Rise of the Arcane Fire (The Secret Order) (32 page)

Billows of steam were rising up from stacks on the nearest side of the long building. David rushed to the door. It opened, and a wiry old man stumbled out. A shock of pure white hair sprouted from the center of his forehead, but the rest of his hair seemed to have abandoned the lonely patch and had taken up residence in a circle about his ears. He coughed dramatically as he came to sit on a large rock near the doors. Then he took out a flask from the pocket of the leather apron he was wearing and took a swig.

His bushy eyebrows hopped up and down as he wiped off a pair of spectacles and replaced them on his nose. He leaned forward and peered at us.

“Guten Abend, Onkel,”
David greeted with a very distinct Prussian lilt. David’s uncle brightened at once and sprang to his feet like a prancing fawn, not an old man. I guessed we didn’t have to worry about him being feeble.

“David, my God! It is too long a time since you have come to visit,” the old man responded in an even heavier Prussian dialect. “So, my favorite nephew is well?”

“Yes, of course,” David said, switching back to English. “You’re trying to find a way around your restrictions again, aren’t you?”

David’s uncle didn’t seem to notice the censure or the change in language. At least he didn’t heed it as he continued on as if David hadn’t responded at all, walking back toward the house. “And who is this you bring here? What a pretty girl. I hope you have come to tell me of a marriage. If that is not so, you should ask her to wed.”

I felt my cheeks go hot. David blushed as well, as he led his uncle toward me. “Allow me to introduce Miss Margaret Whitlock,
Onkel
.” David leaned his head closer to the old man. “She speaks German,” he whispered, “though her Swiss dialect is horrendous.”

“Ach, I am caught,” Uncle Albrecht said in English. He smiled, and his silvery eyes twinkled. “So this is the young lady apprentice. I must admit, I was expecting something different. Your forgiveness, please. I so rarely have a chance to play the matchmaker.”

“Of course . . .” I hesitated, not knowing what to call him exactly.

“Uncle Albie,
bitte
. Our families have always worked well together. At least on the Reichlin side.” He took my arm and led me through the back garden toward the house.

“I beg your pardon, but what was the loud noise we heard earlier?”

The old Prussian laughed. “My smithing skills are not what they used to be. I had a pressure vessel, how should we say, not meet my standard. Do not fear. I had it quite contained, though none of this would happen if I still had access to the Foundry.” He opened the door to his kitchens and attempted to usher me inside. “So you will stay for tea? I will make my best attempt with my regular teapot. I’m having only a very little bit of trouble with my clockwork one.”

I started to answer, but David spoke over me. “I’m sorry,
Onkel
, but this is not a social call. We have discovered a plot against the Foundry, but at present no one will believe us. We have to get to Scotland tonight, or the disaster that will unfold could destroy the Order altogether.”

Uncle Albrecht let the door swing closed as his affable disposition turned suddenly serious. “Who would wish to harm the Foundry?”

“Headmaster Lawrence is seeking revenge upon MacTavish for a suspected affair with his wife. He has a bomb,” I explained. “He intends to use it.”

Albrecht’s bushy eyebrows furrowed so close together, they became one. “If what you say is truth, this is very serious. I would help, but after the incident over Kent, I’m afraid I cannot.” He looked toward the barn with longing. “I can no longer direct the steam from the boilers into the envelope. Without a working key I’m afraid our feet must remain firmly planted.”

I brought my hand to the key around my neck. “If you have a means to get us to Scotland by morning, I have the means to unlock it.” I lifted the key, and the old man’s wrinkled face lit up.

“Henry’s master key. He taught you to use it?”

I nodded.

“Excellent.” He clapped his hands together. “I am far too long without causing trouble for the Order. Come, this way. David, go inside and gather food, water, and warm blankets—oh, and don’t forget my tonic. If we are going to Scotland, we will need them.”

I followed Uncle Albrecht back to the stables. I didn’t know what we might find there. I thought perhaps he had invented a train that did not need a track. Or perhaps there were mechanical horses in the stable that never tired. When we had traveled north in the Chadwick coach, we had made good time, but it had still taken us days to reach Yorkshire. We had to get to the Highlands. I didn’t see how it was possible.

Albrecht opened the doors, and we stepped inside. I immediately choked on the thick air, heavy with smoke and steam. It clung to my skin and made my hair stick to my scalp. We had entered a good-size room. On either side of the room stood enormous boilers, six in all. Scorching-hot fires burned within them as the hiss and whistle of escaping steam permeated the air.

“I’ve been trying to find a way around the lock but have had little success, as evidenced by the noise you heard. With the lock in place I cannot vent what steam I have, except through the stacks,” Albrecht shouted over the noise. “The lock is here.” He reached a box connected to the juncture of several of the pipes. They radiated out from it like the rays of the sun.

“Why did you light the fires in the first place?” I asked, swiping my hand over my cheek to pull away the wet strands of hair clinging to it.

“I am an Amusementist,” he said while checking the pressure valves on the enormous boilers. “I was working on improvements to the water intake system. What else am I to do with my time? Here, here.” He ushered me closer to the box.

I pushed away the medallion with the Amusementist seal. It was hot from the steam. Opening my key, I watched the internal mechanism rise from the casing and spin until it had opened completely, like the flower that graced the seal.

I fitted it into the box, and the song began to play. A set of pianoforte keys rose up from beneath a long, narrow grate at my feet. Several large pipes also rose, forming a wall behind the pipes sprouting from the boilers.

Albrecht moved close to my side and without thinking much about it played his personal code phrase of music on the keys. Answering notes bellowed out of the pipes like those from a monstrous pipe organ.

Suddenly gears began to turn, and the whistling hiss became a rush of moving steam. Something rumbled, and the building began to shake. I ducked, fearing the old ceiling would come down. I ran out the door and onto the grass beyond.

Albrecht galloped out of the doors, looking both enormously pleased and satisfied. I didn’t see what he had to be so happy about. The rumbling was about to tear his stable apart. As I looked up, I realized it
was
tearing his stable apart. The roof of the building had split and was rising slowly, opening up like the hinged lid of a basket.

A great undulating form seemed to be rolling or boiling within. David came up beside us with a crate of supplies. He leaned back a bit to get a better view. “The last time you flew it, it seemed much larger.”

Whatever the pulsing thing was, it could not possibly get any larger. It was enormous, filling the entire barn.

“Oh, my dear Lord,” I murmured as the mass began to take shape and rise.

An immense oblong balloon rose out of the barn and into the falling dusk. Mist swept off the fabric in waves as the cool evening air met with the heated balloon. A gondola, shaped suspiciously like a pirate ship, hung from great cords of rope attached to the keel framework of the balloon above. The fabric swelled and ebbed as it strained against the confining ropes, and I couldn’t help thinking of the body of a great dragon breathing and belching smoke as steam vented from the ship. Slowly a pair of guide wings unfurled as the airship reached the limit of its tether.

I didn’t have words. It was glorious.

“
Na ja!
We will sail the skies. It has been too long a time. Come! Come!” Albrecht entered the stables, waving his arms for us to follow.

As we passed through the door, I whispered to David, “Are you sure about this?”

He looked at me as if I were the one who had gone daft. “Of course. No one can take us to Scotland faster.”

We climbed an unsteady wooden stair into what should have been the loft of the barn. The airship bobbed lazily before us. “I’m not worried about arriving quickly so much as arriving in one piece.”

“Worry not, Miss Whitlock. This ship is perfectly safe.” Clearly, the old man’s hearing was as sharp as he was spry. “One day the sky will be full with airships. You will see. Once people learn to float among the clouds as one with them, there will be no other way to travel. There is no disaster that could possibly taint the glory of an airship.” Albrecht led us over a swinging rope bridge and onto the deck of the ship. He opened up a large chest and pulled out some long, heavy leather coats, along with caps, gloves, and goggles.

I glanced at the boilers and imagined the ship plummeting to earth in a ball of fire. No disaster indeed. A pair of gloves smacked me in the chest, and I instinctively caught them. Albrecht removed his leather apron and donned one of the long coats. “David, use the starter to get the fire going in the propeller engines.” He tossed David a cap. “I must adjust the condensation feed from the envelope. Miss Whitlock, if you would, please wind the navigation system at the bow of the ship.”

I pulled on my own coat. It felt reassuringly heavy on my shoulders and warm as it wrapped over my entire body and nearly reached the hem of my skirts. I buttoned the front and pulled on one of the thick leather caps. Stray wisps of my hair refused to be contained and tickled my cheeks.

Near the bow of the ship, I found a large map on a table surrounded by an extremely intricate machine. The joints and arms created a lace-like impression as I tried to follow the connections to several different instruments and gauges. To the right was a large wheel. I turned it slowly even as the fading light of dusk finally died.

Albrecht joined me and lit a lamp hanging from the machine. In the light I could make out a very detailed map of Great Britain. Albrecht inspected the machine, making a few adjustments, then placed the ball of a pointer attached to an arm suspended from the machine on a point on the map. “We are here.” His thin finger touched the map. “As we fly, this machine will track our progress. If all goes well, we will reach the Foundry by morning.” He tapped a second location on the map. Loch Ness. It seemed so far, and so much could go wrong.

It didn’t take long before we had the ship in full working order.

I heard a churning, chugging sound, not unlike a locomotive, and the great blades of the propellers at the back of the ship slowly turned.

Albrecht perched his goggles merrily on his thin nose, then reached for a large lever at the center of the deck. He pulled it, and I let out a gasp as the deck lurched. Ropes from along the rail all released at once, falling away to the ground like dying serpents. Albrecht jumped into a seat next to the map and deftly turned each of the four different wheels surrounding him. I ran to the rail, mostly to hold on to something as the deck tilted sharply to the sky and we rose, the dark countryside falling away beneath us.

My heart hammered and my throat went dry as I clung to the rail, watching the dark shadows and glimmering lights from windows in the houses below sink farther beneath me. We drifted along past as if we were sailing on a very clear lake. The trees were nothing more than the rocks at the depths, and the lights, reflections of golden stars in the water.

I had never witnessed anything so utterly beautiful and terrifying at once.

ONCE WE REACHED A DIZZYING
height, the deck of the ship leveled out and we floated along amid the clouds. I refused to let go of the rail and gripped it tight enough that my knuckles blanched as I watched the lights and shadows move along beneath us.

“We’re at thirty-five knots,
Onkel
,” David called from the engines in the back. “All system pressures are normal.”

“Good, good.” Albrecht hummed a tune to himself as he checked the map again, then adjusted one of the two smaller wheels.

The great fans were spinning behind us, catching the cooling mist trailing off the envelope. The loose tendrils of my hair brushed against my face as the mist rained down on us. With the breeze it was quite cold in spite of the large, heavy coat I was wearing. I shivered.

David appeared next to me and wrapped a quilt over my shoulders. I could see the glow of London like a blanket of fire on the dark countryside.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, leaning his forearms on the rail as if he were sailing on a ship and not suspended thousands of feet in the air by hot gas.

As I took in the sight of London, burning like some glorious beacon in the night, I had to admit he was right. The last time I’d flown, I had nothing but a pair of wings on my back with thin straps of leather holding them on, and a fervent prayer I wouldn’t drop from the sky.

That had been a wholly different experience. With the solid rail beneath my hand and the deck steady under my feet, it was the world around me that seemed to defy what was possible. The clouds drifted over us, close enough to touch, and I wondered if they felt soft, or if, like ghosts, they’d elude such earthly connections.

“It is beautiful,” I admitted, pulling the quilt closer around my neck. “Perfect, really.” I watched my breath turn into fog before my face. I felt no danger here, no thrill for my life. All was still and so very cold.

As I thought back to the time I had flown with the wings, I remembered the touch of the light of the dying sun on my skin, and the feel of Will’s hands on my face as he kissed me, hot, desperate, and so alive.

I had soared.

Now I drifted.

We sailed on for a time in companionable silence before David spoke again.

“What is it about him?” he asked. He didn’t bother to say more as he turned to me. The moon glowed behind him, lighting his hair with a silvery hue and turning his blue eyes to elusive mercury.