Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times (26 page)

“Perhaps we ought to wait for night,” said the doctor.

Xeno scoffed. “That will do precisely what good, eh, Mephisto? We won’t be able to see a blind thing.”

“Is that better or worse than everyone seeing us, hmmm?”

Jack ignored their bickering and looked at the Gearwing again. It hadn’t moved, not one flick of a feather. Warily, he walked up to it, afraid that any moment it could panic again. Poor creature, indeed.

“Don’t be afraid,” he told it. “We’re going to fly. A different sort of flying than you’re used to, I expect, but it’ll be all right.” Did he imagine the glimmer in its eye? He hoped it was there, that somehow the Gearwing understood.

“Worry not, lad.” The doctor rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder as Jack took the airship’s wheel. Clearly he’d lost the argument. “We’ll find it.”

He was only trying to cheer Jack up, Jack knew, but it was a nice thing nonetheless. Particularly since the doctor hadn’t even believed in the Gearwing until a few days before. It felt like months. Months since he had eaten or slept, months since that warm, laughter-filled
supper at the doctor’s house after Beth was back together.

And much, much longer since he’d been home, safe in his room with his toy soldiers to guard him, which he was sure were the only kind worth having. Forever since his mother’s laugh had drifted, tinkling, up from the dining room below.

The ship rose from the trees, leaving behind a very boat-shaped dent in the forest. Everyone—bar the Gearwing, of course—held on as Jack swung it about to aim for the city. There was some truth to the doctor’s worry of being seen. Jack wished they had the faeries again, but they were out of nectars, and good luck trying to get faery help without them.

So, alone, a single ship in the sky, they flew back to Londinium. In daylight, the outskirts were even shabbier, crumbling shacks built of splinters, spit, and prayers, filthy factories, scrubby fields of blackened, coughing goats. He wished his pockets were full of coins that he might shower down to the people, but he wasn’t rich here.

And he had his eyes on the city, peeled and searching as it whizzed past underneath them.

It could be
anywhere.

More clouds had come in since they’d snuck in like fiends to steal the clock in the dead of night. He flew below, looking, looking. . . .

He needed his binoculars. Well, technically the doctor’s binoculars, but they fitted Jack’s eyes just so. After some searching, Xeno unearthed them and strung them around Jack’s neck.

Jack lifted them. The empty clock tower looked close enough to reach out and trail his fingers over the stone. The faces were hidden, but none on the streets would be using it to tell the time regardless. No, it had been just for Lorcan.

“What’s that?” asked the doctor, pointing. Breath caught in Jack’s chest, but it was only a red dress on a washing line, billowing in the wind. Xeno took the wheel so that Jack might look properly.

“It’s no use,” said Jack, dropping the binoculars, which whacked him painfully in the chest. “Go up. Hide above the clouds. I need to think.”

More horrid, cloying fog. He knew to close his eyes, hold his breath, but still it was awful, cold and wet and swirling. Above, the air thinned and cleared and Jack gulped it gratefully. The empty clock faces stared at him. He spun to check the Gearwing, but it was still as it had been since it landed on the deck. It showed no sign of knowing it was so close to its prison.

Somewhere old, because Lorcan was. That was no help in the slightest.
All
of Londinium was old; Lorcan and the
others before him had built this one to be just like Jack’s London because it amused the Lady. And he’d taken the great clock tower and twisted it into something horrible, evil, when in London it was a beautiful thing, beloved by everyone.

Somewhere old and
famous.
Though this, too, wasn’t as much of a help as he wished. London was the greatest city in the world, known to all. He pressed his hands to his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, dejected. “Back down, I suppose, and . . . and along the river.” He pressed the binoculars to his eyes the instant they were free of the clouds, the masts still dragging filigree patterns in the lowest of them.

Something caught his attention. He’d already moved on to the next patch of the city and jerked the binoculars back.

He’d seen before that it was different here, but
why
was it different?

“There.” Jack pointed. “Why is that an egg here?”

The doctor grasped the binoculars, nearly throttling Jack, who was far too excited to care about silly things like breathing. The stone column rose from the ground, not as high as the clock tower, but Jack could still remember the sickening climb to the top with Mrs. Pond and standing on the narrow platform there.

“Why, that’s the monument to the birth of the Empire,” said Dr. Snailwater. “S’posed to be a copper dragon’s egg
or somesuch. I’ve never looked particularly close, myself.”

No, no, that was wrong, though Jack was sure Lorcan had been vastly entertained by his little joke. Replacing the urn on the monument to a fire that had raged through half of London. A
fire.

Funny, too, to force a creature that could live forever into the horrible tedium of counting each second of it.

“Jack,” said Beth.

It was in there. He knew it. He—

“Jack,” Beth said again. “Would you like to know that Sir Lorcan’s coming?”

He looked up. She was pointing, out past the gleaming egg to the airship beyond.

•  •  •

Jack’s heart hammered. Time seemed to stop entirely. With the binoculars, he could see Lorcan, neat and pressed as ever, flanked by cannons large as two men. But there was something else, too, something that filled Jack with a secret joy.

Fear. Lorcan had spotted the Gearwing.

“Hurry,” Jack shouted. “We must get to the egg before he does. Hurry!”

In the belly of the ship, the engine roared louder and the ship leaped forward, Xeno grinning at the wheel. Jack couldn’t take his eyes from Lorcan, close enough with the
binoculars to see his pale face and eyes glinting red.

A rage such as he had never known swept through Jack. Lorcan didn’t care about anyone but himself and the Lady, and he’d turned into a wretched thing who wasn’t bothered who he hurt to get what he wanted.

They were over the river now, sailing above its curve, every inch the airship traveled matched by Lorcan’s coming closer.

“Faster!” Jack shook. “We need to go faster!”

The doctor took the sails to steal every scrap of wind. Lorcan disappeared from Jack’s sights, and Jack cast the binoculars about, desperate to find him. And there he was, a spectral figure behind a billow of steam.

“Cannons!”

Xeno spun the wheel with a violent jerk. The airship tilted, everything not nailed down sliding dangerously on the deck.

“Beth! Get down below where you’ll be safe!” the doctor commanded. He would not be able to save her if she fell in the river to rust before they found her. The cannonball missed, only just, whistling past, plummeting to a splash loud enough to reach them in the sky.

The egg was a hundred and fifty feet away. A hundred. So intently was Jack watching it that he saw, too late, Lorcan’s ship speed up and sweep around the monument.
The deck pitched as Xeno tried to get out of the way.

He didn’t quite manage. The world turned inside out. Splinters rained down to the water as the whole ship quaked from the blow. Jack fell into the railing and tasted a mouthful of blood, pain searing his nose. Frantic, he looked for the Gearwing. Some deep-buried instinct to protect itself had caused it to jump from the deck to fly in blind circles overhead. He could feel its terror clawing at him.

“Mean business, do you,
Sir
Lorcan?” Xeno shouted. “We’ll just see about that!” He pulled the ship about to bear down on the other. The doctor swung across the deck, clinging to the sail.

But Jack had seen where Lorcan was taking aim. “No!” he screamed, running toward the Gearwing, but it was too high above him.
Move
, he thought with all his might.
Move!

Below, something rumbled. Steam swallowed Lorcan so Jack could see only the very top of his hat. Any second now an enormous ball of iron would smash into the bird, and surely it would be too bent and broken for anyone to fix ever again. The deck shook under his feet, and an explosion tore the air.

Beth had fired first. The cannonball tore into the hull of Lorcan’s ship, knocking it off kilter. Enough. Just enough for his own shot to miss the Gearwing’s beak.

“Oh, good girl!” the doctor roared. Jack grinned through bloodstained teeth. He would thank her later.

“You will not defeat me, little Jack!” Lorcan’s voice crossed the distance between the ships. “You may have discovered my secret, but I have lived your lifetime many times over, and I will not let you ruin it!”

Jack’s eyes cut to the Gearwing. It had landed at the other end of the deck, rage and terror and confusion pouring from it like oil. The Monument was starboard, two hundred feet. The airships were nearly nose to nose and there was nowhere to go, no room even to turn around.

Oh, yes, he would ruin Lorcan. His one normal hand gripped the railing. He would ruin Lorcan and then, then he would go home. Xeno turned his head, and Jack caught the corner of his eye, pointing up.

Xeno winked.

Air whooshed past as the ship shot up into the clouds. Jack choked and coughed, but within seconds they were free, of the fog and of Lorcan.

“Everyone all right?”

“Yes, Doctor! Xeno, the egg, please!”

The ship spun like a top and sped off. Behind them now, Lorcan had joined them above the clouds, but they had distance. Enough? Jack wasn’t certain. But he hoped. Another blast of cannon fire burst; this time Lorcan’s aim
was not so unlucky. It slammed straight into the ship, and Jack lost his hold.

It was like flying without the ship, like having wings. Jack soared into the air, buffeted, tossed, but there was only so far he could rise before the fall must begin. To have landed on the deck would have been bad enough.

Thick as the clouds were, they would not break his fall, cushion him with their false softness.

Wildly, with no time to think, Jack flung out his arm. His brass fingers caught the edge of one of the holes in the side of the ship, and he hoped that Beth wouldn’t choose this one from which to fire another cannonball.

“Lad?” the doctor shouted, terrified. His bushy hair appeared over the railing, relief coloring his face as he saw Jack, clung to the side of the airship like a barnacle.

“It’s all right,” Jack yelled at the top of his lungs. Every breath scorched them with cold. “The egg, get me to the egg!”

Beth’s face appeared from inside the ship. “Hello, Jack. Gosh, what are you doing out there? Shall I pull you through?”

Jack shook his head. The hand Dr. Snailwater had made him held fast to the wood, not tiring nor slipping, the way a normal one might. His feet braced against the side of the ship as they dropped back down through the clouds and the great copper egg shone twenty feet away . . . Ten . . .

The doctor’s head appeared again, eyes wide with fright and worry.

“Closer!”

Five feet. Four.

“Closer!”

Jack closed his eyes. He took a deep breath of the Empire’s soupy, sooty air.

And he jumped.

All the wind knocked from him as he landed on the egg. It wobbled on its plinth, held there as a jewel might be held to a ring. It was smooth, polished so his face, bloodied and bruised, looked back at him.

Reaching down to grab the fattest part, Jack wrenched the egg free, letting them both fall to the narrow platform that circled the column. He hit the stone and folded, rolling over. The egg slipped from his arms and skittered away; on his knees, Jack crawled to catch it.

Only then did he look up, right into Lorcan’s eyes. His ship hovered in the air, and on the deck Lorcan was entirely still for a moment. He raised his hands, imploring.

“We can discuss this, Jack. Give it to me, and I will teach you magic of which you have never dreamed. Magic far beyond what you have seen in your time here in the Empire. I will show you all my secrets. We shall rule together, the Lady’s sons.”

Jack looked at his feet. He had once stood in this very spot, in London, with Mrs. Pond. He glanced over to the other ship, battered and struggling, where Beth, Xeno, and Dr. Snailwater watched. Xeno gave Jack a tiny nod. Behind them, the Gearwing stood, and this time it wasn’t fear Jack felt from the bird, but a hope that rang clear as the bell for which it had once measured the hours.

Very deliberately, Jack carried the heavy egg to the railing. For a moment he held it there, high above the solid ground at the base of the column, and then he let it tumble over the side.

W
HEN LORCAN SAW THE EGG
drop, a great resignation came over him. Since he’d stolen the Gearwing’s soul, it had occurred to him only in times of great worry that someone might discover his secret. Now he was left without even the leisure to wonder how it had come to pass at the hands of this young boy who still reminded him so of the Lady, with his dark hair and mischief.