There was a shuttered window in the far wall. In front of it, what looked to be the squat and bulky main trunk of a plant humped up from the floor. Burton, ducking under a dangling creeper, stepped closer to it. He saw that it had corners and realised that what he was looking at was actually a desk, though it was hardly recognisable as such, distorted as it was by all the knotted limbs of the growth that covered it.
His lantern picked out a gnarl of woody protrusions that caught and held his attention. A few moments passed before he realised why.
It was because they resembled a hand.
The hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end.
He slowly raised the lantern and leaned closer. The protuberances grew from the end of a thick, vine-tangled branch which, a little way along its length, bent elbow-like upward before joining a hideously warped trunk-positioned just behind the desk-over which centipedes, spiders, ants, beetles, and termites scuttled in profusion. The insects were flooding in a downward direction. Burton followed their course upward, to where the trunk suddenly narrowed before then widening into a large nodule which angled backward slightly. There was a hole in it, and from this the creatures were vomiting.
Burton knew what he was going to see next, and with every fibre of his being he didn't want to set eyes on it, but the compulsion to lift the lantern higher couldn't be resisted, and its light crept upward from the hole, over the deformed nose and cheekbones, and illuminated Christopher Rigby's living eyes, which burned with hatred in his transfigured and paralysed face.
Burton's shock rendered him voiceless; he could only crouch and stare, his whole body trembling, his senses blasted by the appalling thing before him.
Rigby had been sitting at his desk when the metamorphosis came upon him. It had turned his flesh into plant tissue. Roots and creepers and vines and lianas had grown from him. Repulsive thorny leaves had sprouted. And, to judge from the corpse on the stairs, the thing he'd become was carnivorous, for it had sucked the blood from that unfortunate individual.
Now, though, with the exception of those demonic eyes, Rigby appeared to be dead, for he was withered and dried out, the majority of his leaves had fallen, and his body was riddled with termite holes.
Burton straightened. The eyes followed him. He noted that Rigby's neck had been crushed, then saw the same claw marks he'd noted on the corpse of Peter Pimlico, but they were deeper, more savage.
“The devil take him, Algy,” he muttered. “This is Zeppelin's doing.”
Swinburne didn't reply.
Burton turned, and for a second he thought his assistant had left the room. Then a flash of red drew his attention to the ceiling. To his horror, he saw the poet up there, flat against it, entwined by creepers.
“Algy!” he yelled, but his friend was limp, unconscious, and the explorer spotted a thorny extension pressed against the side of the small man's neck.
Spinning back to face Rigby, he yelled, “Let him go, damn you!”
A thick fountain of insects suddenly erupted from the consul's mouth, spraying into the air and landing on the desk, on the floor, and on Burton. The head creaked slowly into an upright position.
“You!” Rigby whispered. His voice sounded like dry leaves being disturbed by a breeze. “I have waited for so long.”
“Release him!” Burton demanded. “Maybe I can help you, Rigby!”
“I don't want your help, Burton. I only want your blood!”
A liana dropped from above and encircled the explorer's neck. Burton, realising that he still held his dagger, brought it up, sliced through the creeper, and pulled it away from his skin.
“Zeppelin did this to you, didn't he?”
“Yes.”
“A Prussian, Rigby! He's working against the Empire and I've been sent to stop him. You're British, man! Do your duty! Help me!”
“Were it anyone else, Burton, I would. But you, never! I'll die a traitor rather than aid you!”
Leafy tendrils wound around Burton's calves. He felt thorns cutting through his trouser legs, piercing his skin. He ducked as a spiny appendage whipped past his face.
There was no time for persuasion. No time for discussion. Swinburne was being bled to death and, at any moment, Burton himself would likely be overwhelmed.
He jabbed his dagger into his lantern, ripped the side of it open, then prodded the point of the weapon into the oil sack. Liquid spurted out and instantly ignited.
“Don't!” the consul rasped.
“I've suffered your jealousy and enmity for too many years, Rigby. It ends here.”
Burton slammed the burning lantern onto the desk. Immediately, the burning oil splashed outward and the tinder-dry plant burst into flames, sending the king's agent reeling backward. The vines around his legs tripped him but then slithered away, thrashing back and forth.
Swinburne dropped and thudded onto the floor. Burton crawled on hands and knees over to him, feeling the spreading inferno scorching the hairs on the back of his head. With Rigby's screams ringing in his ears, he tore vines away from the poet, grasped him by the collar, and dragged him through the scuttling insects and out of the room.
The fire was expanding with frightening speed. It tore along the walls and over the ceiling, raged past the two men, and filled the corridor with roiling black smoke.
Holding his breath and staying low, Burton reached the top of the stairs and practically fell down them. He rolled onto the cadaver on the landing, then Swinburne rolled onto him, then all three tumbled down the remaining steps. The corpse's limbs broke like snapping twigs as it fell.
A blazing roof beam crashed onto the landing they'd just vacated, showering sparks and fragments of flaming wood onto them.
Burton stood, hoisted Swinburne onto his shoulder, and staggered across the reception hall, out into the courtyard, and through the consulate's gate.
He turned and looked back. There would be no saving the building, that much was plain, and Christopher Rigby, who'd hated him implacably for two decades, was being cremated inside it.
Burton felt no satisfaction at that.
He carried Swinburne back toward the Imam's palace.
Early the following day, on the East African coast below Zanzibar, two ships dropped anchor off a long, low, bush-covered sand spit some twenty miles south of the ivory-and copra-trading town of Bagamoyo.
The Artemisand Ann Laceylowered their boats and began the long task of transporting men, mules, horses, and supplies to the mainland. In this, they were assisted by a hundred and twenty Wasawahili porters, who waited on the shore having been transported in a dhow from Bagamoyo by Said bin Salim and his eight staff-wielding Askaris.
This part of the coast was known as the Mrima, or “hill land.” Cut by deep bays, lagoons, and backwaters, its banks were thickly lined by forests of white and red mangroves, the tangled roots of which made passage through to the more open land beyond extremely difficult. There was, however, a humped shelf of black rock that cut through the trees and formed a path from the spit. Burton ordered that this be strewn with sand-and straw from the Ann Lacey'shold-so the horses might traverse it without slipping. One by one, eighty of the fine Arabian mounts were lowered by harness from the cargo vessel to the boat, then landed two at a time on the spit and led across the rock and through the mangroves to an encampment, an extensive patch of white sand bordered by a wall of verdure on three sides and by a low hill, held together by tough and bright-flowered creepers, to landward. Beyond this, more grass-covered hills swelled between mosquito-infested creeks, lagoons, and black fetid ooze.
The eighty horses were the first of four livestock shipments, and once they were ashore, the Ann Laceysteamed away to pick up the next consignment from Zanzibar.
Meanwhile, Artemisoffloaded seventy bundles of trading specie, crates of food and books and equipment, Rowtie tents, weapons, ammunition, and all the other paraphernalia necessary for the safari.