Waistcoats & Weaponry (18 page)

“Has she always been this bossy?” Felix asked Dimity.

“Imagine being her best friend,” replied Dimity.

“Crikey.”

“Dimity, am I really? That’s so sweet.” Sophronia was distracted from bossiness by affection. She thought of Dimity as
her
best friend, but they had never talked about it, and she’d no idea Dimity felt the same. After all, Dimity was more popular and gregarious, and had lots more friends than Sophronia. Possibly because she wasn’t so bossy.

“Of course. Sorry, Sidheag,” Dimity answered with a grin.

Sidheag made a face. “You two are attached at the hip, everyone knows that.”

To Felix, Sophronia said, “I only get bossy when it’s important. Speaking of which, you should let Dimity go first, she has more training. Besides, and I do apologize, Dimity, but the shock value alone of your outlandish appearance might give you the edge.”

Dimity’s resigned expression, combined with the oddball clothing, gave her a marked resemblance to her brother in his younger, portlier days.

“Definitely bossy,” said Felix, resigned.

“Oh, hush up, you like it,” said Sophronia.

Felix grabbed her hand, and before she could protest, pressed a swift kiss to her arm above the hurlie. It was shockingly forward and very daring. Of course, Sophronia was delighted.

“I do,” he murmured against her skin, letting her go just before she would have felt it necessary to jerk away.

Soap hissed a little, like an offended cat.

Dimity clasped her hands together. “Don’t worry, Sophronia, I’ll look after him for you.”

“Oh, I say,” huffed Felix, glaring doubtfully at Dimity.

So they left Felix crouched behind Dimity, ready to climb down and enter the freight carriage. They could only pray the drone had no gun. Sophronia hated to think her friends were going into danger on her orders.
The price of bossiness
, she thought.

But she had to trust in Dimity’s abilities; it needed to be a coordinated attack. So she led the other two onward, over the two passenger coaches, hopefully empty, and then over the tender to the cab. The cab had open doorways on both sides. She crouched on the right and Soap on the left, ready to swing down and in. Sidheag held position on the roof behind them, to follow as soon as possible, whichever side seemed necessary.

Sophronia waved her arm back at Dimity.

Her friend signaled acknowledgment. Then Dimity and Felix disappeared from sight.

Sophronia looked over and was about to nod to Soap when he pointed up. Ahead and above them, through a break in the clouds, was that same dirigible. The one Soap had spotted before. No time to think about that. Sophronia spread her hands in mystification and then nodded at him, once.

They each crossed their own arms, grabbing on to the top edge of the cab roof, then swinging out and twisting around feet first through the doorway to land inside the cab proper. Sophronia, trained in acrobatic execution, had had ample opportunity to practice as she climbed about the school. In trousers, it
was easy as buttered crumpets. She had no idea why Soap knew the maneuver, but sooties were universally fit and Soap very athletic. He did get a bit tangled up in the doorframe, being taller than she, so his landing was one knee down.

A good thing, too, for Monique had taken a swing at him with a wicked-looking dagger. Her arm swooshed right over his head.

The driver with the huge mustache, who happened to be near Sophronia, was concentrating on the controls and only half noticed the intruders. It helped that the noise was deafening so close to the engine—the hiss of steam and roar from the firebox combined with clanging cables and pistons.

Monique hadn’t noticed Sophronia yet. Her attention was on Soap.

Sophronia wasn’t really a killer. She’d never particularly enjoyed the assassination part of her lessons, but she couldn’t have the driver messing things up, either. So she simply tapped the man on the arm. “Pardon me, sir?”

“Ho, there, lad, what are you doing…?”

“I do apologize, but we require the use of your train.”

“You what?”

Sophronia grinned at him, very cheeky, in the meantime sliding around to his other side so he was near the open door and she was not.

He was very confused.

Meanwhile, behind them, Monique and Soap grappled, Monique hurling some very unladylike profanity at the sootie—what had she been learning among vampires?—and telling him he had no right, and to keep his dirty, nasty guttersnipe hands off her!

A small young man tended the stoker’s box, the train’s equivalent of a sootie. Hard to tell if he was a hireling or a minion, but he turned to face the fray, attracted by the noise. He seemed befuddled into inaction, but he
was
armed with a large shovel. No time to think on him further; Sophronia spun in against the driver, bumping him.

“What?”

“Oh, my god, what’s that!” she screamed, pointing out the open cab door. There was real fear in her face, as if she were seeing a poltergeist.

The driver turned to look.

Sophronia shoved him with all her might. It shouldn’t have worked—she was too slight and he was too large—except that Sophronia nipped one foot out and behind his leg, tripping him up. The SOS maneuver—
startle, obstruct, and shove
—was a classic tactic in which Captain Niall had trained them well.

Sophronia had never made it work before. When one was practicing, one’s opponent always knew the startle was coming. But the driver reacted perfectly, and as a result tumbled out of the train.

She stuck her head out after. He seemed to have fallen harmlessly to one side. The train was moving just quickly enough that even a fit human couldn’t catch up.

She yelled up to Sidheag. “Room for you now. Waiting for an invitation?”

Sidheag dropped down and swung in easily, no finesse but no wasted effort, either.

The girls turned to face the stoker.

He looked from one to the other.

Sophronia looked mean and scruffy and had just shoved his boss from a moving train.

Sidheag was awfully tall and imposing.

The stoker put down his shovel and put both his empty hands out in a pleading manner. “They hired me, young masters. I’m only along for the pay and the ride.”

“Sidheag, if you would deal with this?” asked Sophronia.

Sidheag looked the young man up and down. “Delighted.”

She said, in her most commanding Lady Kingair voice, “You know, friend, I’ve always been terribly interested in the running of trains. If you wouldn’t mind continuing to shovel? I’m sure we can match your pay. In the meantime, if you could please tell me everything you know about everything, that would be topping.” And, because Sidheag knew well how to recruit a willing participant, she added, “Would you like a bit of kidney pie? We happen to have brought a few on board with us.”

Sophronia went to help Soap with Monique.

It was an awkward scrap of a fight. Soap was very conscious of his position in society, or lack thereof, and he was never one to strike a lady regardless of station. Therefore, he was trying to apprehend Monique without actually touching her anywhere indelicate or injuring her in any way. Monique was not correspondingly delicate. She had several more years of training than Sophronia and wasn’t half bad, even if she had left Mademoiselle Geraldine’s in disgrace. She was giving Soap a very challenging time of it, and she was armed.

Soap was mainly dodging out of her way and blocking her from doing anything drastic. She spat curses at him, lashing out with her knife. Soap hadn’t drawn the letter opener to combat it.

Sophronia reached into her pocket and pulled out the bladed fan. Time to test its paces.

“Soap, if I may?”

Soap glanced over at her in relief. “Oh, would you?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

Only then did Monique realize who had taken over her train. She saw right through Sophronia’s boy’s garb to the oval face and green eyes that had given her so much trouble at school. “Of course, it would be you, wouldn’t it? Always messing everything up, aren’t you, Sophronia?”

“That’s my sole purpose in life, Monique, to inconvenience you.”

The two girls circled each other warily. It was close quarters in the cab of a locomotive, particularly with three fellows. Sophronia was confident that Soap and Sidheag would, between them, get the train in hand. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Soap take the driver’s station.

Monique nipped in and slashed. A real kitchen knife, too, no pretense at some more upstairs-friendly implement. Although it did have a nice ivory handle.

Sophronia whipped out her fan and shook off the leather guard.

“Had that lesson, have you?” sneered Monique.

Sophronia concentrated on the shift of Monique’s shoulders under her traveling gown, hints as to where she might move to strike next.

“I never liked the fan. Too flashy,” said the blonde, nipping in again.

In Sophronia’s experience, nothing was too flashy for Monique, so this must mean that Monique wasn’t any good with the fan. Sophronia had been practicing as much as she could since the first instance. This new one felt inexplicably natural in her hands.

She spun it in against Monique, a fancy wiggle and shift.

The girl’s beautiful blue eyes widened in horror. She backed up a bit.

“Careful with that thing, Sophronia, you could hurt somebody!”

“I thought that was the idea,” replied Sophronia, twirling the fan expertly around her wrist in a blur.

“No, peewit, that’s
my
task!”

Sophronia whipped the fan in, cutting away at Monique’s sleeve and nearly chopping the blonde’s hand off at the wrist where she held the knife.

Both girls gasped: Monique at the narrow escape, Sophronia at the very idea that she had almost cut off someone’s hand. Shocking.

Odd
, thought Sophronia,
that if Monique were a stranger, I’d have a much easier time hurting her. But because she’s a person I know, even though I don’t like her, I struggle to be ruthless. Do all intelligencers have similar scruples?

They circled each other, a little more hesitant now.

I could really hurt her. I’m better than she is
. It was a frightening kind of power. Sophronia would have thought to find it thrilling. After all, this was why they trained so hard. But it was merely scary.

Monique nipped in again, unguarded, aiming for Sophronia’s chest—her knife sharp and focused. Sophronia might be a better fighter, but she wasn’t as bloodthirsty.

Sophronia ducked out of the way and slashed at Monique’s shoulder, cutting through the tightly stretched material there, above the older girl’s corset, leaving a wide gash. Sophronia had thought Monique would now be accustomed to pain, offering up her neck to vampires on a regular basis. Perhaps vampire bites didn’t hurt, because Monique dropped her blade and began to wail loudly.

Soap and Sidheag turned, surprised.

Sophronia kicked the knife off the train.

Sidheag gave Monique a dirty look and went back to chatting with the sootie. She was shoveling under his supervision while he consumed kidney pie with evident joy. Apparently, that was just the thing to alter loyalties. It probably helped that Sidheag was genuinely interested in locomotives. Strange, for until recently Sophronia would have said Sidheag cared for nothing but Scotland and werewolves, with the possible addition of small dogs and cigars. Not that she’d seen Sidheag with either; dogs and cigars were not encouraged at finishing school. But one could easily
imagine
Sidheag with dogs and cigars.

Sophronia returned her attention to the unpleasant Monique. She snapped her bladed fan closed in disgust. “I had no idea you were so weak!”
I once thought this girl so very dangerous.

Monique was petulant, clutching her shoulder. “It stings something awful!”

Sophronia rolled her eyes. “Well, there you go, stay away
from bladed fans. Oh, for goodness’ sake, shush! Here, let me bandage that up.”

She did so, Monique fussing the whole time.

“Toss her or keep her?” she asked Sidheag and Soap.

“Toss,” said Sidheag, without looking up from the boiler.

“I agree,” said the kidney-pie-filled stoker. “That one is rotten to the core.”

“Keep,” said Soap. “She might have vital information.”

“She’s just like us, educated to resist.” Sidheag really did not like Monique.

“Still,” said Soap.

Sophronia was tempted to tip the annoying female off the train, but there was no knowing how useful she might be as a bargaining chip, if nothing else. She narrowed her eyes at Monique. “Which would you prefer?”

Monique shrugged, but her eyes slid to the door.

That settled it; Monique was staying.

They’d had lessons from Lady Linette in how to escape bonds, so Sophronia tied Monique’s hands above her head and then looped them up and over a protrusion on the outside of the doorway. Monique had to stand on tiptoe, occasionally swinging out the door and back again in a most precarious manner. That would keep her distracted from slipping her restraints.

After that, it was a matter of ignoring the girl’s whining and learning how to run a train.

Soap applied all his prowess as a sootie to monitoring gauges, throttle controls, and the brake lever. The stoker proved most helpful and most taken with Sidheag. Sophronia wondered if
he saw through their disguises, or if he was merely the type of young man who preferred the company of other men. Whatever the case, he and Sidheag had formulated a relationship, even though nothing was left of the kidney pie. He was knowledgeable about trains in a way only a young man raised on the railways could be.

They chugged along happily, stoking the boiler up to a nice clipping speed, one that made Monique squirmy and discontented, swaying back and forth. Sophronia left her to dangle for a good hour, to contemplate her choices in life. They all ignored her pleas and attempts at bargaining.

Finally, they had to stop at a switch. Their young stoker friend explained the niceties of signaling. They waited politely at the switch for a local train to toot past them.