Blameless

“But, Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf, what a way to treat a fel ow member of the Order of the Brass Octopus. Be reasonable; it is the middle of the day!”



“Not even for the Order!” The little man stood, looking as though he were about to get just as hysterical as his dog. “You must leave! I shal give you provisions, money, contacts in Italy, but you must quit my house now. Get to the Templars. They wil take care of you, if only because the vampires want you dead. I am not equipped. I am not able to handle this.”



Alexia stood to find that Floote, being Floote, had at some point during the conversation sensed impending doom and vanished to their rooms. There he had obviously packed up her dispatch case, retrieved her parasol and their outerwear, and was waiting patiently in the doorway. He, at least, did not seem at al reluctant to leave.



CHAPTER NINE



How Not to Cross an Alpine Pass



Upon reflection, Alexia decided it was perhaps safer to press on toward Italy during daylight, anyway. It was becoming painful y obvious that should she expect any answers as to her current condition and situation, she would have to extract said answers from either the Templars or the vampires. And of the two, only one was likely to talk to her before they tried to kil her.



Another thing had also become apparent. As driven as she might be to prove Conal wrong, the fate of the infant-inconvenience was now at stake. Alexia might be frustrated with the tiny parasite, but she decided, after contemplation, that she did not, exactly, wish it dead. They’d been through a lot together so far. Just you allow me to eat regularly, she told it silently, and I’ll think about trying to grow a mothering instinct. Won’t be easy, mind you. I wasn’t ever expecting to have one. But I’ll try.



On the run from the murderous hordes, cashiered by an eccentric German, Alexia was nonplussed to find they did what anyone might have done under more mundane circumstances—they caught a cab. Hired transport, as it turned out, was much the same in France as it was in England, only more limited. Madame Lefoux had a brief but intense conversation with the driver of a fly, after which a good deal of money exchanged hands. Then the inventor sat down next to Floote, and the handsom took off at a terrific pace, heading for the coast through the streets of Nice, which were crowded with invalids and wet-weather refugees. Alexia supposed it was a sensible mode of transport when one was on the run, but the fly was a tight fit for three passengers.



The driver, up high and behind them, encouraged the horse into a fast trot with a long whip. The creature surged forward, taking turns and racketing down al eyways at quite the breakneck velocity.



In no time whatsoever, they had left Nice behind and were headed along the dirt road that wound along the cliffs and beaches of the Riviera. It was a drive Alexia might ordinarily have enjoyed. It was a crisp winter day, the Mediterranean a sparkling turquoise blue to their right. There was very little traffic, and their driver cut loose along the long slow turns and straight stretches, al owing his horse a distance-covering canter.



“He said he would take us al the way to the border,” Madame Lefoux spoke into the rushing wind. “Standing me up a pretty penny for the favor, but he is making very good time.”



“I should say so! Wil we reach Italy before dark, do you think?” Alexia tucked her dispatch case more firmly beneath her legs and skirts, and placed her parasol across her lap, trying to get comfortable while wedged tightly between Madame Lefoux and Floote. The seat real y was only meant for two, and while none of them was overly large, Alexia had cause to be grateful she was currently without her ubiquitous bustle. It was by no means an ideal arrangement.



The driver slowed.



Taking advantage of the more relaxed pace, Alexia stood, turning precariously backward so she could look over the roof and the driver’s box to the road behind them.



When she sat back down again, she was frowning.



“What is it?” Madame Lefoux demanded.



“I do not mean to concern you, but I do believe we are being fol owed.”



Madame Lefoux stood in her turn, holding her top hat firmly to her head with one hand and grasping the edge of the hansom’s roof with the other. When she sat back down, she, too, sported a crease between her perfectly arched eyebrows.



Alexia looked to her valet. “Floote, how are you fixed for projectiles?”



Floote reached into his inner jacket pocket and presented the two tiny guns. He cracked each open in turn. They were both loaded. He’d obviously taken the time to reload the single shots after their spot of vampire bother. He fished about further in his coat and produced a smal quantity of gunpowder in a twist of paper and eight more bul ets.



Madame Lefoux reached across Alexia and picked up one of the bul ets, examining it with interest. Alexia looked on as well . They were made of some kind of hard wood, tipped in silver and fil ed with lead.



“Old-style sundowner bul ets. Not that we wil need such as these at this time of day.



Any fol owers would have to be drones. Stil , Mr. Floote, what are you doing with such things? You cannot possibly be certified to terminate supernaturals.”



“Ah.” Floote put the bul ets back in his jacket pocket. “Let us say I inherited them, madam.”



“Mr. Tarabotti?” Madame Lefoux nodded. “That explains the age of the guns. You want to get yourself one of those newfangled Colt revolvers, Mr. Floote, much more efficient.”



Floote looked with a certain degree of fondness down at the two tiny guns before tucking them back out of sight. “Perhaps.”



Alexia was intrigued. “Father was an official sundowner, was he?”



“Not as such, my lady.” Floote was always cagey, but he seemed to reach new heights of tight-lippedness whenever the subject of Alessandro Tarabotti came up. Half the time Alexia felt he did it out of obstinacy; the other half of the time she felt he might be trying to shield her from something. Although with vampire drones on their tail, she could hardly imagine what she might stil need protection from.



Madame Lefoux pushed back the sleeve of her jacket and checked her own little wrist-emitter device. “I have only three shots left. Alexia?”



Alexia shook her head. “I used up al my darts in the clock shop, remember? And I haven’t anything else left in the parasol but the lapis lunearis mist for werewolves and the magnetic disruption emitter.”



Madam Lefoux sucked her teeth in frustration. “I knew I should have given it a greater carrying capacity.”



“You cannot very well have done much more,” consoled Alexia. “The darn thing already weighs twice as much as any ordinary parasol.”



Floote stood and checked behind them.



“Wil they catch us before we cross the border?” Alexia had no clear grasp on the distance from Nice to the Italian frontier.



“Most likely.” Madame Lefoux, however, did.



Floote sat back down, looking quite worried.



They clattered through a smal fishing town and out the other side, improved paving on the road al owing them a fresh burst of speed.



“We wil have to try to lose them in Monaco.” Madame Lefoux stood, leaned across the roof, and engaged in a protracted conversation with the driver. Rapid-fire French scattered on the wind.



Guessing the gist of it, Alexia unclipped the ruby and gold brooch from the neck of her traveling gown and pressed it into the inventor’s smal hand. “See if that wil encourage him.”



The brooch vanished across the roof of the hansom. The whip flashed. The horse surged forward. Bribery, apparently, worked no matter what the language.



They kept a good pace and steady distance from their pursuers right up and into the town of Monaco, a decent-sized vacation destination of some questionable repute.



The driver undertook the most impressive series of twists and turns, breaking off from the main road and dodging through some truly tiny al eys. They ran pel -mel into a line of laundry stretched across the street, taking a pair of trousers and a gentleman’s shirtfront with them, in addition to a string of French curses. They ended their obstacle run, clattering out of an upper section of the town away from the ocean, heading toward the Alpine Mountains. The horse tossed off the pair of scarlet bloomers he had been wearing about his ears with a snort of disgust.



“Wil we be able to cross through the mountains at this time of year?” Alexia was dubious. It was winter, and while the Italian Alps hadn’t the reputation of their larger, more inland brethren, they were stil respectably mountainous, with white-capped peaks.



“I think so. Regardless, it is better to stay off the main road.”



The road narrowed as they began to climb upward. The horse slowed to a walk, his sides heaving. It was a good thing, too, for soon enough the track became lined with trees and a steep embankment to one side and a treacherous drop to the other. They clattered through a herd of unimpressed brown goats, complete with large bel s and irate goat girl, and seemed to have shaken off pursuit.



Out the left side window of the hansom, Alexia caught sight of a peculiar-looking contraption above the embankment and trees. She tugged Madame Lefoux’s arm.



“What’s that, Genevieve?”



The inventor cocked her head. “Ah, good. The sky-rail system. I had hoped it was operational.”



“Wel ?”



“Oh, yes. It is a novelty freight and passenger transport. I had a smal hand in designing the control mechanisms. We should be able to see it in ful presently, just there.”



They rounded a bend in the road and began climbing ever more steeply. Before and above them stood the contraption in al its glory. To Alexia it looked like two massive laundry lines strung paral el across the tops of pylons. It became clear, however, that the lines were more like sky-high train tracks. Straddled atop them, crawling along in a rhythmic, lurching, buglike manner on large wheels threaded with moving treads, marched a series of cabins, similar in size and shape to stagecoaches. Each cabin emitted bil owing gouts of white steam from underneath. Hanging from the cabin, down below the cables, each supported a swaying metal net on long cords, loaded with lumber. Like a spider with an egg sac or a trapeze train trol ey.



“Goodness!” Alexia was impressed. “Are they unidirectional?”



“Wel , most are going downhil with freight, but they are designed to go up as well .



Unlike trains, those cable rails require no switchbacks. One car can simply climb over the other, so long as it is not carrying a net, of course. See the way the cabling goes over each side of the cabin roof?”



Alexia was enough impressed by the invention to be distracted from her current predicament. She’d never seen or heard of anything like it—a railway in the sky!



Floote kept popping up and looking back over the cab roof like a jack-in-the-box.



Alexia became quite sensitive to the pattern of his movements and so noticed when his legs became suddenly tense and he spent longer than usual standing. Madame Lefoux did as well and bounced up to lean next to him, much to the driver’s annoyance. Scared of further upsetting the fly’s center of balance, Alexia stayed seated, her view fil ed with trouser-clad legs.



She heard a faint yel ing behind them and could only imagine that there were drones fol owing. On the next switchback, she caught sight of their enemy. Out the right side window of the cab, she could see a four-in-hand coach loaded down with intense-looking young men in hot pursuit. There was some kind of firearm equipage mounted atop the carriage roof.



Just wonderful, thought Alexia. They have a ruddy great gun.



She heard the pop of Floote firing off one of the tiny derringers and the sharp hiss of Madame Lefoux doing the same with one of her darts.



Floote popped back down to change guns and reload. “Madam, I regret to inform you, they have a Nordenfelt.”



“A what?”



Madame Lefoux sat down to reload while Floote stood back up and fired again.



“I have no doubt we shal witness it in action shortly.”



They reached the snow line.



A whole fleet of bul ets of ridiculously large size hissed by the cab and embedded themselves in an unsuspecting tree. A gun that could fire multiple bul ets at once, imagine that!



Floote hurriedly sat back down.



“The Nordenfelt, madam.”



The horse squealed in fear, the driver swore, and they came to an abrupt halt.



Madame Lefoux didn’t even try to argue their case. She jumped down from the fly, fol owed by Floote and Alexia. Floote grabbed Alexia’s dispatch case. Alexia grabbed her parasol. Without waiting to see if they would fol ow, Alexia charged up the embankment, stabilizing herself with the parasol, and began slogging through the snow toward the cable lines.



Another burst of bul ets churned up the snow just behind them. Alexia let out a most undignified squeak of alarm. What would Conal do? This kind of gunfire action was not exactly her cup of tea. Her husband was the trained soldier, not she. Nevertheless, she recovered enough to yel , “Perhaps we should spread out and make for that support pole.”