scent all its own, had been a little too pungent for her—and she’d been brought up in Southsea.
But the village was gone now, and likely not a single building would remain standing when the waters finally emptied. An entire community washed away in moments.
She glanced at her boots as they squished on the wet topsoil. Not rain but seawater, all the way up here. A small metallic object in the grass reflected light from an airship passing overhead. She picked it up and showed it to Merry, who was leaning on the fence near where the peeping tom had fallen, staring blankly out at the fjord.
“What do you make of this, Merry?” It appeared to be a closed pocket watch with an odd design on the brass casing—something like a sceptre, but with the planet Earth as the ball at the top. Merry didn’t take any notice until Sonja added, “I think our tree man must have dropped it.”
“Hmm? What have you got there?” She grabbed Sonja’s hand and tilted the item until it caught the light of another passing airship.
“Is that a sceptre?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Merry plucked the spectrometer goggles from her sister’s pocket and inspected the inscription under medium magnification. “It’s a new one on me. The stick you thought was a sceptre is actually the London Leviacrum tower, and it’s holding up—”
“The earth?”
“Yes, but that’s obviously symbolic. Hmm. It won’t open.” She fingered the edges and tried to pry the two halves apart, but there didn’t appear to be a clasp or hinge. The little winder wouldn’t turn either. “Blasted thing.”
“Here, let me try,” Sonja said.
“After I’ve finished my inspection.”
Sonja masked her grin by pretending to wipe her mouth. This mystery was just what Merry needed, and it was great to see her engaged in it instead of brooding silently over things beyond her control. Sonja leaned in. “The engraving is incredibly fine, isn’t it—looks like it was done under a spectrometer microscope. Here, there might be something written—”
“Ah, ah...” Merry brushed her sister’s hand away, “...I’m on top of it. There are three words across the globe. I’m trying to think back to Latin class... Exitus acta probat.”
The result validates the deeds. Sonja would rather give her big sister a minute or so to translate it on her own, otherwise Merry might get snippy and sink back into her moroseness.
“Aha! I’ve got it. A means to an end.” Well, not quite, but close enough. “Obviously some kind of secret organisation. Don’t you think?”
Sonja snickered. She was usually the one prone to seeing conspiracies in everything. So this was what the others felt like, patronising her at breakfast as Father and Aunt Lily read the newspaper headlines and Sonja spun the stories into her ingenious speculative theories.
“Why do you say that?” Sonja asked.
“The man was armed. He was watching us. Then the wave hit. Connected...surely.”
Well, that was a stretch, even for a McEwan, but Sonja thought she’d best play along for now. Until someone made sense of all this. And if she were honest, nothing would ever surprise her again after tonight.
Chapter Three
Shipmates
The dull chatter of loose cables tapping on sheet metal in the hold overhead whenever the Brunnhilde shimmied in high winds, kept Meredith on edge over the North Atlantic. The others—Sonja, Father, Aunt Lily and Lady Catarina—hadn’t spoken for hours, but they weren’t asleep. Hot lemon sunlight streamed in through the porthole windows, drawing an unpleasant acrid soda smell from the new seat upholstery. Collars had been loosened, sleeves rolled up, and magazines opened to replace conversation. A seething recalcitrance, understood by all, liked by none, ruled the Brunnhilde.
Meredith fingered the Leviacrum pocket watch on the open Explorer’s Weekly page on her lap. What did it mean? The man who’d been hiding in the alpen tree had worn a dark turtleneck jersey, black corduroy trousers with the hems tucked into thick woollen socks, as well as hiking boots and a black woollen hat, and he’d been carrying a .42 Epsilon steam-pistol in a hip holster. No identification on him at all apart from the portable camera and a box of used platelets he’d left hanging in the tree where he’d fallen. So he’d definitely been spying on the party. Sorensen had developed the miniature plates in his darkroom last night, and they primarily featured the men he and Father had spent the most time with after Father’s presentation: investors from across Europe, and the local scientific alumni.