by Anna Butler
Sam snorted. “I fret over everything. It’s what you pay me for.”
“Look, if it were just about me, well, all right, I’d bow my head to whatever my father wants, however much it hurts to give up Aegypt. But it isn’t just me. I have an entire team depending on me, four archaeologists and ten students. A field dig is so significant, so important for them.” Ned turned and his arms spread in a helpless gesture. “How can I get you to understand? This is crucial for their academic careers and futures. The archaeologists need publications and credits, papers they can use to make their names and catch the eye of potential sponsors for the future. The students all need practical experience to write up for their degrees to supplement their theoretical learning. A few weeks on a dig now opens doors when they graduate and are looking for expedition places. I can’t jeopardize that. I have to make sure they aren’t the victims in this. There has to be a way. There just has—”
Ned broke off. Stared at me.
I had no arguments to refute his, other than I care about you and It frightens me when you’re threatened and I will do anything to see you safe. I could understand Sam’s fretting. I was doing some myself.
Sam spoke with a patience that was almost inhuman. “We’re going nowhere without a pilot, Ned.”
“But I have a pilot. One I trust with my life.” Ned was on the move again, and this time he fetched up in front of where I sat on the sofa. He stooped to look me straight in the eyes. “Don’t I, Rafe?”
Chapter 8
WAIT! WHAT?
I must have said it aloud, because Ned, the dark cloud lifting from him almost visibly, repeated his astonishing assertion. “I have a pilot, Rafe. I have you.”
Well, if I knew what my gast was and where it was situated, I could confidently claim it had never been so flabbered. Whatever sangfroid I may once have prided myself upon possessing deserted me with such rapidity that I heard the whoosh of displaced air as it went.
“What?”
“It’s the perfect solution! I was dreading us being separated for the winter. Come with me! You’ll love the country, and the dig will fascinate you, I know…. And flying, Rafe. Flying! We’ll have all winter together, and….” Ned stuttered to a stop, but only because too many words were trying to tumble out at once, stumbling over themselves in their eagerness. He was glowing with it, bouncing on his toes, fairly vibrating.
What?
But this time I didn’t say it aloud. Flying. Flying and Ned, in one heady combination. Flying! Before I could stop them, my arms lifted as if someone else controlled them, spreading out to search for my wings, aching to feel the wind lifting me up.
“Oh, Rafe, do come to Aegypt with me.”
I let my arms drop back to my sides. “I… I can’t, Ned. I can’t.”
It didn’t sound like me, even to my own ears. I don’t usually sound so yearning, so lost and longing. Oh God. Flying again, even a civilian aeroship. Flying. And Ned.
It was too much. A punch to the chest by a steam hammer couldn’t hurt as much.
“Ned.” Sam spoke quietly in the murky haze that was all my eyes could see, but his tone was intended to calm and quell.
“But Rafe’s been cleared by the intelligencers. It’s perfect! We’ll have a pilot we trust absolutely, and Rafe—” Ned spun around to focus on me again. “Oh, Rafe, I wouldn’t have to leave you behind. It’s been weighing on me like lead. And now you can come with me, and we’d be together, far away from here, somewhere the Houses don’t matter. It’ll be wonderful. Please say yes!”
“I… I can’t! I have a business here. I can’t just up and leave it for months—”
“You said yourself that business had slowed down. Why not?”
True enough, visitor numbers and takings had started to fall in the latter half of September as the tourist season ended, and a month later, we were only ticking along. Breaking even. From the accounts I studied before buying the coffeehouse, I was still doing a great deal better than old Mr. Pearse ever did. But if business followed the same pattern, I could expect it to be pretty flat until next spring. It worried me, to be honest. I wanted to pay off my loan to Stravaigor House as soon as humanly possible, but I’d have to cut the payments back to the bare minimum if I had to pay wages to Hugh and Alan and have enough left over to live on.
But the point was I wouldn’t have even that much if I closed down to go with Ned to Aegypt. I’d be bankrupt.
“Because this is all I have! I sank everything I had into this place, every penny I could raise. I had to take a House loan, Ned. I can’t renege on that. I can’t afford to close down even temporarily, not when I have Hugh and Alan to think about. I’m responsible for them too. Hugh has no income other than his salary here with me, and I barely pay him a quarter of what I should. If I lose the coffeehouse, what would he and I do for a living?”
Ned blinked. “Why close it down? Hugh and Alan could run it between them, couldn’t they?”
Another punch from the steam hammer. Because yes, they could. Indeed, I’d run it on my own for three months in the previous winter and early spring. But—
“Besides, we will pay you, you know!” Ned was unstoppable, like a runaway aeroship. “We’ll compensate you for the coffeehouse business too.”
“Ned, you aren’t being fair,” Sam said. “You can’t expect the captain to just ditch everything at such short notice.”
“Listen to me, Ned. Please listen. I have never flown whatever damn aeroship it is you own. It’ll be far bigger than anything I’ve ever piloted. I can’t just step into the cockpit and take off!”
“Is it so different?” Ned asked.
Hell and damnation, but that left all my sails sagging forlornly from the mainmast. Because no, the controls were not so very different, and the principles of flight most assuredly were not. But I’d been away from flying for a year, I hadn’t flown a civilian aeroship since I first learned to fly a decade earlier, and even though my military license had been converted to a civilian one without me having to requalify, I was out of practice, damn it!
“Think about it, Rafe, please?” Ned’s voice was soft and coaxing. “Just think about it. We’d work something out about the coffeehouse. There’s time for training flights. Please just think about it.”
This was my life Ned was cavalierly reordering to suit him! I opened my mouth to tell him that no way in the seven hells would I fly him to Aegypt and lose my own business in the process, but he stood there, looking so earnest and serious while pleading with me, that my breath failed me. Oh God, I wanted to say yes! I wanted to go. I wanted to spend the winter with Ned, kneeling beside him in the warm sands while he showed me the treasures that meant so much to him, the work that moved him so deeply. I wanted him to share his life with me. And at the same time, I resented his easy assurance that I’d fall into line. He was asking a tremendous thing of me. Tremendous.
I resorted to a phrase I had used frequently to express my feelings in the early days of my association with Edward Fairfax Winter, as we navigated the tricky waters between the Scylla of friendship and the Charybdis of love. Only now I used it loudly, explosively, and in the sure and certain knowledge that I would indeed think about Ned’s plea.
“Well, damn!”
“SO, WHEN are we leaving?” Hugh asked.
Ned had been hauled back to Gallowglass House by Sam, still protesting that I was the only answer to this current crisis. They left me to explain to Hugh and Alan what had happened to Ellis and all that had followed. I tried to give an impartial account, truly I did. I don’t think I achieved it.
Really, Hugh took placidity of temper to extremes. He sat back while I strode up and down my tiny office, windmilling my arms and sweeping everything before me as I fulminated against House aristocrats who, fond as I was of them, were definitely an encroaching lot. I made an abrupt turn at the fireplace and strode back. Hugh dived to rescue a pile of bills and invoices that took flight in the wake of my passing. He stacked them neatly on
the corner of the desk, the flimsy papers fluttering under his fingers as he smoothed them out.
His question stopped me dead. “What?”
“Well, of course you’re the only pilot Mr. Winter can truly trust, sir. I can quite see how he came to the conclusion you’re the answer to his prayers.”
Alan was less placid and more on the qui vive, listening alertly with no more than a smothered exclamation when I mentioned Ellis’s murder. He nodded with all the vigor of one of those porcelain ornaments you see in old maids’ parlors, the kind that have their heads attached to a pivot so they bob-bob-bob at you without ever tiring. “It’d take months to find another pilot. Hugh’s right, there.”
“I’m not letting you go without me there to look after things for you, though,” Hugh said. “I just got you straightened out after all those months with you shifting for yourself. I couldn’t face doing that all over again.”
“Am I the only one here to see that I’m being asked to drop everything, and I mean everything, to go to Aegypt at Ned’s behest? I mean, it’s hardly a day trip to Brighton, is it? It’s more a ‘put your life on hold for months’ affair, dancing to a House tune. And fond as I am of Ned Winter, he’s being every inch the First Heir here. I don’t think it’s even crossed his mind how out—out—” My tongue stumbled on the word “outrageous,” because, well, it was Ned, and I finished my sentence with a lame “He doesn’t even realize how extraordinary his request is!”
“Well, of course he doesn’t,” Alan said. “I’ve every respect for Mr. Edward. He’s one of the best. After all, Captain, you just have to compare him to that Princeps of yours, not to mention your cousin—”
“All my family.”
“Well, I didn’t want to say anything against your brother, but yes. Look at them, and Mr. Edward’s a saint in comparison. But still he’s First Heir of the biggest Convocation House there is. They don’t have any idea how the rest of us live.”
Amen to that!
“They can’t help themselves.” Hugh was all sympathetic agreement. “It’s the way they’re brought up.”
I flung myself into my chair behind the desk. And regretted it. The human body and a wooden-framed chair—even one padded with the finest leather—are not made for so emphatic a union. The chair arm met my rib cage in a very unforgiving manner. By the time I’d finished rubbing my side and got my breath back, Alan and Hugh were deep in planning Alan’s management of the coffeehouse for a few months.
“Because there’s no way I’ll be going too.” Alan frowned and slapped a hand on his bad leg. “I can’t go scrambling over tombs and pyramids anymore. But I can hold the fort here.”
My jaw was beginning to ache with the effort not to snap at them. Being managed left me longing to bare my teeth and growl.
“It’s pretty quiet right now and likely to get quieter.” Hugh gestured to the window where the mid-October rain splatted against the glass in sooty bursts. “Not many excursionists about when it’s cold and wet. You should be able to handle the customer numbers if things stay like this over winter.”
“Oh, I’m not bothered about that,” Alan said. “But I’m nowhere near as good as you when it comes to roasting the coffee beans. I don’t have the trick of it. And I don’t have any sort of hand with finances.”
“Mr. Somers next door would always step in and help, I’m sure.”
“Yes, but he has his own business to run, and he’s a baker. He keeps ungodly early hours.” Alan froze for a moment, raising his finger in the air. Ah. Inspiration had struck, perhaps. He glanced at me. “Do you think old Mr. Pearse might like to come back for a while, Captain? I’ll wager he’s finding Eastbourne a miserable place in autumn, and winter will be worse.”
Inspiration, indeed. I choked and coughed.
“Oh, that’s a brilliant idea!” Hugh copied the head bobbing that had afflicted Alan a few moments earlier.
I found my voice, although it had an uncomfortably high and squeaky sound. “Yes. Quite ingenious.”
After all, I’d been able to buy this coffeehouse only because old Mr. Pearse had allowed it to decay into almost nothing. A repeat performance was not a reassuring prospect. Fond as I was of him, I couldn’t allow him to run the business while I was away. I’d have nothing at all to come home to.
“It’s not as if he’d be the only one here.” Alan appeared to have developed the ability to read minds. “Not on his own, like, the way he was before. I’ll handle the customers, because if there’s one thing I am good at, it’s that, and to be honest, the old gent used to scare ’em off. If Mr. Pearse will do the books and manage the coffee roaster, though, it won’t be too much for him, and we’ll be all set. Give us both some company, like, over the winter, and he’d get the chance to see all his old friends again. I suppose he’ll move back in upstairs?”
“Probably the best thing. You’d best move in to keep an eye on him.” Hugh’s nods started up again. “Gallowglass will keep your lodging for you, won’t they?”
My neck ached in sympathy with that bob-bob-bobbing. That may have accounted for the testy tone of voice. “Do I get a say in all of this?”
They turned as one to stare at me, mouths open and eyes wide, comically alike in their astonishment—Tweedledum and Tweedledee, for once never contradicting each other.
“It’s a good plan, Captain.” Tweedledum drew himself up, tapping the side of his game leg with his walking cane. “It’s workable. Practical, like.”
Tweedledee, though, just smiled. “I hear Aegypt’s nice and warm this time of year.” His smile broadened. “And it’s flying, sir. Flying.”
Hugh knew me all too well.
Damn it.
A MAN’S relationship with his House resembles an unhappy, despairing marriage. Divorce is a prohibitively expensive luxury. The links forged by his House are, as Kipling has it, the white hands clinging to the tightened rein and slipping the spur from the booted heel. They hold him fast. There is no escaping the House’s soft embrace.
So when I hoped the visitation I had in August from my revered House Princeps and his unrevered Heir would be the last I saw of them until Christmas, I knew I was whistling gamely in the dark. And so it proved. Over late summer I had twice been invited to the Stravaigor’s home in Kensington for some event in the giddy social round. In each case there was not the snowball’s chance in the proverbial hot place that I could escape the obligation.
I had been summoned for a garden party barely a week after their visit and then in mid-September to a dinner for four dozen select House members to celebrate the Stravaigor’s birthday. Bad enough I couldn’t see my way to decline, I also had to take him a gift. I had presented myself at the festivities, bearing a box of three dozen Lonsdale cigars that had cost me the better part of an entire week’s takings. While I’d been careful to keep my distance from John, who glared magnificently every time he spotted me, I’d been received with some complaisance by the Stravaigor himself. He had taken the cigar box with eager hands and even evinced pleasure at seeing me, giving me a smile lacking its usual aura of menace.
It was almost more disconcerting than John’s hostility.
But even bearing this past cordiality in mind, the request to visit the Kensington fastness two days after Ellis’s murder was something of a surprise. No social reason accounted for the invitation. It wasn’t a family birthday, when I’d be expected to turn up to offer felicitations and a suitable gift. It wasn’t a general reception. It was simply the Stravaigor’s chief guard, Tatlock, appearing in the coffeehouse with an airy “His nibs wants to see you. Hop to it.”
“What? What does he want?”
“He didn’t confide in me, Captain.” And with a jerk of the head to the road outside, the genial Mr. Tatlock added, “I’ve got the autocar. Let’s be ’aving you.”
No choice. I left an apprehensive Hugh and Alan and got into an autolandau, the doors emblazoned with the Stravaigor sailing ship crest. The drive to Kensington might have been quite
pleasant, except that Tatlock took the seat opposite me and spent the journey paring his fingernails with a knife. Personal grooming in public isn’t something I condone, and I was only grateful he didn’t fish out a pair of tweezers and remove his excess nasal hair. It is a wonder that so many bald men have hairy noses, as if their follicles have slipped south, so to speak. I am grateful to have a full head of hair and a nose that is no more hirsute than is reasonable.
The engine was behind me at the back of the vehicle. Its gentle, constant vibration and the occasional crackle of contained lightning along the autocar’s axles, insulated from the cabin but always exciting to see, were faint echoes of the larger aether engine that had powered my aerofighter. The churning generator gave out more than enough heat to keep me quite toasty. I was glad of the heat as an antidote to the chill weather, and gladder still that the shielding between me and the glowing aether chamber held firm. Any failure of that shielding and I would be very toasty indeed.
Moderation in all things, that’s the ticket.
The butler admitted us into Stravaigor House’s overstated luxury. The house was not quite silent. A piano tinkled in the distance, accompanying a thin-voiced soprano practicing French love songs—Madame Stravaigor, I assumed, keeping up musical ties to her homeland. The Stravaigor’s study at the back of the house overlooked a sad, sodden garden. I was bowed in with little ceremony, Tatlock staying outside and closing the door softly behind me. The soprano’s warbling cut off as if chopped into silence with Tatlock’s knife.
Chapter 9
THE STRAVAIGOR sat behind a large desk. He had the datascreen of a small analytical machine turned toward him, but he had pushed the typewriting board to one side and planted his elbows in its place, all the better to prop his chin upon his hands. A cigar smoldered in an ashtray beside the datascreen. He watched my progress across the room, his face wearing not its usual unreadable expression, but one that was softened and thoughtful.