The Doomsday Vault

by Steven Harper

  “It doesn’t stop us from trying to get it,” Gavin countered. “And it doesn’t mean we should give up.” He shifted tactics. “What about your responsibility to the Crown? To the people of the British Empire? Your aunt killed dozens of men, and if you know where she’s hiding, you have a responsibility to find her and save other lives.”

  “And this responsibility just happens to coincide with what you want.”

  “Is that wrong? For once can’t the world work for us?”

  “Oh, Gavin.” Tears welled up in her brown eyes, but her hand remained within both of Gavin’s. “You are so young.”

  “And you act so old. So what? Your whole life you’ve followed logic and reason, rules and regulations, but you’re not an automaton. Close your eyes and jump. I’ll catch you and we’ll fly. I love you, Alice. It’s always been you.”

  The electric lights over the theater doors flashed three times, indicating intermission was over. Most of the crowd had already drifted inside, leaving them nearly alone on the damp sidewalk. Norbert appeared in the doorway, a pinkish stain on his dress shirt. Behind him, Kemp tried to get through, but Norbert resolutely blocked his way.

  “Alice?” he said. “What are you doing out here?”

  Alice slipped her hand out of Gavin’s and turned toward him. “Getting some air, darling. I’m on my way in.”

  “Come with me,” Gavin whispered. “Tell me how to find your aunt.”

  She paused, caught between the two of them. She licked her lips. Gavin forced himself to remain still. Norbert glanced impatiently at a pocket watch.

  “Alice,” he said, “we won’t be able to find our seats in the dark.”

  “Madam?” Kemp said. “What do you wish to do?”

  Alice glanced at Gavin, and he knew her answer. An icy shell crushed his heart as she turned toward Norbert. Abruptly she spun back and said, “I’ll send you a telegram about what I know.” Then she was up the steps and through the doorway with her fiancé. Kemp gave Gavin a short glance with his expressionless eyes and shut the theater door.

  Gavin sank to the bottom step, heedless of the damp and dirt. Every scar on his back ached, and they pulled him down like taut chains. He drew the little nightingale from his pocket and pressed the side of its head so it sang. The mechanical notes sounded dull as a pile of lead shot. Gavin silently swore he would never sing or play the fiddle again, not in a world where Alice would never hear him.

  The theater doors banged open. Alice burst through them and rushed down to Gavin. He leapt to his feet just as she flung herself into his arms.

  “I’m an idiot,” she whispered in his ear. “To hell with Norbert. It’s always been you, too.”

  And then she was kissing him. Gavin pulled her to him and tightened his arms around her. His aches vanished and his heart soared. They joined hands and fled through the dark.

  Gavin didn’t even remember how they got back to Ward headquarters or when Kemp caught up to them. He only knew he was running up the steps to the main doors of the house, and it felt as if his feet barely touched the ground. A breathless Alice ran beside him, her eyes bright. He stopped in the doorway to kiss her again. She kissed back, and he wanted to shout and laugh even while his body pressed hard against hers.

  “Mr. Ennock!” she gasped when they parted. “One doesn’t kiss a baroness like that!”

  “One doesn’t?” he said with a wide grin.

  “Certainly not! One kisses a baroness like this.” She moved closer and kissed him again. Gavin closed his eyes and breathed hard. He’d died. That was the only explanation.

  “Madam,” Kemp said uncertainly.

  Alice ignored him. “Now it’s your turn,” she breathed against Gavin’s teeth.

  He stepped back, touched her face with one gloved hand, found he couldn’t bear that, and flung the gloves aside. He let his bare fingers brush her face as lightly as wings, and he leaned down for another kiss, one that stopped time.

  A gentle cough pulled them apart. Lieutenant Phipps stood a few feet away, her metal fingers drumming softly against her thigh. Alice covered her mouth, then put her hand down. Gavin, for his part, couldn’t stop smiling.

  “I’m glad you plan to join us, Your Ladyship,” Phipps said.

  Kemp regained his mental footing. “Since Madam has finally seen fit to take the advice of certain people and leave Sir, shall I arrange for the delivery of Madam’s things?”

  “The only things I need,” Alice replied with a small toss of her head, “are Click and the box of little automatons from my workshop. My favorite tools are in my handbag”—she held it up—“and everything else came from my . . . from Mr. Williamson, and I don’t want any of it.”

  Phipps gave a curt nod. “I’ll send a pair of agents round for the automaton box.”

  “What about Click?” Alice said.

  “Strange about Click.” Phipps stepped aside, revealing the little clockwork cat, who was licking a paw. “He showed up about five minutes before you did.”

  “Click!” Alice scooped him up, and Gavin felt glad that she was so glad. “How did you know to come here?”

  The cat only looked pleased with himself. A rusty purr emerged from his chest. Kemp sniffed.

  “We’ll also get you some clothes,” Phipps added. “Grand gestures may be dramatic, but they’re rarely practical. Welcome to the Ward, Baroness Michaels.” Phipps held out her flesh-and-blood hand.

  “Shouldn’t it be just Alice?” she said, shaking hands around Click.

  The corners of Phipps’s mouth twitched. “Indeed. We’ll start your training in the morning. Early.” With that, she strode away.

  Alice started to say something, but Gavin stopped her. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Tell her you have an idea about finding Edwina. Let’s keep it to ourselves for now.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Because the last two times she yelled at me,” Gavin said.

  “Two times?” Alice repeated.

  “Once after the incident at the Bank of England, and once after your adventure with the giant mechanical. You didn’t stick around for that one.” Gavin rubbed his face. “If your idea doesn’t pan out, I don’t want her to yell at me again. I don’t like being yelled at.”

  Alice looked doubtful, but finally nodded.

  “So tell me what’s going on.”

  “Do you have a map room in this place?”

  A few minutes later, she was unrolling a large, detailed map of London across a table in a room illuminated with gas jets Kemp lit for her. Click lounged on the table and batted idly at the scroll weights Alice used to prevent the unwieldy parchment from rolling back up.

  “Aunt Edwina kept playing that same chord,” she said. “It was a message, one only someone with perfect pitch would understand.”

  Gavin scratched his head. “Well, it didn’t work. I don’t understand it.”

  “You did—you just didn’t decode it. Look here. You said the G-sharp has a frequency of fifty-one; the B’s frequency is thirty; the rest would be zero, of course; and the D is nine. Those four numbers were almost exactly the same as fifty-one, thirty, zero, and eight, the map coordinates Pilot gave for Buckingham Palace when he flew us on the airship from Father’s house. I don’t know much about map coordinates, but I reasoned the music numbers must give a spot for a place close by. And I was right. Look—fifty-one degrees, thirty minutes north and zero degrees nine minutes west.”

  “Holy cow!” Gavin’s finger stabbed down onto the map. “Hyde Park!”

  “Oh! We should have known from the beginning!” Alice exclaimed. “Everything comes back there. Norbert and I often went to Hyde Park, and you played in Hyde Park. I first heard you there, though I didn’t know it at the time. If that’s where Aunt Edwina’s hiding, no doubt she heard you as well. It may be the reason she settled on kidnapping you—availability.”

  “It wouldn’t explain why she came back for me,” Gavin pointed
out.

  “What say we go ask her?” Alice asked.

  “After you, Your Ladyship.”

  “Might I suggest a change of clothing first?” Kemp said. “Neither Madam nor Sir is quite attired for tramping through the verge.”

  “Oh! I hadn’t thought. Can you find something more appropriate for me, Gavin?”

  Kemp’s eyes flickered and flashed. “I have already contacted the Third Ward’s main Babbage engine and discovered both the location of Sir’s room and the location of the main clothing stores. What color dress would Madam prefer?”

  “Madam would prefer trousers, please,” Alice said wickedly. “If Madam is going to break the rules, she may as well break them badly.”

  “If Madam and Sir will give me a moment.”

  “He’s full of surprises, isn’t he?” Gavin said as Kemp bustled away.

  Her arms went around his neck. “We have more rules to break, Mr. Ennock.”

  When Kemp returned a few minutes later with more appropriate clothing, he found Alice and Gavin in a state of dishabille. He coughed, and they separated. Gavin flushed, but Alice only laughed. It was the first time he had ever heard that sound from her, and his heart gave a little leap.

  “Thank you, Kemp.” She planted another kiss on Gavin’s mouth and scuttled behind a tall fire screen to let Kemp help finish removing her dress while Gavin changed out of the remainder of his evening clothes. His groin ached, and he was glad that Alice couldn’t see his present state. Click cocked his head across the map table.

  “What are you looking at, cat?” Gavin muttered.

  Click licked a metal paw.

  Alice emerged from behind the screen wearing brown trousers, a white blouse, a riding jacket, and a boy’s cloth cap. Gavin barely recognized her, but she was still beautiful. The trousers and jacket outlined her shape and made her femininity even more apparent. Gavin longed to snatch her up and flee to a remote mountaintop, where the air was clear and the clouds washed the world clean and where they could be alone together for an eternity of moments.

  Kemp said, “I took the liberty of ordering a pair of riding horses from the stable. I will stay behind to ensure proper quarters are prepared for Madam’s return.”

  They were heading out the door when Alice stopped and dashed back to Kemp. She spoke to him briefly, then rejoined Gavin.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  “I’ll want tea and a hot bath when I get back,” she explained, “and Click will need winding, since he’s staying behind. Life is in the details, Gavin.”

  “At least you’re not calling me Mr. Ennock.”

  They didn’t go the stables, though. Instead, Gavin led Alice to a staircase that took them down to the first basement level and a heavy door with several keyholes on it. Gavin spun a combination lock several times, depressed a number of keys on a large adding machine set into the door itself, and produced a key, which he slid into the third keyhole from the right. The door clanked and groaned, then creaked slowly inward.

  “What is this?” Alice asked.

  “The weapons vault. We’re not going unarmed.”

  The large, large room beyond was filled with racks and shelves and drawers. Gun barrels made of metal, glass, and other substances gleamed in the overhead electric lights. Pistols in a variety of shapes waited to be loaded and used. Many were connected by long, heavy cords to power packs meant to be strapped to the wielder’s back. Other racks sported explosives—bombs, dynamite, barrels of gunpowder. One section was lined with syringes, ampules, and rows of brown medicine bottles.

  “Goodness,” Alice said. “You’re well equipped.”

  “We try.” Gavin felt unaccountably pleased at the remark, as if he had something to do with the Ward’s weaponry. “Most of them are singular pieces invented by the clockworkers we find. The worst ones go into the Doomsday Vault, of course, but these are for us agents to use as we see fit.”

  Alice picked up a small ball of red porcelain. “What’s this?”

  “It’s filled with pollen from a plant developed by L’Arbre Magnifique. Don’t drop it! It’ll put you to sleep for several minutes unless you drink absinthe first.”

  “Absinthe?” Alice shuddered. “Why absinthe?”

  “Ask L’Arbre Magnifique.”

  She set the ball down and hefted a bulky rifle. “What’s this one do?”

  “Good choice. It shoots a balled-up net that springs open to engulf the target. Not much accuracy over long distances, but good at close range.” Gavin selected several syringes with corks on the end. “Opiates. Clockworkers don’t sleep much, and it takes a lot to keep them out, as you saw with Patrick Barton.”

  “Why didn’t we take any of this with us when we went after him?”

  “No time, remember? He was running, and we had to track him before the trail faded. Besides, Tree came armed. Here, take this one, too.” He handed her a pistol and holstered one for himself. “Now we can get those horses.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alice, Baroness Michaels, swung down from her horse with the net rifle heavy on her back. Everything felt odd. It felt odd to ride astride. It felt odd to wear trousers. It felt odd to think of herself as Baroness Michaels. It felt odd to think she had left her fiancé.

  One thing that didn’t feel odd was having Gavin beside her. That felt perfectly right. She was theoretically about to walk into the den of a notorious clockworker who was also her own aunt; yet right now she felt happier and more secure than she had since before her mother died.

  Gavin dismounted from his own horse with a creak of leather, and the animal snorted hard. His pale hair shone almost like a halo from under the simple cloth cap he favored. They were in the middle of Hyde Park, some distance north of the Serpentine. Trees and bushes and lawn stretched out around them, and a misty drizzle made the moon a fuzzy disk. Yellow gaslights shone here and there, but the park itself was deserted. Alice glanced around, wondering exactly where to start looking.

  “This is more or less where the map coordinates would put us,” Gavin said. “It may take several hours of searching before—”

  “Here it is!” Alice called out. She was examining a small gardener’s shack that stood beneath a spreading beech tree. It appeared completely normal, except for the overly complicated lock on the door. Gavin trotted over and shone a large electric torch on it. Brass gleamed, and Alice saw scratches above the lock.

  “Too much for a simple gardener,” Gavin agreed.

  Alice’s heart rate climbed, and her lips were parted with excitement. “How do we get in?”

  “These scratches.” His fingers dragged across them. “It’s musical notation, but old-fashioned—medieval. Doctor Clef showed me some stuff like it.”

  “What happens if you sing it?”

  Gavin sang, a short, quick melody that trilled like a nightingale. Alice found it pretty, but she glanced nervously around. Staying in one place after dark was a good way to encounter a plague zombie, especially in a place like Hyde Park, where the lights were scattered and far apart. Even as the thought crossed her mind, a shadow moved to their right. Two plague zombies lurched out of a clump of bushes. Both were women in tattered dresses. One carried a battered parasol. To their left came a trio—three teenaged boys, barefoot and in rags.

  “Gavin!” Alice hissed.

  He caught sight of the zombies, and the melody stopped with a startled choke. A red light flashed above the lock.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Alice said. “The Ward can find this place again.”

  “Agreed.”

  But more zombies oozed out of the damp darkness, a crowd of pale men, women, and children, all groaning their misery. There was no way through them. Alice shrank back against the shack, her excitement forgotten.

  “Where did they all come from?” she asked desperately. “Why are they coming for us?”

  Gavin turned back to the door and started the song again, but his voice shook, and he got only a few notes in b
efore the red light flashed. He started a third time. Alice drew her pistol. There didn’t seem to be much point in using the net rifle against a whole crowd, though the single pistol in her hand didn’t seem a great defense, either. Could she kill a plague zombie? They had once been—perhaps still were—human beings. The closest ones were only a few paces away now, and she could smell the rotten meat, even see the maggots that crawled around their open sores. Gavin continued to sing. Alice drew back the pistol’s hammer and aimed with a shaky hand.

  The lock clunked and the bolts drew back. Gavin’s torch revealed a staircase heading down.

  “Go!” Gavin shoved her inside without waiting for a response, then dived after her and slammed the door shut. Alice leaned against the shack wall, breathing heavily. Her knees quaked inside the unfamiliar trousers.

  “Are you all right?” Gavin put an arm around her shoulders. “Did they touch you?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I’m fine. They didn’t touch me.”

  Fists thudded slowly on the door and walls. Alice shied away from them. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about them. I faced down a small army of them at the bank.”

  “You were sitting atop a mechanical at the time. Drink this.” He handed her a flask, and she sipped something that burned all the way down. “Brandy. For the jitters.”

  It did help. What helped even more was the way Gavin took her hand as they stood at the top of the stairs.

  “Since we don’t have much choice,” he said, “let’s see who’s home.”

  They descended the creaky staircase and came to a wide tunnel lined with brick. A deep trench ran down the center. Water dripped, and rats scuttled away from the light of Gavin’s torch.

  “This looks like part of the sewer,” Alice said. “Though it smells rather fresher.”

  “How would a baroness know what the London sewers are like?” Gavin flicked a foot at a passing rat, and it squeaked angrily at him.