“Dr. Clef!” he shouted. “You’re my favorite German.”
“Very glad to see you are safe, my boy.”
Alice looked calm and unruffled, but Gavin read a symphony of strain holding her upright. “I don’t suppose,” she called up, “that you could provide a ladder?”
Seconds later, one end of a rope ladder tumbled down. Alice clambered up first, and Gavin followed with Click. The whirligig flew.
“We can still follow you,” Phipps shouted up at them. “We found you now, and we’ll find you again!”
Ignoring her, Gavin pulled himself over the edge to join Alice. His shoes came down on solid planking, and he felt some of the tension drain away. The airship, the Lady, was his place, his home. Wood and hemp made their familiar creak as the envelope strained against her ropes, trying to pull the ship higher while her lacy skeleton gleamed a magnificent azure blue. The generator that ran on paraffin oil muttered and mumbled to itself on the deck, emitting steam and feeding a steady stream of power to the Lady’s skeleton and to her propellers. Dr. Clef, a clockworker once captured by the Third Ward, had developed the alloy that pushed against gravity when it was electrified, but Gavin had been the one to put it into the envelope of a dirigible.
At the helm stood a stocky, sharp-faced Oriental dressed in a pirate shirt that suited him perfectly. He was just over eighteen. His trousers were tucked into his boots, and like Alice, he kept a glass cutlass sheathed at his belt. He saluted Gavin with a rakish grin that made him even more handsome than before.
“No, no,” Dr. Clef was calling down. He continued to aim his power cannon at the ground. “Don’t move, please. My finger trigger, it itches.”
“That’s trigger finger,” Gavin said. “And you let Feng pilot the Lady?”
“It was that or give him the cannon,” Dr. Clef replied mildly. “I did consider pulling apart the clicky kitty’s brain and using it to create a wireless device that would allow me to control the ship from a distance, but the young woman wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Bloody right.” Alice picked up Click and let the whirligig land on her shoulder. “Feng, get us out of here!”
“Which way?” said Feng Lung with a trace of China in his words.
“Any way, as long as it’s east,” Alice said.
Feng swung the helm around. The propellers on the Lady’s nacelles hanging from the outer hulls whirled to life, and she picked up speed, still trailing the rope. Alice set Click down and pulled it in.
“You slid all the way down that to get into the greenhouse and rescue me?” Gavin said. “I must be awfully special.”
“Indeed you are, Mr. Ennock.” Alice coiled the rope on the deck, then turned and collapsed into Gavin’s surprised arms. Her body shook against his, and wet, sloppy tears dampened his shirt. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, you… you cad.”
His own throat thickened and he held her, clumsily at first, then tightly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” After a moment, he added, “What did I do?”
Alice gave a hiccupping laugh and straightened. “Oh, Gavin. Dear God. You scared me half to death, that’s what.”
“So true,” Feng said from the helm. “After you went missing from the hotel, she went mad. Berserk. She would not sleep; she would not eat. When we tracked you to the greenhouse, she almost rammed it with the ship. I insisted to be pilot then.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said again. “Should I write letters in the sky to warn you when I’m going to be captured?”
“Certainly.” Alice pulled off her leather gloves, revealing a metal spider wrapping her left hand from forearm to fingers. Its legs ended in claws that tipped Alice’s own nails, and tubules running up and down the spider’s legs flowed scarlet with her blood. The dark iron gleamed, and the spider’s eyes glowed red, indicating that she had just touched someone infected with the clockwork plague—Gavin, in this case. It was another of the daily reminders that he was dying, and it was inextricably linked to the woman he loved. The thought made him both sad and angry, and he wanted to wrench the spider off her, even though he knew it wouldn’t work. The spider’s joints squeaked slightly as Alice fumbled at her sleeve for a handkerchief, and then she remembered she wasn’t wearing a woman’s blouse. She reached into her pocket for one instead and dabbed at her eyes. “I’ll kill the next one who captures you. I swear it.”
“There’s going to be a next one?”
Alice cuffed him lightly on the shoulder, then knelt in front of him to pull up his pant cuffs. “If Phipps has her way, there will be.”
“Uh… what are you doing?”
“I need to check your ankles. Those horrible chains Antoine kept you in couldn’t have been good for them. This will be easier if you sit down.”
He sank into a deck chair and let her pull off his shoes, wincing as the leather came away from swollen flesh. Alice made a low sound.
“I wish you’d been wearing your boots instead of just shoes,” she muttered. “They might have protected you better. Does this hurt?” She gently massaged his ankles.
“Yes,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “But don’t stop.”
She looked up at him, and he saw tenderness in her eyes. It melted the pain and relaxed every muscle in his body. He slumped in the chair, unable to move as her strong, careful fingers went over his feet and worked at the muscles.
“Oh my God, I love you,” he groaned. “Always and always.”
“And I love you always,” she replied. “Even when you blaspheme.”
“You blasphemed just a second—”
“Now you need to explain what happened, starting from the moment Antoine took you.”
“Not yet, Madam.” A mechanical man emerged from belowdecks. His features were only painted on, as was his black-and-white outfit, yet he carried himself as if he were starched and fully clothed. The only hint of expression lay in the flickering firefly lights that made up his eyes. He set a laden tea tray on a deck table beside the spot where Alice knelt. “You haven’t eaten since Sir was captured. And then you must have a massage yourself to ease the tension.”
“Wonderful, Kemp.” Dr. Clef rubbed his hands together. “Do you have any of those lacy sugar cookies? I have had quite a craving, and the patterns twist through dimensional rifts on golden wings.”
“You have had your tea, Doctor,” Kemp said. “I will make more if I have time, but I have more important concerns at the moment.”
The cake and sandwiches on the tray sent up smells that called to Gavin’s stomach, though he wasn’t yet willing to move away from Alice’s ministrations. “What time is it?” he asked, trying to get a glimpse of the sun around the envelope.
“Two fifteen,” Kemp replied. “Tuesday.”
Gavin bolted upright, and Alice released his foot. “Tuesday? How long was I—?”
“You’ve been missing for three days, darling.” Alice took a teacup, which rattled in her metallic hand. “It’s been hell.”
“Three days?” Gavin sank back onto the chair and bit into a ham sandwich without really paying attention to it. “I thought it was only a night.”
“Antoine has powerful sleep drugs,” Feng said.
Gavin stared past Alice at calm, blue infinity. He should feel safe, at home in the ship he had created with his own hands. She ignored gravity, soared silent currents, explored the limits of daylight. Set him free. But all he felt was violated, stripped of his clothes and then his skin. He wondered how long he had hung unconscious in Antoine’s greenhouse, a piece of meat in the hands of a twisted homunculus. His gorge rose, and then he was at the gunwale, the few bites of sandwich falling to the forest far below. The pieces seemed to fall slowly, pushing aside the billions of tiny bits that made up the air. The bits rubbed against the falling pieces and raised their temperature as they fell closer to hell.