Empire of Ruins Read Free Page A

sick and died on the third. The glowing map led him deeper into the dark rain forest. The sky never stopped crying, the Indians complained. The insects never stopped biting, the Chinese moaned. Soon larger creatures were biting; they crossed a river and he lost a man to a crocodile. Even when a fever overtook him, King drove them on.
    After that they wandered for days, and King began to fear he wouldn’t find the temple. Was he remembering the map accurately? But yes, it shone like a constellation in his mind.
    Then, one day as he climbed a rock face, he discovered two falcon-headed statues, their features crumbled with age, marking the entrance to a cave. Hieroglyphs surrounded the open door. He stared at them, stunned. Egyptian hieroglyphics? In Australia? Now,
this
was a discovery the world would remember! Paperboys across the coloniesand America would soon be shouting, “
King discovers ancient Egyptian temple!
”
    His crew wouldn’t follow him inside, so he wiped sweat from his forehead, loaded his pistol, and entered the cavern alone. There he discovered more Egyptian symbols. How had they come to be in this place? Who had carved this temple out of a mountain?
    After two hours King stumbled out, drool dripping from his lips. He kicked aside the dice his men were playing with and fell to the ground, moaning and jittering.
    The guides looked at him and then at each other. Should they just leave him to die? He’d been a cruel boss, after all.
    “Let’s tell the port people a snake bit him,” an Indian suggested.
    “No,” said a Chinese man, “a spider.”
    Another man said, “Leave him in the river for the crocodiles.”
    But the largest of them looked at King, whose eyes stared directly at the sun as though searching for some secret in that burning orb.
    “There may be reward,” the man grunted. “He easier to travel with now.”
    They couldn’t agree, so they threw their dice—and rolled the number seven. A lucky number.
    They strapped King to the lone mule and began the journey back to the coast.

 

The Unexpected Guest
     
    M odo sat at the window of a mansion in London known as Safe House, a teacup in his right hand. Behind him were his training tools—straw-stuffed dummies,
kenjutsu
swords, wooden dumbbells. Through the window in front of him he could see Kew Gardens—April showers had turned London’s largest garden a lush green and brought the flowers to life. In the distance they were a blur of color.
    Modo had spent a quiet winter in Safe House. His most recent mission as an agent for the Permanent Association had involved the pursuit of a submarine from New York to Iceland, and he’d returned to England with more bruises than he could count and a chest infection that had taken two months to cure. It was a small price to pay. A great blow had been dealt to the Clockwork Guild when he helped sink their giant warship. Mr. Socrates had said, “I am proud of how well you performed your task.” It was perhaps the most effusive compliment his master had ever given him.Modo still glowed, thinking how he’d helped the Permanent Association, an organization dedicated to defending England’s interests, defeat an enemy. As the days passed he wondered when the Clockwork Guild would surface again. Their goal appeared to be to destroy the Empire itself. At this very moment Miss Hakkandottir, one of their most powerful leaders, was likely tapping her metal fingers somewhere. The image gave him the shivers.
    Over the months his fatigue had ebbed, and now he was training again, honing both his martial arts skills and his “adaptive transformation” ability—the shifting of his shape. But training every day was growing maddeningly boring; he’d been languishing in this mansion for so long that he worried Mr. Socrates had forgotten him. There had been a few brief visits from his master, the last two weeks ago.
    “I will go batty!” he whispered. He set his teacup down and pushed aside the latest