Sophronia nodded. “And the Picklemen will want to control any aetherosphere travel for themselves.” She was thinking about the prototype kerfuffle at her sister’s ball. Both the government and the Picklemen had been after the technology then. “No wonder we are floating to town.”
“You think there’s going to be some kind of contest for control?” Sidheag nibbled her lips. The werewolves, as a rule, were uninterested in advancements in science that did not pertain to munitions. Sidheag had not been raised to think in terms of patent control or manipulation of technological discoveries.
Sophronia said, “I’m not sure what I think yet, but that seems likely.”
It was far easier to get around the ship with Vieve. Sophronia didn’t have to climb the exterior to avoid patrolling mechanicals. Vieve had an invention of her own devising, the obstructor, which froze a mechanical in its tracks long enough for two girls to slide around it.
They sped through the central student section and then into the forbidden section. Dangling red tassels all around demarcated the highly restricted forward segment of the ship, which included the teachers’ quarters, the record room, and… the boiler room. Everything was going smoothly, even the most dangerous part: passing the doors of slumbering teachers.
Then a loud whistle reverberated through the airship, picked up and repeated by every mechanical within range. They hadn’t had to use the obstructor for two hallways, so it couldn’t have been their fault. The alarm was triggered by some other miscreants out after hours.
The two girls squeezed behind a massive marble bust of Pan and a once-underdressed nymph in the corner. The nymph had been clothed in skirts and a lace hat, to make her more the thing. This meant there was plenty of room for concealment. Just in time, too, for doors to teachers’ rooms popped open and heads stuck out.
“Is there no peace for the naked?” Sister Mattie wore a bed cap of sensible white lace.
“I think you mean peace for the wicked,” corrected Lady Linette, wrapped in a flowing silk robe of apple green trimmed in black velvet. Her hair was loose and flowing, her face free of paint. She looked lovely and fresh.
“Why would that apply?” asked Sister Mattie, before closing her door on both the problem and the noise.
“What’s going on?” The headmistress voiced that query, her rinsed red hair crowned by a great pink floof of crochet.
“I shouldn’t worry, Geraldine. It’s probablyour young gentlemen guests.”
“I warned you no good would come of having boys on board!”
“Might have told that to me, mum, whot?” joked Professor Braithwope, shimmering out of his room fully clothed and dapper. His mustache was a fluffy caterpillar of curiosity, perched and ready to inquire, dragging the vampire along behind it on the investigation.
“Oh, Professor,” simpered Mademoiselle Geraldine, “you don’t count. You’re a gentleman, not a boy, and qualit-tay to boot.”
The vampire looked around the hallway, noting no mechanicals or culprits who might have set the alarm. He was the only one dressed, his boots mirror shiny and his trousers cut to perfection. Sophronia wondered how such a nobby little man could manage to fade to the background so often. It was a real skill.
“Where’s the revolution?”
“Student quarters, I suspect. One of the boys. Our girls know better than to risk it at night. Or they know how to avoid setting off alarms.” Sophronia could have sworn Lady Linette glanced in their direction.
The vampire nodded. “I’ll see to it, being as I’m all gussied up and proper for public consumption. Plus, put a bit of fear into those monkeys, wrath of a vampire, whot?”
“A most excellent notion, Professor.”
Sophronia, forgetting her own first encounter with the vampire, suppressed a giggle at the very idea of Professor Braithwope, with his quizzical mustache and undersized frame, putting the fear into anyone—except perhaps the fear of growing the wrong facial hair.