Timeless (Parasol Protectorate #5)

Thus pleasantly entertained, the group made its way through the city, pausing overlong only once, in one of the bazaars when Alexia was particularly taken by a fine display of leatherwork. Looking up, she noticed that the man seated behind the goods attractively arrayed on a colorful striped rug was not the same in looks as all the others they had encountered thus far. He had a different garb and bearing. His sharp, bearded features and steady gaze betokened firmness, resolution, and an autocratic nature. He was also not singing. This was no Alexandrian local but one of the Bedouin nomads of the desert, or so Alexia believed at first. Until she noted that a long rope ladder was tied to the building behind him, a ladder that stretched all the way up into the sky above, attached to the basket of one of Prudence’s beloved balloons. The man was uncommonly handsome, his dark eyes intent, and he stared hard at Alexia for a moment.

“Leather for the pretty lady?” he asked.

“Oh, no thank you. Simply looking.”

“You should look farther south. The answers to your questions lie in Upper Egypt, Miss Tarabotti,” said the Drifter, his accent thick but his meaning unmistakable.

“Pardon me. What did you just say?” Alexia was startled into asking. She looked for Mrs. Tunstell. “Ivy, did you hear that?” By the time she had turned back, the man was gone, shimmying up his rope ladder into the sky with remarkable dexterity and speed, almost supernaturally quick—impossible, of course, as it was still daylight.

Alexia watched him go with her mouth slightly open until a new voice said, “Leather for the pretty lady?” and a small boy, in typical Alexandrian garb, looked hopefully up at her from the exact place the man had just been.

“What! Who was that bearded man? How did he know my name?”

The boy only blinked his fringe of lashes at her, uncomprehending. “Leather for the pretty lady?”

“Alexia, are we finished here? I hardly see what you would want with such goods.”

“Ivy, did you see that man?”

“What man?”

“The balloon nomad who was just here.”

“Oh, really, Alexia, it says right here in my little book—Drifters don’t fraternize with Europeans. You must have imagined it.”

“Ivy, my dearest boon companion, have I ever imagined anything?”

“Fair point, Alexia. In which case, I am very sorry to say that I did not observe the interaction.”

“A disappointment for you, I’m sure, for he was a remarkably fine specimen.”

“Oh, my, Alexia, you shouldn’t say such things! You’re a married woman.”

“True, but not a dead one.”

Ivy fanned herself vigorously. “La, Alexia, such talk!”

Lady Maccon only smiled and twirled her parasol. “Ah, well, I suppose time is of the essence. We should press on.” She tried to memorize the stall’s location and the color of the man’s balloon, a patchwork of varying shades of deep purples.

With no further disruptions, they made their way to the west end of Boulevard Ramleh, arriving by six o’clock exactly. Alexia left her party in ecstasies over Port Neuf, glittering rich and blue under the low light of the late afternoon sun. She strode swiftly inside and, finding it was English run and quite up to snuff, had her own valve in place exactly on time to transmit a message to Biffy. At least she hoped it was the right time; so many things could go wrong with aethographors.

“Ruffled Parasol in place,” her message ran. “Booking this time this location until departure.” She then added the Alexandria codes and waited with bated breath. Within moments, as ordered, there came a reply. Unfortunately, it was not the reply Lady Alexia Maccon would have wished.

Biffy’s sleep was troubled and not only by the fact that Professor Lyall boasted rather a small bed for two occupants. While neither of them was very large, Biffy was a good deal taller than his companion, which caused his feet to dangle off the end. Still neither would even think to suggest that they sleep apart, not now that they had discovered each other. Besides, once the sun rose fully, they both slept solidly enough to be thought dead, limbs wound together, breathing soft and deep. Nevertheless, Biffy’s dreams were colored by missed appointments, canceled events, and forgotten messages.

Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings had caught Biffy following Lyall into his room that morning. He raised one blond eyebrow in silent criticism but said nothing. However, they both knew they were due to come under a good deal of teasing that evening, for all the pack would be informed. Werewolves were terrible gossips, especially about their own. Vampires preferred to talk about other people’s business; werewolves were a tad more incestuous in their interests. Knowing that their new arrangement, as yet unformed in the particulars, was public fodder for the rumor mill allowed Biffy to give his claviger instructions to see him awakened a few minutes before sunset in Lyall’s chamber.

“Sir, sir, wake up.” As ordered, Catogan Burbleson, a nice boy with considerable musical talent, shook Biffy hard some fifteen minutes before sunset. It took a good deal of force to rouse a werewolf before sundown, especially one of Biffy’s youth.

“Everything all right, Mr. Burbleson?” Biffy heard the Beta whisper.

“Yes, sir. Mr. Biffy asked me to see him up before sunset, something about not missing an important appointment.”

“Ah, yes, of course.”

Biffy felt a nuzzle at the back of his neck and then sharp teeth as Lyall bit him hard on the meat of his shoulder.

He stopped pretending to be asleep and said, “Now, now, Professor, save that for later. Naughty man.”

Lyall laughed, actually laughed, and poor Catogan looked horribly embarrassed.

Biffy rolled out of bed and his claviger helped him into a smoking jacket, silk trousers, dressing gown, and slippers. Under ordinary circumstances, he would not leave his room, nor Lyall’s for that matter, in anything less than shoes, spats, trousers, shirt, waistcoat, cravat, and jacket. But there was no time to waste, and he would have to complete his toilette at leisure later. He only hoped he should not encounter anyone with fixed opinions on his foray to the aethographor—a faint hope in a den of werewolves.

Thus informally attired, he hurried up to the attic of the house, where Lady Maccon had had her aethographic transmitter installed. The device looked on the outside to be nothing more than an enormous box, large enough to house two horses, raised up off the floor via a complex system of springs. The exterior was quilted in thick blue velvet to prevent ambient noise from reaching its interior. The box was divided into two small rooms, each filled with a precise arrangement of machinery. As he was supposed to be waiting for the Alexandria codes from Lady Maccon, Biffy took up vigil in the receiving chamber.

With everything switched to the on position, he sat as still as possible. Utter silence was necessary or the receivers might be disrupted in their response to aetheric vibrations. He watched intently and just as the sun set—he could feel the sensation in his werewolf bones—a message came through. Before him were two pieces of glass with black particulate sandwiched between, and a magnet mounted to a small hydraulic arm hovering above began to move. One by one, letters formed in the particulate. “Ruffled Parasol in place. Booking this time this location until departure.” And there came a short string of numbers. Biffy had an excellent memory, so he simply made a mental note of the codes and then dashed out and over to the transmitting chamber.

As quickly as supernaturally possible, he dialed the aetheromagnetic setting into the frequency transmitters. Lady Maccon had insisted on commissioning only the latest and most sophisticated in aethographors. Biffy needed no companion valve on his end. That done, he double-checked his numbers and then picked up an acid stylus and an etching roll. He composed his message, careful to print each letter neatly in a grid square. This first communication was simple and had to be sent immediately. “Wait,” it said, “more follows. Wingtip Spectator.” He slotted the metal slate into the brackets and activated the transmitter. Two needles passed over the grid squares of the slate, one on the top side and the other underneath, sparking whenever they were exposed to one another through the etched letters.

Without waiting for a reply, he bent to compose his second message, the one carrying the bulk of his recent discoveries. It was a lot of vital information to transfer in code, but he did his very best. Once more he activated the aetheric convector. Barely breathing, he watched the sparks fly and hoped against hope that the message was away and that he was not too late.

“Wait,” Biffy’s message said, “more follows. Wingtip Spectator.” Lady Maccon looked from the clerk to the scrap of papyrus paper he had passed to her and then back again.

“Is the receiving chamber booked just now?”

“Not for another few minutes, madam.”

“Then allow me the privilege of renting it for one additional message.” Alexia passed over a generous amount of money. The clerk’s eyebrows rose.

“As you wish, madam.” He hurried off, back to the Alexandria aethographor’s receiving chamber, graphite pencil in one hand, a fresh scrap of papyrus in the other.

He returned a few moments later with another message. Alexia snatched it from him. The first part said, “50 years ago GBP start expand.” Alexia puzzled over this for only a moment before she realized that Biffy must have figured out that the God-Breaker Plague was increasing and that this expansion had commenced some five decades ago. A fact that confirmed what she and Conall had surmised. She wished she knew how much and with what rapidity but guessed it must be quite significant for Biffy to think it important enough to mention. Also, Biffy had given her a time frame—fifty years. What happened in Egypt fifty years ago? This must have something to do with Matakara’s summons. But what good can I do? Or Prudence, for that matter. Neither of us can stop a plague. Given that Biffy had determined the rate of expansion, Alexia wondered if he had also determined a possible epicenter. If the plague moves far enough into Alexandria, I suppose Queen Matakara will have to swarm. Could a vampire in her condition, grafted into a chair, afterlife supported by artificial means, still swarm? Then again, someone had once said that the older the queen, the shorter amount of time she had to swarm. Was Matakara simply too old to manage it at all? Had she lost the capacity?

Troubled by these thoughts, Lady Maccon almost didn’t notice that there was a second scrap of paper with another message.

It read, “Lady K knows PL past. Wrote Lord M.”

Alexia Maccon felt her heart sink down and lodge somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach where it caused no little upset. Her cheeks tingled as the blood drained out of her face, and she was certain, had she been the kind of woman to faint, she would have done so right then and there. But she was not, so she panicked instead.

The message was cryptic to be sure, but it could only mean one thing. Lady Kingair had somehow found out that Professor Lyall had rigged the Kingair assassination attempt and she had written to Conall informing him of Lyall’s duplicity. This should not, ordinarily, upset Alexia all that much. Except, of course, that she, too, had known. And in knowing such an awful thing, she had also chosen for the last few years to keep it secret from her husband. A wifely betrayal she had hoped would not be revealed in her lifetime. For Conall would find it difficult to forgive such subterfuge.

At that moment, Lady Maccon remembered the innocent little letter, the one with the handwriting she had not recognized. The one she had picked up from the hotel clerk the other evening and placed upon Conall’s bedside table, thinking it a missive from one of his BUR operatives.

“Oh, my giddy aunt!” she cried, crumpling the little scraps of paper in her hand and dashing out without further conversation. The surprised clerk had not the time to even wish her a good evening, merely bowing to her retreating back.

“Ivy! Mrs. Tunstell! Ivy! We must return to the hotel directly!” Alexia yelled upon exiting the offices.

But Ivy and the children, having grown tired of waiting in the street, were busy exploring the exotic world around them. Some species of little old lady in black robes, her face wrinkled into obscurity, was telling an animated story to a highly appreciative audience on the far side of the street. The crowd participated and responded to her words with cries of excitement. Ivy stood among the watchers, with Primrose on one hip and Percival on the other. Behind her was the nursemaid and the donkey with Ivy’s parasol and the babies’ hats. Prudence, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Seized by additional panic, Alexia dashed over, narrowly missing being hit by a cart full of oranges. The vendor hurled obscenities at her. Alexia shook her parasol at him.

“Ivy, Ivy, where is Prudence? We must return to the hotel directly.”

“Oh, Alexia! This lady is an Antari, a singer of tales. Isn’t she marvelous? Of course, I can’t understand a word, but simply listen to the verbal intonations. And her projection is one of the finest I’ve ever experienced, even on the London stage. Such somnolence. Or do I mean resonance? Anyway, would you look at this crowd? They are riveted! Tunny would be so intrigued. Do you think we should go back to the hotel and wake him?”