William Dietrich - The Barbary Pirates

"I'm sorry, Ethan," Marguerite called from behind one of her spangled curtains. "These are not men to trifle with! They threatened to hurt me! I had no choice but to lure you down here! It was you or me!"

Have I mentioned I have bad luck with women? The door was blocked by ogres and behind me was a subterranean seraglio. I tried to think of a plan. One of the doormen lifted manacles.

"Then I have no choice either." I once might have hesitated to use force, given my naturally affable personality, but I've learned the rascals of this world thrive on good men's indecision. I whipped Osiris's pyramidal medallion as hard as I could across his face, making him curse and reel. Then I kicked the nearest of his troglodytes in the cockles, bending the bastard like slamming the leaves of a book. The other tried to charge but collided with the first two, and so I had time to aim and hurl the damn trinket at a bank of candles.

The only plan I'd been able to come up with was to set us all on fire.

Wax tapers went flying as the heavy gold ornament and chain sliced into the pretty array, flame arcing like fire arrows. Osiris, or whatever his real name was, stumbled back against his trolls with a curse and a snarl, blood flowing through the hand clutched to his cheek. He reached for a hidden pistol with the other, but as silk curtains ignited from the scythed candles, I toppled Ottoman lamps on the floor. Oil spilled, and before he could draw and shoot, I hopped back through a gush of flame.

Smoke bloomed behind me as the fire flared, and my would-be captors cried out and retreated. Madame Marguerite was screaming. In seconds I'd turned her little anteroom into a merry inferno, and as I retreated deeper into the brothel smoke rolled against the ceiling. The trollops behind me began shrieking as well.

So I'd set fire in front and had stone walls to my back. Not ideal. And where the devil were my savants? "Georges! Robert! William!"

"Here!" I heard Fulton shout. "Damn it, Gage, what have you done now?"

I found him coatless but otherwise presentable, a half-dressed strumpet crawling away on her hands and knees. My, she had a fetching bottom. "I was just explaining the process of adding oxygen to my Nautilus," the inventor said, coughing, "when all the shouting started. Cuvier and Smith are insensible, I'm afraid. They drank from those Turkish vessels, and I think there's something in the wine." He looked past me at the lurid light coming from the room from which I'd retreated, the smoke orange in its glow. "By Zeus and Jupiter, Ethan, have you been drinking, too? I believe you've started quite the alarming fire."

"It was the only way I could prevent being manacled by the henchmen of that madman Osiris," I explained hastily. "He's of the Egyptian Rite, a nasty bunch I've encountered before." To emphasize the point, shots sounded and bullets buzzed through the smoke to ping against the stone walls of the cellar. I dropped, yanking Fulton down. "Best to stay low. Most men shoot high, and there's less smoke at the floor."

"Very informative, Gage. Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, the only door out is on the other side of your inferno."

"It's true I didn't have time to entirely think my plan through. But the bonfire is rather like the panorama you painted, don't you think?"

There was a whoosh as more curtains caught. Settees sprouted flames as if they were logs on a Christmas fire. Heat pulsed like a throbbing heart.

"Considerably hotter."

We retreated back another room to where Cuvier and Smith lay blearily, drugged and hacking. Three other half-naked male patrons and their prostitutes were crawling about, all of them bawling in terror. "Surely there's a back door," I said, trying not to join the panic. I grabbed a trollop and shook her. "You! Which way out?"

"She bricked it up to control us!"

Well, damnation. I still didn't have a clue where Astiza was, either. When I finally perfect my character, I'm going to conduct a more placid life. "Unless we can find a great deal of water, it seems I've cooked us," I conceded.

"Or we can re-create that door," Fulton said grimly. "Where did they brick up the second entrance?" he asked the girl.

"It's two feet thick of heavy stone," she wailed. "You'd need a day to break it!"

Fulton looked at me with exasperation. "What's below us?" he asked me.

"How the devil would I know? Smith's the rock man."

"And above?"

"A gambling salon, I think. We're in the cellar foundation of one wing of the Palais."

"Then that's the solution! To the tent! We go for the keystone, Ethan!"

I had no idea what he meant but followed his lead still deeper into the bordello, thankful to get farther from my fire. In another room was an erected tent of the Arabian type, piled with cushions and carpets to make a desert fantasy. Stout poles that reached nearly to the vaulted stone ceiling held the fabric up.

"Those are our battering rams," the inventor said. "Our only hope is to bring the ceiling down on top of us."

"Start a collapse? Are you mad?"

"Would you rather cook? If we can drop the floor of the gambling den, we can crawl out."

I glanced upward. "But the stonework looks sturdy as a castle."

"Which you didn't consider before setting us ablaze, did you? However, the ceiling will be thinner than the walls, and every fortress has a weak point. Now wrap the tent and some of the pillows round that pole there, like a giant torch. Smith, Cuvier!" He slapped them into some semblance of stuporlike action. "Find water, or at least wine! No spirits that might ignite! Hurry, if you don't want to roast! Ethan, go stick this matchstick into your fire and set it aflame!"

"Then what?"

"Carry it back to me."

Not having a better idea, I advanced toward the inferno. The gunshots had ended; presumably because Osiris and Isis had the sense to flee out the main door. My ten-foot-long "torch" caught like a match and I retreated from the heat with the end of the tent pole blazing, Fulton helping me swing it up against the ceiling. "The keystone in this vault looked weakest," he said, panting, letting the flames roar up against the central part of our roof. There the vault met at a central stone, the compression keeping the entire building steady. We squinted as bits of flaming fabric rained down. "We need to imitate quarrymen and use heat and cold to crack it."

"I can hardly breathe," I wheezed.

"Then work faster!"

The flare of silk and cotton burned out against the stone overhead just as Cuvier and Smith came dragging in a jar of liquid. Fulton grabbed it, swung, and hurled the water or wine-I was never sure which-against the heated ceiling, cool liquid against hot stone.

There was a snap, and cracks appeared, bits of rock spitting out. The keystone at the arched ceiling's center was fractured.

"Now, now, the other tent pole! Hurry, before we pass out!"

I understood. I took a second pole, not yet burned, and rammed it against the stone highest in the ceiling with all my might. More rock rained down.

"Harder, harder!" Fulton shouted, helping me bang against the ceiling.

"Blazes, this is hard work," I gasped, wondering what we were supposed to do if the ceiling truly gave way on top of us.

"Get the whores to help!"

As smoke swirled and the main fire licked toward us, the girls joined our battering, aided slightly by the woozy zoologist and drugged canal surveyor. Grunting, we rammed like pistons, driven by the energy that comes from fear and desperation. Finally there was another crack and the central stone suddenly plunged down, hitting the brothel floor with a bang. A girl shrieked and jumped aside. There was a dark gap overhead, the ceiling's domed vault leaning in toward nothing.

"More, more, before we're consumed!"