enjoyed turning his hand to cooking now and again, tied an apron about the remains of his evening clothes, and fell to work. As Athena flew steoug/fexceptioadily south, they decided against eating in the crew’s quarters away at the stern, opting instead to clear the charts from the navigation table and remain where Nine could hear them.
“I’m very glad you ent dead again, Lady,” Maggie observed, spooning stew into her mouth at a terrific rate. Both the girls had not left her side since her rescue, as if they feared the wind would blow her out of the gondola and they would not be able to fetch her back, with or without the assistance of Nine’s magnetic feet.
“I am very glad I am not, as well. When do you suppose we shall land in Edmonton?”
“I do not think we should go to Edmonton.” The count put down his spoon and indulged himself in a stiff tot of what appeared to be very fine brandy. He offered one to Andrew, who accepted with alacrity. “I suggest that we make straight for Charlottetown and inform the authorities in the new government at once.”
“Charlottetown! But that is at the other end of the continent!” Claire objected.
Thousands of miles from Tigg, and Willie, and the Dunsmuirs, and everything she cared about on this side of the wide world.
“What do you suppose are the odds that a pigeon was launched long before we lifted?” the count asked. “Whether to report my death or the supposed perfidy of Frederick Chalmers, I think it very likely that any ship coming from points north that is not Lady Lucy or Meriwether-Astor’s ship will be treated as suspect. The Canadas have only the very beginnings of a fleet of law enforcement, but from what I have seen of the Royal Canadian Airborne Police, they will not suffer us merely to take on fuel and be on our way.”
“And it is not likely that a pigeon or a telegraph message will be heading for Charlottetown,” Andrew added. “We are the only ones who can help the Dunsmuirs now. The sooner orders come from the Viceroy to the Airborne Police, the better.”
Their logic was sound, and in light of the greater good, Claire swallowed her distress at being separated by so many miles of land and air from the ones she loved.
By the third day in the air, they had not only covered a great many of those miles, but they had fine tuned the operation of what Maggie had taken to calling “our Athena’s brains.” Claire had explained to her the properties of the engines that Alice had created—that they were capable of obedience only, not thought—but Maggie airily dismissed such details. Claire suspected that she regarded the airship as something of a pet, like a spaniel. She could only hope that the girls did not try to make poor Athena do tricks.
By the fourth day, they could see a wide blue vastness on the farthest curve of the horizon. Claire stood at the viewing window, Rosie the chicken in her arms, stroking the bird’s feathers. Count von Zeppelin had never quite accustomed himself to Rosie’s release from the hatbox, nor to her being a member of their company, and looked askance at her each time she shared a meal with them.
He joined Claire at the viewing window, slightly out of range of Rosie’s beak. “The Atlantic,” he lanl wsaid. “Our journey is nearly over.”
“I confess I shall be glad to step on the ground again. Have you been to the new capital?”
“Nein. To be on the safe side, I have dispatched a pigeon to the Viceroy’s house announcing our arrival and including my letters of passage from His Majesty the Kaiser of Prussia.”
“Let us hope the Viceroy appreciates engineers as well as representatives of foreign governments.”
The count smiled under his handlebar moustache, whose jaunty curl had now been restored. “I have heard a rumor that it is so. Lady Claire, may I ask you something?”
“Of course.” She turned to him, curious.
“Please forgive me if I am too personal, but I was a soldier and am a man of blunt speech. What are your plans for the future?”
Rosie protested as the familiar arms about her feathery body tightened, and Claire forced herself to relax. “I am not certain. Return to London, I suppose, and take up my life where I left it.”
“Which was what? Do you plan to marry young Malvern?”
Claire nearly dropped poor Rosie on the gondola’s polished deck.