Simon didn’t answer. Dr. Clef worried Phipps. He was a classic clockworker—completely absorbed by his work and utterly oblivious to the impact any of it might have on the world around him. His Impossible Cube was one of the most powerful inventions she had ever seen, and thank God it had been destroyed. Unfortunately, he was running about loose in the world with Gavin Ennock, a new-made clockworker. The thought of the two of them creating world-class inventions together made her sweat ice water and lent new urgency to her need to capture the little group before China got hold of them. Every hour she regretted not killing Alice Michaels beneath Third Ward headquarters. It was the biggest mistake of her career, and now the world was paying for it.
“Dr. Clef will probably be dead in a few weeks,” Simon said at last. “As for the doomsday weapon Alice and Gavin released… Well, we can’t put the cure back into the bottle, and England’s clockworkers will be gone within the year. If we let them go to China, they might be able to ensure the same thing happens to the Dragon—”
“You shut it, Simon d’Arco!” Glenda was on her feet again. Two spots of color rose in her cheeks. “I’m going to capture Alice Michaels—Lady Michaels—and drag her back to London by the hair if I have to. Every damned mile over broken glass, if I can arrange it.”
“Why, Glenda?” Simon asked. “What for?”
“What do I have, Simon?” Glenda snarled. “The Third Ward is dead, by the Queen’s order. Once the final clockworker dies, we’ll have no reason to exist anyway. Maybe a few of us will hang about to guard the Doomsday Vault, but nothing more. And where will I go? I’m a woman, Simon. Shall I become a seamstress? A schoolteacher? A parlor maid? A wife? For nearly ten years I’ve been hunting clockworkers and keeping England safe and I brought Alice Michaels into the Ward because she was small and timid and I felt solidarity for my fellow woman. Now that bloody bitch destroyed the Ward and I have nothing. I’ll see her hang for treason, and I’ll piss on her grave.”
“Oh,” was all Simon said.
“You may sit down again, Glenda,” Phipps said quietly, and Glenda reluctantly obeyed. “And I don’t answer to you, Simon,” she added.
“Yes, ma’am.” He shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “But I… I just…”
Phipps leveled a hard gaze at him. “Simon, I want the full truth from you, as a gentleman and an officer of the Third Ward.”
He stiffened. “Ma’am.”
“I brought you and Glenda on this assignment because you are my absolute best agents. I am not saying this as flattery or to puff you up. It’s simple truth. However, I am also fully aware of your… romantic proclivities and of your feelings toward your former partner. I don’t much care about the former, since you are an officer of the Ward, and as such, you have my complete loyalty and support. As for the latter, I assumed that your loyalty toward the Ward would be the overriding concern, but now I must ask, Agent d’Arco: Is your loyalty pure? Will your feelings for Gavin Ennock get in the way of our mission? Answer honestly. You will not be reprimanded, but I do need to know if I must send for someone else, someone who can be a fully capable man.”
Simon got to his feet. His face was stony, but Phipps’s monocle told her that the heat in his body had shifted into a pattern she associated with anger, exactly the emotion her final remark had been calculated to engender. He stood at attention, unconsciously making himself stiff and hard as a fully capable man should be.
“Lieutenant,” he barked, “I am willing and able to carry out any orders you give me, as my oath to the Third Ward dictates.”
“Excellent, Agent d’Arco,” Phipps replied. “Your hard work will not go unnoticed. Dismissed.”
Simon saluted. The door snapped shut behind him, and his footsteps faded down the hotel hallway as he went to his own room. Glenda coughed.
“Fully capable man,” she said. “You know how to hit below the belt, Lieutenant.”
“Hm,” Phipps said, and stared out the window, though now it was dark and there was nothing to see.
“Just between us,” Glenda said, “and knowing that I’m perfectly happy to come along because I want to see Alice pay, why are you doing this? You did let them go, down in the Doomsday Vault.”
Phipps chose her words carefully. “Simon persuaded me not to kill Alice, but only because she had stopped Edwina Michaels’s device from exploding and killing us all. Simon said I owed her, and he was right. That debt is paid, and now it’s time for Alice and Gavin to pay their other debt to us. To the Empire.”
“That doesn’t quite answer my question,” Glenda said. “Why are you here? You never go into the field.”
“I used to,” Phipps said. “It’s where I started. My father was a military man, and he was away quite a lot. But he always sent home money to make sure my mother and I had food and clothes. And his brother, my uncle, visited often to ensure there was a man about.”
For a moment, the reflection in the window showed a Susan Phipps much younger, without the streaks of silver in her hair, and with the smooth features of a girl not yet twenty, but who still held the ramrod posture expected by her father, her dear father, who never showed emotion but who could grind her to the ground with a tiny frown or fling her to joyful skies with a simple nod. The reflection showed her younger self hurrying home on one of the rare days when Father was in town. He met her at the door of their row house with two carpetbags in his hand.
“The world is upside down,” he said simply. “I do not wish to live here any longer, so we are moving.”
Susan knew better than to ask why, but she felt she deserved more information, so she said, “I don’t understand, Father.”
“I found the love letters. As far as I am concerned, your disloyal mother is dead, and so is my brother.”
Susan remembered the overwhelming despair, the fear, and most of all, the anger. Not at Father, of course, but at Mother, who had committed such a betrayal of loyalty. The bedrock of Susan’s life, her parents’ marriage, had crumbled into sand, and it was Mother’s fault. It had to be. Otherwise Father would be in the wrong, and that was unthinkable.
“Loyalty, Susan,” Father had said as they climbed into a cab. “Loyalty.”
For a while, Susan wondered if Father’s reference to Mother’s death was metaphorical or literal. She never heard from Mother again, but neither did the police come for Father. No one was even reported missing, and for the first time Susan wondered what sort of work Father did for the military. Eventually Susan dismissed the matter as unimportant. A few years later, Father introduced her to Lieutenant Lawrence Garrison, who asked if she wanted to join the Third Ward. When she replied in the affirmative, Father gave her a small nod.
Phipps’s hands clutched the windowsill. Her right fingers turned white, and her left ones left dents in the wood. “I made a terrible mistake when I let them go, Glenda,” she said, “so it is my duty to set it right. Gavin and Alice unloosed several dangers into the world, and we must bring them into custody before they do further harm.”
Glenda gave her a long look, then rose. “I understand. If I may, Lieutenant?”
Phipps nodded a dismissal and continued to stare out the window. I’ll find them, Father. I’ll set the world aright for you. For us.
Chapter Three
Alice glared down at the unyielding numbers. They glared stubbornly back, hard little loops and corners that wouldn’t move no matter how hard she tried. Twice she had rubbed them off the page and run through them again, but they always came out exactly the same. She resisted the urge to throw the book overboard. Instead she snapped it shut and slipped it into her trouser pocket so she could lean on the gunwale to think while cool morning air washed over her like water.