Brilliant Devices (32 page)

“Take it!” she called, scrambling up the ladder to the rope
looped through the
Lass
’s nose ring. “I can make another one.”

“I need to make some room and ditch some ballast on the double quick—I’m sending out
Seven and Eight. Take care of ’em, will you?”

Must she? Ugh. “Fine!”

“And what about Jake?”

“I’m goin’ and that’s that!” came a
stubborn shout from somewhere within.

“Feed him and teach him, and turn him into a
capable man,” Claire called, “and I shall be satisfied.” She untied the rope. “Free to lift when ready, Alice. Fair winds!”

She heard a clanking
crash and the scrape of gravel—the automatons, no doubt, being unceremoniously unloaded in a heap.

“To you, too! Up ship!”

The Mopsies and Andrew ran clear of the gondola as Claire climbed to the ground. The
Lass
fell up into the night sky, her engine running as smoothly as a sewing machine as Dr. Craig’s cell gave it more power than it had ever had before this stage of its life. And as the craft turned its bow to the south, Claire saw movement in the sky behind it.

Andrew drew in a long breath.

“Lady, what are they?” Maggie asked in awe.

A cluster of silver craft floated purposefully after the
Stalwart Lass
, their silver fuselages rippling with the speed of their going, for all the world like elongated bubbles swimming through the cold air. The gondolas clinging to the undersides were sleek and shallow, each one ribbed like the skeleton of a long-dead creature.

Ribbed like the interiors of the Esquimaux longhouses.

Like the interiors of great, long-dead creatures.

The goddess whales.

“They live in their ships,” Claire breathed on a note of discovery. “That’s what Alignak meant by the village lifting. He meant it quite literally. The entire village has pulled up ropes and gone with Alice and Frederick.”

“And, I assume, Isobel Churchill,” Andrew said. “She sent a pigeon not half an hour ago
to warn them.”

“So they will all be safe?” Maggie asked, her forehead creased in concern even as she watched the majestic sight of the Esquimaux craft
sailing through the stars.

“They will all be safe,” Claire echoed. “I do not know where they are going, but with Malina and Alice in charge, they will find
a quiet harbor somewhere.”

“But our Jake,” Lizzie wailed. “They’ve took our Jake
!”

“He has his duty as navigator, Lizzie,” Andrew told her gently. “He chose his course like a gentleman, and he will
keep to it until his captain releases him from duty.”

“Besides, someone’s got to look after our Alice,” Maggie said, taking her
twin’s hand. “Wiv Tigg on
Lady Lucy
, we’ll be the Lady’s seconds in ’is place, won’t we, till we gets ’ome to Snouts?”

“I wouldn’t have anyone else.” Claire
laid a gentle hand on each of their shoulders, feeling both girls lean into her skirts as if unconsciously seeking the comfort of someone who would not leave them.

The Esquimaux fleet glimmered one last time, as if in farewell, and passed out of sight over the
black shapes of the hills to the south.

Claire took a fortifying breath. “Now, then. I think it is time we located Count von Zeppe
lin and made sure of his safety, as Mr. Chalmers wished. Even though we have no proof whatsoever that he is in danger, except the evidence of our own eyes.”

“Isobel told me that he has been Her Majesty’s liaison with the Esquimaux nation for
some seven years,” Andrew told her. “If he believes the count is in danger, I think you may take that as proof.”

They crossed to the
small heap of bronze limbs and torsos, and assisted the automatons to their feet.

“Has he?” The mystery of
Chalmers’s life here began to make a glimmer of sense. “No wonder the Colonials wanted him to take the blame. They would not only discredit the Dunsmuirs, but throw a spanner into Her Majesty’s works as well.”

“
So what is our plan?” Andrew asked her, quite seriously.

She had no idea. But it would never do to say so in front of the children.

She straightened her shoulders, and the automatons turned their blank faces toward her as if waiting for instructions. “I think Maggie had the right of it. This whole affair began with a gun that makes no sound. Do you not agree that if we can find that, we might find a clue that will lead us to the count?”

*

It was fortunate indeed that, while someone had unloaded an enormous number of trunks and cases from the Meriwether-Astors’ ship, it appeared no one knew exactly what to do with them afterward. So they sat upon the gravel some distance from the ship, in the inky shadow of the fuselage, providing enough cover for two small figures and two larger ones, with a view of both that ship and the motley group of cargo ships moored around it.

Claire had told
Seven and Eight to wait by
Lady Lucy
. The thought of a pair of clanking shadows following them about when a man’s life might be at stake made her shiver with revulsion.

“Mopsies, what do you make of our situation?”
she whispered.

“This Astor bloke, ’e’d want to keep ’is treasures close, yeah?” Lizzie said in a low tone. “Lightning Luke kept ’is treasure box where ’e slept, innit?”

“So your guess is that the count would be upon Mr. Meriwether-Astor’s ship?”

“Aye.”

“Which is guarded,” Andrew put in. “They’ve posted a watch.”

That was true. A man sat upon the gangway smoking a
Texican cigarillo, the noxious fumes of which they could smell from here.

“Ent much of a watch,” Lizzie said with some disdain. “Pity we just lost Jake. ’E were a dab hand at dealing wiv such.”

“We might shimmy up a mooring rope,” Maggie suggested.

“Too dangerous, and we risk being spotted before we reached the top,” Claire said. It was one thing for the girls to slide down a rope to escape for purposes of saving a life. It was quite another to labor to the top, exposing themselves to discovery—or gunfire.

“Wot about a diversion?” Maggie asked. “You c’d zap one of them cargo ships wiv the lightning rifle, and when everyone come out to put out the fire, we c’d go in.”

“You forget that our time here is limited to a few more days,” Andrew told her gently. “
With the
Margrethe
disabled, the loss of one cargo ship could be devastating to the Dunsmuirs, the count’s crew, and the people who work here, once the snow flies.”

“Don’t care about the Dunsmuirs no more,” Lizzie grumbled. “They didn’t believe the Lady, and let those blokes ’urt our Alice’s dad.”

“We have no proof, Lizzie,” Claire said gently. “Without that, the Dunsmuirs cannot act except to delay and pray that calm heads will prevail. I wonder if anyone has checked the dressing room yet?”

“Let us hope n˜Lenfire.ot,” Andrew said. “It will not take a brilliant mind to conclude that you are behind thei
r escape. I wonder where they’d put
you
?”

Somewhere without tunnels, that was certain.
Or windows. A memory of a locked room in Resolution assailed her, and she set her teeth. She would not allow anyone to make her a prisoner again.

Lizzie touched her arm, her fingers cold. Claire was seized in the sudden grip of guilt. What was she thinking, bringing the girls along on such an errand? They should be tucked up in bed aboard the
Lady Lucy
, safe and warm, with Tigg and the other middies to look after them, not in danger of being made prisoners themselves.

She was a terrible guardian, Claire thought
on a wave of despair.

But Lizzie did not seem to be much inclined to seek either safety or warmth. “Lady,” she whispered, “there’s that Alan again. See? By that wreck of a ship we visited wiv Alice. Where I found that other brass casing.”

“Those other two, they’re Bob an’ Joe. Alan is Joe’s brother,” Maggie explained.

Goodness. What a memory
she had. Almost as good as Jake’s.

Huddled behind the sort of trunk that turned on one end to open into a
traveling closet, they watched Bob and Joe pace in front of the nearly derelict cargo ship, from one end to the other, as if doing an inspection while they waited for Alan to come out of it.

“Does it not seem strange to you that that ship is the only one of the convoy that appears to have a
proper guard?” Andrew asked. “Aside from our smoking friend behind us, of course.”

“I had not noticed before, but you are quite right.”

Alan rejoined his friends, and a brief conversation took place before they began to pace again, two heading down to the stern vanes, one to the bow, then reversing and crossing at the gangway in the middle of the gondola.

“And do you
see how very large the doors are to the rear of the gondola? One could wheel a landau out of them if one had a ramp.”

“
What I see is an engine so large and powerful it warrants its own gondola, there at the stern.” Andrew paused for a moment for them to see the truth of it. “Jake mentioned something Gloria Meriwether-Astor said to him and Alice, just before the explosion,” he went on. “Something about a steam cannon.”

“We are not looking for a cannon, Andrew. Those
propelled bullets may have been large, but they were certainly not large enough to fill a cannon barrel.”

“Still … if a man transported a cannon secretly, disguised in an old trap of an airship that would be an unlikely target for sky pirates or
tariff men, he might be just as likely to transport silent rifles and who knows what else along with it.”

“But that does not mean he would conceal a prisoner wl aes ith them.”

“Why waste guards?” Maggie put in. “If yer guardin’ yer guns, might as well put the prisoner there. That lot’ve been there all day. So it would make no nevermind to someone lookin’ on whether there was guns or trussed-up gentlemen inside.”

“You sound like Alice,” Lizzie said.

“And you make a sound point,” Andrew told her. “I say it’s worth a look.”

“I say we are outnumbered,” Claire
reminded them softly. “Though I would put Lizzie up against a miscreant any day, I should not like to take the chance that she might be hurt.”

“Diversion,” Maggie singsonged softly, as if to remind them she had suggested this before.

“But what?” Claire’s legs were beginning to cramp. She longed to stand up, to shout and wave her arms and demand to be allowed aboard that ship.

Which would net her absolutely nothing except the relief of movement and the inevitability of imprisonment.
It was maddening to be trapped here in the shadows with so little time and so urgent a task. She might as well be one of Alice’s automatons, standing uselessly at the bottom of
Lady Lucy
’s gangway.

Wait.

“The automatons,” she said.

Lizzie and Maggie could not have been more delighted to be in charge of the diversion. Claire was not so sure this was the right course—though it seemed to be their only one. Since the thre
e guarding the airship knew the twins, they would at least allow them to get closer than they might allow Andrew or Claire herself, who were strangers.