Iron Pegasus #3:
Harry Gets Her Wings
by Steve Turnbull
Iron Pegasus: Harry Gets Her Wings
By Steve Turnbull
Copyright © 2015 Steve Turnbull. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-910342-34-3
This novella is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without permission of the publisher.
Published by Tau Press Ltd.
Cover art by Steven Novak (novakillustration.com)
Harriet Edgbaston art by Darrel Bevan
Pegasus 3D model by Drew Northcott
For Deanna
i
“I can’t believe it,” said Harry as she tossed another letter with its envelope into the fire. It blazed into cinders that balanced for a moment in the flames, then rocketed up the flue.
Seated in an armchair by the window, Khuwelsa glanced up from her book. Probably another scientific romance penned by Monsieur Verne. Harry had tried them, but they were far too dry.
It was still morning and the sun had not got around to this side of the house. The room was baking from the fire, but Harry needed to get through her correspondence and the fire was the most effective method.
“What can’t you believe?” said Khuwelsa.
“Another proposal of marriage,” Harry said. “Honestly, I have no idea what possesses these people.”
“I imagine it happens to anyone in the public eye.”
“It was another woman.”
Khuwelsa shrugged. “Well, you do have a masculine nom de guerre.”
“Not my idea.”
“Be grateful we’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Imagine what it would be like in London or Manchester.”
Harry kicked the postal sack that had arrived that morning. It keeled over and spilt its contents across the carpet. News of their latest exploits had leaked out and, with gross inaccuracies and pure invention from the members of the press, had been plastered across the broadsheets of England.
“Why did you tell them, Harry?”
“Me? I didn’t tell them.”
“Well, how did they find out?”
Harry shook her head. “I have no idea.” She looked down at the pile at her feet. “It’ll take me forever to get through this lot. I won’t be finished before the next bag arrives.”
“Want some help?”
Harry nodded.
Khuwelsa put down her book, gathered up her skirt and petticoats, and came over. She looked at the pile.
“You need a system,” she said. She rummaged through her pockets and pulled out a notepad with a pencil attached by a string. “We’ll make a list of the types of correspondence and the action to take with each. Then we’ll take each one in turn, determine what it is, and put it in its appropriate pile. Finally we burn them all.”
“If we’re going to burn them all, why are we putting them in piles?” said Harry. “Why not just burn the lot now?”
“I’m curious as to percentages. Besides, you may decide to answer some of them. And there might be something important; perhaps Her Gracious Majesty would like to see you?”
Harry laughed.
“Or,” said Khuwelsa. “Perhaps the prince would like to marry you?”
Harry pulled a face. “He’s ancient and ugly.”
“He’s a prince.”
“And he’s married.”
“He has mistresses, he might want to add you to his harem.”
Harry made a disapproving noise and glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was just past ten thirty. “We have a lesson at eleven.”
“All right,” said Khuwelsa as she settled on the floor next to the letters. She wetted the tip of the pencil with her tongue and held the notepad at the ready. “What sorts of correspondence do you receive? Marriage proposals.” She scribbled on the pad.
Harry picked up the next one, studied then sniffed it. “Smells of cigars, the hand pressed hard when writing the address, and it is angular. Angry.”
Khuwelsa frowned. “Angry?”
Harry sighed. “Yes, some of them are not very complimentary.”
Khuwelsa snatched it from her, tore it open and scanned the contents. “Evil man,” she hissed. “You shouldn’t read these.”
“I get them from women too.”
Her sister wadded up the letter and tossed it in the fire.
“I thought were categorising and making piles.”
“Those go straight in the fire as soon as we know what they are,” said Sellie. “What else?”
Harry picked a thicker and larger envelope from the selection. “This one will be a business requesting an endorsement of their product.” She tore it open. “Lady Lovely, support wear for the beautiful woman.”
Khuwelsa laughed. “Are they offering money?”
Harry scanned the letter. “No, just free supplies.”
“We’ll make a category for business offers,” said Khuwelsa, jotting down the name. She tapped on the table. “Put that here. If we get one that wants to give you money we will address it more seriously.”
“I’m not sure how Dad will feel about that.”
Sellie shrugged. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”
Harry picked the next item. “Marriage proposal—oh, this one has a photograph.” She giggled and handed it to her sister, who pulled a face.
“What do you want to do about these ones?” she said. “Do you want to reply?”
“If I do, it might encourage them.”
“If you don’t, they’ll probably keep trying.”
“We could do a form letter,” said Harry. “Miss Edgbaston thanks you for your kind consideration; however, she feels she is far too young to be contemplating marriage at this time. ”
Sellie giggled. “Unless you have an annual income in excess of ten thousand pounds. In which case please come straight over.”
Harry laughed. Khuwelsa noted down the new category and action to go with it.
“We should probably return their photographs.”
“Yes,” said Harry after a slight hesitation.
“What?”
“Occasionally they have no clothes on.”
Sellie was aghast. “Really?”
Harry nodded. She could feel her face reddening.
“Any of them look nice?” asked Khuwelsa.
“Sellie!”
“Well, a girl can be interested, can’t she?” she said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“Sometimes,” Harry said in a very small voice.
“You should let me check those for suitability. And then we’ll throw them in the fire.”
Sellie made notes. “Let’s move on.”
“Letters from admirers,” said Harry. “These are in the majority.”
“Form letter acknowledgement. Next.”
“Business opportunities.”
“Same as endorsements.”
“No, these are people asking me to put money into business ventures.”
Khuwelsa pulled a face again. “They can go in the fire after being checked.”
“People wanting charity.”
Sellie looked at her sister. “You can’t.”
Harry’s heart felt heavy. “I know. I mean we don’t even have any money to give. But it seems so heartless.”
“Most of them will be chancers.”
Harry nodded. “I feel like I should apologise.”
“No,” said Sellie. “No apology, not even an acknowledgement.”
“Well, that covers everything.”
Sellie wrote out signs and ripped the pages from her notepad. She laid them on the floor; then she and Harry went through the post. They managed to identify most of the angry people from the envelopes, and Sellie merely confirmed the contents before disposing of each letter.
They found they required one additional category: for genuine letters that required a reply.
Then the door slammed open, and Mrs Hemingway stood in the doorway, fuming.
“I believe you are overdue for my lesson.”
ii
Later Khuwelsa lay beneath the Pegasus and held out her right hand. “Small pliers.”
She kept a tight grip on the ends of the wires in her left hand. There was a pause longer than she liked; she knew Harry would take a moment to figure out what she needed. It was not that Harry was not clever. In fact Khuwelsa agreed entirely with Mrs Hemingway on this point.
Harry just didn’t seem to try very hard. She was always a bit distracted.
Khuwelsa, on the other hand, drove herself despite Mrs Hemingway never disguising her disapproval of having to teach “the black girl”. Sellie never expected to get any word of encouragement from their tutor, so she was never disappointed.
The heavy metal of the pliers fell into her hand. Khuwelsa focused on the wires in front of her. Their father, Jonathan Edgbaston, had cut off their pocket money again. It was the only pressure he could bring to bear since they were both too old to be spanked. So, she had spent the last few days tinkering with some left-overs in the workshop and turning them to a new use.
Like the old Faraday grid she had picked up from one of the old plantation tractors.
Decisions about adding more equipment to the Pegasus were always difficult. Despite the gravity reduction, more weight was still an additional burden; if she added it in one place she really needed to take it away elsewhere. So the benefit of wrapping this old grid around the existing fuselage had to be balanced against the additional weight.
The problem was that Faraday grids did not add to one another. The best modern grid cancelled all but a quarter of the weight of anything above it. But if you put one grid on top of another and energised them both it was still one quarter, not a quarter of a quarter.
Nobody knew why. She had tried it herself, of course, but the experiment just proved what every engineer knew to be true. There were stories, of course; even Jules Verne had written De la Terre à la Lune ten years before the first ill-fated trip into the Void. In Verne’s story, the inventor had succeeded in achieving complete nullification of gravity.
“We should be so lucky,” said Khuwelsa to no one in particular.
“What?” said Harry.
“Nothing.”
“What exactly are you doing?”
“Increasing the coverage of the Faraday effect so we can turn tighter without gaining weight.”
“That’ll be useful.”
Khuwelsa tightened up the electrical connection with the pliers. She would have to come back and solder it later. Along with the dozens of other ones. It was going to be a long job. She replaced the cover and slid out from under the ship. Harry gave her a hand up and pulled her into a sitting position.
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic about my improvements.”
Harry looked pointedly across towards the front of the house. A line of steam-powered cars were puffing up the gravel drive. “Looks like we’re going to be spending the weekend skulking in our rooms again.”
“Dad didn’t say he was having guests this weekend.”
“Must be trouble.”
“Well, we’re grounded.”
“It’s all right for you; you’ll just curl up with a book.”
“You could.”
Harry sighed. “I’d rather be flying.”
Khuwelsa reached out and took her sister’s pale hand in her own black one. She squeezed it. Harry just stared at the house. Sellie squeezed really hard.
“Ow!” said Harry. “What did you do that for?”
“Just trying to cheer you up.”
“With pain?”
“Got to be better than melancholy.” Sellie got up on her knees and poked Harry in the midriff.
“Ow.”
Sellie poked again. Harry tried to bat her hand away but missed. Khuwelsa went all-out on a poking attack. Harry defended, but at least half of Sellie’s pokes got through. Harry fell back into a flowerbed and rolled under the outstretched wing of the Pegasus. She tried to suppress her giggles, failed, and burst out laughing, but Sellie was remorseless in her attack.
Harry laughed and laughed. Khuwelsa grinned and kept up her relentless onslaught of poking fingers even though Harry’s defence was in ruins and she could not see for the tears running down her face.
“Pax!” shrieked Harry. “Please! Pax!”
Sellie sat back on her heels, still grinning.
“I hate you,” said Harry, though the grin on her face as she struggled out of the bushes belied her statement. “And I’ll get you back.”
Their moment did not last.
“Quite honestly, Miss Edgbaston, I despair.” The highly strung wire that was Mrs Hemingway stood near the tail of the Pegasus with her arms crossed. Her hair piled high on her head gave her that extra height with which to dominate them (at least in theory).
Not that she needed it, thought Sellie, as she was quite a tall woman. Harry was only average height while Mrs Hemingway looked down on most men, both literally and figuratively.
Perhaps that’s why she remained single.
Harry stood and brushed some of the dirt from the front of her dress.
Mrs Hemingway shook her head. “You are not a child any more, Miss Edgbaston, you are a young woman and the sooner you behave appropriately the sooner you will find a husband.”
“Yes, Mrs Hemingway,” said Harry.
Khuwelsa rocked back on her heels and stood in one fluid motion. Mrs Hemingway was not addressing her, of course. There was no reason for Khuwelsa to behave in any fashion resembling that of a proper young woman because she would not be attracting a husband.
Except perhaps one of the men working on the plantation.
From Mrs Hemingway’s viewpoint, as soon as Harry was married off, Sellie could be dispensed with as a companion. Not that Harry thought that way, but every right-thinking British lady would come to the same conclusion.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit, Mrs Hemingway?” said Harry. “If it’s to tell us to keep clear of my father’s guests we had already assumed as much.”
Mrs Hemingway frowned. “Your assumption is completely incorrect. Your father requests your attendance at luncheon.”
“What?”
Mrs Hemingway sighed. “Really, Harriet, you cannot say what. If you have truly misheard then the correct phrase is I beg your pardon.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said you must not say what…”
At which point she broke off with a look of powerless fury in her eyes. Khuwelsa turned away and hid her laughter in a cough.
“You will return to the house, clean yourself up, put on something respectable and present yourself at 1 p.m.” She turned on her heel and flounced off.
Khuwelsa managed to suppress her giggles until Mrs Hemingway was, hopefully, out of earshot before they erupted from her. Harry turned with a look of fake innocence on her face.
“What’s funny?”
Then she dissolved into laughter as well.
iii
Khuwelsa straightened her skirt for the umpteenth time and took a deep breath. Mrs Hemingway had insisted they take baths, which was not a problem, and then that they wore their best day dresses. Which was a problem because the only way they could get into them was to climb into the corsetry t
hey preferred to avoid.
Not that Mrs Hemingway had given any instructions directly to Sellie herself, but since neither had she been forbidden it meant that she was also required to go to luncheon.
Sellie loved Jonathan Edgbaston, even though he wasn’t her real father. He was never unkind, except when he was telling her off—and when that happened he would almost certainly be telling Harry off as well. He was genuinely unaffected by the colour of her skin.
Unlike everyone else, and that wasn’t just the Europeans. Even her own people reacted badly to her much of the time. She was seen as unfairly privileged. If other natives couldn’t have what she had, why should she be allowed it at all?
The fact that it was not her decision did not seem to have any bearing on the matter.
Honestly Harry had nothing to worry about. At least she had a place in the world, while the only place Khuwelsa had was standing three paces behind her sister.
Khuwelsa looked down the long curving staircase and then back at Harry, who looked just as nervous as she. Mrs Hemingway had not been invited and that was another reason she had been in such a foul mood.
“Ready?” said Harry.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Harry gave two short whistles and one long one: Attack dive. Sellie grinned, they linked arms, and as one they set off down into the hall.
The butler opened the door and they entered the morning room. The gazes of ten men turned on them. Five wore uniforms; Khuwelsa recognised both Navy and army. Of the others, three were in well-tailored suits and the final one was Mr Edgbaston. He was the only one who smiled.
“I thought they were chaps.” The sotto voce whisper reverberated around the room. It was one of the military types, a fellow sporting a handlebar moustache on a face puffed and red from an over-indulgence in alcohol.
“My daughters, gentlemen,” said their father. Khuwelsa’s heart melted again. She loved it when he said that in front of people who would not only disapprove of her, but also of him for saying it.
Harry made a beeline for him and Sellie followed.
Harry gets Her Wings (Iron Pegasus Book 3) Page 1