Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) (12 page)

“
But the spy in Niflheim,” Meredith interrupted him. “You were both being watched, weren’t you? You and Professor Sorensen?”

“
Perhaps.”

“
So perhaps he isn’t fully trusted by the Council. I’ve learned about something called the Atlas Club. It’s some kind of fanatical branch of the Leviacrum, going right back to the original founders. What if they know everything you know, and they are—”

Father stopped her with his
outstretched hand. “I won’t tell you again. Leave it, Meredith. Leave it right there and don’t go near it anymore, do you understand? These are dangerous people. They have made princes and politicians disappear before now for sniffing around dark and uninvited places. Like I said, the only reason they leave me to my devices is because they’re hoping I can lead them to pay dirt in Subterranea. And because I don’t bother them, or question them, or even mention words like ‘Atlas Club’ or ‘the rule of eight’. Investigating won’t get you anything but investigated. Look and they’ll be watching. Speak out and they’ll silence you for good. Is that clear?”

“
Yes, Father,” Sonja replied.

“
Meredith?” His stern gaze bore into her.

“All right, Father. I’ll do as you say.” A lie, which he seemed to recognise with a tilt of his head.

“
Fine. We’ll talk some more tomorrow—no, better make it the day after, I’ve some calls to make in town.”

“
And there’s the Steam Fair,” Sonja reminded him.

“
What about it?”

“
We’re
going.
Or I’ll scupper your whole expedition overnight.”

He laughed. “
Why so interested in the fair? A lot of preening showmen and their flash-in-the-pan gadgets. Might be good for a laugh, though, now that you mention it. And it will give me an excuse to meet with Simeon before I depart for Africa. Hmm, I might be able to get us tickets on the late morning shuttle, have you there around two.”

“
Twelve-thirty. It has to be for twelve-thirty.”

“
Sonja?” He playfully squinted at her. “Who are we meeting at twelve-thirty?”

“
Never you mind, Father.” She blushed and left the room, trying hard to walk like a lady before a dash of energy got the best of her and she vanished with an ungainly skip.

“
Merry, who’s this mystery person?” Father finished disassembling his apparatus. “Anyone I know?”

It
pained her to admit she hadn’t been told, so Meredith shrugged.

Soon she was alone again with the portrait on the wall. More a
lone than ever. All she had were questions—a hot air balloon full of questions, tethered absolutely to a ground she could no longer see. In the space of a single morning, everything and everyone she’d known was now unrecognisable. For goodness sake, she needed
something
of her own to latch on to or she’d go stark raving mad.

Was Mother still watching?

Playing with the pocket watch in her sweaty hands seemed as good a distraction as any. Better than any, in fact. For the postwoman arrived presently with a parcel from Europe—the airmail stamps stood out a mile—and Meredith now had her mystery to solve. To hell with promises.

Like Father
and his expedition, or Sonja and her rendezvous, this was something she absolutely
had
to see through to its end. Right now, it felt like the only thing she could call her own.

She tore the wrap
ping off and clutched the well-worn, cork-bound book to her breast. The receipt card fell to the carpet, landing face-side up. It read:

1 Used Volume
– Acceptable condition, some wear to spine and cover, some notations in margins, signed by author

Shadow Players: A Study of Esoteric Societies and Modern
Conspiracies, 1893

By R.B. Villiers

Four pounds and two shillings...PAID IN FULL

Regards,

Ebony Eyes Books, 117 Rue de Saint Martin, Marseilles

Chapter Six

The Steam Fair

In all the years Derek had
attended the great Steam Fair in the shadow of the Roundhouse Circus, London, the air had never felt so clogged, so thick upon his chest. The absence of even a breeze didn’t help matters, nor did the sheer number of contraptions spitting out smoke—one could, from a distance, mistake them for battlefield artillery. But it was something
inside
the fumes this year, an unpleasant sulphurous component that struck a match on his sinuses whenever he inhaled anything more than a shallow breath.

Mother and Father didn
’t seem to notice it at all as they strode from one exhibit to the next in mute fascination, goggle straps fastened too tightly under the brims of their worst and oldest hats that hardly stood out from the other patrons’—an exceedingly rare concession for Father in particular, who ordinarily went to great pains to express his social status at these public events. He was a snob, and proud of it, saw it as his duty. The Aurics were aristocracy in everything but name. With Derek’s imminent appointment to the Leviacrum, their hopes were set on titles—overdue titles and renown for the Auric name. Woe betide anything that might impede that...or anyone.

Derek wiped the moisture off his goggles and scanned the rows of
prototype machines for a sign of Sonja McEwan. The note he’d slipped her before they’d parted in Keswick was bold, perhaps too bold, and certainly improper. Any such advance would be frowned upon by both families; yet if the alternative was to not see her at all before his induction into the Leviacrum, well, that was unacceptable. She was sixteen, soon to be seventeen, and he had to
know
if she esteemed him as highly as he did her, before he made a complete ass of himself.

If she did,
and it was truly more than a girlish infatuation for her teacher, he would have to pre-empt her ritual introduction to society. With haste. The idea of London’s young dandies sweeping her off her feet while he bided his time, waiting for a permitted and propitious moment—hell, this
was
the propitious moment. His heart screamed it over the grinds and whistles of these rapacious metallic saplings of new industry.

Whatever happened, he couldn
’t lose her to propriety. But unfortunately, Mother and Father would never assent—her family was too notorious.

S
o something had to give.

He wryly tipped
his top hat to the loose banner slung between two flagpoles. It read, Ambition Soars, The World Is Yours.

Well, this is the age of innovation.

She suddenly strolled into view at the head of a fresh influx of visitors—Miss Sonja McEwan, alert to the world as her lovely big hazel-grey eyes took in the wonders around her. She’d just arrived on an airship whose name he couldn’t make out through the steam cloud. Her sister was with her, as was her father—the infamous Ralph McEwan, hijacker of the discovery of Subterranea, if one believed the gossip. Derek instinctively took one step toward her, halted in the mud, then shuffled back discreetly when he realised the certain end that rash approach would bring.

He stole behind a group of automobile racers who waved their flat
caps at a glamour puss sashaying across a nearby podium—she was there to promote the latest speed vehicle, and loved the attention. Derek helped himself to a newspaper that was tucked under a driver’s arm. He opened it and used it as cover while he watched the McEwans making their way behind the exhibits, toward the Roundhouse Circus.

He cringed, let the pages flop to his waist. Was this what he
’d been reduced to—spying on a schoolgirl? He was unfit to hold a position in the Leviacrum, unfit to call himself a gentleman, a damned disgrace to higher apes. If a man’s heart could reduce him to this, maybe he was better off without one.

He scrunched
the newspaper up and shoved it back under the driver’s arm, before heading for the Big Top.

The packed circus, a two-tiered circular behemoth several hundred feet high, formerly the derelict ruins of the aborted first attempt to construct a Leviacrum tower in London, had almost finished its first show of the day. Glimpses of high-wire acts, and daredevil flying machines sputtering coloured smoke to form words and shapes in the air inside the colossal scaffold left Derek grinning. He couldn’t help it. Some of the most amazing sights he’d seen in his life had been inside the Roundhouse arena, and with this current sprint in technological advancement, he could only imagine what effect these new engineering wonders would have on today’s youth.

Hundred
s of stalls and vendors circled the outside of the arena, selling everything from candy floss to steam-powered skeet launchers and rapid-fire rifles, from hot chestnuts to a ‘Have Your Portrait Drawn By An Automaton in 30 Seconds’ service.

Families swarmed around the various novelty acts, such as
an electric eel that could emit messages in Morse Code—or so its slippery owner claimed—and especially The Levitating Man, a young fellow who could rise fifty feet into the air at the end of a tether, with no discernible means of uplift. It had to be a magician’s trick, but Derek was damned if he could figure it out. Another man on a ladder swiped a sword over the rising fellow’s head, to prove the protagonist wasn’t being pulled up by any kind of line.

Sonja McEwan appeared
equally puzzled by it, writing secret theories in midair with her gloved finger as she looked the act up and down several times. She then seemed to sense Derek’s presence and swivelled. Feigned surprise when he caught her eye, then blushed and coyly turned away. She tugged at her sister to move on.

Meredith
warded him off with a sharp glance in his direction. A little too sharp for his liking. He thought about doffing his hat, taking this opportunity to formally introduce himself to Sonja’s family—hell, to get it over with—but a flood of patrons leaving the circus swept between them, an impossible torrent to ford as the arena held forty thousand people at full capacity and the show had only just finished. He was bustled to one side, and soon found himself forced back toward the exhibition field, fingers clamped on the brim of his hat to keep it in place.

He surrendered
for the time being, cursing the species.

A quarter
hour later, he caught up with his parents outside the Tarot tent. Father hated to say it, but Mother’s guaranteed long life of good fortune and future grandchildren named Ned and Ruby—sired by Derek, no less—was emphatically not worth the three guineas he’d paid for it.

“
Oh, and what
is
a fitting price for such life-affirming news, pray?” she asked him, beaming rather too grandmotherly for Derek’s liking.

“
There’s news and then there’s
news,
Winifred. This was neither. I’ve never heard so much tosh.”

“
Pssh. Our understanding of the paranormal is growing all the time, don’t you know. Not everything is within your primitive logical grasp any more, Sebastian.”

He muttered something abou
t “especially those three guineas”.

They walked on toward the luncheon tent
, several hundred yards away at the other side of the field, stopping again and again to greet Father’s colleagues and Mother’s friends. Derek couldn’t engage beyond one-word answers and polite nods. His attentions were captive to a mysterious magnetic north, one he sensed but couldn’t quite locate in the crowds, spinning him every which way like a fidgety compass needle.

A chorus
of horns sounded off to the right. Mother playfully craned her neck sideways to catch Derek’s darting glance in that direction. “Have you seen the automobiles yet?” She smiled, seemed to recognise his distraction. “Why don’t you go explore for a while. Meet us in the luncheon tent shortly.”

“
Thank you, Mother. Don’t mind if I do.” He kissed her cheek.

“
Start by paying her a compliment...whoever she is.”

He swallowed.
How much does she...?
“I don’t know what you mean.”

Mother gave a gentle, vacant nod
, then returned to her friends.

After completing an entire circuit of the exhibits, taki
ng care to dodge his old teammates from football—he was almost caught offside once or twice in the attempt—Derek slumped into a frustrated malaise near the sporting set-ups. Of a sudden, a prickly paranoia made him back up against a wire mesh fence. The perimeter of a tennis court. But not any old tennis court; the lines glistened, strips of some copper-like metal, while the line judges
and
the umpire were in fact jerky automaton figures croaking out phrases like, “Fault,” “First service” and “Quiet, please, ladies and gentlemen!” It was at once eerie and startling to see machines dressed in purple and green uniforms, as almost exact replicas of their human counterparts, employed to adjudicate something so trivial as a racquet sport at a fair.