The Ruby Airship

by Sharon Gosling

  Everyone else was beginning to eat. Thaddeus glanced down at his enemy, the spoon, and noticed that the cuff of his shirt was poking out from beneath his black jacket. It was frayed, betraying its age. He’d borrowed the dinner suit from the Professor’s stash of disguises, but he hadn’t been able to find a decent white shirt to go beneath it. Buying a new one was out of the question. An inspector’s salary, it turned out, wasn’t that much more than a constable’s.

  “Perhaps the young monsieur has an — how you say? — insight on the situation? He must surely come across similar during his duties as one of ’er Majesty’s police?”

  It took Thaddeus a moment to register that the speaker was addressing him. He looked up to find the eyes of the entire table trained in his direction. Opposite, the man who had spoken — the Comte de Cantal — was watching him with calculating eyes and an unfriendly smile. The ladies present obviously found the Comte handsome, as they had been twittering behind their hands about him ever since he had stepped into the room earlier that evening. To Thaddeus, the man seemed strangely snake-like. An unusually thin, curling scar stood out on his left cheek, and all his movements were sly and darting. If he’d been dressed in street garb, Thaddeus would have pegged him for a pickpocket.

  “Forgive me,” the man said, flicking his cool gaze away with a lazy shrug. “I have neglected — I should address you as Lord, no doubt?”

  Thaddeus’s fingers twitched away from the spoon. “Er — no.”

  “Ah,” said the stranger, his soft French accent caressing the English words with undue care, as if to make them hang around longer than necessary. “Sir, then. Sir — I’m sorry, what is your name?”

  Thaddeus clenched his jaw. Sir Henry had introduced everyone upon their arrival, and there were not so many present that it was difficult to remember who was who. Particularly since Thaddeus was the only guest with no honorific title. The Comte de Cantal knew full well the policeman’s name and that nothing went in front of it. Which was, the policeman surmised, the reason the nobleman had drawn attention to him with such cunning mockery. It wasn’t the first time that someone had chosen to point out his true station in life among polite company. For Thaddeus, it had become just another tedious aspect of his promotion.

  “Neither am I a Sir, Comte,” Thaddeus said, with a faint smile of his own. “I am merely Thaddeus Rec, born and bred of London town.”

  “Come now, Rec,” spluttered their host, Sir Henry, from his seat at the table’s head. “There’s no ‘merely’ about it, my boy. Rec is the very future of the force, Comte, the very future! We are lucky that he has found time to grace our little soiree, what?”

  The Comte’s handsome, angular face momentarily twisted into a grimace but was just as quickly forced back into a grin as he looked directly at Thaddeus. “The future, yes,” he said, “and how bright the future must be, no? If even one such as yourself may prosper in the glow.”

  Thaddeus understood. Just a year ago, he would have been nothing to most of these people. Born on the streets of the East End, parentless, homeless, Thaddeus Rec had clawed his way up out of the gutter. There were plenty of those, such as the Comte, who wished he had not. For how many other commoners might decide they had the right to follow in his footsteps?

  Thaddeus forced a pleasant smile on to his face and was about to reply when Sir Henry stepped in again.

  “Perhaps you did not hear, Comte,” Sir Henry began, “about the shocking events surrounding the theft of the Shah of Persia’s diamond. It is called the Ocean of Light, you know — quite the biggest in the world, excepting her Majesty’s own stone, the Mountain of Light, of course. Well, if not for Rec here, it would have disappeared into the clutches of a circus brat — one of your countrywomen, in fact, now I come to think of it. She was rather famous in your parts, I believe. Now, what was her name? Something flighty, something — well, you know — typically French.”

  Thaddeus made no reply, but his stomach churned at the thought of Rémy’s stage name being mentioned in connection with the crime. She was still a wanted criminal, still in London — and he knew exactly where she was.

  “Le Petit Moineau,” murmured the Comte. “In English, I believe you call her Little Bird.” Thaddeus found the Frenchman looking at him with renewed interest, though his gaze was no friendlier. “She has been wanted in France for some years, as you say, Sir Henry, but she always seems to slip the net. Well, well, well. So this is the man who thwarted the best jewel thief in Europe. Or almost, at least, no? I congratulate you, Monsieur Rec. An achievement indeed.”

  Thankfully, at that point the conversation moved on, although Thaddeus had not missed the Comte’s final jibe. Neither was he ignorant of the Frenchman’s inquisitive gaze as the evening continued. Thaddeus survived the soup course and the fish course, too. They were embarking on the meat course — a huge hunk of beef that had been broiled with onions — when the Comte spoke again. This time his words were only for Thaddeus’s ears.

  “Tell me, Rec,” he said softly, “the time of the theft of the Darye-ye Noor and your subsequent investigation. That was also when Lord Abernathy disappeared so mysteriously from London, yes?”

  The Comte’s casual mention of Abernathy in connection with the diamond’s theft almost made Thaddeus choke on his food. He forced himself to stay calm, looking at the Frenchman with a deliberately puzzled frown.

  “I’m sorry, Comte? Lord who?”

  Something unpleasant flickered in the Comte’s dark eyes. He leaned back, pausing before he spoke again. “You do not remember the case? Strange, for I believe the Lord in question was present when the jewel first disappeared. I thought I heard tell that he had even been the one to help the girl thief into the Tower of London on the night the diamond was stolen.”

  “Ah,” said Thaddeus, pretending to remember. “Indeed, you are right, of course. I did not know, however, that Lord Abernathy was said to have disappeared. You mean no one has seen him recently? I am afraid I was so busy during that investigation —”

  “But of course,” the Comte whispered, with a rather mocking nod. “You were . . . busy.”

  Thaddeus picked up his champagne glass and took a sip. “Lord Abernathy was an elderly gentleman, wasn’t he? I am not certain that he disappeared so much as . . .”

  “Died?” The Comte de Cantal supplied the word with a sharp tongue and shot Thaddeus a piercing look. “It is possible, I suppose. Although for that to happen with no one to hear about it . . . Strange, do you not think?”

  The policeman felt sweat begin to prick at his brow and cursed himself, hoping that this strange Frenchman could not see his discomfort. Thaddeus had a terrible feeling about this man. Did he know something about the truth of what had happened beneath the streets of London? What Abernathy had sought to bring about through his army of infernal machines? Surely not. Abernathy and his men had died, thanks to Rémy’s own willingness to sacrifice herself. Only she, Thaddeus, Desai, and J knew the truth of what had happened.

  He was trying to come up with an appropriate reply to the Comte’s question when a butler entered the room and spoke to his master.

  “Comte,” said Sir Henry a moment later, “there is a messenger outside for you. He insists on speaking to you in person. Rec, there is a message for you, too. Go on, Jackson, give it to him, don’t delay!”

  The Comte stood, dabbing his mouth with his napkin in an elaborate show of delicacy. He bowed to the table. “My apologies, dear friends, for this interruption. Please excuse me for a moment.”

  Thaddeus watched the Frenchman as he departed the table, but the Comte did not look at him. Jackson appeared at Thaddeus’s shoulder, proffering a silver tray that held one small sealed envelope with his name scrawled untidily upon it. The policeman recognized the hand at once — it was from his sergeant, Collins. Tearing open the envelope, Thaddeus read the enclosed note and grimaced.

  “A proble
m, Rec?” Sir Henry asked.

  “I am afraid so, Sir Henry,” Thaddeus told him, standing. “I am sorry, but I must take my leave. Police business.”

  “Not another darned burglary, Rec?” Sir Henry demanded. “Lord Theakston’s hopping mad, you know. Lost his grandmother’s pearls in his, by Jove.”

  “I’m not at liberty to say, Sir Henry,” said Thaddeus, smoothly, “but my attendance is needed. Can you please excuse me, with many thanks for this excellent meal?”

  “Yes, yes, Rec, of course. Come, I will walk you out.” With effort, the considerable bulk of Sir Henry stood and ushered Rec from the room. Once outside, the kindly old gent placed a hand on the policeman’s shoulder. “Now look here, Rec,” he said. “You’re not to mind that fool Cantal. He may be aristocracy, but he’s not got two pennies to rub together, and he’s sure as heck not fit enough to lick your boots. So chin up, young chap. Understand?”

  Thaddeus smiled. “Thank you, Sir Henry. And I am truly sorry to break up your party.”

  “Pish,” said the gent, with a wave of his hand. “Enough of that. Bunch of useless windbags, the lot of them. Now be off with you. Save us from the rabble, Rec. Save us from the rabble.”

  Outside, the night had congealed into a mess of gray clouds tinged a sickly yellow by the weak moon beyond. Thaddeus pulled the collar of his old leather overcoat up around his ears and ran down the steps from Sir Henry’s townhouse. There had indeed been another burglary, and Collins had called him to the scene. It wasn’t far. Thaddeus began to walk, crossing the square and heading into the streets.

  He was passing a shaded alley when a noise caught his attention. He glanced in its direction to see two men standing in the buttery glow of a gas lamp, talking quietly. He recognized one as the Comte de Cantal. The other’s face was half-hidden in the murky shadows. He was a young man, with a high forehead and a thin nose. He was dressed in a dark tailcoat, a top hat clutched in one hand. The stranger glanced toward him as Thaddeus passed, sharp eyes looking out of a sharp face. Then he turned away into shadow, passing out of the policeman’s sight as if he had never been there at all.

  Thaddeus walked quickly onward, shivering slightly in the evening chill. For him, at least, it was going to be a long night.

  {Chapter 3}

  AN OLD FRIEND

  At noon the next day, Rémy woke to the familiar sound of tinny hammering coming from J’s room. The boy had been hard at work on something for weeks now, but he hadn’t said a word about it. In fact, Rémy had hardly seen him for days. She wondered what he was doing but knew better than to ask. The explanation would likely be as confusing as whatever contraption J was trying to cobble together. Since moving in to the Professor’s workshop, he’d become obsessed with the various mechanical marvels — or, more accurately, bits of mechanical marvels — that were scattered around the building. Still, at least it kept him out of trouble.

  She washed and dressed quickly and then stepped out into the chaos of the main workshop. Everywhere there were piles of bits and pieces — clockwork watch parts here, strange, half-assembled masks there; listening devices; power gauges; odd-looking boxes that held who-knew-what . . .

  Every time Rémy tried to look at it all, it made her dizzy. The one relatively tidy part of the room was just in front of the great fireplace, where a semi-circle of old leather sofas and chairs had been arranged. She picked her way toward it, spying a tray of bread and cheese that J had thoughtfully left out for her after his own breakfast. As she ate, she looked around, hoping to see a pile of post. But, as had been the case with the past three weeks, there was nothing. Anxious, Rémy sat down, drawing her legs up under her.

  It was now almost a month since she had heard from her oldest friend, even though they had promised to write to each other every week when Claudette departed for France. Claudette Anjou, once a talented pickpocket and fortune-teller, had taken over running the circus that had been Rémy’s only home when its canny and criminal owner, Gustave, had finally received his just desserts. Claudette had changed the name from Le Cirque de la Lune to Le Cirque des Secrets — The Circus of Secrets — and had taken it back to France to begin anew. Rémy, though, had decided to stay behind in London. It had been a difficult decision, but going back to France would have meant never seeing Thaddeus Rec again. At the time, that had somehow seemed unthinkable.

  He’d said he loved her.

  Rémy shivered slightly as the memory surfaced.

  A deep chasm had been between them, and she’d thought she was going to die a watery death, alone, because it was the right thing to do and only she could do it. Thaddeus had stood there, shouting over the abyss, and convinced her to let him cross. To be with her, no matter what happened, as they tried to save the city from Abernathy’s dastardly plot. Because he loved her.

  That was why she was still in London. That was why she hadn’t gone back with Claudette. It was all for Thaddeus and that moment. Yet they hadn’t spoken of it since, not once.

  Rémy felt her opal pendant shift slightly against her skin — a small, mystical sliver of stone with a life of its own. Most of the time she wasn’t aware of it, but every now and then, it would make itself known. There would be something like a tingle, a tiny, insignificant buzzing in her head. And then, filtering like new mortar through the bricks of her thoughts, there would be others. Thoughts that weren’t hers; the thoughts of people passing in the street, of J in his sleep . . . of Thaddeus, trying to find something to say to her and mentally crossing out every sentence before it even got to his lips. His eyes, that odd mixture of one blue and one brown, clouding with a confusion that she wanted to understand but couldn’t bring herself to talk about.

  She stood, shaking off this sudden, unsettling feeling with a flick of her shoulders. She hadn’t seen Thaddeus for days. The last time he had visited, it hadn’t even been to see her. He’d been looking for J, as he always seemed to be now that the boy was his unofficial eyes and ears on the ground in the East End. She and Thaddeus had stood in front of the fire together, awkwardly, neither quite meeting the other’s eye. They talked of nothing at all, because all the things they should have been talking about had flooded the space between them and turned it into a fathomless, impassable ocean.

  And that, she thought, was what I abandoned my oldest friend for? Where are you, Claudette? Why don’t you write to me?

  To occupy her mind, Rémy decided to go to the theater and practice her new routine. She wasn’t due on stage that evening, which was just as well. After the exertions of the previous night, Rémy knew she wouldn’t be at her best. But she needed something to distract her, both from her worries about Claudette and from thoughts of Thaddeus, and there was nothing better for that than mastering a new trick. J was still hammering frantically behind the closed door of his room as she stepped from the noise of the workshop into the roar of Limehouse.

  When Rémy had first begun living at the workshop, she’d tried to work out what time of day the dock was busiest but had soon given up. The place never seemed to settle; there was always work to be done. That morning a clipper had arrived, traveling up the Thames on the morning tide from whatever far-off place it had begun its journey — India, perhaps, or maybe even farther.

  Now the ship’s sails stood furled as men of all sizes and colors rushed up and down her gangplanks, hauling crate after crate back down onto the solid, wet-sluiced stone of the dockside. Rémy paused beside one of the wooden boxes, wondering what was inside. Tea? Spices? Silk? Everything came through Limehouse, though little of it stayed. It was for richer folk in richer places than this.

  The bustle danced to a different tune as she turned onto Whitechapel Road and began heading north. The rooming houses had turned out their penny-chair renters hours ago, and now the scramble to earn enough to find a warm place for tonight was in full swing. The pickpockets were on the lookout for the unwary; the women who could do no better were trying
to find men with which they could do worse. Under the pale, miserable London sun, the stink of the streets was rising to meet the stink of the people who lived there. Rémy had grown used to it over the months. She knew this place now, and she knew that what the people did, they did because they had no choice. Take J, for example — their chance encounter had been driven by his need to steal her bag, but at the first chance he’d been given, he’d dropped all that thievery and become a model citizen. He’d even traveled as far as some of those clippers, to India and back with their friend Desai.

  The East End was a strange place, a wild place, a dangerous place, and sometimes even a kind place. It was the sort of place that someone like Rémy found very easy to make home.

  The theater was quiet, its lights dimmed for the daytime. The old doorman let her in with a black-toothed smile that was really more of a leer. She slipped up the stairs to the dressing rooms to change before heading for the stage, only to find that it was already occupied. The surprise performer was a magician. Rémy could tell that even from where she stood in the wings — he was wearing the ubiquitous black top hat-and-tails combination that workers of stage magic seemed to favor. There was only one person in the audience — Mr. Richards, the owner of the theater, was sitting in the stalls, three rows back so as to get the best view. He had obviously offered the magician a chance to try out for a coveted spot on the playlist.

  “Come on then, lad,” Richards bellowed at the tall young man on stage. “Show me what you’ve got, and be quick about it. I haven’t got all day, y’know.”