So it proved to be the case. Although, even with supernatural ears, Rue could only hear one side of the conversation – tubes were like that.
“Miss Phinkerlington. Yes. Yes, he’s up here. No, I can’t send him down. He’s been shot. Yes, it is serious. No, you must stay there. We’re still in danger. I don’t know. Let me ask.” Tasherit looked up and shouted over to the medics, “Mr Floote, sir, engineering wants to know if you’d like a hot poker to cauterise the wound?” She returned to the tube. “He says no, and don’t be barbaric. Yes, well, I thought it was a good idea, too. But I’m no surgeon. Yes, we should. I imagine the captain will rectify that soon. I don’t think you should say such things about the captain!” She held the tube away from her ear briefly and closed her eyes. “That’s enough, young lady. No, you get stuffed!” Miss Sekhmet slammed down the speaking tube. “What an unpleasant creature. Surely she realises that talk of stuffing to a werelioness brings up taxidermic nightmares?”
Rue rumbled an agreeing cat noise – half purr, half meow.
“Now, how do I get my immortality back? You look healed yourself, and you speaking at this juncture would be a good thing.
“Meroooow!” agreed Rue.
Percy came over and took the helm away from Virgil.
Virgil gave him a look that said clearer than words that even an ornithopter battle full of flying bullets and crossbow bolts was no excuse for a lost cravat.
“That boy,” Percy grumbled, sitting down in his customary position, “gets bossier and bossier.”
“He didn’t say anything,” Tasherit defended the lad.
“Didn’t need to.” Percy was more melancholy than usual. “Rue, could I have a private word? You don’t mind, do you, Miss Sekhmet?”
“Not at all. She’s all ears.” The werecat was perfectly civil to Percy but there was an edge to her voice that suggested she still hadn’t quite forgiven him for publishing her existence to the world.
“Exactly why I want to talk to her now. How often does one get to bend Rue’s ear without threat of interruption?”
“Rourow!” objected Rue.
Tasherit gave them both an evil smile and drifted back to the crowd around Quesnel to see if anything more was needed. Their balloon escort returned, surrounding them in a friendly flock of chubby shadows. They all hooked into the same southerly breeze and floated along at a nice pace, putting comforting distance between themselves and Khartoom.
Anitra left off her medical ministrations to give a long handkerchief-wave report to the Drifters, under the light of a single lamp. It had a beautiful dancelike quality. The waving handkerchiefs were awfully temping; Rue wanted to bat at them.
Percy snapped his fingers near her whiskers. “Rue! Do pay attention. I’m trying to have a revelatory moment. This is a serious epiphany and you’re busy staring at handkerchiefs.”
Rue turned tawny eyes on him and blinked slowly. The cat version of, I trust you. Trust me.
“Look…” Now that Percy had her attention, he couldn’t seem to find the right words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Was Percy being contrite?
“I overreacted about the weremonkey publication. I shouldn’t have written about Miss Sekhmet without her approval. I treated her like a scientific subject, not a person. It was wrong of me.”
Rue gave a rrupp noise of agreement, hoping to articulate that perhaps he ought to be apologising to Tasherit, not Rue, but Percy soldiered on. Clearly her rrupps were not nuanced enough.
“And now Mr Lefoux is gravely injured and it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t let it be known we had a werelioness aboard, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Oh, so now he decides to have a guilty conscience? Rue lashed her tail and grumbled at him.
“It’s only that he’s so friendly and everyone likes him and he’s a great inventor and well regarded and I’m just” – Percy gestured to his rumpled self – “this.”
Jealousy? Rue hadn’t thought to pry into Percy’s motives. She’d believed his actions spawned from an arrogant belief in his own intellectual superiority. She hadn’t realised he felt threatened by Quesnel. Percy never had understood his own value in society or as a friend. He saw other people as either worthy academic opponents, fellow awkward intellectuals, or irrelevant. He applied the same judgement to himself. It was why he found the constant attention of interested young ladies at parties so mystifying. He didn’t understand that he was an attractive man, not to mention well connected and reasonably solvent. If only he put himself forward and tried to be polite, he might be just as charming as Quesnel, in his own way. But he never bothered to try.
Rue, of course, couldn’t tell Percy any of this. So she lashed her tail and hissed at him.
Percy took this as criticism. “I will try to do better. I never wanted him to die. And now he’s injured and we’re all in danger and it’s my fault.”