“Thank you, Ivan,” Buckle said. He already had a cold mug of beer in his hand—the dark ale, the first-rate stuff, the yeasty flavor of it bright on his tongue—and he placed the tart on the balcony rail.
“One must make it to the pastries early, you see—before the bounders snap them all up!” Ivan said, jamming a tart into his mouth. Despite his efforts to the contrary, Ivan looked good. Buckle and Windermere had managed to replace his ratty ushanka with the top hat now sitting at a rakish angle atop his head, and his open jacket allowed his red ascot and cummerbund to draw attention away from the machinery visible on his face, neck, and hand, which did not stick out in the crowd as much as Buckle might have guessed, for most of the Crankshaft women incorporated metal elements into their fur-trimmed wardrobes.
Ivan stopped chewing, crumbs cascading from his chin. “Awwww, criminy!” he muttered.
Buckle followed Ivan’s stare. Gliding toward them through the crowd came the beaming Sabrina and Holly, each girl holding on to an arm of a grinning Balthazar.
The two young women were a sight to behold in their finery, appearing to float just above the surface of the earth as the bottoms of their dresses swept effortlessly across the waxed floorboards. Holly, her light brown tresses curled about her face and held up with a small white bird’s-nest hat accented with cardinal fathers, wore a scarlet gown with elbow-length silk gloves. The tops of her breasts plumped up roundly above her bodice. At her neck, the stiff collar, brocaded with white lace, framed a choker cameo with a white whale-ivory silhouette set in relief over a garnet stone.
Sabrina wore an emerald-green dress edged in black fur, and her crimson hair, unfurled and sweeping about her shoulders, rippled brightly under the oranges and yellows of the lanterns and candles. The open tunic collar of her dress jacket sported a double row of black buttons edged with black lace, running along the length of the tapering coat as it plunged down to her waist. She wore short black gloves, for the sleeves of her dress jacket were long and snug, ending in cuffs at her wrists with swirls of black fur.
Buckle took a short breath. Holly looked gorgeous, but Sabrina was nothing less than a vision.
Ivan spewed an unintelligible excuse through his mouthful of lemon tart and started to bolt. Buckle snatched him by the scruff of his collar.
“Stand fast, damn you!” Buckle whispered loudly at Ivan. “Stand fast!”
PECCADILLOES AND PETTICOATS
“WIPE YOUR FACE, QUICKLY!” BUCKLE yelled into Ivan’s ear.
Ivan rubbed his mouth with his sleeve, downing a gob of tart in one swallow, nearly choking on it.
Balthazar released Holly and Sabrina as they arrived. “Gentlemen,” he said. “I have delivered the young ladies into your care. Now, regretfully, I must return to our guests.”
“Thank you so much, Admiral,” Holly said, offering Balthazar a deep curtsy.
“Thank you, Papa,” Sabrina said, kissing Balthazar on the cheek, bouncing a little on her feet.
“I demand that you all enjoy yourselves immensely,” Balthazar shouted as he hurried away.
Buckle watched Balthazar depart. He felt strangely remote from his father at that moment, shouldered away by Balthazar’s unwillingness to disclose the secrets of his love life to at least one of his sons, though feeling such a way made him aware of being petty.
“You see, I told you!” Sabrina laughed to Holly, her cheeks powdered but still pink and shining. “Romulus always comes up here and hides.”
“I am not hiding,” Buckle said. “Just getting oiled up for the party.”
“That is a shame and a waste,” Holly said, her eyes darting toward Ivan and then back to Buckle. “For a man widely considered one of the finest waltzers in the clan.”
Buckle grinned. “High praise, though grossly misplaced. And yet I would be most delighted if you allowed me the honor of a slot on your dance cards.”
Holly handed Buckle her card, but her gaze was on Ivan, who looked like he was about to be shoved into an iron maiden. “My younger sister, Meagan, has been assigned to the Pneumatic Zeppelin as the assistant signals officer, as I am sure you are aware, Captain.”
“Of course,” Buckle replied. Ivan was quaking at his shoulder.
“Meagan is beyond excited,” Holly continued. “She reported to the Pneumatic Zeppelin an hour after she received her posting, and she is still aboard now, I am sure, her nose buried in a signals compendium. I have no doubt that you and Sabrina shall look after her.”
“She is already under my wing,” Buckle said with a smile. “Now, I am certain you are familiar with my brother, Ivan.”
“Good evening, Ivan,” Holly said as she curtsied.
“Good evening.” Ivan coughed, bowing—and then he saluted.
Buckle laughed inwardly as he signed Holly’s card. His first instinct was to try to save Ivan, to jump in and salvage whatever shred of a chance he might still have with the girl, but even Buckle knew—from the way Holly’s eyes shone when she looked at Ivan—that Ivan’s awkwardness was not going to deter the pretty girl who was enamored with the strange Russian-blooded mechanic.
The lovely Holly came to Ivan’s rescue, anyway.
“I hate to trample all appearances of etiquette,” Holly said, taking a step up to Ivan, who was pinned against the balcony rail. “But I do desperately wish to be dancing. Ivan, would you be so kind as to sign my card for the next waltz?”
Holly thrust her dance card at Ivan, who accepted it with a trembling hand. Ivan would readily stick his face into the guts of an exploding boiler, but here he was transfixed, confounded, utterly helpless—he was absolutely, spectacularly, deliciously doomed.
“I, I would find that to be most acceptable,” Ivan mumbled, scratching his name on Holly’s card and handing it back to her.
Holly paused, waiting. She raised an eyebrow.
Buckle slapped Ivan on the back. “Bow and offer the lady your arm, good gentleman,” Buckle said. “And escort her to the dance floor.”
Ivan bowed and jerkily offered Holly his undamaged arm. “Please, may I have this dance?”
“Most absolutely!” Holly said, snatching Ivan’s sleeve with a grip so tight that it startled him. “Let us go then, shall we?”
Ivan carefully led Holly away through the crowd.
“Poor Ivan.” Buckle laughed, turning to find Sabrina’s jade eyes sparkling at him.
“Lucky Ivan,” Sabrina said.
“Yes, you are right,” Buckle said, tipping a swig of beer into his mouth. He did not really want the drink at that particular moment, but he needed to break eye contact with Sabrina. Her presence was as warm and familiar as always—so why was he feeling so unsettled about her?
“Oh, I so wish Max could have attended. She would have enjoyed the party.”
“Do you think so?” Buckle asked. “She hates parties. She sulks when she has to put on a corset.”
Sabrina smiled. “Yes, she acts like she hates it. But I know better.”
She took hold of Buckle’s arm, her gloved hand resting on the fine fabric of his sleeve, the weight of the fingers as if a bird had lit there—but the touch ignited an awareness in Buckle, an intense awareness of her.
“If I may be so bold as to steal a scene from Holly’s last act,” Sabrina said, offering her dance card, “may I also be so inappropriate and brazen as to ask you to sign my dance card, and the last dance of the evening at that?”
“Of course,” Buckle answered playfully, though every nerve ending in his hands was tingling. He drew his pencil from his jacket and signed his name in the last slot—the most sought-after station on any lady’s dance card.
“After all,” Sabrina said, removing her hand from Buckle’s arm as he handed the card back to her. “We are not here, either of us, with anyone special. So I say I shall take advantage and enjoy the last waltz with the finest dancer in the hall.”
“I am sure you have just crushed the hopes of many young beaus,” Buckle said. And this was true. Sabrina
was a popular Crankshaft female. But she rarely entertained the hopes of potential suitors. Her passions always seemed to be distracted by other, more mysterious things.
“I am sure I shall not escape Wellington,” Sabrina sighed. “Poor Welly. As soon as he finds me—and I am shocked that he has not popped up yet—he will most diligently attempt to fill five slots on my card.”
Buckle laughed at Sabrina’s discomfort. Four dances in one evening were all that a lady was permitted to accept from a single man and still maintain her propriety. “Shall I get you something to eat?” Buckle asked. “A scone, perhaps. I saw blueberry on one of the tables.”
“That would be lovely,” Sabrina replied. “Thank you.”
“And a glass of beer?” Buckle continued. Sabrina liked beer. Especially ale.
Sabrina frowned. “No—I do not want beer.”
Buckle looked at her, confused. “Uh, no?”
“I am a proper lady at a proper ball,” Sabrina said, with an odd trace of hurt in her eyes. “As such, beer is improper refreshment. I would like a glass of punch. With an orange slice in it. Please.”
Buckle nodded, but he did not understand. Why would Sabrina be upset with his assumption that she would want a glass of beer, even though she always liked to have a glass of beer at a party? “I shall be right back,” he said, tugging off his white kid gloves.
Sabrina looked away over the balcony as if she were angry. Buckle hurried over to the table with the blueberry scones, loading one onto a plate with a scoop of clotted cream. Sabrina was just being catty, for some reason. But when she had turned her eyes from him, with the line of her jaw set against the lantern light, she had looked like Athena, a redheaded goddess gazing down upon the world, and the loss of her gaze had hurt him, hurt him in some new way that he did not understand.
THE APPRENTICE NAVIGATOR
CREWMAN DARIUS BANERJI, SEVENTEEN YEARS old and the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s apprentice navigator, hated the night watch. It was a cold, dark, lantern-lit bore, especially in safe harbor, and even more so at the Punchbowl airfield. He wasn’t upper-crusty enough to attend the Seasonal, but he could have been spending the evening at home with his family. Banerji loved zeppelineering—it was in his bones—but it also took him away from his loved ones for long periods of time. He wanted to see his parents, his brother, his sister, and the dog.
The iron grating of the keel deck occasionally creaked as Banerji walked it, moving at an easy pace, glancing through the compartment gaps at the girders and envelope walls beyond. At night, the inside of the zeppelin seemed like the inside of the moon—too big to truly comprehend, and filled with endless things, both inanimate and alive, that made endless little noises.
He did not make any sound to add to the quiet cacophony—he was a soft treader, he was. He made it a point to let the gratings creak as little as possible when he walked them.
Banerji paused at the top of the circular stairwell that led down into the piloting gondola and leaned on the rail. He wanted to smoke his pipe, but it was not allowed on board. But he was just a few steps from the galley. He liked to raid the pantry at night, much to the annoyance of Perriman Salisbury, the ship’s cook.
Sweetmeats tasted brilliant when one was tired, hungry, and cold.
He turned to stroll into the galley.
A sound stopped him.
Banerji froze. He listened. He knew every one of the thousand sounds the Pneumatic Zeppelin made in her moorings at night—and that was not one of them.
The single soft sound of a compartment panel creaking open down in the piloting gondola had come and gone in an instant, but for Banerji, it had been clear as a bell.
He slipped his hand to the butt of the pistol at his belt as he peered down into the dark companionway. It was difficult to see—the boil was not lit on the bridge, and the only illumination was coming from the buglight lanterns hanging on the hawsers outside.
Another sound—the scuff of a boot on the deck. Banerji crouched. The person below could be another of the six-member night watch, but Banerji knew it wasn’t. He was the only one patrolling the forward keel, and if someone had needed to visit the piloting gondola, they would have taken a lantern with them, or activated the boil.
Banerji wrapped his fingers around his pistol, wincing when the iron barrel squeaked against leather as he drew it. If he crept down, the intruder might see him first. He decided to descend quickly, treading lightly, and gain a view of the bridge before the intruder had time to react.
Heart pounding, Banerji rushed down into the darkness of the companionway.
He caught a glimpse of someone there—a squatting man wearing a black coat, leaning inside the access panel under the elevator wheel. But the man had heard him. He had not trodden softly enough.
A brilliant flash blinded Banerji, accompanied by the deafening boom of a pistol and an explosion of sparks against the iron railing in front of him. Banerji missed the next step and pitched forward, a lucky grab of the rail the only thing saving him from a headfirst tumble. He almost swung his pistol wildly and fired—his finger tight on the trigger—but he did not want to waste the shot.
By the time Banerji blinked, the man had jumped out over the port-side gunwale.
Banerji leapt to the deck, charged the gunwale, and launched out after him.
Cold air slapped Banerji, his ears ringing, as he dropped the eight feet from the gondola port to the repair dock. His boots hit hard and he rolled—and then he was up and running. He saw a dark figure duck down into the machinist’s trench under the wharf. “Alarm!” he screamed. “Alarm!”
Banerji’s shout was not necessary. The gunshot had brought every soul on the airfield running in the darkness, calling out, and the rest of the night watch was peering down from above.
He jumped down into the machinist’s trench—a long corridor the length of an airship lined with machinery and lit by huge glass tanks of glowing green boil, where the machinists could work metal without worrying about sparks—and saw the saboteur darting ahead. Banerji took off after him, dodging a handful of surprised mechanics as they raised their goggles over their machines.
In a few strides Banerji was out of the dry trench and under the massive sweep of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s envelope nose, his boots crunching in the dry snow.
The saboteur was about thirty feet ahead, snatching the reins of a guardsman’s tethered horse and swinging up into the saddle. All around them, the shouts of Crankshaft guards and airmen closed in.
“Stop!” Banerji howled, aiming his pistol as he ran. “I have you! Stop!”
The saboteur did not glance back. Leaning forward in the saddle, he kicked the horse’s ribs. The animal bolted.
Banerji, twenty feet away now, fired his pistol at the man’s back. He plunged through the muzzle’s flash and burst of black smoke to see the horse and rider galloping out onto the main road, picking up speed as they weaved around wagons and bowsers with copper-sheathed wheels and water tanks, all drawn by stamping draft horses, their nostrils pumping steam into the cold air.
Banerji stopped, eyes swimming with sparkles, ears ringing, breathing hard, his pistol muzzle smoking. It was impossible that he had missed the man with his pistol shot. Impossible.
The mounted saboteur disappeared into the darkness just as shouting people appeared from every direction: musket-carrying guards, wrench-wielding mechanics, big-gloved supply men, and other members of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s night watch.
Lieutenant De Quincey, the helmsman and officer of the night watch, was suddenly at Banerji’s shoulder. “What happened, lad?” De Quincey asked.
“Saboteur. In the airship. He escaped toward town on a horse,” Banerji breathed. He wanted to say more, to explain what had happened, but he could not form any more words. “Saboteur,” Banerji said again.
SWEETHEARTING
SABRINA CLUNG TO THE EDGE of the dance floor, watching the sea of waltzing partners whirl about in smooth undulations of dark frock coats and rain
bows of fluttering gowns; she was leaning forward, almost on tiptoe, and the stretch of the muscle made her shin ache where she had slashed it in her battle with the kraken’s tentacle. Andrew Windermere and his wife, Julia, swept past, two people absorbed in one another, absorbed in happiness.
Suddenly, Sabrina hated not being in the game.
She caught sight of Buckle. He was out on the dance floor, and her pleasure was immediately stymied when Ilsa came into view, swinging in his arms, her antelope-brown hair drawn up in blue ribbons, her bosomy body resplendent in a dark-blue chiffon dress, her sensual face lit up in a smile, the smile of a woman who was content with her lovely fragment of Romulus Buckle. With her waist cradled in his arm, she seemed to be the princess of the hall.
Sabrina brought her glass to her lips and took a genteel sip—the sweet rum punch, further sugared by cherry and apple juice, nearly made her sick. She greatly desired a sip of beer—and instantly felt unladylike for it. She so yearned to be a lady this evening, an elegant, soft, beautiful lady—not a rough-edged, leather-clad, powder-blackened zeppelineer. She wanted to hate Ilsa, all of a sudden, because she was somehow jealous of her being with Buckle.
Sabrina smoothed out the silken backs of her black gloves. She was not willing to pursue Romulus. But then why did she envy Ilsa so?
Suddenly the assistant navigator, Welly, was at her side, smiling in his ever open and expectant way, his eyes full of her reflection. “Good evening, Miss Serafim,” Welly said, bowing his lanky and awkward body deeply, then flashing his white smile. “I hope you are enjoying the ball. May I request the honor of a dance?”
Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War Page 21
