Lucifugous by Elizabeth Bear

Author:Elizabeth Bear [Bear, Elizabeth]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi Short
Published: 2010-03-07T17:38:22.515000+00:00

Chapter Six

6

Dinner passed uneventfully. Jack demonstrated a certain hesitancy in circumventing the pork roast, but–given two lunches–he extemporized around the fish and salad courses and, with the addition of Sebastien’s dessert to his own, made a satisfactory supper. Sebastien disarrayed his food artfully to produce the illusion of dining, a sleight of hand that had served him well over the years. After dining, the ladies excused themselves before the men adjourned to the smoking room. Sebastien took advantage of the exodus to plead a headache and an aversion to cigars and make his own escape. If Sebastien ventured into the smoking room, he’d be smelling stale tobacco for days. Jack, who numbered cigars among his bad habits as well as brandy–quite the young rakehell, he was growing into, and Sebastien had no-one to blame but himself–would report if anything interesting transpired. Sebastien had fairer prey.

The passenger room at the head of the stairs was the least desirable, and on an airship as unpeopled as the Hans Glücker, it was understandably deserted. Sebastien slipped inside, leaving the light fixture shrouded, and settled on the lower bunk to wait.

A human–or even a younger blood–might have brought reading material, something with which to while away the hours. Sebastien simply closed his eyes in the dark, leaned his shoulder on the bedpost, and listened to the Hans Glücker drift.

An airship was no more silent in her passage than a sailing vessel. Through the deck, Sebastien could feel the thrum of engines, the almost-subliminal vibration of the cables containing the gas bags within the lifting body, the way the giant aircraft moved in response to the wind plucking at its control cabin and fabric skin. He listened to the ship in the night, and let his mind wander. It was a kind of meditation, and sometimes it helped him uncover surprising truths.

Now, it led him back to Mme. Pontchartrain’s cabin, and the disarrayed papers, and the amended logbook. But those items refused to resolve into a pattern, no matter how many angles he turned them to or stared at them from. He found himself instead musing on Mrs. Leatherby, and her blatant attempt to feed him information. Probably accurate information, as it happened. But he was not blind to the manipulation.

A step on the stair and the swish of a woman’s skirt brought him from his reverie. A small woman, by the weight of her footfall, and so either Mrs. Smith or Mlle. LeClere. And while he would have been happier to see Mrs. Smith–he was beginning to give some serious thought to wooing her; he would need friends and courtesans in America–he hoped it was, at last, Mlle. LeClere. Alone.

He smoothed his hair with both hands, the mirror no use to him, and stepped into the corridor. And almost into the young Frenchwoman’s arms.

She gave a startled squeak and might have toppled down the stairs if he hadn’t caught her wrist and landed her. Instead she tottered and collapsed forward into his arms; he took two quick steps back to set her at arm’s length.

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