“I’m not leaving him.”
And Maddie wasn’t leaving Serephene there to face men who would surely threaten her—even hurt her—to make Scottie reveal his formula. Once that knowledge was in their hands, who knew what would happen to her? Or him? It would not be good.
“Let’s take the whole shark,” she said.
“Are you mad?”
“No. The thing’s already untied. Just hold onto that rope and let’s get out of here.”
Off they set. Maddie winced each time her scraped-raw fingers had to grip the rough edges of yellow brick, but she kept going. Serephene pulled hand-over-hand along the metal grating. The shark float swayed along behind them, its nose veering across their stern with every shift of Serephene’s arms.
“The rowboat is closer to the grating,” Serephene muttered. “I think the tide is rising.”
“Pull faster, or we won’t get out under the walkway.” Any moment now, someone might come to move the shark, and Scottie, to yet another hiding place. Or to one of the big ships moored at the port, for transport back to Russia. Maddie gritted her teeth and shifted her hands further along the wall.
They were passing under the line where yellow brick met faded orange when a shout echoed down the tunnel behind them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“FASTER,” MADDIE HISSED, but it was quite unnecessary. Serephene pulled with such force that the rowboat’s nose scraped the wall on her side. Behind them the shouting multiplied. They straightened out the boat and sped onward between the boxy walls.
“The grate’s shaking,” said Serephene. “Somebody’s on it.”
Maddie spared a glance back, but all she saw was the rat, staring backward from its seat on the shark’s head. The ceiling seemed perilously close to its pointed nose. The shark had floated under the walkway readily on its way in, but that was hours ago, when the tide was low. Could they get it out? If they did, where could they take it?
Ahead, moonlight glimmered on the tunnel’s entrance, showing the stark line of the walkway barring their path. It wouldn’t be much above the rowboat. It wouldn’t fit the shark.
“Faster,” Serephene gasped, crouching lower in the rowboat. “We’ll have to ram through, break off the tail-fin. We can pull Scottie into Nonna’s water-gate and close it behind us.”
The holo-projector crackled as they passed beneath it. Both girls knelt on the floorboards and ducked, working the boat beneath the outside walkway. They shot out into the starlit canal and straight as an arrow across it. Behind them, the shark’s nose scraped the underside of the walkway and then popped out. The long, silvery body followed. They were going to make it.
The rowboat’s nose crashed into Nonna’s closed water-gate.
Maddie tumbled backward. Serephene staggered. The shark’s jaws gaped over the rowboat’s low stern, tilting the smaller boat and throwing the girls forward again. They lurched more or less upright to find themselves and their two boats jammed together, forming a line exactly across the canal. Starlight reflected from dancing ripples to either side; the water-gate’s lantern was dark.
“The porter’s gone to bed.” Serephene stood up, holding the tow-rope in both hands, tugging uselessly. “He’ll take ages to wake up and open up for us. Where can we go?”
“Let’s get unstuck first.” Maddie, marginally closer to the water-gate, put both hands on it and pushed as hard as she could. The little boat inched backward. The shark’s tail retreated into the tunnel. When the rowboat’s nose cleared the grill, she swung it sideways and yanked on it, careless of splinters although she thought her hands might be bleeding. Once it faced the Grand Canal she stood up. “Now for the shark.”
With both girls jerking the rope, the shark surged forward. As expected, its tail-fin caught on the walkway. Just the tip, but enough to stop it with a lurch and send the girls’ boat floating sideways. They tried again. The rat scampered up to the snout from wherever it had hidden during the last attempt. Again, the tip stuck. Then, as the girls let the rope slacken, the rat dashed along the shark’s back and leapt, claws outstretched, through the holo-curtain. From beyond came a yell, then a mighty splash. The shark rocked madly. Its tail dropped as something, or someone, grabbed on.
“Pull,” Maddie yelled.
Out popped the shark, veering across the canal to mash its white jaws against a moored boat. Clinging to its tail was a burly man mostly under the water. His wet face set in a snarl, he reached for the rowboat. Serephene kicked his hand away and yanked on the tow-rope, pulling the shark’s nose around. The wet man began to creep hand-over-hand along the silvery side.
“We’ve got to get moving.” Maddie grabbed the rowboat’s mooring line and clambered onto the nearest gondola. Holding up her skirts with one hand, she ran that boat’s length and stepped onto the next, hauling the rowboat after her. With the weight of the man dragging at its tail, the shark sluggishly followed. One boat-length . . . two . . .
Serephene said urgently, “He’s climbing up.”
Caught with her foot halfway across to the third gondola, Maddie wobbled. She dropped her skirts and grabbed for the stern-post. Her hand closed around something equally solid, but of smaller diameter. An oar!
As the rowboat floated past, she lined up the long pole on her shoulder like a medieval jouster. When the shark came alongside, with its hanger-on already scrambling up the tail, she shot her heavy lance forward. The pole connected with a thump. The man slid off with a groan and a faint splash.
A second man leapt to the gondola nearest the arch. Maddie swung the oar at him. He dodged. The pole bounced off the canal wall, the reverberation stinging her shredded hands. She fumbled the oar. He grabbed at the end. Using her knee as a fulcrum, she pushed down hard on her end. The oar’s blade rose, whacking him in the chin. Over the side he went, sending all the boats rocking.
The shark was far ahead by now. Maddie scrambled from boat to boat, one hand holding the oar and her long skirt twisting around her legs. The cloak dragged backward on her throat, but she had no hands to spare to shift it. The rowboat was silhouetted against the Grand Canal. Serephene, crouched in the bow, was pulling alongside the last of the moored boats. The shark bobbed and swayed as Maddie’s oar bumped it in passing. She leaped precariously into the rowboat and pushed off hard from the nearest mooring pole. Awkwardly wielding the long oar, she paddled frantically. When the shark’s tail was a full gondola’s length from the nearest landing, she sank onto the seat, gasping at the pains shooting through her palms.
Serephene pointed over her shoulder. On the platform at Rio de San Maurizio’s entrance stood two dark-clad men. They paused there, staring, and then faded back into the shadows.
A sliver of moon revealed a deserted expanse of Grand Canal. The parade had passed by hours before. From the direction of Piazza San Marco, a golden glow limned the rooftops. Faint music and laughter trickled along the breeze. But the areas immediately around them had said a firm buona notte to the evening’s Carnevale festivities. Maddie recognized the chill in the air. Coming near to dawn, about the time she’d been used to collecting her friend for the apprenticeship. How long ago that seemed now.
Serephene put an arm over her shoulders. “You’re shivering. Here, have my cloak too, until you warm up. Hold the shark’s rope and I’ll paddle for a bit.”
“Where to?” Maddie huddled gratefully into the extra layer of black wool. “I don’t suppose we can rouse your Nonna’s footman at the street door, and take Scottie in there?”
“You realize how far that entrance is from the nearest water?” Serephene traded her the tow-rope for the oar. “I’d have to go, because they’d have you arrested on sight. That would leave you alone with Scottie, tied up on this shore, where those men could easily reach you.” She stood upright, trying to scull the rowboat further out from the line of palazzos.
“Appealing to the politzei is useless,” said Maddie. “That Commissario Bruciato would be sure to think we’d kidnapped Scottie ourse
lves, or something equally foolish. The Gritti’s not far. It’s right on the water. We can tell the doorman Scottie’s drunk, and get him carried up to my room.”
“Your reputation!”
“Not my real name,” said Maddie wearily. “And they’re used to me showing up near dawn with Obie, although he hasn’t stayed more than a few minutes. Oh, how I wish he was here now. Another pair of strong arms would come in really handy.” She gazed across the widest part of the canal to the Dorsoduro, where the English Consulate sat, its landing stage deserted and its many windows dark.
Serephene pointed. “There’s an airship up there. Some new noble guest, or could his earl have returned already?”
Longing for her best friend overwhelmed Maddie. Her hand was reaching for TD when she remembered she couldn’t send a message in front of Serephene. Besides, if Obie was back, he’d have sent a message to her first thing. She was on her own, in the middle of the Grand Canal, with a shark’s belly full of drugged inventor, a single oar, and a fashion apprentice who was more than willing to use the dagger tucked into her bodice.
The moon vanished behind a tumble of cloud. The water around them darkened. Serephene tried her best but the oar was made for a gondola, not a rowboat. Choppy waves shoved them back to the area they’d barely escaped. The men from the landing stage might be anywhere along that side of the Grand Canal, waiting for the dawn breeze to blow their escapees right back into their clutches. Maddie didn’t think she had the strength to fight them off again.
From the Gritti’s darkened landing stage, a black gondola slid over the water. Its oar swooped gracefully, silently, with nary a squeak or rattle drifting ahead of it on the wind. Was it them? She shook out her aching hands and stood up.
“Over there,” she murmured to Serephene. “A boat’s coming.”
There was no point pretending they would be passed by. The shark’s silvery hide marked them as surely as any Carnevale lights could. Until Scottie woke up, they had only each other and their single oar to rely upon.
“We need a plan,” said Serephene.
The moon slid out again, bathing the water and the shark, so bright it might almost feel warm on their faces. It washed, too, over the approaching gondola. One person on the seat, and a gondolier. The swooping oar, the bulky torso, the tripod where legs should be . . . Maddie sagged.
“It’s Fanto.”
In a moment, a voice came softly on the breeze. “Maddalena, is that you?”
“Zaneta?”
Fanto came up beside them, angling his sleek craft to cut the chill breeze. “Signorina, for you I looked everywhere. Almost I came back to the other signorina’s window but I saw her with the many family leaving and if you were there, I thought, she would not leave. You have found lo squalo without me.”
“I found it because of you,” said Maddie. “I was on top of the Biblioteca Nazionale when I saw you following it earlier.”
“Where you go? I take you anywhere.”
“The Gritti,” said Serephene.
“Back to Madame Frangetti’s,” Maddie countered. “The place will be deserted and Scottie should still have his key to the staff door. Or do you have one, Zaneta? Can you get us there before dawn breaks, Fanto?”
“Assi. But we leave the rowboat.” He stretched out his hand and helped each girl in turn into the gondola, tied off the shark’s rope neatly to his stern-post, and with a swirl of his oar sent them shooting along the silvery water, leaving the little rowboat bobbing alone on the wide water, with its out-sized oar lying across its seats.
They fairly whooshed under the Ponte dell’Accademia. Maddie unwound the spare cloak and passed it back to Serephene, feeling ashamed that she hadn’t done so much sooner. “How did you get here, Zaneta? Not that I’m not glad to see you.”
“Fanto came to me, should I know where you would go? I thought to help. You have l’uomo scozzese? The Scottie? He is safe?”
“Drugged. Inside the shark.”
Zaneta shivered. “Like Pinocchio and Geppetto in the whale.”
“I’m going in there with him,” Serephene said. “If he wakes up he’ll think he’s still captured, and try to escape. Fantoccio, slow down a minute, and pull that float alongside.” Soon Serephene was inside the shark and Fanto was oaring along again as if he’d had a full night’s sleep and a good breakfast. They’d be at the Rio di Noale in no time now.
Maddie thought that right up to the moment a spotlight slashed across the water, pinning them in its harsh, white beam.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THEY DIDN’T NEED Fanto’s shout to warn of trouble. Maddie threw up a hand to shield her eyes and saw a traghetto a scant boat-length behind the shark. Men knelt along the sides, paddling furiously. Fanto threw himself against his oar, shooting toward the far bank. The open boat veered to follow. Soon it was gaining once more.
“We can’t outrun them like this,” Maddie said, scrambling to her feet. “Fanto, how do I work your clockwork motor?”
He gave one more strong thrust, sending the gondola skimming further, before handing off the oar to her. She kept sculling, moving the gondola as best she could while he bent to his winding. The traghetto gained on them. One man reached out with a boat-hook to snag the shark’s tail. Fanto grabbed the oar from Maddie and, with a mighty twist, shot the gondola backward between the shark and the oncoming boat. Paddles crunched. Men shouted. The boat-hook man tumbled off the stern.
Fanto smacked a few more of the attackers before tossing the oar to Maddie and grabbing his winding handle. She struggled to whack one of the remaining paddlers but only knocked her hat askew. TD squawked as the wind tugged at the brim. The hat’s pins shifted and, as she dodged a long arm, it fell completely off her head. Zaneta, cowering in the footwell, snatched it before it could land on the churning water. Maddie gave a grateful nod and turned in time to pole-thrust her attacker backward. He stumbled over the only man still kneeling and went head first over the far side. That left . . . too many!
Fanto’s spider-legs unfolded, lifting him off his pedestal and carrying him to the other boat, where he laid around him with the handle. He yelled something in Italian and Zaneta leaped to his pedestal. The gondola shot away, its clockwork engine racketing across the water, with the shark’s wide jaws bouncing in its wake.
Maddie leaned on the oar as a makeshift rudder, steering as best she could, her eyes streaming from the wind. The shore was rushing toward them. At this speed, they’d never turn far enough to avoid crashing. She pushed anyway. The gondola veered, its stern skidding dangerously, its prow pointing to a slice of darkness between two buildings that she devoutly hoped was a canal and not a calle. Zaneta tumbled with a squeal into the footwell.
Before Maddie could see into the slit of darkness they were in it, zooming along between high walls far in excess of the allowed speed, with the ticking of a thousand clocks rattling their ears. Their wake left a low, continuous thunder against the foundations. On and on they went, swaying as her weight shifted on the oar.
The canal opened out for a few lengths, easing the volume of noise temporarily. A lighted landing stage flashed by, where a woman in a glittering headdress was just stepping from her craft. Almost they were out of earshot when a screech shook the night. Peering back past the careening shark, Maddie saw a gondola sideways on the wave-washed landing stage, and a golden headdress floating on the black water. The clockwork craft swerved and the corner of a building cut off the lighted scene. They thrummed along in blackness. Zaneta called out a warning of a set of mooring posts on their right, and Maddie adjusted her heading as they blinked past.
Bursting out into a wider space again, the gondola slowed. The ticking slowed too, tock-echo-tock instead of a mad scramble of sound. They were still moving faster than Fanto had ever poled. The walls to the left fell away completely, and the craft bobbed along. A wave splashed against the side, spraying Maddie with a fine, icy mist. She turned her head cautiously, and gasped. They’d come all the way
through the city to the open lagoon.
The fitful moon chose this moment to spread its silver across the expanse of water. Whatever land there might be ahead was too far off to be seen. The view to the left was the same: all water. To the right were the hundreds of arches supporting the railroad, still flickering past. How far out must they go before they could slow enough to safely turn? How would they get back once the clockwork motor ran down?
Tick, tock, tick. Without the echo to fill in the gaps, the sound seemed ominously slow. She brought the gondola out in a wide sweep and lined it up with one of the railroad arches. Tick . . . tock . . . tick . . . Under the brickwork bridge they went, moving almost too fast still for the inevitable echo to reach them. Out the other side they came, bathed in moonlight once more. Off the port bow rose the dark hump of an island. The clockwork wound down, ticking slower and slower until its last click was done.
The gondola rode the choppy waves for another few lengths and then it too stopped.
Maddie clung to the oar as if it was the only thing keeping her upright, which, when she thought about it, was nothing more than the truth. The boat rocked gently. She swayed with it, and at last reached up a hand to push all the windblown curls back from her forehead. That’s when she remembered the hat. And TD, who had narrowly escaped a sail on the Grand Canal. She whistled without stopping to think.
Zaneta looked around. “Do you see something?”
TD’s answering whistle came from under the gondola’s seat. Zaneta stared down in bewilderment.
Maddie said, “Pass my hat, please.”
“I fear my boot might have stood on it.” Zaneta started speedily fluffing the silk petals, perilously close to TD’s usual perch.
“Never mind. It will keep my hair out of my eyes.” Maddie reached down and tweaked the hat from her grasp, and instantly felt TD’s comforting presence press against her fingers. She squeezed his foot in case he’d been sending an alarm during all the battles. Between that and his earlier flying, he would be very low on power. Hold on, little bird, she thought at him, but couldn’t say it out loud in front of a stranger. I’ll tuck you into my pocket with a power pellet as soon as I can.
Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta Page 15
