Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School)

by Gail Carriger

  “Did you hear Monique cornered Agatha in the hallway this afternoon? Apparently she said she wondered how someone of Agatha’s vulgar proportions even got admitted to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s. She said that Agatha probably wouldn’t be asked back after the winter break, even if she did come from a long line of intelligencers. She said you would take Agatha’s place, since there was no one better.”

  “Oh, dear, no wonder Agatha was mad at me. It’s not true, is it?” In normal finishing schools, the general attitude was the more students the better, but this one was different. Perhaps on an airship number restrictions have to be followed.

  Dimity chewed her bottom lip. “It’s possible. Not that you’d take her place, but that she might not make it through. I don’t mean to be unkind, but she really isn’t very good. She might be better off at a real finishing school, and even then… I mean to say, have you seen her? It’s not so much her figure as her confidence.” Dimity shook her curly head in sympathy. “If only her posture were improved.”

  They heard a little gasp from the doorway and looked up to see Agatha’s round, crestfallen face as she ducked away.

  “I thought you closed that!” Dimity said to Sophronia, horrified.

  “I thought I did, too. Perhaps she’s not so bad an intelligencer as you thought.”

  Dimity was clearly upset with herself. Dimity was many things, but no one would call her mean-spirited. “Should I go after her, do you think?”

  Sophronia sighed. “Perhaps we both should.”

  They went to knock on the other girl’s door. Sidheag opened it, wearing a sour expression. Well, more sour than usual. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “We came to apologize.” Dimity looked hopeful.

  “Well, it’s a bit late for that.” Sidheag crossed her arms over her bony chest and glared at them.

  “Oh, don’t take that attitude with us, Sidheag Maccon. We know you’re not so bad as you make out.” Sophronia pushed past the taller girl and into the room. Dimity followed, shutting the door firmly behind them.

  Agatha and Sidheag’s chamber was much the same in structure and layout as Sophronia and Dimity’s. Which is to say it was small, with two beds, two wardrobes, and a vanity with a wash basin, and not much else. It did not, however, have Dimity’s touch. Dimity’s touch in their sleeping chamber involved draping brightly colored silk scarves on all the surfaces and pinning sparkly glass brooches to them. Sophronia didn’t mind, although she did think it made the place look a little like an opera singer’s boudoir.

  Dimity approached the bed where Agatha lay facedown in a hunch, head buried in her pillow. “I’m sorry, Agatha, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Agatha didn’t move.

  Sophronia came over and said, “Couldn’t you let us help you, just a little bit? I mean, we are trying with Sidheag.”

  Sidheag snorted.

  “Well, we are. She helps us with boy-type stuff, and we coach her in how to be a girl.”

  Sidheag snorted again.

  Sophronia gave her a look. “Well, we do. You’re simply bad at it!”

  Dimity patted Agatha on the back. “We could do it with you, too.”

  Agatha sniffed and rolled over. Her face was, as Mademoiselle Geraldine had pointed out, very blotchy indeed. “But what can I exchange?” she asked shakily.

  Sophronia and Dimity grappled for a reply.

  Finally Sophronia said, “You’re good at sums and calculating household management. I heard Sister Mattie compliment you the other day. And we could all use help being more mild-mannered. You are particularly good at that.”

  Dimity came in to assist. “Yes, I talk too much, and Sophronia is overly bold.”

  “How kind of you to say, Dimity.” Sophronia raised her eyebrows.

  “And of course Sidheag is perfectly hopeless,” added Dimity.

  “Yes, thank you, Dimity.”

  “Well, it’s true!” Dimity was truculent.

  Agatha started to chuckle damply. “There you go, talking too much again, right, Dimity?”

  “See, that’s the spirit!” said Sophronia.

  KEEPING PROPER RECORDS AND HOW TO STEAL THEM

  So their little private study parties of three became four. If Agatha observed Sophronia and Sidheag’s occasional jaunts to the boiler room, there was one thing Agatha was really very good at, and that was holding her tongue. Their private club didn’t help modify Monique’s behavior, however. Later that week, a rumor sprouted up that Dimity had stepped out with Lord Dingleproops, alone and unchaperoned.

  Dimity was absolutely crestfallen. “I never! I’m a good girl, much to Mummy’s disappointment. We always stayed in company. Besides, I don’t think he likes me in that way.”

  Sophronia began pacing about the room. “Monique started the rumor, I know it. Something is going to have to be done about her.”

  “I don’t think any of us are ready for a full-on covert reputation destruction. Monique has four extra years’ training. She may not be a natural intelligencer, but she certainly is a natural pain.” Dimity chewed her lip, still upset.

  “She’s a natural cod-slinger, is what she is.” Sidheag had rather taken to Dimity. Dimity is like that; she wears you down eventually.

  “Sidheag, language!” Dimity gasped, then she turned to Sophronia. “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t know yet, but it had better be good. And something where I don’t get caught or turned in.”

  Dimity, who was on Sidheag’s bed, flipped over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “You mean to say, where we won’t get caught.”

  “We?”

  “I’m going to help you,” said Dimity.

  “Me, too,” insisted Sidheag.

  “And me, though I probably won’t be much good,” said Agatha.

  “And there’s Bumbersnoot—he’ll help,” added Dimity.

  “Really? What’s Bumbersnoot’s difficulty with Monique?”

  Dimity considered this seriously. “I don’t know, but I wager he has one. Oh, she dented him once. Didn’t she, Snooty darling?”

  Sophronia took a deep breath. “We could go after the prototype. That would show them all. And she wouldn’t be able to pass it on to her employer, whoever that is.”

  Sidheag and Agatha, who hadn’t really been involved in her covert investigations thus far, looked as though they were trying hard to understand what she was talking about.

  “So what’s the plan, then?” asked Sidheag.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It involves a ball.”

  Sidheag and Agatha paled at the very idea.

  “I’m not ready for a ball!” said the taller girl with an uncharacteristic look of panic.

  “Oooh, a ball.” Dimity clapped her hands.

  “Well, there’s one the night I return home. It’s a good excuse to bring you three to visit. I can’t write to ask, of course. But it will be an excellent cover for searching the house and grounds while Frowbritcher and the other mechanicals are distracted.”

  “But that’s the start of winter holidays. How are we to get the prototype into the appropriate hands?” Dimity wanted to know. “Even supposing we do find it.”

  “That’s the other part of the plan. Someone told the school to recruit me. We have to figure out who reported on me to Lady Linette. We find out who that person is, we can give her the prototype.”

  “I don’t suppose you know who that might be, do you?”

  Sophronia grinned again. “No, but—”

  Dimity said, “I know that look. That’s the look she gets right before she goes off exploring.”

  “But?” prompted Sidheag.

  “But we could break into the school records to find out.”

  “Sophronia, that’s a terrible idea!” protested Dimity.

  “You’re mad,” added Sidheag.

  Agatha only looked wide-eyed.

  “Ah, but I have the trum
p card.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m going to borrow an obstructor and some soap.”

  “I could, but it’ll take a long time. I spent years learning how. I’m thinking you need it before the holidays?”

  Soap and Sophronia were sitting watching Sidheag take on a small herd of sooties in a rousing game of dice during a break in the late-night shift. The two girls had come for coal and stayed for conversation and, in Sidheag’s case, gambling. She really was a lost cause. Sophronia had hoped she might get Soap to teach her his neat trick of getting inside locked doors.

  She nodded glumly.

  “What do you want to know lock-picking for, anyway?” Soap asked.

  “I need to find out about school-affiliated intelligencers in my home area who might have recruited me for Mademoiselle Geraldine’s.”

  “You’re wanting to break into the record room?”

  “That’s about the sum of it.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Soap, what if you get caught up top?”

  “Now, there, miss, you think every time you come visit us we aren’t at risk? It’s a good thing there are so many sooties and so many places to hide. And that you bribe all of us with them smallish cakes. Because otherwise someone would have long since put a stop to these little visits of yours.”

  Sophronia only gave him a look. She didn’t like Soap taking too many risks for her.

  He grinned at her, sidled over, and bumped her shoulder. “Stop your fretting. I can get away. Plus, how you going to do it without me?”

  Sophronia felt a little giddy despite her worry. “Oh, very well! But this is becoming quite the expedition.”

  It took them a week to plan their raid on the record room. Vieve agreed to lend Sophronia the obstructor with remarkably little fuss. She was involved in some new invention and it was taking up most of her time—even the temptation of a midnight record room break-in could not lure her away. She also told them where the room was located. “ ’Course I know. Whatcha take me for, an amateur? They keep records of inventions there, too.” After that there was a good deal of arguing about who should go and who should stay behind.

  Sophronia didn’t tell anyone Soap was coming; she only said she had a way of getting inside once they found the place.

  Dimity advocated most strongly. “I want to come! I haven’t had any exciting excursions yet.”

  “It’ll be either you or Sidheag; we have to keep the numbers down.” And Agatha clearly isn’t interested.

  Dimity looked pleadingly at Sidheag, who, not unsurprisingly, shrugged.

  Dimity took that as an affirmative and clapped her hands in excitement.

  “You may have to tone down your sparkles, you know. The point is not to be seen.”

  Dimity, with great reluctance, removed all her jewelry and put on her darkest gown, a royal blue walking dress.

  “Will I do?”

  “Admirably.”

  Soap was waiting as arranged on the deck outside Sister Mattie’s empty classroom, lurking among her potted plants. He materialized from darkness behind a tall foxglove. Good as a poison in large doses or for trouble breathing in small amounts, Sophronia remembered.

  “Good evening, ladies.”

  “Good evening, Soap. All prepared?” He was looking cleaner than usual, and his clothing almost fit. He put on his Sunday best for me. Sophronia was chuffed.

  “Of course. You have the obstructor?”

  “I do, indeed.” Sophronia showed him her wrist.

  Dimity remained silent, her mouth a perfect O of amazement as she looked at Soap.

  “Dimity, this is Soap. Well, Phineas B. Crow is his proper name.”

  Soap grinned his perfect grin and doffed his cap at the still-dumbstruck Dimity. “How-d’ye-do, miss?”

  “This is Dimity Plumleigh-Teignmott.”

  Dimity bobbed a curtsy and recovered her voice, fortunately remembering to keep it low. “How do you do, Mr. Soap?”

  “Oh, just Soap will do, miss.”

  Dimity looked up at him, eyes wide. “You know we have a stable lad just like you. You know, in color. Perhaps you know him, name’s Jim, he—”

  “I’m loath to cut introductions short, but we really must get moving,” said Sophronia, mostly to forestall anything further Dimity might come up with.

  The three of them turned and proceeded in a measured way toward the teachers’ section of the ship. They spent a good deal of time pausing to let the obstructor work its invisible magic, dashing around a frozen mechanical, and then going onward.

  Fortunately, the record room was exactly where Vieve said it would be: on the upper floor of the front section of the airship.

  Getting there was rather less easy than it might have been. Dimity was no climber, and she kept wobbling around and squeaking about the distance to the ground—far—and the difficulty in bridging gaps—impossible. Eventually they climbed a rickety set of steps that wound in a corkscrew around the outer hull from Professor Lefoux’s balcony to a small, cupboardlike door.

  Directly above was the forward squeak deck, where Sophronia had stood on her first day and acquired Bumbersnoot. Below were the levels containing the teachers’ private quarters; below that, the massive boiler room. The forward section housed everything important, and the attic level was one of the only ones Sophronia hadn’t visited. Consequently, she was dying of curiosity.

  Dimity signaled them to keep their voices down. “Professor Braithwope, remember? He’s still awake, and he’s only a level or two below us, with vampire-acute hearing.”

  Wish she’d thought of that when she was squeaking, thought Sophronia.

  They continued along in silence. The level was somewhat squashed. Even Sophronia felt cramped, and she was by far the littlest of the three. It was not rigged with gas parasol lighting. They had to feel their way along in the dark.

  They found the room, conveniently labeled RECORD LIBRARY—CONTAINING RECORDS OF IMPORT in big gold letters.

  There was a soldier mechanical directly outside the door. It spotted them approaching and whirred to life, puffing smoke out from below its headpiece in a huff of alarm. Before Sophronia could even raise the obstructor, the mechanical raised one cannonlike arm and shot at them.

  Soap dove down on instinct. Sophronia and Dimity flinched.

  They found themselves covered in a net of some spongy, sticky material, like tripe, that was nevertheless very strong. The mechanical advanced toward them, hissing menacingly.

  I feel like a partridge wrapped in bacon, thought Sophronia. Most unpleasant. Sophronia couldn’t raise her arm to point with the obstructor, as the netting held it firm at her side. “Dimity, can you reach your sewing scissors?”

  “I can’t move,” peeped Dimity, and then she made a puft noise as some of the sticky netting got into her mouth.

  “Soap?” Sophronia tried to look about to see the sootie.

  “I’m better off than you are, miss. But it’s a mite embarrassing.”

  Sophronia glanced down. In diving to avoid the blast, Soap had ended up partly shielded by the skirts of her dress. Only one side of his body was trapped to the floor by the netting; the other half was under her petticoats.

  The mechanical was upon them, and had apparently been instructed to try to capture any intruder, but was confused to have caught three at once. It was making bewildered whirring noises and rocking side to side on its track as it sifted through its protocols for the correct approach.

  “Do you have any sewing scissors?” Sophronia asked Soap.

  “No, miss, but I have a knife.”

  “Can you get to it and try to free up my wrist?”

  Soap squirmed, fluffing out petticoats as he wiggled his free arm. Dimity made a muffled squeak of alarm at this indignity to Sophronia’s person. Soap managed the task barely, cutting away enough of the strands to allow Sophronia to raise her arm and point it at the mechanical. Unfortunately, the strands were now stuck to his kn
ife.

  The soldier mechanical appeared to have reached a decision. It leaned back and brought up its other arm, this one spouting smoke.

  “It’s going to burn us alive!” gasped Dimity.

  Before the mechanical could do anything further, Sophronia hit it with the invisible blast from the obstructor. The mechanical froze, but they still had to extract themselves from the net. Soap continued to hack from below with his knife, using the hem of Sophronia’s gown to clean it as he did so. Sophronia managed to access her reticule with her free hand and pulled out her sewing scissors. She cut away at the netting around Dimity until she, too, could get to her scissors.

  “This stuff is so sticky. I’m sure it’s food by nature. Should we be handling raw foodstuffs? My dress is entirely ruined, and even using it to wipe with isn’t very effective.” Dimity was not pleased.

  Sophronia checked the tackiness of the net between two fingers. I wonder if oil might work. She fished some perfume oil out of her reticule—rose-scented. She cleaned her scissors as best she was able and then coated the blades with the oil. It worked a treat.

  “Would you look at that?” Soap was impressed. Sophronia dropped the bottle down to him. He coated his knife, then handed the oil up to Dimity. Things went much faster after that, although they all ended up smelling like roses.

  All the while they were working to get free, Sophronia had to pause to blast the mechanical with the obstructor. When the sticky stuff was finally gone, they could not push the huge, heavy soldier mechanical out of the way, for it was somehow locked down.

  Soap couldn’t manage to pick the lock in the space of one obstructor blast. So Sophronia had to stand before the sentry and disable it with the obstructor every six seconds while Soap worked diligently behind it.

  Sophronia worried the obstructor might run out or fade in its effectiveness. Vieve had not explained exactly how it worked, and Sophronia could hardly believe it would continue indefinitely, but it showed no signs of stopping.

  Eventually Soap got the door open. Sophronia hit the mechanical with one last blast and they squeezed inside the room before the thing woke up again. They closed the door firmly behind them.