Brilliant Devices: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices) Page 2

“There. Scouting.” She pointed, rather proudly.

  “They ought to let us know before they disappear.”

  “You may certainly suggest it. But they know their duty and it would seem strange to them to warn me they’re going to do it.”

  Alice shook her head and returned to her inspection of the partially buried gondola. “Not like any little girls I ever met. I bet they wouldn’t know what to do with a doll if you gave ’em one.”

  Claire remembered her own nursery and the row of abandoned dolls on the top shelf of the bookcase. “Papa used to give me a doll every year for Christmas.” She knelt to inspect a brass plate in the hull, bent nearly double with the force of the landing, but salvageable. “He gave up when I was eight and my nurse reported to Mama that I was disassembling them and making notes on their anatomy. Which, I discovered, bore no resemblance to actual human babies’ anatomy at all.”

  Alice’s brow lightened a little and she almost smiled through her worry. “I ain’t never had a doll. I wouldn’t know what to do with one, either.”

  “You have the automatons. Theirs may only bear a nodding resemblance to human anatomy, but at least they’re useful. Dolls, I’m afraid, are not.”

  By the time the Mopsies ran up, panting, to report, Alice had finished inspecting as much of the hull as she could see. The rest would have to wait until the gas bags had been inflated once again, and the hull lifted to its normal resting altitude of a few feet.

  “You sure picked a good place to crash,” Maggie informed Jake and Andrew. “Ent a soul or an ’ouse or so much as an eyelash to be seen for miles an’ miles.”

  “There is a bunch of mucky great creatures on t’other side of t’river, though,” Lizzie put in. “Horns on ’em as big as Tigg.”

  “I suspect those might be elk,” Andrew said. “They possess antlers, which are solid. Cows have horns, which are hollow.”

  Lizzie did not look impressed by the distinction. “Solid—hollow—they’re pointy, is what I’m sayin’. Big and pointy.”

  “Duly noted,” Claire said. “And no sign of any source of help. Well, on the positive side, neither is there any danger … of the human sort, at least. We shall only have to worry about bears.”

  “Bears?” Lizzie’s eyes widened. “There’s bears ’ere?”

  “There was a bear due east of where you found me in the Texican Territory. I have no doubt there are similar creatures here in the Idaho Territory.”

  “If you folks are done with the nature lesson,” Alice put in with barely concealed impatience, “can we get the pump going and get some gas into the bags? That patch oughta be dry enough to hold now.”

  The pump turned out to be an automaton named Eight, who had hose concealed in his appendages and a small engine as well. Claire watched, hands nervously clasped, as the bags filled, the twin fuselages leveled out, and the Lass slowly freed herself from her untidy nest. The trees brushed the lower surfaces of the fuselages as they rose, until finally the airship stalled.

  “Gondola’s stuck,” reported Tigg from the far side. “C’mon, everyone, it’ll be like pushin’ that barge off into the Thames once we got all the chickens into the garden at ’ome.”

  Home. The warmth of affection flooded Claire at the thought of the shabby cottage in Vauxhall Gardens—the first place in Tigg’s memory where he had an actual pallet to himself and “three squares” a day.

  If she had accomplished nothing more on this earth, she had at least done that—given these children their first home.

  Maybe some day they would even see it again.

  Heaving, pushing, and commanding Nine to help, they dislodged the Lass from her clinging prison. With a sucking sound, she lifted a few inches, like a char who remembered better days shaking mud off her shoes. Rosie the chicken, who had been hunting in the fallen leaves as they worked, immediately jumped into the gash in the earth and yanked a fat worm out of it.

  “That’s it,” Alice muttered to the old ship. “Come on, girl. Eight, keep pumping on the starboard side.”

  The fuselage fattened until it curved like the breast of a healthy hen, lifting the gondola until it bobbed a couple of feet off the ground.

  “There.” Alice patted a ripped piece of brass, whereupon a number of rivets hit the stones with a tinktinktink. “Eight, that’ll do.” The automaton fell silent and she disconnected the hose.

  Then, elbow to elbow with Claire, she studied the hull. “Bow’s stove in, but Nine and Andrew can bang it back into shape.”

  “Tigg and Jake and I can replace rivets.”

  “The girls can take the ballast out so we can see what’s what inside.”

  Andrew looked from one to the other, then at Tigg. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”

  “We ain’t forgot,” Alice said tersely. “We’re merely thinking out what we’re going to do while we try to figure out what to do about that.”

  “About wot?” Maggie asked.

  “About the fact that we have no engine,” Claire said gently. “We can bring the ship’s body back to life, but if she has no heart, she can’t sail.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Tigg said stoutly.

  “Yeah?”

  Claire wished Alice would not sound so grim in front of the children. Or in front of her, for that matter.

  “We got no boiler. Without a boiler, we can’t make steam. Without steam, the pistons and props won’t turn.”

  Claire clutched what remained of her chignon with both hands. “Good heavens. I completely forgot! Oh dear. Oh dear. I hope no harm has come to it.”

  She gathered up her skirts and scrambled into the hatch, heedless of the mud that rimmed it. In a moment she reappeared with her valise.

  “Going someplace, Lady?” Jake inquired.

  “Maybe there’s a nice hotel we ent seen yet,” Lizzie told her twin in an aside that ought to have been on the vaudeville stage. “Maybe she ordered roast beef an’ Yorkshire puddings for all of us.”

  “Very funny. Andrew, Alice, look.” She pulled the valise open to reveal Dr. Craig’s power cell nestling like a great bronze cat on her shirtwaists and spare skirt. “Is there any reason we cannot power the Stalwart Lass with this?”

  *

  Alice handed Andrew Malvern the smaller wrench so he could tighten the bolts on the far side of the hastily fabricated housing for the power cell. The silence as they buttoned up after the flurry of work, while companionable, had gone on long enough. If somebody didn’t say something, she was going to leap out of her skin.

  “I got to hand it to Claire, she knows how to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

  Outside, Claire and the Mopsies were pounding dents out of the brass plates of the gondola with rocks wrapped in spare canvas, which meant she could hardly hear herself speak. She’d heard a wax recording once called the Anvil Chorus—if the girls ever wanted careers in music, they could start with that.

  “What mystifies me is that she kept it a secret. We’ve been in flight for days—I would have thought the subject might have come up in that time.”

  “We didn’t need it, Mr. Malvern.”

  “Alice, we have stared death in the face together more than once. Under the circumstances, I believe it would be quite proper for you to use my given name.”

  It had been so long since Alice had blushed that it took her a moment to recognize the hot, prickly feeling in her cheeks and forehead.

  We, he’d said. Together. Dang. In all her daydreams she had never expected to experience the thrill of the plural pronoun in connection with the brilliant mind she had been worshiping from afar—very far—for so long. In the delight of it, she quite lost track of what he was saying.

  “—risking my life for the wretched thing, she might have told me she’d liberated it from the wreckage.”

  In Alice’s experience, liberate was a word you used when you didn’t want to say steal. “But doesn’t it belong to her?”

  “I am not arguing that. Dr. Craig left it as her legacy.�
��

  “That mad scientist?” Tigg had told her the whole juicy story. Alice wouldn’t have believed a word of it, except that she’d been the one to pull Claire out of the drink half drowned. Anyone who would jump into a flash flood on purpose could break a mad scientist out of Bedlam if she darn well wanted to.

  “It is my uneducated opinion that Dr. Craig was not in fact mad. She was being held against her will because she represented a threat to some very wealthy men. But that is beside the point.” Andrew heaved on a nut. “The point is that we are both invested in that cell, and she could have told me.”

  The plural pronoun didn’t sound nearly so appealing that time.

  Alice stood and dusted off her pants. “Well, in all fairness, we’ve had our hands full. I got a pile of parts in the hold I’ve been meaning to make something with, and I haven’t given them a single thought, myself. So I can’t say as I blame her.”

  Andrew finished with the last of his bolts and stood as well. He pulled off his gloves and surveyed their work. “You’re quite right. Isn’t it singular that the four of us—engineers all, and I include Tigg in our number—wound up on this particular ship at this particular time? Without any one of us, we would not have been able to create what I must say must be the first engine of its kind.”

  Alice couldn’t keep her face from breaking out in a smile. “You’d better call her in. After you and her rigged that swinging truss—”

  “—and you found that glass for the lightning chamber—I swear it will never cross my lips that it began its career holding a gallon of rotgut whiskey—”

  “—and you and Tigg and Jake manhandled poor Four into becoming this housing—”

  “—we definitely must all be present when we fire her up for the first time.”

  Sharing a laugh with him was probably the sweetest moment in Alice’s whole life. The part that came after her father had jumped ship, anyway.

  A moment later she realized the hammering had stopped, and Claire and the girls appeared in the gangway. “Did we miss the joke?”

  “We’re just having a moment of celebration,” Andrew told her, still smiling.

  Claire looked from him to Alice and a shadow passed over her eyes. Was it—could that be hurt?

  Well, never mind if it was. Lady Claire Trevelyan had just about everything on earth a girl could want, minus a working airship, but they were about to fix that. If she begrudged Alice a moment of laughter with a certain handsome and brilliant man, well, that was just too bad.

  In the next moment, she felt ashamed of herself. Claire wasn’t that petty. She probably liked a good laugh as much as anybody, and wanted to be included, that was all.

  If this worked, they’d have plenty to celebrate.

  “Is it done?” Maggie asked, evidently objecting to silences, too.

  “It is done. Tigg, are you ready?” Andrew asked.

  “I been ready for hours, sir. I don’t care if we do have to fly at night, I ent minded to stick around and be dinner for bears.”

  “I quite agree,” Claire said. “Alice, let’s see if she’ll go, shall we? Girls, is Rosie safely aboard? Yes? Jake, ready tiller.”

  Jake jogged forward and called, “Ready, Lady.”

  Who was in command of this tub, anyway? Much as she liked and admired Claire, Alice was the captain and it was her job to give the orders, not someone who was used to ordering maids around and bossing dressmakers and—and whatever else it was fine ladies did in London Town.

  “Tigg, stand by engine,” she said, moving smoothly but with authority to the stern with him. “Mr. Malvern, take the vanes, please. Full vertical. Passengers, I’d find somewhere to sit. Lift in five, four—”

  Claire and the girls scrambled forward and sat wherever they could find a horizontal spot with something to hang onto. Rosie perched above their heads, her feet wrapped around a pipe.

  “—three, two, one.” She slammed all three levers down, one after the other. “Ignition, Mr. Tigg!”

  She half expected to hear the throaty grumble of the poor old Massey. But there was no such sound. Instead, the engine mount seemed to tremble, there was a flash of light that she could see right through the rippled seams of Four’s erstwhile chest, and the pistons began to move.

  The props turned, slowly at first, then faster and faster. It worked, by golly, it really, truly worked. Alice drew in a breath that was more like a gasp of relief.

  “Up ship!”

  The Mopsies yanked in the mooring ropes. Andrew threw the levers for the elevation vanes forward and Jake gripped the tiller …

  … and they fell up into the twilight sky with the joy of a lark greeting the morning.

  Chapter 3

  Edmonton.

  The Northern Light, some called it, the third jewel in the continental crown that included New York and San Francisco, and light it was.

  The Stalwart Lass circled an airfield big enough to put fifty small towns on, looking for a mooring mast that was free. Through the glass, Claire could see the twinkling lights of the city coming on as darkness fell. It was bigger than Santa Fe, though not nearly as large as London or Paris—but give it time. The lights—not the sallow yellow of electricks, but orange and blue and nearly white, sparkled like the diamonds that gave the city its reason for being.

  “Look!” She pointed a little to the west. “Isn’t that Lady Lucy? Jake, steer that way. Perhaps we can moor close enough to walk over and see the Dunsmuirs.”

  “Dunno as I want to.” Tigg popped out from behind the engine mount and leaned through the gangway door. “Ent they the same ones as left us all behind in Resolution?”

  “They didn’t intend to leave us behind.” Lizzie giggled and elbowed Maggie in the ribs.

  Maggie, who was holding Rosie and stroking her feathers, nodded. “We left our own selves.”

  “Be fair.” Claire turned from the viewing glass and scratched Rosie’s head. The bird, who was getting sleepy with the fading of the light, gave her a polite tap upon the finger with her beak. One did not disturb a lady at her rest. “They believed me to be dead, the two of you in your cabin, and Tigg back with Mr. Yau at the engines. And you know the countess puts Willie’s safety before all other considerations.”

  “Kid’s goin’ t’be spoiled rotten,” muttered Jake.

  Despite his grumbles, Claire was pleased to see that he had changed their course, and they were now floating nearer to the Lady Lucy.

  “There’s a mast free,” Lizzie said suddenly. “Fifty feet off the port side of her.”

  So there was. Maggie took Rosie to her hatbox in the twins’ berth in the starboard-side fuselage while Jake and Alice brought the battered Lass in for a smooth landing. One of the ground crew stationed at the field caught the rope and moored them fast, and for the first time since they had left Reno, Claire found herself disembarking like a lady—meaning on her feet, as opposed to climbing out by means of a rope or being hauled about unconscious like a sack of vegetables.

  “Cor, it’s freezing!” Lizzie bleated as she jumped to the ground from the gondola. She wore her black raiding skirt and striped stockings and boots, but her white blouse was thin voile, much like Claire’s own.

  “I would wrap you in my coat if I still had one,” Andrew told her. “Will my waistcoat do?”

  “Here.” Alice pulled off her mechanic’s jacket and settled it around Lizzie’s shoulders. “Air’s got a bite to it, that’s for sure. It never feels like this in Resolution except in the deeps of winter. But then, we’re pretty far north. It’s winter here already.”

  “Let us board the Lady Lucy, then,” Claire said briskly. “Davina will know where we can buy clothes more suited to this climate.” And hopefully sooner rather than later. She herself had two skirts and a waist to her name, and both pairs of stockings had holes in the heels. If she didn’t open her mouth to speak, an observer would assume she was a young woman down on her luck—a seamstress, perhaps, or a schoolteacher who had come north to find more
opportunity, or a shopgirl down on her luck.

  That was certainly not the case. She had been enormously lucky. Blessed, even. They had simply come to the end of the resources left from the previous stages of their journey. She would visit a bank, and then repair as quickly as possible to the high street to resolve this most immediate problem. Small difficulties like this certainly beat her most recent ones—like having to invent an engine from scratch in the middle of a wilderness.

  How she had changed! She recalled clearly the burden that visiting a dressmaker had been even six months ago. But that had been a time when clothes appeared magically in her closets and she never gave a single thought to stockings or coats—or to money, for that matter.

  By now darkness had fallen, but the airfield was illuminated by lamps on every mooring mast. The Mopsies and Tigg set off at a determined jog for the warmth of Lady Lucy’s salon—where Claire hoped they would be received with open arms and not a lecture upon the evils of abandoning ship. Jake and Andrew followed, and when Claire looked back, she saw Alice lingering at the gondola, pretending to check their repairs to its bow.

  “Alice, are you coming?”

  “I—well, sure. Maybe later. I just want to make sure things are buttoned up here.”

  “I’ll wait for you, if you like.”

  Alice hunched her shoulders. “Naw, you should go join your fancy friends. And Mr. Malvern. I’ll see what I can rustle up with the ground crew. They’re usually good for some news and a laugh.”

  Claire took in the poor posture, the hands jammed into the pockets of her pants, the scuffed toes of her work boots.

  “Alice, you do not need to be ashamed of who you are. John and Davina certainly aren’t, and neither am I.”

  Alice snorted. “An earl, a countess, and a lady. ’Course you’re not.”

  “You are the woman who saved my life,” Claire reminded her fiercely. “Who helped us put the cell in the Lass, which, as Andrew pointed out, has never been done before. You are the woman who flew across I don’t know how many territories to get us here safely, when you didn’t have to. You could have gone to Texico City and spent the rest of your life being nice and warm instead of risking your life to stand here in this cold airfield arguing with me.”