Brilliant Devices (3 page)

Then, elbow to elbow with Claire, she studied the hull.
“Bow’s stove in, but Nine and Andrew can bang it back into shape.”

“Tigg and
Jake and I can replace rivets.”

“The girls can take the ballast out so we can see what’s what inside.”

Andrew looked from one to the other, then at Tigg. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”

“We ain’t forgot,” Alice said tersely. “We’re
merely thinking out what we’re going to do while we try to figure out what to do about
that
.”

“About
wot?” Maggie asked.

“About the fact that we have no engine,” Claire said gently. “We can bring the ship’s body back to life, but if she has no heart, she can’t sail.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Tigg said stoutly.

“Yeah?”

Claire wished Alice would not sound so grim in front of the children. Or in front of her, for that matter.

“We got no boiler. Without a boiler, we can’t make steam. Without steam, the pistons and props won’t turn.”

Claire clutched what remained of her chignon with both hands. “Good heavens. I completely forgot! Oh dear. Oh
dear
. I hope no harm has come to it.”

She gathered up her skirts and scrambled into the hatch, heedless of the mud
that rimmed it. In a moment she reappeared with her valise.

“Going someplace, Lady?”
Jake inquired.

“Maybe there’s a nice hotel we ent seen yet,” Lizzie told her twin
in an aside that ought to have been on the vaudeville stage. “Maybe she ordered roast beef an’ Yorkshire puddings for all of us.”

“Very funny. Andrew, Alice, look.” She pulled the valise open to reveal Dr. Craig’s power cell nestling like a great bronze cat on her shirtwaists and spare skirt. “Is there any reason we cannot power the
Stalwart Lass
with this?”

*

Alice handed Andrew Malvern the smaller wrench so he could tighten the bolts on the far side of the hastily fabricated housing for the power cell. The silence as they buttoned up after the flurry of work, while companionable, had gone on long enough. If somebody didn’t say something, she was going to leap out of her skin.

“I got to hand it to Claire, she knows ho
w to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

Outside, Claire and the Mopsies were pounding dents out of the brass plates of the gondola with rocks wrapped in spare canvas, which meant she could hardly hear herself speak. She’d heard a wax recording once called the
Anvil Chorus
—if the girls ever wanted careers in music, they could start with that.

“What mystifies me is that she kept it a secret. We’ve been in flight for days—I would have thought the subject might have come up in that time.”

“We didn’t need it, Mr. Malvern.”

“Alice, we have stared death in the face together
more than once. Under the circumstances, I believe it would be quite proper for you to use my given name.”

It had been so long since Alice had blushed that it took her a moment to recognize the hot, prickly feeling in her cheeks and forehead.

We
, he’d said.
Together
. Dang. In all her daydreams she had never expected to experience the thrill of the plural pronoun in connection with the brilliant mind she had been worshiping from afar—very far—for so long. In the delight of it, she quite lost track of what he was saying.

“—risking my life for the wretched thing, she might have told me she’d liberated it from the wreckage.”

In Alice’s experience,
liberate
was a word you used when you didn’t want to say
steal
. “But doesn’t it belong to her?”

“I am not arguing that. Dr. Craig left it as her legacy.”

“That mad scientist?” Tigg had told her the whole juicy story. Alice wouldn’t have believed a word of it, except that she’d been the one to pull Claire out of the drink half drowned. Anyone who would jump into a flash flood on purpose could break a mad scientist out of Bedlam if she darn well wanted to.

“It is my
uneducated opinion that Dr. Craig was not in fact mad. She was being held against her will because she represented a threat to some very wealthy men. But that is beside the point.” Andrew heaved on a nut. “The point is that we are both invefonre bothsted in that cell, and she could have told me.”

The plural pronoun didn’t sound nearly so appealing that time.

Alice stood and dusted off her pants. “Well, in all fairness, we’ve had our hands full. I got a pile of parts in the hold I’ve been meaning to make something with, and I haven’t given them a single thought, myself. So I can’t say as I blame her.”

Andrew finished with the last of his bolts and stood as well. He pulled off his gloves and surveyed their work. “You’re quite right. Isn’t it singular that the
four of us—engineers all, and I include Tigg in our number—wound up on this particular ship at this particular time? Without any one of us, we would not have been able to create what I must say must be the first engine of its kind.”

Alice couldn’t keep her face from breaking out in a smile. “You’d better call her in. After you and her rigged that swinging truss—”

“—and you found that glass for the lightning chamber—I swear it will never cross my lips that it began its career holding a gallon of rotgut whiskey—”

“—and you and Tigg and Jake manhandled poor Four into
becoming this housing—”

“—we definitely must all be present when we fire her up for the first time.”

Sharing a laugh with him was probably the sweetest moment in Alice’s whole life. The part that came after her father had jumped ship, anyway.

A moment later she realized the hammering had stopped, and Claire and the girls appeared in the gangway. “Did we miss the joke?”

“We’re just having a moment of celebration,” Andrew told her, still smiling.

Claire
looked from him to Alice and a shadow passed over her eyes. Was it—could that be hurt?

Well, never mind if it was. Lady Claire Trevelyan had just about everything on earth
a girl could want, minus a working airship, but they were about to fix that. If she begrudged Alice a moment of laughter with a certain handsome and brilliant man, well, that was just too bad.

In the next moment, she felt ashamed of herself. Claire wasn’t that petty. She probably liked a good laugh as much as anybody, and wanted to be included, that was all.

If this worked, they’d have plenty to celebrate.

“Is it done?” Maggie asked, evidently objecting to silences, too.

“It is done. Tigg, are you ready?” Andrew asked.

“I been ready for hours, sir. I don’t care if we do have to fly at night, I ent minded to stick around and be dinner for bears.”

“I quite agree,” Claire said. “Alice, let’s see if she’ll go, shall we? Girls, is Rosie safely aboard? Yes? Jake, ready tiller.”

Jake jogged forward and called,
“Ready, Lady.”

Who was in command of this tub, anyway? Much as she liked and admired Claire, Alice was the captain and it was her job to give the orders, not someone whomuc someon was used to ordering maids a
round and bossing dressmakers and—and whatever else it was fine ladies did in London Town.

“Tigg, stand by engine,” she said, moving smoothly but with authority to the
stern with him. “Mr. Malvern, take the vanes, please. Full vertical. Passengers, I’d find somewhere to sit. Lift in five, four—”

Claire
and the girls scrambled forward and sat wherever they could find a horizontal spot with something to hang onto. Rosie perched above their heads, her feet wrapped around a pipe.

“—three, two, one.” She slammed all three levers down, one after the other. “Ignition, Mr. Tigg!”

She half expected to hear the throaty grumble of the poor old Massey. But there was no such sound. Instead, the engine mount seemed to tremble, there was a flash of light that she could see right through the rippled seams of Four’s erstwhile chest, and the pistons began to move.

The props turned, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
It worked, by golly, it really, truly worked. Alice drew in a breath that was more like a gasp of relief.

“Up ship!”

The Mopsies yanked in the mooring ropes. Andrew threw the levers for the elevation vanes forward and Jake gripped the tiller …

… and they fell up into the twilight
sky with the joy of a lark greeting the morning.

Edmonton.

The Northern Light, some called it,
the third jewel in the continental crown that included New York and San Francisco, and light it was.

The
Stalwart Lass
circled an airfield big enough to put fifty small towns on, looking for a mooring mast that was free. Through the glass, Claire could see the twinkling lights of the city coming on as darkness fell. It was bigger than Santa Fe, though not nearly as large as London or Paris—but give it time. The lights—not the sallow yellow of electricks, but orange and blue and nearly white, sparkled like the diamonds that gave the city its reason for being.

“Look!” She pointed a little to the west. “Isn’t that
Lady Lucy?
Jake, steer that way. Perhaps we can moor close enough to walk over and see the Dunsmuirs.”

“Dunno as I want to.” Tigg popped out from behind the engine mount and leaned
through the gangway door. “Ent they the same ones as left us all behind in Resolution?”

“They didn’t intend to leave
us
behind.” Lizzie giggled and elbowed Maggie in the ribs.

Maggie, who was holding Rosie and stroking her feathers, nodded. “We left our
own selves.”

“Be fair.” Claire turned ft t{rom the viewing glass and scratched Rosie’s head. The bird, who was getting sleepy
with the fading of the light, gave her a polite tap upon the finger with her beak. One did not disturb a lady at her rest. “They believed me to be dead, the two of you in your cabin, and Tigg back with Mr. Yau at the engines. And you know the countess puts Willie’s safety before all other considerations.”

“Kid’
s goin’ t’be spoiled rotten,” muttered Jake.

De
spite his grumbles, Claire was pleased to see that he had changed their course, and they were now floating nearer to the
Lady Lucy
.

“There’s a mast
free,” Lizzie said suddenly. “Fifty feet off the port side of her.”

So there was. Maggie took Rosie to her hatbox in the twins’ berth in the starboard-side fuselage
while Jake and Alice brought the battered
Lass
in for a smooth landing. One of the ground crew stationed at the field caught the rope and moored them fast, and for the first time since they had left Reno, Claire found herself disembarking like a lady—meaning on her feet, as opposed to climbing out by means of a rope or being hauled about unconscious like a sack of vegetables.

“Cor, it’s freezing!” Lizzie bleated as she jumped to the ground from the gondola. She wore her black raiding skirt and striped stockings and boots, but her
white blouse was thin voile, much like Claire’s own.