“Oh, dear.” Sophronia gave a tremulous smile. “Did my playing disturb you, sir? I do apologize.” Tremulous smiles were very effective when applied to the right victim.
Nothing could be more confusing to the poor man than Sophronia at that moment. He fell back on etiquette. What else was an Englishman to do when confronted with a wicker-chicken-wearing leather-clad tremulous smile? He drew the only ready weapon he had—manners. “Good evening, miss…” He trailed off.
Sophronia rose, sweetly innocent, and moved toward him as if she were a ballerina.
He, in turn, stepped into the room, as politeness demanded. Bumbersnoot scuttled in after, looking pleased with himself. He went to snuffle about the fringed carpet to see if it might be susceptible to singeing.
“Miss Pelouse. How do you do? Are you visiting for the party?” Sophronia’s voice was breathy—due to the euphoria of her own transformative harp playing, of course.
The young man had a largish nose and floppy hair and the appealing gawkish posture of the literary-minded. He might also, Sophronia realized, have a gun. Difficult for him to reach for it, however, as he was carrying his notebook in one hand and Professor Braithwope’s miniature crossbow and three bolts in the other.
He clearly did not know what to do when approached by a pretty young lady wearing a wicker chicken who ought—by all standards of decency—to be long abandoned on the moor… chickenless.
Sophronia held out her hand, as if she were a bishop and wished it to be kissed.
The young Pickleman fumbled, his arms full, to finagle an appropriate response. He managed a truncated sort of bow over the offering. “Spice Administrator Bawkin, miss, how do you do? Is that your mechanimal?”
Sophronia gave him a perfect curtsy and then cocked her head, inquisitive. “Mechanimal? Where?” Bumbersnoot had conveniently rejected the fringe and was poking about the back side of the coal scuttle, out of view.
The young man abandoned that line of questioning for one of greater import. “Um, miss, how did you get here?”
Sophronia floated her fingers about in a dancer’s confusion. “I walked. You would suggest some other method?”
“No, I mean, miss, the ship was evacuated.”
“Dear me, was it? I hadn’t noticed. I do get lost in my music. It is my one true passion. Do you have a one true passion, Mr. Spice-Bawkin?” Sophronia prattled in an airy-fairy manner. She did not let him answer. “Mine is music. I simply adore music. Je l’adore, je l’adore! It’s so transporting, don’t you find? Of course you do. Everyone does. When I sit at my harp, the world simply melts away. Like, you know, that creamy icy thing that melts. What am I thinking of? Oh, yes, Nesselrode pudding. I’m afraid it may have melted too far just now, and I missed something important. An evacuation, you say? Are you the authorities? Have we been evacuated for political reasons? Oh, I always knew they would go too far.”
“Who?” interjected the young Pickleman, almost desperately, overwhelmed by her blathering.
Sophronia was breezy and dismissive, “Oh, you know, they.” All the while she chattered, she pressed the young man around and back, moving him into position by slightly crowding his social space. So vested was he in keeping the correct distance for conversation with a lady that he didn’t even realize he had been moved until he came up against Lady Linette’s mantelpiece, where her prized stuffed badger in a lace mobcap stared austerely down at him.
“Miss,” he interrupted again, “why are you wearing a chicken?”
“Oh, this old thing? It’s the very latest fashion accessory. Don’t you like it? Mine is a bit big, I grant you. I was going to put it into my hair, but it was too heavy. You don’t like it? I’m so foolish.” She widened her green eyes as though she might burst into tears.
“Of course. I mean, I do like it. It’s very, um, bendy.”
Sophronia’s lips trembled and her eyes welled.
The young man leaned in, solicitous.
She said, “I really am very sorry about this. You seem like such a nice man.”
“You are? I do? Well, they should have found you after the evacuation. We sent a sweep around.”
“My fault entirely, I assure you. I’ve never trusted chimney sweeps.” Sophronia allowed one perfect tear to trickle over her cheek, staring up into his confused face with an expression of mild adoration mixed with shame.
The poor young Pickleman. He’d had no chance from the moment he entered the room. If there were a book on befuddlement with evil intent, Sophronia had just thrown it at him.
At which point she hauled off and hit him with it.
Or, to be more precise, she hit him with Lady Linette’s copy of Mrs. Blessingbacon’s Hot Cross Buns for the Bunless. It was a heavy tome that Lady Linette had left sitting atop her mantelpiece and that had managed not to fall off during the crash.
Sophronia whacked the Pickleman on the temple, precisely where she had been taught.
Spice Administrator Bawkin fell to the ground in a pleasingly floppy manner.
“That’ll teach you to question a lady’s wicker chicken!”
It was hard to know how much time she had while he was incapacitated—only a few seconds if she’d done her job right. She hadn’t wanted to cause permanent damage. He might work for the Picklemen, but he didn’t seem that bad.
Luckily, Lady Linette had a passion for lace drapes, gold cord, and velvet runners. Sophronia converted one of the runners into a gag. She tied the Pickleman’s hands over his head and to the leg of the grand piano. She had always thought it odd, not to mention a waste of weight, that Lady Linette insisted on a grand piano in her classroom. But in this instance it proved useful. With Bawkin’s wrists tied to one leg, and his feet to the leg kitty corner, he was efficiently immobilized. Sophronia found a large shawl and draped it over the piano, anchoring it with vases. Now, should anyone look into the room, it would appear empty, the young man well hidden behind the shawl.
Sophronia now suspected that Lady Linette had a piano on board for exactly this purpose. Feeling safe for the moment, and wanting to make certain he would wake up, Sophronia shut the door. Bumbersnoot reappeared from behind the coal scuttle, looking smug, as if he had found some loose coal. She scooped up the young man’s notebook and held it in the moonlight to examine it.
The first section was filled with notes in cypher, some mathematical equations, sketches of mechanical functions, and a rough map of something mysterious. In the middle there were newer notes—messy and smudged from a hasty closing of the book. Still in cypher, the style of the text suggested names and dates combined with other pertinent information. This must be from the record room, probably an account of active intelligencers. Sophronia tore those pages out of the book.
“Bumbersnoot, come here, please.”
The little mechanimal tick-tocked over to her.
Sophronia fed him the sheets of paper, one at a time, making certain they went into his boiler and were incinerated.
There was one page of additional notes after that, even more hastily written, in a different hand. The results of Deep Voice’s interrogation, Sophronia supposed.
The rest of the book was blank. She extracted her own stick of graphite and drew a hasty schematic of the ship, marking off the locations of Picklemen and flywaymen with dots. She took great satisfaction in then putting an X through the dot representing Spice Administrator Bawkin. One down, thirteen Picklemen, three runners, and five flywaymen to go. She tore out this map, folded it up, and put it in a pocket with her stick of graphite. Then she ripped out the rest of the notes, rolled them up tight, and secured them with a bit of ribbon. She removed Bumbersnoot’s coal reserves from her cleavage to a pocket of the leather smock, and stuffed the notes there instead. Most secure place for them.
Even though the remainder of the notebook was empty, she tucked it under some couch cushions for safety. One never knew with Picklemen.
She then examined the crossbow, delighted to have it in her possession. If she
could activate the soldier mechanicals, she would have a real weapon on her side. But she’d probably need Professor Braithwope for that, and who knew what mental state he was in at this point. Sophronia cannibalized a length of curtain cord to be a belt and tied the tiny crossbow to it, using more hair ribbons. Geraldine’s girls carried extra hair ribbons at all times for exactly this kind of eventuality. She shoved the bolts into the biggest of the pinafore pockets. She practically jangled like a tinker with all the items she had hanging off her, but she felt much better about life in general. She took a moment to rearrange and redistribute so she wouldn’t make noise as she snuck about.
She ducked under the piano and checked on the Spice Administrator. He was awake and his pupils looked fine. He lay perfectly still as she loomed over him.
She grinned, unaware of the maniacal expression in her green eyes. “Love of music—it can drive a girl to distraction. Or do I mean destruction?”
She patted his cheek in what she hoped was a reassuring way and left him. Poor thing hadn’t even squirmed or groaned around the gag. She was certain he thought her quite mad. And should he somehow get free—and he would have to be a circus contortionist with supernatural strength to do so—he would have such a strange story to tell, it would make the other Picklemen think him drunk at best. “A girl wearing a wicker chicken and playing the harp bopped me with a book about buns and then stuffed me under a piano.” It sounded like a funny dream.
Sophronia chuckled to herself but quickly sobered. Professor Braithwope and Mademoiselle Geraldine needed rescuing, and she still had sooties to save. She headed back up the stairs for her next victim. Deep Voice, she felt, was going to be much harder to disable.
This time Sophronia did not wear the chicken. She took it off and left it in the hallway outside the administrative room with the crossbow and Bumbersnoot and orders to guard. She armed herself with the water-projecting device filled with acid from Professor Lefoux’s laboratory. Then she took out her small hoard of nibbles from the kitchen and knocked on the door.
“Come!” called Deep Voice.
Sophronia entered, eyes down, looking at the Pickleman through her lashes, pleased to find he had not been joined by any others.
“Who the devil are you?” He was a rough-looking fellow, his jaw dark with a nascent beard.
Sophronia had never seen such a thing as a seedling beard before, no gardener having tended it to greatness nor pruned it into submission. It was positively oafish in its incivility. She actually felt unwell at the sight.
“Only the maid, sir. I’ve brought you food.” She proffered her own cheese, bread, and apple.
The man looked suspicious but also off balance—unable to decide whether to leave off what he was doing and approach or allow her to enter farther into the room.
Sophronia took his hesitation as an opportunity to assess the situation.
Mademoiselle Geraldine was sitting in a big chair in the far left corner, near the forward window, several large storage baskets pushed aside to make room. Before her was a low table set for tea. There was an empty seat across from her, shoved out of the way as if in haste. The headmistress looked so relaxed, Sophronia had the horrified thought that she was working with the Picklemen.
I have two enemies to disable, and only one ally to rescue, when I was prepared for the other way around! Sophronia cursed herself. It was a debut’s mistake.
Deep Voice was in the other corner of the room next to a cage shaped like a bird’s, only bigger. It hung from a hook in the ceiling and looked to be steel, woven through with a glass tubing filled with gas. This heated the metal red hot at multiple contact points.
Professor Braithwope was locked inside this cage, naked.
Sophronia quickly slid her eyes away, but not before she noticed welts on the vampire’s arms, burns on his hands, and open cuts across his face. His mustache looked to have fainted. He was silent, half curled, half crouched—trying to make himself as small as possible so as not to touch the burning bars. Vampires, of course, could survive most things, but they still felt pain. The cuts, no doubt, were made with sharpened wooden blades and would be slower to heal as a result.
Deep Voice, orchestrator of this torture, left off prodding the professor and walked over to Mademoiselle Geraldine and the tea table.
When Sophronia moved to take the food to that table, he snapped, “Halt! You stay there.”
Sophronia froze.
With a studied casualness, the Pickleman poured tea. Which made Sophronia realize that everything wasn’t right with the headmistress. Mademoiselle Geraldine would never let a visitor pour, even if that man was her superior. It was always the hostess’s responsibility to serve tea, evacuations and hijackings notwithstanding.
Sophronia lifted her lashes slightly to take in details she had missed earlier.
Mademoiselle Geraldine was strapped into her chair at the elbows and legs. She could raise up her hands to feed herself from a plate in her lap but was otherwise immobilized. The headmistress was behaving in a civilized manner, but she was not assisting the invaders. She was a hostage.
The headmistress looked at Sophronia with an expression of sublime indifference, showing absolutely no indication that they had ever met before.
Bravo, thought Sophronia.
All this time the students thought Mademoiselle Geraldine ignorant of the fact that her own school was an espionage academy. They had always acted to keep her immersed in that ignorance. In fact, it was a vital part of their training. Sophronia had wondered… but now she outright knew that Mademoiselle Geraldine had been in on it all along. She was too calm to be an ordinary headmistress tied to a chair. By rights, she ought to be in hysterics.
The Pickleman finished pouring the tea and handed a cup to Mademoiselle Geraldine, taking away her empty plate. Then he served himself and sat down, turning to face Sophronia. “I do not recall any maids being brought aboard, except mechanical ones. Who are you really, girl?”
“A forgotten student.” Sophronia dropped the act and pocketed the food. She was grateful that she didn’t have to use it. It was all she had to eat. At the same time, she palmed the acid emitter and let her other hand rest on her bladed fan, ready with either. She minimized any appearance of threat by hunching and keeping her eyes down timidly.
“Come in then, and have some tea. Pull up a stool. You realize, of course, that I must take you prisoner.” The Pickleman was confident in his own superiority.
Sophronia could hardly believe it. Surely he knew what this school did? Surely he didn’t see her as weak? But, then again, this was part of her education, to play on the perceptions, particularly of men. Girls were not dangerous.
She grabbed a pouf from a pile of rejected furniture and pulled up between him and Mademoiselle Geraldine at the table.
“You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” He extracted an extra cup and saucer from a nearby tea trolley.
Sophronia considered herself only passing fair, but if he liked his ladies lean and muddy of hair and eyes, she wasn’t going to gainsay him. “Very kind of you to say so, sir.”
The man picked up the teapot, and Sophronia, with an apology to the tea gods for the waste, sprang at the man, animal-like. She had the acid spray pointed at him in one hand, and her trusty fan was open, leather guard flicked off, in the other.
The acid hit him first. It took the Pickleman a split second to react to her attack. That was often the problem with big thuggish men—they were slow.
Then he yelled, both hands flying to scrape at his face, dropping the teapot in his distress. This spilled hot liquid in his lap, which caused him to scream again. He fell backward in the chair, getting tangled up in its arms and legs. By which time Sophronia was on top of him. This was not a womanly maneuver, and he was certainly strong enough to toss her off, except that she had her fan pressed to his jugular. She made certain to prick his skin so there was no doubt as to the danger.
He was crying openly and wiping his e
yes, but he stopped the moment he felt the sharp metal against his throat.
“May I suggest that you stay quite still, sir?” Sophronia was careful not to forget her manners. After all, the headmistress was right there. Her voice was deadly confident. “You, I do not feel so kindly toward as I did my last victim.”
“What? Who?” He shuddered, wanting desperately to toss her off.
Sophronia pocketed the acid without looking away. She brought her free hand to his neck, above where her fan pricked. She pressed down firm and steady, cutting into his air intake, listening for the wheeze.
“Don’t you worry about him, sir. He’s all taken care of. And now I’ll be taking care of you, too.” Without turning, Sophronia asked, “Mademoiselle Geraldine, do you think you can scoot your chair over here? I have a knife somewhere, for your bonds.”
Mademoiselle Geraldine’s voice replied, “No need, my dear. I’ve had them undone for some time.”
Sophronia was unsurprised, but she did not look up. “I suggest you unlock Professor Braithwope, then. We are, after all, enjoying tea. I should think he’d be grateful for a drop or two of the warm stuff himself, what with Professor Lefoux gone these many hours.”
“My dear girl, what a cracking idea.” There was a rustle of skirts as the headmistress moved around the prone Pickleman, feeling about his waistcoat for the keys. The man twitched. Sophronia pressed down with both her hands. A trickle of blood appeared from under the edge of her fan. Good. That would draw Professor Braithwope’s attention.
Deep Voice fell still.
The click and clang of the cage being unlocked followed, and then a faint hiss and the smell of escaping gas.
“He tapped this contraption into our own gas lighting lines—quite ingenious, actually.” Mademoiselle Geraldine seemed most impressed. “Best way to hold a vampire at short notice. Ah, there we are, my dear Professor. Right this way. We’ve prepared a light repast for you to enjoy after such a trying evening. I shall find your robe, shall I?”
Manners & Mutiny Page 19
