Shanghai Sparrow

by Gaie Sebold

  The smile on her face felt strange. She hadn’t had so much fun since she’d left Ma Pether’s. There was something about Liu that put her dangerously at ease, but she couldn’t afford to trust him. She didn’t believe he’d come all this way and gone to the bother of getting himself hired just because he felt like it, or because he wanted to see her – it wasn’t as though they’d been sweethearts, or anything like that. She liked him well enough. She liked his sharp white grin and his sharper tongue, his long dark eyes, his glossy black hair and quick, neat movements... You’re getting soft, Evvie Duchen. Can’t afford to get soft.

  No, she didn’t believe it. Since Mama, there’d been no-one in her life who didn’t want something from her. He was working for someone: Ma Pether, perhaps, or Holmforth. Spying on her. He had to be. She remembered some of the things she’d said, and shivered suddenly. She was a fool. She’d have to be more careful. If it came back on her she’d say she was suspicious, and testing him out by saying disloyal things.

  She didn’t like the thought of ratting on him. She kicked at the skirting, scowling. Well, if he ratted on her, she’d do likewise. What’d he have to come here for, anyway? She had troubles enough. She wondered, briefly, if he knew anything about Etheric science, if he was so all-fired clever... but she’d made herself vulnerable enough. She certainly wasn’t going to admit to him that she didn’t have the first idea how to make Mama’s precious mechanisms work.

  But she had an idea about that.

  “YOU’VE BEEN WORKING on something, haven’t you?” Eveline said, pushing aside one of the mechanisms with a sigh.

  “What do you mean?” Hastings said.

  “You should be more careful, you keep sneaking off and then coming in stinking of oil. It don’t notice when we’ve been out here, but it does in lessons. You smell like Lazy Lou.”

  “Who’s Lazy Lou?”

  “A mechanical woman someone I knew had.”

  “An automaton! Oh, I’d give anything to get hold of a good one...”

  “Never mind that. You hear what I said?”

  “Of course I did!” Hastings looked her up and down, wonderingly, and shook her head. “You’re clever,” she said. “Why are you so awful with Navigation?”

  “Because it’s boring and stupid and Miss Prayne makes me want to scream and throw eggs.”

  Hastings giggled. “It’s a shame. If she wasn’t so mopey even you might get interested.”

  “Can I borrow your notes?”

  “Much good they’ll do you.”

  “I know.” Eveline sighed. “All them lines and circles don’t make the least bit of sense to me. I’m good at people, not stupid lines.”

  “The lines are only a way of talking about real things,” Hastings said. “You’ll need them if you ever have to travel by yourself. What if you’re in a boat and something happens to the person you’re with and you have to find your way home?”

  “Don’t.” Eveline hugged her arms around herself.

  “Don’t you want to travel?” Hastings said.

  “Not me. I want a nice warm house and enough to eat, right here in England, thank you.”

  “You’ll have to if they make you.”

  “I s’pose. But fat lot of use I’ll be to the Empire if I get lost.”

  “I can’t wait,” Hastings said. “I’ve never even been on an airship. Oh, can you imagine? Up there, away from everything... you could go anywhere in the world, in an airship.” She thought for a moment. “Well, you could with enough fuel, anyway.”

  “That great noisy thing’s bad enough,” Eveline said, glowering across the barn.

  “That thing is a variant of the steam car. Mr Jackson wants to patent the engine. It’s revolutionary.” Hastings pushed her hair back with a wet hand and said, “At least it would be, if he wasn’t... he just won’t listen.”

  “Well, of course he won’t. Never knew a man yet who’d listen when he’s got his teeth in something – like terriers, they are. You gotta distract them with something else. How far could you get on that?”

  “That? About half a mile before the engine overheats,” Hastings said. “Honestly, he keeps trying to push more power through it and he won’t compensate properly. I haven’t been doing anything to it but what I’m told. What would be the point? If I change anything, he’ll only change it back.”

  “So where is it?”

  “Where’s what?” Hastings said, her eyes going wide and round like a nervy horse’s.

  “Come on, I know you been working on something. You been making your own, ain’tcher?”

  “You mustn’t tell!”

  Eveline shook her head. “See? You just give yourself away, saying that. You gotta be more careful. I’d not have known for certain if you hadn’t said.”

  Hastings shot a glance at the Velocitator, where Mr Jackson was yet again banging something and muttering, then grabbed Eveline’s hand. “Oh, but now you know, and I can show you, I’ve been wanting so much to show someone, come tonight, please. You’re so clever, maybe you can show me how to get some of the things I need....”

  “Whoa up, girl!” Eveline tugged her hand away, grinning. “All right. You need stuff, I’ll try and help – I need something too, so maybe you can help me.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, it’s just I need more steel, and some India-rubber, and copper wire, and...”

  “How close is yours to being ready?”

  “Ready to do what?” Hastings said. “It’ll run, and it’ll stop. I haven’t had a chance to test the engine at full stretch – it’s a lot quieter than the Velocitator, but if I take it through the grounds the tracks will be so obvious... besides, I haven’t been able to get enough copper wire to finish the connections and there’s no cover over the differential mass accelerator... why? Are you finally getting interested?”

  “Oh, I’m interested, all right.”

  “Why?”

  “If I can get you the materials you need, how d’you fancy taking it for a spin?”

  “You mean through more of the grounds? But what about the dogs?”

  “Surely it can outrun a couple of dogs.”

  “Easily, but what’s to stop them barking?”

  “Oh, you leave that to me,” Eveline said, grinning. She had tricks aplenty to stop a dog from barking – geese were a lot worse.

  “And the tracks it’ll leave?”

  “I’ll think of something. Once we’re on the road, it won’t matter.”

  “The road? Duchen, what are you thinking?”

  “Fancy a trip to Watford?”

  “Where?” Hastings shook her head so violently her hair tumbled out of its pins. “No. No, no. Take her outside the school? You’re mad. I’d be expelled. I’d go to Bedlam. She’d be stolen, or broken up. No.”

  “She?”

  “She’s called the Sacagawea,”Hastingssaid.

  “What’s that when it’s at home?”

  “A woman who guided Lewis and Clarke on their expedition in America. An explorer.”

  “I thought explorers went somewhere. That’s the point of exploring, ain’t it?”

  “I can’t,” Hastings said. “Duchen...”

  “Oh, call me Eveline, for the love of... ain’t no-one else around to hear you bark out my name like I was a soldier.”

  “All right, Eveline.”

  “And you’re Beth?”

  “Yes. But don’t let Miss Grim hear you use it. We’re supposed to maintain a proper distance. Oh!” She covered her mouth with an oily hand. “Listen to me, you’ve got me calling her that now,” she wailed. “I’ll forget and do it to her face and then what? And if I try and take Sacagawea out... I won’t do it. She has to be finished. She isn’t finished.”

  “How long have you been working on it, then?”

  “Since just after I got here. About two years, I suppose.”

  “Can I see it, at least?”

  EVELINE LOOKED AT the machine and sighed. “I think maybe I’d just better try
and borrow a horse.”

  “I thought you couldn’t ride.”

  “Well, I stuck on, once. For a bit. I’ll have to manage. ’Cos that ain’t going anywhere, is it?”

  It was not a beautiful machine. Its origins in scraps and scavenging were pitifully obvious. Its wheels didn’t match, its inner workings were a mass of dull coils and ancient gears, and its seat appeared to have begun life as a church pew, before an unfortunate and extended encounter with a savage woodworm. If she hadn’t known better, she might think it was just a pile of old bits and pieces that had somehow fallen together into a vaguely cart-like shape.

  “She’s not finished,” Beth Hastings said. “I can’t get the materials. But she goes.”

  “Yeah? How far, before it falls apart or blows up?”

  “She won’t do either!”

  “No. Sorry. I like my skin whole, and I’d rather not be sitting in a pile of scrap covered in burns waiting to see if Miss Grim or the ruddy dogs find me first. Never mind, eh?”

  “But she works!”

  “But you said yourself, it isn’t finished. Anyway, you don’t want to risk it, I understand that. What do you plan to do with her when she’s finished?”

  “I...” Beth’s mouth drooped. “I don’t know.”

  “I gotta get to class. I’ll see you later. Don’t forget and stay back here half the afternoon – they’ll come looking for you.”

  She left Beth standing in the fading light, one hand resting on her machine, both of them looking rather dusty and forlorn.

  Am I bad? Eveline stopped, halfway back to the school, and frowned at the trees. Was she? It wasn’t a thought she troubled herself with that often.

  But she’d said things to Beth that were as calculated as she’d ever laid on a mark. And Beth wasn’t a mark. Beth was the only friend she’d made in this place.

  She shrugged irritably in the deepening afternoon gloom and headed for Retention, where she performed less well than usual.

  Beth avoided speaking to her for days.

  Eveline spent every spare minute in the barn. Beth always managed to be busy elsewhere when Jackson left them alone, but Eveline knew better than to push. Instead she poked about at her mother’s mechanisms, turning levers, studying dials, placing ball-bearings in the grooves carved for them, without having the slightest idea what she was about. Sometimes she succeeded in getting a noise out of something – a string of faint pings, or a soft wail, or, once, a teeth-jarring shriek that brought Mr Jackson shooting out of the cab of the Velocitator like a jack-in-the-box. He banged his head on the way out and went bright scarlet. Eveline apologised, but felt his glare on her neck for the rest of the afternoon.

  Lessons with Liu were a bright spot. Eveline started to feel the language with her teeth and tongue and brain, its singing intonations and sliding scales. The speed she learned at, now, was exhilarating. She was getting better at French, too, but slowly.

  Miss Cairngrim tended to fling open the door on her Cantonese lessons. Somehow, so far, they had been lucky – whenever it happened, Eveline was sitting at her desk, following Liu’s pronunciation as he read out words he had written on the blackboard. The rest of the time he would be asking her about her life – of which she told him carefully selected portions – or telling her fantastical stories about river-dragons and ghosts and tragic lovers. As the days went on, Eveline realised he was talking more and more in Cantonese, and she was understanding more and more. It happened so smoothly, it was almost like magic.

  “You’re ever so good at this,” she said to Liu one day as she was leaving to go on kitchen duty – which she’d got, again. On purpose, this time, although spilling ink on Treadwell had been a bonus. Eveline was sorry for the girl, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t still a right royal pain in the backside. “You could teach at a proper school, if you wanted.”

  “I would not be so successful if I did not have such an amenable pupil.”

  “You don’t half talk fancy.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I think you’re a flatterer, mister, is what I think.”

  “No,” he said. “You do not need flattery. The Folk, now, their rulers need it. Live upon it. Shall I tell you about the Five Gracious Gifts?”

  “Is this another of your stories?”

  “Of course. You have done very well and have earned a story.”

  It was a strange story, of gifts that were not real things, but the shadow of things, the intention of things. It left her feeling strange, disconcerted, and as though her head were no longer quite connected to the rest of her. She sat frowning afterwards.

  “You didn’t like it?” Liu said.

  “It’s just... odd. I remember people back home leaving out milk for them.”

  “Oh, yes. It isn’t the milk – they have everything they could ever want to drink – it is the intention. The fear and worship. And if the milk is hard to spare, all the better. Lacking nothing, they crave the knowledge of lack.”

  Something in Liu’s voice made her glance up then, but he was looking away, out of the window, and she could not read his expression.

  “How come you know so much about them?”

  He turned back, and gave her a smile that was rather thin and sad. “I am very clever, and I study a great deal.”

  “Liu, where are you from?”

  “Is it not obvious?”

  “Well, you’re Chinese, yes, I can see that – but you speak such good English and you spend half your time here – the Brighart Company’s English, too...”

  “Spending time in China became... a little difficult for me. I offended someone powerful.”

  “Ah. Got a bit too clever, did you?”

  “Rather say that I was not quite clever enough. I did something that might be seen as giving advantage to a rival of theirs, so, I joined the rival. Who happened to be from... this part of the world.”

  “So do you ever go back?”

  “Now and then. Discreetly.” He cocked his head. “The Grim Woman is coming. We should finish the lesson.”

  “How’d you know? You always know!”

  “I have most sharp ears.”

  “THESE ARE THE things I need,” Beth said, shoving a piece of paper into Eveline’s apron pocket and picking up a dish of greyish mashed potato. Eveline pulled it out, eyes widening at the list of incomprehensible items.

  “Wait. You mean you’ll do it?”

  “Yes, I’ll do it. I’ve even worked something out to cover any tracks.”

  “But I don’t even know what half these things are!”

  “You get the money and I’ll get the materials. How are you going to get the money?”

  “I don’t know. Yet. I’ll think of something.”

  “You’re not going to rob anyone?”

  “What, here? No-one’s got anything worth robbing, in this place. You could break up the whole building and it’d be worth about thirty bob down the market. If that. Beth...” But she’d gone, balancing dishes.

  There wasn’t another chance for them to talk until supper was over and they were wearily scraping congealed gravy from the plates. The gas mantle hissed overhead, shedding soft greenish light. The cook had taken her sore feet home. Now the oven had gone out, the kitchen was rapidly getting colder.

  “Why’d you say yes?” Eveline said.

  “Because I called her Sacagawea,” Beth said.

  “You don’t have to, you know,” Eveline said, regretting the words the moment they were out of her mouth.

  “Well I’m not letting you take her.”

  “Too bloody right – me, drive that thing? I’d blow meself up.”

  “No, you’d just stall her and make a mess of the engine.”

  “I meant, I can find another way to get there.”

  “Fast enough and without taking a horse? Besides... I want to.” Beth’s eyes gleamed. “I want to find out how fast she’ll really go.”

  “Right,” Eveline said. “Er... how fast d
o you think she might go?

  “Let’s see, shall we?”

  “Mm, let’s,” Eveline said. Eveline Duchen, I suspect you’re going to regret this.

  IT WAS AN overheard conversation between two of the staff that gave Eveline her next move. First, she did a little more late night exploring; she made certain enquiries, and took careful note of the social columns of the newspapers that the staff left lying about. Then, she managed to arrange an extra French lesson alone with Mon Sewer. Once she was certain they weren’t going to be interrupted, she cut across his explanation of the Future Perfect (she didn’t care about Future Perfect, she was more interested in Future Possible).

  “I hear you’re leaving us to get married, monsewer,” she said.

  “Monsieur. Monsieur. Really, Duchen, I thought your pronunciation had improved.”

  “Oh, I dunno, monsewer, I think sewer’s just about right for you. Or would you prefer...” she switched to a perfect imitation of his own accent, “Monsieur Merde?”

  “What?” He spun around on his shiny, black shoes so fast he skidded and almost fell. “How dare you!”

  “I dare ’cos I know all about you, monsewer. And I been wondering if maybe there’s a few other people should know all about you, too.” She slid onto his desk, and sat there, swinging her feet. “About you and Treadwell, maybe.”

  His face froze. Eveline could see the pulse beating in his temple.

  “Because that’s the sort of thing a lady who’s getting married might want to know about her beloved husband-to-be, don’t you think? Especially a nice, rich lady.”

  “What nonsense has the girl been telling you?”

  “Treadwell? Oh, she en’t told me nothing, monsewer. She don’t think anyone knows. But I know. And I know she isn’t the only one.” That was a risk, she didn’t know for certain, but she was pretty sure. She knew the type, and given the chance they were like foxes in a hencoop; they couldn’t stop at one. At least a fox didn’t pretend it was doing the chickens a favour. “And since you’re going to be marrying such a lovely, generous lady, I reckon there’ll be some money to spare, don’t you? Five hundred, maybe?” Beth hadn’t asked for nearly that much, but there was no point being skimpy.