The dirigible was actually small, as such things went. The envelope, longer and leaner than most, was perhaps the length of two cottages and only as high as one. It barely eclipsed its own gondola, which rested on the floor in the final stages of completion while the envelope hovered overhead. Gavin had been about to set the generator in place when he decided to take a rest.
“Are you building this?” Alice asked in wonder.
“Refitting it, actually. Only the envelope is new. I’ve been working on it off and on for a few months now, but lately the work’s been going faster. Has it really been two days since I’ve been in—?”
“It has. Why didn’t you want me to come in?”
He flushed a little. “I didn’t want you to see it until it was finished.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Well, since the cat’s out of the bag, I may as well have a look.” Alice set the tea tray down on the table and walked slowly around it. The dirigible kept its ropes taut, and a fine mesh seemed to hold the envelope’s fabric together, a thin, loopy lattice that pressed against the cloth from inside, rather like a lacework skeleton.
Gavin watched Alice in silence, turning the clockwork nightingale over and over in his fingers and feeling oddly unsettled at her appearance. At long last, Alice had left her fiancé for him. The memory of each kiss they had shared clung to his skin like individual talismans. But the ease with which Alice lied still bothered him.
Gavin suppressed a groan as Alice completed her circuit of the airship. It wasn’t fair. Everything was supposed to be wonderful now that Alice had joined the Ward and admitted her feelings for him. Did life ever go smoothly?
“What do you think?” he said, and waited for the polite lie.
“I like it. It’s very sleek,” she said. “Very modern.”
“I see,” he said neutrally, though his heart was tearing inside. She had lied—again.
She twisted one hand in her skirt. “But,” she added slowly, “it’ll never fly, Gavin. The envelope is too small to lift a gondola that large.”
And Gavin felt abruptly light. “Really?” he said. “You think so?”
“Darling, it’s obvious. I don’t even have to work out the math. What were you thinking?”
In that moment he could have leapt to the faraway ceiling. “Help me anyway.”
Careful not to trip over the cord, he lifted the little generator with easy strength and hauled it up the short ramp onto the gondola’s main deck, which smelled of linseed oil and sawdust. Alice snatched up the tea tray and followed. Gavin lowered the generator in place on the deck and set to work with a wrench to bolt it down. Alice laid the tray on the deck next to him. Teapot, bread, butter, jam, sliced ham. Red rose in a vase. His stomach growled.
“When did you last eat?” she asked.
“I don’t remember. I’m almost done and I want to finish.” He grabbed a piece of bread and butter from the tray and wolfed it down. “What couldn’t you wait to tell me?”
“What?”
He reached for another bolt. “When you first came in, you said you couldn’t wait to tell me something.”
“Ah. I know what to do next.”
“About what?”
“Oh,” Alice said. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
“I was just noticing how handsome you look in the morning, Mr. Ennock, even when you’re all dirty and tousled. Or maybe it’s when you’re all dirty and tousled. I think you owe me a kiss for bringing you tea.”
Without a thought, he gave her one. It was distinctly odd, kissing Alice with a heavy wrench in one hand and rich bread in the other. It felt decadent, something a prince might do. When they parted, he held the bread up to her mouth, and she took a languorous bite. Her lips grazed across his fingers, and her soft tongue brushed his knuckle. A shudder coursed over Gavin, and he was suddenly very glad to be kneeling.
“I’m in a bachelor’s workshop without a chaperone,” Alice murmured. “How wicked am I?”
“Very wicked,” he said hoarsely.
Her hand ran up the length of his thigh. Blood sang in Gavin’s ears. He very nearly threw the wrench aside and snatched her to him. Instead, carefully setting tool and food down, he touched her face, then her hair, then her shoulders. He left a smear of grease on her cheek. She guided his hand lower until it was on her breast, and she gasped as he pressed its warmth beneath his palm.
The barn door snapped open. Gavin snatched his hand away. Kemp entered the barn and strode up the ramp to the gondola, a largish book bound in leather tucked under his arm. “Madam, I believe this is the volume you were looking for.”
Alice recovered quickly and accepted the book as if she and Gavin were sitting in a library. “Thank you, Kemp.”
“Shall I clear that tray away for you, Sir?” Kemp asked Gavin.
Gavin shot him a hard look. “I’m still eating, thanks.”
Kemp nodded with a faint creak and left. Gavin poured himself some tea to cover his consternation. “What is it you figured out?” he asked.
Alice was already paging through the book. “Just this. Phipps still won’t let me near Aunt Edwina, so I don’t know for sure how Aunt Edwina is doing at the moment, but she didn’t seem to be in the final stages of clockworker madness. That’s why it bothered me, the way she kept telling me to play má què with the Queen. So I went down to the library. Mrs. Babbage was very helpful, actually.”
“And what did you find?”
“This.” She turned the book so he could see a color plate with a series of tiles made of what looked like ivory. Each had an Oriental character painted on it. “It’s a game.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“No one has, really. It comes from China. It has a lot of names: má què, mu tsian, má jiàng, even mah jong. They all mean sparrow.”
“China,” Gavin repeated. “Why would Edwina tell us to play a Chinese game with the Queen?”
“She knew the Third Ward was coming,” Alice said. “Those lights on her wall were a series of alarms. She knew you and I were coming, remember? At any rate, she couldn’t tell us what she meant outright with the Ward in the room. It’s a hint that no one else would get, just like the coordinates puzzle.”
“And what’s the hint?”
“Mrs. Babbage reads the Times every day; did you know that? Every word. She also reads the Gazette, Punch, the Examiner, the Graphic, the Atlantic, and, well, everything!” Alice’s eyes sparkled. “There’s a speaking tube in the library, and you can ask her a question and—”
“I know, I know,” Gavin interrupted. “I met Mrs. Babbage last year. What does this have to do with Chinese sparrows? What’s the hint?”
“According to three different articles in different periodicals, the Chinese ambassador and his son introduced the Queen and the Prince Consort to má què, and the four of them play quite a lot.”
“All right. But how could Edwina expect us to play má què with the Queen?”
“She doesn’t,” Alice said. “But who does play má què with the Queen?”
“The Chinese ambassador.” Gavin fiddled with his teacup. “You think Edwina wants us to talk to him?”
“I do. I think Aunt Edwina knew she was going to be captured, so she’s sending us to talk to someone else about the cure. The Chinese ambassador must know something important.”
“And where do we find him? We’d never get into Buckingham Palace. Not even with Third Ward credentials.”
Alice clapped her hands. “Ambassadors don’t stay at Buckingham Palace. They stay at Claridge’s hotel. You’ll never guess where that is.”
Gavin didn’t even think. “Near Hyde Park.”
“Shall we take a cab or get horses from the stable?”
“Wait just a moment.” Gavin tightened the final bolt and tossed the wrench aside with a clatter. “Let’s see if this works first.”
“I’m telling you, it won’t fly,” Alice repeated.
Gavin spun a crank on the generator and press
ed a switch. It coughed twice, then sputtered to life in a cloud of acrid paraffin-oil smoke. Indicator lights flickered. Gavin reached for a dial on the side.
“Let’s see what happens,” he said, and turned the dial.
At first nothing at all happened. Then a thin crackle snaked through the air. Soft blue energy threaded through the loops and spirals of the lattice under the skin of the envelope and lit them like threads of sky. A soft hum thrummed under Gavin’s feet. Ropes creaked, and the envelope rose, taking the gondola with it. A moment later, it gently bumped the ceiling, as if nosing for a way out.
“Oh my goodness!” Alice laughed. “Oh my goodness! Gavin! What did you do?”
Gavin couldn’t stop grinning. “I wasn’t sure it would work. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to come look. It uses wire made from the new alloy Doctor Clef created for his Impossible Cube. The alloy pushes against gravity when you pump electricity through it. The more electricity you use, the more it pushes. So you don’t need a big envelope to fly.”
Alice balked. “Electricity is running through an envelope filled with hydrogen?”
“No, no,” he reassured her. “That’s something else I came up with. My ship uses helium, which doesn’t explode.”
“Well! Mr. Ennock, I have to say I find you intelligent and resourceful, and the way you lifted that generator made me truly appreciate how much a man you are.”
He laughed again. “How do you always know exactly what to say to a man?”
“I know what to say to you.” And she kissed him while the gondola swung gently beneath their feet. They parted and laughed.
“You didn’t lie about the gondola being too big for the envelope,” Gavin said. “Even though you thought it might hurt. Thank you.”
Gavin picked her up in one fluid motion, swung her around in a circle, and kissed her again. His tongue slid into her mouth, and she accepted it, smooth and soft. He set her down, and she put a hand up to catch her hat.
“Oh! That was engaging,” she said with a laugh. “Should we fly your new ship to the hotel?”
“I have to paint her yet,” Gavin said. “Let’s hire a carriage.”
Claridge’s, formerly Mivart’s, had gained a reputation as London’s only proper hotel for international political travelers. It was five stories of glass and red brick that occupied an enormous section of corner at Davies Street and Brook’s Mews. Alice adjusted her hat and allowed Gavin to help her down from the carriage. The afternoon was overcast, but not foggy, so they didn’t have to worry about plague zombies—not that even zombies would have dared wander close to Claridge’s.
In preparation for visiting an ambassador to the Orient, Alice had spent considerable time in a Third Ward attic searching for a suitable dress while Gavin washed up. She chose an afternoon dress of deep gold silk—and found she didn’t like wearing it. No matter how carefully Kemp and her little automatons altered the garment, the restrictive corset and annoying skirts got in the way. But she was calling on the Chinese ambassador, and she could hardly do so in trousers. At first, she chafed at having to follow the rules so shortly after being freed from them, but then she realized the dress was a disguise for a secret agent, which made her feel better.
Gavin’s coat and trousers allowed him freedom of movement and made much more sense. He certainly cut a dashing figure, with his powerful build, startling blue eyes, and white-blond hair. He dressed like a gentleman, but moved like a rake, and she saw envious glances from passing women as he offered her his arm outside the carriage to escort her indoors.
The concierge met them inside the lobby doors. Gavin showed him a silver badge. “We’re looking for the Chinese ambassador,” he said. “Crown business.”
Sometime later, they were ascending in a tiny lift, and Alice was examining a handwritten card the concierge had given them.
“His Honor Jun Lung, room 310,” she read. “You’d think he’d have more names than that. What do you know about China?”
“Nothing,” Gavin admitted as the lift stopped.
Alice knocked at the appropriate door, and it was opened by a young man in a long blue coat, which was heavily embroidered and had wide sleeves. His black hair was pulled back and plaited in a braid that hung down his back. Gavin showed the badge again and gave their names.
“We need to see His Honor, the Ambassador Jun Lung,” he said.
“Sorry. His Honor see no one.” The servant’s English was heavily accented.
“It’s Crown business,” Alice said.
The servant bowed. “Sorry. His Honor see no one.” And he shut the door.
Alice and Gavin looked at each other, dumbfounded. “That frankly didn’t occur to me,” Alice said. “Now what? Break the door down?”
“I don’t think that would put His Honor in a good mood. Maybe if we left him a note?”
“How do we know he’d read it?” Alice said. “A telegram might—”
The clatter of the lift interrupted them. From the cage emerged another Chinese servant, also in a blue coat. He was pushing a cart with covered dishes on it. Exotic smells wafted from them, and Alice wondered if the ambassador had his own private chef in the hotel kitchen.
“Here’s an idea,” Gavin muttered. He put a hand in his pocket and approached the man. “I wonder if you could help me, sir. I need to talk to the ambassador.” He took his hand from his pocket, and Alice caught a flash of silver. Something dropped to the carpeted floor as Gavin laid a heavy coin on the linen-covered cart. The servant flicked the coin away as if it were an insect and kept going, his expression wooden. Then he jerked the cart to a halt, leaned down, and scooped the fallen object from the floor.
“Where you get this?” His eyes were wide.
“That’s mine,” Gavin said sharply. “Give it back now.”
“Where?” the man repeated.
“It was a present from a friend. Give it back, or I will hit you. Very hard.”
The servant dropped it into Gavin’s palm and bowed twice. “You come with me, please. Please, you come now.” Abandoning the cart, he opened the hotel room door and ushered them inside.
Alice was half expecting the rooms to be decorated in Oriental fashion, with carved dragons and Oriental wall hangings, and silk everywhere. Instead, she found a set of lavish hotel rooms, with generous furniture, thick carpets, large windows, and a marble fireplace. A middle-aged man sat in an armchair with his back to the door, a book in his lap. The servant scurried over to him and bowed, leaving his head down until the man acknowledged his presence with a word. They exchanged several sentences in Chinese before the servant returned.
“His Honor see you now.” He brought Alice and Gavin over to the sitting area, and the man rose to his feet. He wore a long, gold-bordered scarlet robe, which was embroidered with dozens of designs. A wide, round cloth hat covered his head, even though he was indoors, and his angular face was clean-shaven. Alice floundered. Should she bow? Offer her hand? Her schooling in etiquette had covered what to do when meeting everything from a priest to a baronet to the Queen herself, but not a dignitary from the Chinese Empire. Gavin looked equally perplexed.
The ambassador solved the problem for them by offering his hand first to Alice and then to Gavin. “I am Jun Lung, nephew of the Guanxu Emperor and ambassador to England.”
“Alice, Baroness Michaels, daughter of Arthur, Baron Michaels,” Alice said.
“Gavin Ennock, agent of the Third Ward,” Gavin said.
“And a friend,” Jun added. “Please, sit. My servants will bring food.”
Before Alice had time to wonder at the friend remark, a servant settled her on a chair and Gavin on a sofa, then quickly set small tables near their elbows while another servant, the one who had brought them inside, trundled the cart up and uncovered the food trays. Three mechanical spiders leapt out from under the cart and climbed to the table. They scooped food onto plates, which they rushed to set on the little tables. But instead of simply leaving the plates there, each spi
der captured a bit of food between two tendrils. Before Alice could react, “her” spider climbed up her arm, perched on her shoulder, and poked the food at her. She was so startled, she opened her mouth to protest. The spider dropped the morsel neatly between her lips and scuttled down her arm for more. Gavin and Jun received their food in the same way. Jun watched them both for their reaction. Gavin was working to hide his surprise, and Alice quickly schooled herself into an expression of nonchalance. One didn’t remark on food or how it was served. It was, though, quite delicious and a bit spicy, with ginger in it.
Jun started with small talk, asking Alice about her family, and then Gavin about his, and she felt compelled to do the same for Jun. She kept a practiced expression of politeness on her face, though inside, beneath the dress, she was prowling like a tiger, wanting to pounce on obvious questions. Jun, however, refused to come to the point. Alice quickly sensed she was in a game, one whose rules she knew well—the first to bring up the real subject would have to tell everything. Gavin started to interject, but Alice caught his eye and gave a slight shake of her head to stop him, and all the while the spiders popped food into their mouths.
“What do the ladies at the Chinese Imperial court wear, my lord?” she asked. “I must have every detail.”
And when he started to answer, Alice pinned him down further, asking for finer and finer detail. “What color of fan? What shade of scarlet? Do the shoes match the gown or the embroidery?”
Gavin was squirming, and the food plates were empty when Jun Lung finally let out a soft sigh and said, “It is a pleasure to talk to you, Lady Michaels.”
“But I must hear more!”
Jun held up a hand, and Alice knew she had won. “I have heard that you, Mr. Ennock, have come into possession of a small object of interest.”
“I have,” Gavin said with relief.
“May I see it?”
Gavin held up the silver nightingale, and Ambassador Lung let out another sigh. “That is indeed the object.”
The Doomsday Vault Page 32