Brilliant Devices

chapter 22



Andrew Malvern had been dancing with Davina when the pressure wave engulfed the Margrethe, sending them both sideways and toppling over a potted plant. He had managed to roll so that her ladyship’s slender form landed on him rather than the other way round, to be followed immediately afterward by a shower bath from the punch bowl, which circled away under a table after it had deposited its contents upon them both.

His first thought, while picking orange slices off her ladyship, was for Claire, his second for Alice. Since then, both those thoughts had remained uppermost and urgent in his mind as he tried to find them in the chaos.

Then, out of a porthole, he had a glimpse of Claire—no longer in evening dress, and with the lightning rifle out and ready, tearing across the field with the Mopsies—which galvanized him into action. He had left the young officer he was tending to the medic who had finally arrived, and sprinted after Claire, only to lose her in the shouting, panicked crowd at the gates of the mine.

Then, to his horror, he heard a man’s name taken up with chants of “Hang him!” and realized who the man in the middle of the crowd must be. Tall, blond, one eye, and with the same wide mouth and firm chin—it could only be Alice’s father.

“Get Isobel!” Chalmers shouted into the screaming crowd—and a second later, Andrew tripped over a pair of booted feet and fell to his hands and knees with bone-jarring force.

“All right, sir?” Someone hauled him up by one arm. Someone with a familiar voice.

“Jake?” He got to his feet to see that the crowd had moved on, dragging Chalmers deeper into the circle of buildings. “Jake, what is going on? Is that Alice’s father?”

“It is. They’re going t’blame the explosion on ’im and ’ang ’im for it. I just saw T’Lady run off—I ’ope she’s gone t’fetch ’elp.”

“Is she all right? I must find her.”

“Ent nowt you c’n do fer her, but you c’n give me a hand.”

“Jake, you don’t understand—she will be hurt.”

“The Lady?” The boy snorted with derision. “Not likely. She’s armed and in a fine uproar of a temper. Don’t you worry about ’er—worry about yer own self. She gave me a job and I can’t do it and do wot Alice’s dad said, too. You gots to ’elp me.”

Was he ever to be useful to Claire on this benighted journey? How was she to see him as a man she could trust with her life and future if she kept leaving him behind to go and save people? Andrew reined his emotions in with an act of will and focused on the boy in front of him, whose desperate eyes belied the curl still on his lip.

“All right, then. What can I do?”

“The Lady bid me follow Alice’s dad and report back to ’er when I found out where they’re goin’ wiv ’im. But he needs someone t’find that Isobel Churchill, and I reckon that’s you.”

“I heard him shout. But why—”

“Dunno, and it don’t matter. A desperate man shouts for ’er, seems a bloke ought t’find ’er.”

Privately, Andrew thought that a desperate man might call a woman’s name if he were having a love affair with her and wanted to see her one last time before he met his doom, but that was none of his business. “Right. I shall do that, and bring her … where?”

“You ought’nt to ’ave much trouble ’earing where ’e is, ’specially if they’re to ’ang ’im. Folks tend to get loud on such occasions.”

“I trust you have not learned this from experience?”

“Mr. Malvern, sir, wiv all due respect, we ent got time.”

“Quite right. To the Skylark, then, as quick as may be.”

Andrew had only had the briefest glimpse of Isobel Churchill this evening on the Margrethe. He had wanted to ask her to dance, but by the time he had screwed his courage up to the sticking point, he could no longer see her among the dancers or at the buffet. And after the explosion, he did not remember seeing her at all.

When danger threatened, it seemed logical that a woman would take her only child and flee to safety. He would begin with the Skylark.

She did not even have a crewman posted at the base of the steps. “Mrs. Churchill?” he called as he emerged onto the lower deck. “Mrs. Churchill, are you here?”

Peony dropped down the gangway from B deck and landed lightly in front of him. “Mr. Malvern, what a surprise.”

“Miss Churchill, this is no social call. They’re about to hang Frederick Chalmers for sabotage and he is calling foris size=" your mother. Is she here?”

Peony’s flushed cheeks drained of all color. “That can’t be true.”

“I heard it myself. Time is of the essence. Is your mother here?”

“Yes.” She turned and climbed the gangway as nimbly as she had come down it, seeing as she was wearing riding breeches. “She’s sending a pigeon.” He resolutely did not look at the unusual view of a woman in breeches as he leaped up the steps after her. “Mama! Come at once!”

But she did not come. Instead, Peony ran to the stern of the trim little gondola, where they found Isobel Churchill seated on a sandbag, writing furiously, a pigeon with its hold open lying at her feet.

“Mama, they are going to hang Frederick Chalmers for sabotage, and he bids you come at once!”

Isobel signed her name with a flourish, folded the still-wet paper, and stuffed it into the pigeon. A few taps of her fingers embedded the magnetic coordinates of its destination in its small engine. She released it from the nearest porthole with a shove that caused its wings to spring open and catch the night wind as it soared upward.

“I told him to go,” she said in a voice like steel. “As soon as I saw him walk into the salon, I told him Skylark would escort his daughter and meet him in Edmonton if he would only leave at once, but no. He had to do this himself. Had to reveal himself in front of all our enemies, and now all is lost.”

Andrew did not understand, but he did not need to. “He is asking for your help, Mrs. Churchill. He, and the two young Esquimaux men who were taken with him.”

Her eyes blazed. “He has dragged them into it, too?” Her laugh cut the air like an axe. “If he survives this and they do not, he will answer to Malina’s mother, the priestess. They are her youngest sons.”

Why on earth was this woman not—in the Texican parlance—saddling up and moving out? “Will you come to his aid, or no?”

“There are bigger things at stake here than you have any idea of, young man. Frederick Chalmers has been one of the best friends the Esquimaux Nation has ever known, but even he would tell you that the good of the village comes before the good of the individual. He has gone into this recklessly, acting from the heart and not the head, and has put hundreds of people in danger.”

She reached for the airman’s coat lying on the sandbag, and Andrew realized with something of a shock that she had also divested herself of her green ballgown some time earlier, and was now clothed in breeches, boots, and shirt.

“Come, Peony. I shall tell Captain Aniq we lift in five minutes.”

“But Mama—”

“Do not argue. We cannot go charging in there with no weapons and no information and expect to save his life. But we can save the village, if the pigeon gets there and they lift before that mob decides there are more saboteurs where he came from.”

Peony turned to Andrew as her mother went forward, presumably to command the engineers to fire up the boiler in preparation for lift. “I am sorry. I would help if I could.”

“What did she mean about the village lifting? There were no airships there—I saw the place myself. And what part does Frederick Chalmers play in the lives of the Esquimaux? She made it sound as if they were a government—a country.”

“Why, they are.” Peony gazed at him in some surprise. “He has been liaison between Her Majesty’s government and the Esquimaux Nation these seven years at least. Why do you think the Dunsmuirs have permission to mine here?”

“I understood they own this land.”

“Ownership is a foreign concept to the Esquimaux, as is the European fascination with diamonds. It is more of a … partnership with Lady Dunsmuir. Which is, of course, utterly unacceptable to certain business interests on this continent.”

“Colonial interests.”

She twinkled at him. “My, my, Mr. Malvern. Your quick mind will get you into trouble one of these days.”

“I hope it will get Frederick Chalmers out of it. I am going back to do my best to assist him.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “Be safe. Tell him I am sorry. And give my regards to Claire. I do not know when we shall see one another again.”


For a moment, Alice could not place the tiny, muffled sound. Then she realized it was poor Maggie’s teeth chattering.

“Dearling, come close to me.” She sat on the stone steps where they gave onto the narrow corridor chipped out of frozen ground and granite. “Lizzie, you too.” She lifted the voluminous folds of her turquoise gown and wrapped the fabric around both girls, folding them in close like a mother hen with her chicks. “I should have gone to the Lass and changed out of this silly rig.”

“You weren’t thinkin’ of clothes at the time,” Maggie said with some sympathy. “Besides, all these petticoats is warm.”

“Do you think Claire was able to fetch the earl?” Down here, with only a thin yellow ribbon of electricks for light, she was cut off—buried as surely as any corpse in a grave. And for so long a time, it seemed eternity had passed.

Alice wobbled dangerously close to losing hope. “I’m going to give her another five minutes and then I’m going up there myself.”

“Wot ’ud you do?” Lizzie asked from within her turquoise-and-lace cloak. “Come to fisticuffs wiv that lot?”

“No, but I have a set of lock picks and I know how to use them.”

“Right, and they’ll ’ave left ’em unguarded.”

Alice exhaled in lieu of snapping at the child. “How can someone so small know so much about lockups?”

“Did the Lady ever tel Lang l you about Dr. Craig, and ’ow we broke ’er out of Bedlam?”

And she made the mistake of saying, “No,” and some while later when the two of them wrapped up their tale, Alice realized that the little scamps had actually made her forget what they were all doing there.

“Tell ’er about the time Lewis rescued all our poor ’ens off that barge, Liz,” Maggie said. Lizzie opened her mouth to do so when they heard a thump from the ground above them.

“Sssh! Wot were that?” Lizzie hissed instead.

“And which way did it come from?” Alice whispered.

Now they could hear a commotion—boots and angry voices and what sounded like fists landing.

“There!” Maggie pointed down the corridor. “The next set o’ steps, I’m sure of it.”

The girls scrambled out of the silken embrace of Alice’s skirts and all three ran down the corridor. Maggie was right—as they climbed the steps, they could hear snatches of people talking. Or shouting, more like.

“Leave them here,” an imperious female voice said quite clearly through the panels of the hidden door at the top of the steps. “My father and Mr. Penhaven will be along shortly to deal with the nasty miscreants. He plans to give them a fair trial, right there in the boardroom.”

“We’ll give ’em fair!”

“Just as fair as they gave our boys on the digger—a long dance on a short rope!”

“But the earl’s dressing room, Miss Meriwether-Astor?” said a calmer voice, more worried. “Is that quite proper?”

Meriwether-Astor? Alice’s mind felt like an unmanned dirigible being batted around by high winds. Where had the girl come from? And what did it mean that she was doing exactly as Claire had said? How could she? She was their enemy’s daughter!

So where were Claire and the earl? Had something gone dreadfully wrong?

Mumbletythump! A body landed against the door, then another a little distance away. And a third beyond that. Someone groaned right next to the panel against which Alice pressed her ear, and it was all she could do not to jerk back and send herself tumbling down the steps.

“Oh, yes. Why should they have the dignity of a drawing room, or even an office? A latrine is good enough for them.”

“I’d say so. Nothing but dung, they are!”

“Hey, don’t insult good dung!” Raucous laughter greeted this witticism.

“Come along, gentlemen. If you will arrange the boardroom and see that this door is securely locked, with a guard posted outside it and outside the window, I will inform my father that his wishes have been carried out.”

“Right you are, miss. Careful. Don’t step in the blood and spoil your pretty dancing shoes.”

“Thank you, Alan. You are the kind of gentleman I desentstep in paired of ever meeting in these parts.”

The door slammed, and the lock turned over.

Alice took a breath and listened. Nothing moved on the other side.

Oh, please don’t let him be dead. Please. I’ve only had a day …

She leaned gently on the lever next to the panel and the door eased open toward her, allowing a crack of light through from the electricks in the dressing room.

The man on the other side sucked in a breath through his nose, no doubt thinking he was suffering from both nausea and vertigo.

Perhaps he was.

Through the crack, she got a glimpse of matted blond hair.

“Pa?” she whispered. “Pa, can you hear me?”

He stirred, and clutched his arm against his ribs. “Alice?” he breathed. “Where are you?”

“There’s a movable panel behind you. We’ve come to get you out. Easy now, not so fast. The steps go straight down.”

“But what—I don’t understand.”

“We’re breaking you out of gaol, Pa. But you have to be quiet. Rouse the other boys and come away quick, before they decide to check to see if you’re dead.”

“I think Alignak might be hurt. Ribs. And Tartok took a pretty bad hit to the head. He’s out cold.”

“What about you?”

“I’m fine.” Gasping, he pulled himself to his feet while Alice swung the panel open.

He was not fine. But it was brave of him not to show it.

She wriggled out of her topmost petticoat. What a lucky thing both she and Claire had lots of them, with multiple flounces of gathered eyelet. At the rate they were going, they’d use every yard for bandages before they got away from this inhospitable country.

“Girls, take this to the bottom of the steps. I want it ripped into strips by the time we get the men down. We’ll patch them up as best we can. Then we’ll have to hoof it before Penhaven and his bunch come back and find the room empty.”

Alignak had heard their whispered exchange and was already on his feet by the time Alice poked her head into the next latrine compartment. He limped out and went immediately to the third one.

“Tartok sleeps,” he whispered, his sloe-black eyes worried. “A demon sleep.”

“Demons made him that way, that’s certain,” Alice whispered back. “Pa, can you lift him with just one arm?”

“Yes.”

Alice helped him shoulder the young man and bit back a cry when she saw her father lose all color and gasp in pain. But he said not a word. He maneuvered Tartok through the opening and took the steps carefully. Alignak followed right behind, holding his ribs as if trying to keep them in place.

Alice brought up the rear and closed and fastened the door. If only there were a way to block it! But thock place.

Only cold silence, and the yellow ribbon of electrick light fading into the distance.

A click sounded above them, at the top of the steps leading to her ladyship’s dressing room. Alice fell to her knees as her father put Tartok down, and began binding up wounds as fast as Lizzie could hand her the torn strips of eyelet. Maggie went up to investigate.

“Lady!” Alice heard her whisper. “Come quick!”

“Do you have them?” came Claire’s quiet voice.

“Aye. That Meriwether-whatsis mort ’ad ’em put right where you said.”

“Are they hurt?”

“Aye. Come away down, Lady. We gots to get out of ’ere.”