Free Brass and Bone by Cynthia Gael Page B

pleasant as that sounds, dear boy, I have given my word. Eli is an old and very dear friend, and he wants this thing done badly. I owe him now for my rejuvenated airship and for other…things. I’m sorry you feel this way. Perhaps you’d like me to leave you in Paris? We’ve got more than a bit of the ready, old thing, and you could have quite a shopping spree until I get back from the Antipodes.”
    I was, of course, aghast. “Of course I shan’t let you go without me! We’re a team, partners, together through thick and thin. But I simply wanted to point out—”
    Something dinged, or possibly donged, and she turned away to flip a lever up two notches. Ahead through the glass—it had been replaced with Sir Eli’s money and was quite crystal clear in comparison to the cloudy, cracked old wreck it had been—I could see spread out below me the bustling port of Calais, looking quite impossibly French.
    Then Abigail started doing other things, and bells rang and whistles whistled and I could see we were changing direction. So I turned to leave.
    It was useless, I could see. Whatever feelings Abigail had for Sir Eli were still there. A pity.
    “Simon,” Abigail said just before I left the bridge. “The distance from Calais to Paris is just shy of a hundred fifty miles. We’re traveling at nearly—,” she looked at a gauge and whistled in delight, “—at over twenty-five miles an hour. Really, I must send a congratulatory telegram to Herr Tesla once we arrive. Tell our passengers we shall be in Paris for a late lunch.”
    ***
    Ah, Paris! The city of light, the center of the world—at least, if one is a Frenchman.
    As for me, give me dear old London. It may be foggy and rather soiled; there may be dangers at every turn; I may get lost upon occasion in its cluttered streets, or attacked by cutpurses or solicited by ladies of the evening or…
    Well, perhaps I should give Paris a chance.
    I spent the forenoon hours settling into my minuscule cabin, and if the thought of living there for some time to come as we traveled was less than inviting, well, who can blame me?
    Perhaps this might be a good time to describe the Invincible , so you may visualize it when I discuss such aeronautical locations as the bridge, engine room, galley, hold and so forth. It had begun its life some fifty years before, when the first airships were built. It consists of a long gondola suspended beneath the airbags, which are nothing more than a series of five large round sacks filled with hot air produced by the engines below. The gondola, shaped much like a stocky sailing galleon, has three levels: the upper deck, which is little more than an open walkway upon either side of the glass-enclosed bridge wherein Abigail spends most of her time, with her small cabin behind it; the second or passenger deck, with three tiny cabins on each side of a central corridor and a small galley aft with a cubbyhole where Rupert holds sway; and below, the third deck is one long open hold, used in the past for the contraband so dear to the late Lord Agamemnon Moran, Abigail’s grandpapa and a most impressive old pirate and smuggler. The hold is also wherein resides the airship engine, lately modified by Herr Tesla. The gondola is made of wood and metal and hangs beneath the gasbags, which are sewn of heavy waxed canvas and bound to the gondola with stout ropes.
    There you have it in a nutshell, a word most apt when referring to the cabins. I am fairly tall. I bump my head constantly. Abigail is nearly as tall as I; she does not. I suspect it is because she is more used to moving about the thing than I.
    “Simon, stop woolgathering!” Abigail’s voice rang in my ears.
    I turned away from the tiny porthole in my cabin and looked at around enquiringly. I expected to see her standing in the doorway, dressed in her usual piloting attire: goggles, leather jacket, white shirt, short full skirt in a heavy dun-colored cloth which looked distressingly like airbag