Brilliant Devices: A steampunk adventure novel Page 5

  The rifle hummed happily at the prospect. She raised it to her shoulder, sighted, and fired. Paxton screamed as a bolt of lightning sizzled across the fifteen feet between them and engulfed his fisted right hand. Tendrils of blue light danced down his arm and his coat caught fire. His men tore it off him and stamped it out, but there was nothing they could do about the cauterized remains of the hand that would have beaten her bloody had she allowed it.

  “You may take that back to Mr. Leduc as a warning,” she said politely as he wept and howled. “I dislike hurting anyone, but if he interferes further with me or mine, I must and will prot

  “You’d best listen,” came a voice out of the dark behind them. “Tell ’im the Lady of Devices sends ’er regards.”

  Claire rolled her eyes as the two men still on their feet helped Paxton away. “Jake, there is no need to be theatrical. You sound as though you’ve been at the flickers.”

  Jake emerged from under a neighboring fuselage. “Couldn’t resist, Lady.”

  “What on earth are you doing out at this time of night? I thought you were safe in your berth on the Lady Lucy.”

  “Wait—you know this rascal?” George had finally found his voice, although the whites of his eyes still showed as his gaze swung from Jake to Claire. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that? And what kind of a gun shoots lightning instead of bullets?”

  Claire patted the rifle affectionately and holstered it. “Did you think it just for show?”

  “I don’t make no assumptions about a man’s ordnance,” George said. “Guess there was a few I shouldn’t have made about a woman’s, neither.” He grasped Jake’s shoulder and shook him. “I’d best not find out that rock was meant for me.”

  “Course not,” Jake said. “You stepped practically in its path. I were aimin’ at that miscreant, obviously, or I woulda hit you instead of ’im.”

  “Do unhand my navigator, George,” Claire said.

  “Navigator?” the man snorted.

  “Assumptions, George,” she reminded him gently.

  “Fine. Fine. You’re her navigator and—” He swung to Claire. “—you need about as much protection as a wolverine and—” He set off. “—I’m going to the Tiller right now and ordering up the biggest whiskey they got.”

  “I shall stand you all the first round,” Claire called after him, and then pointed up ahead. Two people were ducking into a low door in a long building that appeared to be half of a giant pipe embedded in the ground. “Look, isn’t that Alice?”

  Chapter 6

  The good thing about airmen, in Alice’s mind, was that they tended to congregate with their own kind and exchange news, gossip, wind and weather, and general badinage. They rarely fought among themselves—they were a tightly knit breed, looking down in more ways than one on the men who chose a groundbound career. If a person needed to find information, an airman’s honkytonk was the place to do it.

  The bad thing about airmen, as Alice had found in the Crown and Compass, was that you couldn’t count on them to stay in one place very long. They were forever moving, following the wind. One word of a storm front and the whole flock of them would scatter like so many starlings with a ssnostartled cry of “Up ship!”, leaving you standing with your mouth full of questions and nothing to show for your pains.

  Her father had been a mining engineer, and had been gone most of Alice’s life, but she never gave up hope that somewhere there was an airman who remembered him and could point her to him. The fact that she didn’t remember him and couldn’t say what he looked like other than that one eye was damaged from falling rock didn’t stop her inquiring about him of every airman she met.

  In Resolution, mind you, most of them were dead by the time she got to their wrecked ships, so up until now she hadn’t actually spoken to as many as she would have liked. But that one man in Santa Fe hadn’t been quite drunk enough to forget he’d seen a one-eyed man up here in the Canadas.

  That was more than enough for her. It was more than she’d heard in years.

  If her mother had been a different kind of woman, she would have stayed to keep her company in the afternoons, before business got going at the Resolute Rose. But Ma, having become the hardheaded practical sort out of necessity, was Ned Mose’s kind of woman. A girl had to survive in any way she could, and Alice wasn’t about to judge the woman who had borne her for the choices she made.

  She had to live with them. Alice didn’t.

  She’d sent a pigeon from Santa Fe letting her know she was riding the winds and probably wouldn’t be back. There had been no reply, and Alice expected none.

  Expectations were a luxury Alice Chalmers couldn’t afford. But hope didn’t cost a thing.

  There was a commotion near the door and Alice turned to see Claire and Jake and a crowd of the rope monkeys who had been at the Crown all coming in together. Naturally, Andrew took one look and made the wrong assumption.

  “Claire? Are you all right? Are these men being troublesome?”

  “On the contrary,” she said gaily. “They are keeping me out of trouble. Andrew, this is George, Reuben, and Elliot. Gentlemen, this is Andrew Malvern, and the blond young woman at the bar is—”

  “Alice Chalmers.” George touched two fingers to his brow in acknowledgement. “I see you found the place.”

  “Your directions were precise.” She turned to Claire. “I’m going to make inquiries at the bar. Do you and Andrew and—Jake? What are you doing here?”

  “He was filling in for the Mopsies,” Claire said. “May he come in?”

  “If he stays out of the way,” George put in. “And don’t throw anything.”

  Alice let this go as none of her business, though how these two could have a history in the ten minutes since she’d left the Compass was beyond her. Claire and Jake took a table, and the airmen joined them. Andrew stopped to speak with a man heading out the door, and Alice—you’d think she’d know better—felt a glow of warmth that he had got right down to the business of helping her.

  But mooning over that wasn’t going to help her find her pa. She ordered something mild in the hopes that at some point later this evening, she would not be caught vomiting all over Mr. Malvern the way she had on the occasion of their first meeting. W Cst h="hen the barman didn’t seem inclined to move away, but stood there drying glasses, his gaze moving from table to table as he kept an eye out for trouble, she cleared her throat.

  “Business good?”

  “Middling. I was hoping the count’s ship’d bring in business, what with the size of the crew it carries, but no such.”

  “You see a lot of traffic through here. Different crowd from the Compass, I understand.”

  He nodded, and wiped out another glass. “Compass caters to visitors. We get a different lot here. More flighty, you might say.”

  “You might have seen a friend of mine, then. Mining engineer, he is. Was. Accident took one eye.”

  The barman considered, twisting his towel in the glass. “How old?”

  “Your age, maybe. Give or take five or ten years.”

  He snorted. “Ain’t seen anyone like that lately.”

  Lately? “It could’ve been awhile ago. Years, even.”

  “Some friend. Close, are you?”

  Caught. “It’s my pa,” she admitted. “I’m trying to get a lead on him, but I haven’t seen him since I was knee-high.”

  Another snort, this time not without sympathy. “Maybe he don’t want to be found.”

  “That might be. I’m prepared for it. But I’d still like to give him the chance to tell me so.”

  “Sorry. Not ringing a bell. But I can ask around. What ship?”

  “Stalwart Lass, out of—”

  “—Resolution. I’ve heard of it. I wouldn’t be bandying that about, if I were you.”

  “Oh? Ship got a bad name? I stole her, if that makes a difference.”

  Slowly, he set down both glass and rag. “You stole the Stalwart Lass? Ned Mose’s ship?”
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  They were thousands of miles from Resolution, and she’d walked into the one bar in the one city to strike up a conversation with the one man who could get her clapped in gaol with one word.

  Alice resisted the temptation to put her head down on her arms and weep.

  “I did. Used to be I called him Pa, but we had a falling out.”

  “Pa? Your ma Nellie Benton?”

  “She is. We’re still speaking, at any rate.” It was one-sided at the moment, but he didn’t need to know the details.

  “I remember Nellie Benton fondly,” the barman said, picking up another glass and leaving the first one abandoned where it sat. “You’re in touch with her, you tell her Mike Embry sends his regards. Tell her I’m a darned fine prospect now, she ever changes her mind.”

  n>“I’ll do that.” Silently, Alice blessed her mother for treating this man kindly. “She ever talk about my pa?”

  His face cracked into what might have been the first smile it had worn in a decade. “We didn’t converse much about other men, missy.”

  “Alice. Alice Chalmers.”

  “That his name? Chalmers?”

  “Could’ve been.” Ma wasn’t much on accuracy except when it came to the account books at the Resolute Rose. “I’m pretty sure.”

  Nodding, he said, “I’ll see what I can find out. In exchange, you pass that message on to your ma.”

  “I said I would, Mike. I’ll be around for a couple of days.”

  Too late, she remembered she was supposed to be pulling up ropes as soon as she could dodge Claire and the rest of her party.

  “It’ll take me that long to put out the word, find out who knows what. Three days, at least.”

  With a sinking feeling in her middle, Alice knocked back the rest of her drink, laid down a coin, and pushed away from the bar. At least in a fistfight, she knew what to do. In the air or under an engine, she was in command of her element. But now she was stuck with at least three days of shopping and balls and all manner of nonsense, where she knew nothing and commanded less.

  If she ever found him, Pa would owe her one for that alone.

  *

  The shop was the size of the Lass’s gondola and yet the entire contents of ten ladies’ closets seemed to be crammed into its windows and displays, and layered on mannequins that resembled her automatons.

  Alice would never put a hardworking, self-respecting automaton in a corset, though.

  “I have it on good authority from Lady Arundel, the governor’s wife, that this corsetiere is the best in town,” said Lady Dunsmuir, clasping her hands in anticipation and practically bouncing on her toes. “If one begins with a good foundation garment, an elegant, correct silhouette will follow.”

  Alice had never had a correct silhouette in her life—or stopped to consider that there was such a thing. Wasn’t whatever a woman possessed correct for her?

  She, Claire, and Alice had breakfasted on the Lady Lucy with the family. The Mopsies had pitched a fit and flat refused to come along, so they had been stood up near a window, measured with ruthless accuracy by her ladyship, and then both of them sent to join Willie at his morning lessons. Alice had briefly considered trying the same ploy, but before she could open her mouth, had been hustled down the gangway with no opportunity to beg for mercy.

  At which point she had come to a dead stop as though she had forgotten how to walk.

  There on the gravel stood the most beautiful Cst a dething she had ever seen. Gleaming with flawless curves, its brass wings and swooping lines told everyone within a thousand yards that Serious Money was driving past.

  “It’s a six-piston Bentley,” Claire whispered, and elbowed her to move out of the way. “Isn’t it lovely? Davina is driving us into town.”

  “We’re going … in that?” Alice couldn’t breathe. How could you waste time on something as prosaic as breathing when a lifetime’s dream had just come true right in front of you?

  “We had it unloaded before breakfast,” Davina chirped, brushing past Alice and opening the rear compartment for her.

  Tigg was already there. “Hullo, Alice. The Lady’s landau is still in the cargo bay cos we weren’t sure she would need it. Ent this fine?”

  Alice had forgotten Claire also owned a landau. And had flown it across the ocean on the off chance she might have somewhere to go in it. Did all rich people think this way?

  “We can run about in this while we’re here,” her ladyship said. “Tigg, watch closely. The ignition sequence is slightly different from that of the Henley.” He leaned over Claire’s shoulder and watched Davina flip switches and turn a series of small wheels.

  That was like saying you could run about in von Zeppelin’s great warship if you wanted to hop over to the coast for lunch. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Alice breathed. She touched the door with one finger. Leather upholstery as soft as butter. Brasswork as smooth and glossy as satin.

  “I can give you a driving lesson when we come back, if you like,” Davina said. “The airfield is perfect for it. It’s much easier to manage the gears here, where it’s flat.”

  Alice was smitten silent at the prospect, and now, standing in the corsetiere’s emporium, she still hadn’t regained her powers of speech. Not when the steam landau sat right outside, gleaming in the autumn sun and accepting the gawking admiration of passers-by as if it were her due.

  There were plenty of vehicles about. In Resolution, they used animals to go across country, there being only the promise, not the reality, of roads. The flash floods were hard on anything the territorial authorities tried to lay down—not that Resolution ever got much attention. That was why Ned Mose liked it.

  But here in Edmonton, there were not only roads, but great steam-powered bridges that ratcheted up and down to let boats pass on the river. There were steam drays and clockwork buses that ticked along their cog tracks on a schedule so faithful that if you didn’t hustle and get on, they would leave without you. Those, the countess had told them, worked in the summer and autumn. In winter and spring, when the roads were impassable with either ice or mud, everyone used the Underground system, which had been modeled after the one in London.

  Every street was as straight as a rifle barrel, laid out in a sensible grid so that the cog tracks would work most efficiently. And along the streets, shops and houses and warehouses were packed, bustling with the activity of the biggest city in the Canadas.

  How in tarnation was she to find her pa? Outside the city, the plains stre Ce pn>

  “Alice, are you listening?”

  She came back to this pretty, fluffy prison with a start. “Sorry, Davina. What?”

  Her ladyship held up two corsets. “Do you prefer the pink with the roses, or the burgundy brocade?”

  Heaven help me. “Neither. Isn’t there something more … practical?”

  “What about this?” Claire held up a plain coutil garment that at least possessed hooks down the front. Alice had tried on her mother’s best back-laced corset once as a young girl, and words could not describe the torture of trying to get out of it when Nellie had been called away. She’d screeched so loudly that one of the customers had finally come in to discover what the racket was all about … which had subsequently caused a ruckus of a different kind when he’d mistaken her for a desert flower.

  “Fine.”

  When Davina went back with the clerk to commandeer a dressing room, Claire rummaged in a wardrobe and pulled out a black brocade number with patent leather grommets. “I’m going to try this one, too. White underthings are so inconvenient when I’m trying to accomplish something at night.”

  Alice couldn’t remember the last time she’d been as shocked as this. She knew Claire led something of a double life, but this? “You tend to flash your underthings when you’re out?”

  “Not on purpose. But think how useful this would be. I wonder if there is a black lace petticoat to go with it.”

  “There is.” Alice pointed. “Good luck get
ting them past Davina.”

  Claire snorted. “She would have a right to speak if it were her money buying them. But it is not. With what I won last night, I can outfit us both and the girls besides, and still have enough for a new pair of boots.”

  “I’d like to know where you learned to play cowboy poker. Can you teach me?”

  Claire’s smile lit her eyes. “Of course. Though I suspect it may be a gift. Now, come. This nice, plain coutil should fit you.”

  Alice was shoved and tugged into the corset, and after that a series of petticoats and walking skirts and a couple of waists of French lawn embroidered within an inch of their lives (“Don’t they have anything that’s just white?” she said in despair, only to be blithely ignored). Then, just when she thought they might stop for tea or maybe something stronger, Davina halted outside a shop with a gilded sign that read Regina Couture.

  “Here we are,” she told them. “Ball gowns to order.”

  “I’ll just wait outside with Tigg,” Alice said, a little desperately.

  width="2em">“Oh, no, you don’t.” Davina took her wrist and pulled her in. For such a tiny thing, she had a grip like a bear trap. Something like this dad-blasted corset—Alice could swear her ribs were actually grinding against one another under its merciless compression, never mind her lungs.

  The Canton modiste was as delicate as a lily, but there was nothing delicate in the way she moved Alice in one direction then another, the measuring tape hissing this way and that upon her body. Good grief. Why did anyone need to know how big she was around the bum when it all got covered up with fifty yards of material anyway?

  “Heavens, Alice, the last vestige of the bustle went out last year,” Davina told her briskly. “Now one leads from the bosom, with slender hips and lots and lots of froufrou under the skirt from the knees down.”

  Alice was afraid to ask what froufrou was, exactly, in case it was something that hurt.

  Silks and organdies and velvets became a blur, and when she couldn’t answer or make a decision to save her life, Davina conferred with the modiste and made said decisions herself with the expertise of long practice.