the bullets’ engine casings have those initials on them, but that don’t mean adonthenything. Lizzie found something similar under one of the cargo ships, too, but—” She shrugged. Said out loud like that, most sane people would just roll their eyes and sidestep away.
“On the contrary, it means a great deal. Alice, are you acquainted with the count? I mean, outside of being in the vehicle when the attempt was made?”
“It does tend to bring strangers together,” she said dryly. “I guess I’m on speaking terms. He wants to talk with me about my automatons.”
“I do, too, but it will have to wait for a sunny day and crisp snow.” She must have looked confused, for he smiled and said, “It’s something Malina says. Alice, I must be quick. You must find a way to convince the count to leave here as soon as possible. By dawn at the latest.”
“How d’you expect me to do that?”
“I am sure you can find a way.”
“But Pa, I can’t just waltz up to one of the greatest men in the world and say, excuse me, sir, but a suspected saboteur says you’re to leave pronto. Why would he do anything but laugh and pat me on the head?”
“Because I have reason to think there will be another attempt if he stays much longer. If not tonight, then definitely during the tour of the mine tomorrow. They mean to blame it on poor management by the Dunsmuirs, thus discrediting the family and destroying the enterprise here. It might even—” He clamped his lips shut.
“—start a war?”
He stared at her, his face going so still it might have been turned to stone. “Where did you hear that?” he whispered.
“Nowhere. Claire and Andrew and I were talking of it. Why start a bullet business on a continent where you can’t sell enough to keep it going? The only place you could sell them would be to countries who are at war.”
He drew in a shallow breath, then seemed to force himself to breathe more deeply. More calmly. Finally he was able to speak.
“Governments have fallen for saying such things.”
“Lucky it’s just you and me and the plates and cups, then.” She waited for him to reply, and when he did not, said, “Pa, how do you know all this? What’s a man living in the back of beyond with a lot of Esquimaux got to do with anything?”
He seemed to come back to himself with difficulty. “Thirty days from now I will tell you, when it’s all over.”
“When what’s over?”
“Alice, please just trust me. You must whisper in the count’s ear and get him to lift by dawn. Can you do that?”
“I can probably whisper in his ear, but I don’t fancy he’s the type to ask how high when I say jump.”
“Just do your best. It is all any of us can do.”
Frustration and about a thousand questions roiled in her gut under the constricting corset. She stared at him, her lips compressed so she wouldn’t blurt out a bunch of swear words, and his gaze softened.
“My dear brave girl. Have I told you how proud I am ow p>
She shook her head. “You ain’t spoken to me in fourteen years, Pa.”
“But I have. Every day. Every time I learned something new, I shared it with you in my head. Every time I saw a new landscape, I imagined exploring it with you. And every time the pigeons came back, I saw you growing and changing, and my heart broke a little more.”
Now she really had to press her lips together, or she would break down and weep. As it was, the hot prick of tears made her blink. She must not cry. She must not let him see.
“Alice.” He said her name like a prayer. “Whatever happens, I will find you when what the Esquimaux call the caribou moon—the full moon following the caribou migration—is at its brightest. Our time here is nearly over, anyway. I just wish—”
She followed his gaze to the ring of delicately carved ivory on the fourth finger of his right hand. “Is that from Malina? Is she your wife?”
“Yes. And yes. I am trying to steel myself to leaving her and the girls. The shadow side of my actions is that I have no funds to keep them with me. It is a simple fact that in doing my duty, I must leave them.”
Alice raised her fingers to her hair, and touched what was fixed there. “You need money?”