Serephene selected a powder stick to highlight her already dramatic eyes. “I said I was having supper up here to rest up for tonight’s outing. An intimate musical evening with another broke family hoping to marry their noble son to outside money. Venetian aristocracy isn’t as chinless or spineless as today’s young English specimen. Instead they’re all outrageous flirts, which would be quite fun if I didn’t know they were flirting with intent. You can’t see past it to the real man behind the social graces. How can anyone be expected to marry someone they only know socially? Set the food on the windowsill, girl, and leave us alone.”
As Maddie slurped down a delicious minestra and twirled her fork into a heaped plate of bigoli, she started to feel better. “You’re supposed to be going courting and they feed you pasta covered in this spicy fish sauce? Won’t your breath be a deterrent to romantic overtures?”
“Not to an Italian. His will probably smell worse.” Serephene picked at a bowl of olives and plucked a single green sprig from the dish of insalata. “I won’t marry any of them anyway. I’m going to hunt for Scottie. Tonight.”
Brighella returned to help her mistress into the night’s gown—not the fabulous purple creation which, predictably, Nonna and the aunts had firmly vetoed, but a more demure construction of innocuous pale blue that suited Serephene not at all. The bright teal paint she applied to her perfect bow of a mouth only heightened the mismatch by emphasizing her inner vitality. She donned her evening gloves and held out her wrists for the silent maid to clasp bracelets around them. Sapphires set in platinum, clearly made for an older woman.
“Nonna’s way of indicating I’ll have a good dowry.” Serephene sneered. “Nobody says right out what they mean. It’s all by innuendo and signals. Not that English aristocracy is much better, but it’s possible to get past all that with a few blunt phrases if I do it when none of the family is by. Here, now, someone’s at my side all the time to be sure I behave. When I have Scottie back, I’ll just leave. Get on his airship and go.”
Maddie started to object. Then, remembering how she had run off from her own debutante ball to avoid that same pressure to marry, she lightly hugged her friend. “We’ll make a plan for the future once we have him safely back.”
Serephene accepted a velvet wrap from the maid. When she returned, which she promised to do as early as she could convince her family she was unwell, they would both sneak out and venture through the hidden arch together. If Fanto arrived before her, Maddie must ask him to wait; if the shark left, she would of course follow it, leaving some kind of a trail so Serephene could catch up.
The door closed behind Serephene. Maddie retired to the window, opened it a crack so she’d be sure to hear if the walkway moved, and pulled the curtain across behind her.
The long, dull evening set in. Fireworks began over the Grand Canal. Cheers and arias floated past with successive parade boats. The clash of fake swords sounded as the French were once more defeated in defiance of history. The shark, which would have looked right at home among the sea-monsters escorting the Carnevale Queen, remained in its hiding place.
After a while, Maddie pulled her notebook from her pocket and brought W.Y. Knott’s account of events up to date. By now she’d gotten used to fudging her pronouns and blurring her personal descriptors, keeping her gender ambiguous. The past forty-eight hours made a stirring tale, filled with intrigue and danger, and, so far, no successes.
“After a long and weary day’s hunt, this reporter tracked the kidnappers’ vessel to a cunningly concealed lair in the very heart of the Consular district. Could I penetrate those guarded walls? Would I find the missing inventor within? Would we next hear of him far off in the Tsar’s domains, creating his marvellous fabrics for a surly Russian oligarch to clothe Cossack raiding parties? Tomorrow’s installment tells the dramatic conclusion.”
She hoped.
As she was reading through the text, she became slowly aware of a scraping sound out in the otherwise quiet waterway below. Was the walkway rising? Would the shark sneak away? Pushing the casement ever-so-slowly open, she leaned out just far enough to see down the wall. From a single arm’s-length below the sill, the automaton rat stared up at her.
Maddie drew back, certain that Henry Wellesley was out there somewhere, spying on her. The rat scrambled into the room, its wicked bronze claws glinting in the dim glow from the only lamp. Ignoring her, it leapt from the windowsill to the stool and scooted straight toward her hat, long forgotten on the bed. TD stuck his head up from between the purple lilies and stared at the interloper. The rat stared back. Maddie, after another hard look down at the unchanging scene below, pulled the window closed and hurried to join them.
“Tweetle-D, speak to me.”
The creatures broke eye contact. TD fluttered to Maddie’s shoulder and said loudly, “I’ll no be telling ye blaggards one thing until I’m convinced my lass is safe and well.”
“Shh,” she said. “Repeat that. Quietly.”
It was definitely Scottie’s voice. The rat had tracked him, then, from that one shred of spun wool in the old boat shed. But where was he now? The rat might not have gone into the hidden tunnel at all. And why did Scottie think Serephene might not be safe? Had the Russians intended to snatch her too, or merely told him they had done so?
TD began to spool out words that were definitely not English. What she wouldn’t give for a Russian dictionary tucked away in TD’s amazing clockwork-and-crystal brain. But there could only be so many commands, and so much retrievable information, stored in a head the size of an almond.
The rat had moved to Serephene’s desk. Its front paws worked at the cap on her inkwell. Maddie hurried over and opened the lid. Did the rat have drawing capabilities like TD’s? Apparently not. It simply sat there, looking at the page. She stood staring down at it, calculating. Could she get the rat to lead TD to Scottie? An image of him alive, and in what surroundings, might tell her whether he was inside that hidden arch or not. If the rat left this canal without going near that archway, she could whistle TD back and try something else.
It took her half an hour to teach TD to “Follow Rat” around the room. Then she gave the rat the thread from Scottie’s tartan. “Find him,” she said, and opened the window.
The rat sat on the sill, its nose upraised as if sniffing the air. Lamplight gleamed on its beady eyes and bronze claws. Then it disappeared. She leaned out and tried to follow its progress down the wall, but lost it almost immediately. Where was it headed?
Not a sound floated up, but the dark water below shifted in the oblique light from Nonna’s porter’s lantern. A vee formed, spreading out behind the tiny creature whose wet ears gleamed just enough to be seen. It was heading straight for the hidden arch. She set TD on the sill, opened his night-sight imager on a one-minute delay, and said, “Follow Rat.”
Once he was gone, she could only sit by the window and worry. Somewhere in the palazzo were servants going about their business, but their noise didn’t rise to the top floor. The clock on Serephene’s mantle filled the room with its slow ticking. When it chimed the next quarter, she jumped. The silence settled in again.
It seemed like forever, but was only a few minutes longer, before TD fluttered to the windowsill. He hopped onto the desk and dipped his beak. His images dashed out in the barest outline, four to a page. The first image showed a kilted man tied hand and foot to a wooden chair: Scottie. In the foreground was a dark strip that might be water. Next a burly man was hitting him across the face. Third, a slimmer man grabbed his arm. Then the two men were dragging his limp body across the floor. Was he dead?
With her heart in her throat, Maddie leaned over to watch TD was tapping out the next set of images. The first was a close-up of a syringe lying on a stone floor, again with the dark water visible. The second was Scottie being lowered into the open side of the shark.
She breathed. They had drugged him, preparing to move him. Either he had been in the shark when it went in, or he was already in
there and they were preparing to move him out. Either way, he was still there now, right across the canal. Could she risk creeping down to Nonna’s water-gate through the house filled with servants? Could she rescue Scottie before Serephene’s return?
Chapter Twenty-Six
MADDIE GRABBED HER hat from the bed and TD from the desk. Then she sneaked from the room, wincing as the door squeaked. Immediately she went back for the images, folding them and stuffing them into the skirt pocket that kept her notebook safe. She spotted the back stairs in an alcove across the square upper hall and hurried around the main staircase toward them. Someone was coming up. As she backed away, voices and footsteps rose up the main stair as well. Trapped, she retreated to Serephene’s room, hiding behind the half-closed door.
Brighella burst out of the servants’ stair. “Signorina,” she hissed, pushing cautiously through the doorway. “They’re back. Hide.”
Maddie slid from behind the door. “Hide where?”
“The window curtains.” The maid lifted them aside and Maddie squished herself into the alcove. She sat on the windowsill and lifted her feet, pulling her dark skirt up around her knees. The room door squeaked. Two sets of shoes clattered on the parquet floor.
“You’ll stay here the rest of the night,” said a deep, masculine voice. “To be so rude to that young man! I am ashamed to call you daughter.” Serephene’s skirts rustled as she strode further into the room, but she said nothing. After a silence the man said, “You are over-tired. Tell me you’re sorry and all will be forgiven.”
Serephene said coldly, “I am not sorry. He told me he would overlook that I was the granddaughter of a mechanic, but only if my dowry included a new home for us here in Venice.” Her voice hardened further. “A mechanic! Would you have me marry someone who will always be ashamed of the work our family has done? The marvels we have invented? How is he a fit son-in-law for the AcquaTiempe?”
“Maybe not so much, this one.” Papa AcquaTiempe sounded weary. “We’ll discuss this in the morning. Good night, bambina.”
“Buona notte, Papa.” The door squealed closed. Before Maddie could move, Serephene said, “Quickly, Brighella. Get me out of this. I’ll have my navy shirtwaist instead, and two black cloaks from the servants’ hall. Maddie? Are you still there?”
Maddie came out. “I’m here. The shark hasn’t left yet. I heard something, though. Voices.” Should she get the girl’s hopes up? What if Scottie was not drugged but dead? Seeing him so could destroy Serephene. No, he was too valuable for the Russians to kill. They would welcome his beloved walking right into their lair, though. Did they know who she really was, or believe her just another seamstress from Frangetti’s?
“You should stay here,” she told Serephene as the girl stepped out of the pale evening gown. “Watch me from the window, and send for help if I don’t come out or signal within a few minutes.”
Serephene’s head dived into the shirtwaist. Her voice came out muffled but firm. “If Scottie’s in there, I’m going in. He might be injured. Even if he’s dead I must see him, to know for sure.” Her head rose through the neck and she efficiently slid her arms into their sleeves. “Then I’ll kill the people who hurt him. Brighella, I want a dagger.”
“No!” Maddie took a breath, calming her voice. “We won’t stand a chance in a fight. We must sneak in and sneak out. If Scottie’s there, we’ll try to take him out too. No stabbing. Promise me!”
“I won’t start a fight, but I won’t step back from it.” Serephene went on doing up her front buttons. “Brighella, the dagger. Go down first and make sure the back stair is clear to the water-gate. Don’t forget the cloaks.”
Five minutes later, the girls slipped out of the palazzo’s water-gate. They hugged the wall to avoid the porter’s fading lantern and stared across at the hidden arch. Was it Maddie’s imagination, or did a faint glow brush the water under the walkway? If the place beyond was well lit, their cloaks would do them no good at all.
“You go cross the bridge down that way,” she told Serephene. “I’ll go the other way, to that platform. If they come out before we go in, one of us will be in position to follow.”
Serephene ignored that and stepped down into a rowboat. She fumbled at the clip holding its line to a ring in the wall. “This will get us across.”
Two minutes later, the sheen on the water brightened as the walkway loomed over their lowered heads. The rowboat’s prow vanished through the holo-curtain. There was the faintest crackle as the curtain parted around Maddie’s ears, and then she, too, was inside. Serephene stood up to stare ahead. Maddie gazed too, willing her eyes to pierce the distance and the future. What lay before them?
The water-tunnel ran square and straight, its damp-stained bricks dimly lit by a single overhead track. The way was hardly wider than their rowboat, with a metal grating on one side that might, barely, serve a person to walk along. There were no voices, no sounds save only the shush of their bow ripples, trailing away into the unknown. It smelled of oily water and the stale, greasy exhaust of launch engines.
Maddie put her hand on the smeared side wall, feeling the rough brick tug at her skin, and eased the little boat forward. Serephene grabbed the grating on the other wall. Together they kept the craft gliding along the tunnel. Overhead, the brickwork changed from old orange to even older yellow, down which decades of sooty exhaust had seeped like malevolent icicles. They’d passed under one building and were going under a second, and still the tunnel’s end was not in sight.
The air moved slightly more than the boat did. There must be another outlet to keep it so, and that meant they’d not be trapped if the tide rose high enough to block the entrance. A chipped corner of brick dug into her finger and she wished for gloves. She wished, even more, that she could whisper to Serephene, for the silence was growing eerie.
They crept onward. Time passed uncertainly, as it had during Maddie’s involuntary underwater ride. Had they been in here ten minutes? An hour?
Something skittered on the grating. Serephene snatched her hand away as a rat scurried toward them. It stopped, stared at them, and scampered back the way it had come. Serephene shuddered and then, after a glance behind to make sure it was the only one around, resolutely grasped the grating’s edge again. Maddie, who recognized the metallic snick of claws, smiled past her rising tension. The automaton rat knew his way around. He was leading them on, maybe straight to Scottie. Heedless of her scraped palms she pulled at the brick wall with renewed vigour, and was soon rewarded by a change in the sound of the ripples. They . . . spread out. She put a hand on Serephene’s arm.
The rowboat coasted to a stop at the edge of a large, boxy room only slightly brighter than the tunnel. The water widened to a square of pool, with stone floors stretching out as wide again on three sides. Stone steps rose to a banded-metal door in one corner. Though similar to the cellar at Madame Frangetti’s, this secret water-exit was deserted, its stone landings empty but for an old wooden chair tipped on its side. The shark gently rocked at one edge of the pool, its silver hide faintly shimmering and its white jaws a-gape. The rat sat on its raised snout, looking at them. The silence deepened.
“We may be under the Russian Consulate.” Serephene’s teal lips quivered. “I was so sure we’d find Scottie in here.”
With TD’s images firmly in her mind, Maddie edged over until she could grasp the shark’s bottom jaw. As she’d guessed, the prow of its boat was disguised right under there. From the shape, and the length, she guessed the shark was built over a traghetto, that open-floored ferry in which several people could stand up for short crossings. She stretched an arm into the gaping mouth and fumbled her way through a drape of dark fabric. Beyond it, her fingers groped over the wooden slat of a seat and touched, at their farthest stretch, something that might have been hair. Was he in there?
She leaned her head as far into the jaws as she could, listening hard past the murmur of tiny wavelets on the hull. Was that a breath she heard? It came again, rhythm
ic, heavy, rasping a bit in a dry throat.
“I think he’s in here, drugged again.”
The image had shown one side lifting up when they tumbled Scottie in. She pulled her arm out and tugged the rowboat along the shark’s silvery side. Although she and Serephene felt all along the gunwale, they could find no catch to open, nor any crack that would admit their fingers. They must get at the other side.
“We have to untie the bow line,” she whispered. One tug and the traghetto’s prow jigged across the pool, exposing the landward side of the shark. At last. Maddie groped along the side, found a latch, and pried it open.
After that the hatch came up easily, revealing an underside of curved wood struts and splattered, stiffened canvas. As Serephene leaned inside, the rowboat wobbled madly. She tugged with all her strength. Scottie’s head lolled into view, his eyes closed and mouth ajar, a thread of saliva trailing down his cheek. He was deeply asleep.
“Scottie. Wake up, carissimo mio. We must go.”
The inventor didn’t react. Serephene tried again, tapping his cheeks, shaking his shoulders. His head only bobbled like a stringless puppet’s.
“Help me, Maddie. We have to get him out of there.” Maddie got a grip on the Pinocchio jacket, but despite her best efforts and Serephene’s, they could not budge Scottie. He’d rise a little ways up the side and then sag back into the belly of his monstrous prison. Both boats rocked, bumping against each other, filling the cellar with whisperings and scrapings.
After a terrifying moment when the shark’s tail whacked the stone wall so hard it echoed, Maddie let go of Scottie entirely. “We can’t shift him by ourselves.”
Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta Page 14
