Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion

by Howard, Jonathan L

  Del sat up in darkness. She was in her bed, breathing hard, her skin chilled by the cold air in the room. There was pain in her right elbow, in the soft flesh on the crook and she rubbed it with her fingers. In the darkness her heartbeat sounded hollow in her ears and she was afraid.

  Her breath tasted like ashes on her tongue.

  “There you are.”

  The bitter throb of a headache had settled behind Del’s eyes and her breakfast looked entirely unappetising. She glanced up at Pickering who was crossing the dining room with quick strides. His blue eyes were bright.

  “What is it?”

  A grin spilled across his face, as if he had been fighting to hold it back.

  “This,” he said, laying something down on the table next to Del’s untouched breakfast. It was a square cut from a newspaper.

  Del looked down into a thin, pale face with heavy lidded eyes and sharp features. The girl wore a neat, dark coloured dress fastened with a mourner’s cameo at the throat, her long fingered hands resting in her lap. Her face was solemn.

  Despite the slight blur from the cheap print ink, the photograph was a near perfect likeness. Only the hair was wrong. Black and white could not capture the ferocity of those flaming strands.

  Del looked up into Pickering’s grinning face.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “I went to county records and then the library. It’s from the Mercury, published five years ago.”

  Del looked back down at the scrap of paper, resisting the urge to run her fingers across its surface.

  “So, who is she?”

  Pickering sobered, his smile fading as abruptly as it had appeared.

  “Her name was Lavinia Tavistock, Del, that picture is from her obituary,” he cleared his throat awkwardly, lifting a notebook from his pocket. “I have the details. Lavinia Tavistock, late niece of Earl Tavistock, died of consumption at the age of nineteen, while under her uncle’s guardianship. Mother died at birth, father two years before her in a riding accident.”

  Del stared down at that still face.

  “So she lived in the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she was Aetheric?”

  “Registered as a Manipulator and taken out of our files upon her death, which is why it took going to the county registry to find her.”

  Del drew in a deep, cold breath.

  “Then you’re saying she’s a ‘real’ ghost?”

  Pickering frowned, “I am not sure what I’m saying, I just thought you should know.”

  Del nodded.

  The girl was dead and Del had been seeing quite another type of ghost, an echo of her forged from lingering Aetherica. But after five years that didn’t seem likely. And Aetherics only left such echoes according to unproven Aetherical theory?

  “This doesn’t make sense, Pickering, I saw her as plain as I’m seeing you, I felt her power.”

  “I know.” Pickering said, “That’s why I got the address of her only other living relative. I think we need some more information. But it will mean a trip to Bath.”

  Mrs. Berkley, widow of General Berkley and sister to the Earl, lived in a spacious apartment in a Georgian terrace on Gay Street. She was reluctant to meet with the Ministry and, by the look on her face when Del arrived, would have liked to throw her out on sight. But she didn’t. Perhaps Mrs. Berkley had good manners, or maybe she saw the badge on Del’s coat.

  “Lavinia was a lovely girl, so bright, so clever, so accomplished. It’s such a tragic loss.”

  “Were you close?”

  Mrs. Berkley flushed. “After her father died, I did try to mother her a little. But she got on so well with the Earl, you see. There really didn’t seem to be any need for me to intervene.”

  “So Lavinia liked her uncle?”

  “Oh, she adored him. That’s why he never told her.”

  “Why he never told her…?”

  Mrs. Berkley hesitated, “About his heart. Lavinia fell ill in July but in May my brother was told by his doctor that he had an untreatable heart condition.”

  Mrs. Berkley sniffed delicately, raising a handkerchief to her eye.

  “And to think, he outlived her after all.”

  Del nodded, frowning down at the notes she had made of the widow’s words.

  Untreatable heart condition.

  As they rattled home on the Ether-shuttle, past the ship-fields at Keynsham, Del pondered the widow’s revelation. Five years ago the Earl had been dying but it was his healthy, young niece who was buried instead.

  Del turned towards Pickering, sitting beside her on the seat.

  “Something’s wrong here, Tom.”

  “I know,” Pickering sighed. “But I don’t think Ancrum will want to hear it.”

  Ancrum didn’t want to hear it. The raid had not secured them any evidence of wrong doing and the Earl was not to be disturbed again.

  And what could Del say: that she believed there was some mysterious connection between the Earl’s heart condition and his niece’s death? Ancrum would laugh in her face.

  That night she dreamt of the girl; she was walking the city, her arms wrapped about her waist. Her head was bowed while a hot wind whipped at the burning glory of her hair. Del tried to approach her, tried to reach out, but she could not. The Archive book had been quite clear, never touch a Ghost, not unless you wanted to be swallowed up by their power and stolen from your Self.

  Never touch a Ghost, even one as pale as porcelain with hair more beautiful than a flame.

  Suppressing a disgruntled sigh, Del finished dressing herself in her Ministry-provided evening wear and went to find Pickering, fighting all the while not to tug at her overly starched collar.

  The Scientific Society’s monthly meetings were notoriously dull but the talk held tonight in the Victoria Rooms was on something called an Artificial Kidney, which utilised a new, much smaller type of Ether-engine, and Lord Ancrum had insisted they attend.

  On the ride through town, Del looked out of the window so Ancrum couldn’t force her to talk. Flurries of snowflakes were falling like ash from the sky. She couldn’t resist watching the darkening road as they rumbled under the Cathedral’s shadow but she did not see the girl. Instead she followed Ancrum and Pickering through a set of wooden doors into a crowd of old, white men who looked at her askance, wondering what exactly she was doing there and in those clothes.

  “The Artificial Kidney is an exceptional medical resource as it cleans the blood of all impurities through its use of hemodialysis. Aetheric technology has allowed…”

  Del did not hear one more word of the man’s speech. There was something unpleasantly familiar about the round backed wooden box on wheels, the ‘Artificial kidney’ with its brass fittings that glinted in the stage lights.

  It cleans blood of impurities…cleans blood.

  Blood.

  “Pickering,” she hissed across the low drone of the speaker’s voice.

  Pickering shifted uncomfortably.

  “Pickering.”

  “Yes, Del.”

  “I think I know how he did it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Earl, I think I know how he killed her.”

  Pickering frowned at her, consternation in his bright, blue eyes.

  Later, in the privacy of Del’s bedroom, she explained at length.

  “He used the Aetherica in her blood to fix his heart.”

  “Is that even possible? Can Aetherica do that?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe with the machine we saw tonight he could somehow separate the Aetherica from her blood and inject into his own body.”

  Pickering shook his head, “That’s not possible, Del.”

  Del frowned down at her hands, “Why not?”

  “It works on living blood, blood heated by a living body and even if he did do as you’re saying, Aetherica dies seventy two hours after it leaves a Manipulator’s body. You’re wrong, Del.”

  Was she? It had al
l seemed so obvious as she sat in the hall. The Earl should have been dead and yet he appeared healthy, he had to have stolen his niece’s Aetherica, but if the machine needed living blood and the Earl needed a constant source of…

  Del looked up, her dark eyes shining, “She’s still alive. That’s how he’s doing it.”

  Pickering looked sceptical.

  “It’s the only explanation that fits. She’s still alive, Tom.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “You don’t have to help!”

  Del pulled on her thickest coat and wound a scarf about her neck.

  “It’s snowing outside, it’s freezing, you can’t do this.”

  “If you don’t want to come I understand, but I am going.”

  “What you’re proposing, even Class 3’s find difficult. Del, you’re only a Sensitive.”

  The lowest class of all, but then so was Nelson and he won an entire war.

  I know that.” Del’s tone sharpened. “Do you think I don’t know that, Thomas Pickering? But I need to do this, I need to find her.”

  “You’re sure she is there?”

  “I know she is.”

  “We didn’t find anything during the search.”

  Del growled in frustration. “Maybe he’s keeping her in a box lined with lead or something.”

  For a moment Pickering looked incredulous, then he sighed, “Very well. It’s not as if I’ve ever said no to you, Master-pilot, now is it?”

  Del smiled, “No, Tom, it’s true, you never have.”

  They wrapped up warm against the growing cold of the night and Pickering insisted that they drink down a couple of hot toddies before they left. It was close to midnight when they reached the corner of the Cathedral and stopped in the shadows.

  They waited, as snow drifted down across the flagged paths, tumbling through the air in flurries and the heat of the Aetherica in the harbour warmed Del’s bones but not her skin.

  At her side, Pickering, an Observer, not a Sensitive, could not benefit from the closeness of the harbour but it was he who said, “She’s here,” in a quiet voice, just as somewhere close a clock chimed one.

  Del looked up, but saw nothing.

  “I can see the light of her,” Pickering said quietly, “She glows like she’s on fire. This is some Manipulator, Del.”

  “Of course, how else did she get through the Earl’s lead box?”

  “Supposed lead box,” Pickering said, sotto voce.

  Del glared at him, “Can you follow her?”

  “Of course.”

  Pickering stepped out of the shadow of stone and as Del moved in his wake, she saw her. Up ahead, already along Park Street, her body dark as shadow, her hair a conflagration.

  They kept pace with her as she headed into the Downs, patiently dogging her silent steps until she stopped in front of the Earl’s house.

  Del turned to Pickering, a prickle of fear in her stomach, “You will have to keep me warm; I won’t be able to feel my body.”

  Pickering’s smile was tight. “I know. Just come back.”

  Del smiled in return, turned, took a step towards the girl and just… reached out. The chill of the night bit into her bare skin as she grabbed hold of the girl’s pale hand.

  A sensation of burning spilled across her palm and along her fingers. Del swallowed back a cry and the urge to drop her hold. The girl did not turn round. It was as if she were frozen in the moment while her body flamed against Del’s touch. Then at last she turned, her pale face meeting Del’s gaze, as it had done on that first night.

  Del stared up into her dark, empty eyes.

  “Lavinia,” she said.

  And she felt her body fall back towards the snowy ground, where Tom was waiting to catch her.

  They walk through the city, feeling ash as cold as snow on their faces. They are hand in hand, ash crunching beneath their booted feet. The girl smiles when she looks sideways at Del, her hair spilling out across her shoulders.

  The river is to one side of them, its waters dark, and they are heading down towards the harbour. Del waits for the familiar feel of heat from the water but there is none. This place is so cold, its Aetherica drained long ago. Only the girl still burns.

  They walk and walk and the wind whistles through them. The sky drops low around them, the edge of the city is a cage as dull as lead. Del squeezes the girl’s pale fingers and the girl squeezes back. Del smiles.

  “Where are you?” She says.

  “Here.” The girl’s reply was soft and distant, like a whisper or an echo.

  “And where is here?”

  “The dying city.”

  “Is there a way out of the city?”

  The girl shivers.

  “No,” she says, “but there is a room.”

  “Show me.”

  They turn away from a harbour where there are no longer any ships. The girl leads them up a hill that is full of rubble. The girl’s pace does not slacken, though the piles of ash that fill the road make it hard to walk.

  Del is panting by the time they reach the Downs.

  The girl leads them to the house and stands there looking up, as Del has seen her do so many times before.

  Del looks up too; blank windows stare back at her.

  “Is that where the room is?”

  The girl said, “I am dying.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  The girl shakes her head, gesturing towards the rubble that fills the street. Only the Earl’s house remains standing in the gloom.

  “I’m crumbling away.”

  “Tell me where you are?”

  “I have,” she says.

  Before them the house stands solid and dark, staring back at Del through sightless windows.

  “I don’t know anything,” she says.

  The girl smiles, “It’s not so bad, really, dying. It’s quiet, there’s no pain. And you know what the best thing is?”

  “What?”

  “I’m taking him with me, without me he’ll not last two weeks.”

  The girl laughs. Her voice is as brittle as ice.

  “You know?”

  “That he’s killing me? Taking all the strength from me in that little, white room? Of course I know.”

  The girl turns, looking into Del’s face with her dark eyes.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says.

  Del clutches at her hand, “I don’t want you to die.”

  “I know, I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me, tell me how to help you.”

  The girl sighs, “I already have.”

  Then she drops Del’s hand and steps away, moving towards the house, just as she always has, walking into the darkness until she is gone.

  Del is alone in a dying city, staring up an empty house. Her hands are cold where the girl’s touch has faded away. She is shivering as the house stares back at her.

  It is so stern with its white brick and black iron balcony and its windows, so many windows. Del begins to count them, four on the ground floor, then another four, then three.

  Three.

  Wait; there are only two rooms in the attic with windows that face the Downs. But there are three windows staring back at her.

  Three windows.

  A secret room. That was what the girl had been staring at night after night, the window of her prison.

  Del turns towards her body.

  She has to tell Pickering and Lord Ancrum. She needs a new warrant, Ancrum must give her one; she will storm the house alone if she has to.

  There is a secret room in the Earl’s attic and in it is the girl with red hair.

  I have seen the light, she is glorious and she is here.

  Artifice Perdu

  - Peter Sutton -

  Its hand lay upon the trembling bird. It combed the feathers back to reveal the net of thin golden wires that covered the bird’s body. A map of the pigeon’s nervous system led circuitously to the golden cap covering its head. Another bird flew past and Its hea
d followed, jerking in small increments, like a second hand on a clock. The roofspace was cramped and dark and smelled of pigeon but the space suited It. It found It could work in peace. It had started with insects, moved onto using pigeons and rats, and recently It had taken to dogs.