Sparrow Falling

by Gaie Sebold

  “She’s been brought up proper, unlike you,” Ma said. “Don’t pay him no mind, Beth, he’s a dirty old codger. He’s right, though. So, what you got that’s fancy?”

  “Oh, I got a few things. But it depends on the price.”

  “What price?”

  “Look, I understand, but you got to give me some room here, Ma. I lend out one of my best pieces, I got no guarantee it’s coming back whole, have I?”

  Beth, looking around the yard, could see little that could be described as whole, never mind fancy. And this was taking far too long.

  “Ma.”

  “In a minute, Beth.”

  “Ma, there’s nothing here. It’s all rubbish. We need another way.”

  “Now, don’t you be so quick to judge, young madam,” Drape said.

  “I can see your stock. This lot? Most of it would take even me a week to get into running order, and we’ve not got time. Ma, let’s go, please? Find someone else?”

  “There ain’t no-one else got what I’ve got,” Drape said. “You come along of me.”

  “Come on,” Ma said. “We’ll give the old fool five minutes, then, we’re off.” She fixed Drape with her steely eye. “And you’ll still owe me.”

  Reluctantly, Beth followed them along an oily track between the half-dismembered machines. Normally she’d have been longing for a chance to rummage, polish, tighten – to find usable parts, to take apart what couldn’t be rescued and rescue what could, make it better, make it gleam and speed. But now, all she could think of was Evvie, and what might be happening to her. Her gut kept tightening with every minute that passed.

  Drape shoved aside a rusted sheet of corrugated iron, and ducked through the resulting gap. His hand came out and beckoned.

  Ma frowned. “I don’t think he’s stupid enough to try and pull something,” she said, aloud, obviously not caring if Drape or any of the oily shadow figures among the machines heard, “but you stay behind me, girl. I got me popper.” She pulled something out from inside her coat. Beth saw the thing in her hand and stifled a groan. Ma was fond of a bit of tinkering herself, and the ‘popper,’ a kind of pistol, was one of her latest toys. Beth had no idea where she’d found it, but though it was fancy-looking as all getout, judging by recent events she wouldn’t trust it not to fire up, down or backwards.

  “You’re a suspicious old bat, Ma Pether,” came Drape’s voice, echoing back from a large space.

  “Not suspicious enough, or I’d never have got mixed up with you,” she growled. “Come on, Beth.”

  Ma wrenched the opening wider, but her bulk blocked any chance of Beth seeing what was ahead as she wriggled after her.

  Into a treasure chamber.

  The lamps in here were no more nor brighter than those outside, but every surface their light fell on threw it back tenfold. Shining glass and gleaming brass, bronze glowing like a flame. Glossy paintwork: burgundy, ebony, forest green. There was a superlative Serpollet fit for a duke – and probably formerly belonging to one (so sleekly black and plumply cared for she almost expected it to purr) and a chunky De Dion steam tricycle.

  And in the corner, on a stand, by itself... “Oh,” Beth said.

  “What’s that when it’s at home?” Ma said.

  “S’an aerial steamer,” Drape said. “Ain’t working, though.” He patted the Serpollet. “Now this beauty’ll chew up the road and spit it out behind her, she will.”

  “Beth? Beth!”

  But Beth hardly heard Ma Pether’s voice as she wandered towards the beautiful, extraordinary machine that crouched in the corner like a hawk ready to leap for the air. “Oh,” she crooned. “Look at you.”

  Carved into the cherrywood of the prow was a name. Aerymouse.

  Beth ran her hands over the chassis, her clever fingers feeling out seams and rivets, her eyes roving over levers and dials, cogs and handles. No, she wasn’t working... but she could.

  Beth slid the padded straps from her shoulders and swung her toolbox to the ground.

  “’Ere, what’s she doing?”

  “Beth, you stop that!” Ma snapped. “You’re telling me this thing flies?”

  “Should do, yes,” Drape said. “Up in the air. Seen it meself, but something inside went awry and now she won’t move for no-one.”

  “She will for me,” Beth said, emerging from the flyer’s innards. “Can you pass me...”

  “Now get off there!” Drape scurried towards the machine. “What do you think...” He reached for her, but Ma grabbed his shoulder.

  “I don’t think, I know,” Beth said, grabbing a spanner from her toolbox, and a phial of liquid that shimmered iridescent blue-green. “She’ll fly for me, she will.”

  “Well you can stop,” Ma said, jamming her hands on her hips, her frown formidable. “Stop right there. If you think you’re getting me into that thing...”

  “Ma, it’s a flyer. I can make it work.”

  “It’s an abomination against nature is what it is!”

  “Can she?” Drape said.

  “What?” Ma said.

  “Can she make it work?”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it... but I’m not...”

  “Here, girl.”

  “What?” said Beth, not looking up from the rivet she was tightening.

  “Want a job?”

  “No. I just want this.”

  “I’ll make you a bargain,” Drape said.

  “Not with that thing!” Ma barked. “Beth, you listen to me! I am not getting in no flyer for no-one!”

  “Oh you’re worse than Evvie,” Beth said. “Ma, it’s safer than a horse. I can make it work.”

  “Can you fly it?”

  “Yes!”

  “Where’d you learn that then?”

  Beth paused. From a book would not reassure Ma. “Just trust me. I don’t think we’ve time to waste.”

  “You got a tickle?” Ma said.

  “Yes. Only... it’s more like a toothache,” Beth said. “Ma...”

  “Right,” Ma said. “Augustus, we’re taking your flying machine.” She raised her eyes to the roof. “And if it goes wrong, my girl... I’ll crawl out of the wreckage just to tan your hide.”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  Somewhere outside a dog was barking. Voices were raised, and one of them cut high and clear above the rest: “Hello? Hello? Beth, are you in there?”

  “Oh, now, what is this?” said Drape.

  “Mrs Sparrow?” Beth squeaked.

  Ma rolled her eyes again. “Oh, just what we needed,” she muttered.

  MADELEINE SPARROW WAS accompanied by Adelita, Doris, and a slight, scarred, fierce girl everyone called Tinder, from her habit of flaring up. Madeleine stood with her hands on her hips, looking up at Ma Pether, who overtopped her by at least a foot. “Did you really think you could take these girls out of the school on a mission to rescue my daughter without so much as consulting me? What have you got her involved in?”

  “I en’t got her involved in nothing,” Ma Pether said. “If she’d paid attention to her business, ’stead of trying to go respectable for your sake, she wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “You think being involved with criminals and who knows what is safer than teaching school?”

  “She never got into this mess teaching, I never said there was nothing wrong with teaching! She’s got some fancy idea about working against her own, that’s what it is. Security, she calls it. Treachery, I calls it. It’s no better than being a snitch. I didn’t bring her up to...”

  Madeleine winced. Ma broke off, and said, “Well, this en’t the time to stand around jawing. You girls brung what I told you?”

  “Yes, Ma,” Adelita said.

  “Right. Augustus, find us somewhere outta sight of your crew. We need to change.”

  Madeleine drew in a breath, and said, “If you think I am going to stand by while you... Is that a flyer?”

  Beth appeared over the edge of the cockpit. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Ma mut
tered something under her breath. “You can fawn over that infernal thing later. We gotta get ourselves up like toffs.” She looked down at Madeleine. “You’re right, she’s your daughter, but she was one of my girls a long time, and right now I’m minded to haul her out the fire. Anything else can wait.”

  “Yes,” Madeleine said. “Yes, it can.” She turned to Drape. “Mr... I’m sorry, I don’t believe we were introduced. Would you be so kind as to find us somewhere out of the way for a few minutes, and then we will no longer impose on you.”

  Drape gaped for a moment, and then made a strange bobbing gesture that might almost, in a kind light, have been a bow. “Come this way, ladies.”

  When they emerged a few frantic and pin-jabbed minutes later, Adelita, Doris, and Tinder were satin-slippered, lace-gloved, beribboned and reticuled. A swift application of theatrical putty had covered the worst of the scar on Tinder’s neck. Madeleine was elegant in a gown of lavender satin, that only the closest inspection would reveal had been made for someone of more generous dimensions and was now padded out about the bosom with whatever material they had been able to find. She also wore a very splendid and glittering necklace that would, at least by candlelight, pass for diamonds. Drape, torn between a sudden access of courtesy and the sheer incongruity of all this primped femininity in the middle of his yard, made odd little half-bows and inarticulate noises in the back of his throat.

  When Beth and Ma Pether emerged he simply stared.

  Beth, her hair tucked away under a peaked cap, her hands in leather gloves, her neat little figure wrapped in an excellently cut blue and grey jacket and matching jodhpurs, made for an astonishingly smart chauffeuse. Ma Pether, on the other hand, was dressed in an apron over a brown stuff dress, with a vast mob cap. “Servants get in anywhere,” she said. “And dress me as you like, no-one’ll any more believe I’m a toff than fly through the...” She glanced at the Aerymouse, shuddered, and failed to finish her sentence.

  THE AERYMOUSE ROLLED out into the yard. Ma Pether crouched in the rear, white-knuckled hands gripping the sides of the seat, her eyes firmly shut. Beth had warned her of all the many dangerous and above all vertical things that could happen should she light her pipe while aboard, so it was clenched unlit in the corner of her mouth, jutting up at a defiant angle. Only close inspection would reveal that it was, faintly but constantly, jittering.

  Beth, a leather helmet jammed over her curls and a pair of goggles over her eyes, steered the flyer towards the widest path she could see between the lace of rust and dying machines.

  Adelita, Doris, and Tinder were in the rear.

  Madeleine Sparrow was looking longingly at the engine, unable to get too close for fear of the effect of oil on lavender satin. Blue-green light flickered over it. “Beth?”

  “Yes, Mrs Sparrow?”

  “What is this fluid?”

  “It’s... well, lots of things. Try not to get it on your hands.”

  “Does it burn?”

  “Not exactly.” Beth, in a whirl of excitement and panic, didn’t feel this was the time to mention the fluid’s occasional odd side-effects, like growing tiny brightly-coloured mushrooms under one’s nails.

  “One of these days, Beth, I think you and I should have a talk about that fluid.”

  “Yes, Mrs Sparrow. But I think everyone should hold on now.”

  The Russian Embassy

  EVVIE LAY ON the floor, breathing dust, and cursed. It hurt. She’d been caught off guard. Blood seeped warm and sticky over her fingers.

  She was frightened. She couldn’t let herself be frightened.

  She’d been caught off guard. She thought she’d planned for everything, but she hadn’t planned for Simms. What was she going to do? What now?

  Get up. Whatever you decide you can’t do it lying on the floor.

  It’s dusty. You’d think the Embassy would be better kept’n this.

  Never mind the dust, you stupid girl! What are you, the housekeeper? Get up!

  She eased herself as far as her knees, which hurt ridiculously, as though the knife were still in the wound, twisting. It also set the blood flowing faster. Her heart was pounding, her ears ringing, her hands felt numb and cold as though she’d plunged them in icy water except where her blood, warm and sticky, ran over her fingers. Perhaps if she could calm down her blood wouldn’t flow so fast.

  The Bartitsu lessons she’d taken hadn’t got as far as knives. That had been meant for the next term. If only she’d found a Bartitsu teacher, maybe she wouldn’t be in this mess.

  Never mind that! Too late! If you don’t get out of here, you’re going to get caught, in the Russian Embassy! And who will they talk to? Why, the British Government! Who might just remember you after all, and wonder what happened to a certain Mr Holmforth, last seen in your company, not to mention a Mr Forbes-Cresswell... last seen being dead.

  Or you might provoke a war... all this glitter and music, that was part of it, wasn’t it, part of saying we’re all friends now so let’s have a grand party to prove it...

  Her head swam so. She could hear the music from the ball, could imagine the gentlemen in their gleaming shirtfronts and the ladies in their fine dresses, every colour like a flower garden, spinning and spinning to the music... I’m sorry, everyone. Mama, Beth... I meant to make it better... I meant to sort it all out...

  Evvie Duchen are you giving up? Don’t you dare! After everything you’ve lived through... are you going to let Bartholomew Simms finish you off? Him? Going to let him ruin everything...

  Devil if I am.

  On hands and knees, her side howling and scraping with every move, she began to crawl towards the window, but it seemed, somehow, much too far away, and something like black curtains shifted and flickered around its edges, around the edges of everything... Yer fainting, Evvie. Don’t faint, or you won’t wake up. She bit her tongue, hard, but the sting was dull, like a dream of pain. All the pain was dimming.

  Ao Guang’s Palace

  THE ROOM OF Reflection. Liu had never been in it before, though he knew of it. Mirrors lined the walls, framed with frenetic writhing figures in blood-red lacquer. Even the door was mirrored, except for a small opening crossed with bars, at the base of which two identical carved figures prostrated themselves to each other.

  Liu tried not to look at the walls, but though he stared at his feet, or hands, or simply shut his eyes, sooner or later he found himself contemplating his reflection.

  He had never been particularly vain about his looks; his face was a canvas to be painted over, when need arose, but he had been aware that he was well-enough looking. Now a ghost looked back at him; a lost thing that he did not want to see.

  The pain in his side was still there, though it had subsided to a dull, hot ache. The magic of the jade fox was not his; he had received the thing in exchange for a favour, long ago, and had given it to Evvie almost without thought, as a gesture of friendship. Once before it had called to him when she was in need of help. Then, he had been able to reach her. Now... from this room he could not slip between worlds, even unencumbered by the Harp. And he had called in every favour he could just to bring the Harp here. Even if he should he reach the lower world, he would be half a globe away from Evvie.

  He cupped his hand to his side, holding on to the pain. It hurt, and clouded his thoughts, but he welcomed its presence. He was terrified of what it would mean if the pain should stop.

  Evvie.

  He wondered where his father was. In another of the cells of the White Jade Palace, no doubt. He had talked his way back into attendance at the court, but his son’s failure would fling him once more into disgrace – which was, after all, what Min desired.

  For the first time Liu wondered why Min hated his father so very much. He knew there had been a woman, yes... there was often a woman, where his father was concerned. And this was a Court of the Folk, yes. Long-held grudges and point-scoring, slights real and imagined, the ever-shifting, obsessive dance of position and favour ran t
hrough them all like fat through bacon. But Min, so often castigated by Liu’s father as “a dull stick, a creature of muddy mind, with only enough imagination to hold a single grudge for a thousand years...” Min was in all other respects a stickler for proper protocol, for what passed among the Folk as honour and respect; a true servant of his Lord.

  He must realise, surely, that the Harp was genuine. Yet he was prepared to deprive his Lord of the very thing that would score him most points in his battle against the Queen.

  Yet what did it matter? Liu could not think of a single thing that would work to get Min on his side, or destroy him in Ao Guang’s favour. All his manipulations, his deceptions, his cleverness had left him nothing but whatever loathsome end Ao Guang (or rather, Min) could devise for him, and the knowledge that he had betrayed his Father, and Evvie, and even the Harp. “I’m sorry,” he burst out. “I really thought I could persuade him, but now Min’s convinced him you’re not even you... I don’t know what will happen. I’m sorry.”

  The Harp opened those beautiful, sorrow-drowned eyes and stared at him.

  “I am not me. I was someone called Thomas once, but I have not been Thomas for a long time.” He sighed, and the sigh echoed back from his strings, filling the chamber with harmonious whispers. “He is much like her, but perhaps not so clever. I see little difference, except in the music.”

  Liu winced. Ao Guang was not so interested in playing off his courtiers against each other as the Queen, and so did not have nearly as many informants infesting every corner of his palace, but that did not mean that it was safe to say such things.

  “I am sorry.” Liu looked up, surprised. The Harp raised his hands, palms out. “I may wish to die, but you do not. I will try to guard my tongue.”

  “It hardly matters now,” Liu said, slumping back against the wall.

  “Why does it not matter?”

  “I’m... I failed. You just got caught up in it, and I’m sorry. I meant to help my father and all I’ve done is make it worse... and Evvie... Evvie is hurt and I’m not there. I knew she was getting into something but then, Father... I never meant any of this. I thought I could... I’ve always been clever. But I wasn’t clever enough.”