“Wow,” he said. “What was that for?”
“I call for a toast, Mr. Ennock”-she raised the sherry bottle-“to celebrate our engagement and those brilliant, beautiful wings you invented. If I can’t have you for long, I intend to enjoy your company for every moment we have left.” Her voice quavered for a moment, and she covered by taking a pull directly from the bottle. The sherry, too sweet and too warm, burned all the way down. “To the best damned clockworker in the whole damned world!”
“Why, Lady Michaels,” Gavin laughed, taking the bottle from her, “you foul-mouthed hussy! I never thought I’d see the day!”
“You’ve seen nothing, Mr. Ennock,” she replied, and kissed him again. This time her hands wandered greedily over his chest and back, wanting to touch him, drink him in as she had the sherry. She moved her body against his and felt him harden, which caused her own deep self to pulse.
When they separated, he took a swig from the bottle. “To the best and most talented woman in the goddamned universe!”
“And don’t you forget it, sir,” Alice said. She slid her hands around his strong, solid body again, not wanting to let go for a moment. Never, ever letting go. “I have many talents, some of which I haven’t yet developed.”
He buried his face in her hair. “I look forward to charting unexplored territory.”
They stayed like that for several moments while air and sky played over them. Then Alice reluctantly stepped away. What she intended to say next was difficult, but it needed to be discussed. The words stuck in her throat at first, but she decided she wasn’t having any of that nonsense anymore, and she would speak. The words came in a rush.
“So, what are we going to do about getting you into China, darling? I refuse to let something as petty as an empire stand in the way of finding your cure.”
She gave a short, sharp sigh. A burden she hadn’t realized she was carrying lifted and floated away. What a strange thing-once the words were said aloud, they lost their power.
“I’ve actually been thinking about that,” Gavin replied.
“Have you?” she said with a smile.
“It’s an occupational hazard with clockworkers. We never stop.”
“Truly? This strikes me as more of a social problem,” Alice said. “And with the sole exception of my aunt Edwina, I’ve yet to meet a clockworker who excelled in the social arena.”
“I’m also an airman,” Gavin pointed out, “and you might remember how the Juniper did her share of. . untaxed shipping.”
“Smuggling,” said the newly forthright Alice.
“If you like,” Gavin sniffed. “Anyway, you can’t possibly make a border that big airtight, and I happen to know that for the right price, an untaxed shipper-”
“Smuggler.”
“Smuggler will move anything you like. That includes people. We just need to find such a person.”
“Iffy,” Alice mused. “We’d be putting our trust in a criminal.”
“Not all smugglers are bad people,” Gavin said in a pained voice. “Some of them are just trying to avoid stupidly high tariffs.”
Alice narrowed her eyes. “You’re smuggling right now, aren’t you? What have you hidden on this ship?”
“Well, technically. .”
“Gavin! What are you-?”
They were interrupted by a mechanical yowl. Click was arching his back on the gunwale at a looming airship ten times the size of the Lady. Gavin had taken his hands off the helm during the. . discussion with Alice, and neither of them had noticed the ship veering into danger. Gavin spun the helm with a yelp and Alice slapped switches on the generator. The Lady’s glow dimmed, and the little ship swooped starboard even as it dropped, missing the other ship by a mere few yards. Alice’s stomach lurched, and she caught faint shouts of outrage from the deck of the other ship. The Lady sped away like a minnow fleeing a whale. Gavin caught Alice’s eye. And they both started to laugh. Click pulled his claws out of the decking and turned his back on them in disgust.
“Well, Mr. Ennock,” Alice said, “we seem to have a knack for attracting and averting disaster together.”
“True, Lady Michaels. It’s the second talent that gives me hope.”
Later, they were mooring the ship at the edge of the dusty landing field just outside the walls of Tehran. Hot sunlight mixed with the unpleasant smells from the distilleries, which also clanked and grumbled like metal jungle animals. There were only a few of the enormous, rounded hangars available, and Gavin said the rent for them was atrocious, so they powered down the Lady’s envelope and together staked her to the ground outside among other airships, and even for this there was a fee that set Gavin to grumbling. Puffs of dust rose up like tiny djinn every time Alice took a step.
“You’d better hide in the hold while I pay,” Gavin said. “Al-Noor might have been lying or mad or both, but if there really is a price on your head, we don’t want the controller to be the person who recognizes you. Stay down there until I have the chance to run into town and find something appropriate for you to wear.”
Alice looked down at her modest blue dress. “Appropriate?”
“For a Turkmen woman,” Gavin clarified. “We’re in Persia, you know. You need some native clothing so you can blend in. Don’t let anyone aboard while I’m gone.”
“What are you smuggling, Gavin?” she asked. “Technically?”
“Technically? My wings. The Impossible Cube. And probably you,” he said lightly, and kissed her cheek before sliding down a rope to the ground below.
Alice dutifully climbed up to hide in the hold with Gavin’s new wings at her feet and her automatons perched on her shoulders. She peeped out a porthole while Gavin talked to a swarthy man in red blousy trousers and a tall, furry hat. A considerable amount of money exchanged hands. Alice held her breath, but the man strutted away without demanding to inspect the cargo hold. Gavin followed a moment later, heading toward the city walls and leaving a trail in the dust. She waited for a considerable time in the afternoon heat, but after a short while her eyes started to droop, and she found she couldn’t stay awake. The day’s excitement and the sherry were having an effect. Perhaps she could creep off to her stateroom bunk as Phipps had done. But no-simpler just to curl up on this pile of sacking near the bulkhead. The automatons would wake her if a stranger-
The next thing she knew, Gavin was shaking her awake. Outside the sun had dropped, and it was nearly dark. Phipps was with him, her hair restored to its usual neat twist and her lieutenant’s hat firmly in place above her monocle. She was holding the Impossible Cube, and her expression was grim. Alice’s sleepy languor jerked away, replaced by dread.
“What’s wrong?” she said, instantly alert. The automatons clustered about her with little peeping sounds.
Gavin set a bundle of cloth on the wood next to her little nest and handed Alice a newspaper. “After I bought clothes, I found this. Take a look.”
The curly Persian letters meant nothing to Alice, and for a moment she realized that this was how it felt to be illiterate. It was an odd sensation, being unable even to sound out individual letters. She started to ask why Gavin would give her a paper she couldn’t read. Then her eye lighted at the top-right corner. A string of numbers, the same in English and in this language, tugged at her attention. Her stomach went cold.
“1681,” she said aloud. “That-that can’t be the year, can it?”
“Persian reads right to left.” Her voice was tight, as if she were trying not to fly apart. “Today is August 20, 1861. About three years after we met al-Noor.”
A small sound escaped Alice’s throat. The cargo hold spun, and she put out a hand to steady herself, glad she was still sitting down. Her breath came in short gasps. Automatically, her gaze went to the Cube in Phipps’s hands. It sat there, innocent as a baby. Alice couldn’t wrap her mind round the idea. It was like trying to spin a rope from sand; the harder she tried, the more it fell apart.