Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 31 Read online

  “Getting thrown over the side?” she asked, indistinctly. Her eyes were closed and her lips chapped and bleeding.

  “Not even pirates throw stowaways over the side,” he said bracingly. ”Not without enquiries. You’re lucky you didn’t fall. Unless you were frozen there?”

  “I was going to jump,” she said.

  “Unnecessary, and a long way down. Keep your eyes closed, I can’t get anything to put on them until I go out on deck, and I’m not inclined to yet.”

  “At first I was terrified of falling,” the woman went on, ”and then the wind cut through me. I could hear it in my head and my bones, howling inside them, and I thought, I won’t fall, the wind will bear me up. I think I went a little mad.”

  “That implies you were sane to begin with,” said Moon.

  “Will I be blind?” she asked.

  He shook his head, then remembered she couldn’t see him. “With luck, the ship and the figurehead between them cut the worst of the wind.”

  “Captain!” roared Mr Fuille, outside the door. “I know you are in there.”

  “Lie down,” said Moon. He pushed her back onto the narrow bed and draped his handkerchief over her face. “Try to look like you have a headache.”

  “Everything aches.”

  “It won’t be hard then,” said Moon. “Come in, Mr Fuille,” he added grandly, unlatching the door. “Please try to be considerate.”

  “Considerate!” exploded Mr Fuille. “I will have you know—Who is that?”

  “Evan Arden,” improvised Moon. Livid spots stood out on the scientist’s cheeks and brow. “Ivana Arden,” Moon amended. “My weatherfinder.”

  “I received the distinct impression your weatherfinder was a man,” said Mr Fuille.

  “You would be surprised at the prejudice one still encounters,” said Moon.

  Mr Fuille narrowed his eyes and swelled slightly. “Women have not been admitted into the Academy for a sufficiently extensive period of time to permit any graduate to have acquired the experience necessary to inspire confidence!”

  “As you say,” said Moon mildly.

  Fuille took a deep breath, then demanded, “What was your weatherfinder doing in my cargo?”

  “Probably looking for brandy. Not to worry, I’ve dosed her up and she’ll be herself in a few hours.” The stowaway groaned convincingly.

  “A weatherfinder should not be drinking on duty,” said Fuille. “The third amendment to the Navigator’s Ordinance—”

  Moon wanted to say, “You’re just making up legislation now,” but merely shrugged. “Old air dog, new tricks, no harm done.”

  Fuille glared at Moon, whose heart sank at the scientist’s next words. “I will be giving information to their Imperial Majesties’ Ambassador and the Poorfortune Aerial and Aerostat Governance Department when we dock.”

  When Fuille was gone, Moon stepped out to inform the steersman of the addition to their crew. When he returned to the cabin, his stowaway lifted a corner of the handkerchief and regarded at him foggily. “Well, one of us is lucky,” said Moon. “I thought I was buying an empty coat.” Then he sighed and looked regretfully at his pipe. “I also hoped to get to Poorfortune unremarked, Ivana.”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “It is until we get to port,” he said and put his pipe between his teeth. “You’ll have to act like a weatherfinder.”

  “I’ve never been taught how!”

  “I’m not asking you to read the winds. I can do that as well as any academy-approved wind-vane. Just—prance around and pretend to make calculations. Act like your brother.”

  “Evan’s a very good weatherfinder,” she said angrily.

  “Then he should be able to take care of himself. Which of all the blue devils made you pull a trick like this, anyway?”

  “You were going to Poorfortune,” she said, and put the handkerchief back over her eyes. “That’s the last place anyone heard Evan was going.”

  “You would have been more comfortable on the cruise ship,” said Moon.

  “Your security was worse,” said Ivana.

  Moon thought of his crew and conceded this. “What ship was your brother on?”

  “The Ravens,” said now-Ivana. She touched the wall of the cabin as she spoke. Moon had run out of paint, and the walls here wore their original colour. Her fingernails—short for a lady’s, although her hands were uncalloused—caught on the grooves where fine copper wires were still set into the wood.

  “This is the Hyssop,” said Moon quickly. “No one’s seen The Ravens for a year or more.”

  “I know,” said Ivana from underneath the handkerchief. “I’m not the only person looking for it.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Moon.

  Ivana paused before she spoke. The silence was filled by the throb of engines, and Tomasch shouting instructions to his brother. “That grey man is looking for it too,” she said. “I heard him mention it when the cargo was being loaded. And there were papers in the boxes he brought. Records and schematics.”

  Moon winced. He didn’t want Government trouble. “I’ll kick you both off in Poorfortune,” he said. “You can look for it together.”

  “I don’t like him,” said the woman. She took the handkerchief off her eyes. “I wish you hadn’t told him my name was Arden.”

  “And I wish you hadn’t stowed away on my ship,” said Moon, but he was even less fond of the idea that Fuille had some connection with The Ravens. The sudden acquisition of this extra passenger, with less ship-sense than Alban, did not unsettle him as much as that.

  “So your brother was—is a weatherfinder,” he mused.

  “A trained one.” She turned to the wall. He could see her shoulder blades sharp under her ragged coat. Her fingers traced the lines in the timbers where the wires lay.

  “They don’t make the other kind anymore,” said Moon with a smile, but she gave no indication of amusement.

  Moon sighed. He preferred conversations with people who gave as they got. He would look up Eliza when they reached port.

  “What do you do when you’re not hitching rides to Poorfortune, Ivana?”

  “I work in a doctor’s surgery,” she said.

  “You’re a secretary?”

  Ivana made a noncommittal sound.

  “I don’t need a secretary,” said Moon. “It’s a small ship. Everyone needs to be useful.”

  “Even the scientist?” asked Ivana.

  “He pays our way,” said Moon. “Do you know anything about ships?”

  “My family traditionally avoids the ports,” she said loftily.

  “Well, do you do anything useful? Can you cook? Otherwise I’m going to have to put you out the front again.”

  “No!” said Ivana, grasping his arm. “Wait, look.” She rolled back and struggled to sit upright, then leaned against the wall.

  “If you pass out, I’ll use you for ballast,” said Moon, freeing himself from her grasp.

  “I work with doctors. I learn quickly. I know a few things—surely I can be useful. You have a habit of injuring yourself.” She made a quick gesture towards his leg and Moon, who prided himself on his ease of walking, was hurt that she had noticed.

  “The question is,” said Moon, “Can you act?”

  “I learn quickly,” she repeated. “I’ll play your weatherfinder, Captain, and I’ll fix injuries if I can, but don’t make me stand in the wind. When I was out there, it went through me as if I were made of flags, and all my nerves and organs were flying away. That frightened me more than falling.”

  Moon had felt the summer breezes and the bitterwinds, but they had never cut through him in such a way, and he envied Ivana.

  “Well, don’t tell Fuille that,” he said at last.

>   Ivana, tidied, stood in the corner of Moon’s cabin. He had helped her back into the too-large blue coat, and rolled one sleeve so that the ink would dry on her arm. “Fuille is particular,” said Moon, setting down the pen and stoppering the ink bottle. He kept hold of her wrist and turned back to blow on the ink. Her fingers twitched. “All weatherfinders I’ve seen have tattoos,” he continued. “I don’t want him to notice anything odd and cause more trouble before I get him to Poorfortune.”

  “And after that?” asked Ivana. “He will notice, if he hasn’t already.”

  “Notice what?” asked Moon, releasing her arm and putting the ink away.

  “That under the paint there are ravens carved all over this ship. And I’ve seen what’s left of the older paintwork, here and below decks. It’s . . . telling.”

  “All ships have histories,” said Moon, cleaning the pen. The ship lurched in a sudden gust and the captain swayed against his desk.

  “And the figurehead should be beautiful, and pale,” continued Ivana, adjusting to the turbulence as if it were a summer wind. “It’s made of bone and ivory, did you know that?” She gestured to the books and charts in the cabin, the carved tobacco pipes, the creditable botanical tracery of a hyssop stem which he had drawn on the inside of her arm. “But I’m sure you did. You like beautiful things. You wouldn’t have painted that figurehead like a dockside . . . like that, if you didn’t have a very good reason. Did you steal this ship? Are you a pirate?”

  “Not yet,” said Moon. “Just lucky. But she is, as you said, a very beautiful ship, and old. This era of ships—well, they aren’t around much any more. They were built to respond to every change in the weather, and a fine degree of understanding of it, and that doesn’t suit modern methods. She wallows under engines, but she would have been fast in her youth. She could be again, with a true weatherfinder on board.”

  “But you don’t have one,” said Ivana.

  “I live in hope that can be remedied,” said Moon, settling back and filling his pipe using long deliberate fingers.

  Ivana, still holding her inked arm away from her side, walked easily around the cabin, studying the charts with a gaze both intelligent and bewildered. “I thought the journalist said you didn’t like weatherfinders, but there’s always the academy. These maps are the same territory at different heights, are they not? They’re very handsomely drawn.” She traced a pattern of weather-currents thoughtfully.

  Moon waved one hand. “If I’d meant an academy weatherfinder, I’d have said that. A blue coat and a degree isn’t evidence of an ounce of real talent. The old weatherfinders, it’s said, could feel the wind in their blood.”

  Ivana met his pointed gaze, and her own did not waver. “I didn’t tell you that so you could use it against me. Besides, it was a—a madness. Altitude sickness. I’ve never even been as high as the port tower before now.”

  “Your family avoids the winds?”

  “Maybe your scientist had hallucinogens in the cargo.”

  Moon was not distracted. “Most people don’t believe that born ability still exists, or ever did. But what you said you felt—look at that book over there, the brown one, Lives Aloft. Eliza says it could do with an editor’s hand, but it’s an old book and that’s what it talks about: ‘a knife of blue freedom.’ If I’d thought to look in doctors’ offices . . .” He stood up again and began sorting through his books. “You’ll have plenty to learn, I daresay, you can’t just tell a steersman what to do by vague feelings, but books and experience will teach you that. As far as I can make out, it should just be a matter of translating for the laity. Do you know what it would mean to have a true weatherfinder? With that and a good old ship, a man could have the run of the skies. I had hopes of the money Fuille’s cargo would bring, but this has turned out better than I could have hoped. You could be a legend, Ivana Arden. We both could.”

  “Captain!” said Ivana shortly. He looked up from his visions and books. “I’m only here to find my brother,” she said, slowly and clearly. “He left us and changed his name and went to study of his own accord, but he’s been missing too long. I’m sure Fuille knows something. I want to look in the cargo hold again.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” said Moon, briefly diverted. “I’d rather not upset him further. He might still declare himself. Let’s ask him to dinner instead.”

  Both the meal and the conversation were cool, for heating was minimal on an old gas-ship and Fuille’s rage had settled to a peevish disgruntlement. The scientist only once mentioned Ivana’s brandy, bitingly, as she hesitated over the simple Poorfortune table-service, but he watched the captain and the weatherfinder steadily throughout the meal.

  “You have a broad experience, Arden,” he said to Ivana sardonically. “Such an illustrated past.”

  Ivana looked at the single stem of hyssop drawn on her arm. The ink had bled lightly into her skin.

  “She’s articled to the Hyssop,” said Moon, to draw Fuille’s attention from the ink. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

  “Indeed,” said Fuille. He glanced around the cabin before narrowing his eyes at Ivana. “You have the look of someone about you, and your name a certain ring. Tell me, this penchant for cloud-watching—does it run in the family?”

  “My brother—” said Ivana and Moon kicked her under the table. Her face was already too windburned to betray a blush.

  Moon supplied glibly, “Her brother said she never has her feet on the ground. Old friend of mine. Took her on as a favour.”

  “Hmm,” said Fuille. “One can be too high-minded. You should widen that experience of yours, before you get walled in. One can be . . . limited, staying too long on a small boat, or so I understand. It is not, of course, my sphere.”

  Ivana did not have Eliza’s speed of reply, and Moon took pity on her.

  “What is your sphere, Mr Fuille?” he asked.

  “Aerodynamics,” said Fuille. “It is a vitally important work, though often looked over or, perhaps, under. As you know, the lifeblood of Their Majesties’ Empire and, indeed, of the nations streams through the currents of the sky. I have sacrificed my life to that work—the interaction of the organic with the atmospheric, that delicate interplay of wing and wind, bone and billow, mind and the mellifluosity of flight.” He seemed lost for a moment in some glorious vision. Then he reached across the table and took Ivana’s hand in his large, colourless one. Moon saw sudden distaste convulse her mouth, although a heartbeat later she had concealed it. Fuille, unaware, turned her hand over clinically, and said, “I should like to examine you, my dear. It is always charming to add new data to my research. My collection would, I think, fascinate you.”

  “You don’t like him,” said Moon, after Fuille retired and before Ivana escaped to the storage cupboard she had insisted upon occupying. His cabin was now uncomfortably cluttered with evicted buckets and pulleys, stored in the few corners and under—and on—his bed. “I can’t say I don’t sympathise, but in the interests of getting to Poorfortune peaceably, and getting paid, perhaps you could conceal it better.”

  “He touched me,” said Ivana, leaning against the cabin wall, her arms folded across her body. “It was like shaking hands with a walking corpse.”

  “Just a bureaucrat,” said Moon.

  “Not that,” said Ivana. “He’s . . .” she shifted and fiddled with the latch of the window. “Unsavoury,” she finished at last, as if the word did not satisfy her, and then added hastily, “I wouldn’t trust him.”

  “You don’t have to. Just don’t let your nerves make you so chatty!”

  “Don’t assume I’d tell him more than I must!” sniped Ivana.

  Moon was tempted to return in kind, but long experience with Eliza’s robust company had taught him circumspection. He sat on his desk, crossed his ankles and waved one hand. “Perhaps he was fascinated by so
mething more than your conversation.” His evil genius prompted him to add, “You think sailors get bad, it’s nothing on bureaucrats. Inviting you to ‘see his collection.’”

  “I’m not a fool,” said Ivana, witheringly. “He was serious about his collection, but I don’t believe he would really care to have it seen. So I want to see it.”

  “I don’t,” said Moon. “And I don’t want you to go prancing about the ship with him either.”

  “I don’t intend to prance with anyone,” said Ivana. “Or be any nearer to him than I have to. I’ll go on my own. You invite him in here again for drinks.”

  “Not until you tell me why.”

  Ivana glared at him. “Feminine intuition!”

  “You haven’t any,” said Moon. “You took against him like—like a judge that just heard evidence. Like a journalist spotting bad grammar. Pure professional hatred. He’s on my ship, and your job is to keep me out of hard weather, so tell me: what put the wind up you?”

  He held her gaze. She did not blink, but her expression was searching rather than hard.

  “I pulled you out of the street,” said Moon. “I paid you for that coat, I didn’t throw you off the ship. I might even want to help you again, though I don’t know why. I don’t believe you’ve told me any more of the truth than suits you.”

  At last, with an air of acceptance rather than capitulation Ivana left the wall and took a step towards him. “Give me your hand.”

  Moon obliged, and felt his hand folded between her rope-burned palms.

  “Fortune teller?” he asked, wryly.

  “Not quite,” said Ivana. Her hands were not otherwise work-roughened, but her cool dry fingers felt strong. If she was a secretary, the only ink he had seen on her hands was from his pen.

  That’s odd,” she said after a silence during which Moon sat and felt her pulse beat against his.