Dilute silver nitrate was designed for werewolves, not humans, and usually had no more disturbing a result on daylight folk than skin discoloration. But since the gentlemen in question were looking up, it had the beneficial effect of hitting the eyeballs and causing all to let go in startlement. The resulting screams may have been because they were falling, or perhaps they were the result of the chemical sting, but, as it ended with the drones writhing in the snow far below, Alexia considered the maneuver an unqualified success. Included among the writhers was the man who had had hold of Madame Lefoux’s boot. He still had her boot, but Madame Lefoux was able to attain the top of the platform with a look of profound relief on her pretty face.
The three of them dashed to the rail cabin. Floote overrode the driver’s objection to their presence by smashing in the front window with Alexia’s dispatch case, climbing inside, and punching the poor man hard in the jaw. He fell like a stone, and his stoker, a slight, reedy boy with wide, anxious eyes, meekly acquiesced to their demands.
No one else was on board.
Alexia ripped off her bustle fall, tore the length into strips, and handed them to Floote. He showed remarkable dexterity and mastery of knot work, trussing up the boy and his unconscious supervisor with ease.
“You do that quite efficiently, don’t you, Floote?” commented Alexia.
“Well, madam, being valet to Mr. Tarabotti had its advantages.”
“Genevieve, can you drive this contraption?” Alexia asked.
“I only worked on the initial schematics, but if you can stoke the boiler, I will figure it out.”
“Done!” Alexia thought stoking couldn’t be that difficult.
Soon enough, the effects of the magnetic disruption emitter wore off, and the massive steam engine in the center of the cabin rumbled back to life. The cabin was designed with a windowed steering area at either end so that the car did not itself turn around. Instead, the engineer merely shifted position in order to drive in the opposite direction.
Madame Lefoux, after a quick review of the controls, pulled down on a massive lever at one end of the lurching cabin and then dashed to the other end, pulling a similar lever up.
An alarmingly loud horn sounded, and the contraption, cabin, and massive hanging net of lumber down below began moving backward in the direction it had come, up the mountain once again.
Alexia let out a little cheer of encouragement.
Floote finished trussing up their two prisoners. “I do apologize, sirs,” he said to them in English, which they probably didn’t understand.
Alexia smiled to herself and kept stoking. Poor Floote, this whole escape was rather beneath his dignity.
Stoking was hot work, and Alexia was beginning to feel the strain of having dashed across rough terrain and then climbed a pylon. She was, as Ivy had once scornfully pointed out, a bit of a sporting young lady. But one would have to be positively Olympian to survive the past three days without some physical taxation. She supposed the infant inconvenience might also have something to do with her exhaustion. But never having run while pregnant, she did not know quite who to blame embryo or vampires.
Madame Lefoux was leaping about the end of the cable cabin, pulling levers and twisting dials maniacally, and the rail contraption lurched forward in response to her ministrations, moving from a sedate step by step crawl to a kind of swaying shambling run.
“Are you certain this thing can take this kind of speed with a load?” Alexia yelled from her self prescribed stoker’s post.
“No!” Madame Lefoux hollered cheerfully back. “I am attempting to deduce how to set loose the cargo straps and net, but there seems to be a safety override preventing a drop while in motion. Give me a moment.”
Floote pointed out the front window. “I do not think we have that long, madam.”
Alexia and Madame Lefoux both looked up from what they were doing.
Madame Lefoux swore.
Another loaded cart was coming down the cables toward them. It was crawling along at a sedate pace, but it seemed to be looming very fast. While one cabin could climb over another, they were not designed to do so while still lugging a net full of lumber.
“Now would be a very good time to figure out a drop,” suggested Alexia.
Madame Lefoux looked frantically underneath the control board.
Alexia thought of a different tactic. She ran over to the other end of the cabin.
“How do I cut the cargo free?” she spoke in French and leaned close in to the frightened young stoker boy. “Quickly!”
The boy pointed in silent fear at a lever off to one side of the steam engine, separated from both sets of steering controls.
“I think I have it!” Alexia dove for the knob.
At the same time, Madame Lefoux began an even more frantic dance about the steering area, employing a complex series of dial cycling and handle pulling that Alexia could only assume would allow their cabin to climb over the other heading toward them.
They were close enough now that they could see the frightened gesticulations of the driver through the window of the other cable cabin.
Alexia pulled down on the freight release lever with all her might.
The overrides screamed in protest.
Floote came over to help her, and together they managed to muscle it down.
Their rail car shuddered once, and seconds later they heard a loud crash and multiple thuds as the load of lumber fell down to the mountain below. Mere moments after that, there was a lurch as their cabin climbed its buglike way over the oncoming coach, swaying in a most alarming fashion from side to side, ending with one additional shudder as it settled back onto the rails on the other side.
They did not have much time to appreciate their victory, for the pinging sound of bullets on metal heralded the return of their pursuers.
Floote ran to look out a side window. “Revolvers, madam. They’re pacing us by foot.”
“Doesn’t this thing go any faster?” Alexia asked Madame Lefoux.
“Not that I can make it.” The Frenchwoman issued Alexia a demonic dimpled grin. “We shall just have to take the cable as far as it goes and then run for the border.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
The grin only widened. Alexia was beginning to suspect Madame Lefoux of being a rather reckless young woman.
“Italy makes for a strange refuge, madam.” Floote sounded almost philosophical. He began a stately tour of the interior of the carrier, looking for any loose objects that might serve as projectile weaponry.
“You do not like Italy, do you, Floote?”
“Beautiful country, madam.”
“Oh?”
“It took Mr. Tarabotti quite a bit of bother to extract himself. He had to marry an Englishwoman in the end.”
“My mother? I can’t think of a worse fate.”
“Precisely, madam.” Floote used a large wrench to break one of the side windows and stuck his head out. He received a near miss from a bullet for his pains.
“What exactly was he extracting himself from, Floote?”
“The past.” Hoisting some kind of large metal tool, Floote chucked it hopefully out the window. There was a cry of alarm from below, and the young men drew slightly back, out of detritus range.
“Shame we did not eliminate any of them when we dropped the lumber.”
“Indeed, madam.”
“What past, Floote?” Alexia pressed.
“A not very nice one, madam.”
Alexia huffed in frustration. “Did anyone ever tell you, you are entirely insufferable?” Alexia went to shove more coal into the stoke hole.
“Frequently, madam.” Floote waited for the men to gain courage and catch up again, and then threw a few more items out the window. Floote and the drones proceeded in this vein for about a half hour while the sun set slowly, turning the trees to long shadows and the snow to gray. A full moon rose up above the mountaintops.
“End of the cable just ahead.” Madame Lefoux gestured briefly with one hand before returning it to the controls.
Alexia left off stoking and went to the front to see what their dismount looked like.
The ending area was a wide U of platforms atop multiple poles, with cables running down to the ground, presumably used for the lumber. There was also some kind of passenger unloading arrangement, built to accommodate the anticipated tourists. It was a basic pulley system with a couple of windlass machines.
“Think those will work to get us down?”
Madame Lefoux glanced over. “We had better hope so.”