“Get your fiddle,” she said. “We aren’t done yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll explain below.”
Nathan was already unhitching the horses with Dr. Clef’s help. Alice explained how she had met the woman. “She said there were more who need me at the Church of Our Lady.”
“I know where that is,” Gavin said.
“So do I,” Nathan put in. “Dodd and I have gone there for confession once or twice.”
Gavin blinked innocently. “What did you confess?”
“That you were an arse.”
“She said to ask for Monsignor Adames,” Alice said. “I need to—”
“There you are!” Dodd ran up and caught Nathan in a hard embrace. One of the horses snorted. “Jesus, you scared me out of my wits.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Nathan gasped. “What’s wrong?”
“Mingers.” Dodd let him go. “Gendarmes. They turned the whole circus upside down looking for Gavin and Alice and demanding to know if we were hiding you. No one said anything, of course, but thank God you weren’t here.”
“Are they still looking?” Dr. Clef asked.
“I should think so. They seemed pretty intent. They called you criminals, and Dr. Clef a danger to society.”
“Was a woman with them? Tall? Dark hair? Metal arm?” Gavin said.
Dodd shook his head. “You mean your Lieutenant Phipps. She wasn’t there, but I heard them mention her name.”
“What about Feng?” Alice said.
“He was easy to hide.” Dodd waved a dismissive hand. “We have two families of Chinese. She didn’t even ask about him.”
“That’s a relief, then.” Alice tugged at Gavin’s elbow. “We need to go.”
“You can’t go now,” Dodd said. “Didn’t you just hear? Phipps has patrols looking for you all over the city. You’ll be safe here—they’ve already looked—but you can’t go out.”
“I promised, Ringmaster,” Alice said. “Those people need my help. Every moment’s delay means another plague victim might die. So unless you intend to lock me in a lion’s cage, get out of my way before I knock you down.”
“She will,” Gavin told him.
“Fine.” Dodd made the same dismissive gesture. “But you aren’t going alone.”
“Certainly not!” Alice said, and Dodd looked surprised that she was agreeing. “Only a fool would do that. And a number of people who aren’t coming should know where I’m going so they can mount a rescue if I don’t return in a reasonable amount of time. Gavin’s coming, of course.”
“Am I?” Gavin was grinning.
“You are. You know where the church is. Feng must come, too. That leaves Mr. Storm, who also knows where the church is, on rescue duty with Dr. Clef and the ringmaster.”
“As long as you’re running my circus,” that man sighed, “you might as well just call me Dodd.”
Chapter Six
They took several moments to gather equipment. Alice wanted to get the firefly jar from Feng, and Gavin wanted weapons. He couldn’t bring himself to use actual pistols, however. A lifetime of training had instilled a healthy fear of anything that created flame, a deadly threat on an airship. Even after several weeks on the Lady, which used newfangled helium, Gavin still shunned gunpowder for the cutlass of shatterproof glass favored by airmen. Unfortunately, he no longer had a fléchette pistol, which used compressed air to fire glass needles. The circus, meanwhile, had gone back to sleep, recovered from its encounter with the gendarmes Phipps had commandeered, but Gavin wondered how long before they returned—and how many they’d encounter on the way to the church, which was why he wanted weapons. He looked at Dr. Clef’s power canon where it lay on the Lady’s deck, and sighed with regret.
“It’s too heavy,” Gavin said. “I wouldn’t get twenty yards.”
“Perhaps you could make modifications with this.” Dr. Clef held up a spool of alloy wire, the same stuff as the endoskeleton rolled up and lying on the port side of the deck. “Can you do it alone? I have fear that we shall fight if I assist.”
Gavin looked at the wire and at the power cannon. His brain leaped ahead, and he saw wires and pulsing power and batteries. He ran his hands over the cannon, able to feel how it all fit together, every bolt, every shard, every pathway, right down to the tiny pieces so small they couldn’t hold a name. He saw a number of fascinating ways to reshape them, gently move matter and energy along a number of different venues. He was only vaguely aware that Dr. Clef, that annoying Dr. Clef, had withdrawn, and the vibrations of his receding footsteps on the deck came out as long, distorted strings that vibrated against the air and kicked it about. Gavin’s fingers flew, snatching up tools and setting them down again, braiding wire, snipping metal, connecting pieces of the universe in new ways.
“Gavin?”
The high-pitched voice intruded, interrupted, interjected. He turned to snarl at the interruption—
—and saw that it was a woman. He knew her. He… had feelings for her. He struggled for a moment. She had broken his concentration, which made him angry, but she was also someone to be trusted, someone he didn’t want to be angry at. The contradictory feelings warred for a split second, equally matched.
Alice. Her name was Alice. The new fact tipped the balance, and in a flash he remembered that she wasn’t someone who deserved disdain. He twisted inside like a cat changing its mind in midleap and yanked back the retort.
“Alice?” he gasped, and realized he was panting. A trickle of sweat slid down his cheek. “What’s going on?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She had changed into trousers, which Gavin found strangely attractive on a woman. They accentuated her hips and showed her legs. She was wearing a tighter-fitting blouse as well, and it clung to her neck and breasts. Her braided hair caught the moon and held it. The silvery light shifted, moving in a shower of particles, then splashing as a wave, but doing both at the same time, just as the Impossible Cube had twisted and changed before his eyes. It was beautiful and terrible all at once, and Gavin couldn’t look away if he wanted to. For a moment it was hard to breathe.
“What is that?” she asked. “Did you make it?”
Gavin held up the object in question. An eight-foot braided lash trailed to the deck from a heavy brass handle, and the handle connected to a cord that ran to a backpack with a battery in it. Dr. Clef’s power cannon lay dead on the deck, its brass entrails scattered across the wood.
“It looks like a whip,” said Feng, who had also climbed up. He was dressed in what looked to Gavin like soft black pajamas from head to foot. “Show us, please.”
Gavin shook off the last of the clockwork daze. He shrugged into the backpack and flicked a switch on the handle. A low thrum—D-flat, he automatically noted—throbbed across his ears and pulsed against his palm. The metal lash glowed incandescent blue. The weight eased in his hand as the power pushed Dr. Clef’s alloy away from gravity. Gavin swung. The whip flicked through the air, quick as a demon’s tongue, and slashed at the barrel of the power cannon. The barrel didn’t move. For a moment, neither did anyone else. Then the barrel fell neatly into two halves that thudded to the deck.
There was a long, long pause.
“I watched someone called the Great Mordovo cut his assistant in half this afternoon,” Feng said at last. “I do not believe you should show this to him.”
Alice swallowed visibly and shifted her pack. “That took you all of half an hour to make?”
“I didn’t keep track of the time.” Gavin flicked the switch off. The glow vanished, and the whip grew heavy in his hand again. He coiled it and hung it on the right side of his belt, opposite his glass cutlass.
“You must be careful,” Dr. Clef admonished, approaching from his previously safe distance. “Every slash takes power, you know, and the battery does not last forever.”