The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set

by Gail Carriger

  The driver, up high and behind them, encouraged the horse into a fast trot with a long whip. The creature surged forward, taking turns and racketing down alleyways at quite the breakneck velocity.

  In no time whatsoever, they had left Nice behind and were headed along the dirt road that wound along the cliffs and beaches of the Riviera. It was a drive Alexia might ordinarily have enjoyed. It was a crisp winter day, the Mediterranean a sparkling turquoise blue to their right. There was very little traffic, and their driver cut loose along the long slow turns and straight stretches, allowing his horse a distance-covering canter.

  “He said he would take us all the way to the border,” Madame Lefoux spoke into the rushing wind. “Standing me up a pretty penny for the favor, but he is making very good time.”

  “I should say so! Will we reach Italy before dark, do you think?” Alexia tucked her dispatch case more firmly beneath her legs and skirts, and placed her parasol across her lap, trying to get comfortable while wedged tightly between Madame Lefoux and Floote. The seat really was only meant for two, and while none of them was overly large, Alexia had cause to be grateful she was currently without her ubiquitous bustle. It was by no means an ideal arrangement.

  The driver slowed.

  Taking advantage of the more relaxed pace, Alexia stood, turning precariously backward so she could look over the roof and the driver’s box to the road behind them. When she sat back down again, she was frowning.

  “What is it?” Madame Lefoux demanded.

  “I do not mean to concern you, but I do believe we are being followed.”

  Madame Lefoux stood in her turn, holding her top hat firmly to her head with one hand and grasping the edge of the hansom’s roof with the other. When she sat back down, she, too, sported a crease between her perfectly arched eyebrows.

  Alexia looked to her valet. “Floote, how are you fixed for projectiles?”

  Floote reached into his inner jacket pocket and presented the two tiny guns. He cracked each open in turn. They were both loaded. He’d obviously taken the time to reload the single shots after their spot of vampire bother. He fished about further in his coat and produced a small quantity of gunpowder in a twist of paper and eight more bullets.

  Madame Lefoux reached across Alexia and picked up one of the bullets, examining it with interest. Alexia looked on as well. They were made of some kind of hard wood, tipped in silver and filled with lead.

  “Old-style sundowner bullets. Not that we will need such as these at this time of day. Any followers would have to be drones. Still, Mr. Floote, what are you doing with such things? You cannot possibly be certified to terminate supernaturals.”

  “Ah.” Floote put the bullets back in his jacket pocket. “Let us say I inherited them, madam.”

  “Mr. Tarabotti?” Madame Lefoux nodded. “That explains the age of the guns. You want to get yourself one of those newfangled Colt revolvers, Mr. Floote, much more efficient.”

  Floote looked with a certain degree of fondness down at the two tiny guns before tucking them back out of sight. “Perhaps.”

  Alexia was intrigued. “Father was an official sundowner, was he?”

  “Not as such, my lady.” Floote was always cagey, but he seemed to reach new heights of tight-lippedness whenever the subject of Alessandro Tarabotti came up. Half the time Alexia felt he did it out of obstinacy; the other half of the time she felt he might be trying to shield her from something. Although with vampire drones on their tail, she could hardly imagine what she might still need protection from.

  Madame Lefoux pushed back the sleeve of her jacket and checked her own little wrist-emitter device. “I have only three shots left. Alexia?”

  Alexia shook her head. “I used up all my darts in the clock shop, remember? And I haven’t anything else left in the parasol but the lapis lunearis mist for werewolves and the magnetic disruption emitter.”

  Madam Lefoux sucked her teeth in frustration. “I knew I should have given it a greater carrying capacity.”

  “You cannot very well have done much more,” consoled Alexia. “The darn thing already weighs twice as much as any ordinary parasol.”

  Floote stood and checked behind them.

  “Will they catch us before we cross the border?” Alexia had no clear grasp on the distance from Nice to the Italian frontier.

  “Most likely.” Madame Lefoux, however, did.

  Floote sat back down, looking quite worried.

  They clattered through a small fishing town and out the other side, improved paving on the road allowing them a fresh burst of speed.

  “We will have to try to lose them in Monaco.” Madame Lefoux stood, leaned across the roof, and engaged in a protracted conversation with the driver. Rapid-fire French scattered on the wind.

  Guessing the gist of it, Alexia unclipped the ruby and gold brooch from the neck of her traveling gown and pressed it into the inventor’s small hand. “See if that will encourage him.”

  The brooch vanished across the roof of the hansom. The whip flashed. The horse surged forward. Bribery, apparently, worked no matter what the language.

  They kept a good pace and steady distance from their pursuers right up and into the town of Monaco, a decent-sized vacation destination of some questionable repute.

  The driver undertook the most impressive series of twists and turns, breaking off from the main road and dodging through some truly tiny alleys. They ran pell-mell into a line of laundry stretched across the street, taking a pair of trousers and a gentleman’s shirtfront with them, in addition to a string of French curses. They ended their obstacle run, clattering out of an upper section of the town away from the ocean, heading toward the Alpine Mountains. The horse tossed off the pair of scarlet bloomers he had been wearing about his ears with a snort of disgust.

  “Will we be able to cross through the mountains at this time of year?” Alexia was dubious. It was winter, and while the Italian Alps hadn’t the reputation of their larger, more inland brethren, they were still respectably mountainous, with white-capped peaks.

  “I think so. Regardless, it is better to stay off the main road.”

  The road narrowed as they began to climb upward. The horse slowed to a walk, his sides heaving. It was a good thing, too, for soon enough the track became lined with trees and a steep embankment to one side and a treacherous drop to the other. They clattered through a herd of unimpressed brown goats, complete with large bells and irate goat girl, and seemed to have shaken off pursuit.

  Out the left side window of the hansom, Alexia caught sight of a peculiar-looking contraption above the embankment and trees. She tugged Madame Lefoux’s arm. “What’s that, Genevieve?”

  The inventor cocked her head. “Ah, good. The sky-rail system. I had hoped it was operational.”

  “Well?”

  “Oh, yes. It is a novelty freight and passenger transport. I had a small hand in designing the control mechanisms. We should be able to see it in full presently, just there.”

  They rounded a bend in the road and began climbing ever more steeply. Before and above them stood the contraption in all its glory. To Alexia it looked like two massive laundry lines strung parallel across the tops of pylons. It became clear, however, that the lines were more like sky-high train tracks. Straddled atop them, crawling along in a rhythmic, lurching, buglike manner on large wheels threaded with moving treads, marched a series of cabins, similar in size and shape to stagecoaches. Each cabin emitted billowing gouts of white steam from underneath. Hanging from the cabin, down below the cables, each supported a swaying metal net on long cords, loaded with lumber. Like a spider with an egg sac or a trapeze train trolley.

  “Goodness!” Alexia was impressed. “Are they unidirectional?”

  “Well, most are going downhill with freight, but they are designed to go up as well. Unlike trains, those cable rails require no switchbacks. One car can simply climb over the other, so long as it is not carrying a net, of course. See the way the cabling goes over
each side of the cabin roof?”

  Alexia was enough impressed by the invention to be distracted from her current predicament. She’d never seen or heard of anything like it—a railway in the sky!

  Floote kept popping up and looking back over the cab roof like a jack-in-the-box. Alexia became quite sensitive to the pattern of his movements and so noticed when his legs became suddenly tense and he spent longer than usual standing. Madame Lefoux did as well and bounced up to lean next to him, much to the driver’s annoyance. Scared of further upsetting the fly’s center of balance, Alexia stayed seated, her view filled with trouser-clad legs.

  She heard a faint yelling behind them and could only imagine that there were drones following. On the next switchback, she caught sight of their enemy. Out the right side window of the cab, she could see a four-in-hand coach loaded down with intense-looking young men in hot pursuit. There was some kind of firearm equipage mounted atop the carriage roof.

  Just wonderful, thought Alexia. They have a ruddy great gun.

  She heard the pop of Floote firing off one of the tiny derringers and the sharp hiss of Madame Lefoux doing the same with one of her darts.

  Floote popped back down to change guns and reload. “Madam, I regret to inform you, they have a Nordenfelt.”

  “A what?”

  Madame Lefoux sat down to reload while Floote stood back up and fired again.

  “I have no doubt we shall witness it in action shortly.”

  They reached the snow line.

  A whole fleet of bullets of ridiculously large size hissed by the cab and embedded themselves in an unsuspecting tree. A gun that could fire multiple bullets at once, imagine that!

  Floote hurriedly sat back down.

  “The Nordenfelt, madam.”

  The horse squealed in fear, the driver swore, and they came to an abrupt halt.

  Madame Lefoux didn’t even try to argue their case. She jumped down from the fly, followed by Floote and Alexia. Floote grabbed Alexia’s dispatch case. Alexia grabbed her parasol. Without waiting to see if they would follow, Alexia charged up the embankment, stabilizing herself with the parasol, and began slogging through the snow toward the cable lines.

  Another burst of bullets churned up the snow just behind them. Alexia let out a most undignified squeak of alarm. What would Conall do? This kind of gunfire action was not exactly her cup of tea. Her husband was the trained soldier, not she. Nevertheless, she recovered enough to yell, “Perhaps we should spread out and make for that support pole.”

  “Agreed,” said Madame Lefoux.

  The next round of fire was not nearly so close.

  Soon they were too high up to be seen from the road below, even by that deadly swiveling gun. Also, the four-in-hand was even less able than the fly to handle off-road terrain. There came a good deal of shouting, probably the drones and the cab driver yelling at each other, but Alexia knew it was only a matter of time before the young men left their precious Nordenfelt behind and took to the ground in pursuit. At which point, she was at a distinct disadvantage with her heavy unbustled skirts dragging through the snow.

  As they neared the cable rail, one of the laden cars came heading downward toward them. Of course the darn thing was going in the wrong direction, back into France, but it still might provide some limited refuge. The three made it, finally, to the support pole. It was furnished with flimsy-looking metal rungs, intended to be used for emergency evacuation or repair.

  Floote seemed to be taking stock of their situation like some extremely dapper Roman general. “Madame Lefoux’s dart emitter is the fastest weapon we have, madam.”

  “Good point, Floote. Genevieve, please guard the base while Floote and I climb.”

  The Frenchwoman nodded, looking fierce.

  Alexia hated to leave her alone, but there was no other option. She hoisted her muddy skirts over one arm. Well, Paris had already seen them; she might as well show the rest of France her bloomers.

  Floote and she climbed the post.

  Floote paused on the small platform at the top, put down the dispatch case, and crouched to fire downward with a derringer, reloading and firing each gun in turn until he was out of ammunition, while Madame Lefoux climbed up behind them. Meanwhile, Alexia aimed her parasol at the approaching rail cabin. She could see the startled face of a driver in the window. She fully understood his confusion. She must present quite the lunatic picture—a statuesque Italian woman dressed English-style in a gown gone well beyond grubby, hair wild, and hat askew, pointing an ugly parasol at his large mechanical transport in a threatening manner.

  Just as the front of the cabin drew level with the platform, Alexia pulled back on a protruding carved lotus petal in the handle of her parasol. The magnetic disruption emitter sent off its silent but deadly signal and the rail car jerked to a halt.

  Inside the cable compartment, Alexia could see the engineer yelling at her in confusion. Behind her on the platform, she heard Madame Lefoux screaming obscenities in French, and the drones, now climbing up the support pole after them, were also shouting.

  She turned to see if she could help her companions in any way. The infant-inconvenience kicked an objection to all her recent exertions, but Alexia disregarded it with an internal, Pack it in, proto-nuisance. Time for that later.

  One of the drones now had Madame Lefoux by the boot. She was kicking at him while simultaneously attempting to climb the last handbreadth up onto the platform. Floote, finally out of bullets, was pulling at the Frenchwoman’s shoulders in an attempt to assist.

  Alexia, thinking quickly, opened and flipped her parasol. As swiftly as possible, she turned the special inset dial in the parasol’s tip around to its alternate setting. Holding the parasol far out over the edge of the platform, Alexia rained a mixture of lapis lunearis and water down onto the young men climbing after them.

  Dilute silver nitrate was designed for werewolves, not humans, and usually had no more disturbing a result on daylight folk than skin discoloration. But since the gentlemen in question were looking up, it had the beneficial effect of hitting the eyeballs and causing all to let go in startlement. The resulting screams may have been because they were falling, or perhaps they were the result of the chemical sting, but, as it ended with the drones writhing in the snow far below, Alexia considered the maneuver an unqualified success. Included among the writhers was the man who had had hold of Madame Lefoux’s boot. He still had her boot, but Madame Lefoux was able to attain the top of the platform with a look of profound relief on her pretty face.

  The three of them dashed to the rail cabin. Floote overrode the driver’s objection to their presence by smashing in the front window with Alexia’s dispatch case, climbing inside, and punching the poor man hard in the jaw. He fell like a stone, and his stoker, a slight, reedy boy with wide, anxious eyes, meekly acquiesced to their demands.

  No one else was on board.

  Alexia ripped off her bustle fall, tore the length into strips, and handed them to Floote. He showed remarkable dexterity and mastery of knot work, trussing up the boy and his unconscious supervisor with ease.

  “You do that quite efficiently, don’t you, Floote?” commented Alexia.

  “Well, madam, being valet to Mr. Tarabotti had its advantages.”

  “Genevieve, can you drive this contraption?” Alexia asked.

  “I only worked on the initial schematics, but if you can stoke the boiler, I will figure it out.”

  “Done!” Alexia thought stoking couldn’t be that difficult.

  Soon enough, the effects of the magnetic disruption emitter wore off, and the massive steam engine in the center of the cabin rumbled back to life. The cabin was designed with a windowed steering area at either end so that the car did not itself turn around. Instead, the engineer merely shifted position in order to drive in the opposite direction.

  Madame Lefoux, after a quick review of the controls, pulled down on a massive lever at one end of the lurching cabin and then dashed to the other e
nd, pulling a similar lever up.

  An alarmingly loud horn sounded, and the contraption, cabin, and massive hanging net of lumber down below began moving backward in the direction it had come, up the mountain once again.

  Alexia let out a little cheer of encouragement.

  Floote finished trussing up their two prisoners. “I do apologize, sirs,” he said to them in English, which they probably didn’t understand.

  Alexia smiled to herself and kept stoking. Poor Floote, this whole escape was rather beneath his dignity.

  Stoking was hot work, and Alexia was beginning to feel the strain of having dashed across rough terrain and then climbed a pylon. She was, as Ivy had once scornfully pointed out, a bit of a sporting young lady. But one would have to be positively Olympian to survive the past three days without some physical taxation. She supposed the infant-inconvenience might also have something to do with her exhaustion. But never having run while pregnant, she did not know quite who to blame—embryo or vampires.

  Madame Lefoux was leaping about the end of the cable cabin, pulling levers and twisting dials maniacally, and the rail contraption lurched forward in response to her ministrations, moving from a sedate step-by-step crawl to a kind of swaying shambling run.

  “Are you certain this thing can take this kind of speed with a load?” Alexia yelled from her self-prescribed stoker’s post.

  “No!” Madame Lefoux hollered cheerfully back. “I am attempting to deduce how to set loose the cargo straps and net, but there seems to be a safety override preventing a drop while in motion. Give me a moment.”

  Floote pointed out the front window. “I do not think we have that long, madam.”

  Alexia and Madame Lefoux both looked up from what they were doing.

  Madame Lefoux swore.

  Another loaded cart was coming down the cables toward them. It was crawling along at a sedate pace, but it seemed to be looming very fast. While one cabin could climb over another, they were not designed to do so while still lugging a net full of lumber.