Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (19 page)

Gentlewoman Aldora Fiske stood unfazed, shopping bags in hand, next to her carriage, squinting at the fog-enshrouded sky. A large plank landed with a clatter to smoulder at her feet, a quarter of the Royal Armada's heraldry visibly etched into its charred surface.

"Miss Fiske, please." Agitation was palpable in her driver's voice. "You'd best climb in. The horses won't stave off panic for long."

She watched the other pedestrians running for cover that wouldn't protect them. "Indeed."

***

Aldora and her fiance Alton Bartleby sat in her parlour on either side of a silver-plated tea service. In most circumstances it would have been inappropriate for the pair to be alone without a chaperon, but special considerations were afforded them due to the length of the engagement. Even so, tongues did wag, and they limited how frequently they were alone together. It was only proper. While some might be tempted to relax their standards of propriety in the privacy of the home, Aldora was dressed in a proper and practical pigeon-breasted blouse, her skirts brushing the floor. The fashion houses of Paris had begun to showcase hemlines that cleared the floor and approach the ankle, but Aldora would never. Not in London.

"I'm afraid I've no cream to offer you, but would you care for some sugar?" Aldora paused mid-pour.

"Yes, please," Alton said. "One lump. They've cut the milk rations again?"

Aldora nodded, scooping a sugar cube into her fiance's cup. "I am afraid so. Dairy products are in short supply. Much of what hasn't been turned to cheese has soured."

"I blame the heat."

"I place the blame on the blockade," Aldora sniffed. "They're the ones preventing shipments into the city. Have you insight into who they are or who they represent?"

"Sadly not. They don't appear to be Luddites, though I'm sure the blaggards cannot help but cheer at the city's predicament. There's no tie to the local criminal element that I've been able to discern, and the multinational trading cartels suffer as much from this as anyone else. I'm afraid we're as stumped as Scotland Yard on this one." As usual Bartleby stood precariously at the height of men's fashion, his sack coat, waistcoat, and trousers coordinated to look tasteful without going all the way to fey. His stiff collar was adorned with a narrow four-in-hand necktie, a soft felt Homburg fedora resting in his lap. His moustache was waxed and casually curled.

"The Kaiser perhaps? Or one of England's other enemies? The Royal Armada Sky-dock was the first facility targeted, was it not?"

"All diplomats have uniformly denied involvement." Alton shook his head. "And James says that the firepower they're employing is well beyond even Prussia's technological prowess. Some form of galvanic cannons, he wagers."

Aldora wrinkled her nose at the mention of her fiancé's partner. "Speaking of Mr. Wainwright, why has he chosen not to grace us with his presence for tea?"

"Back at our home, down in his laboratory." Alton chuckled. "Working, as is his wont. I can attempt to summon him forth should you miss his wit so keenly."

"Heavens no, I'd hate to interrupt his important work."

"That's where we're at. We don't know who's targeting shipments into the city, and aside from some rumours of a drunk in Calais who claims to have been crew aboard one of the airships, mums been the word."

"Have you looked into that rumour?" Aldora sipped her tea.

Alton paled. Further, that is. "Oh, heavens no. Trust me, I'm all for it, but even though the airships seem to be set on targeting shipping rather than passenger lines, there isn't a captain within the city willing to risk passage across the channel. Not for all the coin I could offer, neither by sea nor by air."

"As dire as the situation is?"

"As dire. Parliament's too afraid of getting all the Lords together in one location to come about a plan of action, and the Queen, God bless her, has been ushered off into one of her bunkers. Nobody else has the power to mandate anything."

"They'll have to."

"Eventually, yes. The gentry will not stand the pinch of rationing for long, but things have a ways to go before they get to that point."

"People drop dead from starvation in the streets, Alton!" An octave's change in pitch was as close as Aldora got to raising her voice. "How much more dire do things need to become?"

"The poor, but the poor are always starving, are they not?"

She gave him a frosty glare. "Don't you start playing devil's advocate with me, Alton Bartleby. I'll not stand for it."

"Sorry, darling, force of habit."

Aldora glared at her fiancé, stirring her tea. After a tense moment her face softened and she continued in a sotto voice. "That's what they're actually saying, isn't it? The Lords? And they're not saying it to get a rise, they're saying it as if they believe it."

Bartleby sighed, regarding his cup, and did not respond. The pair sat still in the silence amongst the luxury of the Fiske family parlour.

Eventually Aldora took a sip of her tea. "Mother's been agitating about our nuptials again."

"Oh, splendid," Alton put his cup aside and ran a hand through his hair.

"She enquired just before you arrived, as she left to visit grandfather's grave. Such familial duties always make her somewhat maudlin."

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her I was deferring to your judgement on the matter."

"Thank you ever so much for that."

"You're quite welcome. But to be serious, Alton, we cannot put the matter off indefinitely. People will talk."

Alton sighed and picked up his cup again, stirring it idly. "Yes, well. We've got a goodly amount of time before we need to cross that bridge. Let the gossips wag premature."

"You underestimate the power of the Season's mutterings. And how easily it gets bored."

"Ah." Alton held up a finger. "But I am well aware of how easily distracted Society can be. Let them twitter on about Bartleby the Bachelor."

"I will not have you make me Aldora the Spinster, Mr. Bartleby."

Bartleby looked hurt. "Aldora! I would never put your good name at risk."

"No, you know too well the value of a Fiske to your social portfolio."

"Aldora!"

"I tease, of course--" She offered back a wan smile, pulling the spoon from her tea. Alton's spoon leapt, seemingly of its own accord, from his cup, splattering droplets of tea across the service, to cling to hers with a metallic 'ting'. "Oh my word!"

Alton stared at the crossed spoons. "Aldora! Is this the good silver?"

"No, just the plated nickel--"

Alton was moving in an instant, grabbing Aldora by the elbow and dragging her away. His explosive rise knocked the service aside, bowl of sugar and teapot falling to splash and scatter across the parlour's carpeting.

"Alton, what--"

"Run!" Bartleby pulled his fiancée towards the parlour's tall picture windows. He covered his face as he leapt through the glass, shattering its pane, and Aldora instinctively turned away from the shards flying past her face. She didn't resist his urgency, knowing full well that when Bartleby was spurred to sudden action that he had good reason. For all the man's faults, she trusted him, and trusted his judgement.

They hit the lawn and rolled just as the parlour seemed to explode behind them. The concussive shock pushed them forth, knocking them from the lawn to the drive leading up to the house. Aldora tucked into herself as she landed and rolled back to her feet, skirts falling about her legs into place without flaw, blouse unmarred by the lawn's earth, a ringing in her ears the only sound she could distinguish, the smell of fire in her nostrils. Bartleby's jacket had been torn by the jagged broken glass, the knees of his trousers muddied, hat missing from his head. He cast about briefly for it and moaned, finding it crushed.

Her hearing gradually returned, and Aldora pushed an errant curl back into her coif, returning to a state of perfect impeccable grace. "Alton, what--"

"Something James said to me." Bartleby fiddled with his hat, pushing the dents back out of its felt. "He kept going on about the science of galvanics, and mentioned that the cannons would interfere with the navigational equipment in targeted vessels. Such navigation is magnetic in nature, so when the spoons clung to one another--"

"You knew that a galvanic cannon had targeted the parlour." Aldora's gaze moved from the smoking crater that had been her family's home's parlour to the sky, where a sleek black shape drifted away through the clouds. "Well done, Alton, you've saved both of our lives."

"As you've saved mine often enough in the past."

The pair watched the burning wreckage of Aldora's home in silence. A fire brigade bell began to ring in the distance, and before long a bucket-line started to form.

"This presents an ugly wrinkle to the blockaders, should they have decided to strike at us directly."

"Strike at me, directly," Aldora said. "Other than the Royal Armada Sky-port, my home is the sole structure they've targeted."

"Perhaps they were targeting me? I have been investigating the matter."

"No. If you were their focus they'd have waited until you and your partner were together before attacking."

"That's hardly comforting."

"It was hardly meant to be." Aldora fell silent, wondering why these airshipmen had decided to target her, wondering at what the connection could possibly be.

***

Jack Fowler dreamed.

In his dream he was still transporting goods across the American heartland from the East coast to the West, still an airship pilot with a major shipping firm. He still lived in Boston, was still married to his childhood sweetheart, and still had a girlfriend in Los Angeles. In his dream, his brother was still alive, and Jack was sober more often than not. This was a welcome dream, a familiar dream, and lately he'd been sleeping as much as possible in order to dwell within it.

An outside influence gradually penetrated his dream-state. His name, repeated endlessly, calling to him from beyond the edges of his perception. It was accompanied by a persistent jabbing.

"Whu?" he gasped, sitting up with a snort, blinking at the strange woman in his room.

"Captain Fowler, I presume?" The woman had gone to great lengths to dress down to better suit the environs of east Soho, assembling a carefully working-class ensemble. Her shirtwaist's blouse was high collared and cut like a man's, her hat was wide-brimmed but unadorned by the feathers and ribbons that ladies of society favoured, and her hair was gathered into a simple knot atop her head. Despite this camouflage, Fowler could tell that she was a gentlewoman of breeding. Common clothes could not disguise the tone in the woman's voice, the surety of her posture, or the imperious confidence in her gaze. She held the parasol she'd been poking him with.

"Yeah." Even dressed down her elegance made him acutely aware of the shabby rough-and-tumble nature of his own clothes, denim trousers and a leather jacket over a shirt that hadn't been washed within memory. They fit the disarray of the room he was renting above the pub, empty whiskey bottles strewn about like forgotten failures.

"Captain Fowler, I have been led to believe that you have an airship available for charter."

Before answering he cast about for one of the bottles scattered about his floor -- it was never auspicious to conduct business on an empty stomach. The woman nudged it out of his reach with her toe, and he gazed at it, forlorn. "Yeah."

"I am Miss Fiske, and I would like to charter your services, Captain Fowler."

Fowler leaned over, trying to reach the bottle, which remained just out of his grasp. He whimpered as his fingertips just managed to drag across its surface, Miss Fiske watching him like some interesting new species of insect.

Miss Fiske raised her voice. "Captain Fowler, I said I'd like to hire you."

"I heard you." Jack gave up and rolled over onto his back, knocking empty glass bottles to scatter across the floor. "Where did you want to go?"

"I need transport to Calais."

"Calais?" he pulled a cigarette out of his breast pocket and stuck it between his lips. "Across the channel? You know there's a blockade on, right?"

Aldora fixed her gaze on the man. "You were not my first choice in captains, Captain Fowler. None of the others I approached were willing to take the risk."

He chuckled; the possibility of death was far from a deterrent. "Yeah, I'll give it a go." He sat up and coughed sharply, then spat into a bucket. Aldora remained stone-faced. "Won't be cheap, though."

"Money is no object."

"My three favourite words."

"That's four words."

"Good thing you're not hiring me as a tutor, then?" Fowler stood and stretched, giving a loud, drawn-out yawn. "I can be ready to depart this afternoon."

"Will that be enough time to sober up?"

He gave the woman a wry grin. "Now why on earth would I want to do that, Miss Fiske? Blockade running isn't a sober business."

"I don't find that amusing, Captain Fowler. I insist we wait until dark, at the very least. I don't want to be spotted leaving."