The officer spread out his arms. “This is merely one of the lounge areas we will see on our brief tour, fitted with observation panes. We will also see the dining area, one of the cabins, and the engine room. The airship is two hundred forty-five meters long, forty-one meters in diameter, with a volume of two hundred thousand cubic meters. We use hydrogen in ballonets, cells of bags full of gas, to gain lift and they are safely stored within the outer skin of the airship within the aluminum frame. At all times you are safe within the airship. However, passengers and crew are not permitted to smoke.”
Everyone chuckled nervously.
“The airspeed in a Waldhar Dirigible can achieve one hundred twenty-nine kilometers per hour. That’s not quite as fast as the fastest train, but I can tell you, that it’s a great deal smoother.” He smiled and rocked back on his heels. Clearly, the passengers liked his affability. The gray muttonchops at his jowls gave him the appearance of some venerable old sea captain, jauntily telling his tales of the sea.
Leopold folded his arms and scowled.
“The Valkyrie class usually flies at an altitude of nine hundred meters, but she can fly higher, particularly for long voyages across the sea. And here. Already you can see out the windows how high we are. But this is no reflection on how high we usually dock. You have seen the docking towers, and with our steam-powered lifts, it eliminates all that walking upstairs, no?” He gestured for everyone to rise. “Let us take a peek into the captain’s deck and then we will look at our luxurious passenger staterooms.”
Leopold followed the crowd, carefully watching Mingli’s expression as she peered into each space; the lounges, the crew quarters, the well-appointed staterooms, and finally the engine room.
The large engine, painted shiny black with gold trim, released a puff of steam as the officer spoke, waxing poetic on its many attributes and “horse power.” Leopold watched the heavy piston slowly churn, turning the wheel that turned a belt that moved the propellers. There was another engine just like it several yards away.
As the officer/guide led the group away, Mingli grabbed Leopold’s arm and pulled him back into the shadows of the huge ribs of the airship’s body. He said nothing as the crowd disappeared through a metal portal and waited to see what the confounded woman had to say now.
The engine room was hot with a loud hum of idling engines and hissing steam, but now that the people had left, the engineers pushed levers and checked gauges. There was a rolling lurch as the ship was released from its moorings and the engines chugged to life, belching steam and smoke through its pipes.
Leopold peered over her shoulder out the windows and saw them leave the fair behind. The lights grew smaller and farther away as they lifted into the night sky.
He was suddenly overcome with terror. He had faced daemons of the worst kind, looked into the bowels of Sitra Achra, witnessed for himself the dreadful souls burning in the rivers of fire in the Otherworld, but somehow, rising into the air on a man-made airship filled him with overwhelming dread.
He swayed with nausea but bucked up, reminding himself that Miss Zhao would certainly mock him should he yield to his upset stomach.
“Why did we stay behind?” he whispered to her.
In answer, she took his hand and led him, trotting crouched and low along the metal frame of the ship to a place between the enormous engines. She pointed.
There, sitting between the two, was what looked like a smaller version of the Daemon Device they had seen earlier in the large tent. Leopold moved forward without prompting as Mingli let go of his hand. He moved right up next to the device and examined all he could. The seal of the Order of the Valkyrie was positioned on it in its center, on a sealed door.
He turned to see her assessment and she nodded at him. He pointed to the seal. “I saw this same seal at the warehouse.”
She looked it over. “Interesting. The Order, eh?” Her gloved fingers ran over the seal. “Waldhar’s device is the main one. And these the auxiliaries, bringing his golems through the airships themselves.”
“And that means that these damned ships can be positioned anywhere. Anywhere in the world and his golems would pour out of them where they stood, ready to devastate whatever country moored it. Diabolical.”
“Wer sind Sie!”
Leopold whirled. One of the sailors pointed a spanner at them. “Blimey. We’re spotted.”
Mingli raised her chin and hid her gun behind her back. “Achtung,” she said. “Gehen Sie zurück zu Ihrer Arbeit. Das geht dich nichts an. Ich bin ein Offizier des Unternehmens.”
Despite her authoritative tone, the sailor seemed unconvinced. Another joined him. Their striped shirts stretched taut over their broad chests and their caps with their ribbons didn’t seem as friendly as when they and the group of punters had first seen them. The sailors stomped forward. Mingli raised her gun. The sailors halted, pointing to the canopy above.
“Nicht schießen!” they cried. “Der Wasserstoff wird explodieren!”
“My German’s a bit rusty,” said Leopold, “but I get the impression that to discharge that firearm would be to explode the hydrogen.”
With a huff, she slowly lowered the hammer, lifted her skirts—much to the amusement of the wide-eyed sailors—and tucked the gun away. Hoisting her umbrella, she pulled out the rapier, tossing the rest of the umbrella aside.
“Do you have a weapon?” she said to him out of the side of her mouth.
No magic. The Daemon Device on the airship was hollow. Unused. He couldn’t summon any even if he tried. Instead, he reached into his inside coat pocket and removed his wand. With a gentle slide of his thumb, a stiletto blade telescoped out until it was as long as her rapier.
She quirked a smile. “Excellent!”
They both postured toward the sailors in the best Royal Fencing Academy tradition.
More sailors gathered with clubs and spanners, slapping them in their hands.
Leopold looked them over. “Not fair, chaps. You outnumber us two to one.”
Their growling chuckles did nothing to comfort him.
One of the sailors lunged first, right for Mingli. Leopold’s heart gave a leap…but he needn’t have worried. She merely moved her wrist, wrenched the spanner from his hand with the tip of her blade, and sent it flying, and then cut a swath across his chest with her rapier, opening the material of his shirt but not drawing blood. He looked down, perhaps thinking it a lucky strike. She disabused him of it with another stroke, this time cutting a wound down the line of his nose.
He howled, held his bleeding nose, and fell out of the way.
But instead of discouraging them, it only infuriated. The three remaining men charged. Leopold lifted his blade. One went for Mingli while two ran at Leopold, shouting in German.
He swept his blade out and upward and spun between them. One lost an ear while the other received a cut to the shoulder.
They turned and came at him again, swinging their clubs wildly. Leopold moved like a dancer in a ballroom, and sidestepped, arcing his blade wide again. His toreador movements jabbed, sliced, riposted, avoiding each of their attempts to strike him.
With a bloody and enraged face, one sailor grabbed a three-foot-long spanner. Barely able to lift it with both hands, he raced forward. Leopold ducked, grabbed the man’s foot, and spun him around. He hoisted him high, and with all his strength, flung him through the glass window, sending shards cascading around them. The sailor fell into the black of night, screaming all the way down.
Leopold barely had a chance to glance out the window to see how high they were when the other came at him again. Before he could turn his blade, the club came down hard on his arm, knocking the wand out of his grip. Pain radiated up his arm to his shoulder, but when the club swept down again, he grabbed that wrist to prevent it.
The sailor grimaced in Leopold’s face, puffing with the effort to move his club. Leopold pushed back, but he knew his strength was giving out. Shoving harder only taxed what was left of his endurance.
And just as he was on the brink of surrendering to it, a blade sprang through the man’s chest, sharp and bloody, inches from Leopold’s own. The man looked down at it in surprise, looked up at Leopold, and then collapsed.
Mingli withdrew her blade from his back with a flourish before the dead man could take the sword with him as he fell.
She looked at Leopold, blade still clutched tight in her hand, and advanced toward him.
Before he could say anything, a whistle sounded and the shout of an order in German through a mechanical device diverted their attention.
They both approached the shiny brass speaking tube and exchanged looks. Surveying the room, it was plain that they had dispatched all the engineers. Leopold unhooked the speaking tube from its hanger. Tentatively, he leaned toward it. “Javohl?”
“Langsam die Motoren. Wir sind auf die Messe zurück.”
He looked up at her and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “They want us to retard the engines.”
“Tell them ‘yes’.”
“Er, javohl!” He hung the speaking tube on its hanger. “And, er, do you know how to slow the engines?”
“No. You’re the mechanical one, after all.”
He straightened his coat. “Right.” He slid an unconscious sailor aside with his foot and approached the first engine, watching its brass governor spin. “It runs on the same principal as any engine, I imagine. We simply cut off the inlet valve and release the excess steam. Looks like…” He examined the engine, watched the reciprocating piston, and sought out a lever. “This one.” He pulled it back and it clicked into a gear. The piston slowed. He pulled it further and it continued to retard.
“You’ve got it,” said Mingli, face shining with sweat and with a light of admiration.
“We better get rid of these chaps or we’ll be found out. Before we return to the fair, I think we should chuck them out the window.”
“Agreed.”
She helped him drag a moaning man to the window. “Sorry old man,” he muttered, slid him up to the broken glass, and shoved him out.
They both heaved the dead man and the second dead man that Mingli had dispatched with her sword. Her rapier was safely tucked back into her umbrella and it put him in a mind to search for his wand.
He found where it had rolled into a corner and snatched it up, depressing the button that pulled the blade back within.
“Before we’re discovered,” he said, brushing off his trousers, “I’d like to have a look at that Daemon Device once more.”
He walked around it, looking it up and down. When he found a little door on one of its sides, he opened it and examined the wiring. “There is a place to insert something here,” he said, running cautious fingers over the strange ports. “Something like…gods. A beating heart. How ghastly.”
A gun cocked close to his head.
“Don’t move,” said Mingli softly to his ear.
Anger superseded his disappointment. “So that’s it, then? Are you really going to shoot me now?”
“They’re coming.”
He heard the footsteps, too. He closed the box and scrambled around the other side of the Device and pressed himself against the strangely warm metal next to Mingli.
“Was is los?” said one of the men in the doorway. “Wo sind alle?”
Leopold let him step fully into the room. Relieved that the man was alone, Leopold snatched a spanner from the ground and whacked him soundly on the back of the head. Down he dropped.
“Come on!” he said to the special inspector. “We must rejoin the tour.”
They hurried through the corridors until they found the gondola lounge again. The officer/tour guide glared at them. Leopold shrugged with his best silly-ass face. “Sorry, old bean. We got lost.”
The others watched as the dirigible approached the mooring tower. As it was, they were coming in too fast. After all, there was no one left in the engine room. He exchanged a look with Mingli and realized at the same time their error.
“Duck!” he cried to everyone, holding on to his hat. He grabbed Mingli’s hand and pulled her against a bulkhead, shielding her with his body. The women screamed and everyone scattered away from the window. The airship slowed only marginally as it hit the tower, bounced once, and then came in again at an angle. The gondola’s glass shattered and the metal frame above them groaned. The propellers whined until one by one they came to a halt, but not before one of them splintered when coming into contact with the tower.
Sailors scrambled to pull in the mooring lines but the window glass had cracked and chairs had fallen over. A claxon sounded and, white-faced, the officer hurried the passengers off the ship to the staircase gangway, even though there was a gap of several feet.
Leopold wasted no time. He grabbed Mingli’s hand and dove for it. “Be careful,” he said to her as they rushed down the steps and away from the airship.
They ran down aisle after aisle between tents, heading for the fair’s exit. Leopold couldn’t help look back at the crippled airship. Was it his imagination that it was slightly bent?
It didn’t matter. They reached the safety of the road outside the lighted archway and took the nearest cab. He waved a pound note to the cabby and the man didn’t blink a lash at the Whitechapel destination.
And then he remembered. “Good Lord! Thacker!”
“Right here, you old sod.” He poked his head through the cabby wall. “I’ve been walking the limits of my barrier. It don’t make much sense I can tell you…” He studied Leopold. “Here. What’s happened? You all right?”
“Yes. Barely.”
Leopold explained what had transpired on the airship and then they all fell silent. Leopold brooded out the window of the carriage. Once again, Mingli had pulled a weapon on him. And once again, she had been foiled by the presence of others. Why did she want to kill him? If she were working for Waldhar she seemed to scotch the man’s plans at every turn. And if she wasn’t working for Waldhar, then was she trying to dispatch Leopold for the sake of another superior?
“Isten a tanúm,” he muttered, falling back on Hungarian for ‘God help me.’ Or better yet, Eurynomos help him.
He slid his gaze surreptitiously toward her, but she, too, was occupied with deep thoughts, sending her glance out the window.
Thacker watched the two of them, saying nothing, and keeping incongruously still as the carriage rocked around him.
They arrived to the Whitechapel warehouse as a clock tower somewhere struck eleven.
He climbed out and leaned into the carriage.
“It has been a most interesting evening, Inspector. But now I really must leave you.” He handed the cabby the pound note. “Take the lady to wherever she likes.”
“You must stop this Device, Mr. Kazsmer. I can help you where I can…”
“There is no need, Inspector.”
She lowered her eyes. Luscious lashes shadowed her cheeks. “You still don’t trust me.”
“Would you?”
She brought up a pained smile. “No. Good night, Mr. Kazsmer. Inspector Thacker.”
Thacker touched the brim of his hat and bowed. They both watched as the cab trundled away, horse hoofs clopping into the fog and growing fainter.
Leopold looked at his ghostly companion. “And now what to do with you.”
“It ain’t like I need a bed. I’m not tired and I’m not hungry. I’m not even thirsty, though Lord love me, I could use a drink.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Maybe Raj will have a suggestion. I have no experience with ghosts, I’m afraid.”
“Raj? who’s that?”
“I’d rather you saw him first.”
He turned toward his lockup and knocked on the door. Von Spiegel answered. His hair was in disarray and his waistcoat and shirtsleeves looked disheveled. “Oh, Mr. Kazsmer, come in, come in! I have made much progress in your absence.”
Weary and bruised, Leopold entered and removed his hat, hanging it on a peg. Thacker floated to the far corner
s, examining this and that. Von Spiegel had moved tables side by side in order to accommodate the stitched together papers that bore his new plans. “See here,” he said anxiously, pointing to the drawing of a fuse box, looking remarkably like the one on the Device in the airship. “I have only glimpsed the Device’s plans and I have designed this. This is where the vacuum tube must go.”
“Vacuum tube? Of what sort? Wait. I saw this. I saw a space for this in the Device or one like it. I thought it was for… never mind. He’s got smaller devices in his damned airships.”
“Gott in Himmel! Yes, I see. Waldhar has specially designed these vacuum tubes to capture the magical vapors needed to open the gateway. But we will leave instead a tube that will counteract the Daemon Device’s power. This is the crux of the Lock. It is the mortar that shuts the gateway for good.”
“Is there a gas within?”
“Not so much a gas but it is filled with incantations. Incantations you will now seal within with your magical signature. Here are the instructions.” He pointed to another area on the plans where his tiny careful handwriting formed a perfect square.
“I see. Yes. I understand.”
“This you need to build posthaste, Mr. Kazsmer. This box. These configurations exactly. We must not let him succeed at the time of alignment.”
“I did read up on that, Herr Professor.”
“Good, good! Well!” He shook his head. “I must say, I had a productive night, but now I am weary and wish to return to my hotel and to bed.”
“Oh. But I have sent the coach away…”
“I’ve sent a young man to fetch me one. He was selling meat pies. And I bought one. It was hungry work.”
“Yes, I can imagine.” Leopold looked over the drawings and measurements. “I am encouraged by this, Professor. I can accomplish this in two days, I’m sure of it.”
“And so you must. So few days to go.” He loosened his rolled sleeves, secured the cuffs, and grabbed his coat lying over a chair. Leopold heard the sound of the carriage arrive and walked with him to the door.
“I shall call upon you in a few days then, Mr. Kazsmer. And we shall plan how to get it to the device. Be well!” He raised his cane in salute and climbed into the carriage. Leopold closed and barred the door before the coach rode away.
The Daemon Device Page 14
