simpler if Adam was able to recognize even one of the landmarks on there. Surely by now, she should’ve realized he wasn’t that untrustworthy. He was kind of an open book. Not too complicated.

Adam thought of their conversation the night before—of the tight, sharp look of hurt that had come over her when he stupidly let slip that he’d dropped out of Cambridge in what more or less amounted to a temper tantrum.

Ellie would’ve been going up against the worst sort of idiots from the moment she tried to do something other than sit at home with her embroidery. Adam had seen enough of the world to know how that worked. Heck, he’d even been on the receiving end of it at Cambridge when some of the high-and-mighty types there briefly took it in mind to try to get one over on the new-money Yank. It had been briefly because Adam had picked up the worst offender and tossed him ass-over-teakettle into the River Cam.

The Viscount of Whatever-the-Hell had come up with a nice glop of pond weed on his overly pomaded hair, and his crowd had mostly steered clear of Adam after that.

His traveling companion had probably spent most of her life being told what to do by blokes who were half as smart as she was, and she wouldn’t have had the luxury of knocking her persecutors into the drink.

Adam found that he didn’t really want to be added to the list of men who assumed they knew better than she did. He’d let her keep her map until she was good and ready to share it. What did it matter if it cost them a few extra days? This whole thing was a lark anyway, weird trinkets and shady characters aside. That map was almost certainly just some long-dead pirate’s idea of a joke.

It probably had a big old X at the end of it.

“Stop!” Ellie cried from the plank. “Stop the boat now!”

With a quick jolt of fear, Adam threw the throttle into reverse. The engine protested at the quick change. The screw pulled against the Mary Lee’s momentum but managed to bring them to a relative halt.

Ellie scooted back along her board, tossing the sapling into the boat and plucking the lantern from where it hung. With an air of intense, focused distraction—and a distinct lack of self-preservation—she leaned out over the water with the lamp raised before her.

“Are you trying to end up in the drink?” Adam demanded, slightly alarmed.

“Go back.” Ellie waved at him without taking her eyes from the darkness before her. “About twelve feet.”

Frowning, Adam eased the boat in reverse. He hoped distantly that he wasn’t about to ram the rudder into some underwater obstruction they were lucky enough to miss on the way in.

“Here—right here!” she ordered. “Move in closer to the wall.”

“Sure,” Adam agreed with just a hint of irritation. “Why not?”

He switched the direction of the screw again and took them carefully forward, nosing the Mary Lee closer to the dark, shining surface of the cave wall.

What he saw there made him start with surprise.

“Hey—there’s an opening!” he exclaimed.

“Of course there is!” Ellie returned. “What do you think I’ve been looking at?”

The narrow crack in the wall of the cave would have been easy to miss. A dark ribbon of water ran into it. The mixed currents made little whirlpool eddies on the surface.

Ellie climbed to her feet, balancing her boots on the plank. She raised the lantern up over her head and strained as though trying to make herself taller.

She was definitely going to end up in the drink.

“There!” she announced triumphantly.

She pointed at a curve of stone near the roof of the cave. Adam squinted at it, curiosity overcoming caution as he moved the boat even closer.

Three divots marred the otherwise smooth surface of the rock—two side-by-side with a third below.

“It’s a face,” Ellie declared.

“Is it?” Adam returned skeptically as he frowned up at the dots.

“Bates, this is clearly not natural. Look at the depth and the angles of the markings. They were chipped away using a harder material.” Ellie gazed up at the rough, almost human visage that gaped out from the wall. Her voice was tight with excitement. “Someone has been here before!”