Changeless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Second (14 page)

“Well, there is no accounting for taste,” said the Frenchwoman softly. Lord Akeldama appeared about to take offense, but the
lady added, turning slightly to the side, “Scotland, Lady Maccon, are you certain?”

A flash of wary approval crossed the vampire’s face at that. “Do sit,” he offered. “You smell divine by the way. Vanilla?
A lovely scent. And so very
feminine.
”

Was that a return jibe?
wondered Alexia.

Madame Lefoux accepted a cup of tea and sat on another little settee, next to the relocated calico cat. The cat clearly believed
Madame Lefoux was there to provide chin scratches. Madame Lefoux provided.

“Scotland,” replied Lady Maccon firmly. “By dirigible, I think. I shall make the arrangements directly and depart tomorrow.”

“You shall find that difficult. Giffard’s is not open to nighttime clientele.”

Lady Maccon nodded her understanding. Dirigibles catered to daylight folk,
not
the supernatural set. Vampires could not ride them, as they flew too high out of territory range. Ghosts were usually inconveniently
tethered. And werewolves did not like to float—prone to terrible airsickness, her husband had explained the first and only
time she intimated interest in such a mode of transport.

“Tomorrow afternoon,” she amended, “but let us talk of more pleasant things. Lord Akeldama, are you interested in hearing
about some of Madame Lefoux’s inventions?”

“Indeed.”

Madame Lefoux described several of her more recent devices. Despite his old-fashioned house, Lord Akeldama was fascinated
with modern technological developments.

“Alexia has shown me her new parasol. You do
impressive
work. You are not seeking a patron?” he asked after some quarter of an hour’s talk, clearly impressed with the Frenchwoman’s
intelligence, if nothing else.

Understanding fully the unspoken code, the inventor shook her head. Given Madame Lefoux’s appearance and skills, Alexia was
in no doubt she had received offers of a similar nature in the past. “Thank you kindly, my lord. You do me particular favor,
as I know you prefer male drones. But I am happily situated and of independent means, with no wish to bid for immortality.”

Lady Maccon followed this interchange with interest. So Lord Akeldama thought Madame Lefoux had excess soul, did he? Well,
if her aunt had turned into a ghost, excess soul might run in the family. She was about to ask an impolitic question when
Lord Akeldama rose, rubbing his long white hands together.

“Well, my little
buttercups.
”

Uh-oh
, Alexia winced in sympathy. Madame Lefoux had achieved Akeldama-appellative status. They would now have to suffer together.

“Would you
charming
blossoms like to see my newest acquisition? Quite the beauty!”

Alexia and Madame Lefoux exchanged a look, put down their teacups, and rose to follow him with no argument.

Lord Akeldama led them out into the arched and gilded hallway and up several sets of increasingly elaborate staircases. Eventually
they attained the top of the town house, entering what should have been the attic. It proved, instead, to have been made over
into an elaborate room hung with medieval tapestries and filled with an enormous box, large enough to house two horses. It
was raised up off the floor via a complex system of springs and was quilted in a thick fabric to prevent ambient noise from
reaching its interior. The box, itself, comprised two small rooms filled with machinery. The first, Lord Akeldama described
as the transmitting room, and the second the receiving room.

Alexia had never seen such a thing before.

Madame Lefoux had. “Why, Lord Akeldama, such an expense! You have purchased an aethographic transmitter!” She looked about
the crowded interior of the first room with enthusiastic appreciation. Her dimples were in danger of reappearing. “She’s beautiful.”
The inventor ran reverent hands over the many dials and switches that controlled the transmitting room’s tangled gadgetry.

Lady Maccon frowned. “The queen is reputed to own one. I understand she was urged to acquire it as a replacement for the telegraph,
shortly after the telegraph proved itself an entirely unviable method of communication.”

Lord Akeldama shook his blond head sadly. “I was
vastly
disappointed to read of the report of that failure. I had such hopes for the telegraph.” There’d been a noted gap in long-distance
communication ever since, with the scientific community scrabbling to invent something that was more compatible with highly
magnetic aetheromagnetic gasses.

“The aethographor is a wireless communication apparatus, so it does not suffer from such severe disruption to the electromagnetic
currents as the telegraph,” Lord Akeldama explained.

Lady Maccon narrowed her eyes at him. “I
have
read of the new technology. I simply had not thought to
see
it so soon.” As a matter of course, Alexia had been angling for an invitation to see the queen’s aethographor for over a
fortnight, with little success. There was some delicacy to its function that would not allow it to be interrupted during operation.
She had also tried, unsuccessfully, to visit BUR’s aethographor. She knew that they had one at the London offices, because
she saw rolls of etched metal lying about. Her husband had been utterly impossible about it. “Wife,” he had finally stated
in abject frustration, “I canna interrupt business simply to satisfy your curiosity.” Unfortunately for Alexia, since they
had come into government possession, both aethographors had been in constant operation.

Lord Akeldama picked up an etched metal roll, flattened it out, and slotted it into a special frame. “You put the message
for transfer, so, and activate the aetheric convector.”

Madame Lefoux, looking about with avid interest, interrupted him mid-explanation. “You would, of course, first have to input
an outgoing crystalline valve frequensor, just here.” She pointed to the control board, then started. “Where is the resonator
cradle?”

“Aha!” crowed the vampire, apparently thrilled she had noticed this flaw. “This is the latest and greatest design,
squash blossom.
It does not operate via
crystalline
compatibility protocol!”

Madame Lefoux looked to Lady Maccon. “Squash blossom,” she mouthed silently, her expression half offended, half amused.

Alexia shrugged.

“Usually,” explained Lord Akeldama to Alexia, misinterpreting the shrug, “the transmitting component of the aethographor requires
the installation of a specific valve, depending on the message’s intended destination. You see, a companion valve must also
be installed in the other party’s receiving room. Only with both in place can a message transfer from point A to point B.
The problem is, of course, that exact times must be agreed upon beforehand by both parties, and each must possess the appropriate
valve. The queen has an entire library of valves linked to different aethographors dotted all about the empire.”

Madame Lefoux was frowning. “And yet your device has none? It is not very useful, Lord Akeldama, to transmit a message into
the aether with no one at the other end to receive it.”

“Aha!” The vampire pranced about the tiny room in his ridiculous shoes, looking far too pleased with himself. “
My
aetheric transponder does not need one! I have had it installed with the latest in frequency transmitters so that I can tune
to whatever aetheromagnetic setting is desired. All I need is to know the crystalline valve’s orientation on the receiving
end. And to receive all I need is the right time, a good scan, and someone who has my codes. Sometimes I can even pick up
messages intended for
other
aethographors.” He frowned a moment. “Story of my life, if you think about it.”

“Good Lord.” Madame Lefoux was obviously impressed. “I had no idea such technology even existed. I knew they were working
on it, of course, but not that it had finally been built. Impressive. May we witness it in action?”

The vampire shook his head. “I have no messages to go out at the present time and am not expecting any incoming.”

Madame Lefoux looked crestfallen.

“So what happens, exactly?” asked Lady Maccon, who was still looking closely at the equipment.

Lord Akeldama was all too delighted to explain. “Ever notice that the metal paper has a faint grid on it?”

Alexia switched her attention to a scroll of metal Lord Akeldama handed her. The surface was, indeed, divided into a standardized
grid. “One letter per square?” she hypothesized.

Lord Akeldama nodded and explained further. “The metal is exposed to a chemical wash that causes the etched letters to burn
through. Then two needles pass over each grid square, one on top and the other on the bottom. They spark whenever they are
exposed to one another through the letters.
This
causes an aether wave that is bounced off the upper aethersphere and, in the absence of solar interference,
transmits globally.
” His gesturing throughout became wilder and wilder, and on the last phrase, he did a little pirouette.

“Astounding.” Lady Maccon was impressed, both with the technology and Lord Akeldama’s ebullience.

He paused, recovering his equanimity, then continued with the explanation. “Only a receiving room tuned to the appropriate
frequency will be able to pick up the message. Come with me.”

He led them into the receiving room section of the aethographor.

“Receivers, mounted on the roof
directly
above us, pick up the signals. A skilled operator is required to tune out ambient noise and amplify the signal. The message
then displays there”—he gestured, hands waving about like flippers, at two pieces of glass with black particulate sandwiched
between and a magnet mounted to a small hydraulic arm hovering above—“one letter at a time.”

“So someone must be in residence to read and record each letter?”

“And they must do so utterly silently,” added Madame Lefoux, examining the delicacy of the mounts.

“And they must be ready in an instant, for the message destroys itself as it goes,” Lord Akeldama added.

“Now I comprehend the reason for the noise-proof room and the attic location. This is clearly a most delicate device.” Lady
Maccon wondered if
she
could operate such an apparatus. “You have, indeed, made an impressive acquisition.”

Lord Akeldama grinned.

Alexia gave him a sly look. “So what precisely
is
your compatibility protocol, Lord Akeldama?”

The vampire pretended offense, looking coquettishly up at the ceiling of the box. “Really, Alexia, what a thing to ask on
your
very
first showing.”

Lady Maccon only smiled.

Lord Akeldama sidled over and slotted her a little slip of paper upon which was written a series of numbers. “I have reserved
the eleven o’clock time slot especially for you, my dear, and will begin monitoring all frequencies at that time starting
a week from today.” He bustled off and reappeared with a faceted crystalline valve. “And here is this, tuned to my frequency,
just in case the apparatus you employ is less progressive than my own.”

Alexia tucked the little slip of paper and the crystalline valve into one of the hidden pockets of her new parasol. “Does
any other private residence own one?” she wondered.

“Difficult to know,” replied Lord Akeldama. “The receiver
must
be mounted upon the roof, so one could conceivably hire a dirigible for air reconnaissance and float about looking for them,
but I hardly think that an efficient approach. They are very dear, and there are few private individuals who could see to
the expense. The Crown, of course, has two, but others? I only have the list of official compatibility protocols: that is
a little under one hundred aethographors dotted about the empire.”

Reluctantly, Alexia realized that time was getting on, and if she intended to leave for Scotland, she had much to do in the
space of one night. For one thing, she would have to send round to the queen to alert her to the fact that her muhjah would
be missing meetings of the Shadow Council for the next few weeks.

She made her excuses to Lord Akeldama. Madame Lefoux did the same, so that the two ladies found themselves exiting his residence
at the same time. They paused to take leave of one another on the stoop.

“Do you really propose to float to Scotland tomorrow?” inquired the Frenchwoman, buttoning her fine gray kid gloves.

“I think it best I go after my husband.”

“Should you travel alone?”

“Oh, I shall take Angelique.”

Madame Lefoux started slightly at the name. “A Frenchwoman? Who is that?”

“My maid, inherited from the Westminster Hive. She is a dab hand with the curling iron.”

“I am certain she is, if she was once under Countess Nadasdy,” replied the inventor with a kind of studied casualness.

Alexia felt there was some kind of double meaning to the comment.

Madame Lefoux did not give her the chance for further inquiry, as she nodded her good-bye, climbed into a waiting hackney,
and was gone before Lady Maccon had time to say more than a polite good night.

Professor Randolph Lyall was impatient, but no one would ever guess it to look at him. Partly, of course, because currently
he looked like a slightly seedy and very hairy dog, skulking about the bins in the alley next to Lord Akeldama’s town house.

How much time
, he was wondering,
could possibly be required to take tea with a vampire?
A good deal, apparently, if Lord Akeldama and Lady Maccon were involved. Between the two of them, they could talk all four
legs off a donkey. He had encountered them in full steam on only one memorable occasion and ever since had avoided the experience
assiduously. Madame Lefoux had been a surprise addition to the party, although she probably was not adding much to the conversation.
It was odd to see her out of her shop and paying a social call. He made a mental note: this was something his Alpha should
know about. Not that he had orders to watch the inventor. But Madame Lefoux
was
a dangerous person to know.