Steven Harper - The Impossible Cube

“That isn’t the point,” Alice snapped. “You are accusing me of-”

“Yes, it is always you ,” Feng snapped back. “You, you, you, and that cure of yours. You dragged me all over Luxembourg and Berlin and Warsaw and now to filthy Kiev for your cure. So you can save everyone. The world revolves around the great Lady Michaels, who guards her chastity during the day so her not-so-secret lover can spend himself on her at-”

Alice slapped him.

Her hand left a mark that changed from white to red on Feng’s ivory skin. Feng stared at her. Alice stared back, a little startled at herself. She had never struck another person in her life. But the fury continued to burn and she refused to move or flinch. Beside her, Gavin tensed, fists clenched. Lilya looked ready to run away. The narrow street stretched in both directions, its unwavering lights pinned to earth like half-dead stars.

“Keep your filthy false accusations to yourself, Feng,” Gavin said evenly.

After a long moment, Feng said, “Translate on your own.” He turned on his heel and stalked away.

“Should I go after him?” Gavin said.

“Certainly not.” Alice turned to the still-uncertain Lilya and gestured with her iron gauntlet. “Go on, girl.”

Lilya may not have understood the words, but she got the message. Timid again, she led Alice and Gavin to another flat, laid out exactly like the previous one. Lilya explained to the mystified inhabitants why Alice had come and then fled immediately, leaving Alice and Gavin no way to speak short of smiles and sign language. Still, Alice managed to cure a man, a child, and a baby, which cried incessantly after Alice scratched and bled on it. Although the family appeared grateful, the wailing infant put a definite damper on their mood. Alice and Gavin left as quickly as they could.

“That was difficult,” Alice said once they were back outside. “Now what?”

“We should probably just go back to the circus.” Gavin scanned the smoky street and its looming gray buildings. He coughed at the soot in his throat. “We’ll have to walk, too. Doesn’t Kiev have even delivery vans that run at night?”

“That wretched Feng,” Alice muttered, taking Gavin’s arm as he slung his fiddle case over his back. “What’s gotten into him, anyway?”

“No idea. He seemed pretty angry.”

Alice’s chin came up, which made her almost as tall as Gavin. “I’m certainly not going to apologize.” She paused. “Do you think we should apologize?”

Like intelligent men everywhere, Gavin fell back on prevarication. “Uh…”

She continued talking, half to herself. “I mean, it isn’t as if we did anything wrong. I honestly thought he’d get along better with people who spoke his own language.”

“Absolutely.”

“It may have been a little presumptuous to assume he’d be happy with a troop of Oriental acrobats just because he himself is from the Orient any more than I-we-might be happy socializing with any random person we met from England-or America.”

“You may have a point.”

She gave a heavy sigh as they walked. Their footsteps echoed down the eerie, empty street. “You don’t suppose the entire circus has been gossiping about us, have they? I mean, you don’t suppose everyone thinks we… that we’re…”

“If they do, it doesn’t seem to bother them,” Gavin pointed out. “No one seems to mind Dodd and Nathan.”

“I can’t quite get over that,” she said. “Two gentlemen, and everyone knows.”

“Which part can’t you get over? The two gentlemen part or the everyone knows part?”

“Well,” Alice amended, “I can’t say I can’t get over it. It’s not as if one never hears of such things. It’s just that one never discusses them.”

“You seem fine discussing it with me,” Gavin pointed out.

“Yes. It seems I can discuss any number of things with you, darling, and that’s one thing that makes you so special.” She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder as they walked. For a moment, it felt as if the entire city belonged to her and Gavin alone. Even the plague zombies seemed to have retreated. A number of thoughts were working their way across her mind, and with no one else about, she allowed herself freedom to express them. “I suppose I was rather self-centered. I know Feng feels disgraced and he’s nervous about facing his family again, and on top of it all, we-I-drag him all around these cities to visit plague victims and zombies.” She sighed again, feeling more and more guilty. “He said such awful things, though. Am I being womanish to feel bad about arguing with him?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Gavin said. “All the women I know would sooner smack you than sorry you.”

“What women?”

“My ma, for one. She’d smack you cross-eyed if you mouthed and I don’t ever remember her apologizing, but speak against one of her kids and you were in for a world of trouble.”

“Do you think I’ll ever get to meet her?” Alice asked.

“I don’t know.” Gavin’s eyes grew sad. “I don’t know if I’ll ever-”

“Don’t!” Alice cut off the rest of the sentence by squeezing his arm with her iron-clad hand. Her parasol knocked against her knee. “I’m being thoughtless again. We’ll see her; of course we’ll see her. She’ll have to be at the wedding.”

Gavin halted. “Is that a proposal, Lady Michaels? Come to think of it, I never did actually propose to you, did I?”

“Oh!” She colored. “Good heavens! I–I didn’t mean to-”

“Yes, you did. You certainly did.”

Alice floundered. The evening was turning out far more peculiar than she had imagined it might. The street seemed to skew sideways, and words spilled from her mouth in a dreadful torrent that she couldn’t seem to stop. “I didn’t mean to push you into anything, though I rather assumed that once we found a spare moment we would want to formalize our relationship, not that we’re particularly traditional people anymore, but my title and my upbringing both mean I was hoping for something more traditional, and even though we were in a church in Luxembourg we never even had a moment to ask Monsignor Adames if-”

Gavin shushed her. “I’ll make it easy for you.” He got down on one knee on the cobblestones before her and swept off his cap. His new wristbands gleamed in the lamplight. Alice couldn’t help clapping a hand to her mouth, not sure if she wanted to laugh or burst into tears. The horrible businessman’s offer she had gotten from Norbert last year came inevitably into her mind. He had offered her an emerald ring over a delicate luncheon of poached salmon and champagne. Gavin, dear, gallant Gavin, knelt on grimy cobblestones in a foreign city that stank of oil and steam. She couldn’t imagine a more perfect proposal.

“Alice, Lady Michaels,” he said, “will you-”

And then he was gone.

Alice stared in uncomprehending disbelief at the stones where he’d been kneeling. Gavin had simply disappeared. It wouldn’t register. What had-?

A split-second later, the clank of metal brought her head around. An enormous ostrichlike bird, easily two stories tall, was rising above her. It had come out of the alley beside and a little behind her. The bird was made entirely of brass and iron, intricately wrought and jointed. Gears spun and pistons puffed as it moved. Its head, at the end of a long segmented neck, was actually a rounded cage half the height of a man. Gavin knelt inside it, looking as startled as Alice felt.

“Good heavens!” she gasped.

The huge bird stalked forward out of the alley, revealing its body and legs now. Brass feathers shone. On the creature’s broad back rode a plump woman in a pink evening gown. Blond ringlets more suitable for a young girl framed her face, and she wore opera gloves. A console before her sported levers and switches, and she worked them with idle skill. A gleaming collar made of copper encircled her throat.