But this particular bird behaved unlike any she had ever met. It landed without fear right next to Percy in the navigation pit. At rest, it was clearly not a pigeon at all, nor was it made of flesh. It was made of metal. And mechanical. And utterly forbidden.
Everyone on board stared at it with mouths agape.
Quesnel followed Rue, although without parasol brandishment, coming to stand next to her, looking up at the creature on their poop deck.
His face was white in shock. “Is that a… mechanimal?”
Lady Maccon came after.
“I thought they were prescribed.” Primrose joined them.
“They are!” Rue and her mother spoke at the same time.
Percy was unperturbed. He looked at the bird as if a tropical bug or small child had approached him, which is to say, without much interest or intent to engage.
“Percival,” said Lady Maccon in a low frightened voice, “come away from there this instant. Those things are explosive.”
Rue panicked. “Get it off my ship!”
Prim clutched her hands together. “Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Didn’t they destroy most of London half a century ago?”
Lady Maccon remained calm. “That’s the rumour.”
Quesnel’s face stayed incandescently enthralled. “To think, in my lifetime! I got to see a mechanimal, in person.”
The metal bird cocked its head at them and let out a peep noise. It burst the ear socket it was so high.
Percy objected. “Ouch. Stop that. What do you want?”
The mechanimal twitched and peeped again.
Then it threw its little beak back and its whole head rolled inside out and converted to a kind of morning glory flower shape, like a hearing trumpet. A human voice emerged, as if from one of those newfangled gramophones.
It spoke a short stream in some foreign tongue, then in French, and finally in English. “Unregistered airships report to the Ministries of Public Works Plus War, at the Customs and Tariff Obelisk.” It then proceed on to various other languages before converting its head back to that of a bird and taking flight, returning the way it had come.
“Nasty piece of work.” Rue felt it was one step removed from a pigeon.
Percy began twiddling dials. “Seemed pleasant enough. Now we know what to do.”
“Oh yes? And where is this Ministries of Public Works Plus War?”
Primrose brightened. “Let me consult my Baedeker’s.” She trotted off to her room to retrieve the obligatory red leather travel guide.
Rue hated to do it but she shouted after her friend, “Prim, you might rouse Miss Sekhmet while you’re there.”
Primrose paused, turned, and gave Rue a nasty look.
Rue tried to look contrite. “We might need her interpretive skills.”
Percy objected on principal. “I’ve studied several of the local dialects.”
“Percy, my duck,” said Rue, “there is a vast different between speaking and studying.”
Percy grumbled, as did Prim continuing belowdecks.
Lady Maccon jumped on the matter of linguistic challenges. “You should hire a dragoman, infant. Although, hard to do so before we’ve visited the tariff office. As I recall, I had no little difficulty in Alexandria at customs when we visited last.” She turned to Quesnel. “They objected to your mother’s hatbox in particular.”
“Oh?” The Frenchman encouraged all mentions of his mother’s past. Rue had the feeling Madame Lefoux could be maddeningly close-mouthed as a rule.
“You don’t happen to have any suspicious hatboxes with you, do you, young man? Could prove difficult.”
Quesnel went deadpan. “Lady Maccon, I assure you all my hatboxes are perfectly respectable and contain hats, nothing more.”
“That’s what Genevieve always said.” Lady Maccon was not reassured.
Primrose returned with her Baedeker’s.
A convenient little map of the city showed that there was a Ministry of Public Works Plus War in the south-western part of the city. They made their way in that direction, eventually spotting what must surely be the Customs and Tariff Obelisk. It jutted up from the centre of a park in between the Ministry of Public Works Plus War and the British Consulate General. It was a particularly tall spire of black basalt. It must be the right obelisk because all manner of transcontinental airships were clustered around it. Each de-puffed and moored in, but not for long.
The Spotted Custard joined the general hubbub of air traffic around the spire. A severe-looking military dirigible of the kind favoured by Queen Victoria’s colonial flotillahs appeared next to them, making the crew nervous. Likely its intent.
However, once they’d reached the obelisk and cast out their own mooring rope, the military craft drifted off to loom at some other newcomer.
A strange feeling of numbness overcame Rue’s whole body as they sunk further down. It was like being submerged in a bathtub, only it wasn’t wet. It felt a little like the moment when touching her mother cancelled out all metanatural abilities.
Rue sidled over to said mother. “Do you feel that?” She kept her tone low; no need for anyone else to be alarmed.
The crew was busy looking as respectable and efficient as possible. Not because The Spotted Custard was engaged in any nefarious activities – she was registered as a pleasure vessel with all the major regulatory bodies of the empire – but because the moment one entered the sphere of any bureaucratic body, one felt the need to put on a jolly good show. Nervous propriety was the natural consequence of proximity to an overabundance of paperwork. Even Quesnel popped off belowdecks to check with Aggie regarding the condition of the kettles and the general cleanliness of the boiler room.