Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  “You are certain Mr. Walsingham trusted you with highly classified documents?” asked Gideon doubtfully, looking around for a space to sit down.

  He ducked as Rowena aimed a lump of steel wool at his head. “Saucy. Admittedly, he did make me lock it in the safe first.”

  She yawned and stretched, the movement pulling apart the front of the oily brown overalls she wore. Gideon averted his eyes. Rowena Fanshawe was a beautiful young woman, and she had already made it quite clear she would … well. It had been a swift education for Gideon Smith, the fisherman from the wilds of the North Yorkshire coast who had been thrust center stage in the dramas he had always dreamed of experiencing. And while certain aspects of his new life—rampaging dinosaurs, international travel, the handling of heavy-duty weaponry—came quickly to him, affairs of the heart seemed to take longer to accommodate. The heart, and organs farther south. Bent had voiced on more than one occasion the opinion that Gideon and Rowena were a match made in heaven, and that were he ten, twenty, or thirty years younger (depending on the severity of his hangover when he made the observation) he would certainly make a go of it with the aerostat pilot himself.

  But always, always his thoughts came back to Maria. Gideon cast his eyes to his feet, and Rowena, as though reading his mind, self-consciously pulled the gaping buttons of her overalls together. “Sorry,” she said, stifling another yawn. “I only got back from Nepal two days ago, and Walsingham was waiting on my doorstep.”

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right to take us to New York?” asked Gideon.

  Rowena nodded. “A quick bath and I’ll be right as rain,” she said. “It’s the best part of two days to America, a day and a half if we’ve got the weather, but this ’stat practically flies herself; I can rest once we’re aloft.”

  She began to haul aside a stack of hydraulic pistons leaning against the wall, revealing the door of a safe. She tapped a dirty fingernail on her lip for a moment, then snapped her fingers and began to spin the twin dials. Gideon held his breath then exhaled as the door clicked open, and she withdrew a thin black leather document folder, sealed with wax, and handed it to him.

  Gideon examined the seal; it was imprinted with a letter “W” surrounded by thorny vines. Walsingham’s mark, all right.

  “Our orders, no doubt,” said Rowena. She paused then added, “Gideon? The lock’s broken on the bathroom door. Do you think you might…?”

  He smiled. “I’ll stay here, make sure no one disturbs you.”

  Rowena smiled back as he stared thoughtfully at the seal on the document folder, then she let herself quietly into the bathroom, pulling the wooden door closed behind her.

  “For eff’s sake.”

  Gideon looked up. Bent was standing in the doorway, dumping his pipe ashes on the doorstep, the Skylady III bobbing behind him.

  “What?” asked Gideon.

  Bent shook his head. “You really are an effing idiot, aren’t you? Carpe diem, Gideon.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Seize the day, lad. Carpe di-effing-em.”

  * * *

  The lock on the bathroom door wasn’t broken, of course, and Rowena chided herself even as she left it open and swiftly disrobed in the small, drafty room. The boiler above the bath shuddered and shook as she filled the bath with steaming water. She knew Gideon wouldn’t follow her into the bathroom, though God knew she couldn’t have telegraphed her invitation more obviously had a parade of music hall singers delivered it to Gideon in the popular tunes of the day. Easing herself into the hot water, Rowena shook her head, both amused and slightly saddened. She was very naughty, trying to tempt Gideon like that. He was a good man.

  Too good for her, perhaps. Too honest and true, at any rate. It had been a month now, and still he pined for Maria, that funny little clockwork thing. Now, now, Rowena, don’t be so tart, she thought as she soaped her legs. She had nothing against Maria, though she barely knew the automaton. Like any aerostat pilot, she’d seen more things than she could rightly explain in this strange old world. Even a flesh-and-blood boy in love with a mechanical girl lost its novelty after a while.

  Still … Rowena Fanshawe had known many men, it was true, and would doubtless know many more. But as she held her breath and her eyes shut tight and submerged herself in the hot water, she wondered how fine a thing it would be, to love and be loved by a man like Gideon Smith.

  * * *

  From the bridge at the fore of the gondola slung beneath the huge balloon of the Skylady III, a freshly bathed Rowena Fanshawe touched two fingers to her forehead to acknowledge the aerodrome employee in bright orange overalls who waved two yellow flags at her, then banged on the wide panoramic window at the tether-monkeys to whom she paid a few pennies in the way of retainer, who swiftly unclipped the steel cables that held the ’stat earthbound. The Skylady III lurched and began to rise. They were bound for America.

  Bent gripped the console, his knuckles whitening as they ascended. “Tell me again how this big effing thing stays in the air,” he said, his voice tremulous.

  Rowena shrugged. “Helium.”

  “I must have missed that science lesson at school. What, exactly, is helium?”

  “It’s a gas, Aloysius. A lifting gas. An entirely natural resource. It powers the Empire as much as coal; it gives us the mastery of the air. It’s lighter than air, Aloysius. They’re finding new deposits all the time, but it’s still relatively scarce, which is why aerostats are the preserve of the richer nations.”

  Bent let loose a long fart. “Oh, God,” he said. “Bit of natural gas of my own, there. Are the bathrooms still where I remember them?”

  Rowena nodded as she held the wheel and said, “If it makes your airsickness feel any better, Aloysius, the galley is well-stocked with rum and sausages.”

  As the fat journalist clumsily let himself down the ladder from the bridge to the corridor below, Rowena looked around for Gideon. He was standing by the window at the starboard side, which opened out on to the observation deck where Louis Cockayne had taken them on board in an act of piracy as they were bound for Egypt. From that same deck, Rowena, Bent, and the others had watched as Gideon tackled John Reed aboard the brass dragon over London.

  The Skylady III was a tripler—powered by a combination of clockwork, steam, and electricity. Rowena didn’t understand the electricity much, and she didn’t like relying on things she didn’t understand, so she tended to make more use of the steam and clockwork. But steam meant coal, and coal was heavy and cost money, so she only used it when she was being paid well, like on this job, or when she needed to be somewhere fast, because when it had a full head of steam the Skylady III could certainly move.

  She locked the ’stat into an ascending course holding due west, setting the electric bell—one of the innovations she had overcome her suspicion sufficiently to use—to sound when they reached the desired altitude. She looked back at Gideon and absently ran a forefinger along the line of her triceps, straining through the crisp white shirt she had changed into. A month of shoveling coal and winding the Skylady III’s clockwork mechanisms (she was not yet making enough money out of her royal honor to employ more staff at Fanshawe Aeronautical Endeavors) had toughened up her already lithe and strong body. She felt a wave of something she couldn’t quite identify as she regarded Gideon, something a little maternal, perhaps, that made her want to take him protectively in her strong arms. Perhaps it was something else, something lighter than air that fluttered behind her breasts, that ached between her legs. Something that made her happy and sad all at once. She was glad to be taking Gideon to find Maria. She smiled. Of course she was.

  * * *

  Gideon never tired of watching London unravel below him as an aerostat carried him to his next adventure. For so long he had dreamed of such a life, earthbound in Sandsend, only his regular escape into his favorite penny blood, World Marvels & Wonders, breaking the monotony of fishing the seas every day on his father’s gearship, the Cold Drake.
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  Be careful what you wish for. That was what they said, wasn’t it? Funny how you only ever heard that advice after you’d gotten what you wished for. As thin fingers of cloud began to draw a white veil over the huge sprawl of London falling slowly away beneath them, Gideon thought of the life he had now, living in opulence in Mayfair and flying off to New York at the drop of a hat when the Crown required it. He thought of the intensive training he had undertaken, how he could now strip down and rebuild a repeating rifle nearly without thinking, how he knew seven ways to kill a man without his target uttering a sound.

  And he thought of what he had lost to be here.

  He thought of his father, Arthur Smith.

  Arthur Smith, who had died by the claws of the foul frog-faced creature, which either worked for John Reed or controlled his mind—Gideon still couldn’t decide which. Arthur Smith, who had worked his fingers to the bone to make a good life for Gideon, especially after the death of his wife and his other two boys. Arthur Smith, who had indulgently shared—or pretended to, Gideon realized suddenly—his only living son’s passion for the unlikely adventures of Captain Lucian Trigger, the Hero of the Empire.

  What would old Arthur make of all this? There’d be sadness, of course, that the business he inherited from his own father and built up into a solid foundation for his family—until death began to claim them—wasn’t going to continue in the hands of his son. But he would have known that Gideon’s heart was never in fishing, that his mind and heart were forever given to the slipstreams of the dirigibles that floated high overhead. Arthur would have been happy for Gideon, would have burst with pride when his only surviving son received the Victoria Cross, the highest honor for bravery in the land, from the Queen herself.

  Gideon blinked; London was lost beneath the clouds. He stroked the black leather of the document folder in his hands, then used his thumbnail to break Walsingham’s seal. Orders. He had just begun to read when a small bell sounded and Rowena announced they had reached their cruising altitude. While Gideon had dreamed, she had crossed the bridge and stood alongside him; her unique scent of Pear’s soap and gear oil filled his nose. Rowena laid a hand on his forearm.

  “Were you thinking about Maria?”

  Gideon smiled at her. “No. I was thinking about my dad. It’s been so busy since … since it happened. I feel I’ve barely had time to mourn him properly.”

  Rowena gazed past him at the stringy threads of cloud skidding over the glass window. “I know how you feel. I lost my father when I was very young, too.”

  She still had her hand on his arm. Awkwardly, Gideon placed his own hand over hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She smiled. “It was a long time ago.”

  They stood together in silence for a moment, connected by loss and by touch, his palm across the back of her hand, until Bent hauled himself up the ladders, two bottles tucked under one arm and balancing a plate of gently steaming sausages in the other.

  “I’ve just flushed my breakfast out over Greenwich,” he cackled. “Time to refill the tanks with rum and vittles. And I’ve a pack of cards to pass the time; they’re in my front trouser pocket. Be a darling, Rowena, and fish ’em out, would you? Just mind you don’t grab the old chap by mistake.”

  6

  THE EMPIRE STATE

  The sun sank far behind New York, lighting up the roofs and towers of Manhattan with golden fire as the Skylady III soared over the glittering Atlantic toward the vast, jumbled city. Gideon held his breath as Rowena began to bring the ’stat down lower. He had never dared hope he would see the fabled city at the heart of the Empire State, the living testimony to Queen Victoria’s mastery of the Earth. He had read of it, of course, many, many times in the pages of World Marvels & Wonders. Gideon’s recent adventures had taken him to Egypt, to the New Spain territory of Tijuana, and to the Lost World, an unmapped dot in the great swell of the Pacific Ocean. But as the Skylady III gingerly nosed over Manhattan, the grasping towers of the great city casting long shadows over the gridlike streets below, Gideon felt the hairs on the back of his arms prickle and stand on end.

  New York! Now he felt like a real adventurer. Manhattan was like a black insect that clung to the Atlantic coast, soot-darkened towers in the Gothic style thrusting upward, scraping at the underside of heaven. Whereas London had enjoyed a brief flirtation with the architecture of the lost civilizations of South America, erecting ziggurats with tumbling foliage flowing down their terraces all over the capital, New York seemed to have embraced the legacy of old Europe: a forest of pointed towers, jagged arches, and ribbed vaults.

  “Rowena,” said Bent, standing beside Gideon on the bridge, looking out the panoramic window that curved around the front end of the gondola as the city opened up like a rich child’s model plaything, “should we, strictly speaking, be actually lower than some of these effing towers?”

  “Just following Walsingham’s orders,” said Rowena through gritted teeth. Gideon could tell she wasn’t entirely comfortable with steering the massive ’stat between the soaring spires.

  Bent held on to the console, his suit and overcoat even more crumpled, if that were possible, after the transatlantic journey, and peered through the window. “There’s some effer in that window, waving at us.”

  Rowena jabbed her finger at the map from Walsingham’s leather folder. “Apparently the Governor of New York has a private aerodrome, here.” Gideon looked at the map over her shoulder. The Governor’s Residence was situated in the Albert Gardens, a huge, rectangular swathe of greenery at the center of Manhattan. “We’ve been granted landing privileges. Unfortunately, this is the only way to get there.”

  Gideon looked up at the towers. “It’s like London … but different. I swear some of these buildings are taller than the Lady of Liberty flood barrier at Greenwich.”

  Bent sniffed. As Gideon gazed upward, Bent risked a look down. “In my experience, the higher a city’s rich raise themselves up, the deeper its poor sink in the shit.”

  Rowena didn’t take her eyes from the course ahead, her hands moving blindly but unerringly over the instrument panel in front of her, as though she could sense the readings on the dials and clocks through strange osmosis alone, but she said, “And your experience of the world’s cities is vast, is it, Aloysius?”

  Bent sniffed. “Lived all my life in London. That’s as much experience as a man needs, in my humble opinion. Greatest city in the world.”

  “I think New York might have designs on that claim,” said Gideon, blinking as the Skylady III emerged from the manmade canyon of towers into an open space, the red rays of the sinking sun flooding the bridge. The Albert Gardens was an oasis in the center of the city, a green pause amid the teeming life of Manhattan, a long, sculpted park surrounded on all sides by teetering towers and spires, an elevated steam-train track threading among them.

  Beside him, Rowena visibly relaxed. “We’re through. I don’t see why they couldn’t have had us land at North Beach Aerodrome and steam-bussed us in, though.”

  Terra firma within his grasp, Bent seemed more jovial, too. He nudged Gideon in the ribs. “That’s because we’re vee eye effing pees, ain’t it? Very Important Personages, that’s us. The Hero of the Effing Empire and his faithful chronicler.”

  Gideon said nothing. As Rowena studied the orders from Walsingham and began to swing the Skylady III around and down toward the grand Governor’s Residence on the east side of the Albert Gardens, his head and heart still danced high in the thin air far above them.

  * * *

  The Governor of New York, Edward Lyle, was a rotund man whose finely cut purple velvet jacket and black breeches proudly showed off his portly physique like a badge of office. He had thick, bushy eyebrows, one of which seemed permanently arched as though he questioned everything, and his mop of unruly dark hair was partially hidden beneath a stovepipe hat, taller than the current London fashion dictated.

  “The Yanks try to do everything bigger than the Brits, eve
n their effing hats,” murmured Bent to Gideon as they descended from the gondola to the stone apron adjacent to the Governor’s Residence. Bent nodded to the opulent building. “Very grand. Ruskinian Gothic, if I’m not mistaken. Not a bad pile.”

  Lyle was accompanied by half a dozen soldiers in dusky blue livery, each one flint-eyed and mustachioed, their wide-brimmed hats bearing the crossed-sabers insignia of the American Cavalry. Each shouldered a modern slide-action twenty-four-inch octagonal-barrel Winchester. Gideon smiled inwardly; he was getting quite adept in the recognition of arms.

  The governor stepped forward to greet the arrivals. He was a full head shorter than Gideon, and he pushed back the stovepipe on his head to properly look at the adventurer, his eyebrow arching even more sharply as the setting sun slid over the balloon of the Skylady III.

  “Mr. Gideon Smith!” declared Lyle, holding out his hand. “It is a great honor to have the Hero of the Empire here in New York.”

  “It’s an honor to be here,” said Gideon, shaking the governor’s hand. He thrilled slightly at the lilt of Lyle’s American accent.

  Lyle turned and took Rowena’s hand, kissing it softly, and said, “Miss Fanshawe, the Belle of the Airways. And Mr. Aloysius Bent, esteemed man of letters.”

  “You’ve done your homework, Governor,” said Bent, though Gideon could tell he was more than satisfied with Lyle’s appellation.

  Lyle inclined his head. “No need for mugging up, Mr. Bent. Your exploits have thrilled America as much as Britain, I dare say.” He clapped his hands together. “Now, you must be exhausted after your long journey. There are rooms for you all in my humble residence yonder, and doubtless you’ll be glad of a good night’s sleep. If I might be so bold, however, to suggest you might freshen up and then join me for a spot of dinner? We have much to discuss.”

  “Dinner?” said Bent. “I like the cut of your jib, Lyle.” He wiped a dark stain off his waistcoat and sniffed suspiciously at the shoulder of his black jacket. “Shall we skip the freshening up, though, and cut straight to the chase?”