Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (33 page)

As she watched, the officer reached down and sliced Anand’s bonds with a knife.

Jani wept with relief. So they had been apprehended by the British at last! But what did that matter beside the fact that Anand was alive?

The officer pulled a revolver from the holster and aimed it through the door at the surviving Russian. Beside her Volovich sprang to his feet, his expression of alarm exhilarating to behold. He backed up against the far wall, mouthing something in Russian.

The officer fired, the explosion deafening in the confines of the gondola, and a red hole appeared in the centre of Volovich’s forehead. He remained standing for a second, a look of absolute incredulity on his face, before sliding down the wall and coming to rest in a comical sitting position, his fat legs splayed before him.

Anand sprang to his feet, yanking the gag from his mouth, and yelled, “Jani-ji!” He ran into the lounge and flung himself at her, sobbing. “But what have they done to you!”

She said through her tears, “Nothing that cannot be undone, Anand, and more importantly you are alive.”

“I heard the lies they told you about killing me!” he said. “And there was nothing I could do to ease your pain!”

“My pain is more than eased now, Anand.”

The officer stepped forward and removed his pith helmet. Jani looked up and stared at their saviour in disbelief.

“Jelch!” she said.

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

Evading the British – Towards Nepal –

Jettisoning the Russians –

“Think of pleasant things...”

“B
EFORE REMOVING THE
hideous mesh from your face,” Jelch said, “I will get the ’ship into the air. I hope you understand this?”

“Of course, but I wonder if you might free me first?”

Anand, crouching against the wall, watched Jelch as he rooted through Volovich’s pockets. The boy looked petrified as he stared at the creature, his gaze moving from its elongated legs and its attenuated torso to its oddly flattened face. Jani thought Jelch looked all the more monstrous for being garbed in the uniform of a British officer.

“Don’t be afraid,” she murmured. “Jelch is on our side.”

Jelch looked up from the corpse. “You have nothing to fear from me, Anand.”

“You know my name?” Anand said in a whisper.

Jelch gave his poor imitation of a smile. “I know your name, and I’ve seen how brave you’ve been.” He looked at Jani. “How brave you’ve both been. I... I had no idea how much my actions would endanger you.”

Jani coloured as she thought of the coin; how could she explain that she had misplaced it?

“How did you find us? And how do you know about–?”

Jelch interrupted. “I’m sorry, but the less you know, the less you can give away.” He reached out towards her with his long, pale fingers and gently touched the wires enmeshing her face. “Had the Russians succeeded in reading your mind...”

She looked away and said in a small voice, “Then they would have learned that I have no idea where the coin is.”

His lips became elongated again. “Jani, on some strata of your mind, subconsciously, you know very well the whereabouts of the ‘coin,’ as you call it.”

He found the keys in Volovich’s pocket and unlocked the handcuffs securing Jani to the
chaise longue
. She sat up as Jelch unknotted the rope around her ankles.

She stared at him as he worked. “I
know
where it is?” She shook her head. “But I thought I’d lost it, or that it had been stolen.”

“Jani, you know where it is, though your conscious self does not know that you know – and that is how it should remain, for now.”

“For now?”

He slid the looped rope from her foot and Jani stood. She was about to ask him why the need for such secrecy, but stopped herself. Of course, if the Russians were to find out about the coin, or the Chinese, or the British...

A smart tapping sounded on the outer hatch. “I say, what’s going on in there?” someone called out in Sandhurst tones. “Someone reported hearing a gunshot. Open up.”

Jelch, from squatting beside the
chaise longue
, sprang up like a tiger and made for the baize door. He dragged Yezhov’s corpse from the control cabin and laid it on the gondola’s Persian rug, then slipped into the pilot’s seat and called out, “We have everything in hand. Just a little trouble with the ventilator.”

“That’s all very well, but I need to come aboard.”

Jani sat on the
chaise longue
, clutching Anand to her as she stared into the control cabin. Jelch looked over his shoulder and hissed, “Hold on tight!”

His hands were a blur over the controls, and the gondola filled with the din of the engines as they powered up.

Jani made out a cry from the officer, “I say!” as the gondola left the ground, rocking violently. It came to a sudden halt, and Jani realised that the hawsers securing it to the tarmac had not been released. Jelch fed more power to the engines. The airship strained against the hawsers, its motor whining. A second later the ’ship shot upwards and came to a halt with a wrenching jerk. A snapped hawser whiplashed through the air and whacked the coachwork of the gondola, narrowly missing a porthole.

Jani leapt up and peered out. The second hawser tautened between the airship and the ground and the gondola tipped crazily. Anand cried out and tumbled towards her. They gripped hand-holds on the wall and stared through the porthole as Jelch fed more power to the engines. The airship circled wildly, pulling on the remaining hawser. Her heart lurched as she saw, across the airyard, the approach of a dozen soldiers armed with rifles.

Then, the engines screaming with the strain, the airship broke free of the remaining hawser; it snapped with a detonation like a cannon and this time, instead of breaking towards the gondola, lashed across the tarmac like a striking cobra. The soldiers, kneeling to take aim, scattered in fright and the airship shot into the air. Jani watched the airyard diminish beneath them, the soldiers scurrying to regroup like ants.

They took aim and fired, their rifles flaring in the twilight. Within seconds the soldiers were lost to sight amid the floodlit hulls of a dozen airships, and then even the airyard took on the dimensions of a child’s toy as they climbed high into the sky and headed east.

Jani tottered across the swaying gondola towards the control cabin and ducked through the baize door. She stood beside Jelch, gripping a crossbar above her head.

“You saved my life,” she said.

He glanced at her. “It was my duty to do so,” he murmured.

She stared at the creature, its elongated skull rising to an egg-like dome, covered in a close-cut furze. Jade green veins pulsed beneath the pale skin; his nose was flattened, his eyes those of an old cod... He was so human in many respects, but it was his proximity to what she considered human that made him seem so alien. Had he been very different to her and her kind, she might have been able to consider him
animal
.

She peered through the viewscreen at the clouds, lit like a swirl of seltzer in the glow of the moon. “The British will send a ’ship up after us,” she said.

“More than one is my bet, Jani. They had their eyes on the ’ship when the Russians landed. I think they suspected that the pair were up to no good.”

“How did you find us?”

“I arrived in Rishi Tal too late, but in time to see the Russians carrying you and Anand from the guest house. They took a taxi down the valley to the airyard. I commandeered a military vehicle – which is how I came by the uniform – and followed. Don’t worry, I didn’t harm the officer, merely rendered him unconscious and tied him up.”

She stared at him, allowing the seconds to elapse. At last she asked, “Why did you give me the coin, Jelch? What is it and why are you... using me?”

His big grey eyes regarded her. At last he said, “I
am
using you, yes, Janisha. But, please believe me when I say that the purpose for which I am using you is in the best interests of you and your kind.”

“Will you tell me?”

“For your own safety, I think it best that I don’t. Please believe me when I say that I have your welfare at heart.”

She smiled. “For some reason, Jelch, I do believe you.”

Jelch reached out and touched a control. To the right of the viewscreen a parabolic mirror moved, adjusting its angle. “And there they are,” he said. “A squadron of the RAF’s Sopwiths.”

Her stomach turned as she made out, tiny in the curve of the mirror, half a dozen pursuing airships. They flew in v-formation, looking like wasps in the distance.

“Can we evade them?” She peered into the mirror. The pursuing airships seemed no closer now than a minute ago, and as yet they hadn’t opened fire.

Jelch reached out to the controls. “I’ll climb into the cloud bank above us. That won’t make their task any easier.” He glanced at her. “I’ll need to concentrate all my attention...” he began.

“I’ll go,” she said, pushing herself across the rocking flight desk.

“There is one thing you could do to help.”

She paused at the door and looked back at him. “Yes?”

“We’re carrying excess weight...”

“The Russians?”

“Precisely,” he said. “If you roll up the rug, you will find a bolted hatch in the floor. Open it with care and ditch the corpses. That is...”

“Yes?”

“If you don’t object.”

She bridled. “Why should I object? It is what they intended to do to me, after all. Only in my case, they promised that I would still be alive.”

She ducked through the door into the lounge.

Anand was at the rear of the room, pressing his face up against a porthole and looking back in an attempt to catch sight of the Sopwiths. “We’re being followed, Jani-ji!”

She hurried across to him, knelt and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Jelch is confident we’ll get away.”

He turned to her. “What is he, Jani-ji? He looks like a monster.”

“But he doesn’t act like one, and that’s what matters.”

“What does he want with us, with
you
?”

“That,” she said, “we will find out in time.”

He laughed. “I always dreamed of adventure, Jani-ji. I read
Treasure Island
and H. Rider Haggard, and I thought it would be wonderful to have such adventures.”

“And now?”

He looked down, his big eyes hooded. “Now I would like nothing more than to be back in your father’s house, working there and with Mr Clockwork.”

She sighed. “Oh, I’m sorry, Anand. If it wasn’t for me...”

“I didn’t mean that I...” He stopped, colouring. “You needed someone to save you, to look after you.”

“Because I’m a girl, ah-cha?”

He nodded. She laughed and clutched his chin, forcing him to look into her eyes. “You certainly have a lot to learn about women, Anand. Now help me throw the Russians from the ’ship.”

She rolled up the rug and found the rectangular inlay of the trapdoor, secured by two sets of bolts. They took the legs of the smaller Russian and dragged him towards the hatch. Jani was about to shoot the bolts when she had a thought. “First, we’ll search their pockets for money and weapons.”