Imprudence

by Gail Carriger

  “Rue dear, I think I might go and do something else.” Strangely, Prim drifted back up on deck when there was nothing to occupy her attention, and the only one awake was Tasherit in lioness form.

  Rue wished her a pleasant night. “Thank you, Spoo. I shall investigate at once.” I wonder if this is at Quesnel’s behest? Is this what has Percy’s dander up?

  Leaving Spoo to return to her bed, Rue climbed down the spiral staircase to the lowest level of her ship, where the two massive boilers were housed in all their teakettle glory.

  Everything was quiet. The Spotted Custard was on low burn; only the main kettle was simmering. The other wasn’t needed unless they were in full propeller mode.

  A single sleepy-eyed sootie tended to the main. He gave Rue a nod as she passed.

  Everything else was still and silent, except in a back corner, behind a coal pile where Aggie Phinkerlington was humming to herself and tinkering with a remarkable-looking gadget.

  It was a large tank, not unlike one of those Wardian cases that the mad fern collectors used to display their obsession. This one was empty of ferns and in the process of construction and installation.

  Rue cleared her throat delicately.

  Aggie didn’t jump, not really – she was too stoic for that – but she did reach to flip a horse blanket over the tank and turned around brandishing a wrench and a displeased expression.

  Aggie was head greaser, second in command of the boiler room after Quesnel, which made her chief engineer while he was away. For some reason Rue did not understand, Aggie had never warmed to her. Which was a shame, because Rue thought that under more auspicious circumstances she would like the young battleaxe. Aggie reminded her a bit of Lady Kingair.

  Aggie was a redhead with a vast sprinkling of freckles over porcelain skin under which blue veins were clearly visible. That skin spoke more to a life spent in engineering than ancestry. She was sublimely fit. Her arm muscles had arm muscles. Rue, who had grown up around werewolves, thought Aggie most impressive even by their standards. She was one of the few women Rue had ever met who actually looked like she might survive metamorphosis. Whether she was creative enough to have excess soul, Rue would never know. Aggie rarely let anyone see any part of her but the tetchy efficient bit.

  “Oh, it’s you.” Aggie frowned. “What do you want?”

  Not a promising start. “Good evening, Miss Phinkerlington. What is that, if I may ask?” Rue always found herself forced into politeness by the extremity of Aggie’s dislike.

  “You may not ask.”

  Rue gave a little sigh. “This is my ship, Miss Phinkerlington.”

  “And this is Himself’s kit. Not for me to say if he hasn’t deemed it necessary to tell.”

  Aggie was a pain but she was good at her job and she adored Quesnel in a bickering-elder-sister fashion. Which made her reliably loyal – to him if not the rest of the ship.

  “Yet Mr Lefoux is not here, so perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me?”

  “That I won’t.”

  Impasse. Rue could order her to tell. But if pushed, Aggie was likely to chuck in the towel and storm off the ship, leaving Rue in a real lurch with no one supervising engineering at all.

  That was the difficulty. Rue needed Aggie’s skills more than Aggie needed Rue’s respect. It put Rue in a chronically uncomfortable position.

  “At least tell me if it is likely to explode or what have you.”

  Aggie raised one red eyebrow at her. “Isn’t everything on this ship likely to explode?”

  Rue bent to look under the blanket at the casement. It was difficult to tell anything in the flickering shadows of a single boiler’s firebox.

  Aggie interposed herself, crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned against the blanket, pinning it down.

  Rue inhaled the musty scent of oil and soot. All in all, this was looking to be an extremely frustratingly evening. Molasses over vinegar, she reminded herself. This had been her tactic with Aggie from the beginning. The nicer she was, the more annoyed Aggie became. It was a minor sort of revenge, but it was all Rue had to fall back on.

  “Very well, Miss Phinkerlington. But now I know of its existence, so you might as well carry on under more well-lit circumstances. Go to bed. There is no point ruining your eyesight over one of Quesnel’s little toys.”

  Aggie began to sputter. Either out of disgust at the concern or out of the insult to Quesnel’s inventing abilities.

  Rue was already moving away.

  “Quesnel,” she muttered as she closed the hatch to engineering, “has a very great deal of explaining to do.”

  “What was that?” Primrose was coming down the main stairs.

  “Only talking to myself.”

  Prim was flushed.

  “Something wrong up top?”

  “Only that Miss Sekhmet… she is” – Primrose paused, looking for the right words – “awfully playful when she is a lioness.”

  “Presenting you with her belly, was she?”

  Prim looked down at her hands. “I simply” – she lowered her voice to a whisper – “can’t get over the fact that she is, you know, naked.”

  “She’s a cat.”

  “Yes, but she’s also not a cat.”

  Rue, being able to change shape herself, had an odd relationship with nudity. Some might even have called it Ancient Greek in its inclinations. Dama certainly did, regularly shaking his head at the goings-on of his neighbours. “Like a less oily gymnasium. One’s imagination runs positively rampant.”

  “The werewolf uncles never seem to bother you.”

  Primrose frowned. “They’re men.”

  Rue didn’t follow that reasoning at all. “Well, I’m sorry Tasherit has offended.”

  Prim blinked wide dark eyes, afraid she had brought Rue’s ire down on the werelioness. “Oh no, it’s not that. It’s only…” She lost her train of thought. “Oh dear, I’m rather discombobulated.”

  “Yes, seems to happen to you quite a bit around Tasherit. Why is that?”

  “She’s so very foreign and…” Words failed Prim again.

  “And?”

  “Catty.”

  “Mmm. If you say so. Perhaps some tea? Shall we ring?”

  Primrose grasped at the suggestion. “What a good idea. It has been a very trying night.”

  “Truth from the mouths of children,” agreed Rue with feeling.

  They turned towards the stateroom where they might ring for tea, when a most extraordinary noise coming from the squeak deck diverted their attention.

  “What on earth?” said Primrose.

  Rue was already running.

  It was the sound of a lioness, shrieking.

  Six men had boarded The Spotted Custard by means of grappling hooks. Four were already on deck; two of these were firing at Tasherit – understandable given that fact that the lioness had the other two down against the railings.

  The guns they had must not be sundowner, for the werecat did not flinch at impact. Or their shots were going wild.

  Still, shooting at a crew member was really not on, to Rue’s way of thinking. Not at all. She dived towards the blighters with the guns.

  Their shots conveniently woke up the slumbering decklings, who tumbled from their hammocks reaching for crossbows, as they’d been trained.

  “To me!” shouted Rue rather grandly, she felt. She herself was entirely unarmed. With Tasherit already a lioness and doing a fabulous job of lionessing about, it made no sense to steal her shape. So Rue charged in without weapon or supernatural form.

  Primrose, on the other hand, did not. Prim could defend herself if absolutely necessary but otherwise preferred to avoid physical confrontation. “I’m not a violent person, Rue. The very idea of killing someone. It’s not in me. I’ll leave it to the children. They do enjoy it so. Why spoil their fun?”

  So Rue ordered her out of it. “Primrose, go to Percy and lock yourself in with him. Don’t unlock it for anyone. We’ll use the code wor
d once this refuse has been rusticated.”

  Prim didn’t answer. She was already dashing below, intent on protecting her twin from whatever it was that he had brought on himself.

  Rue, for lack of anything better, grabbed up a sluicing mop and issued one of the bruisers shooting at Tasherit a full biff to the side of the head. He went down, dropping his gun. A deckling tumbled in, retrieving the gun in a somersault… Spoo.

  Another deckling shot a bolt into a second gunman. Shoulder wound but effective, for the man cried out and clutched at his arm, falling to his knees. Two more decklings swooped in, screaming like banshees, swinging from the rigging – feet first at the still-standing man.

  Rue closed in on her prey, flipping the mop about and pressing the wooden handle to the man’s throat in case he had ideas on moving.

  Meanwhile her two deckhands, Willard and Bork, pried off the grapples in case any more of the enemy tried to board.

  Tasherit was handling her two invaders with bloody aplomb. To be fair, she was going easy on them. They were only mortal, and she could have killed them with one blow; instead she was batting at them like a house cat with field mice. One of them took his chances jumping back over the rails rather than continue to suffer those claws. The other huddled in a ball, his back a shredded mess. Occasionally, he would uncoil and skitter sideways. She’d yowl, charge, and swipe to stop him. He’d ball up again for a time and then skitter the other way. She’d let him think he could escape for a while, then pounce in a jolly manner.

  Rue let her have her fun.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Rue admired the decklings in action; like a small herd of lemurs, they swarmed their man and clung to every part of his body. Despite being a substantial fellow, he was slowly folding under their collective weight.

  Rue turned her full attention back to the blighter lying below her. He was clearly not best pleased to have been felled by a gentlewoman with a mop.

  He was a big man, almost as big as Paw, who was one of the biggest Rue knew. He grabbed the mop handle and yanked. Rue, who was no fool, let go rather than pit her strength against his. He rolled to his feet and swung. Rue darted back, out of reach, wary.

  Spoo, having determined the small mess of decklings had the other gunman under control, came running over to Rue.

  “This might work a bit more the treat, Lady Captain.” Spoo was grinning in a decidedly evil manner as she handed over the man’s revolver.

  The man squinted at her in focused interest.

  Rue wasn’t overly fond of guns but they were awfully useful when facing a man twice her size with no respect in his eyes. Guns engendered respect and Rue did know how to shoot one – Dama had made certain of it. This one was a mite bigger than the muff pistols she’d learned on but seemed to function about the same in theory. It took both her thumbs to cock it, and she hoped not to have to actually shoot; it’d have a terrific kick.

  Upon seeing her facing him with a revolver and not a mop, the man became wary.

  “What do you want with this ship?” Rue demanded.

  “It’s not us. It’s ’em as hired us.”

  Rue was annoyed enough to wiggle the pistol. “That is not an answer.”

  The man smiled. “That’s all you’re getting.” He ran for the railing.

  Rue was surprised enough not to shoot. They were about rooftop height above the ground. It wasn’t a fall most daylight folk could survive. Except as he jumped, he shed his massive overcoat and had some kind of boxy device strapped to his back. She leaned over the railing to watch. It deployed into an articulated gliding apparatus which lifted off his shoulders with the pull of a strap.

  Rue had never seen the like. He seemed to catch the breeze and sail about, directing himself with a tilt this way and a tilt that way, like a bat. It looked pretty darn fun and Rue instantly wanted a whole bunch of them for her crew. Parachutes were one thing, but this was much more mobile.

  “Nifty,” said Spoo. “Can we get us some of those, Lady Captain?”

  “I was pondering along similar lines. I’ve not seen such a contraption before. Have you, Spoo?”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “Well, then, new gadget, pretty advanced at that.” Which made Rue think of Quesnel’s mysterious fern tank down in the boiler room. Perhaps these men were after that? Exo-splorers, apparat-collectors, and cog-burglars weren’t so uncommon these days, and if they heard of something new outside patent control, they might risk boarding her airship to steal it. Although, they didn’t seem prepared to transport something as big.

  As everything seemed to be controlled on deck, Rue ran below to find that Aggie had pulled an enormous metal carapace over the tank, which bolted to the floor through one of the securing rings meant for a boiler. Definitely Lefoux design. Rue had seen Quesnel in a steam roly-poly transport made with exactly the same kind of carapace.

  If anyone was after that tech, they certainly weren’t getting it. Rue was oddly reassured over its safety, especially given no one had asked her opinion on its presence.

  Back on deck, Tasherit had her mouse supine and panting under one large paw. The decklings had their lemur tree felled and were sitting on every available part of him. They looked mighty pleased with themselves. Rue decided she would put on a very nice tea for them tomorrow as a thank-you. I shall get some hot cross buns from Lottapiggle’s.

  While they had been trained to repel invaders, it wasn’t until that moment that Rue realised they were not at all equipped to take prisoners.

  “Decklings, you’re good with rope. Could you determine a way to tie these men up for questioning?”

  “Yes, Lady Captain!”

  They did their best, but the ropes they had were big, being intended for balloon work, so both men were rather wrapped about as if they were mooring posts. Still, they didn’t look likely to escape and, being injured, were docile enough.

  Tasherit, with a meaningful glance at Rue, disappeared below, emerging some time later in human form with two greasers in tow – big burly men with large fish knives at the ready.

  “Ah, good, Miss Sekhmet, there you are.”

  They established early on that their werelioness did not want to be known as a werelioness. Her people had gone into hiding centuries ago and she wished to respect their secrecy. Whether this was preference or some sacred vow, Rue had never been so bold as to ask. It was clearly a private supernatural matter and the entire crew honoured the werecat’s wishes. Just like a cat, to mould her environment to suit her whim. Thus, while Rue had told the Shadow Council – she had had to tell them – of her encounter with the weremonkeys, she’d left werecats out of her report.

  Tasherit was invaluable muscle, being the first supernatural anyone had ever met who could travel through the aether. Although, truth be told, she slept like the dead the entire time. This, too, was intrinsically catlike.

  Thus, in the face of their prisoners, everyone treated Tasherit as if she were different from the lioness. No reason for these thugs to know anything. Besides, it would only add to The Spotted Custard’s reputation as having a trained attack cat.

  “Miss Sekhmet? If you could please assume control of the prisoners and begin questioning? See if you can find out who hired them and what they’re after.”

  “It’s not my area of expertise but I will do my best.” Tasherit’s beautiful face was impassive.

  “If you can’t get anything out of them, I’ll pass them on to Dama. I’ll wager he can.”

  The werecat nodded. “Agreed.” Miss Sekhmet had yet to meet Rue’s vampire father but she knew of him. At least, Rue assumed they’d never met – hard to tell with immortals.

  “Still, I’d prefer to source this mess ourselves before we involve any of my parents. Things always get dramatic with them.”

  “And you’re young enough to still hunger for your independence.” Tasherit’s tone didn’t indicate whether she found this charming or annoying.

  Rue had no idea how old the werecat was, but sh
e would guess she was older than most werewolves if not as old as a vampire. Which meant three hundred at least. Under such circumstances, a little condescension was expected.

  “You have the deck. I should go and tell the twins that everything is safe now.”

  Tasherit nodded. “Good idea. You sent the little flower down to her brother?”

  “Yes. I find it best to keep Prim out of the way when things get rough. She’s a delicate flower.”

  Tasherit laughed. “Or she likes to be thought a delicate flower.”

  Rue narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing to her anyway?”

  The werecat’s brown eyes went wide with assumed innocence. “Me? Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Mmm.” Rue could almost see her licking her whiskers. “Try not to break her, please? She’s my best friend and not your toy on a string.”

  Tasherit only looked smugger. “I assure you, I have no intention of harming one hair on that lovely head. And I am most assuredly not playing.”

  Rue issued her a measuring stare. “Cats.”

  Rue knocked on the library door.

  “Yes?” said a tremulous voice from within. “Who is it?”

  “Honeysuckle Isinglass.” It was their agreed-upon code for all extenuating circumstances.

  The door swung open to show the twins, wide-eyed and sobered after listening to the kerfuffle abovedecks.

  Percival and Primrose Tunstell did not look like one another. Prim took after their dark-haired frippery of a mother and Percy their flamboyant father. Neither had inherited their respective parent’s personality, thank heavens, aside from a certain flair for the dramatic.

  “Has anyone died?” Primrose demonstrated her flair immediately.

  “Possibly.” Rue was thinking of the one man who had jumped overboard while not in possession of articulated bat wings.

  At Prim’s harried expression she added, “But no one we know or care about.”