Imprudence

by Gail Carriger

  “I think the presence of a pet lioness fighting smart to defend The Spotted Custard is awfully substantiating.”

  “They’re after me?”

  “You’d make a pretty nice addition to any unscrupulous natural historian who wanted to collect the world’s only known sample of werecat. Caged on display or pinned like a butterfly to velvet backing, I imagine they care not which.”

  Prim scooted closer to Tasherit and put a cautious arm around the werelioness’s shoulders. “Oh, Percy, how could you?”

  Tasherit didn’t shrug her off.

  Rue paused at the head of the table. “I thought they were after Quesnel’s tank, but Mother tells me that it’s an established invention with patents. It makes more sense that they are after you. The weremonkeys have a treaty and the werecats do not. Which makes them fair game by empire law.”

  Percy looked as if he would protest, so Rue held up a forestalling hand.

  “British policy doesn’t recognise supernaturals as people, not in the broader sense. We’ve only legislation to cover vampires and werewolves specifically. I made a cock-up, as far as the queen was concerned, with weremonkeys when I granted them legal standing.”

  Primrose nibbled her bottom lip. “So Miss Sekhmet is right?”

  “Yes. Percy has let the cat out of the bag in a big way.”

  Tasherit looked up, her almond eyes wide with fear.

  “Oh, mercy.” Prim finally understood the full scope of the implications. There were fates worse than death, especially to immortals.

  Percy squinted, confused. “Rue, are you worried people will want werelions for pets?”

  Miss Sekhmet curled a lip at him.

  “No, you idiot!” Primrose lashed out at her brother, almost physically, shaking in repressed fury. “She is saying they will want them for slaves.”

  Rue sat heavily, slumping forward in a manner most indecorous for a young lady. But such a situation as this warranted bad posture. “Recriminations are all very well but what’s done is done and Percy will have to answer for it. I leave the manner of his punishment up to you, Miss Sekhmet. Meanwhile, we have a responsibility to your people. How can we help protect them? The Spotted Custard is at your disposal. We will do whatever we can to fix this.”

  Tasherit took a long, shaky breath. “We must get to them first.”

  Rue nodded. “We run the risk of being followed and leading the enemy straight to them.”

  “Do you, or do you not, have the fastest ship in the British Empire?”

  “So they tell me.”

  “Then prove it. It’s most important to warn them. At this juncture, the British are coming. We simply must to beat them there.”

  “Very well.” Rue assumed her captain voice. “Primrose, please check we’ve restocked sufficiently for a long journey and ascertain the whereabouts of the crew. I know some are on shore leave. We must get them back as quickly as possible. Percy, you’ll have to consult Miss Sekhmet as to our course. I’m sorry, Tasherit, but he’s the best we’ve got. I advise planning it in such a way as to make it look as if we are tourists. The longer we remain innocuous the better. Is that practicable?”

  Tasherit nodded.

  Everyone was somewhat emboldened with the possibility of action.

  Rue turned to mobilise the remaining crew for departure. It would be best if they were ready to move as soon as the last straggler boarded. Then she thought of something else.

  “Percy, after you’ve done all you can to get us ready, I want you researching that treaty of ours with the weremonkeys, plus any supporting texts. See if we can’t graduate other species in or use it as legal precedent to get the werecats a similar treaty. You’re the closest we’ve got to a solicitor, and you’ve amends to make.”

  Percy sputtered a protestation.

  Rue cut him off. “I don’t care if your brain rots reading while airborne. You’ll take that risk or I’ll jettison you in the middle of the nearest desert. Don’t test me.”

  She left the buzzing atmosphere of confrontation for the slightly less oppressive heat of the upper deck. Most of the decklings were slumbering in their hammocks. Rue hated to rouse them, but rouse them she did.

  “How many are off on leave?” she asked once they’d rallied round.

  “One of the deckhands and four of us, including Spoo,” piped up a sleepy voice.

  “And the staff?”

  Another deckling wrinkled his nose. “We don’t much steam with those belowdecks but Cook certainly sent a few off to the market.”

  Virgil chivvied up at that juncture. “What ho, Lady Captain? Himself is in a tizzy and has me running all sorts of places. What’s flipped his pikelet?”

  Rue sniffed. “Himself has put us all in a bit of a bind. We float out as soon as full complement is aboard.” She returned to the patient decklings. “I’m sorry, you lot, but all leave is cancelled. Plus you’ll have to spread the word to the other unluckies all over the ship. I want us ready to go as soon as may be. Double shifts and double pay if you can get us ready by sundown.”

  A chorus of groans met that.

  “Now, please.”

  The decklings scampered off, with a little less enthusiasm than usual given the oppressive heat and curtailed fun.

  Virgil turned to go about whatever business Percy had set him.

  “You keep an ear to most things aboard ship, don’t you, Virgil?”

  Virgil grinned.

  “Who else of ours is loose in Cairo?”

  Virgil considered. “Steward took a log, so Miss Tunstell should be able to get the details for you. I’d guess about half the sooties and two greasers went off to explore. Old Aggie is still flapping below, though, so we won’t fall out of the sky.”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  Virgil turned to go, giving her a final tidbit over his shoulder as he moved off. “And your Mr Lefoux left about an hour ago.”

  “Did he, indeed? And where, exactly, did he go?”

  “Search me.”

  About an hour or so later, Rue went to visit Percy in his lair.

  “Come to yell at me again, have you?”

  “No. I think you know well enough what you’ve done.”

  Percy sighed. “I do now. Rummy business. I didn’t consider it from Miss Sekhmet’s perspective. I thought her wanting to stay undisclosed was a whim.”

  “Percy, she’s hundreds of years old. Does anyone with that much experience have whims any more?”

  “Lord Akeldama is comprised of nothing but whims.”

  “Fair point. I think it’s how he keeps going. But I never once made the mistake of thinking them trivial. He isn’t all brocades and pomade, you know. He’s still a vampire. Vampires run deep.”

  Percy looked at his charts. “Consequence of being the son of a very young and very silly immortal, I forgot how the old ones operate.”

  “Or you lack the necessary interpersonal empathy.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say, Rue.”

  “I’m not feeling very charitable at the moment.”

  Percy looked so crestfallen at that, Rue decided to gentle her abuse. She needed him functional to fly the ship.

  Footnote appeared at that juncture, intent on sniffing her shoes. Rue could sympathise. She was fond of footwear, too. She nudged him in Percy’s direction, hoping the cat might alleviate his depression.

  Footnote chirruped at the academic autocratically.

  Percy chucked him under the chin as ordered.

  Rue explained. “I came down to find out where we are going. She never said.”

  Percy pointed to a map of Africa sprawled out over a pile of books. The Nile snaked down the right-hand side. He traced the long blue line with one finger out of Egypt, through Nubia and the Sudan, and into the contested wilds around Lake Victoria.

  “We’re going here, to the Source of the Nile.”

  There was a march of letters across the map: unexplored. Rue felt a tinge of fear but refused to
show Percy. They had travelled quite a bit in her wonderful little ship, but they had yet to leave the comparative safety of the empire’s fortified territories.

  “Well,” she said, “I made a promise on the back of your mistake. Let’s hope we can survive them both.”

  Percy returned to his charts. “There is a difficulty. No aetheric currents flow in that direction. Plenty of lower atmosphere wind, though. The locals have a saying: ‘sail the Nile south with the wind and north with the current’.”

  “Is that what normal tourists would do?”

  “Normal tourists wouldn’t go uncharted.”

  “Then we drift astray.”

  “You should know.”

  “Percy.”

  “Sorry, Lady Captain.”

  “It’s not the fastest, and it’ll take more propeller – we’ll go through coal. You’re sure atmosphere is our best option?”

  Percy grimaced. “It’s our only option.”

  “South with the wind we go, then.”

  Rue left him to it and went down to beard her ship’s second fiercest lioness in her den.

  Aggie Phinkerlington was more than normally impossible.

  “I’ve no idea where he scuttled off to,” was all she would say to Rue’s enquiry.

  “Well, then, you had better prepare the ship for float yourself. We leave at sundown whether Quesnel Lefoux is back aboard or not.”

  “Like that, is it?”

  “We have an urgent mission and his private business cannot be allowed to interfere.”

  “Taking it out on him, are you?”

  “Oh for goodness’ sake. Taking what out?”

  “Your lovers’ spat.”

  “We aren’t having a lovers’ spat. This has nothing to do with me or him or us.”

  “Oh no? And the fact that he was in here this morning looking like a depressed baked potato has nothing to do with an evening spent in your bed and not his own?”

  Rue blushed, hot and humiliated. “You keep a careful watch on his comings and goings, don’t you? Or is it me who interests you so strangely?”

  Aggie sputtered in a rage so overpowering it rendered her speechless.

  Rue followed up her advantage by calming her voice into condescension. “Your obsessive interest in my private affairs notwithstanding, you cannot go around besmirching my reputation.”

  Aggie snorted. “You have no reputation. All your vaunted aristocratic connections and you’re little more than an unmarried strumpet with parents in trade.”

  As that was a concise if not particularly flattering assessment of her current situation, Rue could hardly protest. “You know a great deal more than you ought, don’t you?”

  “The old boffin is my friend. And he’s my kind. You think you’re too good for him with your snobbish ways and your fast connections.”

  Rue frowned. “I’m confused. You’re angry because I won’t make an honest man of Mr Lefoux? You’re protecting his interests against predatory little me?” Rue gestured to herself dismissively. “Because I’m known to swallow men whole like oysters in season? Look, if you must know, neither of us took advantage. It was a mutually agreed upon arrangement that is likely now over and was never any of your concern! Now, as a matter of official business, if you won’t tell me where my chief engineer has gone, you had better get a message to him instructing him to return immediately. Is that clear?”

  Aggie grunted.

  Rue, in a temper, took that as a yes. She marched away muttering, “Is nothing secret aboard an airship?”

  To which one of the sooties answered with feeling, “Not much, Lady Captain. Worse than a small town. If there ain’t something interesting to talk about, we make it up, including each other’s doings.”

  Rue looked at the soot-covered scrap of humanity, feeling a sudden kinship. “Got you, too, did she?”

  The boy rolled his eyes expressively. “You’ve no idea.”

  Rue nodded and continued on her way. Everyone’s got problems, I suppose. Silly me to think mine so much more profound. She wondered what Aggie’s problems were, for certainly they were made manifest whenever Rue was in the room.

  Fortunately they did not have to leave Quesnel behind. Although his manner of return was unusual: he bobbed abreast in a hot air balloon – a balloon that wasn’t his. And he wasn’t alone.

  At first, when the balloon approached, Rue thought it was coming to share their obelisk. However, it was not a style of craft welcome in Shepheard’s part of town. It was one of the roughed-up patchwork jobbies piloted by local tribesmen. It was small and nimble, retrofitted with a manual propeller to give it some manoeuvrability. It was more primitive than even Dama’s old dirigible, Dandelion Fluff Upon a Spoon. However, it had been lovingly maintained, for all it showed its age in the smoothness of its gondola’s wicker edge, rubbed by hundreds of hands pressed to lean over.

  Quesnel hailed The Spotted Custard as soon as they were in range, although the deckling in the crow’s nest had already shouted down details of who was on intercept.

  Quesnel cast a line over and the deckhands winched him in until the two airships bobbed as close as they may without balloons clashing. At this juncture, Quesnel and his friends cast out a thick net between the two ships. Rue’s crew scuttled to anchor their side taut, so that it became a hammock meets walkway.

  Quesnel trotted across. He was uncommonly graceful, bouncing only slightly. Two other figures climbed up to the net behind him and followed.

  Rue met him at the rail. “You’re late.”

  “Now, chérie, you said we might have the afternoon. It’s not yet teatime. Not that I wasn’t perishing for lack of your scintillating company.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re horribly charming. Sadly, circumstances have changed.”

  “I’m no longer charming?”

  “Cairo is no longer charming.”

  Quesnel sobered. “What circumstances?”

  “Percy is an outstanding rotter, not to mention a terrific chump.”

  “Well, I know that! You know that. That’s nothing new.”

  “The problem is that now everyone knows.” Rue glanced away from his twinkling violet eyes. The two strangers moved more slowly over the mesh than Quesnel, although they were clearly accustomed to the technique of net strolling. Both wore the flowing robes favoured by natives. The man was swathed in white, bent and frail, assisted by a younger female in black.

  Rue explained. “Percy has exposed Miss Sekhmet’s existence in an effort to get back at you. Now we are all on the hook to make it right with her and the werecats.”

  Quesnel took this in stride. “I take it you’ll relay details later?”

  Rue nodded. “Over dinner.”

  He flinched.

  At which she realised he might be implying later later, over pillows instead of port. Not knowing how to react, she kept the conversation on business. “Do we have passengers or visitors?”

  “That will depend on you, Lady Captain.” Quesnel’s tone became formal.

  “There could be a more convenient time.”

  “On The Spotted Custard it’s rarely convenient. I will go down and resume my duties, if you would only talk with them? They’ve come a long way to meet you.”

  “Me? Oh dear. Is this a metanatural thing?”

  Quesnel tilted his head, giving nothing away.

  “If you insist. Come and see me later, once we’re in float? Official business. There’s something we need to discuss. I’m afraid my mother has spilled the beans.” Rue could hardly believe this man had concealed so much from her. Who is going to die? she wanted to ask. Why didn’t you just tell me about the true purpose of the tank? Why don’t you trust me?

  “Ominous.”

  “You’ve no idea.”

  “I’ll just make introductions and be off.”

  Quesnel helped the old man and the younger woman down from the net.

  “Lady Akeldama, please allow me to introduce Grandfather Panettone and Miss Panetto
ne. Grandfather, Miss Panettone, this is my captain and friend, Lady Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama.”

  Quesnel bowed and then left.

  Rue, conscious of her duties as hostess, led her strange visitors over to Prim’s shaded sitting area.

  “Mr Panettone, Miss Panettone? Do sit. Tea? I’m afraid we stock the English variety.”

  The old man nodded, looking as if he would like to smile in pleasure at the idea. But he did not have the kind of face that smiled well.

  Rue hailed a footman and sent him for tea, hoping Cook wouldn’t be too mad at the disruption to float off preparations. Apparently not, for the footman reappeared promptly with a fresh pot and a few biscuits.

  Miss Panettone was a lively little thing, thin but with a round cheerful face darkened by the sun. She did not wear the full veil as Rue had seen on most women in Cairo and her hair was pulled out to frame her face. Her features were pleasingly symmetrical, with serious liquid black eyes and thick lashes. She wore black robes, fitted at the top, with a velvet belt around her hips from which hung colourful tassels. Her robe’s skirt and sleeves were richly embellished with gold embroidery. Over the top she wore a dark blue velvet vest with yellow embroidery which reminded Rue of a Spanish bull dancer. The embroidery was a repeated motif of a stylised balloon.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Prudence.” Miss Panettone had a strong accent. Her voice was oddly familiar. As were her eyes.

  “We have met before.” Rue poured tea, frowning. It was not a question.

  “I did not think you would remember.”

  “You wore a fuller veil and you called me Puggle. Anitra, I think it was.”

  She dimpled. “He trained you well.”

  Rue thought of Dama drilling her on names and faces and how to remember them. She’d thought at the time it was merely for society gatherings. “Do you have another message for me?”

  Anitra’s smile widened. “Not this time.”

  “And this is your grandfather?” Rue wondered if the young lady’s elderly relation knew she was a spy for a British vampire rove.

  Anitra inclined her head. Unlike other Egyptian women, she wore no jewellery except tiny glass jars dangling from her ears.