“We’re not done,” Gavin said to the whirligigs, which rushed down to the wagon and, working as teams, hauled up two large canvas signs. Gavin hung one over one side of the ship and Alice hung the other over the opposite side. In garish letters, they read Kalakos Cirque International du Automates et d’Autres Merveilles.
“It’s like putting whore’s makeup on a queen,” Gavin muttered.
Alice was sure she wasn’t meant to hear that comment, so she ignored it. She climbed down a rope ladder, dropped to the ground, and trotted a short distance from the tracks to get a good look. The airship’s gunwales looked like the railings that graced the top of most circus wagons. Silk covered the name The Lady of Liberty painted across the stern, and the banner signs completed the trick. The airship looked like a tall wagon or high train car being hauled somewhere for repairs or a bit of publicity. Alice climbed back up. Kemp was back on deck, along with Gavin. Nathan and Dr. Clef drove the horses below. Click had disappeared, but Alice was confident he would show up again. He always did.
“Go below and hide, Kemp,” Alice said. “You’re illegal here. Take the little ones with you.”
“Shall I bring tea first, Madam?” Kemp said.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” Alice replied.
Kemp withdrew. The horses were making good time on the tracks. Already they were nearing the boundary of the city. The fields and trees were nearly dark, and the sounds of the city—voices, horses, clattering machinery, laughter, music—floated past in snips and pieces beneath shy stars. A faint breeze from the country brought smells of earth and hay. Alice drummed her mechanical hand on the gunwale with little clicking sounds.
“I tried to warn you,” Gavin said quietly. “And I’m not going to fall all over myself apologizing.”
“Don’t expect you to.”
He shrugged casually, but Alice could see the stiffness in his posture. “I didn’t bring the plague on myself, and I don’t like it that you’re treating me as if I did.”
The anger flared again. “What are you talking about? I gave up everything for you, Gavin Ennock. I gave up a marriage and abandoned my position in society and, God help me, I even destroyed the British Empire, all to save you.”
“You wanted to watch me work and whatever you saw scared you.” Gavin flung his cap away and spread his arms. “Get a good look, Alice. I’m the monster your dear aunt made me.”
“Don’t you bring Aunt Edwina into this!” Alice cried. “She was just as insane as… as…”
“As I am?” Gavin finished for her. “Go ahead. Blame me. Blame her. It doesn’t matter. In a few months I’ll be dead. Then you can rush to England and see if Norbert will take you back.”
He stalked over to the other side of the deck and stared viciously out at nothing. Alice turned her back on him, stiff with fury. The city slid past with a faint rumble and scrape of train wheels. The Lady swayed a little. It felt distinctly odd, the familiar rhythm of a railway car on the open deck of an airship. Some of Alice’s anger gave way to nerves. Somewhere out there, Glenda and Simon and Phipps were looking for her. For all she knew, they were one street over, or just around the corner. She shivered and glanced back at Gavin. The anger came back. It didn’t matter that it was the plague that—
Yes. It did matter. She looked back at the streets and buildings, now only lit by occasional streetlights and yellow lamps in windows. This part of the city was mostly residential, and there was little street traffic at night. Three of the doors each had ragged red P’s painted on them. The deserted sidewalks and cobblestones suddenly seemed an echo of her life. The plague definitely mattered. It was all that mattered. It had stolen her entire family and her future, turned her into a fugitive, and forced her to make choices that would change the entire world. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it made her so angry.
Movement caught her eye. A tattered, gaunt woman shuffled along the sidewalk as the airship glided past. She wore a battered straw hat and sores split her skin. The light from a streetlamp made her flinch. Plague zombie. A lifetime of reflexes made Alice flinch away, but once she recovered, she turned to tell Gavin, but then thought otherwise. What business was it of his?
Alice scuttled down the rope ladder. The airship moved slowly, and Alice easily dropped to the street. Nathan and Dr. Clef didn’t see her and continued on with the horses. She didn’t want to shout and call attention to herself, so she simply dashed over to the zombie woman, pulling off the glove that covered her left hand as she went. It would be easy enough to cure the poor woman and catch the ship back up. She couldn’t save her family, but she could save this woman, and so many others like her. She had to do it, or what was the point of everything that had gone before?
The zombie woman barely reacted when Alice slashed her, but straightened fairly quickly. Much of the misery left her face, replaced with relief. She blinked and looked around, like a blind person seeing color again. Alice’s heart lightened. Every life she changed for the better made her own existence a bit more worthy. The zombie—now a full person again—wandered away with an expression of wonder.
“Excusez-moi!” Another woman Alice hadn’t noticed stepped out of a doorway. “Êtes-vous qu’elle?”
Alice started, and her light mood evaporated. “Am I she, who?” she asked cautiously, also in French. The woman was young and very pretty, with enormous blue eyes.
“The one who cures people,” she clarified. “People with the plague.”
The airship-cum-wagon was pulling out of sight, but if this woman also needed help, Alice didn’t see how she could refuse.
“I am she,” she said.
The woman abruptly caught Alice in a hard embrace. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you. You are an angel.” She broke away, suddenly embarrassed, and said, “But where is your friend?”
“My friend?”
“The one whose music gives you power to cure them.”
“Oh.” Alice thought about correcting her, then thought the better of it. “He’s… he’s nearby.”
“There are more who need you. Many more. Can you come? Please?”
The airship was curving away, nearly gone. Alice chewed her lip. She was still angry, but she wasn’t stupid, either. “I can’t come right now, but I will, I promise. Where?”
“To the Church of Our Lady,” she said, “at the top of the hill in the center of the city. Ask for Monsignor Adames.”
“I promise,” Alice repeated, and ran back to the clattering airship. At the front with the horses, Dr. Clef was telling Nathan, “The closer one comes to its position in time, the farther one wanders from its position in space.”
She had just reached the ladder when a trio of men on horses cantered around the corner, the horses’ iron-shod hooves clattering on the cobblestones. The men wore smart blue uniforms, and one of them carried a torch. The woman fled into the shadows.
“You!” one of the men shouted at the airship in French. “Halt!”
Nathan and Dr. Clef stopped the team. Gavin poked his head over the gunwale, a startled and worried expression on his face. Alice hurried up the ladder, her hands chilly with apprehension.