Original: "Trafalgar and Boone," Chapter Thirteen
I think this brings us to the end of Act II. Act I was origin stories and discovering the plot, Act II was combining their efforts and heading out on the mission. Now for Act III! ;D
Chapter Thirteen
It was still early by Dorothy’s internal clock, but the ship went into nighttime mode in anticipation of making landfall in the middle of the night. Rome’s terminals operated around the clock, so they would be greeted by a full staff. Araminta wanted the crew to be alert and responsive as well. Dorothy retired to her room, took a pill to help alleviate her monthly issues and changed into her nightgown. She’d warned Beatrice she wasn’t up for spending the night together, and Beatrice suggested they could share a bed and just sleep. Dorothy accused her of just wanting the bigger room, which Beatrice curiously did not deny.
They passed Paris close to an hour ago and now all she could see below them were dark squares of green, yellow, and brown, the Mondrian pattern of France’s countryside. So much of it had been torn apart and scarred by the war, so much beauty needlessly shredded by boots and bombs and burials. She had been behind enemy lines, she had witnessed some of the horrors being wrought in the name of... what? Ideals? Fighting to protect your country whilst simultaneously ripping the country apart, fighting to protect your people while sending those people to die for it... the whole thing made no damned sense.
She had a feeling perhaps her anger was due to discomfort and exhaustion. At the moment Beatrice was sleeping in the bed behind her, nude with the sheets twisted around her waist like a rope ladder. Dorothy was at the cabin’s built-in desk with the light turned low and angled so she could see her book. She looked over her shoulder at Beatrice’s bare back, the intricate branches of her tattoo blending with the shadows and the loose curls of her hair.
Though she longed to cross the room and crawl under the blankets, there was too much to be done before they reached Rome. She turned back to the journal and focused on the nonsensical words. There had to be some sort of pattern to the code, some system she could crack. Taking notes in the field required speed and shorthand. If Solomon couldn’t decipher what he had scrawled down then there was no reason to take notes at all. He had to have a system.
The teletype embedded in the wall next to the desk came to life, beeping and scratching out its message. The noise startled her enough that she put her palm against her chest and turned to make sure the clatter hadn’t disturbed Beatrice’s sleep before taking the slip of paper from the feeder.
“Sorry for the lateness. New message from IS. Kestrel tucked in for night in Paris. Resuming trip tomorrow 0430. Should have a twelve-hour lead on them. Sweet dreams. AC.”
Dorothy smiled and whispered, “Sweet dreams to you as well, Minty.” She folded the note and looked at the journal again. She would never be able to explain why everything slipped into place for her then; whether it was looking away for a moment and then re-focusing, or if looking at Araminta’s shorthand from the teletype had pushed her brain into the proper position to see it, but suddenly the words in Solomon’s journal didn’t look quite as random as they had before. She placed her hands on either side of the book and looked down at the swirls and loops of ink, willing the letters to make sense. It was like trying to hold onto the snippet of a dream long enough to remember everything that happened in it.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Come on, stay with it, Dot. You can see it. It’s right there in front of you.” She ran her bottom teeth against her top lip and narrowed her eyes.
Her grandmother had slapped the top of her head just hard enough to make her flinch. “If you expect every answer to be spelled out, you won’t last very long in this profession. Look harder.”
“I’m looking, Grandma,” she whispered. “I can’t see it... I... wait.”
A single letter seemed to stand out to her. The letter T, by itself, unconnected to the letters around it, and capitalized. Dorothy found a blank sheet of paper and wrote T=I. She flipped back to the coordinates Trafalgar had identified as Djibouti. There were two Ts in it, and she translated the word into the new alphabet. T was a substitute for I, and that meant D was an O. It was the most simplistic cypher he could have used, but the use of random spacing between words would have made it impossible to crack if he hadn’t made one mistake. He had been writing too swiftly and his brain told him the personal pronoun needed to be on its own and capitalized.
Dorothy rapidly scribbled the code on her paper, then began translating the final entry. “Believe we have found the perfect receptacle for our host. Willing to defend herself against stronger opponents, willing to fight unarmed, strong, intelligent (learned language in a matter of days to a degree that she was able to converse in English). The girl lacks a name and therefore has no sense of self. The host will easily overwhelm whatever personality the girl may have and subsume her completely. As a child she will be pliable. The host will be like a child and therefore susceptible to whatever the Society wishes. We can mold it into our own champion with minimal effort.”
This paragraph encircled the drawing of Trafalgar’s head. Dorothy touched the cheekbone, horrified at what Solomon and his ilk had planned for an innocent child. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, settling her brain back into its proper channels. It had taken her nearly an hour to translate one paragraph, and she’d been helped by repeated words. Translating the entire journal would take too long to be very helpful.
If they worked backwards, perhaps they could learn what the Society had been planning for Trafalgar. If they knew that, they might have a clue about what to expect in Rome. She looked at the clock and winced, knowing she should get to bed if she had any hope of getting rest. She sharpened her pencil with the blade of her penknife and wet the nib with her tongue. Behind her Beatrice murmured in her sleep, speaking rapid and desperate Mandarin. She had done it before; Dorothy only waited for the burst of language to fade away before she bent over her page again.
Another hour and she could have the page translated. Then she could lie down and take a quick nap so she was rested when they reached their destination. She put a finger on the journal’s page and dragged it along each letter to keep her place as she began translating as quickly as she could.
#
Beatrice woke to the sway and sweep of the gondola. Her fingers tightened on the bedding and she took a moment before opening her eyes to remind herself that she wasn’t in the hold of the ship. Her earliest memory of clinging to the moth-eaten sweater of an old man fading as her brain caught up with her body. She wasn’t at sea, she was in flight. She was an adult, she had more memories than blankness, and she knew precisely who she was. Her first years, her mysterious years, didn’t matter as much as the years that came afterward.
The fear subsided and she opened her eyes. The room smelled ever so slightly of Dorothy’s perfume, but she was alone in the bed. She let the sheet fall away as she sat up and looked at the desk. Sure enough, there was her employer and sometimes lover, head down on the desk and fingers still curled around her pencil. Beatrice climbed out of bed and draped the sheet over her shoulders like a cape, walking on the balls of her feet to wrap her arms around Dorothy’s slumbering form. She gently removed the pencil from Dorothy’s grip and massaged the divot in the pad of her forefinger until it faded. The gentle massage stirred Dorothy.
“Mm.”
“You fell asleep,” Beatrice whispered against the shell of Dorothy’s ear. She nipped at the lobe as Dorothy tried to sit up and pressed against her.
“Miss Sek, I do believe you are nude.”
Beatrice said, “I do believe that is the way you prefer me.”
Dorothy reached back and ran her hand over the curve of Beatrice’s hip. “What time is it?”
“Quarter to two.”
“Damn. We’ll be landing in Rome soon.” Beatrice took a step back and let Dorothy up. “I should dress and join Minty on the passerelle.” She turned and pushed the sheet out of the way to admire Beatrice’s curves. “Or... perhaps... a quick shower first. These rooms are equipped with private bathing facilities. I think I definitely require a bit of a wake-up if you’re willing.”
Beatrice nodded and pecked Dorothy’s bottom lip. “Always willing, Lady Boone. I’ll get those hard to reach places.”
Dorothy lowered her voice to a seductive purr. “And maybe a few of those that are easy to reach, but are just no fun reaching by myself.”
They kissed, and Beatrice’s sheet drifted to the floor around their feet. A minute or so later when they retreated to the head, they didn’t bother to retrieve it.
#
Dorothy arrived on the passerelle in a snug brown waistcoat, the collar of her shirt open to reveal a crimson ascot. Her hair was still wet from the shower and bundled in a loose braid that fell over her shoulder. The brief slumber at her desk had been enough to screw up her sense of time. It felt like morning to her and yet the world outside the front windows was full dark. Araminta was once again in her station in full uniform, the only difference being that her hair was now styled in a looser and more casual do. Dorothy wondered if she had actually been to bed.
“Good morning, Dot.” Araminta cast an appreciative eye over Dorothy’s outfit. “You missed the Alps. Always a spectacular sight to behold, even by moonlight.”
“Sounds romantic,” Dorothy said.
Araminta arched an eyebrow and smiled. “We shall be descending into Rome in approximately twenty minutes. Make sure everyone has their papers ready.”
“I shall.”
Araminta said, “We’ve received no further missives from your mole on the other ship, but they should be on the ground in Paris as we speak. Shall we make life difficult for them? Send a missive to the authorities that they’re smuggling contraband?”
Dorothy smiled. “A tempting thought, but no. We need them to arrive eventually so we can follow them to whatever their next destination might be. We’ll take advantage of our early arrival to arrange a surprise once they arrive. Is Trafalgar awake yet?”
“She passed through here about half an hour ago. I believe she’s in the galley having some breakfast with that bodyguard of hers.”
Dorothy nodded and went to the window. They were flying over the hills that surrounded Rome, and even at the early hour she could see lights burning in some of the windows. She loved ancient architecture like this, cities that seemed to grow organically from the countryside like strange flowers. Cities like London razed the fields, flattened the hills, and shored up the waterways to make the world more convenient. It made for comfortable and cozy towns, but she had to believe there would be a point when the world had become too torn apart to sustain them further.
When Dorothy arrived in the galley, she saw Beatrice had already joined Trafalgar and Leola in their breakfast. She helped herself to a banana and peeled it as she sat beside her friend across from their former quarry.
“Minty says we’ll arrive in twenty minutes. Still no word from Ivy.”
Trafalgar said, “Should we be worried about that?”
Dorothy shook her head. “There’s no reason to believe she’s been captured. I know from experience that she can be slippery even in an enclosed environment. She once managed to elude a constable while riding in the backseat of a car with him. She may not have any further information, or it may be impossible for her to gain access to the teletype to send another note. Whatever the reason, we’re stuck waiting here until someone arrives to point us in the right direction.”
“Let us hope Miss Sever is still aboard when they arrive,” Trafalgar said.
“In the meantime...” Dorothy took a few folded pages from her pocket and spread them out on the table. “I managed to find the key for unlocking Solomon’s journal. I translated a swath leading up to his encounter with Trafalgar, and he wrote briefly about the stone he attempted to use in his ritual. It’s something he called chalcedony, unless my cryptography was off.”
Leola shook her head. “It’s a fibrous variety of quartz.”
“All right,” Dorothy said. “This particular variety of the stone is extraordinarily rare. It was excavated from a site which had been saturated with mystical energy by ancient wizards. The stones have long been rumored to open a channel between two beings. One mind is opened and another is given the opportunity to step inside. Much like opening a window and letting a burglar crawl inside. Even a thousand years ago there were only a handful of the chalcedony stones, but today even finding one was considered to be a monumental discovery. The Watershed Society took it to mean their plans were blessed. Apparently they had been searching for it since the middle of the nineteenth century and finally found it in a tomb near Athens.”
Trafalgar said, “Perhaps they found another tomb. Our final destination may be Athens.”
Dorothy nodded. “It’s likely, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. If we tell Minty to prepare the ship for Athens and the second stone turns out to be in Majorca...”
“True. Then we shall wait. Are we being allowed to leave the ship once we arrive?”
Dorothy said, “Of course. We can investigate Watershed’s presence in the Mediterranean and gear up for a potential assault. If Ivy can’t provide any more information before their ship arrives we may be forced to hijack them and ask them what their plans are. We cannot allow them to achieve their goal. I don’t know what they have in store for this Felix Quintel, but I’ve no intention of finding out.” She took out her fob watch to check the time. “Now, we’ll be coming in for a landing soon. I suggest we get our papers in order and strap ourselves in.”
They took the last of their breakfast and retired to their rooms. When they were strapped securely to the chairs in Dorothy’s suite, away from the ears of Trafalgar and Leola, Beatrice said, “Do you really believe Ivy is still at liberty aboard the Kestrel? It’s a long time to avoid someone running into her. Even invisible she might have accidentally revealed herself a dozen times by now.”
Beatrice pressed her lips into a thin line but said nothing more on the subject.
The landing was as gentle as they could hope for, and Araminta was waiting by the gangplank to see them off. She had donned her uniform cap and revealed she was sending her crew out to see if there were any cargo contracts heading back to England.
“No reason for this trip to be a complete lark.”
Dorothy wished her luck and kissed her cheek before leading her unlikely crew out into the hangar. The Burattini Docks were located at the very furthest reaches of Rome, a fact Dorothy found utterly inexplicable considering the winds coming in off the Tyrrhenian Sea. The potential for a dirigible to be knocked against the mooring masts or sent careening off-course would have been enough for her to suggest a location on the other side of the city, but Araminta had handled their arrival with aplomb.
As predicted the docks were as lively as a market in the middle of the day. Four other airships were circling the area as they awaited permission to land. Crewmen in bright orange jumpsuits were running to and fro on the tarmac, checking their lists before sending a signal to one captain or another that they were cleared for takeoff. Ahead of them, Dorothy could see into the terminal. Even at three in the morning there was a crowd of passengers waiting to be ferried to the far reaches of the globe. She wondered how humans satisfied their wanderlust before airships and sea travel were commonplace. She passed two tourists in brown leather jackets who paused to appreciate her suit before continuing on their way. She winked at them before getting to the matter at hand.
“We shouldn’t have time to get settled,” Dorothy said. “In two hours, the Kestrel will once again be on her way. I’d like to have a larger section of the journal translated by that time. We’ll find a quiet place in the terminal where we can split up the pages.”
“You don’t mean to take the book apart,” Trafalgar said.
Dorothy said, “Needs must, Miss Trafalgar. We’ll do it as carefully as possible, but I agree that we must... preserve the... content.” She furrowed her brow as they approached the terminal. When she spoke again her voice was quieter and more distant. “The Watershed Society, and Mr. Solomon in particular, has been at this for decades. We have no idea how much valuable information lies in these pages. But time is... of the essence.”
Beatrice had tensed as soon as Dorothy’s tone changed. “What is it?”
“Those men by the door. Brown leather jackets. The two tourists who passed us...” She scanned the tarmac and saw another brown jacket. “Oh, crumbs.”
Trafalgar said, “You say that often. What does it mean?”
“In this instance, it means something small and insignificant has been overlooked, and now it may lead to a larger problem. The guards outside the Quintel house wore brown leather jackets. Like this, but shorter.” She flicked the mantle of Trafalgar’s coat. “I thought it might constitute some sort of uniform. Now I believe that has been confirmed. I never considered that they’re a large enough organization to have satellite agencies in other countries. They must have called ahead to tell them we were coming. I count six.”
Beatrice gestured slightly with her head. “Seven. The fellow with the newspaper.”
Trafalgar rolled her wrist and the emei piercers slipped into her palm. She refrained from extending them, however, choosing instead to look at Dorothy.
“How should we proceed?”
“If we cause a spectacle we risk being subdued by security. We’ll continue on as if we haven’t noticed them, but the moment we have an opening, we take it.”
Beatrice kept her arms down, but she fanned out her fingers. Dorothy saw a dim spark pass in the space between her fingertips and knew she was gathering energy from the static electricity in the air. If she built up a big enough charge she could provide a distraction for them to get away.
“We can still salvage this, despite the Society having us surrounded. They’ll be privy to the next step in the plan. If we can--”
“Insurrectionists!”
The bellow echoed across the tarmac just as they reached the door. Dorothy turned and saw one of the leatherjackets running toward them. His fellow Society members were also taking flight with weapons drawn. They were close enough that they were reach Dorothy and Trafalgar before security did. Dorothy looked at Beatrice and nodded, even though there was no chance she’d built up enough of a charge to do much damage. Beatrice turned and brought her right hand up, cupped her wrist with her left hand, and squeezed her hand into a fist. The blue electric charge built up around her hand like ball lightning as she waited for all the Society men to get close enough that they would all be affected.
Three men came at them from the side. Leola grabbed one and disarmed him by a swift cutting blow to his forearm. He dropped his weapon and she slammed him against the wall. Dorothy drew her baton and dropped into a crouch, swinging at the knees of the closest Society member. He went down hard and Dorothy disarmed him easily. The doors of the airdock had opened to reveal more leatherjackets coming at them from behind. Trafalgar swept her piercers at their chests to hold them back.
“Trix!” Dorothy said.
Beads of sweat appeared on Beatrice’s forehead as she fought to gather as much energy as possible before she unleashed it. When she determined the men were all close enough, she flashed her fingers outward and released the energy in a blinding flash. Trafalgar and Leola were knocked to one side, only staying upright because Dorothy grabbed their coats to keep them from toppling. Beatrice stumbled, lightheaded from the display, and Dorothy took her head.
“Quickly! While they’re stunned!”
They retreated into the building, through the crowd of stunned fliers who had been preparing to depart. Airdock security were similarly confused as to how they should proceed. Behind them one of the leatherjackets called out the ‘insurrectionists’ cry again, and this time even civilians tried to stop their forward progress. Dorothy and Leola both had to tear away from the grips of well-meaning Samaritans. As far as the eyewitnesses were concerned, Beatrice had just set off an incendiary on the tarmac. If they were captured they would be imprisoned and most likely put on trial as terrorists. They just had to escape the general vicinity and Araminta would pick them up at the nearest airdock in the morning.
Klaxons began to sound, their jangling bells making Dorothy’s head ring as she struggled to think. She had been pursued by the polizia before, during a retrieval at the Vatican that had gone pear-shaped. She knew a few bolt-holes they could use until the coast was clear. One thing in their favor was the early hour; the security was operating with a skeleton crew, and there were few civilians to get in their way as they fled.
“I should have seen this coming,” Dorothy growled as they ran.
Beside her, Trafalgar said, “You could not have anticipated this.”
“I should have. We had a good head start. We could have detoured and landed outside of town, instead of flying directly into their bloody hands.”
Something hit her in the shoulder hard enough to throw her forward. Her foot slipped out from beneath her and she went tumbling, hitting the tile of the terminal hard enough to rattle her bones. Whatever the Society member had thrown at her had pierced her jacket and clothing and penetrated the skin of her shoulder. Her heard had been protected by the hard shield of her scapula, but the numbness from the wound was fast spreading through her left side. Trafalgar and the others skidded to a stop, but Dorothy pulled the bag from her shoulder and shoved it across the floor. It bumped Beatrice’s boot and she scooped it up.
“They mustn’t get the journal. Run!”
Beatrice looked as conflicted as she ever had, but she looped the strap over her head and started running again. Leola followed her, but Trafalgar hurried to Dorothy’s side and grabbed her arm.
“They hit me with a Sandman,” Dorothy snapped. Her words were quick and slurred. “My arms and legs aren’t working and in thirty seconds I will be unconscious. Go while you still can.”
“I will not leave you.”
A second Sandman hit Trafalgar in the side. She dropped to one knee and grabbed at the small oval device, grimacing as she pulled its spike from her side. Blood poured from the wound, her efforts rendered useless as the drug was already in her system. Dorothy slumped to the floor as Trafalgar hit the ground. The boots of the leatherjackets entered her blurry vision like shiny black trees, their feet stomping against the tile as they surrounded their prisoners.
Dorothy managed to lift her hand in one final and futile attempt to reach her weapon. She was already unconscious by the time the leatherjacket secured her still-raised hand in a metal shackle.
Chapter Thirteen
It was still early by Dorothy’s internal clock, but the ship went into nighttime mode in anticipation of making landfall in the middle of the night. Rome’s terminals operated around the clock, so they would be greeted by a full staff. Araminta wanted the crew to be alert and responsive as well. Dorothy retired to her room, took a pill to help alleviate her monthly issues and changed into her nightgown. She’d warned Beatrice she wasn’t up for spending the night together, and Beatrice suggested they could share a bed and just sleep. Dorothy accused her of just wanting the bigger room, which Beatrice curiously did not deny.
They passed Paris close to an hour ago and now all she could see below them were dark squares of green, yellow, and brown, the Mondrian pattern of France’s countryside. So much of it had been torn apart and scarred by the war, so much beauty needlessly shredded by boots and bombs and burials. She had been behind enemy lines, she had witnessed some of the horrors being wrought in the name of... what? Ideals? Fighting to protect your country whilst simultaneously ripping the country apart, fighting to protect your people while sending those people to die for it... the whole thing made no damned sense.
She had a feeling perhaps her anger was due to discomfort and exhaustion. At the moment Beatrice was sleeping in the bed behind her, nude with the sheets twisted around her waist like a rope ladder. Dorothy was at the cabin’s built-in desk with the light turned low and angled so she could see her book. She looked over her shoulder at Beatrice’s bare back, the intricate branches of her tattoo blending with the shadows and the loose curls of her hair.
Though she longed to cross the room and crawl under the blankets, there was too much to be done before they reached Rome. She turned back to the journal and focused on the nonsensical words. There had to be some sort of pattern to the code, some system she could crack. Taking notes in the field required speed and shorthand. If Solomon couldn’t decipher what he had scrawled down then there was no reason to take notes at all. He had to have a system.
The teletype embedded in the wall next to the desk came to life, beeping and scratching out its message. The noise startled her enough that she put her palm against her chest and turned to make sure the clatter hadn’t disturbed Beatrice’s sleep before taking the slip of paper from the feeder.
“Sorry for the lateness. New message from IS. Kestrel tucked in for night in Paris. Resuming trip tomorrow 0430. Should have a twelve-hour lead on them. Sweet dreams. AC.”
Dorothy smiled and whispered, “Sweet dreams to you as well, Minty.” She folded the note and looked at the journal again. She would never be able to explain why everything slipped into place for her then; whether it was looking away for a moment and then re-focusing, or if looking at Araminta’s shorthand from the teletype had pushed her brain into the proper position to see it, but suddenly the words in Solomon’s journal didn’t look quite as random as they had before. She placed her hands on either side of the book and looked down at the swirls and loops of ink, willing the letters to make sense. It was like trying to hold onto the snippet of a dream long enough to remember everything that happened in it.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Come on, stay with it, Dot. You can see it. It’s right there in front of you.” She ran her bottom teeth against her top lip and narrowed her eyes.
Her grandmother had slapped the top of her head just hard enough to make her flinch. “If you expect every answer to be spelled out, you won’t last very long in this profession. Look harder.”
“I’m looking, Grandma,” she whispered. “I can’t see it... I... wait.”
A single letter seemed to stand out to her. The letter T, by itself, unconnected to the letters around it, and capitalized. Dorothy found a blank sheet of paper and wrote T=I. She flipped back to the coordinates Trafalgar had identified as Djibouti. There were two Ts in it, and she translated the word into the new alphabet. T was a substitute for I, and that meant D was an O. It was the most simplistic cypher he could have used, but the use of random spacing between words would have made it impossible to crack if he hadn’t made one mistake. He had been writing too swiftly and his brain told him the personal pronoun needed to be on its own and capitalized.
Dorothy rapidly scribbled the code on her paper, then began translating the final entry. “Believe we have found the perfect receptacle for our host. Willing to defend herself against stronger opponents, willing to fight unarmed, strong, intelligent (learned language in a matter of days to a degree that she was able to converse in English). The girl lacks a name and therefore has no sense of self. The host will easily overwhelm whatever personality the girl may have and subsume her completely. As a child she will be pliable. The host will be like a child and therefore susceptible to whatever the Society wishes. We can mold it into our own champion with minimal effort.”
This paragraph encircled the drawing of Trafalgar’s head. Dorothy touched the cheekbone, horrified at what Solomon and his ilk had planned for an innocent child. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, settling her brain back into its proper channels. It had taken her nearly an hour to translate one paragraph, and she’d been helped by repeated words. Translating the entire journal would take too long to be very helpful.
If they worked backwards, perhaps they could learn what the Society had been planning for Trafalgar. If they knew that, they might have a clue about what to expect in Rome. She looked at the clock and winced, knowing she should get to bed if she had any hope of getting rest. She sharpened her pencil with the blade of her penknife and wet the nib with her tongue. Behind her Beatrice murmured in her sleep, speaking rapid and desperate Mandarin. She had done it before; Dorothy only waited for the burst of language to fade away before she bent over her page again.
Another hour and she could have the page translated. Then she could lie down and take a quick nap so she was rested when they reached their destination. She put a finger on the journal’s page and dragged it along each letter to keep her place as she began translating as quickly as she could.
#
Beatrice woke to the sway and sweep of the gondola. Her fingers tightened on the bedding and she took a moment before opening her eyes to remind herself that she wasn’t in the hold of the ship. Her earliest memory of clinging to the moth-eaten sweater of an old man fading as her brain caught up with her body. She wasn’t at sea, she was in flight. She was an adult, she had more memories than blankness, and she knew precisely who she was. Her first years, her mysterious years, didn’t matter as much as the years that came afterward.
The fear subsided and she opened her eyes. The room smelled ever so slightly of Dorothy’s perfume, but she was alone in the bed. She let the sheet fall away as she sat up and looked at the desk. Sure enough, there was her employer and sometimes lover, head down on the desk and fingers still curled around her pencil. Beatrice climbed out of bed and draped the sheet over her shoulders like a cape, walking on the balls of her feet to wrap her arms around Dorothy’s slumbering form. She gently removed the pencil from Dorothy’s grip and massaged the divot in the pad of her forefinger until it faded. The gentle massage stirred Dorothy.
“Mm.”
“You fell asleep,” Beatrice whispered against the shell of Dorothy’s ear. She nipped at the lobe as Dorothy tried to sit up and pressed against her.
“Miss Sek, I do believe you are nude.”
Beatrice said, “I do believe that is the way you prefer me.”
Dorothy reached back and ran her hand over the curve of Beatrice’s hip. “What time is it?”
“Quarter to two.”
“Damn. We’ll be landing in Rome soon.” Beatrice took a step back and let Dorothy up. “I should dress and join Minty on the passerelle.” She turned and pushed the sheet out of the way to admire Beatrice’s curves. “Or... perhaps... a quick shower first. These rooms are equipped with private bathing facilities. I think I definitely require a bit of a wake-up if you’re willing.”
Beatrice nodded and pecked Dorothy’s bottom lip. “Always willing, Lady Boone. I’ll get those hard to reach places.”
Dorothy lowered her voice to a seductive purr. “And maybe a few of those that are easy to reach, but are just no fun reaching by myself.”
They kissed, and Beatrice’s sheet drifted to the floor around their feet. A minute or so later when they retreated to the head, they didn’t bother to retrieve it.
#
Dorothy arrived on the passerelle in a snug brown waistcoat, the collar of her shirt open to reveal a crimson ascot. Her hair was still wet from the shower and bundled in a loose braid that fell over her shoulder. The brief slumber at her desk had been enough to screw up her sense of time. It felt like morning to her and yet the world outside the front windows was full dark. Araminta was once again in her station in full uniform, the only difference being that her hair was now styled in a looser and more casual do. Dorothy wondered if she had actually been to bed.
“Good morning, Dot.” Araminta cast an appreciative eye over Dorothy’s outfit. “You missed the Alps. Always a spectacular sight to behold, even by moonlight.”
“Sounds romantic,” Dorothy said.
Araminta arched an eyebrow and smiled. “We shall be descending into Rome in approximately twenty minutes. Make sure everyone has their papers ready.”
“I shall.”
Araminta said, “We’ve received no further missives from your mole on the other ship, but they should be on the ground in Paris as we speak. Shall we make life difficult for them? Send a missive to the authorities that they’re smuggling contraband?”
Dorothy smiled. “A tempting thought, but no. We need them to arrive eventually so we can follow them to whatever their next destination might be. We’ll take advantage of our early arrival to arrange a surprise once they arrive. Is Trafalgar awake yet?”
“She passed through here about half an hour ago. I believe she’s in the galley having some breakfast with that bodyguard of hers.”
Dorothy nodded and went to the window. They were flying over the hills that surrounded Rome, and even at the early hour she could see lights burning in some of the windows. She loved ancient architecture like this, cities that seemed to grow organically from the countryside like strange flowers. Cities like London razed the fields, flattened the hills, and shored up the waterways to make the world more convenient. It made for comfortable and cozy towns, but she had to believe there would be a point when the world had become too torn apart to sustain them further.
When Dorothy arrived in the galley, she saw Beatrice had already joined Trafalgar and Leola in their breakfast. She helped herself to a banana and peeled it as she sat beside her friend across from their former quarry.
“Minty says we’ll arrive in twenty minutes. Still no word from Ivy.”
Trafalgar said, “Should we be worried about that?”
Dorothy shook her head. “There’s no reason to believe she’s been captured. I know from experience that she can be slippery even in an enclosed environment. She once managed to elude a constable while riding in the backseat of a car with him. She may not have any further information, or it may be impossible for her to gain access to the teletype to send another note. Whatever the reason, we’re stuck waiting here until someone arrives to point us in the right direction.”
“Let us hope Miss Sever is still aboard when they arrive,” Trafalgar said.
“In the meantime...” Dorothy took a few folded pages from her pocket and spread them out on the table. “I managed to find the key for unlocking Solomon’s journal. I translated a swath leading up to his encounter with Trafalgar, and he wrote briefly about the stone he attempted to use in his ritual. It’s something he called chalcedony, unless my cryptography was off.”
Leola shook her head. “It’s a fibrous variety of quartz.”
“All right,” Dorothy said. “This particular variety of the stone is extraordinarily rare. It was excavated from a site which had been saturated with mystical energy by ancient wizards. The stones have long been rumored to open a channel between two beings. One mind is opened and another is given the opportunity to step inside. Much like opening a window and letting a burglar crawl inside. Even a thousand years ago there were only a handful of the chalcedony stones, but today even finding one was considered to be a monumental discovery. The Watershed Society took it to mean their plans were blessed. Apparently they had been searching for it since the middle of the nineteenth century and finally found it in a tomb near Athens.”
Trafalgar said, “Perhaps they found another tomb. Our final destination may be Athens.”
Dorothy nodded. “It’s likely, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. If we tell Minty to prepare the ship for Athens and the second stone turns out to be in Majorca...”
“True. Then we shall wait. Are we being allowed to leave the ship once we arrive?”
Dorothy said, “Of course. We can investigate Watershed’s presence in the Mediterranean and gear up for a potential assault. If Ivy can’t provide any more information before their ship arrives we may be forced to hijack them and ask them what their plans are. We cannot allow them to achieve their goal. I don’t know what they have in store for this Felix Quintel, but I’ve no intention of finding out.” She took out her fob watch to check the time. “Now, we’ll be coming in for a landing soon. I suggest we get our papers in order and strap ourselves in.”
They took the last of their breakfast and retired to their rooms. When they were strapped securely to the chairs in Dorothy’s suite, away from the ears of Trafalgar and Leola, Beatrice said, “Do you really believe Ivy is still at liberty aboard the Kestrel? It’s a long time to avoid someone running into her. Even invisible she might have accidentally revealed herself a dozen times by now.”
Beatrice pressed her lips into a thin line but said nothing more on the subject.
The landing was as gentle as they could hope for, and Araminta was waiting by the gangplank to see them off. She had donned her uniform cap and revealed she was sending her crew out to see if there were any cargo contracts heading back to England.
“No reason for this trip to be a complete lark.”
Dorothy wished her luck and kissed her cheek before leading her unlikely crew out into the hangar. The Burattini Docks were located at the very furthest reaches of Rome, a fact Dorothy found utterly inexplicable considering the winds coming in off the Tyrrhenian Sea. The potential for a dirigible to be knocked against the mooring masts or sent careening off-course would have been enough for her to suggest a location on the other side of the city, but Araminta had handled their arrival with aplomb.
As predicted the docks were as lively as a market in the middle of the day. Four other airships were circling the area as they awaited permission to land. Crewmen in bright orange jumpsuits were running to and fro on the tarmac, checking their lists before sending a signal to one captain or another that they were cleared for takeoff. Ahead of them, Dorothy could see into the terminal. Even at three in the morning there was a crowd of passengers waiting to be ferried to the far reaches of the globe. She wondered how humans satisfied their wanderlust before airships and sea travel were commonplace. She passed two tourists in brown leather jackets who paused to appreciate her suit before continuing on their way. She winked at them before getting to the matter at hand.
“We shouldn’t have time to get settled,” Dorothy said. “In two hours, the Kestrel will once again be on her way. I’d like to have a larger section of the journal translated by that time. We’ll find a quiet place in the terminal where we can split up the pages.”
“You don’t mean to take the book apart,” Trafalgar said.
Dorothy said, “Needs must, Miss Trafalgar. We’ll do it as carefully as possible, but I agree that we must... preserve the... content.” She furrowed her brow as they approached the terminal. When she spoke again her voice was quieter and more distant. “The Watershed Society, and Mr. Solomon in particular, has been at this for decades. We have no idea how much valuable information lies in these pages. But time is... of the essence.”
Beatrice had tensed as soon as Dorothy’s tone changed. “What is it?”
“Those men by the door. Brown leather jackets. The two tourists who passed us...” She scanned the tarmac and saw another brown jacket. “Oh, crumbs.”
Trafalgar said, “You say that often. What does it mean?”
“In this instance, it means something small and insignificant has been overlooked, and now it may lead to a larger problem. The guards outside the Quintel house wore brown leather jackets. Like this, but shorter.” She flicked the mantle of Trafalgar’s coat. “I thought it might constitute some sort of uniform. Now I believe that has been confirmed. I never considered that they’re a large enough organization to have satellite agencies in other countries. They must have called ahead to tell them we were coming. I count six.”
Beatrice gestured slightly with her head. “Seven. The fellow with the newspaper.”
Trafalgar rolled her wrist and the emei piercers slipped into her palm. She refrained from extending them, however, choosing instead to look at Dorothy.
“How should we proceed?”
“If we cause a spectacle we risk being subdued by security. We’ll continue on as if we haven’t noticed them, but the moment we have an opening, we take it.”
Beatrice kept her arms down, but she fanned out her fingers. Dorothy saw a dim spark pass in the space between her fingertips and knew she was gathering energy from the static electricity in the air. If she built up a big enough charge she could provide a distraction for them to get away.
“We can still salvage this, despite the Society having us surrounded. They’ll be privy to the next step in the plan. If we can--”
“Insurrectionists!”
The bellow echoed across the tarmac just as they reached the door. Dorothy turned and saw one of the leatherjackets running toward them. His fellow Society members were also taking flight with weapons drawn. They were close enough that they were reach Dorothy and Trafalgar before security did. Dorothy looked at Beatrice and nodded, even though there was no chance she’d built up enough of a charge to do much damage. Beatrice turned and brought her right hand up, cupped her wrist with her left hand, and squeezed her hand into a fist. The blue electric charge built up around her hand like ball lightning as she waited for all the Society men to get close enough that they would all be affected.
Three men came at them from the side. Leola grabbed one and disarmed him by a swift cutting blow to his forearm. He dropped his weapon and she slammed him against the wall. Dorothy drew her baton and dropped into a crouch, swinging at the knees of the closest Society member. He went down hard and Dorothy disarmed him easily. The doors of the airdock had opened to reveal more leatherjackets coming at them from behind. Trafalgar swept her piercers at their chests to hold them back.
“Trix!” Dorothy said.
Beads of sweat appeared on Beatrice’s forehead as she fought to gather as much energy as possible before she unleashed it. When she determined the men were all close enough, she flashed her fingers outward and released the energy in a blinding flash. Trafalgar and Leola were knocked to one side, only staying upright because Dorothy grabbed their coats to keep them from toppling. Beatrice stumbled, lightheaded from the display, and Dorothy took her head.
“Quickly! While they’re stunned!”
They retreated into the building, through the crowd of stunned fliers who had been preparing to depart. Airdock security were similarly confused as to how they should proceed. Behind them one of the leatherjackets called out the ‘insurrectionists’ cry again, and this time even civilians tried to stop their forward progress. Dorothy and Leola both had to tear away from the grips of well-meaning Samaritans. As far as the eyewitnesses were concerned, Beatrice had just set off an incendiary on the tarmac. If they were captured they would be imprisoned and most likely put on trial as terrorists. They just had to escape the general vicinity and Araminta would pick them up at the nearest airdock in the morning.
Klaxons began to sound, their jangling bells making Dorothy’s head ring as she struggled to think. She had been pursued by the polizia before, during a retrieval at the Vatican that had gone pear-shaped. She knew a few bolt-holes they could use until the coast was clear. One thing in their favor was the early hour; the security was operating with a skeleton crew, and there were few civilians to get in their way as they fled.
“I should have seen this coming,” Dorothy growled as they ran.
Beside her, Trafalgar said, “You could not have anticipated this.”
“I should have. We had a good head start. We could have detoured and landed outside of town, instead of flying directly into their bloody hands.”
Something hit her in the shoulder hard enough to throw her forward. Her foot slipped out from beneath her and she went tumbling, hitting the tile of the terminal hard enough to rattle her bones. Whatever the Society member had thrown at her had pierced her jacket and clothing and penetrated the skin of her shoulder. Her heard had been protected by the hard shield of her scapula, but the numbness from the wound was fast spreading through her left side. Trafalgar and the others skidded to a stop, but Dorothy pulled the bag from her shoulder and shoved it across the floor. It bumped Beatrice’s boot and she scooped it up.
“They mustn’t get the journal. Run!”
Beatrice looked as conflicted as she ever had, but she looped the strap over her head and started running again. Leola followed her, but Trafalgar hurried to Dorothy’s side and grabbed her arm.
“They hit me with a Sandman,” Dorothy snapped. Her words were quick and slurred. “My arms and legs aren’t working and in thirty seconds I will be unconscious. Go while you still can.”
“I will not leave you.”
A second Sandman hit Trafalgar in the side. She dropped to one knee and grabbed at the small oval device, grimacing as she pulled its spike from her side. Blood poured from the wound, her efforts rendered useless as the drug was already in her system. Dorothy slumped to the floor as Trafalgar hit the ground. The boots of the leatherjackets entered her blurry vision like shiny black trees, their feet stomping against the tile as they surrounded their prisoners.
Dorothy managed to lift her hand in one final and futile attempt to reach her weapon. She was already unconscious by the time the leatherjacket secured her still-raised hand in a metal shackle.