The Shadow Conspiracy II

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  “Rigby,” said Emma.

  “One of a certain lady’s agents, I understand,” said Mistress Artemisia. “Your disguise was rather convincing, as one might expect.”

  “I am not here on her behalf,” Emma said. Her mind was clear, hard and sharp, and free of fear. “What I sought in your house, I did find; I stole nothing, and only took away what belonged to itself. I can assure you that your secrets will remain safe. I was not sent to betray you, or to destroy what your masters have built.”

  “My masters,” said Mistress Artemisia. She shook her head and smiled. “You are a clever child, and rather less arrogant than your age and ignorance might portend. If you survive your reckless youth, you will go far.”

  “I try to be as little reckless as I may,” said Emma. “I will not speak of what I saw in Xanadu. You have my word.”

  “I do believe you,” Mistress Artemisia said, but she made no move to rise or go.

  Emma’s weariness had given way to sharp annoyance and the dawning of puzzlement. “What, then, do you wish of me? Why have you come?”

  “There was an agreement,” said Mistress Artemisia.

  “My life? My soul?” Despite herself, Emma’s breath came short.

  “Not exactly,” said Mistress Artemisia. “I must make a request of you, which you would be well advised to grant. When you return to London, persuade Sir Willoughby to reveal himself to Lady Ada. Let her know what he is and how he became so — though I would bid you refrain from speaking of the uses to which we put his creations. Then accept whatever task she lays upon you.”

  Emma’s brows rose further with each word. “Why? What do you hope to gain?”

  “I? Protection. You? Perhaps the furthering of your career, and the alleviation of boredom.”

  “Protection from what?”

  “You need ask?”

  “Humour me.”

  Mistress Artemisia smiled. “Clever indeed. We practise the transference of souls. Were the names of our guests to be known or their actions to be revealed, the consequences would be terrible. And yet, in a sort of paradox, the more that certain powers in the world know of what we are, the safer we may be. Lady Ada is such a power, who in her own quest has discovered secrets far greater than ours.”

  “Then they must be very great,” Emma said. Her eyes and mind sharpened. “Are you suggesting that I discover them for you?”

  “No,” said Mistress Artemisia. “We have spies of our own for that. There is one thing, one message you might convey.”

  Of course there was. Emma stood stony-faced, offering nothing; no expression, no evident emotion.

  “Say to Lady Ada,” Mistress Artemisia said, “that the naming of Xanadu was neither fashion nor coincidence. Say also,” and there she paused, as if to measure her words, “that where poets dream, men of science may conceive reality. When poetry and science meet — there is the making and breaking of worlds.”

  “You speak riddles,” Emma said.

  “Then I give you a name,” said Mistress Artemisia. “The Promethean.”

  Emma drew in a breath, carefully. “So. It is true. My lady’s father in his pride — after all — he succeeded. He lives; he truly has become immortal.”

  “I will not say that he lives,” said Mistress Artemisia, “but whether he is immortal...that may be a matter of interpretation.”

  “Indeed?” Emma said. “The eidolon of Pluto that wears Lord Byron’s face — does it not also contain his soul? When, that is, it is not inhabiting the bodies of those who dwell for a while within the eidolon? Is that the heart of all Xanadu’s secrets? But if that is so, why reveal it now? Why even hint at it?”

  Mistress Artemisia did not reply. While Emma stood, dizzy with speculation, she had risen to her feet.

  She was almost at the door. Small as the room was, still her speed was somewhat less than natural.

  Emma caught her arm. It was flesh; she was certain. But the balance of the body, its movement, the strength with which Mistress Artemisia spun free...

  In the swirl of skirts, Emma saw a thing that she could not mistake. Gears; wheels. Feet of leather and steel.

  Mistress Artemisia paused in the door. “Some things should not exist,” she said, “and some of those cannot help themselves.”

  Emma had no sensible response to that. Before she could think of one, Mistress Artemisia was gone. Emma stood alone, bowed down beneath a burden of secrets.

  Queens’ College and Lady Jocasta Merriwell together mourned the sad and terrible death of Sir Willoughby Smythe. So tragic; cut off so soon in the service of science. His like, the Fellows agreed, would not be seen again.

  The automaton that walked with the late professor’s distinctive gait took ship three days after the funeral, sailing for the Americas. An African servant, unmistakably human, accompanied it, as did a young woman of discreet but evident means.

  Ostensibly they were to tour the remote and marvellous continent. Much more secretly, they were to make certain contacts and secure certain alliances, and widen the net that Lady Ada had cast across the world of men and machines.

  Lady Ada did not come to see them off. She had bidden them farewell in the early morning, receiving them in her study.

  She had been there all night; Emma recognised the signs. Her eyes were a fraction too bright, her carriage just a little too erect. She was holding herself up by force of will.

  It was never Emma’s place to offer comfort, still less to invite Lady Ada’s confidence. Yet one thing she felt bound to say. “If the one you have been hunting for so long is indeed in Xanadu, he must surely by now be rendered harmless. Otherwise the world would know; and the world has heard no word.”

  Lady Ada sighed. “So one might think,” she said. “And if the soul must transfer again and again, losing a fragment with each shift, there can be little left at all. And yet...”

  And yet, thought Emma. She held her tongue.

  Lady Ada saw: her glance was, not grateful; that would be beneath her. But it acknowledged Emma’s tact. Acknowledged, and then moved firmly on. “Whatever the truth of that, there are a world of tasks to be done, and terribly few of us to do them. You three will serve us well in your various capacities.”

  Emma bowed to the compliment. Her heart was beating more quickly than usual. A commission, at last. Adventure — at too long last. And with such companions.

  “It will be an interesting journey,” she said.

  “And useful for the cause,” said Lady Ada. “Godspeed, then. Until we meet again.”

  “As we shall,” said Emma, and that was more true a promise by far than the one that she had made to Mistress Artemisia.

  Pirate Queen of French Prairie

  Irene Radford

  Spring 1843

  Cannon blasts exploded amidships. Splinters sprayed upward. My galleon-class dirigible dropped a thousand feet into the dawn mist as five ballonets in the envelope lost gas. The deck met my face with force and malice aforethought.

  I shook my head to clear it of the reverberations. Then I crawled upward, clinging to whatever brass I could use as a handhold.

  “Loose the dragons,” I called into the speaking tube, trying to maintain a facade of calm despite the desperation of our situation.

  When my spine was straight and my feet firmly planted, I exhaled an undulating battle cry, challenging my crew to renew the fight with vigour.

  “Aye, aye, Captain!” Grimes, my first mate, slid down the pole toward the cannon deck before he’d finished his salute. I heard him chant the call to battle all the way to the gun deck.

  God, I wished I could fly with my pilots. But I, Trude Romanz, captained the White Swan. I needed to direct our battle from the bridge. I needed to take out that tricky International Secure Shipping Lanes Police battlewagon. The captain was supposed to protect independent shippers as well as Hudson’s Bay fleets. He wasn’t supposed to lure independents like my White Swan into close-quarter combat by masquerading as a lumbering Hudson�
�s Bay Company cargo bateau.

  I should have known. The mistake was mine and mine alone. Company bateaux never flew alone. They always clustered together in flocks of nine or more. If one dropped out of formation when the boilers failed, or the envelope burst, or one of the myriad things that can go wrong with a dirigible, they sank to the Pacific Ocean below and rode the waves until they fixed the problem and they could fly away with the next convey.

  Now I had to pay the price with a damaged ship and delay getting to my true mission.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the White Swan, caressing her wood and brass fittings beside the wheel. Then I grabbed the wheel and spun it to starboard, presenting the port side to the enemy and thus giving the pilots a clear exit.

  “Dragons away!” Jimmy Seaforth, my navigator and helmsman, called. His own ululation followed the harriers into battle.

  I dropped a magnifying lens over my goggles and watched as the snub-nosed dragons shot forth from the hull, expelled by compressed steam.

  Light and manoeuvrable, the dragons had limited range and duration. Each one packed a full-sized pulse cannon above the cockpit.

  As each of the small aeros cleared the hull, more cannons snugged into their ports.

  A few seconds. We needed just a few more seconds for the cannons to recharge. Wisps of steam drifted from the ISSLP hull. I counted on the inefficiency of their regulation boilers. A few more seconds...

  “Fire all cannons!”

  The dragons loosed bolts of pure light, strafing the enemy envelope. The fixed Gonnes followed with a barrage of fire to the aft hull where the boilers were.

  The ship exploded in a shower of brass fittings, hemlock splinters, and boiling water.

  I needed to make every shot count before my dragons had to return fire or lose altitude. I slipped a purple crystal from the thong about my neck. Misty morning light from the ports glinted off the hundred and more facets. Before the inner light of the Yuenon matrix could enthral me, I rammed it into a special slot on The Gonne racked beside the wheel. The moment the crystal hit home, the weapon began to vibrate with building energy.

  Jimmy dropped the glass on the forward port. I rested The Gonne on the sill and took aim. When the crystal began to whine with a need to release, I pulled the trigger.

  A straight line of purple energy pierced the envelope of the enemy. I dragged the line of fire horizontally, obliterating as many ballonets full of lighter–than-air gas as I could.

  The enemy dropped and dropped fast. Any crew left alive would probably black out before they hit water. Five thousand feet is a long way to fall.

  The dragons added their own blue pulses to my shot to the vulnerable underbelly.

  Holes appeared in the enemy’s hull. Steam gushed out, followed by hungry flames.

  The ship was doomed.

  “Recall the dragons. Damage report?”

  “We’ll have to drop altitude and lay into port soon, Captain. Gertie is split and Mabel’s lines are leaking,” Engineer Markos grumbled back up the speaking tube. I almost felt his tears as he commiserated with his precious boilers. We all had pet names for favourite bits of machinery. The White Swan was our home, our friend, and our livelihood. She had her quirks, like any ship. But she was ours, even if she sometimes had a mind of her own.

  “Express-class dirigible approaching from the east northeast, Captain Romanz, Ma’am. Looks like she’s flying at seven thousand feet,” Grimes barked from his station at the wide bow port. He kept his spyglass up and trained upon his target. A fresh bandage circled his brow from a long gash he’d received in the battle. He’d have an interesting scar and a story to tell the ladies when we made port.

  “Speed and intersect?” I asked more casually as I dropped two magnifiers over my right goggle lens. The dark speck in the far distance jumped in size to a recognizable vessel. I added a third lens. The ship took on the sleek outline of an express: small, almost dainty, with more envelope than ship. The bold Hudson’s Bay Company logo shone clearly on the silver envelope. Who else could afford an express to the remote Columbia Department of North America?

  “She’s all boilers, water reservoir, and coal. No cargo bay,” Jimmy muttered. “Not worth our bother.”

  “Passengers and documents aboard an unscheduled flight could prove interesting and worthy of ransom,” Grimes commented. “If they strip the crew from nine to five, they’ve got room and weight allowance for a highly placed investor or Company officer.”

  “Approaching at...at...Ma’am, looks like they’re moving at twenty knots. Projecting intersect at Fort Vancouver aerofield,” Jimmy Seaforth announced. On a good day, with a full head of steam and a tail wind, the White Swan could hold eighteen knots for one thousand miles before we had to refuel. This wasn’t a good day. We limped along, barely holding twelve knots at two thousand feet.

  “There’s only one man in the entire Hudson’s Bay Company who could order an express to move at that speed this far from Montréal,” I mused aloud. “Looks like Sir George Simpson has something important to say to Dr. John McLoughlin. Something he can’t trust to a courier.”

  “Dr. John has been known to misplace or delay more than one courier until it’s too late to do anything about the message,” Jimmy muttered the thoughts in all our heads.

  “Order to loose the dragons, Ma’am?” Grimes asked. His feet twitched in his eagerness to fly. I knew the feeling.

  “Not yet.”

  He looked mightily disappointed and turned his bleak gaze toward me for an explanation.

  An explanation I could not, and would not share with him. Yet.

  My sister Elise — known to polite society as Madame Magdala, seeress, employed by Lady Ada Lovelace, the inventor of automata, as the proprietor of the Book View Café in London — had sent me privileged information by telegraph to our home port of Honoruru in the Sandwich Islands. She’d written that Sir George was up to something. A coup d’état perhaps? Something that would wrest power from the London Board of Governors and place it firmly in his own hands.

  Her mission and my need for repairs coincided.

  I’d raided richly laden cargos of beaver and otter pelts often enough to believe the rumours that Sir George planned to set up an independent fiefdom along the Columbia River, free from interference by both England and the United States.

  Sir George could very well manipulate himself into a kingship, using his remoteness from the authority of both the Governors and the crown to act as he pleased. Just as Dr. John McLoughlin had. But with fewer scruples or concern for the inhabitants along the Columbia River — most of whom came from the United States.

  “I want to talk to Dr. John at Fort Vancouver before we move against Sir George,” I mused aloud.

  “The White Headed Eagle ain’t gonna be too happy that his boss is descending upon him unannounced,” Grimes said. “I say we take out the express. We could add it to our fleet.”

  With himself as captain. I knew Grimes’ ambitions. Twenty years my junior, he had a lot to learn about alliances and trade, whom to trust, and whom to bribe. Pirating entailed a lot more than just fighting and looting.

  “Set course to land in French Prairie,” I ordered. “We’ll seek out rumours while we do repairs.”

  “That’s twenty miles up the Willamette River from the fort,” Grimes protested.

  “Exactly. Twenty miles away from igniting Sir George’s suspicions until we are up to full steam. We’ll spy out this caper from the ground.”

  Twenty men dressed in a mixture of calico and buckskin awaited us as our galleon settled on the vast meadow beside the Willamette River. Some bore the distinctive high cheekbones and copper skin of half-breed Indians. The rest looked as if their ancestors hailed from a dozen European countries.

  Their weapons varied as widely as their clothing and ancestry. I noted long-barrelled, large-bore hunting rifles and the lighter, more uniform weapons dispensed by the HBC. They all carried hunting knives that could skin and dress o
ut prey with swift accuracy or as easily slit a human throat.

  “Power down, but keep light ballast in the envelope,” I spoke quietly into the tube to my engine crew. “And get those repairs underway.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Grimes, with me. Gather ten marines. Side arms only, holstered. Seaforth, you have the helm. You might want to prime the cannons but keep the gun ports closed for now.” I checked my own weapons, blade, and black powder. “And keep an eye on those repairs. No coddling the engineers if they complain.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “And, ah, check The Gonne for any cracks in the steam hose.”

  “Captain?” Seaforth raised his eyebrows.

  “Never know when a Kinematric Galvatron will come in useful,” I dismissed his questions as I fingered the Yuenon crystal pendant on its leather thong around my neck. Its bright purple facets only hinted at the power it focused when placed within The Gonne’s mechanism. It was easily twice as deadly as the pulse cannons and their larger but inferior Kentite crystals.

  A dozen crew scurried down the gangplank ahead of me. Their bare feet made little noise as they lashed the lines lightly to pegs in the ground. I wanted to slip this temporary mooring quickly if I had to.

  I waited at the top of the metal ramp until they finished and their leader gave me a curt nod. The crew faded into an obscure port within the galleon hull. The locals held their ground, neither inviting us nor storming the ship. The hiss of steam engines powering down punctuated the long silence with thick coal smoke and water vapour that meandered toward the sky in the still spring air.

  My goggles dimmed the light too much, blurring details. I slipped them onto my brow, beneath my wide hat brim. The world jumped into brighter and cleaner lines. No need to protect my eyes from soot here.

  The sound of water wheels turning in rushing river current provided a muted background to the near silence of a wilderness community. Wild water provided decent and cheap power to mills. No need for steam to grind the grain and plane the lumber. No wonder the air was so clear and clean.