Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Eighteen

Ellie stood in the center of Hyde Park amid a sea of women gathered in droves of all ages. Cockney East Enders mingled with Scots, Jamaicans, South Asians and Irishwomen. They waited in noble stillness with their arms linked together.

A stuffy little man in a black suit climbed up to the podium. He cleared his throat and prepared to read from a thick piece of paper.

“Ahem,” he began. “The vote on the question of whether the right to participate in elections should be extended to all ladies over the age of twenty-one has been counted. Members in favor: four hundred and eighty-nine. Members against: one hundred and eighty-one. The motion has passed. The franchise of the vote shall be extended to women at the next…”

The rest of his words were drowned out by the cheer that rose up from the crowd—a roar like an enormous tide sweeping over the shore. The women around Ellie jumped and screamed as they hugged one another with tears streaking down their faces.

A dawning comprehension washed over her like cool water. Ellie was consumed by the realization of all that the change would mean—of everything that it would transform.

Women constituted half the population of the nation. With the power of their votes, they could institutionalize fair employment practices. Secure property rights and protection from domestic abuse. Expand the right to divorce. Access safe and reliable forms of birth control.

They could transform Britain’s policies in its colonial holdings, liberating countless thousands of other women who struggled, suffered, and fought across the full extent of the globe.

Someone was hugging Ellie, bouncing with happiness at her side. She heard laughter and the wild chatter of resurrected dreams.

The scene stuttered—and changed. Ellie smelled something that reminded her of the aftermath of a brushfire as smoke drifted through the air. The white linen shirtfronts and black silk lapels that surrounded her flashed with crimson splatters.

The world she knew jittered back into place. The stark red stains were gone. Someone passed around a flask of gin. Women flooded the stage to shake the hand of the gentleman at the podium until his dour face split into a grin.

The view contorted with another shuddering transformation. Heat burst over her with a ferocious crack. Pale bodies flew back, tossed like children’s dolls.

Her sisters screamed with the savage joy of victory.

Ellie glanced down at the blood covering her hands.

“We’ve done it!” Constance exclaimed.

Ellie’s friend grasped her arms. Constance’s lovely face was bright with happiness as tears streaked down her cheeks. Her white lawn dress was spotless as new snow.

Behind her, a terrible smoke spiraled into the sky, stinking of scorched flesh.

Ellie blinked.

No—it was just a cloud, the whisper of an oncoming storm.

A woman stood in the space beyond Constance’s shoulder, noticeably still amid the roiling of the crowd. Her figure was delicate, crowned with rich black hair over sun-blessed skin. Eyes like ancient wells gazed at Ellie steadily from above the ordinary gray lines of a proper English walking dress.

Ellie recognized those eyes, just as she recognized the ancient scar that marred the skin of the woman’s cheek.

“This is a dream, isn’t it?” Ellie called out.

Her sisters danced around her with their arms raised in celebration as ash rained down from the sky.

“This is more than that,” the scarred woman replied in a voice like a fall of silk—or a rumble of distant thunder.

Then the world around Ellie exploded, blowing into a thousand scattered fragments.

Ellie woke to a clatter of dishes and bolted upright in her hammock. Bates flashed her an apologetic look as he opened another mystery can for breakfast.

As soon as they had finished eating, they set off once more along the river. Ellie glued herself to the compass as they steamed against the quick-moving current. She desperately hoped that she could find some indication of the presence of the Black Pillar, despite Bates’s insistence that they could make their way along the path of the map regardless. If she could confirm that just one of the landmarks from the parchment was real, then she would be far more confident that this entire effort wasn’t just a risky and terrible waste of time.

The landscape grew wilder. Steep foothills rose up around them, draped in rich, green growth. The boat’s engine audibly struggled. Bates took more time to shovel in fuel as he wiped a line of sweat from his forehead.

He looked rough. His clothes and skin were stained with coal dust and mud, while his jaw was darkened by three-days’ growth of beard.

Ellie doubted that she was faring much better.

Halfway through the morning, they reached the first set of rapids—a cluster of boulders protruding from the bed of the river. Bates navigated them carefully through the rocks, weaving the Mary Lee over the higher spills of water. He took the curves at a wild pace, but Ellie knew he couldn’t afford to be more moderate. The steamboat had to overcome the current or else risk losing control of their course.

At one point, the boat swung ominously close to one of the stones. Ellie tensely awaited the inevitable crunch of collision, but Bates swept them past into open water.

A second run of cataracts hit shortly after lunch. They were even more quick and hazardous than the first. Bates’s expression grew grimmer as he tightly gripped the rudder.

The Mary Lee twisted through a spin that sent Ellie’s stomach and nerves into a lurch. Bates wheeled them into the turn and glided them along a spill of water that swirled around one of the larger boulders. The flow spat them out of the stretch of rapids as water splashed up over the place where Ellie clung to the bow.

Once they were through, Bates called to her over the rush of the current.

“We hit another one like that, we might want to think about whether it’s worth risking,” he said.

There was still no sign of the pillar.

By mid-afternoon, the heat of the day lay over them thickly despite the cool waters under their hull. Ellie wiped the sweat from the back of her neck as the boat rounded a bend… and the river had ended.

The cobalt road stopped abruptly at a thirty-foot cliff veiled by a cascading waterfall.

Disappointment washed over Ellie as she faced the rushing barrier. The steamboat clearly couldn’t navigate past this. They had reached the end of the line—with still no sign of the landmark they sought.

The timbre of the engine changed as Bates eased back the throttle until they were barely chugging forward against the swirling current.

“That’s it for the boat.” He glanced over at the compass in her hand. “Anything?”

Ellie closed the dented golden case with a sharp click.

“It’s possible I missed it,” she offered numbly.

Bates looked down at her silently for an uncomfortable moment before he turned away to face the waterfall.

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I can still get us there.”

The flat tone of his words left Ellie uneasy. They felt incomplete, and Bates wasn’t the type who kept his thoughts to himself.

“What aren’t you saying?” she pressed uneasily.

His glance back at her contained a hint of dismay.

“I…” His shoulders sank as he gave in. “Look—this has been the easy part. Trekking through an uncharted stretch of bush on foot is a different bag of worms. We’ll have to hunt and forage for whatever we’re going to eat—probably not always successfully. Track down safe sources of water. Fix up a place to sleep where we won’t find ourselves serving as bait halfway through the night. There are snakes out there that’ll kill you if you step in the wrong spot, an absurd quantity of mosquitoes, carnivorous ants—”

“Carnivorous ants?” Ellie cut in, frowning. She did not recall reading about any of those in her natural history books. She wondered if she’d heard him right over the growing rush of the waterfall.

“If you spot them before you step on them, you can just go around, even if it means a detour of a mile or so,” Bates continued. “It’s only if you’ve waded into the damned caravan before you realize what’s happening that things get hairy.”

“How hairy, exactly?” Ellie prodded.

She had to pitch her voice louder to be heard over the rush of the waterfall. They were near enough to the cascade that the light mist cooled Ellie’s skin. Little beads of it began to collect on the tips of Bates’s hair.

Bates sighed tiredly.

“What I’m saying is—it’s not just harder,” he replied carefully. “It’s risky. A lot more risky.”

His eyes flashed with sympathy… and Ellie began to feel a deep, cold fear.

“You think we should go back,” she filled in numbly.

“I’m just trying to make sure you’ve got the whole picture,” he returned, hedging his tone.

“But what do you think we should do?” she pressed.

Bates didn’t answer right away. He looked out toward the shoreline. It was a beautiful, impenetrable wall of green where tangled thatch palms sprouted up beneath soaring trees dripping with vines.

She could not peer at what might lie beyond it. The interior was a mystery shrouded in dangerous life.

Ellie realized that she didn’t need Bates to answer. His hesitation told her what he was thinking.

He wanted to go home. And why wouldn’t he? He had come out here with her for a lark. They’d had their fun, but now things were going to get hard, and he was far from certain that anything worth finding waited for them at the end of the journey.

Ellie admitted the horrible truth—that she was far from certain of it herself.

They hadn’t found the Black Pillar that Draws the Compass. She had always known the map and medallion could be a hoax. The fact that Bates had recognized one of the glyphs on it was promising, but anyone who had been poking around the territory centuries ago might have spotted something similar and copied it. The symbol didn’t prove anything.

They were about to set out into the uncharted wild on the cusp of the dangerous rainy season based on nothing more than a whispered promise of an implausible legend. Was that really worth risking their lives over?

Of course, Bates must risk his life like this all of the time. Doing so was quite literally his job. Even if there was no lost city at the end of it all, an excursion like this still gave him more information he could fill in on his maps. So what was different this time?

She was. Ellie was the difference. Bates didn’t want to go out into the bush because of her—because she was a liability.

And he was absolutely right.

The realization brought with it a wave of anger and shame. Ellie could rattle off the identifying symbols of Schellhas’s gods, along with all the latest theories on Mesoamerican archaeology and history, but none of that would keep her alive in a hostile environment. Out here, she was just another piece of baggage Bates would have to cart through the wilderness.

No wonder he was hesitating. Why wouldn’t he? It was a perfectly rational position for him to take.

It was also awful.

A terrible sense of frustration and helplessness washed over her. What would be left for her if they did go back to Belize Town?

Nothing but dragging herself back to London to try to gather up the tattered shreds of her old life. She had no job and no prospects—nothing but the wrenching choice between marriage and obscurity lay before her. She would be trapped. All her knowledge, her ambitions, and her dreams would be bottled up like wine left to spoil in the cellar.

Her face was wet. It must be the floating mist from the waterfall. It had nothing at all to do with the burning she felt at the corners of her eyes.

“Fine.” Ellie bit out the word even as a piece of her wanted to shrivel up at the sound.

Bates stared down at her, the lines of his face uncharacteristically conflicted.

Water continued to spill down before them. The rush of it drowned out the perpetual rustle of the leaves and the chirps or croaks of any neighboring wildlife. It felt like silence even as it roared incessantly against Ellie’s ears.

“Fight with me,” Bates abruptly ordered.

Ellie looked up with surprise.

“What?” she blurted.

“Fight with me,” he repeated, calling out the words over the relentless cascade. “Tell me why we should keep going.”

“I… I’m not sure that we should,” Ellie admitted, stammering out the reply.

“Wrong answer,” Bates returned flatly.

“You said it was a bad idea!” she accused, rising from where she sat at the bow.

“What do I know about it?”

“A great deal more than I do!” she shot back as her frustration rose.

“Since when has that ever stopped you?” he tossed back.

Ellie’s frustration quickly shifted to anger. She narrowed her eyes.

“Excuse me?” she seethed.

“You love telling men when they’re wrong about things,” Bates returned cheerfully.

“Only when it happens to be true!” she retorted.

Ellie’s emotions were a thickening storm that made it hard for her to think clearly. Even through the maelstrom, she sensed that something was off. She didn’t know Bates very well, but she felt as though he was deliberately baiting her. But why would he do that?

The roar of the waterfall seemed to be getting louder. The constant, unrelenting noise drove at her ears and made her head pound.

“Why limit yourself? Tell me I’m wrong right now,” Bates replied—and then smirked at her. “Or are you admitting you can’t hack it out there?”

Fury sparked to life inside of her, and Ellie’s hands clenched into fists at her side.

“Unlike some of us, Mr. Bates, I am capable of acknowledging my limitations,” she hissed.

“Now, see—that’s what’s holding you back,” he called out easily as the water beaded on his skin.

“What is holding me back,” Ellie shouted as she took a step toward him, “is an entire society built on the implied superiority of men! A society that refuses women any sense of agency or competence! What is holding me back,” she continued as she drove a firm, pointy finger into his sternum, “is a legal and professional system designed to systematically exclude women in order to force them into lives of domestic slavery! I can’t just walk away from whatever isn’t working for me. I don’t get to bounce into any job tacked up onto the postings board. I can’t just give up, secure in the knowledge that there are a thousand other options out there for me. I can’t afford to roll through my life like nothing in it really matters!”

The words spilled out of her like the water rushing over the cliff above—a seething mass of decades of pent-up, simmering frustration—and yet even as she felt them leave her lips, part of Ellie jolted back in horror at just how personal they had suddenly become.

Bates went quiet. That sense of prodding—of someone deliberately riling her up—was suddenly gone.

“You got me, Princess,” he replied. “Just a big, dumb lug over here who can’t take anything seriously.”

His tone was bitter and hard-edged. It slapped up against the wall of Ellie’s anger, which refused to entirely give way.

“I never said that,” Ellie shot back thinly.

“Pretty sure you just did,” he pointed out.

“I was talking about the system!”

The boat spun slowly against the current. The water misted around them as she faced him across a mere foot of the deck. The relentless crash of the falls was an assault against her brain.

“Are you going to make the call here, or what?” Bates snapped.

“Why does it have to be my call?” Ellie pleaded.

“You wanna be in charge, don’t you?” he drawled. “Being in charge means you make the call.”

“I never asked to be in charge!” Ellie returned sharply.

“You hid half the map from me,” Bates pointed out.

“That’s because I didn’t trust you yet!”

“Ahh—I see,” he said coldly. “I’m just here because you were that desperate for a way out.”

“I was not desperate,” Ellie countered.

“You were tied up with a psychopath chasing after you,” he retorted.

Frustration and anger roiled inside of her, mingling with a colder streak of fear. The horrible tension of it finally burst and spilled out of her.

“You really want to know the truth?” she retorted. “Fine. Of course you weren’t what I wanted! You kicked down a door and pushed me into a corner! You tracked me through the city and told me that what I was trying to do was stupid! You were the absolute last person I wanted to come out here with!”

Nothing but rushing water answered her.

All of it was true. Ellie recognized that, even as part of her stood back, horrified, at what had just burst from her mouth… but it wasn’t enough of the truth. There was more, and it was desperately important—if she could just figure out how to pin it down inside of her and speak it into life.

“I’m sorry. I…” She trailed off, struggling. “That’s not what I…”

“I get it,” Bates replied shortly.

“No,” she protested. “You don’t understand…”

“I think that’s kind of the point. Isn’t it?”

Guilt and shame twisted up through the heart of her anger.

“Why did you start this?” she pleaded.

He shrugged. The line of his shoulders was tight and defensive.

“Just wanted to know whether we’re turning around,” he threw back.

Ellie’s fury and dismay rose into a whirlwind.

“You… I… Argggh!” she yelled.

There were no more words for it. All she could do was act.

She snatched the pan from where it hung on the canopy frame.

“Of all the infuriating—” She launched the pan out over the water.

“Hey!” Bates protested as he whirled back to her. “We needed that!”

She tore the coal shovel from the bin

“Self-important, aggravating things—”

The shovel sailed through the air and disappeared into the current with a tiny splash.

Bates’s expression fell, his eyes widening.

“That could be a problem,” he noted uncomfortably.

Ellie’s hand grasped the gray hedgehog-shaped stone on the shelf by the boiler. A distant part of her mind recognized it as Bates’s lucky rock.

“Wait—not that!” he cried.

He lunged for her and succeeded in hooking a wrist around her waist—but Ellie’s arms were still free.

She chucked the rock over the side.

The water swallowed it.

Bates stared after it with an expression of blank horror.

Ellie pushed her way free of his hold and jabbed her finger at him.

“I will not be manipulated into reinforcing your own unjustified insecurities—”

“You threw my rock,” Bates blurted, his eyes still on the water.

Ellie suppressed a growl of frustration.

“I am trying to explain—”

“This is bad,” he continued numbly. “This is very, very bad.”

“Would you leave off about the bloody rock already?” she burst out.

A thud sounded from above them, followed by a grinding roar. The texture of the spray abruptly changed, arcing much further out from the falls. The wash of it immediately drenched both of them, soaking Ellie to the bone.

She spluttered as she raised her head to look at the source of the water—and found herself staring up at the jagged, battered end of an enormous log.

It wavered at the brink of the cliff. The end of it tipped ever so slightly downward. The current sprayed up around it in misty rainbows.

Bates lurched for the controls. Ellie heard the engine fire back up. The deck shuddered under her boots as the screw whirled back into forward gear.

Above her, the angle of the log shifted… and Ellie realized what was coming next.

“Too late,” she breathed—and sprinted for Bates.

She caught him around the waist, using the force of her momentum to shove them both to the deck beside the boiler.

She landed hard. Her shoulder slammed into the boards. Bates’s weight pinned her arm—and then the Mary Lee leapt beneath her, jolting upwards as an impact like a thunder crack sounded behind them.

Bates instinctively clamped his arms around her shoulders. The deck plummeted, slamming back down into the water with another impact that bounced Ellie’s skull against the wood.

“Are you all right?” Bates shouted against her ear.

“Yes!” she called back.

He hauled her upright and turned back to assess the damage. Ellie grasped the pole of the canopy, using it to steady herself as the boat spun, still rocking, away from the waterfall.

The wall at the stern had been crushed into splinters. Near the impact site, the boards of the deck were jolted and uneven.

Bates dropped to his stomach, scooting out over the edge and feeling down beneath it.

The impact of the log had snapped Ellie’s anger and frustration. She was left with only a shivering, queasy unease as she watched him assess the damage.

“How bad is it?” she called over to him.

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to sink,” he said. “Hull feels intact. Can’t say the same about the propeller.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie stumbled over to drop to her knees beside him. “What’s happened to it?”

“It’s not there anymore.” Bates flopped himself back to rest against the remaining portion of the rail.

“Can you fix it?”

“Not unless you’ve got another prop stashed in that corset of yours,” Bates quipped in reply.

Darts of panic leapt to life in Ellie’s chest, rattling there like stray marbles.

“So what do we do?” she demanded.

“Float,” Bates returned. “Presumably downriver. Until we stop.”

Her heart sank as she looked over the shattered transom to the now peaceful waterfall.

“Well,” she said numbly. “I suppose that settles our debate.”

Bates flashed her a guilty and uncomfortable look.

He kicked out with his boot. One of the boards of the deck popped up in response. Reaching into another of his stashes, he pulled out a tin box, cracked it open, and removed a stick of desiccated meat.

“Tapir jerky?” he offered.

He held it out like a peace treaty.

“I’m… er… quite all right,” Ellie replied awkwardly. “But thank you.”

He snapped off a bite and chewed it with obvious effort.

“There’s plenty here if you change your mind,” he said.

“How long will it take for us to make it back like this?” Ellie asked.

“Maybe a week or two?” Bates guessed.

The Mary Lee had stopped spinning. The rudderless steamboat settled into a lazy drift down the river. Her bow was pointed back at the waterfall. The craft bobbed stern-first past rows of vine-draped trees.

Ellie looked out over the broken transom as Bates gnawed on more tapir.

Tapir, she thought numbly. Tapirus bairdii. Herbivorous mammal distinguished by its extended, fleshy proboscis.

The knowledge anchored her against a wavering, uncertain shock that threatened to swallow her.

They would float back to the mouth of the river for a long, mosquito-swarmed hike to town. If they ran into another boat along the way, perhaps they could get a tow… and then she and Bates would go their separate ways. He would return to his cigars on the veranda between his mud-soaked trudges through the swamp, and Ellie would go back to England… where she probably should have stayed all along.

She would keep the map from falling into Jacobs’ hands one way or another. Just because her hopes had been smashed didn’t mean she had to hand the parchment over to a batch of criminals. If she had no other options, she could simply burn it. Surely that was better than allowing looters to empty whatever lay at the end of it, leaving it as devastated as the cave from the day before.

The notion of the map’s potential curling into ash and smoke made her stomach churn.

Ellie forced back the thought. She wouldn’t face that possibility until she had to. Instead, she focused her attention on the shore, where thickly forested slopes were framed by peaks of gray stone.

A fork in the brown current of the river glided past. The two streams were broken by a jagged islet covered in spindly brush and ferns.

The sight unexpectedly jarred her.

“Bates?” she called out without turning back to look at him.

“What?” he returned through a mouthful of jerky.

“We’re going the wrong way.”

“The river only goes one way, Princess,” he drawled from where he slouched against the rail.

“I mean that we’ve taken some sort of branch.” Ellie pointed at the fork, which was now disappearing behind them. “We’re not on the same river.”

“They all end up at the ocean. Quit worrying about it and sit down,” Bates replied.

Ellie dropped onto the remains of the shattered bench. The uneasy feeling lingered in her gut. The landscape around them tugged oddly through her perception of the tangled branches that lined the bank and the clouds that scudded thinly overhead.

She realized that the nagging concern was centered on the way the rushing water echoed back from in front of her.

“That’s funny,” she said distractedly.

“What is?” Bates replied.

“The waterfall,” she clarified. “We’re moving away from it, but it seems to be growing louder.”

“Sounds travel in weird ways up here in the mountains,” Bates returned lightly and popped the last bite of tapir into his mouth.

Ellie gazed over the rippling water in front of them. The branch they had inadvertently taken was narrow and quick. The steamboat bounced gently along the rush of it. The water frothed here and there at the surface with the strength of the current. The white caps on the ripples were more apparent a little further ahead of them where the trees lining the banks opened into a wider vista over a deep, thickly overgrown valley.

An instinctive dart of fear quickened Ellie’s pulse.

“Bates?” she said as she jolted to her feet.

“You should lay back and take a nap,” he returned easily. “We’ll tie off and look for more grub whenever we bump into the bank.”

“But something is wrong with the river,” Ellie pressed back.

Bates reluctantly peeled himself from the deck and strolled over to her.

“What could possibly be wrong with—” he began. “Oh hell!”

His eyes locked on the place a hundred yards ahead of them where the river disappeared into a low wall of mist. He grabbed Ellie’s shoulder and swung her toward him roughly.

“Waterfall!” he shouted, pointing out over the water.

Ellie stared forward blankly, panic driving the thoughts from her head.

Bates sprang into action. He yanked the Winchester and his canteen and swung them across his shoulders. He snatched up the rucksack as well and skidded across the deck. Whipping his machete from his belt, he jammed the blade under another board and pried it up with a pop. He yanked out the map tin—and hesitated for a breath.

“Heck with it,” he muttered.

He grabbed out an unlabeled bottle of dark golden liquid and tossed that in the stuffed bag as well.

“What did you just pack?” Ellie demanded.

“How well can you swim?” he shot back, ignoring the question as he threw on the rucksack.

“Tolerably well, I suppose,” Ellie replied. “Though I haven’t really—”

“Deep breath,” Bates interrupted and yanked her over the rail.

Ellie plunged into cold, rushing water. The river swirled around her violently as the current swept her forward with terrifying speed. Only the anchor of Bates’s grip on her arm kept her from being utterly disoriented by the maelstrom of it.

He hauled at her in a direction that she hoped was up. She broke the surface and gasped in a desperate breath. The force of the river shoved her forward as water splashed against her face.

Bates tugged at her. His hair was plastered to his scalp.

“There!” He waved a hand at the bank ahead of them. “Swim with the current. Don’t fight it!”

Ellie forced her shocked limbs to move. Every instinct screamed for her to swim directly for land. With Bates’s words fresh in her ear, she resisted, and instead let the river propel her forward as she pulled ferociously for the shore.

Her flailing hand brushed against a slick, protruding root. Ellie grasped it. The force of the water pressed her up against the wood.

Bates slammed into place beside her, hitting the extended roots of the tree with a thud. He hauled himself up and reached back to pull Ellie after him.

They fell against the leaf-strewn earth of the bank and lay there, breathless.

Ellie stared up at the flickering green leaves of the trees overhead. The rush of the water still sang in her ears. Slowly, she forced herself to stagger back to her feet and look out over the river.

The waterfall was just ahead of them. Through the cool, damp mist, Ellie could see just how far away the ground below it lay.

The drop was dizzying.

As she watched, the Mary Lee reached the edge, spun in a lazy half-circle—and then toppled over the brink.

A sickening crunch sounded from below.

She looked down at where Bates lay on the ground with his eyes still closed.

“That was my boat. Wasn’t it?” he asked quietly.

“I’m afraid it was,” Ellie replied.

She waited for his reaction, wondering whether it would be anger or dismay.

Bates laughed.

He sat up with the force of it, coughing, and pounded a hand to his chest.

The laugh was contagious. Ellie fought back a bubbling, wild hysteria—and then succumbed to it. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

“How are we going to get back?” she demanded, forcing the words out through the spasms in her chest.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Bates replied, wheezing.

Laugher consumed her in another helpless fit until she slumped down against the trunk of a nearby tree, sprawling her legs out in front of her.

“Are we going to die out here?” she asked mirthfully.

“Naw,” Bates replied. “I’ve been in worse scrapes. We’ll figure it out.” He frowned. “Well. Maybe not worse…”

That threatened another outburst of hysteria.

“Come on,” he said at last. He hopped to his feet and crossed over to her. “Let’s see what we might be able to salvage…”

His voice trailed off. His eyes locked on the space beyond Ellie’s tree. Ellie quickly rose and whirled with alarm as she wondered whether a jaguar was in the process of sneaking up on them.

She saw only the place where the river fell away and, far below it, the cloud of mist that covered the rocks where the Mary Lee had been smashed to splinters.

When she turned back to Bates, his skin was looking distinctly clammy.

“Is something the matter?” she demanded.

“Nope,” he mumbled. “Just great.”

“Did you hit your head in the current?” she pressed. “You look as though you might be showing signs of a concussion.”

“Head’s fine. Everything’s fine,” he numbly and unconvincingly assured her. “Just going to… sit on down here for a minute. Look at some trees.”

He promptly dropped to the ground and flopped onto his back again.

Ellie stared down at him in surprise.

“Are you ill?” she demanded.

“No. Nope. Just great.”

“Then why are you on the ground?” she pressed, exasperated—and an unexpected suspicion popped into her mind. “Bates—are you afraid of heights?”

“Nope. Not me,” he returned thickly. “Not afraid at all. Just sensibly cautious.” He paused and then blurted out the rest, still looking a bit green. “They might also make me feel like I’m gonna puke on my boots.”

Ellie knelt down beside him.

“Perhaps we’ll set up our camp a little further inland,” she suggested.

“Great idea,” he agreed. “Setting up. Gotta get ourselves organized before…”

His voice trailed off as his hand moved automatically down to the sheath of his machete—and then continued. He groped along the length of the blade as his features creased into a frown.

“Knife’s gone a bit…” he started.

He lifted his head to gaze down across his torso. Ellie followed the direction of his look, and her own eyes widened with surprise.

The leather sheath danced away from his thigh, pulling out toward the dense foliage.

Bates poked at it curiously, shoving the blade back down an inch. As he removed his hand, it sprang back up again.

“That’s awkward,” he commented.

Ellie had already leapt to her feet. She pushed into the tangle of palms and vines.

Shoving aside a stand of ferns, she revealed a tall, glittering pillar of night-black stone.

Bates scrambled up beside her. He gazed at the monument in wordless surprise. He took the machete from his belt. Slowly, he extended the blade out before him, stopping an inch or so from the fierce visage of the figure carved into the surface of the black monument.

He let go.

The knife snapped across the remaining space and stuck to the stone with a clank.

“Well, Princess…” he said wonderingly. “It looks like you found your rock.”