The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire (14 page)

Gavin looked like someone had kicked his puppy. She knew she was being unreasonable, that she should apologize or offer to hear him out, but she couldn’t seem to do it.

“We’re ready up here,” she called over the gunwale.

Nathan had disembarked. The
Lady
was still floating a few feet above the ground, and her new wheels just barely cleared the green grass. Dr. Clef, also out of
his fugue, was hitching the horses to the front of the airship with Nathan’s help.

“Give it a little more power, my boy!” Dr. Clef called up.

Gavin went to the paraffin oil generator and adjusted the dials. The purring grew louder and more steam emerged. The endoskeleton glowed a little brighter, and the
Lady
rose higher, but only about a foot.

“Clear!” Nathan called from the horses, and flicked the reins. The four horses started forward, towing the ship, which slid forward at a quick, even pace.

“It works,” Alice said.

“So far,” Gavin said cautiously. “And we can come back for the wagon later. I’m just not so sure about the rest.”

Alice whistled, and whirligigs flew from a dozen different directions to hover in front of her, their brass parts glittering in the dying sunlight. Most of them were carrying at least one spider. “Thank you for your help,” she said. “We’re nearly set for the next step. Please stand ready.”

Looking excited, they flew up into the rigging like a cloud of mechanical bats.

“Do they understand
please
and
thank you
?” Gavin asked.

“They seem to work better when I use those words, so I do,” Alice said. “I can’t explain it, so I don’t try.” Her words came out curt.

“Look, Alice, I’m sorry I—”

“Oh look—the tracks!”

The railroad tracks ran alongside the road Alice,
Gavin, and Feng had taken into Luxembourg two days ago. No one was on them at the moment. Nathan guided the horses around until the airship was hovering just above the tracks.

“Down!” Nathan called.

With another glance at Alice, Gavin slowly powered down the generator. The blue glow lessened and the
Lady
sank like a woman settling into an armchair. Alice looked over the side. Kemp, Dr. Clef, and Nathan pushed and nudged the hull as it went down, making sure the new wheels lined up with the tracks. With a
clunk,
the ship dropped into place.

“Perfect,” Dr. Clef said. “Everything matches.”

“We have an hour before a train comes,” Gavin said. “So let’s hope this works.”

He put his hand over the green button on the newly mounted box on the deck, the one with half-carved ivy leaves on it, and paused. Several moments passed, and Alice finally said, “What’s the matter?”

“I hate to do this to her,” Gavin replied quietly. “It feels like I’m crippling my sister or my mother. But it needs to be done.”

He slapped the green button. In the rigging, all the automatons instantly came to attention. The spiders rushed over the ropes and the whirligigs spun into action. Under the new instructions Gavin had spun into their memory wheels, they unfastened the
Lady
’s outer envelope. Their tiny fingers popped seams with quick precision, and the sides of the envelope peeled away like petticoats to reveal a glowing wire corset beneath. Alice realized she felt a bit embarrassed, as if the
Lady
were undressing in public, and she told herself not to
be silly. The spiders dodged into the endoskeleton’s framework, and got to work on the interior balloons. As the last pieces of the envelope drooped away, the four interior ballonets deflated with an unhappy sigh, leaving a pile of cloth inside the curlicue endoskeleton. The outer layer of cloth dropped to the deck, and Alice found herself buried in silk. She struggled out of it and found Gavin emerging as well. His expression was sad.

“My ship,” he said.

But Alice could only manage a curt nod.

The endoskeleton, meanwhile, continued to hover, and the whirligigs rolled it up like an enormous piece of chicken wire with the deflated ballonets inside. It was still powered by the generator, however, so the roll hovered high above the deck. Without the additional lift of the envelope, the skeleton didn’t have the strength to lift the
Lady
’s hull, and the ropes kept it from floating away. Gavin swept silk away from the generator and powered it slowly down. The wire roll, which was the same length as the ship and about five feet in diameter, sank slowly to the deck, drooping ropes as it came. The whirligigs and spiders rode it down, and Alice could swear they were silently cheering. She and Gavin pushed the roll a little to one side so it wouldn’t land on the helm and finally eased it down to the starboard side of the deck. The hull creaked and settled as the weight shifted. Nathan snapped his reins, and the four horses jerked forward. It took them a moment to get started, but at last they moved ahead, pulling the newly wheeled airship smoothly down the tracks.

“We’re not done,” Gavin said to the whirligigs, which rushed down to the wagon and, working as teams, hauled up two large canvas signs. Gavin hung one over one side of the ship and Alice hung the other over the opposite side. In garish letters, they read
Kalakos Cirque International du Automates et d’Autres Merveilles.

“It’s like putting whore’s makeup on a queen,” Gavin muttered.

Alice was sure she wasn’t meant to hear that comment, so she ignored it. She climbed down a rope ladder, dropped to the ground, and trotted a short distance from the tracks to get a good look. The airship’s gunwales looked like the railings that graced the top of most circus wagons. Silk covered the name
The Lady of Liberty
painted across the stern, and the banner signs completed the trick. The airship looked like a tall wagon or high train car being hauled somewhere for repairs or a bit of publicity. Alice climbed back up. Kemp was back on deck, along with Gavin. Nathan and Dr. Clef drove the horses below. Click had disappeared, but Alice was confident he would show up again. He always did.

“Go below and hide, Kemp,” Alice said. “You’re illegal here. Take the little ones with you.”

“Shall I bring tea first, Madam?” Kemp said.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Alice replied.

Kemp withdrew. The horses were making good time on the tracks. Already they were nearing the boundary of the city. The fields and trees were nearly dark, and the sounds of the city—voices, horses, clattering machinery, laughter, music—floated past in snips and pieces beneath shy stars. A faint breeze from
the country brought smells of earth and hay. Alice drummed her mechanical hand on the gunwale with little clicking sounds.

“I tried to warn you,” Gavin said quietly. “And I’m not going to fall all over myself apologizing.”

“Don’t expect you to.”

He shrugged casually, but Alice could see the stiffness in his posture. “I didn’t bring the plague on myself, and I don’t like it that you’re treating me as if I did.”

The anger flared again. “What are you talking about? I gave up
everything
for you, Gavin Ennock. I gave up a marriage and abandoned my position in society and, God help me, I even destroyed the British Empire, all to save you.”

“You wanted to watch me work and whatever you saw scared you.” Gavin flung his cap away and spread his arms. “Get a good look, Alice. I’m the monster your dear aunt made me.”

“Don’t you bring Aunt Edwina into this!” Alice cried. “She was just as insane as… as…”

“As I am?” Gavin finished for her. “Go ahead. Blame me. Blame her. It doesn’t matter. In a few months I’ll be dead. Then you can rush to England and see if Norbert will take you back.”

He stalked over to the other side of the deck and stared viciously out at nothing. Alice turned her back on him, stiff with fury. The city slid past with a faint rumble and scrape of train wheels. The
Lady
swayed a little. It felt distinctly odd, the familiar rhythm of a railway car on the open deck of an airship. Some of Alice’s anger gave way to nerves. Somewhere out there,
Glenda and Simon and Phipps were looking for her. For all she knew, they were one street over, or just around the corner. She shivered and glanced back at Gavin. The anger came back. It didn’t matter that it was the plague that—

Yes. It
did
matter. She looked back at the streets and buildings, now only lit by occasional streetlights and yellow lamps in windows. This part of the city was mostly residential, and there was little street traffic at night. Three of the doors each had ragged red P’s painted on them. The deserted sidewalks and cobblestones suddenly seemed an echo of her life. The plague definitely mattered. It was
all
that mattered. It had stolen her entire family and her future, turned her into a fugitive, and forced her to make choices that would change the entire world. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t
right
. And it made her so
angry.

Movement caught her eye. A tattered, gaunt woman shuffled along the sidewalk as the airship glided past. She wore a battered straw hat and sores split her skin. The light from a streetlamp made her flinch. Plague zombie. A lifetime of reflexes made Alice flinch away, but once she recovered, she turned to tell Gavin, but then thought otherwise. What business was it of his?

Alice scuttled down the rope ladder. The airship moved slowly, and Alice easily dropped to the street. Nathan and Dr. Clef didn’t see her and continued on with the horses. She didn’t want to shout and call attention to herself, so she simply dashed over to the zombie woman, pulling off the glove that covered her left hand as she went. It would be easy enough to cure the poor woman and catch the ship back up. She couldn’t save
her family, but she could save this woman, and so many others like her. She had to do it, or what was the point of everything that had gone before?

The zombie woman barely reacted when Alice slashed her, but straightened fairly quickly. Much of the misery left her face, replaced with relief. She blinked and looked around, like a blind person seeing color again. Alice’s heart lightened. Every life she changed for the better made her own existence a bit more worthy. The zombie—now a full person again—wandered away with an expression of wonder.

“Excusez-moi!”
Another woman Alice hadn’t noticed stepped out of a doorway.
“Êtes-vous qu’elle?”

Alice started, and her light mood evaporated. “Am I she, who?” she asked cautiously, also in French. The woman was young and very pretty, with enormous blue eyes.

“The one who cures people,” she clarified. “People with the plague.”

The airship-cum-wagon was pulling out of sight, but if this woman also needed help, Alice didn’t see how she could refuse.

“I am she,” she said.

The woman abruptly caught Alice in a hard embrace. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you. You are an angel.” She broke away, suddenly embarrassed, and said, “But where is your friend?”

“My friend?”

“The one whose music gives you power to cure them.”

“Oh.” Alice thought about correcting her, then thought the better of it. “He’s… he’s nearby.”

“There are more who need you. Many more. Can you come? Please?”

The airship was curving away, nearly gone. Alice chewed her lip. She was still angry, but she wasn’t stupid, either. “I can’t come right now, but I will, I promise. Where?”

“To the Church of Our Lady,” she said, “at the top of the hill in the center of the city. Ask for Monsignor Adames.”

“I promise,” Alice repeated, and ran back to the clattering airship. At the front with the horses, Dr. Clef was telling Nathan, “The closer one comes to its position in time, the farther one wanders from its position in space.”

She had just reached the ladder when a trio of men on horses cantered around the corner, the horses’ iron-shod hooves clattering on the cobblestones. The men wore smart blue uniforms, and one of them carried a torch. The woman fled into the shadows.

“You!” one of the men shouted at the airship in French. “Halt!”

Nathan and Dr. Clef stopped the team. Gavin poked his head over the gunwale, a startled and worried expression on his face. Alice hurried up the ladder, her hands chilly with apprehension.

“Where were you?” Gavin hissed at her.

“Never mind,” she whispered back. “Get out that nightingale.”

“What?”

“Just do it!”

“Yes, Officer?” Nathan asked pleasantly, also in French. He sucked at his pipe with outward calm, but
Alice could see tension in him. Dr. Clef had slid to the side of the team opposite the two police officers and was keeping his head down, away from the torchlight.

“What are you doing out at this hour?” the first man snapped. He was older, and wasn’t carrying the torch.

“We are with the circus and had to move one of our cars,” Nathan replied. “It was the only time the tracks were free.”

“Where are your papers?”

“Here, sir. All signed and stamped.” Nathan drew a set from his pocket and handed them over. The man with the torch held the light so his superior could examine them. The third man took his horse around the other side of the disguised airship, clearly to make sure no one slipped away and vanished. Alice held her breath, hoping they would take the explanation and leave.

The officer gave the papers only a cursory glance. “We have reports of certain dangerous criminals from England and America. A woman with brown hair and a younger man with pale blond hair.”

“I was afraid of that,” Gavin whispered. “The Third Ward has connections all over Europe. Phipps must have talked to the police.”

“I’m from Ireland,” Nathan said.

“What about him?” The older officer pointed at Dr. Clef, who was still huddled behind the horse.

“He’s mute, and an idiot,” Nathan said. “His mother was a sideshow freak and he was born funny, but horses love him.”

“I still need to search this wagon,” the officer said.

Alice’s heart beat fast now. Before she could lose her
nerve, she shouted over the gunwale in her heavily accented French, “What is wrong down there? We should not stop for long, you know.”

“Who’s there?” the lead officer called up. He drew a sword. “Show yourself!”