“Tell ’er about the time Lewis rescued all our poor ’ens off that barge, Liz,” Maggie said. Lizzie opened her mouth to do so when they heard a thump from the ground above them.
“Sssh! Wot were that?” Lizzie hissed instead.
“And which way did it come from?” Alice whispered.
Now they could hear a commotion—boots and angry voices and what sounded like fists landing.
“There!” Maggie pointed down the corridor. “The next set o’ steps, I’m sure of it.”
The girls scrambled out of the silken embrace of Alice’s skirts and all three ran down the corridor. Maggie was right—as they climbed the steps, they could hear snatches of people talking. Or shouting, more like.
“Leave them here,” an imperious female voice said quite clearly through the panels of the hidden door at the top of the steps. “My father and Mr. Penhaven will be along shortly to deal with the nasty miscreants. He plans to give them a
fair
trial, right there in the boardroom.”
“We’ll give ’em fair!”
“Just as fair as they gave our boys on the digger—a long dance on a short rope!”
“But the earl’s dressing room, Miss Meriwether-Astor?”
said a calmer voice, more worried. “Is that quite proper?”
Meriwether-Astor? Alice’s mind felt like an unmanned dirigible being batted around by high winds. Where had the girl come from? And what did it mean that she was doing exactly as Claire had said? How could she? She was their enemy’s daughter!
So where were Claire and the earl? Had something gone dreadfully wrong?
Mumbletythump!
A body landed against the door, then another a little distance away. And a third beyond that. Someone groaned right next to the panel against which Alice pressed her ear, and it was all she could do not to jerk back and send herself tumbling down the steps.
“Oh, yes. Why should they have the dignity of a drawing room, or even an office? A latrine is good enough for them.”
“I’d say so. Nothing but dung, they are!”
“Hey, don’t insult good dung!” Raucous laughter greeted this witticism.
“Come along, gentlemen. If you will arrange the boardroom and see that this door is securely locked, with a guard posted outside it
and
outside the window, I will inform my father that his wishes have been carried out.”
“Right you are, miss. Careful. Don’t step in the blood and spoil your pretty dancing shoes.”
“Thank you, Alan. You are the kind of gentleman I desentstep in paired of ever meeting in these parts.”
The door slammed, and the lock turned over.
Alice took a breath and listened. Nothing moved on the other side.
Oh, please don’t let him be dead. Please. I’ve only had a day …
She leaned gently on the lever next to the panel and the door eased open toward her, allowing a crack of light through from the electricks in the dressing room.
The man on the other side sucked in a breath through his nose, no doubt thinking he was suffering from
both nausea and vertigo.
Perhaps he was.
Through the crack, she got a glimpse of matted blond hair.
“Pa?” she whispered. “Pa, can you hear me?”
He stirred, and clutched his arm against his ribs. “Alice?” he breathed. “Where are you?”
“There’s a movable panel behind you. We’ve come to get you out. Easy now, not so fast. The steps go straight down.”
“But what—I don’t understand.”
“We’re breaking you out of gaol, Pa. But you have to be quiet. Rouse the other boys and come away quick, before they decide to check to see if you’re dead.”
“I think Alignak might be hurt. Ribs. And Tartok took a pretty bad hit to the head. He’s out cold.”
“What about you?”
“I’m fine.” Gasping, he pulled himself to his feet while Alice swung the panel open.
He was not fine. But it was brave of him not to show it.
She wriggled out of her topmost petticoat. What a lucky thing both she and Claire had lots of them, with multiple flounces of gathered eyelet. At the rate they were going, they’d use every yard for bandages before they got away from this inhospitable country.
“Girls, take this to the bottom of the steps. I want it ripped into strips by the time we get the men down.
We’ll patch them up as best we can. Then we’ll have to hoof it before Penhaven and his bunch come back and find the room empty.”
Alignak had heard their whispered exchange and was already on his feet by the time Alice poked her head into the next latrine compartment. He limped out and went immediately to the third one.
“Tartok sleeps,” he whispered, his sloe-black eyes worried. “A demon sleep.”
“Demons made him that way, that’s certain,” Alice whispered back. “Pa, can you lift him with just one arm?”
“Yes.”
Alice helped him shoulder the young man and bit back a cry when she saw her father lose all color and gasp in pain. But he said not a word. He maneuvered Tartok through the opening and took the steps carefully. Alignak followed right behind, holding his ribs as if trying to keep them in place.
Alice brought up the rear and closed and fastened the door. If only there were a way to block it! But thock place.
Only cold silence, and the yellow ribbon of electrick light fading into the distance.
A click sounded above them, at the top of the steps leading to her ladyship’s dressing room. Alice fell to her knees as her father put Tartok down, and began binding up wounds as fast as Lizzie could hand her the torn strips of eyelet. Maggie went up to investigate.
“Lady!” Alice heard her whisper. “Come quick!”
“Do you have them?”
came Claire’s quiet voice.
“Aye. That Meriwether-whatsis mort ’ad ’em put right where you said.”
“Are they hurt?”
“Aye. Come away down, Lady.
We gots to get out of ’ere.”
Claire wasted no time in assisting Alice, fabricating a sling out of a length of white voile for Chalmers’s arm, and binding up Alignak’s ribs with half a second petticoat.
“What luck you’re still in evening dress,” she whispered to Alice. “This rig doesn’t allow for petticoats—though I’m tempted to add a number of layers of ruffles. They seem to come in handy rather regularly.”
“It’s this place,” Alice whispered back. “Once we’re clear of assassins, our clothes ought to be fine.”
“Speaking of assassins, were you able to speak to the count?”
In the dim light, Alice looked stricken. “I forgot all about him,” she said in horror.
Frederick Chalmers looked up from tightening the knot
s on his sling. “You what? You mean you didn’t warn him to lift?”
“No, Pa, I was too busy trying to save
your
hide.”
“But this is terrible! We must—”
“We must do nothing but get you out of here before you’re recaptured and hanged,” Claire said briskly. “We’re not likely to get a second chance to spirit you out of a locked room. I will see to Count von Zeppelin.”
“And I will get you all in the air without delay.” Alice’s gaze was as stony as
the one her father leveled upon her. There was no doubt in the world that the two of them were related. Claire wondered who would win this contest of wills.
“But—”
“Chama,” Alignak interrupted, “we must get Tartok to Malina or his spirit will leave him. And we must warn the village so the goddess whales may sail.”
Frederick Chalmers gazed from the young man to his daughter, clearly torn between two equally important choices. But to Claire, there was only one.
“You leave the count to me,” she repeated. “I will have him in the sky within the hour, I promise you.”
“No, but it cannot be difficult to find out.”
“Just look for an assassin,” Maggie put in helpfully.
Tartok stirred, but then his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped into unconsciousness again. “We must go,” Alignak said, his voice hoarse with anxiety.
Alice helped heft Tartok onto her father’s back, his wrists tied together with a bit of lace to form a loop under Frederick’s chin. Then they set off down the corridor. Claire visualized the route in her mind’s eye as they traveled under the mine offices, under the parade ground, and paused at a cross-corridor with another tiny sign.
Dining
was indicated to the left.
Supplies
lay to the right.
“The supply warehouse is not a hundred yards from end of the airfield where the
Stalwart Lass
is moored,” Claire said, keeping her voice low. “That way, as fast as we can.”
It couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a mile, but to Claire it seemed endless. At any moment a door could open at the top of any of these flights of stone steps, and a horde of angry men pour through clamoring for
the immediate deaths of Frederick Chalmers and the Esquimaux men—to say nothing of the girls attempting to save them. Alice reached the final stair first and darted up it, opening the hidden panel with caution as she tried not to gasp for breath.
It opened in a small storage room directly across from an exterior door. The warehouse was pitch black except for a small electrick lamp glowing over the door.
“Come on—” Alice began, when Maggie and Lizzie slipped past her. “Girls, wait—”
Claire touched her arm. “Let them do wha
t they do better than any of us.” Then she turned to Frederick, who emerged slowly from the staircase with Tartok’s head lolling on his shoulder. “Mr. Chalmers, are you all right?”
“Fine. Alignak?”
“I am able.”
Maggie materialized out of the dark. “All clear, Lady, but we’d best be quick. We c’n ’ear voices behind this building, as if someone’s coming to get summat.”
They ran through alleys of pallets and crates filled with supplies—food, flour, spare parts. They gained the door and Claire had enough time for a frantic glance across the airfield. “Alice, do you hear that?”
An engine.
Even as they ran, peering past the light cast by the lamps on the mooring masts, the
Skylark
lifted, sailing straight up into the night sky and blotting out the stars.
Frederick gasped. “Isobel!”
Alignak let out a low cry of despair.
What…? But there was no time to ask questions, for someone was running across the field toward them. Two someones—one tall, o—width="2emne lanky and shorter.
Claire pulled the lightning rifle out of its holster and took aim.
“No, Lady, don’t!” Maggie cried. “It’s our Jake and Mr. Malvern!”
But they could still hear an engine, even though
Skylark
had passed out of sight and out of all hope of assistance.
“Someone’s fired up the
Lass
’s boiler,” Alice said. “Jake, you get double pay for this.”
“Here, sir, let us take him,” Andrew said to Frederick, and in a trice he and Jake had the unconscious Tartok between them, jogging across the field to the
battered old airship. Alice and the men followed, tumbling up the gangway into the gondola.
Claire grabbed the Mopsies by the hand. “We must untie the ropes. I shall attend to the mooring mast. Run, fast as you can.”
“Claire!” Alice leaned out of a porthole. “I never got a proper engine in here to replace Dr. Craig’s power cell!”