Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) (40 page)

“
Quigley!” yelled the third man on hearing the
thump
, and again as he watched his colleague eat acorns. “Where in the hell is she?
Where are you?
”

Her answer, not a minute later, hit him on the right quad muscle and gave him a dead leg. Her worst shot so far. But Meredith was determined to
make amends. The man hadn’t seen her, and anyway he was limping, wounded prey. She crept back along the path to the other side of the thicket he thought was giving him cover. Crouching low, she waited for him to get up.

And waited.

His string of muttered obscenities seemingly had no end, and precious little syntax. When he finally struggled to his feet, she sprang up, thrust the barrel through the upper nettle stems and fired at almost point blank range. The corky splattered his nose, snapped his head back and sent him reeling to the ground. Without pause she ran around the bush and picked up his crowbar. Hit him thrice on the skull. Snatched up the last ball that had hit him. Then she scurried away back to the house as fast as the rigid fly-mech—that beautiful, clumsy, life-saving fly-mech—would let her.

Tw
o projectiles left. But would she need them now? The burglars were all down, unconscious, but not disarmed, damn it. As she made the turn onto Bitker Lane Meredith panted and wanted to double up to catch her breath, but the stiff rig wouldn’t allow it. It made her stand upright. She daren’t remove it, though. Not yet. Not until Sonja was unequivocally safe from the intruders. Not until—

The first bullet
, fired from behind, whizzed by her left ear and ricocheted off one of the stone gate posts at the front of her house. She halted. Imagined the next bullet thudding into her back, exploding her heart. She stood there, halfway through a stride, and braced herself for the impact.

Clank!

It glanced off the metal barrel over her extended left arm, jerking her off balance. She used the momentum to swivel her head enough to spot him—hell, almost close enough to spit on him—then she bolted across the muddy lane in a wild zigzag that lost her a slipper. No shot came. She ducked behind the gate post and thought about reloading.

But she was outgunned.

“You put up a brave effort, girl, I’ll not deny you that. A pity no one will ever know.”

I
’m sorry, Sonja. I couldn’t do any more. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.

She closed her eyes and sat back against
the stone post, letting her weight hold the fly-mech’s stiff frame in place. The muzzle aimed roughly at the front window. Pointing her home. For the last time.

“
I want you to know this will be quick,” he said, standing over her. “And that this bullet was never meant for you. Never for his daughter. But you’ve left me no choice.”

“
That’s enough of that,” boomed a familiar masculine voice from the house. “Put it down, Westerfeld. This is your last warning.”

She opened her eyes...

“Tangeni! William!”

...and wept
at the sight of their rifles trained inches over her head.

“
No, this is
your
last warning,” said Westerfeld. “Whoever you are, drop those weapons or I kill the girl.”

“
There’s a third option.” A woman’s voice, clear and severe, yelled from down the lane. “Either you die or...no, that’s pretty much it.”

“
You?” The shock in Westerfeld’s voice frightened Meredith as well. What if it made him do something rash? “But you’re Atlas. You and I, we’ve worked—”

“
No. Say hello to the Coalition.”

Meredith
dared enough to peer across. She thought she saw not one but two women approaching. She rubbed the teary mist from her eyes, and gasped.

Aunt Lily! Cathy!
And Donnelly too! But how...?

“
If you let me go, I swear I’ll leave the country. You’ll never see me again.” The same pathetic plea he’d tried on Meredith in the cellar. “Here, I’m unarmed.” True to his word, he tossed the gun onto the ground. Slowly, achingly, Meredith uncrumpled to her feet and began disassembling the fly-mech. It was so heavy and cumbersome and her solar plexus broiled under its constriction.

“
Are you hurt, Meredith?” Aunt Lily’s unwieldy, two-handed weapon she held at her midriff like an usherette’s confectionary tray, boasted no less than four large brass barrels extending forward, side by side. It was cushioned by a crescent rubber stock a few inches thick that hooked around the waist onto her hips. With a jerk and a snap the barrels folded up into a perfect oblong, which she then pointed, like a sawed-off shotgun with two triggers and an under-arm stock, at Westerfeld.

“
I’m unhurt,” Meredith replied.

“
And the other two men?” Cathy was content to train mere twin pistols on her enemy.

“
Unconscious. Maybe dead.”

“
Where? In the forest?”

“
Yes. Near the first fork in the path, past the saplings.”

“
See to it, please, Cathy,” said Aunt Lily.

“
Aye.” Cathy jogged away.

“
What are you going to do with me?” Hands raised in surrender, Westerfeld back-stepped from Aunt Lily’s steady advance.

“
I’m going to let you go.”

He cast Tangeni and
William a worried glance. “Why?”

“
So I can watch you run,” she said. “Your kind never has to run—the Atlas Club is
so diligent
when it comes to looking after its own. So I want to see you flee for your life, tail between your legs, knowing that you’ve seen England for the last time.”

“
Oh, I swear. I swear I’ll take the first airship abroad.”

“
Then what are you waiting for? Run, little fox, run.”

He made it as far as the privet hedge before Aunt Lily unleashed
all four barrels into his back. Westerfeld flew forward and skidded into a puddle, which quickly turned crimson. He was dead. Killed by a quadruple-deck broadside Sonja would approve of.

Her barrels still smoking, Aunt Lily finally lowered the weapon. “
Threaten my family? Nobody threatens my family.” Then she tutted irritably and checked her fingernails. At least one of them appeared to be broken.

Chapter Nineteen

In Demand

Meredith
relished the influx of family and friends into her home. Aunt Lily, who hadn’t known of Sonja’s condition until now, watched over her upstairs, leaving Meredith to recover in the others’ company in the living room. It was all a little overwhelming but it was an overwhelming she needed, as it kept her focus without, not within herself. Figuring out the hows, the whens, the whys that had brought them all here at this exact hour proved fascinating in a coincidence-or-something-more kind of way.

“
It’s no coincidence,” Donnelly assured her as he sipped his coffee, “and the opposite of timely, I’m afraid. If we’d acted faster we might have got here before those buggers. You see, I received a telephone call from my associate at Customs & Excise saying Westerfeld was back in the country, so I immediately woke my best surveillance man and had him trail Westerfeld. Before long he found out the filth was planning a trip to Southsea, with two professional safe crackers, and that they were being paid for the job by a foreign sponsor. Not exactly a puzzler for me. I telephoned your London apartment right away to warn you, but to my surprise it was Swan—I mean Lady Catarina who answered.”

“
At which point I contacted William and Tangeni, who were in London on business,” said Cathy.

“
Coalition business?” asked Meredith.

“
Quite so,” replied Cathy. “Your aunt was with me in the apartment—in fact we’d hoped to find you there. The Council gave us permission to leave the Leviacrum hospital only yesterday. So the five of us got together in the early hours and chartered the fastest airship we could find. Unfortunately the pilot was an avaricious old sod who wouldn’t take off until we paid his exorbitant fee. Tangeni it was who brought the weapons. And believe me, we were in the air in no time once the pilot caught sight of what we’d brought. But like Mr. Donnelly says, if only we’d got here sooner. ”

“
Soonest is soon enough, from the sounds of it. You all did all you could, and I’ll never forget it.” Meredith paid each of them, in turn, a nod of affection, knowing the faces looking back at her would forever be among the most important of her life. Whatever happened from now on, she need never feel alone, unwanted, neglected again. She mattered to them, and they to her, and in truth that was all that mattered in this cockeyed world.

The inf
lux didn’t stop there, either. First Derek arrived, true to his word, shortly before Dr. Marsan. Derek was surprised by the full house, as he hadn’t met most of them. If only he’d known what had
really
brought them here, what had happened in his absence. Cathy and Tangeni had hidden the dead bodies in the cellar for now (the two locksmiths had not survived being moved—slit throats often had that effect), and would dispose of them later.

P
oor Derek had enough on his plate with a sick fiancée and a distraught mother. He all but flew upstairs, while Meredith followed grimly, watching the ugly brown carpet one slow step at a time as it took her to what might be the worst news of her life.

But s
he found herself in her empty old bedroom, overlooking the twin single beds. Hers and Sonja’s. Instinct, habit had taken this detour. Sonja’s teddy bear in its aeronaut uniform sat on one side of the bedside table; next to it, her pile of nautical and science fiction adventure books. Meredith’s own stuffed gollywog with the mended stitching and a spiffy new pair of tartan trousers sewn on—heck, five years ago now!—sat up against the wall on her pillow. The armoire with two secret compartments, one in the base, one in the back panel near the top, where they’d hidden illicit items, had never changed in her lifetime. The various rocks and artefacts from Father’s expeditions, assembled on the mantel, whispered of happy homecomings. Beneath the mantel, the bricked-up fireplace where Sonja had tried to paint a scene from one of her
Lady Skyhawk
picture books directly onto the brickwork, not too successfully. These were the things she would never have again.

But they were ju
st things.

“
Did you hear that, Meredith? Oh, thank God.” Aunt Lily dabbed her eyes. Handkerchief still in hand, she threw her arms around Meredith. “She’s on the mend. The doctor says the worst may be over, that she fought the fever like a tigress last night and its grip appears to have loosened. Did you ever hear such good news?”

“
Say that again.”

“
She won’t be right for a while, and she’ll need lots of care, but...” Aunt Lily, flittering, glittering Aunt Lily, herald of joy, angel of death, was a stranger to Meredith, a Machiavellian figure with one foot in a familiar past and the other in the terrifying new world of espionage. As unexpected as the news she’d just brought. And in her own way, as deeply reassuring.

“
Auntie, let me see her.”

“
Oh, of course. Sorry, child—I mean Meredith.”

“
Let’s go together.” She offered Aunt Lily her arm, caught the canny twitch of a smile on the woman’s quivering lips. In that moment she felt, truly for the first time, like the lady of the house. That she might at last be worthy of the name McEwan.

Four or five days of terrific winds battered Southsea and southern England as Sonja slowly recovered. Seeing to her every need, Meredith, Aunt Lily and Cathy rarely left the house. Derek braved the dangerous weather twice, sometimes three times a day to sit at Sonja’s bedside for an hour or two, reading up on his biology literature in preparation for his important new post in the Leviacrum—in the heart everything the McEwans stood against.

Cathy knew where his true loyalties
lay, though. No one mentioned to him that they knew his predicament because until he figured out his role, his capabilities in said role, what he felt comfortable doing—spying wasn’t for everyone—it was better if he dealt directly with his sponsor in the tower and no one else. That sponsor was a woman named Clytemnestra Fallon, whom Sonja had clocked meeting Derek on the roof of the Round Tower that night in Portsmouth. All very cloak and dagger.

But n
ever was a patient given more devoted care than Meredith’s little sister, and Dr. Marsan’s visits grew less frequent after the third night following her turn for the better. Meanwhile, the others—William, Tangeni, Donnelly, and the Gambling Six—had all returned to their lives in London or Oxford, with the exception of Mears, whose broken hip hadn’t fully healed. Kingsley paid Meredith a visit before he left, inviting her to Oxford after her sister’s recovery.

Nickson and the others bitterly regretted what had happened at the Aurics
’, and had vowed to make it up to her somehow, should she ever find it in her heart to forgive them. In her mind there was nothing to forgive, and she’d be only too happy to see them in Oxford once she returned from her trip abroad.