Manners & Mutiny

Sophronia opened her mouth to protest, as modesty demanded, but Agatha forged on, now looking more fierce than miserable. “I’m better at being invisible and dowdy. Being the wallflower. No, don’t try to make me feel better. I know what I’m good at. But I also know I’m an object of pity. That’s useful, too, but doesn’t make a girl feel all that nice most of the time. He saw through it, you know? From the very first time we met. I was only ten. But he won’t take me for a drone and he won’t put me in the field where my talents aren’t up to Sophronia’s standards.”

“So what are you getting out of this arrangement?”

“Enough money to set up my own household, if I want.” Agatha was purposefully not looking at Pillover.

“No!” Dimity gasped. An unmarried woman setting up house was the mark of a mistress.

Agatha looked at Sophronia, but she was talking to Pillover. “I would be an independent woman of means. I could love as I willed without consulting my family. He even promised me an allowance, if I continued to pass on information.”

Pillover looked at his feet.

As riveting as this all was, Sophronia finally recovered from her shock enough to bring them back to the point. They hadn’t time to process Agatha’s revelation further now. The string of students was ambling away, and Sophronia had a ship to save.

“So you can get a message to Lord Akeldama, and he’ll alert the dewan.”

Agatha nodded.

“You’d do that for me?”

Agatha nodded again.

“And Dimity, you’ll check on Soap?”

Dimity nodded, although she was still staring at Agatha, eyes wide.

Pillover seemed genuinely afraid. “You aren’t going to give me an assignment, are you, Sophronia?”

“I wouldn’t insult your personality.”

“Aw, Sophronia, you care.” Pillover looked almost happy.

Sophronia nodded. “I’ll follow when I can. If you haven’t heard from me by morning, send help or come back yourselves?”

They didn’t discuss what or how, but the two girls nodded.

“Good luck,” said Sophronia.

Dimity rushed over and hugged her hard. It was most unladylike. Bumbersnoot was crushed between them, the side of his carapace digging into Sophronia’s hip bone.

It was wonderful.

“I trust you, Dimity.” For Sophronia, this was as near as she got to an admission of affection.

Dimity sniffled. “Don’t do anything too drastic, please?”

Then Dimity let her go and trotted after the other students, back set against Agatha.

Sophronia looked at Agatha. She felt a change in the order of things, a new respect between them. “She’ll come around.”

“But you aren’t angry with me?”

Pillover, perturbed by the prospect of sentimentality, made a hasty bow and drifted after his sister.

Sophronia examined her feelings. She hated talking about them, but she intended to hit Agatha with the honesty that Agatha hadn’t afford her. “I feel betrayed, but I would have done the same thing, in your position.”

Agatha paled but took it like the intelligencer she was. “That’s fair.”

“You really will send to London for help? I can trust you in this at least?”

Agatha was in grave earnest. “Absolutely.” Perhaps she would be a good match for Pillover. If they married, they’d have a wedding as near to a wake as might be. For some reason this thought cheered Sophronia.

“Take care of them?” Sophronia’s hand gesture took in not only Dimity and Pillover but also Vieve and Soap in town.

Agatha smiled and turned to catch up to the others.

Pillover paused to offer her his arm.

They followed Dimity into the night.

Sophronia returned to the school in a roundabout way. If she were the infiltrating Picklemen, she’d have guards posted at the wreck. Taking into consideration that fact, plus their previous interest in the pilot’s bubble, she angled to come around the stern of the airship.

The moon was bright enough for her to assess the damage as she crept through the underbrush. It wasn’t pretty, but it also didn’t look fatal. Some splintered wood, a balloon or two damaged, rigging dangling free.

She kept getting distracted by the fact that her chest area was freezing. Her stupid dress was too full and too low for clandestine activities not involving seduction. She fervently wished for a nice set of breeches and a man’s shirt. In the end she settled for shedding her top petticoat and constantly tugging up on the neckline. The liberated petticoat she tucked under a gorse bush, where it sat like some sad forgotten fluffy creature. In one respect, she was grateful for the dress—dark red with black brocade was perfect for fading into the heath.

She shifted Bumbersnoot to lie across her back. The little mechanimal stayed silent but for the faint tick-tock of his tail. As she inched closer, she checked to make certain her carnet de bal and bladed fan still hung securely from her waist. She was as equipped as a ball gown allowed. She stripped out all the pretty frills and fripperies from her hair and used a ribbon to tie it tightly back and out of her eyes.

No Picklemen were in sight, but there were sooties everywhere, busy making repairs. Two greasers yelled instructions, one from the midship squeak deck and another from the balcony above boiler room level.

Two of the balloons had lost a great deal of helium. Despite the resulting limpness, they were solid enough to withstand the weight of sooties crawling over them, applying slap patches. That was causing the airship to straighten, like a student caught slouching and chided into proper posture. Still, the school wasn’t floating anywhere without a refill, and that was going to be a challenge so far from the train tracks.

If anything, the whole operation was going suspiciously well. The attackers never intended to cause permanent damage, but instead to force a grounding. Did they want an evacuation also?

Sophronia almost slapped her forehead with her hand, she felt so stupid. They are after the airship itself! They want the school, and they’ve wanted the school all along. That’s what the pilot’s bubble infiltration was all about. They were surveying the darned thing, learning how it worked, determining whether it would fill their needs. They weren’t after war airships—they were after our school. It’s the biggest dirigible in the country.

Sophronia scanned the surrounding landscape. She gasped—quietly, of course. For riding low and coming in fast toward them were three flywayman airships… big ones.

ABANDONED SHIP

One of the sooties noticed the incoming ships and shouted, pointing. There was nothing they could do. They were sitting ducks. Or more precisely, one great big huge sitting duck.

At that moment, three large men appeared, one on each squeak deck. They held fierce-looking guns, which they swung around, pointing from one sootie to the next.

The sooties reacted instantly. They were not fighters and had no cards in this game. They were merely laborers, and the lowest of those. Grunts in the boiler room. They, quite rightly, thought only in terms of saving their own skins. Most of them froze where they climbed, then turned to face this new threat.

One sootie panicked and jumped off the lower deck. He ran off across the moor, fortunately away from Sophronia’s hiding spot.

The forward deck Pickleman took aim and fired.