Eoin Colfer: Airman

Conor remembered thinking at the time that you could leave the box by the window and have it light the fire for you each morning, a chore that he was none too fond of.

And now Isabella had removed the cap.

‘Did you move the box?’

‘Mind your tone, commoner!’

Commoner ? Isabella must really be terrified.

‘Isabella?’

‘I possibly placed it on the table, by the window to see the colours passing through.’

Obviously the device had caught the afternoon light, releasing the power of the lenses into the king’s laboratory, filled with the fertilizer, jugs of fuel and various explosive materials. The concentrated light had obviously landed on something combustible.

‘We have to go,’ said Conor, all thoughts of Captain Crow forgotten. He was no stranger to the power of explosives. His father was in charge of the Wall defence and had brought Conor along on a trip to collapse a smugglers’ cave. It was a birthday treat, but also a lesson to stay away from anything that went boom. The cave wall had collapsed like toy bricks swatted by a toddler.

The tower shook again, several floor blocks rattled in their housings, then dropped into the apartment below. Orange and blue flames surged through the holes, and the snap and grind of breaking glass and twisting metal frightened the two children.

‘Up on the wall,’ said Conor urgently. ‘The floor is falling.’

For once, Isabella did not argue. She accepted Conor’s hand and followed him to the lip of the parapet.

‘The floor is a foot thick,’ he explained, shouting over the roar of the flames. ‘The parapet is four feet thick. It won’t break.’

The explosions went off below like cannon fire, each one issuing different odours, different colour smoke. The fumes were noxious, and Conor presumed his own face was as green as Isabella’s.

It doesn’t matter if the parapet holds , he realized. The flames will get us long before then.

To Isabella and Conor it felt as though the entire world shook. The stairwell spewed forth flame and smoke as though a dragon lurked below, and from the courtyard came the screams of islanders, as chunks of the tower crashed down from above.

I need to get us out of this place , thought Conor. No one else can save us, not even Father.

There was no way to walk down, not through the inferno below. There was only one way down, and that was to fly.

King Nicholas was down the corridor, in the privy, when his daughter blew up his apartment. He was admiring the new Royal Doulton wash-out toilet he had recently had plumbed into his own bathroom. Nicholas had considered installing them throughout the palace, but there were rumours of a new flush toilet on the horizon and it would be a pity to be one step behind progress.

We must embrace progress, be at the forefront of it, or the Saltees will be drowned by a tidal wave of innovation.

When the first explosion rattled the tower, Nicholas briefly thought that his own personal plumbing could be responsible for the din, but realized that not even the bottle of home-brewed ale that he had consumed with Declan Broekhart the previous evening could result in such a disturbance.

They were under attack then? Unlikely, unless a ship had managed to approach undetected on a clear summer’s afternoon.

A thought struck him.

Could he have left the cap off the lens box? If so much as a spark took flight in that room …

King Nicholas finished his royal business and yanked the door open, quickly closing it again as a roiling cloud of smoke and flame invaded the bathroom, searing his lungs. His apartment was destroyed, no doubt about it. Luckily there was no one in his rooms or above them, so the tower’s other occupants should easily escape.

Not the king, though. King Nicholas the Stupid is trapped by his own mouldering experiments .

There was a window, of course. Nicholas was a great believer in the benefits of good ventilation. He was a devotee of meditation too, but this was hardly the time for it.

The king stuffed a towel under the door, to stop a draught inviting the fire in, and flung the window wide. Glass and brickwork tumbled past his open window, and the entire structure shuddered as another explosion shook the tower. Nicholas poked his head out for a sideways peek just in time to see a plume of multicoloured smoke expelled from his lounge.

There go the fuel jars .

Below, the courtyard was in chaos. The fire division, to their credit, had already hauled the pump wagon to the base of the tower, and were cranking up some water pressure. If there was one thing they had plenty of on the Saltees, it was water. On any other day, the salt sea spray would have doused the fire, but today in spite of a stiff breeze, the sea was as flat as a polished mirror.

One man stood near the base of the tower. He cut a jaunty figure in his French aviator’s jacket and feathered cap. At his feet lay a large leather valise, and he seemed quite amused by the entire exploding tower situation.

Nicholas recognized him immediately, and called down.

‘Victor Vigny. You came?’

The man beamed, a startlingly white smile from the centre of his tanned face.

‘I came,’ he shouted in the French accent you would expect from one in such attire. ‘And a good thing I did, Nick. It seems like you still haven’t learned to keep a safe laboratory.’

Another explosion. Blue smoke and a shudder that rattled the tower to its foundations. The king ducked out of sight, then reappeared in the window.

‘Very well, Victor. Banter over and done. Time to get me down from here. Any of that famous Vigny ingenuity make it across the Atlantic?’

Victor Vigny grunted, then cast an eye around the courtyard. The fire wagon had a ladder hooked on its flank, a rope too. Neither was long enough to reach the king.

‘Who designed this thing?’ he muttered, hefting the coiled rope on to his shoulder. ‘Tall towers and short ladders. Just goes to show, there are idiots everywhere.’

‘What are you doing?’ asked a member of the fire brigade. ‘Who said you could take that?’

Vigny jerked a thumb skywards. ‘Him.’

The fireman frowned. ‘God?’

The Frenchman winced. Idiots everywhere . ‘Not quite so lofty, mon ami .’

The fireman glanced upwards, catching sight of the king in the window.

‘Do what he says,’ roared Nicholas. ‘That man has saved my life in the past, and I trust him to do it again.’

‘Yes, Your Majesty. I am at your… at his service.’

Victor pointed at the ladder. ‘Lean that against the wall, below the window.’

‘It won’t reach,’ said the fireman, eager to say something intelligent.

‘Just do it, monsieur . Your king is getting a little hot under the collar.’

The fireman grabbed a comrade and together they propped the ladder against the tower. Victor Vigny was halfway up before the stiles hit the wall.

The tower transmitted its vibrations into the rungs, and Victor knew that it wouldn’t be long before it blew its top, like a plugged cannon. The king’s apartment and everything above it would soon be no more than dust and memories.

He quickly reached the top of the ladder and, threading his legs through the rungs, he slid the rope off his shoulder and down his arm.

‘Nimble, ain’t he?’ commented the fireman to his partner. ‘But as I intelligently said, that there ladder don’t reach.’

The debris was showering down now, lumps, shards and entire granite blocks. There was no avoiding it for the three men working at the ladder. They bore the blows with hunched shoulders and grunts.

‘Lean it back,’ Victor called down, sweat dripping from his face. He tore his feathered cap off as it caught fire, revealing the shock of spiked hair that had earned him the nickname La Brosse. ‘You owe me a hat, Nicholas. I’ve had that one since New Orleans.’