Miss Temple kicked herself away both from the bloody man and the open hatch, as chaos erupted around her. The Contessa was on her feet and after Caroline, lifting her dress with one hand to step over the sailor, the other hand holding her spike. The Comte and Xonck were close behind, but Xonck had not taken a step before he was tackled by Svenson and Chang. The Comte turned, looking back and then forward, hesitated, and then ripped open a cabinet near his head, revealing a rack of bright cutlasses. As Chang wrestled with Xonck for the saber, Svenson took a handful of Xonck’s red curls and pulled his head away from the floor—Xonck snarling his protest—and then slammed it down as hard as he could. Xonck’s grip on the saber wavered and Svenson smacked his head again on the planking, opening a seam of blood above his eye. The Comte ripped free a cutlass, the massive weapon looking in his hand like a particularly long kitchen cleaver. Miss Temple screamed.
“Doctor—look out!”
Svenson scuttled back as Chang finally scooped up the saber, forcing the Comte to pause. Miss Temple could not see the Comte’s face, but she doubted his alchemical knowledge included swordplay—not when he faced a bitter opponent like Chang, even if Chang was weaving on his feet.
But her scream had another effect, which was to remind the Prince and Lydia of her presence. Karl-Horst dropped into a cunning crouch and leered at her, yet to her greater distress she saw Lydia weave the other way, behind the open hatch, where Elöise hung gagged and bound to the wall. Lydia clawed at the ropes with a determined grimace, watching Miss Temple across the whistling open hatchway.
Too much was happening at once. Chang was coughing horribly, Miss Temple could not see Svenson or Chang for the Comte’s broad back and his enormous fur. Lydia pulled apart one knot, attacked another. Coming at her, his hands clutching wickedly, was the Prince, pausing to stare at Miss Temple’s body. Miss Temple realized how exposed she was without her robes, but that the Prince could find the time—at this pitch of a crisis, to ogle a woman he was hoping to kill—was but another spur to her courage, for she had already seen what she must do.
She feinted to the stairs and then dashed the other way, leaping the hatch straight at Lydia, forcing the girl to drop the ropes. But Miss Temple dodged again, over Elöise’s legs, just avoided the Prince’s flailing arms, and then hurled herself at the Comte, digging at his fur with both hands, finding the pocket even as he turned and swatted her into the far settee with his mighty arm. Miss Temple landed in a sprawl, mid-way between the Comte and Chang, but in her hands, plucked from the pocket where the Comte himself had stowed it so many hours ago at the St. Royale, was her green clutch bag. She thrust her hand inside and did not bother to pull her revolver out, but fired through the fabric, the bullet shattering the cabinet near the Comte’s head. He turned with a roar of alarm, and Miss Temple fired again, the bullet swallowed by his coat. She fired a third time. The Comte coughed sharply once, as if a bit of dinner had stuck in his throat, lost his balance and cracked his forehead hard against the corner of the cabinet. He straightened himself and stared at her, blood beading down above his eye. He turned to leave, almost casually, and caught his feet together. His knees locked, and the great man fell face down like a tree.
Xonck grunted, trying to crawl away. Chang sank to his knees and drove a brutal punch with the saber hilt across Xonck’s jaw, stilling him like a pole-axed steer. Through the open doorway Miss Temple saw the Prince and Lydia watching in terror, but it was a terror mixed with defiance, for between them they had untied Elöise and held her precariously over the hatch, where with the gentlest push she would plummet to her death.
Miss Temple extracted the revolver from her bag and stood, taking a moment to yank what was left of her petticoats into position over her revealing silk pants, relieved that no one was looking at whatever parts she had exposed sprawling on the settee. Chang and Svenson advanced past her to the far doorway, Chang with Xonck’s saber and Svenson availing himself of a cutlass from the cabinet. She stepped up between them, giving her petticoats just one more tug. The Prince and Lydia had not moved, rendered mute and still by the sudden fates of the Comte and Xonck, and by the truly vicious screaming that now reached them all from the wheelhouse.
The heated words passing back and forth between Caroline and the Contessa could not be made out over the roar of the open hatchway, but they were punctuated by the Contessa’s snarls of rage and Caroline’s shouts—tenacious, but terrified—the mix further complicated by the cries of the remaining crewman, who seemed by his pleading oaths to be German.
“Do not worry, Elöise,” Miss Temple called out. “We shall collect you directly.”
Still gagged, Elöise did not answer, for her gaze was fixed—indeed, it was held—on the freezing abyss beneath her, suspended by Lydia’s tight handful of her hair, while, a step behind, the Prince had wrapped his arms around Elöise’s legs. Wrists and ankles tied, Elöise could do nothing to prevent them dropping her through.
“Let her go!” cried Chang. “Your masters are down! You are alone!”
“Drop your weapons or the woman dies!” replied the Prince, shrilly.
“If you kill that woman,” said Chang, “I will kill you. I will kill you both. If you release her, I will not. That is the extent of our negotiation.”
The Prince and Lydia exchanged a nervous glance.
“Lydia,” called Doctor Svenson. “It is not too late—we can reverse what has been done! Karl—listen to me!”
“If we do release her—” began the Prince, but Lydia had begun speaking at the same time and overrode his words.
“Do not treat us like children! You have no idea what we know or what we are worth! You do not know—do you?—that all the land in Macklenburg purchased by my father was settled in my name!”
“Lydia—” attempted the Prince, but she swatted at him angrily and kept on.
“I am the next Princess of Macklenburg whether I marry or no—whether my father is alive or no—no matter if I am the only person alive on this craft! I insist you drop your weapons! I have done nothing to any of you—to anyone!”
She stared at them wildly, panting.
“Lydia—” The Prince had finally noticed the smear of blue across her lips, and glanced to Svenson, suddenly confused.
“Be quiet! Do not talk to them! Hold her legs!” Lydia’s stomach heaved again and she groaned painfully, spitting onto the front of her dress. “You should be fighting them yourself!” she complained. “You should have killed all three of them! Why is everyone so useless!”
The crewman above them screamed, and at once the entire airship careened to the left. Chang went into the wall, Miss Temple into Chang, and Doctor Svenson to his knees, the cutlass sliding from his hand. The Prince fell toward the open hatch, keeping his hold on Elöise so he drove her like a ram into Lydia, knocking both women into the opening. Lydia screamed and hit the lip of the hatch with her thighs and began to slide through. Elöise disappeared up to her waist—only the Prince’s grip on her legs preventing her fall, a grip that was visibly slipping as he tried to decide whether to drop Elöise in order to save his bride.
“Hold her!” shouted Svenson, throwing himself forward to catch Lydia’s feverishly clawing hands.
The airship careened again in the other direction, just as suddenly. Miss Temple lost her balance as she tried to reach Svenson. Chang leapt past them both toward the Prince. The Prince retreated in terror, releasing his hold on Elöise, but Chang caught her legs, digging his fingers in her ropes, and braced his foot on the hatch plate. He shouted to Miss Temple and gestured to the wheelhouse.
“Stop them—they’ll kill us all!”
Miss Temple opened her mouth to protest, but as she watched—the Prince hunched in the corner beyond them—she saw Chang pull Elöise out to her hips, and Svenson do the same to Lydia.
She tightened her grip on the revolver and rushed to the stairs.
The second crewman lay draped over the topmost steps, blood bubbling on his lips. Lining
either side of the wheelhouse were metal panels of levers and knobs, and at the far end, in front of the windows—where Miss Temple had first seen Doctor Lorenz from the roof—stood the wheel itself, made of brass and polished steel. Several levers had been broken off, with others jammed into positions that set the metal gears to grinding horribly. From the tilting floor it seemed certain the craft had swooned into a curve, spinning gently downwards.
In front of her lay Caroline Stearne, on her back, arms outstretched, an empty hand some inches from a bloody stiletto. Crouched on top of Caroline, her hair disheveled and her spike-hand smeared with blood like a glove, perched the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. A crimson pool drained to the side with the angle of the floor. The Contessa looked up at Miss Temple and sneered.
“Why, look who it is, Caroline—your little charge.”
Her fist flashed forward, driving the spike into Caroline’s throat with a meaty smack, causing Miss Temple to flinch and Mrs. Stearne’s still body to react not at all.
“Where is everyone else?” she asked with a smirk. “Do not tell me you alone are left? Or if you’re here, I suppose it is more accurate to say I am the only one left. How typical.”
She rose to her feet, her dress dripping blood, and gestured with her free hand to the whining machinery.
“Not that it mattered—I could have cared less who killed Trapping—if this romantic idiot hadn’t killed Lorenz and our crewmen—much less set off my own anger—we could be sharing tea. All of this for nothing! Nothing! I merely want people I can control! But now—just listen!” She gestured at the grinding machinery and scoffed. “We’re all finished! It makes me so very … savage …”
She stepped closer, and Miss Temple raised her pistol—she was still looking into the wheelhouse from the stairs. The Contessa saw the revolver and laughed. Her hand shot out to a lever and wrenched it down. With a shudder that shook the airship to its very frame—and threw Miss Temple all the way to the bottom of the staircase, her stinging fall broken only by the distressing cushion of the first crewman’s body—the spinning momentum reversed direction. A broken chopping sound erupted from one of the propellers. The grinding from the wheelhouse rose nastily in pitch and volume, and as she shook her head Miss Temple heard the Contessa’s footsteps coming down the iron steps.
She clawed her way free of the body—she was moving too slowly, she had dropped her revolver—and looked ahead of her, hair hanging in her eyes. The hatch was closed, but the sudden jolt had knocked everyone off their feet. Chang sat on the floor with Elöise, cutting her bonds. Svenson was on his knees, facing Lydia and the Prince, skulking in a corner just beyond his reach. Miss Temple pulled herself toward them, feeling stiff as a tortoise.
“Cardinal!” Miss Temple gasped. “Doctor!”
Ignoring Miss Temple utterly, the Contessa’s voice shot out from above.
“Roger Bascombe! Wake up!”
Chang and Svenson turned as Roger did just that, returning to awareness in an instant. Roger leapt to his feet, took in Xonck and the Comte on the floor, and threw himself at the open cabinet of weapons. Chang raised the saber—Miss Temple was dismayed to see still more blood around Chang’s mouth—and struggled to stand. Doctor Svenson collected his own cutlass and reached his feet with the help of a brass wall bracket. He shouted to the Contessa.
“It is finished, Madame! The airship is falling!”
Miss Temple looked back, relieved she was not dead, but having no idea why it was so. The Contessa had paused on the little landing mid-way down the stairs, where in a small alcove—emblematic of the cunning use of space so necessary aboard vessels of all kinds—her minions had lashed into place an enormous steamer trunk.
Miss Temple heaved herself to her knees. She saw her revolver, slid half-way across the floor, and screamed at the Doctor as she flung herself toward it.
“She has the books! She has the books!”
The Contessa had both hands in the trunk and when she pulled them out each held a book—in her bare fingers! Miss Temple did not know how the woman did it—indeed the Contessa’s expression was ecstatic—how was she not swallowed up?
“Roger!” called the Contessa. “Are you alive?”
“I am, Madame,” he replied, having retreated at Chang’s approach to the other side of the unmoving Francis Xonck.
“Contessa,” began Svenson, “Rosamonde—”
“If I throw this book,” the Contessa called, “it will surely shatter on that floor, and some of you—particularly those under-dressed and sitting—will be killed. I have many of them. I can throw one after another—and since the alternative means the end of every book, I will sacrifice as many as I need. Miss Temple, do not touch that gun!”
Miss Temple stopped her hand, hovering above her revolver.
“Every one of you,” cried the Contessa. “Drop your weapons! Doctor! Cardinal! Do it now or this book goes right … at … her!”
She glared at Miss Temple with a wicked smile. Svenson dropped his cutlass with a clang, and it slid with the tipping of the craft toward the Prince, who snatched it up. Chang did not move.
“Cardinal?”
Chang wiped his mouth and spat, his blood-smeared jaw like the painted half-mask of a red Indian or a Borneo pirate, and his bone-weary voice from another world altogether.
“We are finished anyway, Rosamonde. I’ll be dead by the end of the day no matter what, but we’re all doomed. Look out the windows … we’re going down. The sea will smother your dreams along with mine.”
The Contessa weighed a book in her hand. “You’ve no care for your Miss Temple’s painful death?”
“It would be quicker than drowning,” answered Chang.
“I do not believe you. Drop your weapon, Cardinal!”
“If you answer a question.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—”
Chang shifted his grip on the saber and pulled back his arm, as if to throw it like a spear.
“Do you think your book will kill me before I put this through your heart? Do you want to take that chance?”
The Contessa narrowed her eyes and weighed her options.
“What question then? Quickly!”
“To be honest, it is two questions.” Cardinal Chang smiled. “First, what was Mr. Gray doing when I killed him? And second, why did you take the Prince from his compound?”
“Cardinal Chang—why?” asked the Contessa, with a sigh of unfeigned frustration. “Why possibly do you want to know this now?”
Chang smiled, his sharp teeth pink with blood.
“Because one way or another, I shan’t be able to ask you tomorrow.”
* * *
The Contessa laughed outright and took two steps down the stairs, nodding Svenson and Miss Temple toward Chang, her expression darkening at Miss Temple’s quite brazen snatch of her pistol before she went.
“Join your comrade,” the Contessa hissed at them, then looked at Elöise with disdain. “And you, Mrs. Dujong—one wonders if you are professionally helpless for a living—hurry!” She turned to the Prince, her tone sweetening. “Highness … if you would climb to the wheelhouse and do what you can to slow our descent—I believe most of the panels have helpful words on them … Lydia, stay where you are.”
Karl-Horst darted up the stairs as the Contessa continued down, stepping over the crewman, to face all four of them in the doorway. The Doctor had pulled Elöise to him and held her hand, while Miss Temple stood—feeling rather alone, actually—between the Doctor and Chang. She glanced once over her shoulder at Roger in the far doorway, his face pale and determined, another expression she had never seen.
“What a gang of unlikely rebels,” said the Contessa. “As I am a rational woman I must recognize your success—however inadvertent—just as I can find myself truthfully wishing that our circumstances were other than they are. But the Cardinal is right. We will most likely perish—all of you will, certainly—just as I have lost my partners. Very well, Mr. Gray … it is no secret
now—not even to the Comte, were he still alive. The mixture of indigo clay was altered to decrease the pliability of the new flesh of his creations. As a defense, you see, if they became too strong—they would be more brittle. As it happened, perhaps too brittle … ah, well … it seems I was rash.” She laughed again—even at this extremity a lovely sound—and sighed, going on in a whisper. “As for the Prince—well, I do not like him to overhear. In addition to taking the opportunity of implementing my own control phrase for His Highness, he has also been introduced with a poison for which I alone have the antidote. It is a simple precaution. I have secretly made an adherent of his young cousin’s mother—the cousin who must inherit if the Prince dies without issue. With Karl-Horst so dead, Lydia’s child—and the Comte’s dire plan for their offspring—is swallowed in a battle for the succession that I shall control. Or perhaps the Prince shall live, continuing to consume the antidote in ignorance—it is all preparation.”
“And all of it rendered academic,” muttered Svenson.
Above them the Prince had found a helpful switch, for one chopping propeller switched off, followed a moment later by the other. Miss Temple looked to the windows, but they were still covered with curtains—were they still losing altitude? The cabin righted itself, and grew silent save for the whistling outside wind. They were adrift.
“We shall see,” said the Contessa. “Roger?”
Miss Temple turned at a noise behind her, but it did not come from Roger Bascombe. Francis Xonck had somehow regained his feet, steadying himself with his injured hand on a settee, the other holding his jaw, his lips pulled back in a wince of pain that revealed two broken teeth. He looked at Miss Temple with cold eyes and reached his good hand toward Roger, who immediately passed Xonck his cutlass.
“Why, hello, Francis,” called the Contessa.
“We’ll talk later,” said Xonck. “Get up, Oskar. This isn’t finished.”
Before Miss Temple’s eyes the enormous man on the floor, like a bear rousing itself from hibernation, began to stir, rearing up to his knees—the fur coat flashing briefly open to reveal a shirtfront drenched in blood, but she could see it had all seeped from one superficial line scored across his ribs—the crack on the head had brought him down, not her shooting. The Comte heaved himself onto a settee and glared at her with open hatred. They were trapped again, caught between the books and Xonck’s cutlass. Miss Temple could not bear it an instant longer. She spun back to the Contessa and stamped her foot, extending the gun. The Contessa gasped with pleasure at the notion of being challenged.