Etiquette & Espionage (18 page)

“Who isn’t?”

“Point taken. I’m Sophronia.”

“I heard of you. The Uptop Soap’s sweet on.” The boy grinned at Sophronia again, showing dimples.

“How old are you?” was all Sophronia could think of to say to
that
.

“Nine,” said the boy, sidling up to her.

“Are you a sootie?”

“Nope.” The boy winked. Actually winked!

“Then what are you doing down here?”

“I like it here.”

“How’d you get in?”

“Came in, like you.”

“You from up top as well?”

“Sort of.”

Frustrated, Sophronia said, “I only came for some coal.”

“Well, let me go wake Soap.”

“Oh, no need to disturb him.”

“ ’Course there’s need. Why do you think I was set to watch the hatch? Waiting on the ghost of boilers past? He’ll box my ears if I don’t tell him you came.”

“What’s your name?” Sophronia felt no compunction about disregarding proper introductions with a child.

“They call me Vieve.”

“Odd name.”

“Suits me.”

“Right. I’m going to go over there and get some coal. Does that meet with your approval, Vieve?”

Vieve gave her another one of his dimpled grins and scampered off, holding his trousers up with one hand. He returned moments later, before Sophronia had a chance to collect any coal, with a sleepy Soap in tow.

They made for an odd pair: the scamp of a nine-year-old in overlarge clothing and the tall, gangly sootie with shirtsleeves so short his wrists poked out the ends.

“Good evening, miss.” Soap’s face lit up with that Sup leeves swide, white-toothed smile.

“Are you well, Soap?”

“Well and good, miss, well and good. Got my little meal, did ya?”

“Yes, thank you. Bumbersnoot and I were most appreciative.”

“Bumbersnoot?” wondered Vieve.

“The miss here’s landed herself a mechanimal.”

The young boy’s face lit up. “You have a real live mechanimal! Can I see it?”

“Well, no, not right now. He’s in my room, up in the students’ section.”

“No, I mean later. Can I see it later?”

Soap explained the boy’s evident enthusiasm. “Vieve here is fixing to be the next great inventor.”

Sophronia was shocked. “That’s a grand ambition for someone your age.”

“Not when your aunt is Beatrice Lefoux.” Soap twisted his mobile mouth into a funny grimace.

Sophronia flinched at that statement, glaring down at the nine-year-old before her. “Your
aunt
is Professor Lefoux! Why didn’t you say?”

Vieve shrugged in a way that managed to look particularly French. “Why should I?”

“You won’t tell her, will you?”

“Tell her what?”

“About Bumbersnoot? Or my being in the boiler room?”

“ ’Course not. Why would I?” Vieve looked offended.

“Oh, thank you.”

“So
now
can I see your mechanimal?”

Feeling as though she had been somehow trapped, Sophronia said, “Yes, very well. How will you get up to my room, though?”

“Oh, I get round most anywhere I wants.”

“No one bothers to keep track of this scamp,” Soap said, pulling off the boy’s cap and ruffling his hair in a manner Vieve clearly found unnecessary and annoying.

“Are you not a real Uptop?” Sophronia felt a little silly using the word.

Vieve shrugged again. “I’m whatever I want to be, so long as alarms don’t sound.”

“That must be nice.” Sophronia exchanged a look of amusement with Soap.

“Get a small stock of black for the lady, would you, Vieve?” Soap tilted his head in the direction of a mound of coal.

Vieve gave the tall boy a measured look and then trotted purposefully off.

“Arrogant little blighter,” said Soap affectionately, once the lad was out of earshot.

“I suppose you’d have to be, if Professor Lefoux were your aunt.” Sophronia was philosophical.

Vieve returned with his pockets bulging. Sophronia transferred the coal to her black velvet reticule. It was her very best evening bag, but it was the only one that wouldn’t show coal smudges.

“Nice keeper,” Vieve commented on the reticule.

“Thank you.”

“Vieve here has an eye for accessories.”

“I like a nice hat on a lady,” was Vieve’s dignified response, with which he trundled off about his own business.

“Nine years old, you say?”

“Well, when your only ma is French and a Lefoux, gotta develop some ways to cope. That barrow contraption of mine, the one you saw last time you was here? That’s Vieve’s.”

Sophronia was impressed. “I thought you built it.”

“Nope, I tested it. Vieve’s got the brains.”

Sophronia tilted her head and looked up at the tall young man. “I don’t know about that.”

Soap pulled at one ear self-consciously. “Why… miss.”

Sophronia was trying to come up with a way to extract herself from what appeared to be an awkward conversation—
That’ll teach me to try flirting outside the classroom
—when one of the boilers nearby sparked to roaring life and far away she heard the clang of alarm bells on the upper decks.

“Oh, blast it! Do you think they noticed I wasn’t abed?”

Soap hustled her over to the exit hatch and held it wide while Sophronia climbed out. “No, miss, that’s a perimeter alarm, that is. School’s under attack. Technically, you’re supposed to stay put, here with us.”

“If I’m going to get caught, I’d just as soon it was outside. Better for my reputation.”

“My thinking exactly. Good luck, miss.”

Must be flywaymen, back for the prototype.
Sophronia slung the reticule full of coal around her neck and climbed up the rope ladder. On the positive side, none of the teachers would still be in their rooms. On the negative side, she might well encounter any number of them on deck as she tried to make her way back to her own quarters.

She considered hiding out on Lady Linette’s balcony until the alarm stopped, but if this was the promised attack from the flywaymen, she wanted to see what would happen next. They had threatened to return three weeks after the first aborted attempt, but the school must have eluded them an extra few days. The school’s aimless floating on the winds of the misty moor made it as difficult to track from the air as it was from the ground.

Sophronia began to climb steadily up the side of the ship. It was tougher going straight up than moving around the side. She had to find handholds and footholds in the woodwork to get through the points where one deck met the hull and another jutted out again. She managed it, mainly by not looking down. Once past the midpoint, she consoled herself with the thought,
Even if I do fall, I’ll land on a lower deck, with probably nothing more dramatic than a broken bone or two.
It was small consolation.

She looked up. She could see the squeak deck above her.
The soldier mechanicals were once more assembled, their little cannons out and pointed inward. Professor Braithwope no doubt stood in the middle with his crossbow. The attackers, if there were any visible, were around the other side of the hull, out of her view.

Sophronia climbed until she was on the level directly below the squeak deck. She used the outer railing method to slip around to the opposite side of the ship. As she rounded one last deck, she saw that indeed the flywaymen were back, this time with reinforcements.

She counted twelve airdinghies and behind them two larger airships. Nothing to the school’s size, but full dirigibles of the kind that were rumored to be in production for overseas transport.

Sophronia scanned the occupants, searching for the shadow gentleman.
He must be Sm>H the there.
It was dark and she had to squint so hard she developed a headache, but she managed to make him out in one of the dirigibles. The silhouette of a man not dressed for riding, like the other flywaymen, but in full evening attire, including a stovepipe hat. Sophronia had no doubt that the band about that top hat was green. He was standing to the back—seeming, as before, to be an observer rather than a participant.

Sophronia wondered if he observed her, in her dressing gown, with an evening bag about her neck, clinging to the side of the ship.

She supposed the dirigibles must belong to sky pirates. Like flywaymen, she had thought them mere creatures of legend.
After all, how does a pirate afford a dirigible?
But there was no
other explanation. The two dirigibles floating among the crowd of smaller ships, like mallards among the ducklings, looked as though they matched each other. It was as if the trappings of weaponry and flags were merely that, trappings, and the dirigibles were a stylish set intended for something far more grand than threatening a finishing school. Sophronia concluded that, like the galleons of old, these must have been stolen from the government.

One of the flywaymen put a bullhorn to his mouth. “Give us the prototype!”

The teachers said nothing.

One of the dirigibles fired, a flash of a cannon on the deck, and a large object came hurtling in their direction. It whizzed right by where Sophronia clung, only just missing the school.

Sophronia suppressed a shriek.

“Fire, Professor Braithwope,” she heard Lady Linette order.

Professor Braithwope came into Sophronia’s line of sight as he took two vampire-quick leaps to the front of the deck. He pointed his tiny crossbow at the fleet arrayed before them.

Sophronia doubted a crossbow of such daintiness would be very effective.

He fired.

As one, all the mechanicals, whose little cannons had been pointed at the professor the entire time, swiveled, tracking the arc of the crossbow bolt.

They target the bolt!
Sophronia realized.
I hope Professor Braithwope is a good shot.

He was. The bolt hit and stuck into the side of one of the airdinghies, well below the edge of the carrier basket, out of reach of its occupants.

Lady Linette came into view as she reached over the side railing and pulled at something hidden there.

The soldier mechanicals all fired at once in a tremendous boom of noise.

Sophronia winced and wished she could cover her ears, but she needed both her hands to hang on.

The squeak deck disappeared in a cloud of gunpowder smoke. The sweet, tinny smell floated down to Sophronia. When it cleared, she could see that one of the small airdinghies was listing to one side, two of its balloons collapsing. It started to spiral down and out of the sky. The ones to either side of it had also taken hits.

One of the dirigibles returned fire. This time it aimed higher. The cannonball tore a massive hole in the school’s middle balloon. Sophronia tilted her head back, trying to look into the cavity and assess the damage. But the balloon was one deck over, and it was too dark for her to see anything. One side of the balloon looked to be caving slightly, and the whole ship listed in that direction.

“Get the sooties up there!” she heard Pr S shdaiofessor Lefoux yell, pointing at the damaged balloon.

Professor Braithwope did his fast scuttle out across the plank to the pilot’s nest, presumably to call down to the boiler room.

Lady Linette stepped forwa
rd to the very front railing of the squeak deck. She needed no bullhorn, for she was very good at projecting her voice.
There is no doubt about it; she must have had considerable experience on the stage.

“Stop firing. We will give you the prototype! Send over your ambassador.”

They are giving up very easily,
thought Sophronia.
Seems orchestrated, perhaps to pass along the fake prototype? Use it as a means to buy more time?

The flywayman with the bullhorn shouted back over the intervening distance, “Agreed.”