Conor crawled to the niche behind what he still thought of as Wynter’s bed, popping out the false brick. Crimson sun rays flooded the space, sinking into the coral, which drank the light in and converted it to green energy. He had long ago traded his day job for the night shift to allow him more daylight with his plans.
In less than a minute, the entire cell glowed with a thousand calculations, schematics and blueprints. A treasure trove of science brought to life by nature. The walls bore dozens of sketches of balloons, gliders and heavier-than-air flying machines. These scratched pictures represented two years of obsessive study. All previous diaries had been written over, except the final four bars of Linus Wynter’s opera, and the word Fin.
For the first few months, dreams of the machines themselves had been enough to fuel Conor through the long lonely hours, but a man cannot stay in the air forever, even in his dreams. And so a purpose for his flying machines was needed. A place to land.
Conor Broekhart would have flown to his parents, to Isabella, but in two years they hadn’t once questioned Bonvilain’s version of events. If they had, surely he would have received a visit or a message. Isabella could have saved him. She could have waved a royal finger and had him pardoned or banished if their young love had meant a thing to her. Obviously it had not. He was deserted and despised. Young Conor felt these things as certainly as he felt the cold rock under his feet. And so his heart hardened and selflessness was suborned by selfishness.
Conor Finn took over and Conor Broekhart was displaced. And where Broekhart had nobility, Finn had self-interest. He would make himself rich by stealing from the people who had stolen his life. The Saltee Islands would pay for the past two years. A diamond per day. And once he had money enough, he would buy Otto’s freedom, then book passage to America and begin his life anew. This was his plan, and it kept him alive just as surely as his heartbeat.
And so, how to escape? By land, sea or air? There was no land, the sea was treacherous, so that left the air. He must fly out of here, or if not fly then at least fall slowly. An idea was born, but one that was to take more than a year of planning and manipulation.
Suddenly the coronation was shifted and his schemes shattered like broken mirrors, and there were only days to put the pieces together.
Conor lay on the uneven ground, salt water darkening his clothes, studying his plans. He must memorize the designs now, and then destroy them. These plans would be valuable to any army in the world, but especially to Bonvilain. And the greatest torment that Conor could ever endure was the notion that he had somehow aided Marshall Hugo Bonvilain.
He traced each line with his forefinger. Every plane, every twist of propeller, each line and rudder, the arrows that denoted airflow, even the fanciful clouds that his artistic side had almost unconsciously etched. As soon as a glider, balloon or aeroplane was committed to memory, he smeared mud across the design, patting it into every groove.
By sunset, these amazing plans existed only inside the head of Conor Finn.
Billtoe arrived thirty minutes late that evening, swathed from head to toe in silken sheets.
‘Catch a goo at me,’ he warbled. ‘I’m the emperor of Rome, I am. Arthur Billtoe Caesar.’
Conor was waiting by the door, and was dismayed to see Billtoe’s boot heel catching on the hem of one sheet. He had enough stitching to do without repairing rips too.
‘My sheets,’ he said, in strangled tones.
Billtoe stopped his tomfoolery. Inmate Finn had that look on his face again. The fearsome one.
‘Here you are,’ he said, suddenly eager to be out of this tiny room. ‘And while you’re sleeping on ’em, dream about that twelve-shot revolver, partner.’
Partner, thought Conor doubtfully. As if Arthur Billtoe would ever accept a prisoner as partner.
Conor caught the thrown sheets, laying them carefully on his bed.
‘Thank you, Mister Billtoe. These mean the world to me. These and my walks on the outside.’
Billtoe wagged a finger. ‘After the coronation, soldier boy. After.’
‘Of course,’ said Conor contritely. ‘After.’ He took a timid step forward. ‘I was hoping to have the revolver designs ready for the coronation. Perhaps if I didn’t have to work for the next few nights…’
Billtoe backed out of the cell. ‘Don’t even ask, soldier boy. This is starting to sound like a relationship. As though we do things for each other. Favours and such. Well, it ain’t a relationship. Not of the friendly type at any rate. You do whatever you can to stop me slitting your throat in the night. That’s all there is to it.’
Conor knew better than to wheedle. Once Billtoe was set in his path, trying to change his course would only send him trundling along it faster.
‘I am sorry, Mister Billtoe. Of course you are absolutely correct. There’s work that needs doing.’
Conor thrust out his hands for the handcuffs, as he had every day for the past two years. And just as he had been doing for the past two years, Arthur Billtoe ratcheted them on tight enough to pinch. Other guards stopped cuffing their charges after the first while, but not Billtoe. Care only took seconds, but it could keep a person alive for years. Billtoe had no intention of ending his days with his head stove in by some fisheye-sucking inmate who had lost the will to live and replaced it with the desire to commit murder.
‘That’s right, Salt. Those diamonds aren’t going to just pop out of the ground and jump into the royal treasury themselves, now are they?’
Conor winced as the steel bit into his flesh.
Two more days, he thought to himself, doing his utmost to hide his hatred of Billtoe behind a mask of compliance. Two more days, then I can begin to collect my diamonds.
Billtoe was thinking too.
This one is not broke. He stands broke, but his eyes are burning. I will have to keep an eye on Mister Conor Finn.
Conor Finn was important to Billtoe, and it was not just for the clever notions, and the calm he seemed to have generated in the ranks of the Battering Rams. He was important because every so often Marshall Bonvilain enquired after the young man’s health. There was a story somewhere in soldier boy’s past but Billtoe had no desire to find out the specifics. It wasn’t healthy to have the marshall wondering how good a man was at keeping his mouth shut. He might decide that the man in question would hold his silence better on the bottom of the ocean with only the crabs to know the contents of his brain.
Billtoe shuddered. Sometimes his mind conjured the most gruesome images. Perhaps they were memories seeping from Little Saltee’s walls.
‘Look lively, Salt. There’s more’n you to be seen to, and only Billtoe to see to ’em.’
With a last regretful glance at the precious sheets on his bed, Conor followed Billtoe through the doorway and into the flooded corridor. There was a spring tide that day and salt water ran along grooves eroded into the mortar. Conor swore he saw an eel wriggling through the tiny torrent. This entire wing was a death trap, and had been for centuries. When he had first arrived, there were signs of King Nicholas’s planned renovations: scaffolds, ladders and such. But these had all disappeared within days of the king’s death.
No. Not simply death, thought Conor. Murder. His life was stolen, as mine was stolen from me.
But soon he would steal it back.
The following days were a blur of feverish toil. By night, Conor mined the pipe, sucking down the bell’s greasy air almost as fast as the pump team could send it through the vent. By day he worked on his sheets, stitching with lengths of thread he had bartered for, and cutting with a sharp stone whetted on the cell walls. There were twelve panels to be cut, hemmed and stitched. The silk was not as tightly woven as he would have liked, but there was nothing to be done about that now. It would have to do. The work was flawed, Conor knew that, but how could he be exact with poor light, improvised materials and no experience? He was most likely stitching a shroud for himself, but even the idea of a quick death held more comfort than a lifetime in this cell.