Dawn's Early Light (35 page)

“Lord Sussex?” she heard Wellington call behind her.

The one eye that was exposed went wide in a fury and madness that made Eliza think of Harrison Thorne when she had seen him at Bedlam. The scream tearing from his throat, however, was something from a nightmare. It was so loud, so powerful, that she could still hear it over the Gatling gun.

Eliza crawled over to Wellington, who said, “Saw him speak at Parliament. Quite a charismatic individual.”

“A recommendation, love,” Eliza said. “Don't call the Maestro by his proper name. It seems to rather annoy him.”

Before Wellington could reply, Bill appeared around the control panels, shouting, “All right, explain to me why we're still here exactly?”

Above them, chunks of the wall tore apart as the Maestro's Gatling opened fire.

“Oh yeah, that,” Bill said with a nod.

The Maestro—Peter Lawson, the Duke of Sussex—was now gasping for breath, his voice vacillating between a whimper and a scream. Eliza, Wellington, and Bill peered out from their hiding places to see Pearson pull himself up and grab the Duke of Sussex's face in his hands to force his eyes on the valet's own.

“Sir, look at me!” he snapped. “You are ill! You need your doctor!”

“Yes,” Sussex, the Maestro, whispered drily. “Fetch my doctor.”

“Shall we?” Wellington asked.

“Let's,” Eliza and Bill returned.

The three leapt from their hiding place, and passed by Eliza's pistols which she quickly snatched up and laid down suppressing fire as the three of them ran for the access door. They had almost made it out of the control room when she bumped into Wellington. He was staring at one of the control panels.

Eliza followed his stare to the control panel where the Jack Frost had dealt its gruesome death to the guard, Parker. She noticed two vertical rows of six lights switching from green to yellow. In a third row were another six lights. They were red, and the top two were blinking.

“We have to go, Welly.” And on catching Pearson's gaze, she shouted,
“Now!”

They didn't dare to look over their shoulder to see if Pearson were on their trail. It was eyes ahead in a mad dash for the cargo bay.

They had reached the landing featuring the “train simulation” when Klaxons sounded all around them.

“Eyes peeled, everyone,” Bill shouted as they opened the door to engineering. “We're going to have varmints making things real uncomfortable.”

“Halt!” the voice rang out.

“Told you,” Bill said to Eliza, turning to the sound of feet pounding against metal.

Two guards appeared from an adjoining stairwell under them. Bill grabbed both railings and kicked, sending them both back down to the platform below. With a quick glance around them, they continued their sprint through engineering. On reaching the hatch, Eliza unlocked the door, pulled hard, and was about to step through . . .

. . . when she felt a hand yank her back into engineering. A moment later, a heavy pipe cut through the air.

“Felicity, it's us!” Bill shouted over the alarm.

The librarian, wide-eyed and trembling, appeared in the open hatchway, a long, heavy pipe now held aloft in her grasp as if it were the very sword of Joan of Arc herself.

“Alarms are going off!” she shouted. “They're loud! Especially in this cargo bay!”

“Not as loud as a tank firing at you,” Eliza offered.

“Now, Eliza, don't tease her,” Wellington scolded gently in her ear.

“Why not?” she muttered back. “I like it.”

“Can we go now?” the librarian implored.

“Are the boilers at full?” Wellington asked.

“Yes,” she said as they entered the cargo bay. “I even took the liberty of starting the car and letting it idle so the boilers would be at full pressure.”

“Bon!”
Wellington exclaimed as he locked the access door and sprinted for his motorcar. He yanked open the car door and began checking gauges by his steering wheel. “Eliza,” he shouted over his shoulder, “reset the tumble seat, if you please.”

As she rotated the back passenger seat to its original position, Eliza could see Wellington now checking pressure indicators and various lights. Whatever they told him, it appeared to be good news. “Ready to go?” he asked everyone.

Eliza did not get a chance to ask what he meant by that, because Felicity was asking what she was thinking. “Go? Go where? We're in an airship.” Her arms spread wide. “In the air!”

Bill guffawed. “And they call me crazy?”

The motorcar revved and rumbled to life as Bill and Felicity settled in the tumble seat while Eliza settled into her own. Wellington launched them forwards, turned the car around, and paused on arriving at where the ramp would begin.

“Eliza,” he began, lowering his goggles, “follow my sequence to the letter.”

“Sequence?”

“Yes, sequence!” He flipped a switch on his dash, and from a panel in front of her appeared a new series of buttons and switches, ones she had never seen before since riding in this motorcar of his. “Just follow my commands.”

“Left to right?” she asked, her breath catching in her throat.

“And timing.” He unfurled a belt before slipping out of the motorcar. “You all should find these belts between your cushions,” he announced to everyone. “If you want to stay in the car, strap in. Firmly.”

As Eliza tightened her own belt to the tightest notch, Wellington took a deep breath and professed, “Know this—just in case we blow up—I love you, Eliza.”

Hardly the most opportune of settings she expected to hear his heart; but at this point, Eliza understood that Wellington would never stop catching her off guard. Somehow, this suited her.

“I love you too,” she returned.

He took a quick kiss from her before crossing over to the ramp release switch, and threw it down. Quick as a flash, he sprinted back to the motorcar as the airship's aft ramp unlocked and started to lower . . .

. . . into open space.

She lowered her goggles and set her eyes forwards. Eliza was in love with a madman, and she trusted him implicitly. “On your word, Welly.”

“All set?” Wellington asked over his shoulder.

Felicity and Bill, their eyes much like wide saucers at present, silently nodded.

Once his own belt was secured tight across his lap, he wrung his hands against the steering wheel and looked over to Eliza. He held his gaze with hers, then turned his eyes back to the now-open bay door.

The motorcar rumbled forwards, and in Eliza's field of vision, the turbulent Pacific Ocean grew wider, and then drew closer as they began to fall. Just over the howling wind, Eliza could hear a single scream. It was hard to ascertain if it was Felicity or Bill.

“Red buttons, together,” he called to her, his voice just audible over the rush of air.

She pressed the two red buttons before her. Each side of the car's hood retracted, and both Gatlings ejected, launched free of the car to tumble uselessly to either side of them. She felt the urge to watch them plummet into the ocean but she waited for the next command.

“Yellow,” Wellington shouted.

Eliza pressed the yellow button. She felt, with a slight lurch, something launch from behind the car.

“Switches.” Wellington glanced at the three sets of lights under each gauge in his own dash. Eliza could see one of the lights turn green. “Blue switch. Now.”

She hooked her finger underneath it and saw a puff of thick smoke rise from underneath them. She could hear a whine emitting over the engine, but their speed remained constant.

From Wellington's dash, another light went green.

“Yellow switches! Not together!” he insisted over the building whine from the engine. “Five seconds apart.”

Eliza nodded, flipped the first switch, waited, and then flipped the second yellow switch. A moment later, she felt herself thrown back in her seat, as the whine now became a banshee's wail.

“The red button?” she called, the distance between them and the ocean rapidly disappearing.

Wellington shook his head. The indicators—all but one—were green.

Eliza could see whitecaps and ripples of the sea in detail. They had to be only several hundred feet in the air now.

“Wellington!”

The final light turned green.

“Now, Eli—”

He never got the opportunity to finish her name or give the command a second time. She threw herself forwards and pressed the red button with two fingers. The banshee's wail now roared as if it were every typhoon from her childhood in New Zealand, and this time Eliza felt as if she were being thrown back from her front passenger seat into the tumble seat. The last time she felt this sort of acceleration, it was in her mad escape from the pirate airship off the Carolinas. Something moved off to her right. She looked over her side of the car and saw fabric extending across the fixed, taut metal skeleton of a wing. Her stomach lurched as the car's hood slowly lifted upwards. The roar increased as Wellington pulled the steering wheel towards him, and the turbulent blue ocean before her disappeared. Now her stomach slipped into her throat as she felt
rapid
ascension. She wanted to call out to Wellington but fought to keep her mouth shut, in case anything were to come out of it against her—or her stomach's—will.

Then the horizon levelled out before her. They were in the air, and they were now flying high over the Northern California shoreline.

Eliza took a deep breath and then looked over at him. “You could have told me, you know?”

“What? That I had built a flying car in my spare time?” Wellington gave a hearty laugh. “You would have thought me daft.”

“No, you twit!” she snapped. “You could have told me that you loved me. Back in England.”

Wellington looked at her sideways. “Some of us have to work ourselves up to spilling our feelings into the world. I'm not quite as used to it as you are.”

She opened her mouth, thought better of it, and shrugged. “Fair point, Welly! Fair point!”

Eliza looked over her shoulder to Bill and Felicity. The two of them were holding on to their respective hats with one hand. Their other hand grasped the back of the driver and passenger seats. They were catatonic.

“Hang on,” Wellington shouted over to her, pointing to the compass. “Hopefully, I can get us in some kind of northerly direction, but first we need to get over the coast, over land.”

Whatever he was about to do, Eliza knew better than to interrupt him. Instead, she looked straight down at the blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

“Just give me a tick,” he said cheerily, flipping a small red switch on his dash. Eliza felt something kick in the stern of their car and they approached the coastline. They still had altitude, but Eliza could feel a sinking feeling of descent.

“Not yet,” Wellington growled through clenched teeth. “Not yet.”

The sensation of thrust ceased, and one of the green lights on Wellington's dash switched to red.

“Bugger!” Wellington spat. “That is not good.”

The car swooped downwards again, but Wellington countered the sudden drop easier this time and guided their car closer and closer to the California cliffside. Eliza could no longer feel her stomach summersaulting, only the tightness in her chest as she was holding her breath. They caught another gust, then another, and Wellington was chuckling happily as if he were on a delightful ride across the country.

Finally, Eliza took a breath as their car passed over the coastline and underneath them was solid ground.

“Now comes the tricky bit,” Wellington said, angling the car in a descent.

The motorcar seemed to enjoy losing altitude as it did so quickly and deftly. Wellington on their controlled descent did bank, following the compass heading to a northerly heading. He continued to dip then climb, slowing his descent with each action until their motorcar reached what Eliza guessed would be fifty feet above terra firma.

“Red switch, Eliza!” he called to her.

Eliza flipped the red switch, and the sensation of thrust ceased. Wellington yanked at a handle by his right foot, and a series of parachutes unfurled.

Twenty feet . . . ten feet . . .

Wellington pushed the accelerator forwards, and their motorcar hopped forwards a few feet, hopped a second time, and then they were rolling forwards as the chutes broke free from the retracting wings and stabilizers. The car finally came to a stop.

“Congratulations, Welly,” Eliza said.

The flash came from behind them.

She had nearly forgotten about the death ray, and when the four of them turned in the direction of the burst, a brilliant silver beam stretched northerly, stretching through the dusk sky to reach out into the Pacific Ocean. The blast struck the ocean so hard that seconds later they heard a sharp crack followed by a great plume of steam and vapour reaching into the night. Eliza scrambled out of the motorcar and ran across the earth, the earth that was vibrating and rippling underneath her until she could see the impact point. She would not dare the cliff's edge as the tremours were growing in intensity while the steam, flame, and vapour billowed into the growing night.

Her eyes now looked everywhere in the sky above them. The titanic airship was nowhere to be found.

Perhaps San Francisco was saved from destruction; but now she sprinted back for the motorcar. She knew this kind of earthquake, knew the force they could hold; but they had been acts of God and nature. Even the way the ground shook and trembled underneath didn't feel right. This was something unknown, something terrifying. Eliza knew nothing would stop the earthquake that would follow in the wake of Thomas Edison's latest scientific breakthrough.

A
fter her dance lesson with Miss Harris, Sophia del Morte knew that she would have to be more careful. She hated being proven wrong in her assessment of the American agent, but it did happen from time to time. On those occasions, when one plan did not work, it simply meant that there had to be another way.

Miss Harris' increase in security was evident to Sophia. There were eyes on the doors and windows, both inside and outside the Palace Hotel, and she was more than certain the prince had earned a few extra shadows as well. All this, Sophia had observed with keen interest earlier that day from a delightful coffee house across from the hotel.

Patience was the discipline of her craft, and that patience had proven its worth with the arrival of a brightly painted caravan with a bold promise emblazoned on its side:

M
ADAME
Z
AMORA

P
EERS INTO
Y
OUR
F
UTURE

As she watched the caravan disappear in the alleyway leading to the service entrance, Sophia began preparations for her return to the Palace.

When the sun had reached high noon, Sophia returned to the streets, a simple cloak keeping the unseasonal chill at bay. Her outward fashion attracted no attention, but the one she wore underneath would have. Under the cowl, she began weighing breaching options for the hotel. Guards would still be at the doors and at events that piqued the prince's interest, but the second floor ballroom, where McTighe had crushed her feet for a number of days, had, she observed, a narrow marble lip running along just under the window.

Sophia ducked into the alleyway behind the Palace; and when certain she was out of plain view of San Francisco's afternoon pedestrians, she removed the cloak. Dressed in her preferred fashion for infiltration, her dark hair up and tucked under a knitted cap, Sophia gave a quick cursory glance at the bandolier that fit across her shoulders and down her torso buckled about herself. Each pouch held darts of various potency for the small pistol attached at the waist belt. Considering Agent Harris' abilities, it was not wrong to plan for the worst.

Just beyond the service entrance stood the carriage of Madame Zamora. Sophia pulled herself up into the driver's seat, and began sifting through the papers covering half of the long seat. These documents appeared essential for the fortune-teller's travels. There were flyers for upcoming summer fairs, many of them noted with names, performance rates, and individual notes pertaining to special guests at these events.

Then she spied one for the Palace's current exposition. It had a contact's name, a rather impressive rate, and the number twenty-two.

Sophia returned to the alleyway and slipped her hands inside a gift from the Maestro. With the stealth and swiftness of a cat, she clambered up the side of the caravan, and then clambered up the side of the building, her fingers digging deep into the hotel masonry. The speed and nature of her climb, she knew, would have appeared superhuman, and indeed it was thanks to the “ascent claws” and rubberised footwear.

The second storey did not offer a lot of extra purchase; but that narrow marble decoration was all she needed, her specialised shoes providing excellent grip. She only had to drop and crawl beneath the windows of two other rooms before she was in the right place.

Crouching, Sophia peered into the window. The suite was dim, but for the light from two gas fixtures on the wall. The woman—apparently an actress of some degree as she was checking her makeup in the mirror—slipped over her raven hair a fine salt-and-pepper wig of fantastic curls. Decorated with beads and bangles that Sophia could hear clinking against each other through the window, “Zamora” now flitted over a small table covered by a red-patterned cloth, a crystal ball as the centrepiece, and a deck of large cards. Looking about the room, the performer suddenly caught her breath and then fished out of a pouch hanging from her waist a box of matches. With a quick flick of her wrist, she went from candle to candle, bathing the room in a deep amber glow. Details and atmosphere were always important in the art of the confidence game.

Sophia removed from her belt sheath a thin stiletto, slipped it between the windowpanes, and flipped the latch. Once inside, she removed one of the darts from her bandolier and waited.

When Zamora went to her window to shut the curtains, Sophia jabbed her dart into the woman's wrist. It was not a deadly poison—since some part of her own heritage was Romani—but the confidence woman would remain asleep until morning, and wake with a pounding headache only. Sophia dragged her back into a bedroom, and then opened up the closet to survey the fortune-teller's limited wardrobe.

“Variations on a theme,” Sophia said to the slumbering woman. “You should try it sometime.”

The outfit Sophia pieced together was similar to the original, but instead of the elderly wig and exaggerated makeup, Sophia wore a scarf decorated with coins and beads on her head. The skirt and puffy blouse, all decorated with the jingling baubles, transformed the assassin into a mystical medium, perhaps with a little more finesse than the other. Now her visitors would find a fetching gypsy rather than a haggard old one. She didn't believe tonight's clients would mind terribly.

It truly was a clever notion, featuring a fortune-teller at a science exposition. There was a notion that clankertons, many notorious for being sceptical of the supernatural, enjoyed daring one another to consult supposed psychics and seers, perhaps to test the boundaries of probability. Others, however, were true believers, and even based their future projects on premonitions. Whether a doubter or a believer, Sophia's “Zamora” would have a most lucrative run here at the exposition.

With the suite's clock chiming thrice, she could hear the exposition outside begin anew: music, voices, the clattering of silverware, and the sound of footsteps. Sophia waited patiently, sitting behind the table, with her hands folded and eyes on the door.

When her first client came through the door, she was disappointed. He was not the heir to the English throne, although he was old enough to perhaps be heir to the throne of Caesar. Sophia sent the crooked old gentleman on his way with an admonishment to stay away from ladies of easy virtue. Hearing the dreadful wheeze from him when he stood to leave, she knew she had done him a great kindness.

Another clankerton entered, and soon Sophia began to warm to her role. It was rather fun to speak in the outrageous accent most people expected from a gypsy, wave her hand over the milky depths of the crystal ball she operated through a pneumatic pedal system. It was a clever contraption this confidence trickster had employed, as with each pedal under her right foot, the currents in the sphere changed colour, direction, and the viscousness of what flowed inside.

Into the evening, Sophia continued to pronounce what the future held for the Palace patrons through the crystal's parlour tricks or tarot readings. While she knew nothing behind the meanings of the artful cards, her visitors knew even less. This made for very active storytelling. Some of her customers she warned of imminent death; others she told they would find love. Everything she had learned about judging a character and manipulating a person, translated very well to this particular con. After only two hours, she had made quite a tidy sum at it.

When Prince Albert appeared at the door, Sophia felt a sudden jolt. Of course, she needed to corner the prince, interrogate him; but this was not the jovial prince she had met under the guise of the contessa. He looked very ill at ease, shifting from one foot to the other, and glancing through the gap in the door he had left open. He had shadows underneath his eyes, and he looked like he had not slept well since her botched abduction. Perhaps he had been attached to the valet she had murdered. That would not surprise her.

Sophia's suspicions were confirmed when he spoke; his voice was full of genuine grief. “I am sorry, madam, I think I am wasting your time. My colleagues rather shoved me into this, and I really don't believe any of this mumbo jumbo.”

Sophia sat up a little taller in her chair. “Well, something has brought you here. Perhaps it is the spirits, perhaps it is fate, or it could simply be a heavy conscience? Whatever it is, you are here. At the very least, I can offer you some insight.” She tilted her head, making sure to keep her features in shadow. “What exactly do you not believe?”

Albert stepped in a little, and she understood she had taken the right tack. He was a man that enjoyed a good debate—even with a woman. “I cannot believe in what I cannot see. My mother . . .” His voice trailed off. He leaned back and pushed the door the rest of the way closed. “Well . . . my mother became quite obsessed with the occult after my father was killed. She kept claiming he could talk to her, but that was just grief. I always thought it foolish . . . but over events of the last few days . . .” He paused and adjusted his ascot. “Well, let's just say they have made me think about my own mortality.”

Sophia looked at him carefully, judging. He probably didn't notice it, but he had sidled closer to her.

The assassin gestured with one open hand to the chair. “Grief is one thing that can be assuaged by reaching into the darkness. Would you not like to speak to your father also?”

Albert jerked a little, and she realised she had stepped on dangerous ground. “My father was a man of science. The only spirits he believed in were scotch, brandy, and cognac.”

The prince was close to banging out of the room, and Sophia could not have that. “Yet as a man of science,” she said smoothly, “he would always repeat an experiment before declaring it a failure . . . is that not so?”

They looked hard at each other. Sophia slipped a solitary hand to her lap where her dart gun resided, just in case the prince saw through her disguise.

With a sharp sigh, the prince sat down in the chair opposite her, and rested his hands on the velvet of the tablecloth. “If you can summon my father, and he answers questions only a family member would know, then I will believe you.”

He really did not sound as though he believed her at all. That was perfectly fine; she had no plan to conjure the dead up for him. Instead, Sophia leaned forwards and took his hand.

Prince Albert had no chance to escape. Her fingers wrapped around his, and the tiny spike on the inside of her ring punctured the prince's flesh just enough for her agent to begin its work. By the time he had jerked his hands away it was already too late.

“I say,” the prince slurred, his eyes glassy, “what was that?”

The paralytic effect hit him fast, so when Sophia placed her dart gun next to the crystal ball, rose from her chair, and opened the backpack she'd brought with her, there would be no worry that he would escape her. By the time she had turned around, Albert had sagged back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, while his arms hung limp on each side of the chair.

Swinging her leg over him, Sophia sat across his lap, face-to-face. It was a position that he would have undoubtedly enjoyed if he were truly conscious.

Over his head she slipped the brass cage with all its screws and struts. Albert's head lolled backwards and forwards in a final act of defiance of trying to escape it, but she held him easily in place before sliding out the brace portion. She hummed under her breath as her fingers flickered over the screws, tightening what needed to be done. The whole device ended up holding his shoulders, neck, and head completely still, facing her. A guttural groan escaped the prince, but that was pretty much all that could get away from her.

Now the tricky part. Sophia's tongue slipped between her teeth as she set about adjusting the cage's lid hooks around the prince's eyes. Each of the reed-thin spindles locked around the flesh of his eyelids with tiny hooks, then pulled them back, keeping his eyes open. It was imperative that the prince did not blink as she worked on him. The information that she needed had to be accurate or the Maestro would be most displeased.

She then used the eyedropper to deliver a clear liquid she didn't know the name of to each eyeball. The prince jerked a little under her, but both the paralytic and the cage held him in place. There must be some chemical in the solution that might burn a little.

With all these devices in place, all that was needed were the goggles, larger and chunkier than any airship pirate or Arctic explorer would have known. These bulky monstrosities were specialised lenses that, even after adjusting them over her own eyes, felt heavy on her. Layers of colours stood between her and the heir's own eyeballs. It was a confusing mess—or at least would have been to one not trained in their use.

The neuro-ocular was not the Maestro's making, but the obsession of a strange Swiss gentleman who had lived twenty years in isolation within the Black Forest. Karl had amused her for a couple of weeks, but then turned rather angry when she'd tried to leave with several of his creations, the neuro-ocular being one of them.