Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times (15 page)

Jack was silent. Lorcan hadn’t left, but he had grown older, at least for a while. And then he had . . . stopped.

The Lady clapped her hands. “Enough!” she said, wearing a merry expression once more. “Such fun we’ll have! Come along, now.”

There were no bedtimes, no bells to rouse him in the morning, though the clock tower was nearby and loud enough that it often did pull Jack from his dreams. Meals were served at a long table under gas chandeliers, or else the Lady had them brought to the thrones.

Beth was right. She was not so very terrible. Not terrible at all, in fact.

She loved him and showered him with gifts. New boots, sending for the cobbler the moment he complained that his pinched his toes, suits in his favorite colors, a small top hat when he happened to mention it.

The day of the parade approached. More people with their glass eyes or metal hands or rattling lungs bowed their entries and begged for the Lady’s yea or nay. Jack sat
in his chair and waited for them to be gone. Or, if he grew tired there, he would slip from the room to explore.

By far his favorite part of the palace was not, technically,
in
the palace. Through a room that seemed to exist because there’s only so much hallway possible before a room is needed to break up the boredom, wide doors led to a courtyard. Enormous clockwork fans branched overhead like trees, so the air below was clean and fresh, nothing like the outdoors in the rest of the city. Faeries frolicked there, climbing the trees to drop to the flower beds, crushing them, or making faery foot dents in the soft grass.

It was here Arabella found him, her hair streaming behind as she ran. “Your lordship!” she called, tripping along the path that wound around the shrubbery. “You must come. You simply must!”

He followed her, through the pointless room, along the thick carpets and over the echoing marble. Behind the closed doors at the footman’s back, Jack heard screams and an almighty crash.

The footman stepped aside. Jack swallowed, and Arabella nudged him.

“Why is she angry?” he asked. Something else broke, ringing out.

“Who can tell? Go.” She nudged him again.

Slowly, Jack pushed open the door. He ducked. A vase struck the wall above his head, a glittering shower of crystal raining down, a drop slashing at his cheek.

“Where were you?” the Lady screamed. “You left!” Her face was red, lips smeared, hair a wild, wild tangle.

Inside his new leather boots, Jack’s feet shook. “I—I didn’t. I went to see the courtyard.”

“You will never leave,” she hissed. A dark thing curled in Jack’s belly.

Never, never leave.

He took a deep breath, a step toward her.
Little boys do not cry
, said Mrs. Pond’s kindly voice in his head.
Little boys are brave and do the things they must.
“I won’t,” he promised. “I won’t leave, Mother.”

O
N THE MORNING
of the parade, Arabella shook Jack awake. She’d opened the curtains, though with the heavy clouds of soot and fug that lay over the city, it was never possible to tell whether, above them, the sun shone; it was brighter than dream darkness.

He blinked and pushed aside the coverlet, sliding from the high bed to the floor, bare toes wriggling in the carpet. Beyond the window, Londinium rose from the ashes of night, lamps flaring to life. If he squinted, he could see the guards patrolling the streets before the palace, feathers in their hats ruffled by breezes.

Jack’s stomach fluttered, empty, hot. The parade.
Where he would look out at all the people and . . .

“Where do they think I come from?” he asked.

A collar fell from Arabella’s hand. She bent to retrieve it. “Beg pardon, your lordship?”

“All of the . . . the subjects. I’m not like them. They’ll see that.” It was why Dr. Snailwater had disguised him, but he decided not to mention that to Arabella, who busied herself rummaging in a drawer.

“Same place as the Lady does, I ’spect,” she said.

“And where’s that?”

Arabella turned, leaned against the chest of drawers, and crossed her arms over herself. “Some things are so very old, it’s as if they’ve been there forever. The Lady does me well, saved me from life on the docks, freezing me fingers off gutting fish all day long, and I can handle her temper. Poking my nose in where it’s got no business won’t do me no favors.”

“But I’m not as old as her.”

Arabella shrugged. “They’ll think you are. They don’t ask questions, neither. Not where a body can hear them, anyways.”

He dressed in the suit she gave him. Green today, green as forests and faery eyes, and this time he did look in the mirror. Everything about him shone new and bright. The day before, the Lady had sent for a barber, who’d snipped away at Jack’s
hair until it was a smooth cap. Dark locks curled on the floor and had stuck to his shoes.

Outside, the clock chimed. Inside, the palace thrummed, a heartbeat of footsteps and orders and
oh-blast-mustn’t-forget-to’s.
The maids, serfs, guards, and ladies-in-waiting stepped out of his way as he crossed the marble, past the footman, into the throne room.

She was simply too beautiful to be real. The choosing of Jack’s suit was no mistake, for she wore green, too, a deep velvet strung through and through with sparkling emeralds. A faery scampered out from behind her gown, cackling as it ran beneath a sideboard, and she did not even kick it, so wide was her red, red smile. A topper crowned with peacock feathers sat on her head. From it hung a veil, fine as mist over her eyes, down to the curve of her cheeks.

“Mother,” he said.

Her smile grew further still. “Darling Jack. Come to me.”

One each day until you come to me.
He pushed the thought away as one would a distasteful food. That had been Lorcan, not her. She wrapped her arms around him, tight enough to crease his collar.

Breakfast was laid out, deviled eggs and kippers, peaches in cream and pastries filled with jam. Jack wished for porridge, thin and watery the way he liked it, but chased an egg around his plate while people bustled in and out. The
noise from the street reached in to touch the palace with excited fingers. His throat stuck together so he could not even swallow tea.

The Lady didn’t notice, too occupied with giving orders and clapping at the smallest perfections.

“I have the most marvelous surprise for you,” she announced. “We are— Oh, Lorcan.” Her smile turned brittle as bones as he entered the room. Jack looked away. “Is it ready?”

“There was a matter to attend to, Lady,” said Lorcan. His eyes glittered. Not red, this time, but Jack remembered. “It is ready.”

“Come along, darling,” she said. Lorcan gave a funny kind of jerk. The Lady reached for Jack’s hand, and Jack did not miss Lorcan’s scowl. Guards fell into step behind, following their journey through the palace to a set of high doors leading to a courtyard.

Jack clasped his hand over his mouth to keep from gasping. An airship hovered a few feet from the ground, taking up nearly the entire courtyard, end to end. Its hull was smooth, sleek, never scraped by rocks or crusted with barnacles. He craned his head to see the masts strung with sails and flying flags of crimson edged with gold. Guards ran about the deck, plumes whipped in the wind, shouting to one another for ropes.

“The palanquins seemed far too ordinary,” said the Lady, delighted. “Now everyone will see you! Isn’t it splendid?”

It
was.

Beside him, Jack heard Lorcan huff, but he did not care.
He
was the Lady’s son now, and if she wanted him to ride in a boat grander than any he’d seen on the Thames, carving through a sea of air, he wasn’t bothered by what Lorcan thought of the matter.

“May we go aboard, Mother?” There wasn’t the slightest pang at the word, for she was his mother now, and let him do all manner of things his own never allowed, and she didn’t fly into a rage at him, because he could eat the cakes Beth never could.

Beth. He did miss her, a little bit. No doubt she was skipping through the streets or sheltered in her birdcage. Perhaps she’d come to the parade. He’d catch a glimpse and wave at her.

“Of course, my dearest. The gangway, if you please, Lorcan. Arabella, do try not to slouch.”

Lorcan signaled to a guard on the deck, and as if the ship were a sea monster itself, a great mouth opened in the bottom, ready to swallow them whole. Slowly, the ramp descended, finally stopping an inch from the cobbles. The Lady held tightly to Jack’s hand as she led him up into the belly, full of clangs and thumps and that same thunderous
rumbling Jack had heard on his first sight of the ships. So much louder now. The floor shook. Jack’s teeth rattled, and it was difficult to keep his eyes open.

But he wriggled free of the Lady’s grasp and moved toward the roar. Too late, it occurred to him that this might displease her, but when he looked back she was smiling. It was Lorcan whose face looked like the business edge of a blade.

Jack didn’t wish to wonder, just then, why Lorcan had gone to such trouble to bring him here only to hate him. There was too much to look at: the spiral staircase that led up to the deck, folded sails and coiled ropes, darkened shadows where guards lurked ready to be called upon. Rows of cannons along either side, their barrels lined up perfectly with holes cut into the sides of the ship.

Most of all, the open door beside the stairs, the maddeningly incomplete glimpses of the engine in the room beyond. He ran to it, through it, engulfed by the sound. It was like nothing Jack had ever seen. The enormity of it, the clouds of steam thick enough to blanket the whole sky, sucked from the room by a shaft that led upward. Every metal part, tiny and huge, playing its well-oiled part. Spinning, hissing, churning.

Fingers clasped his forearm. Jack looked up. Lorcan glared at him in return, dragging him roughly from the engine room. “Careful near that steam, child,” said Lorcan as they went.
“How sad it would be if you were to get . . . hurt.”

The instant they were in sight of the Lady, Lorcan’s grip loosened and his mouth slackened into what might generously be termed a smile.

“Go on,” he ordered Jack. The Lady went first, the liquid green silk of her dress melting improbably upward on the stairs.

The deck was nearly grander still than the inside of the ship, if not as interesting. Sails snapped in frustration against the masts that rose high above the deck. A huge wheel bloomed at the helm, beside . . . Surely there wasn’t always a parlor set out here. This was to please the Lady, but there it was, right at the front. Two thrones, one large, one smaller, sat atop a finely spun rug. Little tables sat spindly-legged as insects holding dishes of sweets and cakes on their backs. There was even a Tune-Turner, but Jack doubted he would ask for music. And a chessboard.

Arabella helped the Lady to her chair, which faced out to the palace, level with the windows on the highest floor.

So that they could see the crowds, Jack realized, and wave to them.

“Sit, Jack.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Cake?”

It was barely an hour since the breakfast he hadn’t
eaten. He took one and held it, crumbs crawling over his fingers as guards rushed to and fro around them, never setting foot on the rug. Arabella curled on the rug as she did inside the palace. Lorcan was nowhere to be seen without Jack craning his neck. He didn’t.

The ship gave a great shudder. A rope whistled through the air and they jolted upward. The palace windows were at Jack’s knees now, then the deck, then he had to lean over the railing. The palace roof spiked and sloped below. He looked across to the far end where the clock tower stood, its faces shrouded in a black veil.

There had been no rain.

The tops of the masts carved etchings in the swathe of cloud. Jack held fast to the arms of his throne as the ship turned away from the curving arm of the river and away from the palace.

“Going down!” someone called. Jack’s stomach leaped, but the descent was smooth, controlled to an inch. No motorcars or carriages barred their way on the streets that, he saw now, were lined with people. Hands and eyes caught the light in diamond sparks. The crowd wasn’t as noisy as it had been for the hangings, but then, for the hangings they had known precisely what they were coming to see. Curiosity painted every face. Necks bent to see as the ship skimmed the cobbles and the people saw first the Lady, then Jack.

“’S’never a boy!” shouted a man from somewhere in the mass.

“’T’is!” replied another.

Voices rustled; Jack strained to hear them. What did they think of him? Where did they think he’d come from? Despite what Arabella said, they must think
something
, and if it was that he’d appeared from the same place as their Lady, well, where was that?

“Oh, they love you!” cried the Lady.

It was impossible to linger on any one face for long. The enormous airship slid through the streets, along the edge of the park where Jack had found Beth. He jumped from the chair to lean over the railing, looking for her. Anything—a flicker of hair ribbon, Dr. Snailwater’s fluffy white hair, because where one was, the other would be.