Gail Carriger - Heartless

Another mystery. The location of a hive was a guarded secret. Lady Maccon herself knew of it, of course, but that was only because . . .

“Oh, Alexia, you idiot!” The burglary at Woolsey! Madame Lefoux must have been the thief, stealing those old missives because among them was Alexia’s original invitation from Countess Nadasdy to visit the hive. It had been delivered to her by Mabel Dair in Hyde Park the afternoon after Alexia killed her first vampire. It contained the address of the hive house, and Alexia had foolishly never thought to destroy it. When did I tell Genevieve that story?

Lady Maccon cast desperately about the empty street. She had to reach the Westminster Hive, and fast. Never before had she resented the infant-inconvenience more than at this moment, not to mention her dependence on horse-drawn transport. She even had an invitation that would get her in the door, but no way to get there in time to warn them of imminent tentacled doom. She was stranded in the wilds of Belgravia!

She waddled faster.

The fire was spreading and whooshing behind her. The once-dim alley was alight with a flickering orange and yellow glow. The din of collapsing buildings and roaring flames was added to by the loud clanging bell of an approaching fire engine. One of the dirigibles must have spotted the blaze and drop-messaged the appropriate authorities. If anything, this made Alexia move faster. The last thing she needed was to be detained trying to explain her presence at the Pantechnicon. It also reminded her to look up to see if she could spot a dirigible.

Sure enough, there were several headed sedately in her direction, having caught sight of the fire and redirected their lazy circling toward an intriguing new attraction. They were safely above the conflagration, not yet in the aether but high enough to avoid any risk associated with even the most massive of ground fires.

Lady Maccon waved her parasol commandingly and yelled, but she was a mere speck far below, unless someone had a pair of Shersky and Droop’s latest long-distance binoculars. Since her marriage, Alexia had adopted a more respectable and somber color palette than that of the pastel-inclined unattached young lady. This made her even less visible in the flickering shadows of Motcomb Street.

It was then that Alexia noticed that the Giffard symbol (a shaping of the name that turned the G into a massive red and black balloon) on a nearby warehouse was modified with a kind of starburst pattern at its end and a phrase underneath that read PYROTECHNIC DIVISION LTD. She stopped, turned on her heel, and headed for a nearby lamppost. With barely a pause for consideration, she hauled off, took careful aim, and threw her parasol hard at the torch section. The parasol, spearlike, crashed into the lamp and brought both it and the hot coals inside down to the ground with a clang.

Lady Maccon huffed her way over to the coals, retrieved her now-slightly-scorched and sooty accessory by its tip, and, holding it like a mallet, used the chubby handle to hit one particularly nice-looking coal along the street toward the Giffard pyrotechnic warehouse. It was a excellent thing, reflected Alexia at that juncture, that she was good at croquet. At a nice distance, she took careful aim and, with a kind of scooping action, struck the wedge of coal hard. It arced splendidly upward, crashing through the window of the warehouse in a most satisfactory manner.

Then she waited, long, slow counts, hoping the coal had managed to hit upon something reliably explosive.

It had. A popping, cracking noise came first, then some whizzing and whirling sounds, and finally a series of loud gunshots. The doors and windows of the warehouse exploded outward, pushing Alexia backward. Instinctively, she popped open her parasol to shield herself as the world around her turned into a smoking cornucopia of brightly flashing lights and loud noises. The entire stockpile of what she imagined must be a very expensive collection of gunpowder display sparkles and sky-lighters exploded, shimmering and flashing in an ever-increasing series of flares.

Lady Maccon cowered in the road—there was really no other way of putting it—behind her open parasol, trusting in the durability of Madame Lefoux’s design to protect her from the worst of it.

Eventually, the popping detonations slowed, and she began to register the heat of the real fire as it crept down Motcomb Street toward her. She coughed and waved her parasol. The moonlight made the residual smoke silvery white, as if a thousand ghosts were collected around her.

Alexia, eyes watering, blinked and tried to take shallow, steady breaths. Then, through the dispersing smoke, a massive upside-down shepherdess-style bonnet appeared, hovering some two stories above the ground and heading toward her. As the smoke vanished, the cumbersome form of a small private dirigible bobbed into view above the bonnet, proving that it was, in fact, not a hat at all but the gondola portion of the air conveyance. The pilot, some miracle worker of the first order, navigated the small craft down toward Lady Maccon, lowering it carefully between the rows of buildings while battling to keep it away from the flames of the burning Pantechnicon.

It was Giffard’s smallest craft, short-range and generally hired only for classified recognizance or personal pleasure jaunting. The gondola portion, even more strongly resembling a shepherdess’s hat upon close inspection, was big enough for only five people. The model was based off of Blanchard’s original balloon. It had four dragonfly-like wing rudders, sprouting below the passenger section. There was a small steam engine and propeller at the back, but the captain had to steer by means of multiple levers and tillers, making him perform a frantic dance. In usefulness, it resembled those small Thames crossing barges so favored by the criminally minded. Giffard had come out with a whole fleet recently, at luxury prices, so the affluent could invest in private air transport. Alexia found them undignified, not the least because there was no door. One had to actually clamber over the edge of the gondola to get inside. Imagine that, fully grown adults clambering! But when one was stranded in an alley with a burning Pantechnicon and a rampaging octomaton, one really couldn’t afford to be picky.

Two of the figures inside the hat leaned over the edge, pointing at her.

“Yoo-hoo!” yodeled one of them jovially.

“Over here! Quickly, gentlemen, please, this way!” replied Alexia at full volume, waving her parasol madly.

One of the gentlemen touched the brim of his top hat at her (no tipping was possible with a hat tied down for air travel). “Lady Maccon.”

“By George, Boots! How the deuce can you possibly tell that there is Lady Maccon?” queried the other top-hated gentleman.

“Who else would be standing in the middle of a street on full-moon night with a raging ruddy fire behind her, waving a parasol about?”

“Good point, good point.”

“Lady Maccon,” came the yell. “Would you like a lift?”

“Mr. Bootbottle-Fipps,” said Alexia in exasperation, “ask a silly question . . .”

The dirigible gondola bumped softly down, and she toddled over to it.

Boots and the second young dandy, who proved to be Viscount Trizdale, hopped nimbly out and came to assist her. Tizzy was a slight, effete young blond with an aristocratic nose and a partiality for the color yellow. Boots had a bit more substance in physicality and taste, but not much.

Lady Maccon looked from one to the other of the two gentlemen and then at the side of the gondola that she must now scale. With great reluctance and knowing she had no other choice, she put herself into their well-manicured hands.