The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire (6 page)

Glenda Teasdale, her blouse and skirt looking worse for the wear, stood behind the other ladder-back chair while Simon d’Arco, equally disheveled, hovered near the bed. A tiny lamp shed grudging light over the table as the sun slid away. The quarters, part of what passed for a hotel in this little town, were dank and cramped compared to her spacious rooms at Third Ward headquarters back in London, but Phipps refused to voice a single complaint, even to herself. What sort of commander sent her troops into conditions that she herself refused to endure?

“We were close,” Glenda said in that flat voice that
was still new to Phipps. “So close. If that bloody Dr. Clef hadn’t shown up—”

“It’s fine,” Phipps interrupted, still pacing. “They’re traveling by airship. Very hard to hide an airship. We
will
catch them; we
will
bring them back to London; we
will
see them put on trial.”

“It’s just… We’re very tired, ma’am,” Simon said.

She suddenly realized what she was doing. They had to remain standing while their commanding officer was on her feet. “Sit, sit,” she ordered. “I think better on my feet.”

Simon dropped onto the bed while Glenda perched on the chair. The woman looked odd in skirts. Ever since she joined the Ward, she had put aside feminine clothing in favor of more practical male attire, like what Phipps wore. However, when female agents traveled abroad, especially in places where the Third Ward had less influence and no actual authority, they typically wore skirts to avoid attracting attention. Phipps continued to wear her uniform, partly because it conveyed authority whether she had it or not, and partly—she admitted only to herself—because it provided her with a wall that made her feel safe.

“They’re heading for Luxembourg, no doubt, judging from the general direction they took and the fact that it’s a major trade city,” Phipps said, thinking out loud. “Alice will want to spread her cure there. And that’s a fine thing for us. The Crown has strong ties with Luxembourg, and I can force a fair amount of cooperation with the local gendarmerie. They’ll help us find Ennock and Michaels in no time. The mechanicals will let us catch them up fairly quickly, so we won’t lose much time.”

“Maybe we should check the hotels first, Lieutenant,” Glenda said. “They’ll have to stay somewhere, and if we find them without starting a fuss with the police first, so much the better.”

“I like that,” Phipps said with a small nod. “We’ll start there, then use the police.”

“Good plan.” Simon paused, then added, “How long are we going to chase them?”

Phipps turned. The monocle that framed her left eye amplified low light and let her see better—a clockworker invention she had confiscated nearly a year before the incident that had claimed her left arm—but she didn’t need it to read the tension in Simon’s body.

“We’ll pursue them until we catch them, Simon,” she said evenly. “There’s no question.”

“Only I was wondering,” Simon replied in a low voice, “whether it’ll be worth the cost.”

“Worth the cost?” Phipps repeated. “Simon, they are dangerous
criminals.
In addition to releasing a weapon from the Doomsday Vault, they let Dr. Clef out of the Ward. Have you forgotten him?”

Simon didn’t answer. Dr. Clef worried Phipps. He was a classic clockworker—completely absorbed by his work and utterly oblivious to the impact any of it might have on the world around him. His Impossible Cube was one of the most powerful inventions she had ever seen, and thank God it had been destroyed. Unfortunately, he was running about loose in the world with Gavin Ennock, a new-made clockworker. The thought of the two of them creating world-class inventions together made her sweat ice water and lent new urgency to her need to capture the little group before
China got hold of them. Every hour she regretted not killing Alice Michaels beneath Third Ward headquarters. It was the biggest mistake of her career, and now the world was paying for it.

“Dr. Clef will probably be dead in a few weeks,” Simon said at last. “As for the doomsday weapon Alice and Gavin released… Well, we can’t put the cure back into the bottle, and England’s clockworkers will be gone within the year. If we let them go to China, they might be able to ensure the same thing happens to the Dragon—”

“You shut it, Simon d’Arco!” Glenda was on her feet again. Two spots of color rose in her cheeks. “I’m going to capture Alice Michaels—
Lady
Michaels—and drag her back to London by the hair if I have to. Every damned mile over broken glass, if I can arrange it.”

“Why, Glenda?” Simon asked. “What for?”

“What do I have, Simon?” Glenda snarled. “The Third Ward is dead, by the Queen’s order. Once the final clockworker dies, we’ll have no reason to exist anyway. Maybe a few of us will hang about to guard the Doomsday Vault, but nothing more. And where will I go? I’m a
woman
, Simon. Shall I become a seamstress? A schoolteacher? A parlor maid? A wife? For nearly ten years I’ve been hunting clockworkers and keeping England safe and I brought Alice Michaels into the Ward because she was small and timid and I felt solidarity for my fellow woman. Now that bloody bitch destroyed the Ward and I have nothing. I’ll see her hang for treason, and I’ll piss on her grave.”

“Oh,” was all Simon said.

“You may sit down again, Glenda,” Phipps said
quietly, and Glenda reluctantly obeyed. “And I don’t answer to you, Simon,” she added.

“Yes, ma’am.” He shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “But I… I just…”

Phipps leveled a hard gaze at him. “Simon, I want the full truth from you, as a gentleman and an officer of the Third Ward.”

He stiffened. “Ma’am.”

“I brought you and Glenda on this assignment because you are my absolute best agents. I am not saying this as flattery or to puff you up. It’s simple truth. However, I am also fully aware of your… romantic proclivities and of your feelings toward your former partner. I don’t much care about the former, since you are an officer of the Ward, and as such, you have my complete loyalty and support. As for the latter, I assumed that your loyalty toward the Ward would be the overriding concern, but now I must ask, Agent d’Arco: Is your loyalty pure? Will your feelings for Gavin Ennock get in the way of our mission? Answer honestly. You will not be reprimanded, but I do need to know if I must send for someone else, someone who can be a fully capable man.”

Simon got to his feet. His face was stony, but Phipps’s monocle told her that the heat in his body had shifted into a pattern she associated with anger, exactly the emotion her final remark had been calculated to engender. He stood at attention, unconsciously making himself stiff and hard as a fully capable man should be.

“Lieutenant,” he barked, “I am willing and able to carry out any orders you give me, as my oath to the Third Ward dictates.”

“Excellent, Agent d’Arco,” Phipps replied. “Your hard work will not go unnoticed. Dismissed.”

Simon saluted. The door snapped shut behind him, and his footsteps faded down the hotel hallway as he went to his own room. Glenda coughed.

“Fully capable man,” she said. “You know how to hit below the belt, Lieutenant.”

“Hm,” Phipps said, and stared out the window, though now it was dark and there was nothing to see.

“Just between us,” Glenda said, “and knowing that I’m perfectly happy to come along because I want to see Alice pay, why
are
you doing this? You did let them go, down in the Doomsday Vault.”

Phipps chose her words carefully. “Simon persuaded me not to kill Alice, but only because she had stopped Edwina Michaels’s device from exploding and killing us all. Simon said I owed her, and he was right. That debt is paid, and now it’s time for Alice and Gavin to pay their other debt to us. To the Empire.”

“That doesn’t quite answer my question,” Glenda said. “Why are you
here
? You never go into the field.”

“I used to,” Phipps said. “It’s where I started. My father was a military man, and he was away quite a lot. But he always sent home money to make sure my mother and I had food and clothes. And his brother, my uncle, visited often to ensure there was a man about.”

For a moment, the reflection in the window showed a Susan Phipps much younger, without the streaks of silver in her hair, and with the smooth features of a girl not yet twenty, but who still held the ramrod posture expected by her father, her dear father, who never
showed emotion but who could grind her to the ground with a tiny frown or fling her to joyful skies with a simple nod. The reflection showed her younger self hurrying home on one of the rare days when Father was in town. He met her at the door of their row house with two carpetbags in his hand.

“The world is upside down,” he said simply. “I do not wish to live here any longer, so we are moving.”

Susan knew better than to ask
why
, but she felt she deserved more information, so she said, “I don’t understand, Father.”

“I found the love letters. As far as I am concerned, your disloyal mother is dead, and so is my brother.”

Susan remembered the overwhelming despair, the fear, and most of all, the anger. Not at Father, of course, but at Mother, who had committed such a betrayal of loyalty. The bedrock of Susan’s life, her parents’ marriage, had crumbled into sand, and it was Mother’s fault. It had to be. Otherwise Father would be in the wrong, and that was unthinkable.

“Loyalty, Susan,” Father had said as they climbed into a cab. “Loyalty.”

For a while, Susan wondered if Father’s reference to Mother’s death was metaphorical or literal. She never heard from Mother again, but neither did the police come for Father. No one was even reported missing, and for the first time Susan wondered what sort of work Father did for the military. Eventually Susan dismissed the matter as unimportant. A few years later, Father introduced her to Lieutenant Lawrence Garrison, who asked if she wanted to join the Third Ward. When she replied in the affirmative, Father gave her a small nod.

Phipps’s hands clutched the windowsill. Her right fingers turned white, and her left ones left dents in the wood. “I made a terrible mistake when I let them go, Glenda,” she said, “so it is my duty to set it right. Gavin and Alice unloosed several dangers into the world, and we
must
bring them into custody before they do further harm.”

Glenda gave her a long look, then rose. “I understand. If I may, Lieutenant?”

Phipps nodded a dismissal and continued to stare out the window.
I’ll find them, Father. I’ll set the world aright for you. For us.

A
lice glared down at the unyielding numbers. They glared stubbornly back, hard little loops and corners that wouldn’t move no matter how hard she tried. Twice she had rubbed them off the page and run through them again, but they always came out exactly the same. She resisted the urge to throw the book overboard. Instead she snapped it shut and slipped it into her trouser pocket so she could lean on the gunwale to think while cool morning air washed over her like water.

In the distance ahead, airships of all sizes and designs floated, cruised, and hovered above the sprawling city of Luxembourg like tame clouds. London controlled airship traffic, but Luxembourg apparently didn’t. Alice glanced over her shoulder at Gavin, lean and strong at the helm of their ship. The rising sun caught his pale blond hair and turned it nearly white, making a stark contrast with the torn black clothes he still wore from last night. His sharp features and long
jaw made her hunger for a kiss. He caught her eye and grinned that grin that always sent a delicious shiver down her back. And she felt all that when he was silent. When he sang, his voice melted her soul. She’d follow him into a volcano if he only sang to her first, and a part of her was glad he didn’t seem to know that yet.

And there it was. In the end, she had betrayed her country for him. She had broken into the Doomsday Vault and released the clockwork cure, an act which would eventually destroy the British Empire as she knew it. And all for the simple reason that Alice, Lady Michaels, had fallen in love with Gavin Ennock. What would the history books say about that? The thought that schoolchildren might one day read about her both fascinated and frightened her. What gave her the right to change the course of mankind for the love of a man?

The book of figures sat heavy in her pocket. Alice leaned out into the fresh breeze, trying to feel the freedom she knew carried Gavin forward. All her life she had followed the rules of traditional society, done as her traditional father had told her. And then Gavin had innocently blasted her life to pieces. Now she was spending her days with not one, but
three
strange men, and no other woman around to chaperone. Frightening. Exhilarating. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff with one foot over.

Below the ship lay a rumpled checkerboard of fields and pastures bordered by hedgerows and stone walls that surrounded the city proper. Arteries of rail and cobblestone ran in and out of the place. Canals threaded through it, and church spires pointed at Alice like
accusing fingers. Castles with rounded walls took up the hills, and square houses occupied the slopes. It looked both foreign and familiar at the same time.

Several miles from the city, the
Lady of Liberty
’s blue glow dimmed, and the ship began to sink. Startled, Alice turned to Gavin, who was moving from the generator back to the helm. “Is something wrong with her?”

“We can’t dock at the shipyard,” he said. “Not if Phipps has gotten word out about us and what the
Lady
looks like. But I think I know a place.”

They came down in a weed-filled pasture surrounded by a scraggly hedge on three sides and a stand of trees on the fourth. Near the stand of trees were a small stone farmhouse and a large stable, both half in ruin. Kemp, Dr. Clef, and Feng emerged from below to see what was going on. Sunlight gleamed on Dr. Clef’s brass goggles, and he pushed them up on his forehead.

“Cut power to twenty percent, Alice,” Gavin ordered.

Alice leaned over the generator and restricted the flow of air and paraffin oil. The machine responded to her precise touch, and she thought about opening it up to poke around inside. Alice wasn’t a clockworker, but she was startlingly talented with the machines clockworkers created. Usually, only a clockworker could create and maintain the fantastic steam-driven inventions that let Britain and China dominate the world. In her short time with the Third Ward, Alice had encountered a number of mind-bending inventions that frightened her out of her wits. Weightless metal and walking trees were just the beginning.