And, choosing to trust, she did.
Lune knelt by the floor hatch and pulled on the lever. The hatch was stiff. She tugged harder, and the hatch moved a little in its runners, exposing a rectangle of open air. The night’s cold touched her face, howling between the gap. It was wide enough to push a hand through, but certainly too narrow for escape. She risked two hands on the lever and tried again, grunting with the effort. The hatch budged again, doubling the gap, but then jammed resolutely. She couldn’t move it any wider, no matter how hard she tried. It felt as if there was metal wedged in the runner, not just grease and muck.
Paris slid under her. Tenements and houses, roofs and towers, cupolas and garrets, the moonlight glittering back from pale skate-scratched alleys and streets. She made out one or two dashing figures, but there were few people abroad at this hour. The cobalt flicker of an Aftman patrol, epaulettes lit as they went about their nocturnal business. No other fliers or argosies below her.
The gap still wasn’t wide enough. It wasn’t even close. She knew what she was capable of squeezing through, and that narrow aperture wasn’t it.
Curse Arquelle, and his plans. Curse his certainty that there was a means for Lune to escape.
But the Red Empress could fit, even if she couldn’t.
She thought about it for a few moments, hoping that there would be a catch, something she’d missed. Lune had already risked much to get this far, but always on the understanding that there was a way out. She’d hardly been enthusiastic about the idea of leaping from the argosy, even with Arquelle’s suspensor belt to convey her safely to ground. But she would much sooner have done that than face Madame Bezile when the theft came to light. As it surely would, once the egg died and the engines faltered.
There was another possibility, wasn’t there? She still had the charm, and no reason to assume that it wouldn’t let her back into the power room. She had swapped the eggs once; she could swap them a second time. Put things back the way they were; return the Red Empress to her golden throne. Get back on with her miserable life, and let Captain Pallas make other arrangements. There was hazard in returning to the power room, but she would gladly take that risk rather than submit to Madame Bezile’s inevitable wrath.
But she had said she would do this thing. And besides, there was that memory of Bezile, among the flowers . . .
Lune unbuckled the suspensor belt and removed it from her waist. Remembering how Arquelle had adjusted the load-dial, she turned it to its minimum setting and pressed the activator. The belt emitted a rising whine and tried to lift itself from her grasp, but she was stronger. Feeling as if she was wrestling a snake, she stuffed the still humming belt into the bag that already held the stolen egg. She added the charm and the discharge pistol.
Lune tightened the drawstring and hefted the rattling bag above the deck plates. She let go, and watched it settle to the floor as if lowered by an invisible thread.
That would suffice, she judged.
Lune took the bag and pushed it through the gap in the floor. The wind chilled her wrist. Dropped from this height, the bag could end up almost anywhere. That was Arquelle’s problem, though.
Not hers. Not now.
Lune made to stand. She had no plan in mind, beyond going about her business as if nothing had happened. Perhaps, if she was extraordinarily lucky, the argosy would make landfall before evidence of her crime came to light. She dared not put much hope in that, though. And even then, where would she go?
There was a sound behind her. Lune turned to face the opening door, almost relieved that she was going to be spared the need to pretend that all was well. Soutine and Derain were there, filling the doorway, faces thrown into diabolic relief by the lantern Soutine held aloft. “Step away from the hatch, Lune,” Derain instructed.
She paused before answering. “Nothing’s wrong. What do you want with me?”
“You don’t have any business down here. Even if you did, you’d need to explain why that hatch is open.”
“It was like that when I got here.”
Derain’s smile was a quick twitch of his mouth. “We saw that the hatch had been opened from the bridge. There’s a circuit. If you knew about electricity, you’d understand what I’m talking about.” He nodded at Soutine. “Close it. And bring her to Madame Bezile. I’m going to check on the power room.”
She tried to read Soutine, tried to tell if he’d gone against his promise, or had been powerless to act in any other way once her escape attempt had come to light.
She couldn’t decide.
By the time she was brought into Madame Bezile’s presence on the argosy’s bridge the evidence of Lune’s crime was supremely obvious. The egg had died, robbing the furnace of life. A reserve egg had been installed, but the fire was feeble and with its engines reduced to idle, the argosy could do little but hover, barely able to counter the prevailing winds. Derain had already conveyed the dead egg to his mistress, verifying—though this was obvious enough from its appearance—that it was not the one they had set out with.
“It was nearly inert,” he told her, while Lune looked on. “Just enough power in it to feed the furnaces for a few minutes.”
“You’ve searched thoroughly?” Madame Bezile turned the dead egg over and over in her hands, staring at it with a peculiar and lingering revulsion, as if it was some kind of large dry turd.
“There’s no sign of the Red Empress?”
“If she’s hidden it, then she knows the argosy better than any of us. I think there’s a more straightforward explanation. We found her by that open hatch. She could have dropped the egg easily enough.” Derain nodded at Lune as if she was a piece of meat. He had strapped her into one of the bridge’s skeletal metal chairs while her fate was decided.
“A spectacularly pointless gesture, wouldn’t you say? Not to mention risking half of Paris, if the egg had broken.” Madame Bezile held the dead egg before her. “Here. Take this useless thing and destroy it.”
Soutine took the egg, but with as much wariness as if there had still been energy inside it. Lune understood. It was very hard to accept that the egg had given up all its blinding fire.
“Someone must have helped her get into the power room,” Derain mused. “If they went to that much trouble, then presumably they already had a plan for getting the Red Empress out safely.” He hesitated. “There are any number of individuals who covet eggs that badly, but very few with the wherewithal to steal one from under our noses.”
“Pallas had the means,” Madame Bezile said slowly. “And we know how badly he likes his eggs.”
“Do you think he got to the girl?”
“Someone obviously did. She hasn’t the wit to have put this together on her own.” Having relieved herself of the egg, Madame Bezile had moved to stand at one of the large, down-facing windows, her hands clasped behind her back. “Pallas is no fool,” she said in a low murmur. “If she dropped the Empress, then he had a means of recovering it.”
“The hatch wouldn’t open all the way,” Derain pointed out. “Perhaps she was meant to go with the egg.”
“And survive that drop?”
“There are ways and means. We’ve searched her, and there’s nothing on her but the clothes she’s wearing. But we don’t know what she might have brought aboard.”
“How long has it been now?”
“An hour since we found her. We can maintain this altitude for a few more hours, but we won’t last the night. Our reserves were for emergencies only; they don’t have enough fire to enable sustained flight.”
“Never mind the eggs. I want to know what Pallas is up to. An hour’s a long time. If he was fast, he could have had my egg for nearly all that time. What do you suppose he’s going to do with it?”