Gilded Lily (22 page)

“Is it still there? Do you see it?”

“Oh, it's still there.”

“Take care with those latches. Don't startle it,” Mord called to the divers, only one of whom was at the surface to hear him.

“I think it's had all the startling already, Mord. I don't think it's possible to startle it any further.”

“They're very sensitive.”

The second diver surfaced, shaking his wet hair from his eyes. “It's unlatched. I'll go back under and pull up, you go hand over hand from that pole to this.

Between them, they managed to spin the cage and secure it, under Mord's watchful eye, to the hooks he'd anchored in two of the pier's supports. To finish the job, they slid the final panel of mesh into place on top of the cage. By the time it was all secure, the sub was moored as well, and as soon as he was off it Mordecai ran along the dock, flopping onto the boards with his face hanging over the edge, nose to the wires of the top panel.

“Is it moving? Has it changed its appearance?”

“Nah,” one of the divers said, reaching a hand underwater toward the side of the cage where the bedraggled marine creature still clung, its freakish tentacles woven through the mesh. “I think it's having a nice rest.”

He flicked the water close to the animal with his fingers, causing hardly a ripple on the surface, and no reaction from the cuttlefish. His mate laughed, and splashed a handful of water at him.

“See how you like it.”

“You're going to frighten him,” Mordecai muttered darkly.

Ignoring his warning, the first boy braced his hand on the cage, cupping his other hand to send a proper volley back to his friend. That was his mistake.

“Oy! The little bugger's got me!” He grabbed the dock, attempting to pull free of the creature's suddenly active tentacles. “It's stronger than it—ow! Fucking hell, it bit me! Get it off me, get it off!”

“Just swim away,” his colleague said, paddling to the dock and clinging there, safely away from the cage. “It's a baby, just swim away from it!”

“Get it—aaah! Ahh . . .”

He dipped under and came back up struggling, obviously from more than the ducking. Rollo watched closely as the boy's body went into convulsions, thrashing so violently that he actually rose in the water and finally broke his hand free of the cuttlefish's embrace. Too late, obviously. His body jerked for a few seconds only, then went limp except for the spastic movements of his terrified eyes. The second time he went down, he stayed under, only bubbles marking his passage from the world of the living to whatever lay beyond. The other boy gaped, too shocked to even consider a rescue. Nor did Rollo recommend one. The cuttlefish had taken its due, and he eyed it with a newfound respect.

“Interesting.”

“Neurotoxins in the saliva!” chirped Mord, who was practically wriggling with excitement as he watched his new pet relocate itself, then change color to blend seamlessly with the mesh on which it rested. “Thank you, Roland!”

“Anything for you, Mord.”

“I think I'm going to call him Albert.”

In his watery new home, young Albert shifted his tentacles once more and began to emit a soft, pulsing glow.

I
T WAS MIDAFTERNOON
by the time Rutherford Murcheson finally visited his daughter's locked room. He was safe enough entering, and they both knew it, because he'd taken almost everything out of the place that might serve as a weapon. She might use the mantel clock as a bludgeon, but the resulting outcry or thud would be sure to alert the gigantic henchman outside her door. His name was Maurice, she'd learned when he carried in her luncheon tray. He seemed nice, but she suspected that wouldn't last long in the face of an attempted escape by timepiece.

At least that meal and its accompanying beverages had been blissfully free of opiates, as far as she could tell. Still, when her father came into her room and closed the door behind him, she said what she'd been planning to since that nasty breakfast surprise.

“Father. Would you like a nice cup of tea? Or perhaps some wine?”

It fell flat, probably because it had sounded too studied. He just raised his eyebrows at her and pulled out the second chair, joining her at the table.

“The mutton wasn't bad at all at luncheon; did Cook send that up for you?”

“Don't speak to me of mutton.”

“Would you rather I speak of the likely consequences for theft of a military vessel, should the Navy or the higher-ups at my own Agency ever learn of what you've been up to?”

“You have higher-ups?” Somehow she'd envisioned her father at the top of the heap, the bodies of his foes strewn beneath his feet.

“Oh, yes. Everybody does. Even you, my little tinker. You've just managed to escape their notice thus far. What, you thought I didn't know?”

She had thought that, yes, but it hardly seemed to matter now. “If you knew, why didn't you stop me?”

“You were enjoying yourself.” He shrugged, then traced an aimless line on the tablecloth with one finger. “You were always so talented at makesmithing, you know. You could have become a master, given time. Not that I would have allowed my daughter to go into a manual trade, of course, but I thought it did you no harm to play about with clockwork animals and the like. It was really your mother who insisted I stop taking you along to the factory. But she isn't here, and this hobby gave you something to do. You've always been at your worst when you're idle too long. As long as Daniel was with you or, heaven help us, some unfortunate agent of mine, I thought it was safe enough. Safer than some of the things you might be out doing instead, anyway. I was right too, until Smith-Grenville came along. I should have known better than to take on another one of those. They're not to be trusted, as I suspect you've now realized. The elder is no better than the younger.”

She thought of the things Phineas had said, the different perspective he offered regarding his reliability and why he'd done what he'd done. And thought too of the timing. The trouble had started before Barnabas entered the picture, hadn't it? But again, it didn't seem important anymore to pick out the details. She could spend a lifetime trying to sift the grains of truth from the beach of lies, and still never learn a way to make Barnabas not be faithless. He
had
to be the one who'd betrayed her.

“You can't keep me here forever.”

“I can keep you until you tell me where my damn submersible is.”

“I have no idea where it is,” she said truthfully. If all had gone according to plan, Phineas had moved it from Mersea, but she hadn't been thinking clearly enough the previous evening to ask him the new location. She'd expected to speak with him today, of course. “I know where it was last night, but it's long gone from there by now.”

“Freddie, this is no laughing matter. That sub carries vital surveillance equipment. You know there are still smugglers carrying opium in the channel; everyone knows it. Well, that sub may help us track the smugglers. Stop the illegal opium trade. That would benefit us all.”

She would have believed him if she hadn't already known the truth. She never would have suspected. He was that good, that smooth, and he sounded as if it meant so much to him.

“You want the
Gilded Lily
back to help you protect the seismograph. Because if that's destroyed, if the Glass Octopus is ruined past all usefulness, Whitehall won't pay to support your undersea station anymore.” There, now he knew that she knew, and they could simply be open with one another. “I laud your efforts to further the cause of science, but the Glass Octopus is wasted if you're not going to use the information it provides to warn the general public about impending quakes.”

“I ought to throw away the key to that door. I might too, if you don't return the
Gilded Lily
.”

Freddie pushed back from the table and stood up, pacing toward the window, wishing for fresh air. “I don't have it on my person, and I truly don't know its current location. As of last night, it was on Mersea Island. If I knew where it was now I would tell you, because I don't care anymore. About much of anything, really. But you should know it isn't the smugglers sabotaging your precious seismograph, so hunting after them won't solve your problem. I'm surprised Lord Smith-Grenville hasn't already told you that, since he was so forthcoming with information.”

“What do you mean? And of course they're the saboteurs. We've already investigated the French, so thoroughly they're probably still having nightmares about it.”

She knew before she spoke what it would sound like. She told him anyway, consequences be damned. “It isn't the smugglers, and it isn't sabotage. The sensors are being disabled by enormous cephalopods who may or may not be interpreting the flashing lights as some sort of signal or trigger related to the earthquakes. There's a chance they may be able to
predict
quakes, better than even your equipment.”

“Cephalopods.”

“Yes. Giant ones. Like squid, or perhaps cuttlefish.”

“Cuttlefish.”

“Yes. Oh, and they can turn invisible. Camouflage themselves, I mean, on any sort of surface. And sometimes they . . . glow.”

She waited for him to repeat
glow
but he never did, just stared her down for several long painful seconds before sighing. Heavily. That special, Father's-disappointed sigh she remembered so well from her youth.
Sigh.
Father was disappointed that she'd eaten all the tea cakes, leaving none for the other children and giving herself a bellyache.
Sigh.
Father was disconsolate regarding Miss Finnegan's report on Freddie's shameful conduct during lessons.
Sigh.
Father simply didn't know what to do with a girl who wouldn't stop opening up his steam car bonnet and removing vital bits to examine them without telling anyone.

The sigh was uncalled for here. She was telling the truth about the squid or cuttlefish, and about the fact that she didn't know where the
Gilded Lily
could be found. It was somewhere between Tilbury and the channel, she hoped, with Phineas at the helm doing something to keep the smugglers from accomplishing wholesale cephalopod destruction. But that was as far as her knowledge extended.

“It's all true. Eventually you'll see.”

He stood up, straightening his coat. “Knock on the door and inform Maurice when you're ready to tell me what I need to know. The longer you take to capitulate, the worse it will go for you in the long run. Oh, and you might want to start packing your trunks, if you're looking for something to do. I've purchased a small home in the countryside just a stone's throw from Windermere. You'll be moving there shortly.”

“You're
banishing
me?”

“To the Lake District,” he pointed out. “It's beautiful.”

“I won't go.”

“What sort of life can you afford on your tinker's wages? And what if the makesmith guild decides on a crackdown against the unlicensed tinker-makesmiths sometime next year, next month, tomorrow? How will you support yourself then?”

“I'll hire myself out as a French tutor.” She could do it too. Her French was as good as any native's. Although she was iffy on the specifics of grammar in her almost-native tongue, which might prove a deficiency. “Or I'll think of something else.”

“Freddie. Darling, I love you and I'm sorry you feel your life is so circumscribed. I'm sorry too that your ideals have to be shattered so harshly. I'd like to use the Glass Octopus as the basis for a public warning system, of course I would. But it isn't up to me, and politics is a complicated business. A truly intractable Gordian knot. The sooner you learn that . . . well, I won't say you'll be happier, but you'll waste less time worrying about it, once you accept that it can't be changed.”

“It can. People change things all the time. Systems, ways of thinking, whole governments.”

“Freddie.”

She returned his gaze, feeling so miserable she didn't even protest when he embraced her awkwardly for a moment, giving her back a pat for good measure before releasing her.

“There, there.”

“Thank you.”

“By the way, don't suppose you can co-opt any more of my servants, or try to play on old sympathies. Mr. Pinkerton served me well enough, but he let you lead him astray for a good long time before coming back to his senses. I'm grateful he did come back, as I wouldn't have had you risking your life and poking in affairs that are none of your concern, but of course I had to terminate him. A man who deceives you once will always do it again given the chance. You don't keep a dog who bites his keeper's hand.”

Terminate . . .

“But—you
can't
have. You killed him? You monster!”

Murcheson looked at her, questioning, then shook his head. “Oh, Freddie, don't be so melodramatic. I terminated his
employment
. And told the staff to stop sending our mending to his mother for piecework. He's a strapping young ox with a pleasant face and a good leg; he'll quickly find another position. I'll even provide him a character. As long as the household is far away from here, and nowhere close to the Lake District. You know I'm surprised to hear you defending him, after he tattled on you. Very magnanimous of you.”

“Magnanimous how?” But her words trailed off, and her father didn't appear to have heard.

It was Dan.

Murcheson was already at the door, knocking for Maurice. “Go to Windermere. Oh, and I'll be sure to let you know how Lord Smith-Grenville's ankle is faring, as I'm so sure you'll be concerned. I'll be sending someone to arrest him for treason this evening, once I've made sure he isn't going to lead me to anything useful if left to his own devices. Though
useful
and Smith-Grenville don't seem to go hand in hand. Heh. Staying at Lady Sophie's for the doctor to visit, and refusing the five-minute carriage ride from there to here on the grounds of a twisted ankle, I'd be inclined to call him a delicate violet of a fellow. But those flowers have a graceful appearance, don't they, for all they're so short? So let's call him Clumsy Violet when we look back later and have a good laugh about all this. Well, Smith-Grenville probably won't be laughing, of course.”

Because she had no idea what he was talking about, other than that Barnabas was apparently still at liberty, Freddie said nothing and tried to think what it could all mean. Her father seemed to take her silence for further sullenness, and it didn't seem to faze him. When the door opened he slipped out quickly, and Freddie caught a glimpse of Maurice's bulk before she was once more shut in with her thoughts.

Barnabas hadn't been injured when she left Sophie's. Had he remained there all night, instead of returning to his room here as they'd discussed? What possible reason could he have?

It didn't matter. She could find all that out in good time. Because it hadn't been Barnabas who betrayed her after all. It had been Dan. And while Dan might have wanted to protect Freddie, that couldn't have been his only motivation.

She smacked herself on the forehead. “I've been an
idiot
!”

An idiot with a practical set of skills. Freddie swiftly dug in her wardrobe, pulling out the sack in which she hid her usual work clothes. In minutes, she'd changed her simple muslin day dress for a pair of trousers and shirt, sturdy brogues and the new cap she'd found to shove her shortened curls into. It fit tighter than the uniform cap had and held all the stray locks in quite nicely.

She didn't have the padding and bandages, and she considered making do with some sort of substitute, but in the end she decided against it. The trousers were loose, but her braces still held them up, and time was wasting.

Even
sans
padding, however, she could instantly see that her first hope of escape was no hope at all. She'd had no fire since that morning, owing to the warmth of the day, so the hearth was cool enough to stand in. But when she really got her first good look up the chimney, she could see that she would never make it all the way to the roof that way. The house was old enough that the flues had hosted their share of chimney sweeps' apprentices, in the days before mechanical sweepers and clockwork flue-scouring devices became the norm. But even on her slimmest day, Freddie had never been built like a sweep's boy, and the already narrow flue took at least one jog and very likely decreased in size before it reached the open air.