Prudence (The Custard Protocol 1)

“I don’t follow. Have I offended in some way?”

The woman merely sipped her funny tea, deep in some moral quandary. “I thought you might be supportive. Or at least scientifically interested. But if they are once again denied? What point is there in my urging them to try? Everything is in confusion.”

“You’re telling me,” said Rue with feeling.

“It’s too sunny and I have a headache,” Sekhmet complained.

“You do look knackered. Should you even be out playing our guide?” Rue resisted pressing Miss Sekhmet’s hand in sympathy. “If you could articulate what is happening? The nature of the trade? The specifics of your demands? I might be able to help, even without my mother. I do have my own particular set of talents.” She tried to be modest.

It was all lost on Miss Sekhmet, who was working herself up into an exhausted frenzy. “You know that your relationship is with the wrong ones, don’t you?”

Rue was exhausted by the continued mystery and was starting to get a headache too. Finally she took a stab. “Do you represent the dissidents? The ones who stole the taxes and the brigadier’s wife?”

“Is that what they are claiming has occurred?”

“Isn’t it?”

Miss Sekhmet’s beautiful eyes narrowed. “I assure you, Mrs Featherstonehaugh came of her own free will.”

Aha, at last we are getting somewhere. “Oh, did she indeed?” Dama’s agent is a traitor! So what about the tea? Did she take it with her?

Instead Rue said, “And the taxes, did they come of their own free will as well?”

Miss Sekhmet gave her an exasperated look. “Money attracts attention.”

“You have my attention. What are your demands?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no. Not for me to say. I must tell them that you have not been contacted, challenged, or authorised. We will see what happens next. This is a grave setback.”

Rue smiled. “I have been authorised, just not as you might assume.”

“Yes?” she perked up at that.

“Oh no, if you can be cagy, so can I.” If they don’t have the tea, no point in telling them about it. Whoever they are.

They finished their repast, at an impasse. Betraying no little annoyance, Miss Sekhmet tossed her rough earthen cup to the packed dirt of the square where it shattered. Greatly daring, Rue followed her example. It was quite satisfying.

The marketplace was only getting more crowded and hot and stifling. Rue would not have thought this possible a mere ten minutes ago.

“Perhaps,” she suggested, “we should round up my companions and you can guide us back to our craft? Then you can contact your friends for the next move in this little game?”

“Very well.” Miss Sekhmet looked unhappy about it, but there was no other course of action.

So it might have happened, except that a roving flower stall, heavily laden and pulled by a steam locomotive of antiquated design, rolled to a stop in front of them, neatly trapping them in their small corner of the square.

“Ho there!” said Rue, banging on the top of the engine with her parasol.

Miss Sekhmet leaned over to talk to the driver, a discussion that escalated rapidly into a virulent argument in the local dialect, punctuated by copious hand gestures.

Then the flower stall exploded.

Rue acted on instinct. Growing up with parents like hers, she’d become accustomed to spontaneous explosions – of beauty products, parasols, or tempers, depending on the parent. She threw herself back and over the low stone wall she’d so recently been sitting atop. She rolled and landed, surprisingly gracefully, on the other side, crouched down, parasol raised up over her head to shield herself from the rain of flowers, leaves, and stalks.

She peeked over the wall in time to see Miss Sekhmet, insensate, being loaded into the now empty flower stall. A team of suspicious-looking black-clad men scuttled about as nefariously as anything. They were arguing with one another. Rue stared, and then flinched when they pointed in her direction.

One moved towards her.

Rue stood, parasol at the ready. She would not crouch behind a stone wall like a coward.

The man was clearly reluctant to follow his orders, as frightened of Rue as she was of him. If he knew that she had metanatural abilities he clearly did not understand that they functioned only at night. Why else be wary of an Englishwoman alone and abroad?

Rue braced herself. He was but one man. She had a parasol.

He lurched in her direction as if he intended to leap over the wall. Rue prodded at him with the parasol tip as if she were a lion tamer. “Back, you ruffian! Back!”

Surprisingly, he backed away bewildered.

One of his fellows joined him. This appeared a source of courage, for they moved in, less frightened as a group.

There came a shout of anger and then a whizzing hiss sound. One of the men looked profoundly surprised for a split-second and then pitched forward, a dart sticking out of his neck. Rue did not risk a turn to see whose dart. She could very well guess. The second one shouted to his fellows before grabbing his fallen comrade and backing away from Rue.

Rue hopped over the wall – or, more precisely, clambered – and brandished her parasol at him threateningly.

The men loaded their fellow in on top of Miss Sekhmet, slammed the flower cart shut and, in a blast of pink steam, chugged off into the busy marketplace.

The steam cleared enough for Rue to see Quesnel standing, arm out, wrist following the departure of the stall, a look of such anger on his face as to strike fear into even Rue’s questionable soul.

He said something quite rude in French.

“We must follow them!” insisted Rue. “I was almost getting answers.” She pulled up her skirts, prepared, if necessary, to run the engine down on her own two feet.

Quesnel gave her a look that said he thought her unhinged. He was, perhaps, not wrong. For the flower cart had disappeared into the milling throng of a foreign city, with too many other steam engines and too much activity already hiding it.

Rue sighed. “Oh, very well.” She crouched down and looked about the area where the explosion had occurred. She did not quite crawl among the fallen flowers, but that was only because she had not entirely forgotten her upbringing. She used her parasol to poke among the heads of decapitated blossoms and fallen leaves. She wasn’t certain what exactly she was looking for but any clue was better than the nothing that currently befuddled her.

Quesnel came over and bent down. “What are we looking for?”