Imprudence (The Custard Protocol #2)(11)

Aggie was head greaser, second in command of the boiler room after Quesnel, which made her chief engineer while he was away. For some reason Rue did not understand, Aggie had never warmed to her. Which was a shame, because Rue thought that under more auspicious circumstances she would like the young battleaxe. Aggie reminded her a bit of Lady Kingair.

Aggie was a redhead with a vast sprinkling of freckles over porcelain skin under which blue veins were clearly visible. That skin spoke more to a life spent in engineering than ancestry. She was sublimely fit. Her arm muscles had arm muscles. Rue, who had grown up around werewolves, thought Aggie most impressive even by their standards. She was one of the few women Rue had ever met who actually looked like she might survive metamorphosis. Whether she was creative enough to have excess soul, Rue would never know. Aggie rarely let anyone see any part of her but the tetchy efficient bit.

“Oh, it’s you.” Aggie frowned. “What do you want?”

Not a promising start. “Good evening, Miss Phinkerlington. What is that, if I may ask?” Rue always found herself forced into politeness by the extremity of Aggie’s dislike.

“You may not ask.”

Rue gave a little sigh. “This is my ship, Miss Phinkerlington.”

“And this is Himself’s kit. Not for me to say if he hasn’t deemed it necessary to tell.”

Aggie was a pain but she was good at her job and she adored Quesnel in a bickering-elder-sister fashion. Which made her reliably loyal – to him if not the rest of the ship.

“Yet Mr Lefoux is not here, so perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me?”

“That I won’t.”

Impasse. Rue could order her to tell. But if pushed, Aggie was likely to chuck in the towel and storm off the ship, leaving Rue in a real lurch with no one supervising engineering at all.

That was the difficulty. Rue needed Aggie’s skills more than Aggie needed Rue’s respect. It put Rue in a chronically uncomfortable position.

“At least tell me if it is likely to explode or what have you.”

Aggie raised one red eyebrow at her. “Isn’t everything on this ship likely to explode?”

Rue bent to look under the blanket at the casement. It was difficult to tell anything in the flickering shadows of a single boiler’s firebox.

Aggie interposed herself, crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned against the blanket, pinning it down.

Rue inhaled the musty scent of oil and soot. All in all, this was looking to be an extremely frustratingly evening. Molasses over vinegar, she reminded herself. This had been her tactic with Aggie from the beginning. The nicer she was, the more annoyed Aggie became. It was a minor sort of revenge, but it was all Rue had to fall back on.

“Very well, Miss Phinkerlington. But now I know of its existence, so you might as well carry on under more well-lit circumstances. Go to bed. There is no point ruining your eyesight over one of Quesnel’s little toys.”

Aggie began to sputter. Either out of disgust at the concern or out of the insult to Quesnel’s inventing abilities.

Rue was already moving away.

“Quesnel,” she muttered as she closed the hatch to engineering, “has a very great deal of explaining to do.”

“What was that?” Primrose was coming down the main stairs.

“Only talking to myself.”

Prim was flushed.

“Something wrong up top?”

“Only that Miss Sekhmet… she is” – Primrose paused, looking for the right words – “awfully playful when she is a lioness.”

“Presenting you with her belly, was she?”

Prim looked down at her hands. “I simply” – she lowered her voice to a whisper – “can’t get over the fact that she is, you know, naked.”

“She’s a cat.”

“Yes, but she’s also not a cat.”

Rue, being able to change shape herself, had an odd relationship with nudity. Some might even have called it Ancient Greek in its inclinations. Dama certainly did, regularly shaking his head at the goings-on of his neighbours. “Like a less oily gymnasium. One’s imagination runs positively rampant.”

“The werewolf uncles never seem to bother you.”

Primrose frowned. “They’re men.”

Rue didn’t follow that reasoning at all. “Well, I’m sorry Tasherit has offended.”

Prim blinked wide dark eyes, afraid she had brought Rue’s ire down on the werelioness. “Oh no, it’s not that. It’s only…” She lost her train of thought. “Oh dear, I’m rather discombobulated.”

“Yes, seems to happen to you quite a bit around Tasherit. Why is that?”

“She’s so very foreign and…” Words failed Prim again.

“And?”

“Catty.”

“Mmm. If you say so. Perhaps some tea? Shall we ring?”

Primrose grasped at the suggestion. “What a good idea. It has been a very trying night.”

“Truth from the mouths of children,” agreed Rue with feeling.

They turned towards the stateroom where they might ring for tea, when a most extraordinary noise coming from the squeak deck diverted their attention.

“What on earth?” said Primrose.

Rue was already running.