The bonnet, ribbons flying, whirled along the gorge and dashed against the rocks on the Downs side of the river. The swirling speck was quickly lost to sight, and Angela’s head was cold without it. Howard had his arm around her shoulders, steering her into the barrier at the side of the bridge.
“That could have been your head. I wish it had been. What sort of woman can’t even kill herself properly?”
“Leave me alone, Howard!” But now there was metal pressed against her side that hadn’t been there before. The cold, circular barrel of a Cutler-Delnaja service revolver, and Howard’s finger tight against the trigger.
“Howard, what are you doing?”
“Threaten me with divorce, will you? Do you have any idea how much it costs to ship a cripple to Rhodesia? You see,” he jammed the barrel tighter against her ribs, lifting his voice against the rising wind, “I did check the prices. I’m not wholly inconsiderate. But I got to thinking, a woman who has tried suicide once, and ended up crippled, what does she have to live for? Even with a devoted husband. People are still going to mock her everywhere she goes. You saw that today, and that little display cost me far less than a boat to the Cape.”
“You — you set that up?”
“I set you up, Angela. You’ll fall. With a bit of luck your freakish legs will drag you down and you’ll drown, with my service revolver falling after you, for insurance. If they find you, they’ll find the bullet hole, and they’ll find the gun. How desperate you must have been, to shoot yourself on the Suspension Bridge, and how desperate I was that I couldn’t stop you! Of course, if the Peelers do have any questions, in four days’ time I’ll be in Rhodesia, and far beyond their jurisdiction.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you. You —” she floundered for something damning enough to say to him, “You weasel!”
Howard roared with laughter at this. “I’ve been called worse, but never by you, my dear!” He shifted his grip on the gun, pressing it to her left temple. “Goodbye Angela.”
She flung up her arm to throw him off, moving with a speed and strength she didn’t realise she possessed, great left claw flashing in the sunlight that sliced through the suspension cables of the bridge.
Howard screamed as the gun flew out of his hand and clattered to the deck of the bridge. No, not out of his hand. Angela stared in horror at his fingers, still twitching around the trigger, the butt of the gun nestled in his bloodied, truncated palm.
“You bitch! You bloody automaton bitch! What have you done to me?” Howard lunged towards her, waving the stump of his wrist. As his remaining hand fumbled for her throat, she pushed him back with both arms, a shove so powerful it lifted him from his feet. He fell back, arms windmilling uselessly, and caught her by the metal wrist as his feet scrabbled for purchase over empty air. She felt the tug, through metal and living flesh, dragging her forward. Forward and down.
Locked in a struggling tangle of flesh and brass, no buoyant skirt to save them now, Angela and Howard plunged towards the bottom of the gorge.
She had died once already, and come back. Dying a second time was no less painful. But steel and brass does not bend and break like flesh and bone.
Angela opened her eyes, blinking the blood away, and forced herself to sit up. One of her metal feet was twisted at right-angles to her leg, her right claw was snapped, and her forehead was sticky with blood. Apart from that she seemed to be remarkably unhurt. The same could not be said for Howard. She sat looking at him, unable to face lifting the weight in her legs and trying to walk. His neck was sickeningly twisted, the remains of his face a pulpy mess of blood and brain smeared across the rocks, where some adventurous soul had scratched their name. She dug inside her for some feeling, some sympathy, but it was all dried up. Maybe she wasn’t human any more. Maybe she wasn’t Angela. And if she wasn’t Angela, who was she?
She was still brooding on the fractured nature of her humanity when she heard the sound of oars, sweeping soft through the waters of the Avon towards her. She wondered, idly, if it was the Peelers. If she couldn’t stand up and they couldn’t carry her, would she be charged with resisting arrest as well as murder?
“Mrs Porter? Mrs Porter, are you hurt?”
Doctor Charles, throwing his medical briefcase out of the bows ahead of him and scrambling up the rocks. He spared barely a glance for Howard.
“I don’t think so,” Angela said. “Not this time. My foot —”
Charles dropped to his knees and studied the metal. “That won’t be a problem,” he said. “We can rebuild you. We have the technology. Or rather, Muscovy has the technology and we use it. Brandy?”
The flask was already in his hand. Well, it wasn’t as if it would kill her. Angela winced as the fiery liquid sloshed around her mouth and down her throat, but it seemed to calm her shaking. Perhaps there was something to be said for strong drink, after all.
“How did you know where I was?”
He had the grace to blush. “You have a tracking device in your voice box. It’s the latest thing, very new. I wanted to make sure we could keep an eye on you; you represent a great investment for Bristol. Maybe for the whole Empire.”
“You spied on me?”
“Hardly. I didn’t trust Howard as far as I could spit a rat, and certain… sponsors didn’t want you disappearing off to Rhodesia.”
“Sponsors? Muscovy?”
“Mrs Porter —”
“Angela, please. I think I’d better leave Howard’s name behind me, don’t you?”
“Angela. I can’t fix you here. There’s a ship coming to pick you up, we’ll patch you up on board.”
“A ship? Where are we going?”
He grinned. “Arkhangelsk. It’s on the Baltic, in Muscovy,” he added, at her blank expression. “I have contacts in the Trading Company, and I thought it was appropriate. That’s if you’re willing?”
Steel and brass and rivets. Strong and free, and born again.
Angela heaved herself to her feet with barely a wince.
“I think,” she said, extending her arm to Charles, “that a trip to Arkhangelsk would be heavenly.”
PART II
Lost Souls
The Girl with Red Hair
- Myfanwy Rodman -
In my dreams the city is dying.
Ash falls from the sky like perpetual snow and the broken shells of houses stand jagged against the horizon. I walk down familiar streets where shattered windows leave shards of glass as bright as diamonds across the cobbles and shadows whisper at my back.
When I reach the harbourside I look down into the water. It is black, rank with filth and turgid, clinging to the sides of the wharf, oozing along towards the dark bulks of moored ships.
Crouching at the dock’s edge I tug the glove from my left hand and reach down. I strain to touch the brackish water and for an instant the cool wetness beneath my hand surges with life, a flood of colour spills from my fingertips and the threads of gold leap up to glitter across water’s surface.
Then the warmth in me sputters and dies and a weariness that is as bitter as laudanum falls over me.
I rise, stumbling away from the water; there is no solace for me here. I walk on, the streets rising up to engulf me. My hair is a flame, trailing behind me.
In my dreams the city is dying and somehow that city is me.
Inspector Fidelity ‘Del’ Blackamoor stood five foot tall in her stockinged feet. Her dark, tightly curled hair was cut close to her head like a cap, and she didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Staring into the freckled face of the cavalry officer seated opposite, she considered the possibilities. The man was out of uniform but his rank and privilege were clear in the cleanness of his unbroken features and the sneer that curled his plump, red lips. Del was almost certain that a broken nose would improve both him and his appearance no end. Or at the very least get him away from her table. In her lap her hand curled into a dark and purposeful fist.
“Aetherics, eh,” he sa
id as he raised a mug of the Victory’s best rum, “Do you really think those badges make you special?”
He was talking to Pickering, of course, a man as pale and freckled as himself. Drink slurred his words.
No surprise the Lander can’t hold his rum.
Del might have left the Navy three years ago but she still couldn’t raise much respect for any man who hadn’t stood before the mast or weathered the deck of an Airship.
Del lifted her own mug, took a draft and waited for Pickering’s reply.
It wasn’t long in coming.
“No,” he said with a shrug and a slight smile, “We know they do.”
The dragoon’s sneer widened and Pickering shrugged again, draining his mug.
“What is it that Aetherics do anyway?” the dragoon persisted. Everyone asked the question sooner or later. They were naturally curious, Del supposed. But how did you describe Aetherica to those who could neither see it nor feel it? You’d have better luck discussing a sunset with a blind man.
To Regulars, Aetherica was the dark hooded Mills that lined the Severn, the arching bows of an Airship and the hum of an Ether-engine. To Del it was heat that was a caress. It was power running through water like a kiss.
Further down the table Manfred stood up with a grunt. “Anyone for another?”
His smile was broad, encompassing both sides of the table.
Del looked down into her mug. Dregs of rum looked back at her, sweet and rich. She was always ready for another.
Manfred collected half a dozen requests and sauntered off to the bar.
“So?” The dragoon didn’t seem to want to let it lie.
Idly Del wondered what had drawn him down here. Most Landers were nervous of the maze of wharfs and jetties where harbour waters gleamed black after dark and the narrow lanes and alleys bore no street signs.
“What do we do?” Pickering said, “We test and register new Aetherics, regulate the manufacture and sale of Ether-engines, Mills and other such products, and monitor geological and physiological Aetherical activity.”
For a moment the dragoon looked nonplussed, “That’s what you do?”
Pickering nodded and the dragoon grunted into his mug, “Thought it was some kind of magic.”
Del grimaced. Regulars.
“Fidelity?”
Del looked up.
Manfred was back, a clutch of mugs in his hands.
“Here’s your seconds, girl.”
“Fidelity?” The dragoon lifted his head and stared at her, at the cropped hair, the dusty shirt, the unwashed waistcoat and the peacoat that had seen better days despite its bright, brass buttons. He looked at her height and her smooth, hairless face.
“Girl?”
His glassy eyes went wide.
“You mean that’s a…?”
Pickering shot Manfred a look and the man had the grace to blush.
“That is Del.” Pickering said.
“And what is it? Your lightskirt? Funny way to dress it.”
Pickering stiffened, his pale face flushing. “Del is an Aetheric.”
The dragoon was well into his stride now, leaning forward over his mug of grog.
“Del? That’s its name? Why don’t you just call it Fido?”
There was a pause, a soft and subtle silence that slid down over the Aetherics at the table.
At last Del leaned forward, staring calm-eyed into the dragoon’s face.
“ ‘Cos I shot the last man who did.”
She let a wicked smile slide across her lips at the shocked look on the man’s face and patted, rather pointedly, the pocket of her worn pea-coat.
Del stepped unsteadily out over the low stoop of the Victory’s front door and into the unlit street.
The Victory had been a naval pub for as long as anyone could remember. Named for the Airship on whose deck Lord Nelson had won his battle and met his fate, making him the greatest Master-pilot in Aetheric history. It was situated just off the docks, where warehouses met the crumbling brick of the Hotwell slums and the air was thick with the smell of soot and rot and brine.
After teasing the dragoon became boring, Del had parted company with Manfred and Pickering. They were off to spend the night at Madame Minchin’s but despite the prettiness and cleanliness of Madame’s girls Del was too drunk and too maudlin tonight. She missed her ship and she missed the sea. Nowhere in the world was Aetherica more potent than in the middle of the ocean. Del sighed.
She turned left into a dark, narrow lane. She remembered this part of the city from her childhood. The dirty, unpaved alleys led to ramshackle courts, where fifty families shared one bare patch of earth, one pump and one privy. Pickering, born with the brass spoon of a factory owner’s son in his mouth, loved coming down here to rub shoulders with the great unwashed. It gave him a sense of superiority. But all Del felt was the long, black stain of it reaching out to drag her back.
The Ministry lay off Baldwin Street, at the other end of the city’s famous floating harbour, and no respectable cabbies came down here. But Del didn’t mind the walk despite the cold.
She followed the edge of the docks. Above her a bright blanketing of stars glowed against a shadowed sky and she could feel the heat rising from the threads of Aetherica in the dark harbour waters.
The warmth took the edge off of the November chill as she pushed her hands deep into pockets which contained, despite her baiting of the dragoon officer, no pistol. She turned up the collar of her pea-coat, quickening her pace.
She drew level with the Reach, where water passed under the shadow of the cathedral, and was thinking about a cup of something hot before bed, when she saw her.
The girl.
She was coming up from the edge of the wharf and they stopped face to face beside the Cathedral wall. Del looked up into eyes as dark as silt.
Del would have taken her for a dollymop, but that she was dressed all in black, more moth than butterfly. Her skin was so pale that it almost glowed in the moonlight and her hair, falling untied and untamed down her back to her knees, was as vivid as wildfire.
Del stopped, her mouth hanging open, right there in the middle of the street, her heart beating loud in her ears.
The girl looked straight into Del’s face and Del flushed, trying helplessly to think of something to say. When nothing surfaced she smiled instead and held out a hand, abruptly remembering her manners. But the girl continued to stare at… no — she was staring through Del as if she were not there. Her dark gaze was as fixed and unblinking as a sleepwalker.
Del stepped forward and the girl turned without hesitating, walking out from under the shadow of the Cathedral on feet that made no sound. Despite the night’s chill she wore neither coat nor hat, did not even have a shawl about her shoulders, only that flaming hair. Del’s sudden shiver was not caused by the cold night air.
She turned away from the Ministry without a backward glance and followed.
They passed up Park Street in silence, Del a few paces behind. By the time they reached the beginning of the Downs Del was breathing a little loudly, but the girl seemed not to have noticed the climb at all. Her pace never changed, not to slow down or to quicken and she looked neither left nor right. She did not appear notice the chill of the night nor Del’s shadow at her back.
Still unwavering, the girl paced up into the streets of Clifton but Del hesitated. Clifton village, with its great mansions and its titled residents, made her uneasy. It was so far from anything she had ever known.
Then the girl threatened to slip away into the darkness and Del reminded herself that she was a respectable Ministry Aetheric now, not a thief from the ‘wells. She followed where the girl led, unable to resist.
The girl stopped at the edge of the Downs, beneath stars that were fading in the lightening sky.
She stopped in front of a house.
Actually it was more of a mansion, with a sprawling, whitewashed façade and several floors. It was shuttered and dark, motionless in the early mornin
g stillness.
The girl lifted her face; it was as pale as porcelain while the rest of her was invisible in those dark clothes. The night deepened her hair to the colour of old blood. Her eyes looked like empty sockets as she stared up at the silent house, hands clenched tight into the petticoats of her skirt.
Del watched, unable to turn away until, after a long moment, the girl stepped forward. She brushed against the garden gate as she moved under the dark eaves of the house and disappeared into shadowed air.
“It was obviously a tart, Del. What is so strange about that?”
Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion Page 9