New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam - By Elizabeth Bear

Lucifugous
(March, 1899)

The zeppelin Hans Glücker left Calais at 9:15 in the evening on a cold night in March, 1899, bound for New Amsterdam, the jewel of British North America. Don Sebastien de Ulloa, known to the Continent as the great detective, passed his departure on the promenade, watching the city lights recede through blurring isinglass. He amused himself by taking inventory of his fellow passengers while enjoying the aroma of a fairly good cognac.

The Hans Glücker was nearly empty, aside from cargo. So empty, in fact, that Sebastien wondered if she would not have delayed her Atlantic voyage for want of passengers if she were not also a mail dispatch and carrying diplomatic papers. Her capacity was over sixty, but this trip she bore only fourteen.

The longest-term travelers were a couple who had been with the airship since Shanghai, Mr. Cui Jioahua and his wife, Zhang Xiaoming. They had passage as far as the Spanish settlement of San Diego, on the west coast of North America, where they intended to join family—if the intersection of their limited Arabic and German and Sebastien's equally flawed Cantonese could be trusted.

It seemed a tremendous journey, but the trans-Siberian and then trans-Atlantic route by airship was actually faster and more secure than the month one might expect to spend on a steamer east across the Pacific. Mr. Cui was willing to risk his household furnishings to the pirates infesting the Windward Isles, but, being of a practical bent, he was not willing to risk his own life or that of his lovely wife.

Another six comprised a touring group of five Colonials and one European that had been with the Hans Glücker since Ukraine. The touring group, which had boarded in Kyiv after traveling by rail from Moscow, were all plainly well-acquainted already, and what with one casually overheard conversation and another, Sebastien had pieced together a good deal about them. The eldest passenger, though by a few years only, was Madame Pontchartrain, a stout, gray-eyed matron enroute to her family's estate in French Mississippi by way of New Amsterdam. She accompanied a young Colonial relative of apparently impeccable breeding and small estate, a Mademoiselle LeClere, who said she was travelling home to Nouvelle Orleans. The resemblance between them was strong enough that Sebastien thought Madame Pontchartrain must have been a very great beauty in her youth. He also thought them lucky that the Hans Glücker's route—new the previous September—spared them a trip by rail across the interior of the North American continent. Various treaties with the Native nations would have made it possible, but far more rigorous and perilous than a modern journey by air.

Next was Oczkar Korvin, an aristocratic Hungarian with hair as dark as Sebastien's and an equally patrician bearing. A platinum chain leashed his pocket watch, and though he had the sallow Habsburg coloring, he was undisfigured by the famous deformed jaw. A collateral branch, no doubt.

The loveliest of the group was also the most famous. She traveled with an entourage and claimed three cabins. Dressed outrageously in a man's suit and cravat, Lillian Meadows, the American moving picture star, crossed her ankle over her knee and smoked Virginia cigarettes in a long tortoiseshell-and-jet holder, gesturing extravagantly with fingers studded with sapphires and diamonds. She was returning to Atlanta—where the studios were—from a European junket. Her white-blonde hair had been arranged in delicate waves around jeweled pins, and the English couple—who like Sebastien had boarded at Calais—avoided her.

One of her traveling companions was a man nearly as beautiful as she was, and also blond. He wore his darker gold hair slicked back against his skull, a handlebar moustache accentuating planed cheekbones and a defined jaw. His name was Virgil Allen, and he was a wealthy farmer's son from South Carolina, and a playboy by reputation.

The other was a woman, the Boston authoress Phoebe Smith. She a fair-haired, bespectacled, sensible small woman with a stubborn tilt to her head, straight-spined in widow's black that did not suit her, her hands usually folded before her. She carried a little bag with a black paper-bound note-pad and fountain-pen, and every so often she would take them up and scribble a line.

A further six passengers had boarded at Calais. Two were Sebastien and his companion, Jack Priest, who presented every appearance of being a young man of excellent family. In truth, his breeding was no better than Sebastien's. But—also like Sebastien's—his education was unparalleled, and a work in constant progress. He was seventeen years old and looked fifteen, with delicate bones and tousled fair hair like a girl's.

Three and four were Michiel and Steven van Dijk, Dutch businessmen travelling only as far as New Amsterdam, where even under English colonial rule there was still a thriving Dutch community. Michiel was the elder, fortyish, round-cheeked under graying, wavy fair hair, and plump without seeming heavy—as light on his feet as if he was filled with the same hydrogen that bore up the dirigible. Steven—pronounced stay-van—was taller and younger and also plump, his dark hair cropped short, his cheeks usually flushed and his eyes glittering with good cheer. He kept a green miniature parrot in his cabin, or occasionally on his shoulder, and Jack was instantly enamored of them both.

And the final two—the ones who seemed determined to avoid all of the Colonials, both the British colonials and the Frenchwomen—were a couple in their twenties. Hollis and Beatrice Leatherby were Londoners moving house to take advantage of a political appointment in the Pennsylvania colony, where an ambitious young man could advance faster than in Albion. She was darkly lovely while he was a freckled redhead: a striking pair.

Sebastien learned those things easily enough. Observation was a long-honed habit, though he intended merely a minor distraction for the hours until he could decently be seen to retire. The journey overland had not been easy and Jack had been delayed, only joining him in Calais that afternoon. Sebastien could not afford to be seen in good light until they had had a few minutes alone.

And so, from his solitary post at the dark end of the promenade, away from the too-revealing electric lights, Sebastien observed the other passengers and watched Jack.

Jack held court forward along the promenade, his admirers a potential source of amusement or inconvenience. He was drinking champagne rather than liquor, but his laughter told Sebastien enough about his conversation with Steven van Dijk and the Leatherbys to swamp that raft of faint reassurance in a sea of potential tribulations. He would flirt. And right now he was flirting with Mrs. Leatherby, immediately under her husband's oblivious eye—and sparing a little charm for van Dijk, as well.

Sebastien cupped his glass before his face, and pretended to taste the cognac. The sharp, drowning scent was good. It blunted his hunger, which threatened to grow overwhelming, and the snifter gave him something to occupy hands that wanted to tremble with desire.

The social dance was not distracting him tonight. He could feel it in the cut-glass edge on his senses, the heaviness of limbs that would transform into mercurial quickness when he required it. Too much more and his restraint would fail. He'd waited too long.

Discipline was always a matter of degree to such as Sebastien, and it had required a certain subterfuge and sleight of hand to free himself of old friends and allies. That alone had consumed days. His court would be

displeased when they came to understand that he had abandoned them.

He would be missed, and their protests would have carried the day if he

had paused to listen; Sebastien de Ulloa was notoriously too soft-hearted. But he could not remain in Europe. It held no savor for him now, and boredom and sorrow were ever more dangerous adversaries than any merely human agency.

There was some risk in travelling in secret, in shedding his court. He should have left Jack, too. . .but Jack would almost certainly leave him, soon enough (as his proteges always did) and he couldn't travel without an entourage. The rail journey from Helsinki to Calais alone had taxed his strength and ingenuity. But he had needed to be free of Europe, so full of secrets and history, and all of Evie's friends.

He closed his eyes. His restraint would hold through this endless, tiresome evening, and then he would have what he needed. Jack would take care of him. And once he came to the Colonies—well. If he could not make a new beginning in America, then he would find an end.

He opened his eyes again, watching Jack tease and flirt and please himself. Meanwhile, someone was slipping up on him, and Sebastien was meant not to notice. The warm scent of her skin carried over the cognac, though, even if he hadn't observed her movements or heard the scuff of her shoes on the deck. Still, he pretended oblivion, because it amused him to.

It was Mrs. Smith, the blonde American novelist, and he feigned startlement when she touched his arm.

"So intent," she said. "What is it that you see, I wonder?"

Sebastien tipped his untasted glass at Hollis Leatherby. "More than he does, in any case."

She bore a red wine cupped in her hand, the stem falling between her fingers, as if she meant to warm the contents with her palm the same way

Sebastien could not manage to warm his cognac. She smiled, her glasses

lifting as the bridge of her nose crinkled. "Are you certain?"

"My dear lady," Sebastien said, "I am certain of nothing. But I will speculate. And my first speculation concerns a charming American, yes? And her agenda in approaching a sullen stranger at a remarkably boring cocktail party."

"You're a striking man. A mysterious Continental stranger. With a certain notoriety. That's supposed to be enough, isn't it?"

Sebastien shook his head, amused. It had been some time, admittedly, but when last he'd consulted a looking glass, he had been of slightly better than average height (for a modern man) and somewhat swarthy complexion—convenient, as it concealed his frequent pallor—with dark hair, thin lips, and a hooked nose. He had no reason to believe much had changed since then. Passable, certainly; his court had never complained of his ugliness. But striking was quite plainly in the eye of the beholder.

"At least you didn't call me handsome," he replied. "Jack would never let me hear the end of it. But come, now—don't we both prefer honesty, Mrs. Smith?"

She sipped, then swirled the fluid in her glass to release the aromas, and considered him. "Will you treat a lady novelist to a demonstration of your storied powers?"

Ah. Well, that neatly explained why she had sought his darkened, solitary corner. He was material.

And Jack had noticed that Sebastien had company. He caught Sebastien's eye over Beatrice Leatherby's head, offering a little smile that whispered you'll pay later, then turned back to Steven van Dijk and the five-inch-long grass-green bird who perched on Steven's forefinger, eyeing Jack as if his nose might be some sort of undiscovered delicacy.

Well, Sebastien would cheerfully abet anyone's quest for a continuing education, especially a smart young woman's. He reminded himself to breathe and said, "On whom shall I inform? And are you in the mood for gossip, dear lady, or for parlor games?"

"At all costs, gossip."

He turned from her quirk of smile and cast his eye over the other passengers. During Sebastien's brief distraction, the Captain—Konrad Hoak—had extricated himself from conversation with Oczkar Korvin and Michiel van Dijk and joined Jack's group, pretending a fascination with the parrot to cover a fascination with Beatrice Leatherby. Curiously, Hollis Leatherby seemed far more cognizant of the Captain's flirtation than of Jack's—or perhaps there was simply more of concern in a grown man's attentions to one's wife than those of a fresh-faced lad, no matter how pretty.

In any case, a frown tugged the corners of Leatherby's mouth as he excused himself, added his wife's empty glass to his own, and made his way down the promenade stairs toward the rolling bar in the dining room. He brushed past Mme. Pontchartrain stiffly, flinching from her effusive greeting while handing over both glasses.

Perhaps Mrs. Leatherby was the jealous one. She certainly glowered sharply enough when she took note of the conversation, though Sebastien did not think Mme. Pontchartrain was the sort of woman who would drive most wives to jealous rages.

Meanwhile, Mr. Leatherby waited as the bartender, a strapping fair-haired Hun of the sort epidemic among the Hans Glücker's crew, mixed martinis and added olives and onions. But Leatherby too couldn't resist a glance over his shoulder while he waited, or a wince when his wife dimpled prettily at the captain.

So Leatherby was also jealous. But not the type to cause a scene.

And any fool could see it, so it would hardly serve to impress an intelligent woman. And Sebastien did feel the urge to impress her, though he mocked himself for it. Haven't you left all this behind, Sebastien? Haven't you sworn it off, the flirtations and seductions? A clean start, wasn't it?

Ridiculous, of course. He was what he was, and had been far longer than this enjoyable young woman had been alive.

And there was Jack. So not a clean start, exactly. But Sebastien could

no more leave Jack behind than his grief and his memories. And like those memories, Jack was perfectly capable of chasing him all the way to New

Amsterdam.

It was the hazard in taking apprentices.

"Well?" Mrs. Smith said, shifting close enough that he could feel her warmth on his arm. "I'm still waiting to be amazed."

He wanted to impress her, but he had hidden in his dark corner for a reason; he was in no mood to perform for anyone. Perhaps he could distract her. "Your impoverished Frenchwoman," he said, with a smile. "Do you suppose she plans to marry American money?"

He didn't need to point. On their left was the outward-slanting wall

of isinglass that showed the sea below and the fading lights of the French coast. On their right was the dining room and the bar, from which Leatherby was emerging with his offering to his wife. Meanwhile, Mme. Pontchartrain, perhaps one or two sherries over her limit, was engaged in a conversation with Zhang Xiaoming that involved a good deal of handwaving and laughter on both sides. She was, however, keeping one drooping eye on the same thing that had drawn Sebastien's attention: Mlle. LeClere, who perched on the bench of the airship's ultra-light aluminum piano alongside Virgil Allen, playing the low notes while he played the high, and together producing a somewhat abused version of "The Lights o' London."

"She'll be disappointed," Mrs. Smith said. "Virgil's a second son."

"I'm surprised the girl's guardian permits it either way," Sebastien said. "Has she spent the entire trip at the bar?"

"She does tipple a little," Mrs. Smith admitted. "Though one doesn't like to judge. After my Benjamin died—" Her voice trailed off, and she sipped her wine. "Well, one copes as one can. And short of turning to necromancy or mediums, alcohol has its mercies."

Her lingering sorrow was contagious, awakening his own. Sebastien wished, for a moment, that he could risk the cognac in his glass. "And Mlle. LeClere?"

"Ah," Mrs. Smith said. "A beautiful, guileless, impoverished heiress. And all the men of good estate flock 'round. . .."

"My dear," Sebastien answered gallantly, "I prefer a woman who knows her own mind."

"Well, there's enough of those on this tub." The wine made her sparkle. Or perhaps the wine was an excuse to shed a little reserve; one could never be too sure. "You won't go lonely."

"Madame," he said, sincerely, "if only it were so."

* * *

Some time later, Mrs. Smith excused herself to visit the ladies' washroom, leaving Sebastien to his own devices. Eventually, someone was bound to notice that he'd been standing in the same corner, swirling the same cognac in his glass for hours. Hunger wouldn't make him wobbly or vague, but it would make him sharp-set, unnerving. And he did not care to leave his fellow passengers. . .unnerved. Attention now could lead to suspicion later.

Sebastien picked his way down the steps toward the bar, to relieve himself of his undesired burden. He would collect Jack (who had descended to the dining room) make his excuses to the captain, and retire.

The steward took Sebastien's full glass with a smile and slipped it under the bar. Sebastien winked at him; he found he could generally rely on the international conspiracy of bartenders for discretion. Especially as Sebastien was always well-behaved.

He turned away.

It was Jack leaning against the piano now, while Oczkar Korvin tried his hand at a little Bach. The result was generally superior to the English parlor tunes, not in the least because no-one attempted to sing. Korvin's hands were long and gaunt, knobby-fingered, and his hair fell over his eyes as he leaned forward, arms akimbo over the keyboard. He glanced up as Sebastien came over and settled in beside Jack. "Don Sebastien."

The effort to speak did not appear to affect his concentration. "Korvin úr," Sebastien answered, giving the other man's name the Hungarian honorific before continuing in the same language, "A pleasure to make your acquaintance. How did you come to be travelling with so many lovely women?"

Korvin laughed and let his hands fall silent on the keys as he answered in English, perhaps noticing Jack's furrowed brow—a patent fraud, as Jack spoke Hungarian like a native. "I noticed the notorious Mrs. Smith had cornered you. Beware of that one. She'll have your secrets out of you like a pocket handkerchief."

"Indeed?" Sebastien folded his arms and settled his weight on his heels. "You met her in Kyiv?"

"Moscow. With the other ladies, and Mr. Allen, ten days ago. The airship's route took us across most of the Baltic states. The Hans Glücker is not what you would call a—" He snapped his fingers as the English word eluded him.

"Express," Jack supplied.

"Thank you." The shared smile made Sebastien's neck hairs prickle. "Moscow," Sebastien prompted, more from curiosity than towards a purpose. Pretending he did not see Jack's smile, he said, "I am preternaturally nosy."

"That is why they call you the detective, I presume," Korvin said, with reasonably good humor. "Have you noticed the Leatherbys? I would not have expected them to be any more acquainted with either of the Colonial parties—American or americain—than I was, but I would say that they have a quite developed aversion to Madame Pontchartrain. Although"—his fingers lifted from the keys to adjust his cravat—"they get on well enough to our Dutch friends."

"So not just English standoffishness, then?"

Jack stirred and cleared his throat before Korvin could answer. "Madame Pontchartrain," Jack said. "How good of you to join us."

She was carrying water now, not sherry, and walking quite steadily, though with a certain degree of care. She paused a few feet away and smiled. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen," she said, in French. "I had come to see if I could prevail upon you for a little more music."

Korvin lifted his fingers from his lap and stretched them. "For the right tithe," he said, "I might even sing. Master Jack, would you see if the bartender has a bottle of cognac back there?"

"Indeed he does," Sebastien said, nodding permission to Jack. "Good evening, Madame—"

She rolled her shoulders over a corset that gave her the general appearance of the prow of a battleship, and curled one loose strand of her uptwisted hair around her finger in a gesture that would have been coquettish, were she young. "And good evening to you, Don Sebastien. I've spent a good deal of time in Spain, and you are the first of your family I've met. Might I inquire where you are from?"

He laughed and turned it aside, hiding his discomfort. "New Amsterdam, as of today. I am emigrating."

"Along with your. . .pupil?"

"My ward," he said. He lifted his chin to watch Jack's negotiations with the steward, the jerk of his thumb over his shoulder as he said, no doubt, the drink is for Mr. Korvin.

"A likely lad." Her voice purred a little, just this side of insinuating, and Sebastien drew himself up.

"Very likely," he answered, and made himself scarce. It was late enough to permit a dignified escape. If Jack wanted to stay up and flirt with the ladies—and not just the ladies, apparently—he could perfectly well follow when he was ready. Sebastien would survive until he got there.

As it happened, he didn't have to survive long. Jack arrived no more than ten minutes later, brushing aside with one hand the curtain that covered the doorway. He peered through and slipped inside, pausing just within. "You should have said something."

Sebastien was sitting on the lower bunk, a gothic novel open upon his knees. He paused with one page delicately uplifted between his fingers, and looked up. "I hadn't the wit left to divert Mme. Pontchartrain's determined questioning. Fortunately, I had the wit to realize it, so I pled a cognac headache and fled. You seemed to enjoy yourself this evening."

His voice went sharper than he'd intended, but Jack just smiled and turned to be certain the curtain was closed. "Put out the light, Sebastien."

Sebastien stood and pulled the shade down. There were no windows in the cabin, but an electric porthole light—of all the futuristic contrivances—provided illumination. It was operated by excess power from the Hans Glücker's six motors and easily darkened by a shade should the occupants desire. Electrical switches could cause a spark, considered undesirable in a

hydrogen-filled vehicle. The dim rooms suited Sebastien very well. Much better than any sailing vessel might have.

The cabin seemed even closer with the lights out. Sebastien could see exceptionally well in the dark, but he closed his eyes to feel Jack moving. Sebastien heard him unbuttoning his collar, untucking his shirt, hanging his jacket in the dark, and sliding his braces down. He kicked his shoes off, and Sebastien heard his shirt and trousers fall, as well. "Jack?"

"Come here."

Sebastien went to him, catfooted. He folded his arms around Jack and pressed his mouth to warm, uptilted lips. He breathed Jack's scent; released from his clothes, it hung about him like the drapery on a Grecian statue. Jack's fingers pressed Sebastien's cheeks and he clucked, not liking what he found. "Don't wait that long again."

"I was alone."

Jack's hands slid across Sebastien's face and knotted in his hair, pushing him to his knees, pressing Sebastien's cold face against his skin. Jack leaned against the bedframe. "Well," he said, "for Christ's sake, don't wait now."

* * *

Early the next morning, when the Hans Glücker was well away over the Atlantic, Madame Pontchartrain was discovered missing from her cabin and, in fact, the entirety of the dirigible. Mademoiselle LeClere, sleeping in the top bunk, claimed to have heard nothing in the night.

* * *

Sebastien could no more travel unescorted than could a respectable woman, although in his case the difficulty was of well-being rather than social standing. They retired separately; Jack slept in the bottom bunk, closer to the curtained doorway. Sebastien did not sleep, but lay listening to the Hans Glücker's deep silences, the creak and strain of her superstructure, the muted breathing of the nearest passengers. Both men would have preferred a room with a door—even a door of spruce splints and doped cloth—but there was no such luxury to be had aboard the dirigible.

So when someone pounded with a nervous fist against the aluminum doorframe beside the curtain, the wall rattled against the bunk, waking Jack with a start. Sebastien was already sitting upright in the filtered gloom when his companion rolled out of bed. "Coming," Jack called.

Sebastien slipped from the top bunk and withdrew into the room's most shadowed corner, shrugging his dressing-gown over his nightshirt. Jack checked that he was halfway presentable before flicking the curtain aside.

"Detective! You are needed! Madame Pontchartrain is gone!" A crewman's voice, by the coarse German accent. Jack glanced over his own shoulder at Sebastien. "A mystery," Sebastien said, with an impatient turn of his hand. "How quaint."

Jack turned back to the crewman and let the curtain fall wide while Sebastien stepped forward to stand at his shoulder. Jack's German was better than the crewman's English, so he spoke in that language. "You wish to speak to the detective?"

"The captain does," the crewman said, his cap clutched to his breast. His eyes flicked around the dark cabin, taking in the blacked-out light, the two rumpled beds. He swallowed.

"Excellent." Sebastien drew his dressing gown closed across his chest, as if he felt a chill. "I'll meet him in the salon in half an hour."

He reached over Jack's shoulder and flipped the curtain shut in the surprised crewman's face. Jack waited until he heard footsteps and stepped back, pressing his shoulder to Sebastien's arm. "No holiday for you," he said.

Sebastien, turning away, paused to tousle Jack's hair. "Pull your trousers on, there's a good lad, and go and check the salon for me, would you?"

"Already done," Jack said, crouching by his trunk. "Use the center stair. I looked last night. It's away from any windows."

Sebastien flipped his valet case open and searched compartments for his cufflinks. "And get yourself some breakfast," he said without raising his chin. "You're pale."

* * *

The cabins, lounge, and dining room were on the main deck, in the belly of the seven-hundred-foot-long airship. The promenades lined that same deck, their isinglass windows angled down, following the curve of the dirigible's body, and showed the passing earth and sea below; direct sunlight would not be a problem except at sunset and dawn.

There was a second promenade one flight up, and the lower deck, while mostly crew quarters, also contained the galley, the washrooms, the smoking room—with its asbestos ceiling and tin floor—and the salon.

Which was empty but for Mrs. Smith when they entered. Barely twenty minutes had elapsed; Sebastien could be ready very quickly when he chose.

The salon was a pleasant room, windowless and in the center of the lower deck as a courtesy to passengers of delicate disposition who might

find the Hans Glücker's altitude or motion unsettling, and thus it was

very well suited to Sebastien's needs. The steady drone of the zeppelin's

motors was a constant accompaniment as he collected a china cup of tea from the small banquet laid along one wall, then chose a leather wing-

backed chair beside the door. Meanwhile, Jack piled jam on scones to suit an adolescent's appetite.

Mrs. Smith was already seated on the divan, applying a silver fork to the pastry on her canary-yellow Meissen cake plate. She had acknowledged Sebastien earlier. Now, he touched the teacup to his lips before he set it, and its saucer, on the side table. "Mrs. Smith," he said. "You seem very calm."

Her eyebrows rose over the frame of her spectacles. "I'm screaming inside," she said, and laid the fork down beside her plate. "But that's no reason not to eat."

"Did you hear anything last night?"

"I thought you'd ask how I learned of the mystery."

"Actually," he said, "I'm curious how you knew to be in this room. As my message was for the captain alone, I believe."

She sipped her own tea. "I eavesdropped." She smiled. "My German is excellent."

The door at the base of the stair swung open. It was a fragile thing, fabric stretched over a wooden frame, closed by a wooden latch for lightness of structure. Sebastien and Jack stood as Captain Hoak entered the salon alone, his hat pinned against his side by his left elbow. Mrs. Smith remained seated, as was proper, but set her teacup down.

"Mrs. Smith," the Captain said, in English. "Good morning. And guten Morgen, Don Sebastien, Master Jack. Is Mrs. Smith—" He wavered, uncertain as to whom he should be addressing.

"Mrs. Smith is just leaving," the authoress said. She abandoned her cup and plate and made sure of her reticule before standing. "I shall be in the

observation lounge if I am required. Thank you for the excellence of your company, Don Sebastien." She offered her gloved hand. He took it and bowed over it lightly. "Master Jack," she concluded, with a teasing smile that sent high color across the young man's face, and swept past the Captain with a little gracious nod.

The Captain turned to watch her go. He was a tall man, blond hair graying, and he carried the beginnings of a small, hard paunch. He sighed lightly as the door latch clicked and went to fetch his own coffee. "How much have you been informed, Don Sebastien?"

Sebastien reclaimed his chair as the Captain sat. He lifted his cooling tea and blew across the saucer. Jack, who had already finished two scones and was toying with the crumbs on his plate, sat as well. Sebastien expected a steward would be along to tidy when their conference was done. "Only that Madame Pontchartrain is. . .gone, I believe the word was. Not dead, I take it then?"

"Vanished," the Captain said. "Dead, perhaps. If she fell, certainly, but there's no evidence she did. No breach in the hull, and the passenger doors are sealed—and she did not enter the control cabin."

"Have you searched the lifting body?" Sebastien's hand rose, an extended finger indicating the ceiling and the giant framework of aluminum beyond it. Within the streamlined lifting body were thirteen donut-shaped gas

containers filled with hydrogen and harnessed by netting within the dirigible's frame.

"We are searching it now," Captain Hoak said. "But there has been no sign of her there. And of course, even if a woman of her. . .dignity could be expected to be clambering up ladders, the hatchways are kept locked."

Sebastien picked up his cup and saucer and stood smoothly, without reliance upon the arms of the chair. "By all means," he said. "Let us examine the lady's cabin."

* * *

Madame Pontchartrain's cabin was no different from Sebastien's, except in that women's clothing—a dozen or so dresses, half of them rich with velvet and silk, and cut for a more generous figure than the plainer muslins and wools—and two nightgowns—hung from the bar at the foot of the bunks, and the upper bunk had been tidied. Sebastien and Jack searched the cabin thoroughly, to the Captain's stiff-lipped dismay, and found little of note. The lower bed lay as it had been left, the covers smoothed roughly over a bottom sheet that was rumpled but not creased; hardly typical of what Sebastien had observed of the chambermaids' military efficiency. There was no blood, and no sign of a struggle, although Madame Pontchartrain's papers seemed to be in some disarray inside her portfolio, and her cabin bag was less neatly packed than one might expect.

"Dear boy," Sebastien said, while the Captain posed rigidly beyond the door, erect as a hungry hawk upon a glove, "do you suppose a woman of Madame Pontchartrain's age and breeding is inclined to creep from her bed at night—to any purpose—without smoothing the sheets respectably?"

"Perhaps if she were very ill," Jack said uncertainly. He stood a little closer to Sebastien than decorum warranted, but the Captain seemed disinclined to comment. "And very much in a hurry."

"Captain," Sebastien said. "I believe we must examine the ladies' washroom."

* * *

The ladies' was innocent of any sign of violence, and like Mademoiselle LeClere, the attendant had heard nothing. After their inspection, Sebastien accompanied Jack to the dining room for an early luncheon, switching plates discreetly when Jack finished his own steak and salad and began eyeing Sebastien's poached salmon. He was halfway across the serving and eating methodically when his fork hesitated in midair and his chin came up, blue eyes catching the filtered light.

Sebastien, who was sitting with his back to the windows so he would not be dazzled by even indirect sunlight, saw their bright shapes reflected in Jack's irises.

"Ah," he said, observing the deepening furrow between Jack's eyebrows. "The nightgowns."

"Two nightgowns," Jack agreed. "Hanging, and one unrumpled. Madame Pontchartrain never went to bed last night."

"Indeed she didn't," Sebastien said, holding his wine under his nose before tilting the glass, and flicking his tongue out to collect just a drop on the tip, for tasting's sake. "So the question remains, who rumpled her bunk?"

"And why did Mademoiselle LeClere lie?" Chewing a last bite of salmon, Jack laid his fork across his plate—more yellow Meissen, with cabbage

roses and gilt edges. The tablecloths were eyelet linen, white and fine. "Speaking of which, there's the young lady herself. With Miss Lillian Meadows,

no less."

Sebastien lifted his knife and turned it so the silver blade reflected the dining room behind him. He saw two blonde heads bent close together as the ladies were seated, Miss Meadows tight-trousered and drawing sidelong glances—admiring or censorious—and Mlle. LeClere scandalous with her shawl wound about her neck like a scarf rather than covering the white expanse of her bosom. "While the duenna's away—" Sebastien began, but then his eyes were drawn to the white cloth twisted around Mlle. LeClere's long pale throat.

Jack cleared his throat. "I know where you were last night."

"Indeed." Sebastien laid the knife crisply across Jack's plate, abruptly grateful that he could not blush. "So do I. And also I think it's time for a stroll. Do you not agree?"

Silently, Jack rose, folding his napkin. And together they left the table.

* * *

"Do you think it's Miss Meadows?" Jack asked, when they were safely away from the dining room, strolling the promenade. It was only a little past noon, so the sun was safely blocked from the long windows by the shadow of the airframe, and if anyone did harbor suspicions about Sebastien, it would do no harm for Sebastien to be seen by midday.

"One doesn't find many of the blood in theatre." Sebastien licked pale lips. "Matinees."

"But she's a motion picture actress—"

"And how might she explain an inability to shoot outdoor scenes in daylight?"

"Ah," Jack said. He raked at his hair, pale curls stretching between his fingers and then springing back. "Besides, why would she turn to Mlle. LeClere when she has two travelling companions of her own?"

"Mrs. Smith was wearing an open-necked shirtwaist," Sebastien pointed out.

In answer, Jack touched his own loosely-knotted cravat. He did not

affect the London and Milan fashion of high collars, as Sebastien did. "Mrs. Smith may not be prone to bruising—"

"She is a very pale blonde."

"—or she may be a more intimate friend of Miss Meadows' than Mlle. LeClere, leaving the evidence. . .inobvious." Jack finished, smugly.

"I am scandalized," the great detective answered, a small smile warming his lips. They warmed further when Jack checked over his shoulder, and then brushed them with a quick peck.

"If not Miss Meadows. . .." Jack said, stepping back.

"You make assumptions," Sebastien said. A cardinal sin, and Jack winced to be caught out. "If there is another of the blood aboard this ship. . .and if Mlle. LeClere is of her court"—the polite term, in preference to any of the myriad crass ones—"it would be the rankest sort of stupidity to murder an old woman."

They turned at the wall, and began walking back.

"Because suspicion would naturally fall on any passenger discovered to be of the blood."

"Prejudices die hard," Sebastien said.

"I've known a few Jews," Jack said. The dryness that informed his voice was no happenstance. He was one, blond curls and blue eyes and good plain English alias aside. "It's the same everywhere. And it needn't be your folk,

Sebastien. A disappearance in the absence of any evidence suggests black magic to me. Teleportation, transmutation. . .what if someone turned her into a frog?"

"Or a green parrot? And us without a forensic sorcerer anywhere to be found."

Jack cleared his throat. "We've seen the parrot and Madame Pontchartrain in the same place. So if it is one of yours, and not Miss Meadows, who?"

"Korvin úr," Sebastien said, automatically. And then he checked himself. "At a guess."

"Good guess," Jack said. He lowered his voice; they were still alone on their side of the promenade, but below, in the dining room blurrily visible through the interior isinglass, Virgil Allen and Hollis Leatherby had entered and paused beside the drinks caddy. "I'm trying to remember if I've heard his name—"

"Have you?" The tone was sharper than Sebastien had intended. He did not care to be reminded of Jack's past.

There were clubs in most cities, places where those who courted the blood congregated, and where those of the blood who were far from their courts and their courtesans could go, for sustenance and for companionship. Names were whispered in those places, and secrets traded.

It was in one such, in a basement in Budapest, that Sebastien had discovered Jack, a gamin child of eight or nine years, and where he—against his custom and better judgement, and in much the spirit with which one might haggle for a starved dog chained to a railing—had purchased the boy.

It was three hundred and fifty German marks Sebastien considered very well spent indeed.

Jack chewed his lip, and then shrugged. "It was a long time ago. I don't recall."

* * *

Jack was still tired from a difficult night, while Sebastien buzzed with energy. It had been unsafe attending to his needs aboard the Hans Glücker, but it would be more unsafe to spend three days and part of a fourth in human company with his skin cold and waxen and his hunger growing.

Sebastien wondered if Korvin úr had found himself in similar straits. It was unusual for one of the blood to travel without a companion. Or three.

Or perhaps the handsome stranger to eye with suspicion wasn't Lillian Meadows or Oczkar Korvin, but the pale and delicate Mrs. Phoebe Smith. Virgil Allen had a southerner's bronzed glow, but that could be counterfeited with cosmetics. . .

Sebastien paused in the passageway and shook his head, leaning one hand on a cornerpost of the corridor wall. Those, at least, were solid enough to hold his weight, unlike the cloth stretched between them. He was committing the same sin he'd accused Jack of, speculating on small and circumstantial evidence, looking for a monster to explain away what was most likely mere human veniality. Speculation, rather than deduction, and that was no way to solve a crime.

Assuming any crime had been committed. Which, admittedly, seemed like a fairly safe assumption—but one assumption tended to lead to another.

He straightened up and squared his shoulders under his coat. The next step must be to interview the witnesses. Particularly, he thought, Mlle. LeClere.

He was halfway down the spiral stair to the day parlor, following her scent, when something else occurred to him. Her scent. In particular. It had been present in the cabin she shared with Mme. Pontchartrain. As, indeed, had the scents of Mme. Pontchartrain—both her own bodily aroma, and the funereal bouf of roses and chrysanthemums she habitually wore. But there had been no third person's aroma, and, as Jack had noted, Mme. Pontchartrain did not appear to have even slipped on her nightdress.

So why had her bunk been rumpled? And not, he thought, rumpled as if someone had slept therein, but rather as if someone had stripped the covers back in hasty investigation, and then smoothed them carelessly.

That mystery distracted Sebastien to the bottom of the stairs, where he paused and cast left and right, sniffing delicately, for the aroma of lilies, powder, and warm girl that identified Mlle. LeClere.

Instead, he smelled lilacs and civet and a different warm girl entirely, the scent vanguarding a swish of sensible English wool. "My dear Mrs. Leatherby," he said, and turned.

She startled, which had been his intention, and drew herself up short, her skirts swinging heavily about the ankles of her button boots. Gray kid-gloved fingers tensed on the handle of her reticule; there was a tiny snag on her left thumb, a little hole she hadn't yet sewn up. "Don Sebastien," she stammered. "I beg your pardon—"

"I have excellent hearing," he said, stooping a little to offer her an arm. She accepted it, her fingers curling as convulsively on his sleeve as they had on her handbag.

"As it happens," Mrs. Leatherby said in a small voice, "so do I. Which is what I wished to speak with you about, if you do not find me too forward, Don Sebastien."

Her steps tarried so he must cut his own stride for fear of dragging her off her feet. He ducked his head to introduce the appearance of intimacy. "Do continue."

"I'm sorry," she said, shivering delicately. "I'm all aflutter. If there's a killer aboard. . .."

"Quite." He patted her arm, grateful of the long sleeves that would prevent her from noticing how his skin was chill.

"Last night—" She glanced over her shoulder, and he soothed her with a hand on her hand again. "Last night I heard voices. You must understand that Hollis is a very sound sleeper, Don Sebastien, and he snores quite dreadfully."

"Indeed," he answered, letting her annoying overuse of his name pass unremarked, though it led him to unworthy speculation on whether Mr. Leatherby had perhaps been less oblivious than he seemed to Jack's shameless flirtation with his wife that first night in the salon, or if the sighs he

had breathed had been of relief rather than jealousy. "And this is significant because?. . ."

"We sleep away from the other passengers," Mrs. Leatherby said. "Out of consideration."

A benefit of the nearly-empty passenger quarters. "You heard something?" Sebastien asked, understanding dawning. His hair slid down his forehead, and he tossed it back, taking a moment as well to consider the particular hell of a nervous woman with acute hearing paired with a heavy snorer.

"A man and a woman," she said, her chin jerking in small, sharp nods. "Speaking French. I recognized the man's voice as Mister Korvin's, and is he really a viscount?"

"Vikomt, in Hungarian," Sebastien said. "And I have not heard Korvin úr make such a claim. If only this were a sailing vessel, one could examine the peerage in the ship's library."

"Silly me," Mrs. Leatherby said. "I'm sure you think me a right fool, but it's so exciting, being abroad and meeting exotic personages with their European manners." Her hand flew to her mouth, releasing his somewhat crumpled sleeve. "Oh, Sebastien, I'm terribly sorry."

"It's quite all right," he answered. "No offense taken." Released of her grip, he took a half-step toward the salon. She tripped after.

"But I haven't told you the worst," she said. Her voice rose, but she had the art of the breathless shriek, like so many Englishwomen, and it wouldn't carry. He wondered when the pocket handkerchief would emerge, or if she'd skip directly on to the fainting spell.

"Indeed, Señora," he said. Perhaps he should resort to his own handkerchief; the lilac was about to make him sneeze. "What did you hear?"

"I didn't understand the words, of course, but it had the sound of an argument," she said. "And afterward. . .there were other things." Her lips made a moue of distaste.

"Ah," Sebastien said. "Say no more. Did you recognize the lady's voice?"

"They were speaking French," she repeated, insistently.

"Of course," Sebastien answered. With a great and distancing show of gallantry, he stepped forward and opened the door to the salon for her, sweeping an outrageous bow. "That does narrow the field somewhat, now doesn't it?"

* * *

Unfortunately, his intention of speaking to Mlle. LeClere was foiled by the continuing presence of Miss Meadows. The ladies had been joined by Mr. Allen and Korvin úr, and judging by the way Mlle. LeClere was leaning on Oczkar Korvin's arm, Miss Meadows' presence was all that was preventing a scandal—an irony which Sebastien savored, briefly.

He understood the urge. A young woman rarely—perhaps never—found herself released on her own recognizance. It must seem a heady interlude in such a constrained life, and he couldn't grudge her taking advantage of it, when it would be back to her ordained task of trapping a man when she made landfall. The Hans Glücker was, in any case, a relatively safe place to sow wild oats.

Or should have been, to all rights, if there had not been a potential murderer aboard.

As soon as Sebastien could decently extract himself from Mrs. Leatherby, he went in search of the infinitely preferable American lady, Mrs. Smith. At the very least, she could no doubt tell him a little something about Miss Lillian Meadows and Mr. Virgil Allen.

He found her on the promenade. Lingering would become a tricky proposition as the sun slid down before the nose of the dirigible, but for now the long shadows kept him safe. Phoebe Smith stood at the forward-most reach of the promenade, under the nose of the airframe. She held her hard-backed black notebook left-handed and scribbled busily with the right, her ink-stained fingers embracing the grip of a tortoiseshell fountain pen.

She sniffed as he came up beside her, and said, with great satisfaction, "Did you know, Don Sebastien, that were we to ascend very much further, the drop in air pressure would cause the ink in my pen to expand, resulting in an oozing mess?" She turned to him, and held it up beside her face for inspection. The nib gleamed dully in the indirect light, a hairline of black demonstrating the split, but Sebastien focused past it. At her face, her pallor, the whiteness of her lips where they tightened over her teeth, the faintly visible capillaries warming her pale cheeks.

"You're staring, Don Sebastien."

He glanced quickly down so she would not see him fail to blush. "So it would appear. Is the material any good?"

"I beg your pardon?"

He gestured to the crawling sea below the isinglass. "You must be working on a novel."

"Only scribbling observations. It's what I do."

"Scribble?"

"Observe."

"And eavesdrop."

"That, too." And yes, she could blush, a delicate seashell glow across her cheeks. "Fortunately, I am discreet."

"And unshockable."

"Quite," she said, after a short pause. She capped the pen and clipped it to a cord around her neck, so that it slid out of sight between her breasts. She marked her place in the notebook with a ribbon and stowed that, as well, in her reticule. "Your young ward thinks highly of you."

Sebastien could no more blanch than he could blush, and this once he thanked Providence for it. They had been quiet—ferociously quiet, fiercely quiet—but Jack had not been able to stifle a gasp against his fist, or the sharp single flex of his hips that had shaken the aluminum frame of the bunk when Sebastien's fangs slipped in.

At that, he was quieter than Sebastien had been in his own time.

"He is very dear to me as well," Sebastien answered. "And your travelling companions? Do you think highly of them?"

Her true smile dazzled. Gone was the contrived, ladylike lift of her mouth at the corners. This was honest mirth, and it included Sebastien rather than mocking him. "I find them a font of human detail," she said. "A veritable education."

"On what do they educate you?"

"On the unpleasant nature of seduction," she said, in a softer tone. She leaned forward, hands braced on the promenade railing, to stare down at the sea below and the Hans Glücker's attendant flock of gulls. The white birds did not seem to care that the ship they followed flew rather than floated. "I would not ever care to find myself on the sort of string upon which Miss Meadows keeps Mr. Allen."

It struck home. Sebastien leaned against the railing beside her, and spoke in French. "Or upon which I keep Jack?"

She tilted her head, watching him from the corner of pale eyes. She

didn't shift away, and when she answered it was in the same language. "I

didn't say it."

"Did you need to?"

"Don Sebastien," she said. "Is it you who has the young Mr. Priest on a string? Or perhaps the other way around?"

"Ach." He pushed himself straight against the railing. "Mutual dependency. How unflattering."

"How very like a marriage." She fiddled one pearl earring, refusing to meet his eyes. "No, perhaps you should look to Korvin úr and Mlle. LeClere, if you wish to see a troublesome partnership breeding."

"Are they partners?"

"He makes her cry," Mrs. Smith said, dropping into English again. "And while she seeks refuge and distraction with Lillian—with Miss Meadows—she does not return Korvin úr's notes unread, either."

"She encourages him."

"She breathes for him, Don Sebastien," Mrs. Smith said. "And Lillian thinks it's funny."

* * *