Prudence went wobbling past, the Drifter girl on her tail, both of them giggling madly and having a grand old time. Alexia made her way to Conall, to defend him from possible contact with his daughter. The last thing they needed was an airsick werewolf pup dashing about the craft. Better to have a large airsick man instead.
A blast of flame and a whoop of delight from the boy, Baddu, and the balloon began a stately rise upward, fuel from the gas giving them a boost of speed high toward the aethersphere. There was no lurching sensation; in fact, the movement hardly registered except that the ground retreated below them and Alexia’s ears popped.
Alexia knew in principle what the Drifters were aiming for. If they could get the balloon up and into an aether stream, they could hook into a current that would carry them south, up the Nile. It was a tricky maneuver, for should the balloon rise too much into the aether, there was a possibility of it getting torn apart, or caving with the sheer of crosscurrents, or the gas flame blowing out, causing them to drop out and down toward the desert.
Alexia tried not to think about it, instead looking down as Alexandria fell away under them.
Poor Conall, at this point reduced to dry heaving and little whimpers of distress, had his eyes tightly shut and his big hands white-knuckled about the side of the basket. Alexia wondered if she shouldn’t get Prudence to take on wolf form. Perhaps they could trap her as a pup in the corner? Prudence didn’t seem to feel the pain of werewolf shift, so perhaps she didn’t get airsick either? She certainly wasn’t suffering from the affliction now. She was having a wonderful time. And, Alexia noted with pleasure, always stopping politely should any of their hosts wish to show her the correct anchoring of a cord or explain to her the thermodynamics of floating—in Arabic, mind you. If Lord Akeldama did nothing else, he was instilling in his adopted daughter the very best manners.
Soon they had risen high enough to turn Alexandria into a spot of faint torchlight. Below and ahead, Alexia could see only the dark of the desert, here and there a lonely fire, and, glinting under the moonlight, the hundreds of long silver snakes that made up the Nile Delta. A sudden flurry of activity in the basket, and Alexia looked over to see Zayed hauling hard on one of the ropes while Baddu offloaded some weight. Then there came a jerk and a woof noise, and the top of the balloon caught an aether stream. Zayed turned up the gas and angled the canister toward the cave-in and the balloon rose up fully into the aether stream. It immediately began to float, with much greater speed, due south. Despite this change in pace, Alexia felt almost nothing. Unlike a dirigible, there were no breezes; the balloon was moving with the currents.
Conall straightened, looking markedly better and less green.
Alexia patted him sympathetically. “Human?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t do much good. I think I simply got everything, well, out. If you know what I mean?”
Alexia nodded. “Could it be our current proximity to the aether?”
“Could be. Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Are you going to make a note of it, wife? Seems that the God-Breaker Plague reaches all the way up to the aether.”
“Either that, or the aethersphere itself counteracts your supernatural abilities.”
“Well, if that were the case, scientists would have figured that out by now, wouldn’t they?”
Lady Maccon took out a tiny notebook from one of the secret pockets of her parasol and a stylographic pen from another. “Oh, yes? And how would they have done that? Vampires can’t float up that high, because they are tethered too short. And werewolves don’t float at all, because they get sick.”
“You can’t tell me no one has transported a ghost and body via float before?”
Alexia frowned. “I don’t know, but it’s worth researching. I wonder if Genevieve and her deceased aunt came via float or ferry when they left Paris for London.”
“You’ll have to ask her when we catch up.” They paused in their conversation, awkward for a moment; then Conall asked, “Can you feel the plague?”
“You mean that odd tingly sensation I felt at the edge of Alexandria?”
He nodded.
“Difficult to tell, since the feeling was already similar to that of aether breezes.” Alexia closed her eyes and leaned her arms out of the balloon basket, embracing the air.
The earl immediately grabbed her shoulder and pulled her backward. “Don’t do that, Alexia!” He was looking green again, this time with fear.
Alexia sighed. “Can’t tell. Could be the plague, could be proximity to the aethersphere. We’ll simply have to wait and see what happens as we move farther toward the epicenter.”
“Did no one ever tell you, wife, that it’s rather dangerous to do scientific experiments on oneself?”
“Now, dear, don’t fuss. To be fair, I’m doing them on you as well.”
“How verra reassuring.”
Biffy knocked politely on Lyall’s office door. He sniffed the air while he waited to be bidden entrance. He smelled the usual odors of BUR—sweat and cologne, leather and boot polish, gun oil and weaponry. In the end it was most similar to a soldier’s barracks. He did not scent another pack. Wherever she was at the moment, Lady Kingair was not there.
“Enter,” came Lyall’s mild bidding.
Biffy was shocked by how warm simply the sound of that voice made him feel. Almost reassured. Whatever they were building together, Biffy decided at that moment that it was good and worth fighting for. Which, being a werewolf, he supposed might actually be more of a literal than figurative way of putting matters.
The young dandy took a breath and entered the room, his pleasure subdued under the weight of the information he had to impart. The burden of a spy, Lord Akeldama always said, was not in the knowing of things but in knowing when to tell such things to others. That and the fact that creeping around could be dusty work, terrible on the knees of one’s trousers.
Biffy felt that there was no point in barking about the dell. “I know who killed Dubh, and no one is going to like it.” He moved across the room, pausing only to remove his hat and place it on the stand near the door. The poor hat stand was already overloaded with coats and wraps and chapeaus as well as a number of less savory items—leather collars with gun compartments, Gatling straps, and what looked to be a plucked goose made of straw.
Once he stood across the cluttered desk from Lyall, Biffy removed the bullet from his waistcoat pocket and slapped it down on the dark mahogany.
Professor Lyall put aside the papers he had been studying and picked up the bullet. After a moment of close examination, he tipped a pair of glassicals down from where they perched atop his head and studied the bullet even more carefully through the magnification lens.
He looked up after a long moment, the glassicals distorting one hazel eye out of all proportion.
Biffy winced at the asymmetry.
Lyall took the glassicals off, set them aside, and handed the bullet back to Biffy. “Sundowner ammunition. Old-fashioned. Of the kind that shot Dubh.”