Magnificent Devices 07 - A Lady of Integrity (23 page)

Andrew swooped down and caught him under the arms, then, proceeding much more slowly than he had arrived, swam in the direction of the glow of the
Fancy
’s lamps.

If Claire could have shrieked a warning, she would have, for two men, enraged at the escape of someone who was not either of themselves, leaped upon Jake. Instead, bobbing against the bell’s cowling, she was forced to watch the frenzied splashing in the bottom of the bell. Jake came up, sucked in a breath, and in a moment a skinny leg thrashed under the glass lip.

That was all Claire needed.

With the force of the jet behind her, she dove for his pitiful white foot, grasped it in both hands, and pulled.

Jake came out of the bell as though he had been greased. Once they were clear, she did another backflip, grasped him around the chest, and followed as fast as her rucksack would take her in Andrew’s wake.

Jake’s arms went around her back and, though she was quite sure he had had his eighteenth birthday some time ago, he tucked his head against the straps on her chest like a small child and hung on for dear life.

The trail of bubbles led her to a great curving orb that likely locked into a larger gear above, where Andrew swam back and forth, the captain’s body dangling from his arms. What was he waiting for? They had less than thirty seconds to jet back to
Neptune’s Fancy
before both their friends drowned!

And then she realized what was missing.

Light.

The lamps of the undersea dirigible illuminated its way for at least fifty feet. But not even a glimmer was to be seen. No light.

No ship.

No Gloria.

Where in the name of all she held holy had they gone?

But there was no time to waste. Jake’s cheeks were already puffed in an effort to keep as much oxygen within as possible. She had no choice. They must return to the diving bell or the boy would drown right here in her arms.

She gestured to Andrew and he followed her, his greater speed telling her that the captain was close to expiring as well. When they reached the position where the bell had been, her eyes bugged out in horror.

It was gone.

Jake bumped the breathing globe with his head, forcing her to look up, and there she saw it, ascending as fast as it could, where no doubt they would report the escape and soldiers would be sent down to capture them.

Not if she could help it.

She had no idea how much propulsion was left in her rucksack, but there was not a second to waste. She jetted upward—stuffed Jake up under the lip of the bell as she passed—then swam up to the apex of it.

The eyes of the
campanero
were desperate as they met hers. Still, she shook her head and threw the lever on the cable, forcing it into the closed position with both hands. The bell shuddered to a stop, the occupants thrashing in their harnesses, kicking at Jake as he gasped for air.

Andrew rose up inside it, still hauling the captain, and before the latter could so much as inhale, two of the harnessed men released their latches and dropped on Andrew. Claire clung to the outside of the bell, watching helplessly as they hauled the breathing globe from Andrew’s head, tore the rucksack from him, and swung the scraping iron. He ducked, but it caught him a glancing blow and the impact was enough to render him so dizzy that he fell back into the water. If Jake, treading water below, had not managed to keep his head above the surface, he would have sunk, insensible.

And now the
campanero
scrambled off his perch and down the short metal ladder. He leaped on the men clinging to the one wearing the rucksack, and without another wasted second, they all plunged into the water, swam out from under the lip of the bell, and jetted off into the marine gloom, four sets of legs dangling and twisting like those of a species of kraken.

She hoped that was exactly what their fate would be, the wretches. Swiftly, she swam down the side of the immobilized bell and up inside it. Surfacing, she trod water and struggled to remove the breathing globe.

“Andrew!” she gasped when she finally got it off. “Is everyone all right? Andrew, dearest, speak to me.”

“’M all right,” Andrew mumbled, one hand pressed to the side of his head. He brought it away smeared with blood. “Stings like the devil.”

A quick examination ascertained that the edge of the scraper had grazed his scalp and, while bleeding rather alarmingly, the cut was not deep. “That is the salt water, dearest. It will help more than harm, if you can bear it.”

Captain Hollys said nothing, merely gazed at the bubbles of his erstwhile companions’ jet as they rose lazily through the water to the surface.

Jake’s eyes, hollow and yet fiercely alight, met Claire’s as she turned to him and laid a hand briefly to his cheek, as if even the evidence of her own eyes might have deceived her. “Hullo, Lady,” he said, still breathing hard as water ran in rivulets down his temples. “We’ve got a wee bit of a problem, it seems.”

While she could also take three men to safety, there was nowhere now to go. They could not rise on the diving bell’s normal trajectory, for nothing awaited them at the top but Ministry men. They could not jet away, for their sanctuary had inexplicably gone. And they could not rise to the surface like so many bubbles and hope for the best, as the convicts had been willing to do, because she had no idea where they might come up, and an attack by the kraken was almost certain.

All that their attempts at rescue had netted them was that first one, then two, and now four were imprisoned deep below the city, with all hope of help denied.

“Oh, dear,” Claire said on a long breath of despair.

23

“Holly! Ivy! You rascals, this is no time to take a flyer—Claude, Mr. Stringfellow—help me.”

Obligingly, Claude and the young middy loped down the gangway and took up positions to left and right. “Like this?”

“Yes,” Lizzie said. “Move slowly. The object is to herd them back up the ramp.”

But the two little hens had been penned in their aviary aboard
Athena
for far too long, and when Lizzie had made the mistake of leaving the door open while she filled their water container, they had taken advantage of her inattention and made a bid for freedom.

Now they ran about on the grassy field where visiting airships moored, yanking worms from the ground and snatching at blades of grass, neatly evading every effort to catch them.

“You’ll have to provide them a better reason to be in than out,” Tigg called from the hatch. “Try this.”

He tossed out a cold prawn from the collation the hotel had provided when they left, and, necks stretched out with curiosity, Holly and Ivy ran to investigate.

With relief, Lizzie threw it ahead of them up the ramp and Mr. Stringfellow closed the hatch behind them. “You’re a bad lot,” she told them affectionately as they tortured the succulent pink flesh. “But it’s my own fault for giving you the chance. I wouldn’t like being cooped up for most of a week, either.”

Claude joined them in the salon, where they helped themselves to the remainder of the sandwiches. It was nearly noon, and the fact that they’d had not a word from anyone was beginning to gnaw at the edges of Lizzie’s composure.

“We ought to have heard from someone by now.” Tigg checked the communications cage even though he’d only done so ten minutes before. “I hope nothing’s gone wrong.”

“The Lady would find a way to tell us if she were in danger.”

“How?” Claude asked around his lunch, honestly curious. “She’s on the bottom of the lagoon with kraken and convicts and goodness knows what else.”

“And Mr. Malvern and Gloria,” Lizzie pointed out. “The dirigibles have a communications system, too. Even if she had to steal something, she wouldn’t let us worry.”

A sound in the stern made Tigg jump to his feet. “There it is. The hummingbird we sent to Alice has come back.”

The young middy brought it in so they could all see Alice’s message, and unrolled the piece of paper tucked in the tube Tigg had rigged. Then he frowned and showed it to them. “This isn’t right. It’s the message we sent her, not a reply.”

“It came back without delivering its message?” Claude said, as though to clarify. “They’re not supposed to do that, are they?”

“The Lady’s pigeons always get where they’re supposed to go, because we have special ones that fly just among the flock’s ships,” Lizzie explained. “Tigg, it didn’t pick up a fault somehow when you took it apart?”

He shook his head. “Couldn’t have. The automaton itself is unchanged. I only removed the carrier and the long-range engine. No, there’s only one explanation—it couldn’t find the
Stalwart Lass
.”

“Impossible,” Lizzie said flatly. “All our pigeons have been to the
Lass
at least once. They found her in Scotland—in the Canadas—even in the West Indies that one time.”

“You don’t suppose something happened to Alice’s ship, do you?” Claude voiced the fear that had been niggling in Lizzie’s insides but that she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.

“That’s the only conclusion I can come to,” Tigg said slowly. “I think we had better lift and have a look ourselves.”

“The Lady told us to stay put until she and Gloria signaled us from the dirigible,” Lizzie objected. “We can’t very well go floating about over Venice.”

“Why not? The tourists do,” Claude said. “Ripping good fun.”

“Yes, but not in cargo ships. We’re five times bigger than the sightseeing balloons.”

“We’ll just say we’re lost and looking for the airfield,” Claude suggested. “After all, what can they do? Shoot us down with a cannon?”

“Yes, I think that’s exactly what they might do, if they knew what we were up to,” Tigg told him. “But I don’t see that we have a choice. It’s too strange for the hummingbird to come back without delivering its message. Alice and Maggie might need help.”

While Tigg told the automaton intelligence system and Mr. Stringfellow to prepare for lift, Lizzie and Claude ran down and released the ropes. When they were safely back aboard, he called “Up ship!” and
Athena
rose gracefully into the sky. She turned to the south and flew over the lagoon, Tigg keeping her well clear of the church towers and the tourist traffic over most of the city.

It pleased Lizzie no end to watch him pilot the ship. He stood at the tiller and kept her on her heading with one hand, so familiar with the mechanics of flying that he might almost be a part of the ship itself. He was a lieutenant now, but it would not surprise Lizzie if he had his captain’s bars by the time he reached his majority at twenty-one.

And then? Would he ask her to marry him?

Lizzie shivered with delight at the thought. Though they were both young, the Lady had approved his courting her. Not that Tigg needed anyone to give him permission to do what he thought was right, but all the same, if Claire had not approved, he would have felt honor bound to respect her wishes, no matter how Lizzie felt about the matter.

She could only be glad that such was not the situation. That the Lady trusted them both. And that they were together here in this strange place, where nothing seemed to go as you might expect and everything was twice as dangerous as you planned for.

“I’m going to take her higher so we can get a look at the impound yard on the Lido and stay out of firing range,” Tigg said, sounding every inch an aeronaut of Her Majesty’s Corps.

“I say, old man, I wasn’t really serious about that cannon,” Claude said from the viewing port.

“I am,” Tigg said, “and I’m not willing to take chances.”

The earth receded a little, until Venice laid itself out beneath them, all pink and cream and frills above, and rot and weed and death below. Lizzie recognized the ornate bubble shape of Saint Mark’s Cathedral, and then the exhibition grounds where only a handful of days ago she had paraded in the sun in her new dress. Then they were crossing the lagoon and the long, narrow shape of the Lido floated beneath them, cradling the city in its protective embrace.

“That’s odd,” Claude said. “I could swear that’s where my lot and I were swimming the other week, and the beach is quite … gone.”

“Can the water really come up so far?” Lizzie craned to see. “What a lucky thing we’re up here and not down there.”

“Let’s hope Alice and Maggie aren’t down there, either,” Tigg said. “I’m going to bring her round and take a pass over the impound yard. Keep your eyes peeled, as Snouts used to say, for the
Lass
’s double fuselage, Lizzie my girl.”

Lizzie smiled at the reminder. Except, as they both knew, Snouts had never called her “Lizzie my girl.” He was usually somewhat more terse and to the point.

Rapidly, she scanned the rows of impounded ships. Goodness, what a lot of them there were. Well, she could discount all the single fuselages, which left not all that many, and if you narrowed it down to the burnished bronzy-brown of the
Lass
’s canvas, you’d be left with …

“Tigg?”

“Out with it, love.”

“The
Lass
isn’t there. Is there more than one field?”

“No idea. Are you quite sure?”

“Quite sure, unless Alice has changed the coating she puts on her canvas. There’s nothing down there except something on fire, toward the middle.”

“On fire?”

Something in his grim tone penetrated straight to Lizzie’s heart, and she actually pressed a hand to her chest, as if to protect that sensitive organ. “You don’t think—surely—”

“I’ll bring her around once more, but we’d best be ready for a scarper—this place has guard towers and you know what that means.”

Lizzie certainly did. And when Tigg brought
Athena
around again, she barely had enough time for a glimpse at the burning wreckage before something pinged off the bottom of the gondola with a whine like a mosquito.

“Tigg!” Claude exclaimed. “That was a shot! Take us up!”

“Seven, vanes full vertical. Nine, full lift!”

The deck pressed against Lizzie’s boot soles as the ship gained altitude so fast that her ears popped, too. And then Tigg spun the wheel and brought
Athena
into full retreat northward, heading for the city at twice the speed with which she had approached.