by Kin Law
Almost unconsciously, Cezette found herself getting out of bed, her bare feet treading three steps until she was perched at the window. She was not yet tall enough to reach the top of the slanting glass, but she could put her chin on the sill, and two hands on either side until a bird might have mistaken her for a curious cat.
She stood on her tiptoes. Up close, she had a better view of the sky, sacrificing her wonderful rooftops.
Her bedclothes hung about her ankles, their lace mottling the square of light from the window.
What could be going on outside? Cezette had never seen her Paris become so agitated. Her streets pulsed like veins and her sky seemed to fill with more of man’s stars.
Cezette’s large hazel eyes opened wide, her pupils expanding to twice their size. In particular, she scanned the web-like tracery of metal marking where the Tour D’Eiffel stood, lit from base to tip in lights. Strange it would be so bright, Cezette thought.
Her suspicions were justified; slowly, she began to notice a dimming in all the other lights of the city. They did not go out all at once, but slowly, as if a giant were drawing a curtain over them. Gas lamps flickered as their fuel was drawn away, until they petered out like dying sprites. The Teslaic lights were slow to go, dwindling to star-points before winking out entirely.
So absorbed was Cezette on the scene before her, she did not notice the soft tread of steps on the stair outside her room. As the rectangle of light grew dimmer on her floor, a faint flicker of flame drifted in from the crack of the door, then ceased as its owner snuffed the lantern.
Even as the steps halted outside her meager inch of wood, Cezette stood absolutely still at her perch, peering intensely at the world beyond. Her eyes darted left, they darted right. Yes- the ships were beginning to close in round the cloud, as a hangman’s noose might a guilty soul.
Her small, agile fingers picked out one, two, three, counting the ships in a quarter of the sky.
What had Maman taught her about counting quickly? Yes, multiply by four…. Surely there could be no less than forty small vessels hanging above Paris, and two larger ones as well. They were oddly the same, as if popped out of the same madeleine pan. She could make out the blue, red, and white of the livery, though she was far too young to understand what they meant.
Slowly, quietly, the door to Cezette’s room swung open on oiled hinges.
In the narrow room, it would have made some noise against the edge of Cezette’s bed, but the opener stopped it just clear of the iron posts.
Cezette did not turn round. Something was happening! The cloud had not moved, but the ships were now well organized into triangles of five or six. A phalanx, Cezette remembered, from a book on the Romans. It was how they had conquered the world, even the land of Gaul she was perched atop right this moment. Such a formation hanging in the sky seemed godlike to a small girl. She could not begin to guess what held those mountains of metal aloft, but she could gasp and exclaim silently as four of them flew over her room in a gale of wind. She could hear the faint howl of their engines and feel a slight tang in the air at their passing. It held her rapt.
Her nose was just touching the glass when the first reports shook the air- the ships were firing into the cloud. Cezette gave a backwards hop of shock at the first thunderous fusillade, but the other occupant of the room did not move a muscle.
In the center of the room, the sight of airships lighting up the sky did not reach, and neither was the shock of vibration great enough to cause alarm.
It certainly did not dissuade a person so rapt on the sight of Cezette’s tiny ankles peeking out of her bedclothes, her shoulders ivory in their thin sheath of fabric.
Cezette recovered from her shock, pressing as far she dared against the shivering glass. Every cannon shook the frame a little, and the combined report of many rocked the thin pane like a concerto.
She could see them- yes, every single one of them! Each time the points of light rocketed from the ships into the cloud, she felt the corresponding shake against the glass.
She had read, of course, of sound traveling at a far inferior velocity to light, but only now could she place book learning in the real world- in the skies of her Paris, no less! The epiphany shook her, but it was an epiphany without context. Why were the ships firing into the eldritch cloud? Was there some hidden enemy inside?
It was just as she was thinking the experience felt like cowering before a storm, when everything changed. Real thunder held no candle to this fusillade, Cezette was thinking, but as if Thor wished it otherwise, there came a sudden snap of light. Cezette blinked- there was no choice about it, as her wide-open eyes would have burned at the sight. When she looked back through the echo of brilliance, she saw at once a new light in the sky. In horror, Cezette looked on as a burning phalanx of airships fell from the heavens, directly into the Seine in a plume of smoke and steam.
“What…” Cezette murmured in high-pitched French, but she could do no more.
It was at this moment a hairy palm placed itself over her small mouth, muffling any ejaculation she might have made. Another wound itself around her slim waist, and suddenly she was airborne. Dimly, she thought one of the dirigibles had lifted her away from her little room over the Rue Fremicourt; then the smell of cheap champagne and bad cheese filled her nostrils, replacing fresh horror with old dread. She had smelled this most nights since Maman had gone, and inside the little world between her ears she was already chastising herself for becoming so lax in her vigil.
With a whump of fabric, Cezette found herself thrown breathless back into bed. She tried to get up, but her arms were held fast by iron vices. Something prickly and warm was pushing up her bedclothes.
As with every night it happened, Cezette fought. On nights when she was on her guard, she would have been hiding in any number of spots- the wardrobe, under the bed, one fortunate time even on the edge of the roof outside. A lock on the sill had put a stop to it, but she would make every effort not to be found, usually with some small degree of success. When she ran out of hiding places, she tried to run away, only to find all her clothes gone from her wardrobe. There was only one option, which Cezette exercised anew: she bit, she scratched, tore the iron from her bed as an improvised weapon. There is nothing so humiliating, and nothing so noble, as when something precious is defended in futility.
Outside, the sky was immolating.
Acrid trails of smoke streaked over Paris, settling as the gaseous steam coalesced to become a nauseous rain. Statues cried black as if in mourning. France’s sons were dying above her, burning inside hulks of metal and wood and canvas. Her denizens had long been evacuated from the streets, but they looked on from shelters far away, able to witness the holocaust over the well-planned boulevards of the city. They cried as the corpses of dirigibles fell onto their homes, covered their eyes at each new serpent of lightning coming from the deadly cloud. They screamed as the paintings burned in the museums. No formation remained; ships dipped and swerved in the sky, anxious to dodge the death all around them.
Then, a new horror; the cloud was moving. It was slow, but it moved purposefully, tracking across the sky with no observable cause. Still, the flashes of light streaked from the depths of its hidden core, striking jaggedly towards the dirigibles still hounding its fringes. It was penetrating the phalanxes like they weren’t even there. They were feeble blows at the flanks of a giant.
Meanwhile, in the little room above the Rue Fremicourt, Cezette Louissaint was screaming. Her bedclothes were now torn lace on the floor of the room, and her slim ankles were being pressed slowly, inevitably apart. Her knees kept snapping together, but she was tiring. Her wrists were already bruised. It would only be a matter of time, Cezette was sure. Tonight would be like all the other nights; when the strength fled her limbs, the end would be hellish but brief.
It wasn’t the pain, of course. It was the feeling of sweat on her, a sheen of slime and dirt she could not wash away. Cezette would give anything to be able to scrub out
the film of filth, the sense of worthlessness, of being an object to be handled by another. Instead there was despair. She felt one of these nights the strength of her mind might fail as her limbs failed, and she would not even have the grit to kick out as she was doing now. Even as the thought overtook her mind, she suddenly felt her knees go limp, and the weight held so desperately aloft began to descend.
“No!” Cezette screamed, once, in desperation. Volga would not intervene. She had never intervened. Nobody else would be able to hear Cezette. Each time she held out some desperate hope of rescue, of escape. Above all, she hoped beyond hope her Maman would appear over the bed, kicking and scratching.
It was then she saw the Tour, gleaming still outside her window. If she hadn’t struggled in a particular direction, kicked in a particular way, she would never have seen it. Cezette saw. She saw the way every other light had been snuffed, yet the Tour remained.
It stood brightly, and for one moment Cezette felt if she could reach the garden at its feet she would be safe. She would be safe in Maman’s warm, charcoal-streaked arms once more, in a bubble nobody could breach.
It was the one thought able to make her draw back her legs and let the disgusting weight drop. Then she kicked out, both feet at once, in the space of a split second.
Her right heel smashed into something soft, and she felt it crush against bone. Something screamed, a deep, feral scream.
Suddenly, miraculously, she was free.
Cezette did not question it- she just felt the weight lift, and the glorious cool air stream over her. She rolled off the bed by instinct, tumbling onto her hurt arms and legs in a scrabbling pile. It wasn’t possible to think- she only had one thing in her mind, and the thought repeated itself all through her body. Run, Cezette! Run for your life!
The stairs were the hardest, in part because the thunder in the sky was shaking everything badly. Cezette held on to the railing and partially slid along it, desperate to traverse the three floors between her and freedom. When was the last time she had seen the rest of the house? She did not know.
When she tumbled onto a landing and felt the rough carpet against her bottom, she remembered she was naked, and began to look round for something to cover herself. She dared not go into the other rooms; Papa would be after her in a moment, and she would have squandered her only chance of escape.
Cezette could only dash along down the stair, and when she saw Papa’s stinking pea coat draped by the entryway, she could have sung.
By now, the fighting had intensified above Cezette Loussaint’s little townhouse.
Ships were darting all over Paris, crashing into homes and shopping districts. The Champs-Elysees was being used as an impromptu dirigible landing strip, but few ships were surviving long enough to set down on the wide boulevard.
L’Arc De Triomphe was completely gone, buckled under the weight of one of the larger ships. The damnable cloud was now hovering directly over the Tour D’Eiffel, setting everything around it ablaze.
Cezette could not know any of this. What she encountered as she stepped barefoot onto the streets of Paris was simply an inferno. Smoke moved in opaque walls through the narrow avenues, cutting her off in poisonous barricades. Her appropriated pea coat went down to her shins, flapping as she sprinted through the deserted paths. At least it was warm for a barely clothed girl, in the flaming streets.
Left and right no longer mattered; she went where she saw an opening, dodging falling debris and crumbling masonry. She had little idea of the direction she was going, only knowing she must put as much distance between herself and what lay behind her. Finally, finally she had escaped! Now she could wash this filth off of her once and for all.
Dodging through gardens, climbing over the toppled chairs of cafes and streaking through deserted promenades, Cezette realized she was not entirely lost. Slowly, she was beginning to have a sense of where everything was, even able to guess how the smoke was moving.
Mais oui! It was so obvious! All those nights watching the city had given her a map of everything outside her window. Even with all the chaos raging about her, dirigibles falling on her head and steam chariots overturned in the fountains, there had only ever been one destination. La Tour!
Overhead, the eldritch cloud had moved across the river Seine. Its mass was nearly centered over La Tour D’Eiffel.
Cezette was headed directly into the maelstrom, yet she did not know- nor did she have any alternative. The lanky girl had never been in any other part of the city, not during the years when she might have memorized the streets. Fortuitously, the larger part of the dirigibles had stopped firing, since they had largely been eliminated. The cloud simply halted above the monolith, and ceased its attack.
In the momentary calm, Cezette Louissaint raced through the quieted streets. Her pea coat flashed behind her a desperate pennant held on by her arms as much as the buttons. She could see no other person, but for this she was glad- she had no idea what she might have said, or how she might have found help. There had been precious few to talk to in the Louissaint home, and those who did were invariably too frightened to help her.
Cezette did have one thing going for her- her stamina and health. Endless nights of fighting off a grown man had given her great reservoirs of strength. Had the attack succeeded, she would have been sore, hurting for days. Now, with hope looming over her the only bright thing in a black hell, she found energy returning to her limbs. In the face of so much desolation, it hardly seemed to matter if her feet were cut.
Finally her abused heels touched something different than hard paving- grass! Cezette slowed, her hurts catching up to her, her lungs burning with the smoke and exertion. She had reached the gardens, her Maman’s gardens!
The elation of it filled her with gladness. For a moment, she could hardly believe she was here. Even her arms and legs were covered with soot, charred black just like Maman’s hands.
She flopped onto the soft greenery, lit orange by the Tour’s lamps. The cool vegetation felt cleaner than anything she had ever touched, and even the heat of fire all around her seemed only a purging blaze. She felt scrubbed, new and reborn. Everything was going to be all right. Slowly, she got up and stumbled forward, deeper into the garden. Here and there were topiary and hedges- Maman would have loved to draw the elephants. It was so pleasant, too! Not a single tourist could be seen, not a clack of photograms could be heard.
Cezette found a cool spot between two hedges, culled by gardening into a perfect nook. There was a bench, and a spectacular view of La Tour overhead. The metal soared over Cezette; she imagined it might have reminded adults of their own parents towering. It felt like an impervious guardian, standing there against the backdrop of dusky cloud. Nobody would be able to find her here. She lay herself down and snuggled into the borrowed coat. Even the smell had changed. Now the coat only smelled of fire and vegetation. Slowly, Cezette’s tired limbs relaxed, and she fell into a deep sleep.
And so it was when the light came down from deep within the eldritch cloud, not a soul, not even Cezette Louissaint, could see the glint of metal protruding from the heart of the darkened mass. To everyone in Paris that night, there could only be seen an intense column of brightness, as straight as lightning was jagged, reaching down like the finger of God.
With nothing to challenge it, the finger traced a line all round La Tour D’Eiffel, including within it the gardens, and the promenade along the Seine river.
The Chevaliers and the Marine Nationale troops rushing all along the Champs-Elysees could only watch from the rooftops as the column traveled a complete circuit round the symbol of their nation.
Quietly, majestically, the tower began to rise, carrying one sleeping girl with it.
4.1: For Queen And Country (Hargreaves)
I must admit, playing the flirtatious wench was something of a dilemma. Throwing modesty to the wind, I put on a mummery act with the patrons, not to mention the lecherous bar owner and his mysteriously friendly wife. Every time they grasped
for my gentler portions, one sentence circled round and round behind my eyes. Each spilled pint or unpaid tab drew on a charm I held close to my heart.
I told myself the same thing, over and over again: for Queen and Country.
I know, I know, it is cliché to the point of nausea, the stuff of penny dreadfuls and cheap espionage narrative. Were there better ways to find a lead on this Samuel Clemens, also known as the Steamboat Man? Probably, but for an operative outside the regular hierarchy of the realm, other choices did not present themselves. It seemed worse when I considered my role as Her Majesty’s intelligence personnel may someday contradict my day job: an Inspector, of all things, in Scotland Yard.
Two pips. Two, little, damnable pips.
I suppose it goes back to the beginning. I recall I had just caught the Blackfriar Bludgeoner, the latest upset in a respectable yet unassuming career. The culprit was an ornery stable master, fed up with the steam cabbies taking over all his business and scaring his mares with their incessant conflagrations. He had taken a pair of heavy shoe tongs to a particularly insulting driver, and everything had snowballed from there.
The solution to the case hadn’t even been completely to my merit.
I had had help, only Arturo C. Adler specialized in consultations, not public attention.
Chalk one up to Vanessa Hargreaves, Scotland Yard’s fifth female Inspector, symbol of a changing Britain, only give credit where credit is due, as she didn’t actually solve anything. The case of the Blackfriar Bludgeoner, while not particularly emblematic of my deductive powers, nevertheless propelled me to the attention of a certain Thelonious Thatcher, an alias I suspect has more to do with Her Majesty’s inner circle than British Intelligence.