Nothing But Blue Skies Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also by Tom Holt

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialised in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. Now a full-time writer, he lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife, one daughter and the unmistakable scent of blood, wafting in on the breeze from the local meat-packing plant. For more infromation about Tom Holt visit www.tom-holt.com

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  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001 by Tom Holt.

  Cover illustration by Tim Holman. Cover copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First US e-book edition: September 2012

  ISBN: 978-0-316-23336-1

  Also by Tom Holt

  Expecting Someone Taller

  Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?

  Flying Dutch

  Ye Gods!

  Overtime

  Here Comes the Sun

  Grailblazers

  Faust Among Equals

  Odds and Gods

  Djinn Rummy

  My Hero

  Paint Your Dragon

  Open Sesame

  Wish You Were Here

  Only Human

  Snow White and the Seven Samurai

  Valhalla

  Nothing But Blue Skies

  Falling Sideways

  Little People

  The Portable Door

  In Your Dreams

  Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

  You Don’t Have to be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps

  Barking

  The Better Mousetrap

  May Contain Traces of Magic

  Blonde Bombshell

  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages

  Doughnut

  For two disparate Jans,

  Fergus and Yarnot:

  Friends indeed

  CHAPTER ONE

  Four men in dark grey suits and black sunglasses climbed out of a black, fat-wheeled Transit and slammed the doors. The noise woke up the proprietor, who staggered out of the little shed that served him as an office. He blinked at them.

  ‘Mr Denby?’ said one of the strangers.

  The proprietor shook his head. ‘No,’ he added, in case of doubt.

  ‘But this is Denby’s boatyard, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The four men exchanged glances and nodded. ‘You build boats?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good. We want a boat built.’

  If the proprietor was surprised by that, he didn’t show it. (But then again, he never showed surprise at anything. Simple demarcation. If you want emotions registered, go to an actor.) Instead, he carried on looking weather-beaten and authentic.

  ‘Yeah,’ said another of the strangers. ‘Can you do that for us?’

  The proprietor’s shoulders moved about a thirty-second of an inch, which in the boatbuilders’ dialect of body language means something like: Of course I can build you a boat, you fool, assuming that I can be bothered and you don’t mind waiting a year or so, and what would a load of dickheads like you be wanting with a boat, anyway?

  ‘Cool. Of course, we need it in a hurry.’

  This time, the proprietor allowed his lower lip to twitch, somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousandths of an inch.

  ‘Like, we need it in three weeks, finished and ready to roll. Can you manage that?’

  ‘Depends.’ The proprietor half-closed his eyes, as if performing miracles of mental quantity-surveying. ‘What kind of boat do you boys want?’

  ‘Ah.’ For some reason, the strangers seemed uncomfortable with that question. ‘We thought we’d leave that to you, really. Like, you’re the expert here, you don’t keep a dog and bark yourself, all that shit. A boat.’

  ‘A boat.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘What kind of boat?’ the proprietor asked again.

  To look at the strangers, you’d think they had something to hide. ‘A big boat,’ one of them said. ‘Not that we’re trying to dictate to you in any way, shape or form; I mean, if it’s gotta be a certain size, that’s the size it’s gotta be. Hell, last thing we want to do is come in here telling you how to do your job.’

  ‘A big boat,’ the proprietor said.

  ‘Yeah.’ The tallest and grey-suitedest of the strangers nodded assertively. ‘A big boat’s just fine by us. Something in the order of - and this is just me thinking aloud, you understand, there’s nothing carved in tablets of stone or anything - something round about, say, 300 cubits by fifty cubits by thirty. There or thereabouts,’ he added quickly.

  ‘Cubits?’

  ‘Sure. Why not cubits?’

  This time, the proprietor actually frowned; easily his most demonstrative gesture since 1958. ‘What’s that in metric?’ he asked.

  ‘Metric?’

  One of the other strangers nudged him in the small of the back. ‘He means, like, French.’

  ‘Ah, right. OK. Trois cent cubites par cinquante par . . . ’

  The proprietor’s eyes snapped wide open, like a searchlight switching on. ‘Are you boys French, then?’ he asked dangerously.

  ‘Us? Shit, no. No way. We’re—’ From the way the man’s head moved a fraction to the left, you might have been forgiven for imagining he was reading notes scribbled on his shirt-cuff. ‘We’re English, same as you. You know: Buckingham Palace, afternoon tea, Bobby Charlton—’

  By now the proprietor was staring at them as if trying to melt holes in their faces. ‘Where did you boys say you were from?’ he asked.

  ‘England,’ the stranger repeated.

  ‘Ah. What were you saying about cubits?’

  The stranger took a deep brea
th, as if making himself relax. ‘I was just thinking, three hundred’s a good round number, for length. By, you know, fifty. By thirty. Give or take a cubit.’

  ‘Mphm.’

  ‘And,’ the stranger went on, ‘something else that’s just occurred to me, like a real spur-of-the-moment thing, dunno where in hell I got this from, but don’t you think it might be pretty damn’ cute if you built it out of gopher wood?’

  ‘Gopher wood.’

  ‘Yeah. Gopher wood rocks, is what I say.’

  The proprietor breathed in deeply through his nose. ‘Gopher wood,’ he repeated. ‘And rocks.’

  ‘Nope, just gopher wood. And while you’re at it,’ another stranger put in, with an air of almost reckless cheerfulness, ‘wouldn’t it be just swell if you pitched it, inside and out. Like, with pitch?’

  ‘Hey!’ His colleague’s face instantly became a study in wonder. ‘That’s brilliant, man. Definitely, we want to go with that. Will that be OK?’ he asked the proprietor. ‘Pitch?’

  ‘Pitch.’

  ‘And,’ the other stranger ground on, ‘what say we have like a window, say one cubit square? And a door in the side? And - get a load of this, guys - lower, second and third storeys—’

  The proprietor let go the deep breath. ‘You mean like Noah’s ark,’ he said.

  The strangers looked at each other.

  ‘Who?’ they said, all at once.

  ‘Noah. Like in the Bible.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the tall stranger, ‘we don’t know anything about any Noah. We’re just, you know, sparking ideas off each other here, brainstorming . . .’

  The proprietor’s head moved from side to side, a whole four degrees each way. ‘You want Noah’s ark,’ he said, ‘and you want it in three weeks.’

  ‘At the most. We’re kinda on a schedule here.’

  Lunatics, the proprietor thought. Mad as a barrelful of ferrets . Then he looked them up and down: the suits, the Ray-Bans, the thousand-dollar shoes, the brand-new custom Transit. Still, he thought, it takes all sorts.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  If the strangers were trying to conceal their relief, they weren’t very good at it. ‘Hey,’ one of them said, ‘that’s great.’

  ‘Awesome,’ said another.

  ‘But it’s going to cost you,’ the proprietor said.

  The tall stranger nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We guessed it would.’ He nodded to one of his colleagues, who was holding a big aluminium case, the sort you transport expensive cameras in.

  ‘Do you reckon five million dollars’d cover it?’ he asked earnestly. ‘In cash,’ he added, ‘half now and half on delivery?’

  ‘In three weeks,’ another of them pointed out.

  It’s very hard to stay looking weather-beaten, authentic and taciturn when, inside, every fibre of your being is shouting YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! But the proprietor managed to make a pretty decent job of it.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  The dragon glowed in the silk like daybreak, wild in symmetry, exuberant in formality, a flash of two-dimensional lightning, storm and thunder frozen in amber. As they stared at it, even the schoolchildren were quiet for a while, as if they were grateful for the sheet of stout plate glass that separated them from it. Only the guide seemed not to notice that the dragon was looking straight at her, amused and affronted—

  ‘In Chinese mythology,’ the silly woman was saying, ‘the dragon symbolises the element of water, and it was believed that dragons were responsible for bringing rain. In its aspect as the source of all fertility and increase, the dragon was adopted by the Chinese emperors as a royal emblem; in particular the dragon with five toes or claws on each foot, as in this example, painted on silk during the Ming dynasty, depicting the Dragon King of the Yellow River teaching the first Emperor the Chinese written language. Notice the distinctive colour tones, typical of the period . . .’

  At the back of the group, Karen yawned, trying without much success to be discreet about it. She knew that yawning was likely to distract the rest of the group and spoil their pleasure, and she felt bad about that. But she couldn’t help it. The reaction was entirely automatic, being the result of too many deathly boring teatimes spent gawping at interminable collections of family albums - here’s one of us outside the temple, now here’s your uncle standing in front of the main gate, and here we both are looking up at the gate, and this is just inside the gate, though really it’s a bit too dark to see anything. Ordeals like that leave an indelible mark on a child’s mind, triggering involuntary reactions; so, even now, the very sight of a picture of a dragon made her yawn.

  And besides, she told herself, if that’s supposed to be Uncle Biff, they’ve drawn his eyes far too close together. Makes him look like an Airedale terrier.

  She smiled. Uncle Biff wouldn’t like that; not one bit. In fact, it was probably just as well for everyone living within convenient flooding distance of the Yellow River that this particular gem of Chinese cultural heritage had been looted by flint-hearted Western imperialists and carried off to a far land where Uncle Biff wasn’t likely to see it; because when he got upset, did it ever rain . . .

  ‘According to traditional Chinese beliefs,’ the silly woman continued, ‘each quarter of the compass is ruled by a Dragon King, who in turn is owed fealty by a complicated hierarchy of lesser dragons - thereby mirroring contemporary Chinese society - down to the smallest lake, stream and well, each of which is governed by its own resident dragon. It was believed that dragons were able to manifest themselves as fish, and also to take human form when circumstances required, so that recurring themes in folklore include the fisherman who takes pity on a fish and throws it back, only to discover that he’s spared the life of an important dragon who is thereby permanently obligated to him—’

  Karen couldn’t help clicking her tongue. Recurring theme in folklore - once it had happened, just once. But what else can you expect when the media get hold of a story and start playing with it? As for ‘obligated’: do a mortal a favour and they think they own you. She played back that last thought and frowned at it; sometimes, when she wasn’t careful, she sounded just like her father. Yetch.

  ‘Another such theme,’ said the silly woman, ‘concerns the son or daughter of a dragon king who falls in love with a mortal—’ She stopped and looked round to see what had made that peculiar noise. ‘Falls in love with a mortal,’ she continued, ‘and takes human form in an attempt to pursue the ill-fated relationship. Invariably, of course, these episodes always end tragically, since such a pairing would represent an imbalance of the Elements, thereby violating the fundamental foundations of Chinese philosophy—’

  Bullshit! screamed Karen’s voice inside her head. And ‘fundamental foundations’ is tautology. Scowling furiously, she turned on her heel and marched out of the gallery before she said something out loud that might land her in court - though by rights it was the damned silly woman who should be in the dock, charged with and convicted of Contempt of Dragons—

  Except that all dragons everywhere would agree with her (except one) and really, Karen had come here to get away from that particular thought. By now, true enough, she was used to the idea that her own kind didn’t have the imagination to see past their silly old traditions and rubbish, which was why she was here, dressed in the monkey suit, instead of back home, where they claimed she belonged. Hearing the same old nonsense trotted out by a human, however, disturbed her considerably. Surely they ought to know better; after all, she told herself, sweeping out of the museum gates into the street, they weren’t all a load of blinkered, scalebound old stick-in-the-muds who reckoned something was true just because they all believed it was true—

  She shuddered and squirmed as the first big, fat raindrops slapped her face. Wet! Nasty!

  Fumbling in her haste, she yanked the small folding umbrella out of her pocket and tried to get it to work. It refused, of course; she had an idea that the wretched thing had somehow recognised her, and was g
rimly carrying on the age-old umbrella/dragon war by means of sabotage and mechanical terrorism. By the time she managed to get its idiotic squashed-cranefly legs into place, she was pink with rage and frustration, and the rain was bucketing down—

  Well, of course. Cause and effect.

  Looked at one way, it was just plain silly . . . Because she’d only been a human for a few weeks, she hadn’t even begun to come to terms with rain (its feel, its sudden onslaught, how squishy and cold and uncomfortable it felt as it trickled down between collar and neck), so that every time the stuff hit her she couldn’t help an involuntary spasm of panic, laced with more than a dash of irrational anger. Since she was a dragon - the hell with false modesty; since she was the daughter of the adjutant-general to the Dragon King of the North-West, no less, with the hereditary title of Dragon Marshal of Bank Holidays and a maximum capacity of 2,000,000,000,000 litres/second/ km2 when she got angry or upset, it rained.

  She happened to glance down, and saw that already the paving stones beneath her feet were awash with eddying, dancing rainwater, while overhead the sky began to resonate with basso-profundo flatulence. Any moment now, there’d be lightning, and probably gale-force winds and armour-piercing hailstones to follow, and all because she couldn’t make sense of this stupid goddamned umbrella . . .

  She stopped trying, and slowly lowered the thing until it was resting upside-down on the pavement, its flabby fabric drinking up the rainwater. Calm down, she told herself. It’s all right. A little rain never hurt anybody.

  (Please, she prayed silently, please don’t let any of my friends from Home see me like this; especially not that cow S’ssssn, because if she were to find out I’ll never hear the end of it if I live to be a million - which I already have, of course, and that doesn’t make it any easier . . .)

  People, humans, were staring at her - girl with lowered umbrella standing perfectly still in the rain, of course they were staring, and as the embarrassment began to bite, so the rain thickened. (They’d scrambled the B-92s now, the big, fast saturation-grade raindrops with the enormous payload and the smart guidance system, the latest in launch-and-forget technology; humans assumed they were imagining things when they got the impression that modern rain was somehow colder and wetter than it had been when they were young, but that was mortals for you.) The frustration of knowing that she was making things even worse made her angrier still, at which point the first lightning bolt split the sky, like God arc-welding . . .