Waistcoats & Weaponry

by Gail Carriger

  Sophronia skidded in to kneel next to him. “Where were you hit? Felix!”

  The viscount took a short moment to look into her worried green eyes. His own blue ones were leaking tears of pain, even though he was patently trying to contain them. “Curses, that burns! God, you’re beautiful.”

  Sophronia forgave him the bad language in fine company. This once. She also forgave him the compliment. It couldn’t be too bad a wound if he was still able to flirt. Although the flywaymen were listening with interest and she was still dressed as a boy.

  “Hush. Let me see,” she said.

  Reluctantly, Felix took his hands away from his leg. “Kiss it and make it better?” he pleaded, winsome as an injured child.

  “Are you delirious? They’re listening,” she hissed.

  “Ria, my dove, I enjoy wearing kohl and favor well-tailored waistcoats. I already have somewhat of a reputation.”

  Sophronia tsked and looked to his thigh.

  Stubby said to his companion, “Supposing that actually is the duke’s eldest, do you think he knows his son is a prancer?”

  Sophronia found the comment somewhat of a relief for her own part; at least her disguise held. Felix was remarkably untroubled by any questioning of his manhood.

  She said, “See what I mean?”

  He whispered, teeth gritted under her gentle ministrations, “All rumors will be put to rest once you agree to marry me.”

  “Oh, of course,” replied Sophronia, “because it always works out exactly like that. You’re ridiculous. No wife ever cleared a man’s character, not without a great deal of trouble on the lower decks. So to speak. I should know, we’ve studied somewhat on the subject.”

  “Ouch, darling, must you be so rough?”

  “Just stoppering up your silly mouth.”

  “I know a better way.” He pursed his lips at her. He was still writhing and crying, mind you. She was a little relieved—at least this meant he hadn’t been in league with the flywaymen from the get-go.

  Sophronia finished her examination of the wound, and in the absence of brandy extracted her vial of lemon tincture—it was alcohol based, after all—and poured it over the gash.

  Felix shrieked. And then, panting, said, “Thank you, fine physician. That makes it feel so much better, and all sweetly scented.”

  “Stop your whingeing. It’s not serious. It only grazed the surface skin, see there.” Sophronia pointed, face free of worry. Underneath, however, she was thinking that it was bleeding rather much. He wasn’t going to be able to walk. She untucked her shirt and began tearing the hem for a bandage.

  Behind her, Sophronia heard a faint sigh and a thud as Dimity collapsed in a faint. She must have caught sight of the blood. Wonderful.

  Sidheag, bless her heart, held her position but had pulled out her sewing shears, which she now brandished in a threatening manner. It was odd for young Lord Kingair to be brandishing shears, but so much else was going on, and so much else was odd, this didn’t seem to clue the flywaymen into anything in any substantial way.

  Stubby did not seem to be inclined to charge.

  Shaggy was actually looking guilty at having shot a peer in cold blood.

  Then from behind the flywaymen came a shout of rage. Someone had been watching their confrontation from the airship, probably through a spyglass. Now that someone climbed out of the dirigible and trotted in their direction with the sedate upright steps of a hound on the scent.

  This man was no flywayman but a gentleman. His suit was of impeccable heavyweight tweed, perfect for floating over the countryside on a damp afternoon. He had paired it with a daytime top hat banded in green, and carried a cane with a spiked wooden top and a silver-tipped bottom, a sundowner weapon designed for killing supernaturals.

  It was the band that caught Sophronia’s attention. She knew that the flywaymen occasionally allied with Picklemen; now she knew that these particular flywaymen were hosting a Pickleman of their very own.

  The man approached at speed. He had silver hair and a very authoritative demeanor.

  Sophronia knew him.

  She finished tying up Felix’s leg. “My dear Felix”—she risked the intimacy of his given name as she whispered—“please don’t tell him too much. I fear this plot is bigger than any of us suppose, and our safety is in your hands. Do, please, be careful, for my sake?”

  Then she calmly straightened to face the Duke of Golborne.

  “What a surprise. Good afternoon, Your Grace.”

  If Felix’s father recognized Sophronia from their two previous encounters, he was very good at hiding it. Of course, the first time had been during a fight, at night, in a gazebo, and she had been wearing a ball gown. The second time she’d been dressed as a dandy drone at a carnival. This time, she looked like a scamp, with her cap pulled down and her body language that of a schoolboy, rather than a fop.

  Besides which, the duke was understandably distracted by his son’s being shot. Fathers were like that, even Pickleman fathers.

  He strode forward and struck Shaggy hard across the face with his cane. Without waiting to see the flywayman’s reaction, he bent over Felix. He did not kneel at his son’s side. Dukes do not kneel on train tracks for anyone.

  “Boy, are you alive?”

  Felix blinked at him in genuine surprise. Perhaps it was true and he had never fully believed in the intimacy between his father’s secret society and the criminal element. Here, however, the duke had come popping out of a flywayman craft. He was either their hostage or their accomplice. And he had not wanted his son to know, or he would have been the one to contact them.

  Felix seemed startled enough to forget that he had been shot, or perhaps to think it slightly less important and put on a brave face.

  “Father? What are you doing here?” he asked, tremulously.

  “Oh, no, no. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in school.”

  “Technically,” answered Felix, “I’m supposed to be at a ball. Remember, I wrote you of the invitation?”

  “Ah, yes, some two-bit country gentry. Odd acquaintance to cultivate, but you thought the father’s business interests valuable to the cause.”

  Sophronia blinked, tempted to doubt all Felix’s attentions. Had he been courting her all along because of something Papa was up to in civil service? Then she realized—hoped, really—that Felix must have said this to get permission to attend the masquerade.

  “Yes, but things change, as they do. It became necessary to borrow a train and head north.”

  “Oh, it did, did it?” The duke did not look convinced. “And you interfered with our business why, exactly?”

  “I didn’t know, Father. We took this train off a handful of drones.”

  Sophronia risked a small squeeze of warning in the guise of checking his bandages: Please don’t tell the duke too much!

  Felix ignored her and went on, “And they happened to be at a station near the ball, and headed in the right direction. So we took their train and bumped them off.”

  The duke nodded. “And what happened at that ball?”

  Felix frowned at this sudden change of topic. “Well, the two-bit country gentleman, I don’t think he’ll be all that useful.”

  “No, I mean to say, boy, did anything unusual occur?”

  “You mean the mechanical failure in all the papers?”

  “Ah, so you read about it. Did you see it in action?”

  Felix came over suddenly quite still and suspicious. “Father, what are you up to? What’s going on? Did you…? Was it…?” He trailed off.

  But Sophronia put all the pieces together at that moment. The Picklemen had chosen her brother’s party on purpose because they knew Felix would be there. They knew he would give them a full report if asked. Perhaps they hadn’t known how wide-reaching the effect would be, or that the papers would pick it up. Or perhaps they had run that test again in the Oxford area, to see what would happen. But Felix’s father, these flywaymen, they were respo
nsible for all of it. And the drones, Monique and the train, they had been tracking them: gathering data, staying out of the way. Sophronia and her band had come in and messed everything up.

  The train hadn’t fortuitously been at Wootton Bassett, and the mechanicals hadn’t spontaneously chosen the Temminnicks for “Rule, Britannia!” As Lady Linette always said, there were no coincidences, certainly not with Picklemen, simply an endless stream of increased probability.

  Because she wanted confirmation, and because she hoped Duke Golborne thought her one of Felix’s Piston cronies and thus safe, Sophronia asked, “You caused that entertaining malfunction, didn’t you, my lord?”

  The duke focused his attention on her. And because he, too, had training, he didn’t give her the outright answer she wanted. He wasn’t loose lipped enough, or he didn’t have that kind of hubris. “Who are you? You’re not one of my boy’s regular associates. You do look awfully familiar, though.”

  Sophronia said, “I have that kind of face.”

  The duke’s eyes turned to Sidheag and the prostrate Dimity. Bumbersnoot had righted himself and was nosing her in the side in a worried manner. “None of your usual companions, boy,” he said suspiciously. “Are they even Pistons? You know I don’t like you fraternizing with the hoi polloi of the aristocracy.” He seemed genuinely angry about it; did he go so far as to control Felix’s friendships? How awful for Felix, thought Sophronia, briefly distracted from concerns over her immediate welfare.

  Stubby stepped in at this juncture. “Sir, there is definitely something funny about those boys. Particularly that one.” He pointed at Dimity.

  The duke glanced again at her fallen form. “That one is the least of my concerns—he’s got himself a mechanimal. He has all the right connections. No, it’s these other two I don’t know.”

  Sidheag said, “I’m Scottish,” as if that would explain everything.

  The duke nodded, as if it did. “Yes, well, we can’t all be from the right side of the country. Would I know your family?”

  Sidheag looked uncomfortable. The duke was probably aware of the Kingair scandal. She scrabbled for the right kind of family to call her own, but Scotland was a funny place, progressive as a rule, mostly not in favor of the conservative referendum. So she dodged the question. “Probably not, Your Grace.”

  That didn’t mollify him, since he had practically demanded an introduction. He turned wrathful eyes on Sophronia. “And you, little man?”

  Sophronia said, “I’m one of those two-bit country gentry, Your Grace.” She bowed. “Mr. Temminnick, at your service.”

  At that precise moment, Monique decided to start screaming.

  The duke looked at his son. “And what exactly is that?”

  “One of the vampire drones. We kept her for collateral,” explained Felix, happy for a change of subject.

  “Is she always that noisy? Seems hardly worth the bother.”

  Sophronia was growing uncomfortable with this encounter. It was getting beyond her control. She wandered over, with the pretext of checking on Dimity. Dimity seemed perfectly fine, although deep in her faint.

  Sophronia pulled out her smelling salts.

  Dimity sneezed herself awake.

  “What?” she sputtered.

  “You fainted and Felix’s father, the duke, has turned up.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Dimity, accurately.

  “Felix is well, thank you for asking, a scrape to the leg.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “But I think it is time we extracted ourselves.”

  Dimity nodded. “And?”

  “I’m sending you back to the train, with the pretext that you aren’t well. Tell Soap he needs to charge the dirigible.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, keep your voice down, do. They won’t let us actually crash. That ship must be full of some very valuable equipment. Just tell him to head at it full throttle.”

  Dimity nodded and stood shakily.

  Sophronia helped her up, all solicitation. She took Bumbersnoot for herself. If the mechanimal was going to confer credence, she wanted to keep him with her.

  Dimity began trudging back toward the locomotive.

  The flywayman with the gun, Shaggy, his face welted from where Duke Golborne had struck him, was having none of it. “Oh, no you don’t, young master!”

  Dimity froze, then turned slowly back.

  “He needs to recuperate,” objected Sophronia. “I suggested he return to the train for a snifter.”

  “He can recuperate perfectly well right here,” answered the duke, turning back to Felix.

  “Now what?” hissed Dimity.

  Sophronia wasn’t entirely certain Felix could get them out. Or even if he wanted to. And she was under no illusion that, if they were taken hostage by flywaymen and Picklemen, their female natures would remain hidden.

  “We’ll have to try something else. Invisible spiders?”

  Dimity said, “Sidheag’s better at those than me.” She angled her back toward the duke and flywaymen so they couldn’t see, and gestured to Sidheag. She pressed her wrists together and waggled her fingers in a fair imitation of a spider.

  Sidheag gave her a funny look.

  Sophronia followed up by giving Sidheag the code for creating a distraction, pressing the first two fingers of both hands together in a quick, birdlike movement.

  Comprehension dawned. Sidheag gave an almost imperceptible nod and then began to gyrate about like a madwoman, waving her hands around her face.

  “Bees,” she yelled, “I hate bees!”

  Dimity watched this for a moment before squeaking herself, adding to the distraction. “Oooo, eeek! Get them off!”

  Sophronia unstrapped her hurlie, remembering what Soap had said about its being her version of a charge. She fed it to Bumbersnoot—her wrist felt naked without it. The little mechanimal obligingly swallowed it into his storage compartment, where it clanked against the crystalline valve already nestled there. If he had possessed the capacity to belch, he would have. As it was, he looked vaguely too full for comfort, whistling steam out his undercarriage in a stuttering way.

  Sophronia set him down, pointing him in the direction of the train.

  She whispered, “High speed, Bumbersnoot, forward, march. Go on, find Soap. Go to the train.” She waggled her free arm in a pinwheel, disguising her ducking down as an effort to avoid the mythical bees.

  One could never be certain, with Bumbersnoot, which instructions he actually understood. Or chose to follow. Sophronia had, after all, rather stolen him. He hadn’t exactly come with a protocol proclamation pamphlet. However, something she said must have clicked into his operation wheels, for he began skittering down the track on his stubby little legs in a rapid and direct approach to the locomotive. How he might get Soap’s attention from the cab was a mystery, but his small metal form was stealthy enough to be ignored by the enemy. Either that or because he was a mechanimal, he was deemed nonthreatening.

  Sophronia began her own fit in earnest, waving off bees. The three girls used the distraction to back—or, more correctly, gyrate—away from the duke, Felix, and the two confused flywaymen.

  And then, delightful music to the ear, Sophronia heard the dulcet sounds of a locomotive cranking to life.

  A ROUSING GAME OF MARBLES

  The duke noticed that there was a train heading slowly but inexorably in their direction. “What’s going on, boys?” he shouted over the resulting hubbub.

  Sophronia said, “Sorry, Felix, but you’re in safe hands now. I figure you don’t want to stay with us, at this point.”

  “Mr. Temminnick, what are you about?” Felix’s voice was deeply suspicious. He leaned up on one elbow to see her. The three girls had managed to wiggle impressively far.

  Sophronia thought he looked heart-wrenchingly vulnerable.

  Then he turned to the duke. “Father?”

  Sophronia immediately regretted any sympathetic feelings.

  The train mov
ed relentlessly toward them, picking up speed.

  Felix lay across the tracks.

  Sophronia said, “Sir? You might want to move your son.” She paused, significantly. “And your dirigible.”

  “You wouldn’t!” the duke protested. “Stop this immediately! How on earth did you get a message to your driver? You’ve been here the whole time. What is going on?” He turned to glare at Felix. “Son, order this little friend of yours to stop. What’s he doing taking charge like this, anyway? You rank him!”

  Sophronia, still backing away, made a deep—almost courtly—bow.

  Felix said, “Never doubt Mr. Temminnick’s word on the matter of immediate actions. Father, if you would be so kind, I think I ought to move off the rails now?”

  The train kept on coming.

  The duke said a rude word and bent to part lift, part drag his son up the berm on the side of the tracks.

  Sophronia, Dimity, and Sidheag moved to the other side, staying as close as safety might allow.

  Shaggy shot his gun at the oncoming locomotive in a futile effort at stopping it. Then he and his companion raced for the airship.

  The locomotive charged forward. The girls spaced themselves and braced to leap.

  The engine was in front of them, and then the cab.

  Dimity went first, grabbing the jamb of the open doorway on the driver’s side and swinging herself in behind Soap.

  Sidheag swung in right after. Sophronia barely made it, stumbling on her dismount. Falling forward, she crashed against Soap. She barked her chin on his shoulder, causing them both pain, but quickly tried to extract herself. Soap, having reflexively embraced her with one arm, refused to let go, as though reassuring himself that she was safely back with him. He wasn’t even looking at her, his other arm and his attention focused on the work of crashing a train. Sophronia allowed the embrace; she was relieved, too. She even enjoyed that for the briefest of moments she could examine his adorable, familiar face, absorb his warm, firm presence, without fear of romantic repercussions.

  He said, letting her go gently, still without looking away from the various levers, dials, and gauges, “Welcome back. Did I interpret Bumbersnoot’s message correctly, Sophronia, or do I owe our fine friends here an apology?”