Lady of Devices (14 page)

“’Ow you gonna loft them vials inside? I can only see one window what’s broke. Mopsies!” The girls materialized next to them out of the dark. “Do a fast reconnoiter. We need ’oles in the walls, broken windows, and such like to pitch the vials through.”

Without a sound, the girls vanished as though they had done this kind of thing before. Claire had done no more than spare a thought for how chilly the night was becoming when they reappeared. “There’s a broken window next to the back door,” Lizzie reported in a whisper. “Shingles ripped out of the roof on the river side, and a loose board on the other side. Front’s tight and they set a watch.”

Snouts swore at this intelligence. “Jake. You do for the watch. Not a sound.”

Claire clutched at Jake’s arm. “What does that mean? You won’t kill that person, will you?”

He gave her an incredulous look. “What d’you take me for? Not unless he gives me a fight.”

“Not under any circumstances! I won’t have my friends connected with murder.”

“Lady—”

Claire’s skin had gone cold with more than just the dewfall. “I will not have it, do you hear? We are to succeed through the exercise of intellect, not brute force.”

“We’ll succeed through t’exercise of my good right arm, Lady,” Jake told her with flat scorn before he vanished into the night.

“I shall have words with him if any harm comes to the watch,” she said with grim promise.

“Jake’s a dab hand,” Tigg assured her. “Watch won’t feel a thing.”

This did not have the comforting effect he obviously intended. However, there was nothing to be done except the job she had come to do. She gritted her teeth as Snouts directed their strategy. “Tigg, you’re our best at the scramble, so you take the roof. I’ll take the back door. Mopsies, you take Jake his vial and set our own watch. Lady, you’d best stay here.”

“I shan’t,” Claire objected with no little warmth.

“You’ve done yer bit with the chemicals. You’ll only be in the way.”

“In the—? And who, might I ask, brought down your entire house at this very time last night with no assistance whatever?”

“Billy Crumwell’s killed four men,” Snouts’s tone was as blunt as a bludgeon and just as effective. “We make one mistake and he’ll do for us wi’out a thought. First sign of trouble, you take to your heels.”

“I am not leaving without my landau—or any of you.”

“Better you leave wi’ yer life.”

“But I—”

A bird whistled near the graveyard wall, and Snouts held up a hand. “Trouble.” Inch by cautious inch, they peered around the flying angel monument behind which they were concealed, to see a lantern bob across the squat’s yard. Three or four young men only a little older than Claire herself accompanied a person dressed in what appeared to be a velvet frock coat and a slightly crushed top hat adorned with a pair of driving goggles. His waistcoat was leather, and at his side he carried a pistol with a curiously bulbous and long barrel. Snouts drew a long breath.

“What? Who is that?” Claire whispered. “Is that Billy Crumwell?”

“Nah. Billy’s the git in the long coat wi’ the chains over ’is shoulder.” Claire peered at the group more closely. She hadn’t even noticed him. “That flash cove ... Lady, this is trouble. I’m callin’ Jake and Maggie in.”

“Why?”

Before he could answer, Billy Crumwell spoke to his companion. “I tell ye, Luke, ye won’t be sorry. She’s a beauty, not a scratch on ’er. A bargain at a hunnert pounds. Ye can go drivin’ about and no one’ll know you ent a lord.”

Claire gripped the granite plinth. They were too late. That filthy criminal! “We have to follow them. They’re about to sell my landau to that Luke person.”

Snouts gave a very credible imitation of a sparrow, and within seconds Maggie had joined them. Not a moment too soon, either, because Luke and his four escorts hopped the wall where she had been posted and made their way through the graveyard not twenty feet away. They filed into the narrow alley between the church and the dilapidated tavern next to it. Claire rose and settled the satchel with its lethal contents on her back.

Snouts jerked her back down. “Lady, you can’t. That’s Lightning Luke Jackson.”

“For heaven’s sake, let go of my skirt. I don’t care if it’s the leader of the Opposition. We’ll lose them!”

Jake dove into the shadow of the monument, breathing hard. “Good call, Snouts. Watch is out, but you won’t catch me takin’ on Lightning Luke.”

She neither knew nor cared what or who Lightning Luke Jackson was. All she knew was that he was about to buy her landau out from under her, and she had not come this far nor lost this much to allow it. “We are armed. I’m following them. You may do as you like.”

Ducking low and moving from monument to headstone, Claire clutched her hat, dodged across the graveyard and plunged into the inky shadow of the alley, where the voices ahead told her that her quarry had no fear of pursuit.

She smiled, guiding herself with fingertips on the greasy, cold wall to her right. A sound behind her wiped the smile away and she whirled to find a small form silhouetted against the moonlight. “Maggie?” A second form joined the first. “Lizzie?” Both girls pressed themselves against her skirts, even as she forged ahead with as much stealth as she could muster. “What are you doing? Has Snouts relented?”

“E’s in a fury,” Maggie whispered with admirable economy. “But I couldn’t let you go by yerself. We’re flock mates.”

“An’ I’m her flock mate.” Lizzie evidently wanted no confusion as to where her loyalties lay. “Mind you don’t get ’er kilt.”

“I will do my utmost to prevent that,” Claire promised. “Now. No more talking. We have work to do.”

Two streets closer to the river, a row of warehouses stood hunched over a thoroughfare so narrow it might as well have been an alley. Down the middle of the cobbles ran a thin stream of filthy water, carrying with it bits of flotsam and food so rotted even the scurrying rats wouldn’t stop for it. Deplorable though her skirts might be, Claire lifted them and hugged the side of the building as the three of them kept their quarry in sight. They crouched behind a pile of barrels where the alley opened out into a square.

“No cover,” Lizzie whispered. “Best to wait
’
ere.”

Billy Crumwell led the way to a low, arched door, with just enough clearance for a wagon. “In here. Won’t no one disturb us this time of night.”

In her stealthy pursuit, Claire had hatched a plan. The Mopsies huddled together next to her, and she leaned close. “As soon as they’re all inside, I shall use the gaseous capsaicin. Cover your faces with your skirts. Do not breathe it.”

“Let us have a look first.”

“No, I—”

Too late. With no more sound than a rustle of limp rags, the girls darted between the buildings, in a space barely wide enough for a skinny dog to pass. To her horror, she heard the landau’s top make the familiar shivery sound as it folded back, and in the next moment, someone dropped the hood and swore.

They were trying to ignite it. Heaven knew what havoc their untrained hands would wreak, messing about with boiler and coal. They would unbalance the entire mechanism, and then she would be unable to pilot it out of this noisome place.

As fast as her fingers would move, she retrieved two of the devices from their wrappings in the satchel, slung it back on, and slipped over to the door. Not one guard stood outside. Fools. By leaning mere inches to the left, she could see around the door. There was her landau, a sheet of canvas crumpled on the floor next to it. Someone had got the hood up again, and two of the thieves had their heads inside, trying to figure out how to ignite it, while a third sat in the driver’s seat, her own goggles perched on his head.

She tightened her lips, and when something touched her hand, she jumped half a foot and let out a squeak.

“Warehouse fronts on t’river,” Maggie whispered rapidly. “If we gots to run, tide’s out.”

Before Claire could puzzle out the connection between these two facts, someone shouted from inside. “Hey! Who’s that? Jim, get the door.”

“We’re spotted!” Maggie grabbed her hand. “This way.”

“No.” As hard as she could, Claire flung first one, then the other device to either side of the landau. As they shattered on the floor, she grabbed the door. “Maggie, help me!”

They pushed it shut just as a body hit the other side, and Claire hung onto the slats for dear life. She pulled at the iron bar that had once rested across the front, but to no avail. The door began to open, inexorably pushing her out into the square. Another body hit the back of it, and another, and the door was flung back. She stumbled to the side as Lightning Luke careened into the open, his hands mashed to his eyes, his oddly shaped gun in the crook of his elbow and hanging over his forearm. Shrieking in pain, the others followed, a cloud of gas billowing out behind them.

Luke collapsed not ten feet from her, the flared barrel of the gun clunking on the cobbles next to him.

The gun. That was what everyone feared most.

She darted forward and snatched it up, then nearly fell headlong herself as its unexpected weight dragged at her arms. Luke did not move except to moan and scrub at his eyes with the velvet tails of his coat. She hefted his gun more carefully, and in the swath of lamplight that fell out into the middle of the square, eyed its operation.

It possessed a trigger, but there was no chamber for bullets. Not like her father’s pistols. But what was this? Instead of a chamber, there was a thick glass globe. If she moved this lever, then ...

The gun began to hum.

Now what was she to do? Common sense begged her to ignite the landau and drive away as fast as she could. But where was Lizzie? Maggie had taken refuge again behind the barrels. She could not leave without the other child, but if she didn’t begin the landau’s ignition sequence immediately, the miscreants would recover and her situation would be unthinkable.

A dim reflection of blue light pulsed on the wet cobbles. She looked down.

A lightning storm had formed in the glass globe, and the hum had taken on real authority now. Great heavens, this gun somehow harnessed electrick power! No wonder they called him Lightning Luke.

She had to move. Now.

“Maggie,” she shouted. “Find Lizzie!”

“Who’s that?” Luke had gotten to his feet, and swayed like a drunken man. “Where’s my gun?”

He was still blinded. Common sense told her to keep quiet, get the landau started, and get out of there. Anger demanded that she give him a piece of her mind.

“It’s a trap,” one of his companions moaned. “Billy’s done turned on us.”

Luke got one eye open, which widened at the sight of her, then slammed shut as droplets of condensed capsaicin gas rolled into it. “Who are you? Put that down, you fool of a woman, and get out of here.”

With the help of the side of the building nearest her, Billy had managed to stand as well. One of Luke’s men flung himself at him. “Turncoat! You’ll see us all dead!”

He pulled a knife, and before Claire could even shriek, he had stabbed Billy in the chest. The chains laced through the shoulders of his long coat clanked on the cobbles as he fell. Instinctively, her hands tightened on the gun, her forefinger sliding into the trigger guard, and when Billy rolled, his still twitching arm slapped her skirts. She screamed, lurched back, and the gun went off.

A lightning bolt ten feet long leaped from the flared barrel, flashing across the square and catching Luke dead in the center of his chest. He arched back as flickering tendrils of blue light traveled outward, along his limbs, along his coat, even to the top of his crushed beaver hat. His eyes bugged out and there was a sizzling sound as the liquid in them evaporated. He fell, rigid as a tree trunk, and lay still.

A plume of smoke rose from the blackened mass that had been his leather vest.

Claire’s fingers went numb, and she dropped the gun on her foot. The night crowded into her vision, and a hive of bees seemed to have entered her brain. From a great distance, she heard another shout that sounded like, “Lady! Are you all right?” and several figures ran into the square.

Fisticuffs.

The Mopsies.

If there was fighting, they would be in danger. She must not faint. She must not.

The gun will hurt them. Pick up the gun. Get the landau. Find the Mopsies.

“Lady!”

She blinked and Snouts’s face swam into clarity. “Mr. McTavish?”

“Stop standing there like a mug, Lady. You just kilt Lightning Luke Jackson!”

“Is he ... really dead?” Surely not. This had not happened. She would wake in her comfortable bed in Wilton Crescent presently and wonder what she had eaten to cause such vivid dreams.

“As a blinkin’ doornail.” Dream or not, Snouts was speaking slowly and not allowing her gaze to wander from his. “Look sharp, Lady. We have to get back to his squat before word gets out and the bobbies come.”

“Squat? Whatever for?”

“He’s got a house, Lady. A real house, wiv a door and chimbley and everything. And rugs, so I hear. We’ve got to get there and claim it afore the rats come out’ the woodwork and take it.”