by Paul Crilley
Tweed climbed another five levels before they arrived at the very top of the airship. A short distance away he could just make out a rope ladder dangling from the edge of the platform.
He was about to move toward it when he felt the girl's fingers curl around his wrist. He turned and saw her staring down at the floor.
Tweed leaned to the side and grabbed hold of the metal frame, peering back to the factory door. Far below him he could see the tiny worms of electricity dancing around the Gibbering Man's top hat.
The tall figure of Professor Moriarty walked into view. He looked around for a moment then pointed. The Gibbering Man lifted his gun, and a burst of lightning shot from the tube and wrapped itself around the set of stairs, arcing and spitting as it crawled and leaped along the metal grating.
The lightning died away. Smoke drifted sluggishly into the air. A second later the same thing happened on the next level, then the next and the next, all the way to the top. Tweed could see the control room through a gap in the scaffolding, and the blue-white light crawled and spat across the floor and walls inside. If they had hidden in there they'd be dead.
Tweed felt a breath of air on his ear.
“Excuse me,” the girl whispered. Then she leaned past him and gently pried his hand away from the metal strut he still held onto. She gestured for him to follow, guiding him along the wooden walkway until they stood in the center of the zeppelin.
A moment later the lightning burst and exploded all around them, arcing up the metallic skeleton of the airship, crawling, spitting, sparks flying, the smell of burning tin heavy in Tweed's nostrils. Their eyes reflected flashing white light as they stared in awe at the electricity arcing up to either side and meeting above them, a cage of deadly energy.
The only thing that saved them was the wooden plank on which they stood.
Tweed couldn't tear his eyes away. The noise was intense, unsettling: staccato barks and cracks of energy. Lightning arced straight down from the top of the airship, grounding itself in anything conductive. Tweed shuddered, realizing how extremely dead he would be right now if the girl hadn't removed his hand.
A few moments later the lighting flickered and died away. Smoke filled the air, and occasional tiny crawling worms of light flashed and disappeared.
Tweed swallowed nervously, then pointed at the wooden platform above them. The girl nodded and they moved toward it, using the smoke for cover. Tweed grabbed the rope ladder tightly and held it for the girl to climb up, then he followed after her and collapsed onto the wooden platform. He could hear sirens in the distance.
Tweed stared up at the roof of the factory, no more than twenty yards above him. Then he rolled over to find the girl peering over the edge.
“They've gone,” she said. “Ran when they heard the sirens.”
Tweed nodded and closed his eyes.
“We should probably stay here for a while,” she said. “I don't really feel like answering the police's questions.”
“Fine by me,” said Tweed.
They were both silent for a while. Finally, Tweed sat up and prodded the girl's foot.
“Have I earned the right to ask your name yet?” Tweed asked. “‘Songbird’ just sounds so…fake.”
The girl frowned. She stared at Tweed, then sighed. “Fine. My name's Octavia. Octavia Nightingale. My mother…I used to sing her songs. She called me her little songbird. Before…” She trailed off and shook her head sharply so that part of her fringe fell forward to cover her face.
Tweed waited for her to carry on, but it soon became apparent that she wasn't going to. He leaned forward to try to catch a glimpse of her face, but she turned her head away.
What had he done? He'd obviously said something to upset her. Should he apologize? Ignore it? He wasn't very good at this kind of thing.
What would Barnaby do?
He thought about it, then leaned forward and hesitantly patted her on the head. “There there,” he said awkwardly. Then he added, “Buck up.”
Octavia turned her head slightly to look at him with a baffled look on her face.
Then she burst out laughing.
“What?” said Tweed.
“You! Patting me on the head like that. I'm not a dog, you know.”
“Oh.” Tweed thought about this and nodded. “I see your point. Sorry about that. I'm not very good with other people. Never had a lot of time for socializing. I much preferred reading, really.” He frowned thoughtfully. “I've been told that spending my formative years with my nose buried in a book may have made me a bit…”
“Odd?” said Octavia.
“No—”
“Disturbed?”
“No—”
“A bit…mental?”
“If you will let me finish. A bit…socially awkward around people I don't know. Which brings me back to the Songbird thing. It's seems that I've offended you somehow. Your mother…did she die?”
“What? No! At least, I don't think so.” She sighed. “The truth is, I don't know. My mother works for the Times. About a year ago she started looking into the reports that Moriarty had returned to London. He obviously didn't like a reporter snooping around, and one night he and his gang turned up and just…took her away.”
“Oh,” said Tweed. “I'm sorry. Seems we're in a similar position, you and I.”
“So it would seem,” said Octavia. “That's what all this Songbird stuff is for. A way to keep my identity hidden. I've been gathering any information I can on Moriarty, hoping I'll stumble onto something. Maybe find out where he's hiding.”
Tweed nodded thoughtfully. “Octavia Nightingale, I have a proposition for you.”
“Sorry, I'm not that kind of girl.”
“What? Oh, I see. Yes, most amusing. No what I want to say is: My father, your mother—both kidnapped by Moriarty and his gang. We can join forces, pool our resources. You can be my assistant and—”
“I beg your pardon? I'll be no such thing. If anything, you can be my assistant. I'm the one who's spent the last year investigating Moriarty.”
“And doesn't the fact that you haven't found him yet tell you something? Because it tells me a fresh pair of eyes are needed. Barnaby trained me in logical thinking from a very young age. That's what this situation needs. Logic. Clear-headedness. Not brash emotion, running off willy-nilly after every little lead.”
Octavia stood up. “You, sir, are a buffoon. I have never ran anywhere ‘willy-nilly.’ Nor do I ever intend to. I can think just as logically as you.”
“Then what's our next move?”
“I…well, I hadn't thought of that yet.”
“I have,” said Tweed. “And if you apologize for calling me a buffoon I'll tell you.”
Octavia folded her arms across her chest. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Fine,” she said eventually. “I'm sorry I called you a buffoon.”
“Thank—”
“When it's entirely clear to anyone who spends even the smallest amount of time with you that you are, in fact, a hedge-born canker-blossom!”
Tweed opened his mouth.
Then he shut it again. Even he had to admit, that was a damned fine insult.
Tweed eventually dozed off, and Octavia decided to let him sleep. She could still hear sirens coming and going, so she didn't think they should move yet anyway. It would be safer to wait a couple of hours.
She studied him as he slept, his mouth slightly open as he snored loudly. He certainly was an odd one, nothing at all like anyone she'd ever met. She'd only known him for a few hours, but he seemed all right, as far as she could tell. Slightly annoying. But all right. He displayed a strange mixture of arrogance and naivety, something Octavia hadn't thought possible up till now. One usually canceled out the other, but in Sebastian Tweed, the two existed side by side.
Octavia eventually dozed off in the early hours of the morning, waking some time later to find Tweed staring at her intently.
He jerked back when her eyes opened, looking quickly away. He got t
o his feet, sending the platform swaying back and forth, and clapped his hands together. “Right. Plans to make, Nightingale. Things to do. People to see. Well, I say ‘people,’ but it's really only one. And he smells odd, so don't get too close to him.”
Octavia blinked and yawned, taking in this verbal stream. Then she frowned. “Hoi,” she said.
“Yes? What?” he turned to face her.
“What were you staring at me for? While I was asleep. It's not polite.”
“Isn't it? Sorry. To answer your question, I noticed that the two sides of your face are not symmetrical. I was trying to see the difference.”
“I beg your pardon? My face is perfectly symmetrical.”
Tweed shook his head. “No one's is. Yours is very slight, don't worry. Far from a deformity. I did notice that one eye is ever so slightly larger than the other, though.” He leaned forward as he talked, then apparently realized what he was doing and quickly straightened up. “But it's barely noticeable.” He gestured to one of the windows in the roof. The light outside was the grey of early morning. “The first workers will be here soon and I don't want to have to explain the door. Or the blackened metal everywhere. Shall we?”
They walked for about three miles or so along the embankment, heading away from docks and into the actual city proper. Hansom cabs pulled by automata jounced past on their right, using the slow lane reserved for them. Omnibuses chugged by in the faster lanes, clouds of steam billowing from their chimneys into the grey morning air. Rush hour was approaching, and even the bluest of skies would soon become hidden behind London's permanent dirty cloud cover.
The soot and steam and dirty smoke from the thousands of vehicles coated everything, turning London into something out of a gothic painting, as if rendered in strokes of black and grey. The city had tried many methods of keeping the buildings clean, most involving small, animal-like automata that spent their lives scrubbing brickwork, but they needed to draw power from somewhere, so they just ended up contributing to the problem.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “Shouldn't we get to Harry Banks? Ask him just what on Earth he was thinking?”
Tweed stopped walking, a frown on his face. “I forgot about Harry. We should do something, yes. I don't think we should be quite so open about it, though. If he did sell us out then what's to stop him from pulling a gun on us and just handing us over to the professor?”
“But he might have information about the gang.”
“Possible, but I don't think it's likely. Harry's a small-timer. You'd know that if you've dealt with him. I think he saw an opportunity and he took it.”
“So we're just going to let him get away with it?”
“On the contrary. I think we should make him suffer. I just don't know if now's the best time.”
“So if we're not going to see Harry, where are we going?”
Tweed pointed at a building across the street. “There.”
Octavia turned and looked to where he was pointing. She knew the red-brick building. Everyone did.
It was New Scotland Yard.
“You won't find anything there,” she said. “I've already asked them.”
“Oh? Who did you speak to?”
Octavia shrugged. “Someone at the front desk. I showed them my Times card, but they said they didn't know what I was talking about.”
“Ah. Well, they won't, will they? I have a feeling certain people higher up won't want word of Moriarty and his gang getting out into the public domain. Professor Moriarty, back from the dead? No one will be too happy to hear that. But there are ways and means.”
“Are you saying you could do better?”
Tweed nodded. “Yes. But don't feel bad about it. It's just that I happen to know someone.”
Tweed led her across the road and into a side street, nodding at any helmeted policemen he passed. They seemed to know him. As they passed beneath a concrete arch that spanned the street, she leaned closer to him.
“Do you come here often?”
Tweed looked briefly uncomfortable. “Ah, yes. I do, actually. They think I work in the records room.”
“Why on Earth would they think that?”
Tweed paused in the street and looked around to make sure no one was listening. “My father was a bit of a…a criminal. A con man.”
“What?”
“So am I, I suppose. He taught me, brought me up doing it. Lately he's been pretending to be a psychic and charging people money to talk to their dead relatives. I started coming here to find out what I could about the marks.”
“That's horrible,” said Octavia, pulling back slightly.
“I know. That's what I told him. I wanted to stop. I came here to try to find something that would give them peace. To make them really think they were speaking to their lost ones. And before you say it, I know that doesn't make it better, but it…it helped some of them.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? That you helped them?” said Octavia angrily.
“No, yes…No. Look. I know it's wrong. I was trying to find a way to give them what they were hoping for.”
“That doesn't make it right!”
“No, but it makes it less wrong…” He hesitated. “Listen, you don't know me. You don't know the life we've had. You can't judge me on what I've told you. Sometimes you have to do things to survive. Or haven't you ever experienced that?” He stepped back and stared at her. “Actually, probably not. You're rich, yes?”
“Why do you say that?” snapped Octavia.
“Your clothing. I noticed that scarf you had wrapped around you last night. It was a cheap cut of material, but the thread was black silk. And your hair. You've tried to hide it with…” he leaned forward and sniffed. Octavia recoiled slightly. “…coal dust, but the natural luster is there. You can't hide it. Expensive soap. Healthy diet. So, there it is. I understand you disapprove, and that's fine. So do I. Just realize that's not all I am.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned away and moved quickly up the steps.
“Wait.”
He turned at the top of the stairs. He looked as if he feared she was going to say something else. She wanted to, but what could she say? He already said it was wrong. Her telling him the same thing yet again wasn't going to make a difference.
“I have to get back home,” she said instead. “My father is hardly ever around but I should be there in case he looks for me. I'll tell him I'm working for the paper for the next few days. That should give me some leeway. Plus, I need to change. Don't think I'll get in looking like this.” She fingered her tatty clothes. “Will you be here later on?”
Tweed nodded. “I'll be in the old records room, downstairs. Find me there.”
He straightened up, all signs of unease gone in an instant. Octavia watched him stride into the building, walking as if he owned the place. She shook her head. She'd never seen such a mixture of awkwardness and confidence in one person. He disappeared inside New Scotland Yard and Octavia hurried back through the dim, early morning streets until she saw a hansom cab. It was an old-fashioned one, pulled by a horse and driver.
“Let's see your money, first,” said the old man.
Octavia bristled, but then remembered what she looked like. She quickly fished out a coin from her pocket and handed it over. Then she climbed inside and gave the driver her address.
Octavia managed to sneak back into the house and wash up without drawing any attention to herself, although, admittedly, she had no idea if anyone was even in the house at the moment. The rooms were silent, the curtains still drawn. Her father had probably been up late again, working on his catalogs for the museum.
Octavia had spent a lot of time letting it be known she preferred to be left alone, and because she had recently completed her studies to her father's satisfaction, he acquiesced. He had even given up complaining about her spending her days at the Times. At first he'd been horrified that she was even thinking about following in her mother's footsteps, but she had told h
im in no uncertain terms that that was exactly what she was going to do, and nothing he could say would change her mind.
What did he think she would do with her life? There was no way she was going to simply marry some gentleman and start raising his children. That might be the height of ambition for other girls her age, but that life wasn't for her.
At midmorning, when her father still hadn't risen from bed, Octavia retired to her room and dressed in tweed trousers, a white shirt, and a tailored jacket. The look was inspired by Ada Lovelace, the writer and one-time business partner of Charles Babbage. The range of clothing had even been named after her.
It was a testament to the woman's influence. Lovelace was now eighty-four years old and still going strong, running Ada, the computing company she set up to compete with Babbage. The Ada machines were a new generation of analytical computers. Designed to be beautiful, not bulky like the Babbages were. Streamlined and simple to operate. Not many people used them yet, but their elegant designs were starting to gain popularity, especially amongst the Progressives.
The clothing was becoming all the rage amongst the younger ladies around London, and Octavia was very grateful. The tailored clothing was so much easier to move around in than skirts and corsets. Another reason that Ada Lovelace was a personal heroine to Octavia.
Octavia reached beneath her bed and disconnected the second Tesla gun from where it was charging. She slid it into her left pocket, thinking she would have to buy another one now to replace the gun ruined from its dip in the Thames. She didn't like only having one.
Octavia closed her bedroom door and slipped from the house, taking a deep breath of freedom as she did so. She hailed a passing automaton pulling a carriage behind it. The automaton was an old model, its face featureless except for two rectangular eye slits. Octavia climbed inside and leaned forward.
“New Scotland Yard!” she shouted in a clear voice. These old automata had problems with their hearing mechanisms. It was why no one really used them for anything other than pulling coaches.