Competence

by Gail Carriger

  Primrose (sipping tea) happily measured, stitched, fashioned, pleated, and hummed quietly to herself. It was a rushed job, but it came out better than she might have hoped. She imagined it must have been like this in her pre-memory childhood, when her parents had run a successful acting troupe. No doubt Mr and Mrs Tunstell spent many pleasant afternoons together assembling costumes in anticipation of an evening performance. Aunt Alexia had much to say on the subject of those costumes. Outrageous, scandalous, and life altering were only a few of the words she had used. Primrose believed it. After all, her mother’s taste had not altered noticeably with the advent of her father’s demise or her vampiric state. It would be impossible to believe Ivy Tunstell had controlled herself when treading the boards.

  Not quite sure on size, Primrose chose a drawstring for the waist. She figured no one would look too closely. It would be hidden by fur anyway, if things went according to plan.

  The sun eventually set, which Prim noticed only because Tasherit stirred and stretched languidly. Her almond eyes blinked open and she immediately focused on Primrose.

  “What are you doing so industriously, little one?”

  “Making you a fishtail,” said Prim, in a tone of voice that suggested this ought to be perfectly obvious.

  “What has happened while I’ve been sleeping?” The werecat sat up in bed and, in clear deference to Prim’s modesty rather than her own, wrapped the throw about her as she sat on the edge.

  “There’s yummy meat bun things there.” Prim pointed to the little cluster she had placed on a low table. “They’re cold, I’m afraid, but tasty. And there’s tea in the pot, of course, if you wish.” Tasherit usually just drank the contents of the creamer, but one should always offer tea even if one’s guest had questionable beverage habits. It was best to assume that a non-tea drinker might, at any moment, develop refinement. Fortunately, this hotel was accustomed to young ladies who took milk with their black tea. Or at least, did not question the extraordinary affectation.

  Tasherit focused in on the small pitcher, licking her plump lips eagerly.

  “As we are where we are, do you think I might have pu-erh?” The werecat glanced over at her briefly in question.

  Primrose did not try to hide her flinch. “You could, but why would you want to?”

  The werecat shrugged. “Developed a taste for it last century. I always liked how it sounded, the name I mean, kind of like purr.” She made the rumbling noise in her throat.

  Primrose tilted her head. “Except that you don’t.”

  Tasherit looked up from enjoying one of the little buns. “Don’t what?”

  “Purr.”

  “You noticed?” Those lovely almond eyes crinkled in pleasure. Well, the buns were delicious.

  Primrose returned to her shell button decorating, nipping a thread cleanly with her teeth and declining to answer.

  “I always thought it’d be fun to purr, but we lions are roaring cats. And one must, of course, be one or the other.”

  “Why?” Primrose was curious.

  The werelioness shrugged. “No idea, it’s simply the way it is. So, about this fishtail?”

  Prim explained her plan, and their imminent transport to ground, and how the two were tied together with a possible misappropriation of helium.

  “Speaking of, we’d better get dressed and settle the hotel account. The dropsy leaves in half an hour and I’d like to get there early enough to choose the right positioning.”

  Tasherit looked as if she’d like to object to the plan, as after all it required her to make a fool of herself. Cats, as a rule, were opposed to such endeavours. But she clearly could not construct a superior one. Or she could, but hers likely would result in bystanders becoming injured. Primrose’s scheme was worth a try, and even if it failed, at least the two of them would be groundside and closer to their friends.

  They arrived at the station in good time. Their dropsy couldn’t depart until it had sufficient weight allotment, so everyone was being weighed as they boarded. A sort of lever-scale with a funny crank-and-piston arrangement cantilevered a plank outwards that stretched to the basket edge of the dropsy.

  Primrose carried her carpet bag. It was now carefully packed full of fishtail as well as correspondences, her daytime straw hat (she’d switched back to her evening one), and wacker. Wacker being a crass colloquial name for a particularly delicate and rather expensive augmentation a-directional puffer (advertised as: ideal for improving upon the old-fashioned balloon in one’s life). She trod the weight plank carefully. It was a great embarrassment to have oneself weighed in public, and no doubt a key reason the omnibus was the preferred transport of the upper crust, but needs must.

  Tasherit came after. Whatever she weighed seemed to surprise the guide in charge of the dropsy, because the large female made the werecat get off the plank and then get back on.

  Miss Sekhmet said something curt in some language Primrose did not know and the guide waved her aboard.

  “You’re denser than you look, aren’t you?” Prim asked, as they settled into the best positioning for the next stage of her scheme, on the opposite side of the basket from where a strap kept them leashed to the wheystation’s guideline.

  Miss Sekhmet arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “All cats are denser then they look, especially if on top of a human. Which I’d be happy to demonstrate at any time.”

  Primrose sputtered at the blatancy of that comment, although it was no doubt intended to be seductive. She was struck by the not unpleasant vision of Tasherit sprawled atop her, pressing Prim into some feathered and pillowy bedding, all silks and sweet sandalwood smells.

  Of course, Primrose instantly changed the subject. I really must watch my tongue around this woman. She does take advantage of any opening. And now I’m wondering about tongues. It wasn’t really fair, with a werecat, to think on tongues. I mean to say, how much of that agile dexterity translates between forms? That’s what I’d like to know. Or perhaps that’s what I don’t want to know. Or really shouldn’t be thinking about at all.

  Plan. Fishtails. Stop it, Primrose Tunstell, right now!

  Sometimes, around Miss Sekhmet, Prim rather lost track of her own brain, which was not only careless but highly dangerous.

  She busied herself watching their fellow passengers climbing aboard, pleased to see they seemed to be mainly locals, or at least not anyone who might cry false on the next stage of her hijacking scheme. This was the kind of situation where an academic or scientist type of Percy’s ilk could muck everything up.

  But isn’t that always the case with schemes?

  If Primrose were Rue, she would have jumped right into the dropsy without any kind of plan in place. As it was, Prim had a plan, but she didn’t think it was a very good one. Unfortunately, this proved to be the case about halfway through its execution.

  She and Tasherit sat in their semi-secluded section of the dropsy basket. Still, they and the other passengers were all rather packed in together, so there was no real privacy of any kind. Thus it was understandably difficult to get a werelioness to look like a merlion without people following what was actually occurring.

  Consequently it was imperative that Primrose herself become a distraction. This was not entirely in accordance with her nature. Prim did not consider herself a self-effacing individual. She was not afraid to be centre stage; she was simply not accustomed to it. After over twenty years of intimacy with Prudence Akeldama, Primrose was usually not the one others gawped at. When one’s very best friend in the entire world happens to be a scientific anomaly meets enthusiastic adventurer meets excitable harridan of tiny yet epic proportions, one becomes accustomed to remaining modestly in the background. One also becomes accustomed to cleaning up after a great number of messes, but not causing them oneself.

  Primrose took a deep breath. At this moment, life was calling upon her to be profoundly messy.

  After assisting a grumpy and decidedly disgruntl
ed Miss Sekhmet to climb into the fishtail (while keeping said tail hidden underneath Tasherit’s conveniently full and flowing silk robes) Prim made her way ostentatiously to the opposite side of the basket.

  There she arranged herself to look back and up at the station, staring with focused intensity at something that was clearly very upsetting to a woman of her delicate sensibilities. Whatever it was did not exist, but Primrose had learned over the years that if a young lady looked with great interest at nothing at all, eventually most people in the crowd around her wanted to know what she was looking at.

  Soon enough she had her dozen or so travelling companions all looking intently in the same direction. Then she made a tiny gasping noise, just a small one (small noises were generally more effective than loud ones) and raised up her gloved hand to point in obvious shock and horror at the continued nothing. Now everyone was looking either at her or whatever it was that had upset her.

  Primrose trusted Miss Sekhmet to take that opportunity to drop her robe and shift forms. Now everyone was distracted, including their guide, trying to determine what it was that had their fashionable young female aristocrat passenger so increasingly upset. Primrose pretended to stumble forward. She made yet another small whimpering sound and allowed her pointing hand to shake slightly. She was pleased to note her lavender gloves emphasised the trembling.

  The guide moved towards her and said in a cross but not unsympathetic voice, “What is it, young miss? What has upset you so?” She was a large gruff weather-beaten lady who reminded Prim of their head greaser, Aggie Phinkerlington, in attitude if not appearance.

  “It appears as if we are losing our attachment to the station, good lady.” They weren’t, of course, but give Primrose a little time and she would fix that. At the moment, she was merely trying to keep attention away from Tasherit.

  The guide leaned next to her and squinted up into the darkness. She even raised a spyglass to one eye. The wheystation proper was now some distance above them. It was relatively well lit with gas lighting and lanterns and the like, but the scaffolding part was not intentionally illuminated. Unlike the Maltese Tower, this wheystation was not occupied with residents and workers all the way up and down its length. It was only about a tenth the size, and situated some considerable distance below the aetherosphere. No one had felt it necessary to light the base of the station - waste of resources.

  At this juncture, as per their previous arrangement, Miss Sekhmet let out a great roar. Primrose had never heard her roar so loudly before. It was impressive but also sounded a great deal more like a very loud coughing fit then Prim felt a roar ought to sound. Not precisely threatening so much as worrying in an imminent expectoration kind of way. Still, it was good enough to get everybody’s attention away from the possible threat of drifting slightly off their downward course, focusing instead on the actual threat of suddenly occupying their dropsy with a lion. Or more precisely… a merlion.

  At a modest distance (which is what the passengers were currently giving Miss Sekhmet as they backed away, pressing hard against each other) Prim’s handiwork in terms of tails was actually not bad. It did, in fact, seem to everyone assembled that they shared their transport with a creature the top part of which was a lioness and the bottom part of which was a shimmering iridescent fish. It wasn’t a sensible, or logical, or realistic creature in anyway, but if one was prone to believing that a half fish, half lion existed, then this was a pretty decent approximation of said creature’s presentation in reality.

  Miss Sekhmet had lifted herself up and arranged her body in such a way that the lioness portion was leaning up against the side of the dropsy basket while the fishtail draped gracefully down to the floor.

  Primrose suspected that she was the only one to notice that there appeared to be an enthusiastically moving bulge in the back section of the fishtail. No doubt this was the lioness’s actual tail, twitching in annoyance. Or perhaps it was lashing at the embarrassment of having been put into such a position.

  It was an odd thing, a tail trapped inside a tail. It bore a striking resemblance to what Primrose imagined those ferrets-down-trousers fellows looked like. Or perhaps more a boa constrictor inside a taffeta sack. Nevertheless, the fear over the sudden presence of a roaring lioness-with-a-fishtail distracted from the strange bulging behaviour of said fishtail.

  As previously arranged, Primrose seized this opportunity to finally separate the dropsy from its leash to the wheystation drop line. She used a letter opener to accomplish this. It was perhaps not proper for a young lady of Primrose’s consequence to gallivant about sporting a letter opener, especially a double-edged one kept impoliticly sharp, but she had found over the years that a small letter opener discreetly tucked about one’s person could be endlessly useful. She never regretted carrying one, and always regretted when she didn’t.

  It was a little too easy to slice through the lead that held them to the station line. It had once been made of a sturdy leather but was not well maintained, and repeated exposure to sun and weather had made it weak. This gave Primrose some pause as to the general safety of the dropsy, but there was no going back now.

  She popped open her trusty carpet bag, pulled out the wacker, put the device to drape over the edge of the dropsy basket, and pressed the release cord. The wacker was a primitive safety device that she’d purchased at the station that morning. At the release of tension it began a quiet whirring noise and the dropsy began to push away from its previous trajectory. It was one of those devices that required actual manual labour to wind up, but then it exuded power and force as a release of mechanical tension. Quesnel would have sneered at its primitive structure but it was extremely useful when one didn’t have access to steam power. It worked for only twenty minutes before it needed to be wound again, but Primrose had calculated that they shouldn’t need more than twenty minutes. Even if they did, the wacker would at least set them in the correct direction.

  At this juncture, Miss Sekhmet began to direct them in said direction. They’d prearranged a series of noises she would make. A roar and Primrose needed to shift them slightly left, a hiss and they needed to jog slightly right, silence and they would stay the course.

  This was, of course, where Prim’s plan fell apart. Because everything was predicated on the werecat being able to ascertain the location of the Spotted Custard below them. They had assumed that their ship’s landing was within some short recognisable distance of the station, and they had assumed that said landing would be within a relatively well-lit area of Singapore and civilisation.

  Unfortunately, this did not appear to be the case. Firstly, Singapore was a smaller city than Prim previously thought. Its buildings were mainly centred about a large dark harbour, with the strait and the wheystation being more occupied than the port itself. Secondly, it was nighttime, so hard to see anything. Thirdly, the Custard had clearly drifted away from the populated area. And, of course, Rue’s crew was not inclined to illuminate their actions as a rule.

  Prim dug about for her opera glasses and, leaning dangerously over the side, determined that, even assisted, she could not spot the Custard in the darkness of beach, plantation, and tropical foliage that made up Singapore’s environs. Primrose had no idea what direction they ought to be heading in, and Tasherit certainly didn’t either.

  Nevertheless, the werecat continued to roar and hiss, guiding Primrose somewhere. Prim hoped that at least they were staying over land instead of drifting out over the ocean. The dropsy guide and other occupants of the basket seemed wholly unaware of the fact they were now untethered and entirely adrift as they sunk slowly into the darkness.

  Percy didn’t have a function aboard ship when said ship wasn’t in motion, at least not in any official capacity. After all, when one’s ship was grounded and anchored to a palm tree, it’s not as if a navigator could be of much assistance. What would he do, calculate the bendability of the palm tree? He didn’t even have the next stage of their journey to chart. Rue had y
et to tell him where they were headed after Singapore.

  But that was his life under Captain Prudence. Full of uncertainty. It was bally annoying.

  After running out of conversation with Rodrigo when the man became distracted by Anitra bringing in dinner, Percy went to his library.

  The library was Percy’s sanctuary. It was crowded with books and the slightly musty ink smell of knowledge and comfort. Footnote greeted him upon arrival, the black and white tom rubbing his legs a few times in the classic cat fashion of this might be love or this might be attempted murder by tripping cleverly disguised as affection. Difficult to tell with cats. Percy, knowing his duty, gave Footnote the requisite head scratches and received a flop and minor ankle-nibble for his pains.

  Intrigued by his previous rumination on the nature of sound within aether, Percy went foraging about for any treatises he might have collected on the subject and became lost in the data for an unspecified amount of time.

  “Sir!”

  Percy looked up. Virgil stood next to him. It was also now dark outside.

  “Yes?” Percy did not try to tame the grumpiness in his voice. He hated to be disturbed while he was reading. Of course, he was always reading, but that did not signify.

  Virgil gave him the you are in trouble look developed early by all good valets. Not the you are in big trouble because there was something you were supposed to do as navigator and forgot about, and now Rue is on the rampage look, but only the you are in trouble for some other silly reason that likely has to do with manners look.

  Primrose, darling sister that she was, called this the universal why must you be so very Percy? expression.

  Percy patted at his own chest and neck. I’m wearing clothing. I even have on a cravat. Feels a little loose. I appear to have lost my jacket and hat somewhere, but it’s a small ship, they can’t have gone far, and I’m technically within in the sanctity of my own quarters. “What is it, Virgil?”