Magnificent Devices 07 - A Lady of Integrity (26 page)

Lizzie shrieked so loudly she was sure even the fish could hear her. “Tigg! It’s the Lady! And Mr. Andrew and the captain and Jake!”

“Get back to the basket!” Tigg shouted. “We’ve got to get them out of there before a kraken comes!”

Claude pounded behind her as she practically flew down the corridor to the hatch in the stern where the rescue basket lay ready and waiting. “What can I do?” he shouted.

“Winch me down—I’ll throw Incendiaries to distract the kraken.” For it was not a matter of
if
they came—it was
when
.

He grasped the handle and Lizzie scrambled into the basket, her pockets full of the little bombs Mr. Andrew had made—bless Mr. Andrew’s inventive mind, to make something so useful! The wind caught the basket and swung it out like a pendulum as Tigg completed the turn that brought the ship about and positioned it above the roiling water, where it was clear the four figures were doing their level best not to splash while they struggled to stay afloat.

Down—down—oh, please let her be in time—

In the clear water two hundred feet away, a shadow swam up from the depths and began to move toward the little group at a speed at which no ordinary creature should be able to travel.

“No!” Lizzie screamed, yanked the pin from a bomb, and threw it as hard as she could. Even from up here she could see the flash under the water, and the kraken halted, temporarily disoriented, its tentacles waving as it backed away. “Claude, faster!”

The line sang out as the winch got away from him and Lizzie dropped like a stone. She screamed his name to no avail … the basket hit the surface as though it were flagged pavement … and she was flung out and into the water, directly into the kraken’s path.

26

Claire tore the now useless breathing globe from her head and struggled out of the spent rucksack. “Lizzie!” she shrieked. Had she been knocked unconscious? Had she broken something in the fall?

There was no time to lose.

Claire had not grown up on the Cornish coast without learning how to swim, thanks to lessons from the second footman about which her mother had never been told. She blessed that footman now as she stroked evenly through the choppy water to where she could just see Lizzie’s sleek wet head.

“Lizzie!”

She could feel the danger rising up through the water—
feel
it, like electricity in her legs and arms, the way a lightning storm made the hair rise on the back of her neck. She had no clear idea how she was going to protect her girl from the kraken, only that she must try, even if she died herself in the attempt.

The basket was rising drunkenly, seawater pouring out of it as it swung in the air, as
Athena
came about again. With no one in it to provide a weight, getting it close enough to save one of them would be a matter of sheer luck. “Andrew!” she shouted over her shoulder. “The basket!” But he and Ian and Jake were already ahead of her, surfacing and reaching for the webbing of rope on the bottom.

She plunged face-first through a wave and came up next to Lizzie.

Who was floating on her back in a boiling calm—the kind that meant something very large was coming up from beneath.

“Lizzie—dear Lord help us—you must swim!”

Lizzie turned her head at an odd angle, her arm drawn in protectively across her chest. “It’s all right, Lady.”

“I will not let you die!”

“It’s too late for that. I did something to my arm—I can’t swim. You need to get in the basket while I distract it.”

“
Distract
it!” Fear and love swamped her. “You will not!” Tears fell, warming and then chilling her cheeks, as the waves’ agitation increased. “Come, I will pass my arm around your chest and—”

The first of the tentacles rose, curling and testing the air, as big around as Claire’s leg. She couldn’t help herself—she screamed.

“Lady, please—leave me—save yourself—”

“Stay away from my girl!” Claire shrieked at the monster as it rose and rose, and now she felt something wrap around her leg, and her arm, and a tentacle slid lovingly between their bodies to encircle Lizzie’s waist. “No! You can’t have her! You can’t!”

And now the creature’s head breached the surface, exposing a black, fathomless eye.

It examined its prey.

A shudder seemed to pass through its gelid flesh—a subtle movement that Claire could feel even in the extremity wrapped around her calf.

Lizzie drew in a breath. “Why, hullo,” she said.

“Lizzie—dear girl, please—try—” But Lizzie did not seem to hear Claire’s frantic, tearful whisper.

“I didn’t expect to see
you
again,” she said to the creature, as though delighted to have met an old acquaintance on the street. “If you plan to eat me, I hope you will make it quick, and let the Lady here go.”

“Why are you talking to this creature?” Claire hissed.

“It knows me,” she said simply. “It’s the one Tigg and I rescued the night of the Minister’s ball. My, how big you’ve grown in such a short time,” she told it.

Though she was nearly in shock with fear and cold, Claire could see an opportunity when it rose up in front of her. Slowly, she reached down and detached the unresisting tentacle from her calf. It clung briefly to her hand before sliding away. The second one unwrapped itself from around her arm, and then the one around Lizzie’s waist loosened.

“So we are even, then,” Lizzie said with approval. “Thank you.” She leaned on Claire, who was treading water as best she could with one arm while she cradled Lizzie’s head against her shoulder. “You might think about leaving,” she advised it. “This is not a very healthy place for your kind. I recommend the West Indies.”

A sound that vibrated in Claire’s very bones seemed to issue from the beast, resonating through the water, and then it sank slowly beneath the waves. The foam closed over the last of the tentacles—Claire had the impression of something moving very fast and very powerfully beneath her—

—and they were alone.

*

The creature’s spell faded abruptly and pain rushed in like an explosion in Lizzie’s brain. She cried out, spots dancing around the edges of her vision.

“I’m sorry, darling,” the Lady said, half sobbing, as Jake and Captain Hollys reached down to take her. “It is going to hurt.”

It did.

Dreadfully.

Like nothing ever had before in her life.

Lizzie fell into the bottom of the basket, retching and weeping, hardly even aware of Mr. Malvern heaving the Lady in and then climbing in himself. The Lady flung herself next to her with Mr. Malvern’s shirt and wadded it up under her head. Far above, Lizzie’s dazed eyes could see the underside of
Athena
and the long filament of the rope as they were winched with agonizing slowness into the air.

Claude had let the basket go, and she had fallen into the water and broken her arm … or her shoulder … or something. He would likely be as sore as she by this time tomorrow from the effort of winching up five people in a wet basket.

A crack like a tree branch breaking sounded in the distance.

The Lady gasped. “Andrew—what was that?”

“Claire, keep your head down.”

“I see them,” came Jake’s grim voice. “Four degrees off
Athena
’s stern.”

“Are we under attack?” the Lady squeaked. “Can nothing go right in this godforsaken place?”

“It appears the Ministry has discovered the abandoned bell and seen
Athena
where she should not be,” Andrew said.

Crack!
Two holes appeared magically in either side of the basket’s corner above Lizzie’s head.

The Lady flung herself over Lizzie’s body, which made her see stars of pain. “Can he go no faster?” she moaned into Lizzie’s hair.

Crack! Ping!

“That went off the gondola,” Jake said grimly. “They’re getting closer.”

Twenty feet to go. Now Lizzie could see Claude and Mr. Stringfellow at the winch, cranking like fiends, even as
Athena
’s engines changed pitch and she began to make way. Dear Tigg was taking an awful risk, sailing when the basket was not secure, but given the choice, she would have done the same. Better to dock the basket in flight than be shot down.

Crack! Crack!

Crrrraaaackle—boom!

“What on earth—” Captain Hollys stared, gripping the woven rim of the basket so hard it creaked.

“Now there are
two
of them,” Mr. Andrew moaned. “Ten feet. Why did no one tell those boys the automatons will run the winch!”

“Malvern, that is a B2 military transport,” Captain Hollys said suddenly.

“I don’t care if it’s a flying squid! We are outnumbered. Why isn’t Tigg pouring on the steam and getting us out of here?”

“Because he cannot until we are docked,” the Lady moaned. “We are so heavy that it is a wonder the ropes have not broken already.”

“But—”

Crrraaaaaackle!

“That is not a rifle!” The Lady leaped to her feet, leaving Lizzie staring upward at poor Claude, whose body had probably never been called to such a degree of physical labor in all his life. And now she realized, belatedly, that it was she who had not told either of them it was not a manual winch.

Oh, dear. She hoped he would not hurt himself.

Neither could she lie here like a broken doll. If she were going to die for the second time today, it would be on her feet, beside the Lady, staring death in the face.

Lizzie rolled to her knees, holding in the groan of pain even as tears spurted from her eyes. She grasped the woven edge of the basket with her good hand, and pulled herself upright. And then she saw what had silenced the others.

The sleek military ship with the blue fuselage designed to make it nearly invisible against the sky was firing—not upon
Athena
, but upon the Ministry ship sailing to intercept them.

Firing with … lightning!

“They’ve got a lightning rifle,” she said, nearly delirious with pain and wonder, to the Lady.

“Not a rifle,” the Lady said. “The bolt is finer—more delicate—the range shorter. Like a—”

“It’s Maggie!” Lizzie shrieked, and clutched the edge of the basket as it rocked into the dock. Mr. Stringfellow looped its ropes around the stanchion, and Claude slammed the winch handle into the closed position. “It’s Maggie’s lightning pistol!”

“Jake, get Lizzie and yourself into a cabin at once.” The Lady leaped from the basket and ran, dripping water all over the decks and down the corridor. But Lizzie did not want to go, and made a terrible production of pain that was three-quarters truth—just enough to delay him until they got to the navigation gondola, where the Lady was stationed at the viewing port with the lightning rifle.

“I’ll show them not to fire on unarmed women and children,” she said grimly. “Tigg, bring her around and flank them. I want a clear shot at their engines.”

The Duchy ship was a quarter mile off their stern, the B2 flanking it with tendrils of lightning crossing the gap and leaving smoking holes in her fuselage wherever they touched.
Athena
made the turn in short order, giving them all enough time to lower the viewing glass.

Lizzie got a clear view of the pandemonium on the bridge of the Duchy ship as they realized they were under attack on two fronts—they got off a few shots that went wide—until the Lady brought the lightning rifle up and sighted down its deadly barrel.

The bolt arced across the air space between them, catching the Duchy ship’s starboard engine dead in the center. Tendrils of blue light flickered joyously all over it before the boiler detonated, blowing a hole in the side of the gondola. Two aeronauts fell out, screaming, to land with a splash in the canal below.

The Lady took aim again, this time at the fuselage.

The bolt passed through canvas and iron substructure, burning as it went, and thence into the gas bag. With a sound like a feather pillow striking one’s head, the gas ignited, and within seconds the entire fuselage was engulfed in flame. The ship fell out of the sky in a burning fireball and landed with a crash in the canal, bits of its structure falling on it in a rain of destruction.

Shadows moved deep below the surface, as the kraken came in to finish what the lightning rifle had begun.

Lizzie said something—she was not sure what—as the swarm of black spots moved into her vision, buzzing like bees.

Tigg leaped from the helm and caught her just in time.

27

While her own small airfield in Vauxhall Gardens still remained Claire’s favorite, there was something to be said for the broad, sunny field in Geneva built by the Swiss, whose attention to the finer things in life extended to the installation of a lovely fountain in the central water holding tank. Flowers lined the broad avenues between the ships, and poplar and lime trees made splotches of brilliant gold upon the green of the field and the gray of the gravel.

Lizzie, whose fall from the basket had resulted in a dislocated shoulder, had her arm in a sling thanks to the field doctor who had attended her. Claude had not yet made up to her for his mistake with the winch, and catered to her every whim to the point where Maggie had determined to take him aside and inform him that being served so assiduously was every bit as bad for one’s character as neglect.

The gentlemen had brought some of the chairs out into the sunny area between the moorages of
Athena
and
Swan
, and they were presently relaxing after an excellent lunch. Tigg lay at Lizzie’s feet, entertaining Holly, who was not convinced that everything that could be eaten had been eaten. Ivy sunned herself in Maggie’s lap in the chair next to Claire’s, while Jake lay on the blanket on the grass with his eyes closed. In this position, of course, he could not tell either Claire or Maggie not to look at him as though he were about to die then and there, which he had already done at least twice.

Both of them had made sure that he had not only seconds of lunch, but thirds, too. It was no wonder he was half asleep. He had borrowed one of Andrew’s shirts and had found a pair of breeches that fit in the crew’s quarters aboard
Swan
. Claire had wasted no time in cutting up his prison rags for polishing cloths—a much more profitable use of cotton.