The Golden Apple of Shangri-La Read online

  Kella smiled sadly. "Shangri-La is my life now. I have a job to do. Good luck with changing your world, Rowena Fanshawe, and remember this: Women who try to succeed in a man’s world often make the mistake of trying to be more like men. This is wrong. You must be more like a woman, for there is where your power lies."

  * * *

  With Von Karloff and his injured henchman bound in the hold, and Rowena, Reed, Professor Halifax and Jamyang in the cramped cockpit, the Skylady lifted free from its moorings in the village and turned to the south-west, where the mountainous wall was at its lowest. Rowena leaned from the cockpit to watch Kella waving, until she became a dot obscured by a sudden flurry of snow that caused the ’stat to lurch alarmingly. They scraped over the mountains and began to descend towards the distant warmer air.

  Reed remained stubbornly quiet all the way to Shanghai, where he declared he had business. Jamyang said he was of a mind to explore also, and Professor Halifax was happy to return to where Von Karloff had kidnapped him. To Rowena’s amazement, when they landed at Pudong Airship Ground, Reed turned the Prussian and his sole remaining thug loose.

  “I thought you would be taking them back to London to answer for their crimes,” she said later, over a rum in the noisy Brethren Union Hall near the aerodrome.

  Reed stared morosely into his chipped glass, picking at a plate of fried grasshoppers on the bar. “And what would be the point? You heard what Von Karloff said. He was in the employ of Walsingham the whole time. I have been made a fool.”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “That’s not true.”

  He shrugged her off. “I’m afraid it is, Rowena. I have been given the appellation the Hero of the Empire, Britannia’s champion, the great adventurer. I have circumnavigated the globe in Queen Victoria’s name, crossed swords with villains such as Von Karloff in forsaken foreign fields. But we are all just being played off against each other, like pawns at Walsingham’s hand.” He finished his drink and stood unsteadily. “But there are no heroes and villains. There is no black and white on Walsingham’s board. There is only grey. Watch my bag while I visit the bathroom, please?”

  She watched him weave through the busy bar and glanced down beneath his stool at his duffel bag, the thin rope fastener coming apart around the neck. Did something gleam within? Without even thinking, Rowena reached down and loosened the fasteners. And there it was, wrapped within a dirty linen shirt.

  The Golden Apple of Shangri-La.

  She stared at it for a long time, until she became aware of John Reed standing above her, suddenly sober. She looked up at him and recalled Kella waving at them until she became nothing in the sudden flurry of snow.

  “The valley … Kella … they’ll all be dead, now.”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes glowing in the reflected gas-light bouncing off the Apple’s golden hide.

  Rowena searched his eyes, but saw only the apple in their dark depths. “But why?”

  Finally he met her gaze. “Cui bono.”

  “To whose benefit?”

  “I’ve been played for a fool, a pawn, once too often. It’s time I took something back.”

  She thought back to Reed emerging from the stone temple at the heart of Shangri-La, the sunlight playing on him, the bird darting about his head. When she thought he had returned the Golden Apple to its rightful place. She stood and began to walk away. Sooner or later, men lie. They always lie.

  Even heroes.

  “You hate me, don’t you?” he called as she threaded her way through Union Hall.

  She didn’t stop, or look back. For all her drinking and fighting and flying, Rowena Fanshawe wasn’t just trying to be a man. She was better than that. She was a woman. He called after her again, the same thing, but she didn’t reply, because she didn’t know yet what her answer would be.

  All that she knew was that she wasn’t going to lie.

  Copyright © 2014 by David Barnett

  Art copyright © 2014 by Nekro