“Doctor Clef is the key,” he said. “He finished his Impossible Cube earlier today, and Lieutenant Phipps said it has to go into the Doomsday Vault.”
“So they’ll have to open it,” Alice breathed.
“Yes. There’s a little ceremony surrounding any invention that goes in. An hour before sunrise, all the clockworkers are locked in their rooms, and the available agents stand honor guard in two lines-like this-while Lieutenant Phipps marches between them. She takes the invention to the Doomsday Vault, which is here. The guards open it, and she puts it inside. Then everyone has a breakfast of kippers and eggs and beer, including the clockworker who invented the device. If he’s gone completely insane, he sits at the table in a straitjacket.”
“So we somehow sneak in when the Vault opens and hide inside until they all leave?”
Gavin shook his head. “No. The Vault would close on us and we’d be trapped. There’s only one way to do it.” He put his pencil down and exhaled, long and slow. “Alice, if we go through with this, it’ll be a crime against the British Crown. I’ll be branded an American spy, and you’ll be a traitor. Are you willing?”
And she hesitated. He was right. She tried to set aside thoughts of Gavin and to think of the situation clearly, as would an automaton. This plan went beyond merely breaking a few societal rules. This plan was outright treason. The sentence for that was transportation to Australia at best, hanging at worst, and her title wouldn’t protect her. The plan, if it worked, would topple the British Empire and change the course of history for thousands, millions of people. Did she, the daughter of an unimportant, impoverished baron, have the right to make that choice?
Did the Third Ward have the right? They had a vested interest in keeping the status quo. Without clockworkers, the Third Ward had no reason to exist. On the other hand, they were more informed, more aware of the wide world. They knew what was proper.
Alice opened her mouth to answer Gavin just as a brick crashed through the front window and tumbled across the floor. Both Alice and Gavin started, then rushed to the broken frame to peer outside. Norbert Williamson swayed on the sidewalk, just visible in the yellow lamplight. He held a bottle. On the street stood his mechanical carriage.
“You thought you could hide from me, you bloody bitch?” Norbert yelled. “You owe me a child and a title!”
A pang went through Alice’s stomach. “Oh God.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Gavin said with clenched teeth.
“No.” Alice laid a hand on his arm. “I will.” And before he could protest, she was out the door.
“There you are, you whore,” Norbert growled. He gulped from the bottle. “Did you enjoy fucking him?”
“Not nearly as much as you enjoyed watching your friends use those machines, you may be sure,” Alice replied primly.
Norbert didn’t seem to notice the dig. “You’re coming home with me. I’ll teach you manners and lock you up long enough to make sure the boy didn’t pollute you with his spawn.”
A crowd was gathering. People opened windows and peered out doors. Alice became aware of every pair of eyes, every judgmental look, every knowing nod. The carriage stood in front of her. It would be so easy to bow her head and climb into it, ride smoothly away from all these unfair, world-shaking decisions, these choices she had never asked to make. All she had ever wanted was a quiet life with a quiet husband.
But that was a lie, too, wasn’t it? It was a lie she told herself. She’d been telling herself she wanted these traditional things. . and why? Because it was her fault the clockwork plague had torn through her family, killed her mother and brother, crippled her father, and wanting traditional things would set everything aright. Except Father was dead, and now the person she loved carried the plague. The tradition, the lie, would cause Gavin’s death, and the deaths of thousands more.
“No,” Alice whispered.
“What?” Norbert growled.
Alice straightened, standing tall before the neighbors who came to stare. Gavin stood in the doorway. “I said no. I am Alice, Baroness Michaels. I am not going back with you, Norbert Williamson. I love Gavin and always have. Go back home to your factory and your money and your filthy machines. I hope they rip your cock off.”
Norbert flung himself at Alice. Gavin shouted a warning from the front steps, but Alice saw him coming. She stepped aside and gave him a shove that carried him straight into the wall of the house. He smashed into the bricks and staggered backward, dazed and with a bloody nose. Gavin hoisted him by belt and scruff and flung him into the carriage. Alice smacked the emergency switch for home, and the carriage rushed away.
Alice found herself in Gavin’s arms. He tipped her chin back and kissed her, right there on the street in front of the little crowd. His embrace was solid as an oak tree, and the kiss electric as a lightning bolt. She gave herself up to it, and to him.
“I do love you,” he whispered.
“And I love you,” she said.
A smattering of applause broke out, then grew louder. Alice broke away from Gavin. The crowd clapped and cheered. “Great job, love!” someone shouted. “You showed him!” “Wish I had your courage!”
Laughing, she dashed back into the house with Gavin close on her. With the door shut, he kissed her again and pressed his body against hers. She felt his urgent hardness, and her own body responded. “I’ve never wanted you more than I do now,” he whispered.
“We don’t have time,” she replied with regret. “It’s only a few hours until sunrise, and we have to break into the Doomsday Vault.”
Chapter Nineteen
Lieutenant Phipps marched past Gavin with the glowing Impossible Cube. As the most junior agent of the Third Ward, he was at the far end of the double line of agents lining the corridor, the end farthest from the Doomsday Vault. Another agent played a military drum. Every beat snapped to Phipps’s footsteps. Each agent, and there were nearly twenty, wore a dress uniform of black linen with red trim. Several sported body machinery similar to Phipps’s, and all of them, even Simon and Glenda, carried side arms. Alice, who was still in training and not yet technically an agent, was nowhere to be seen, but Gavin knew she was hiding halfway up the stone spiral staircase that led back up to the main floor.
Phipps reached the head of the double line, and the drum stopped. The four agents who guarded the round, two-story door to the Doomsday Vault saluted Phipps and turned to the Vault controls. Each guard knew only one sequence of instructions for opening the Vault, to ensure that no one person could open it alone. The first guard spun a large wheel that reminded Gavin of an airship helm, then spun it backward, then forward. The second guard spoke rapidly into a speaking tube. The third guard turned a series of dials set into the door. The fourth guard took a card from his pocket, punched a series of holes in it with an awl, and fed the card into a slot. A moment of silence followed. Gavin held his breath. With a dull booming sound, the great door swung outward.
Lights inside the Vault flickered to life, revealing a wide, long tunnel lined with shelves. Strange objects, some of them moving, occupied the spaces. Gavin couldn’t see into the Vault very well from his vantage point, but he didn’t need to. He pulled from his pocket a small object of his own: two glass bulbs connected by a third, like an hourglass with a slight bulge in the middle. The top bulb held water. The small middle bulb held a cube of sugar. The lower bulb held a clear green fluid. Gavin twisted a small brass lever on the side of the device, and the water in the top bulb rushed down over the sugar cube and into the absinthe in the lower bulb just as Phipps entered the Doomsday Vault. The absinthe in the lower bulb bubbled and changed to a milky green.