Curtsies & Conspiracies (Finishing School, #2)(64)

Giffard gave some kind of signal and the Puffy Nimbus bobbed up, leaving Mademoiselle Geraldine’s behind.

At first everything seemed fine. Then Professor Braithwope began to gyrate around in his mechanical suit, waving his hands about his face as if fending off a swam of attacking wasps. The mating dance of a mechanical was Sophronia’s hysterical thought.

Giffard seemed to be occupied doing battle with his navigation helm. Sophronia thought she heard Professor Braithwope scream. Then she saw him jerk wildly backward, come up against the railing, and flip right over it. At the time and for years after, she was never certain if he fell accidentally or jumped in order to get relief from invisible tormentors.

Professor Braithwope, encased in his Lefoux-made suit, was tumbling down though the air. His body was limp and there was no sound coming from him anymore.

He should be screaming, thought Sophronia, inanely. I would be screaming.

She watched, transfixed, as the vampire’s body spiraled down into the clouds and out of sight.

Then she moved. He was supposed to have had a guidance valve in that suit of his. Presumably connected to their ship’s boiler room, so they could follow him right away if anything happened. But he either hadn’t used it or it hadn’t worked, because Mademoiselle Geraldine’s still held steady.

Sophronia had never moved so fast about the hull, hurling and jumping from balcony to balcony in a frenzy, working her way down until she could climb in the hatch to the boiler room.

She had never seen engineering so busy before. It was a swarm of activity, every sootie awake and at work. There were greasers, firemen, and engineers everywhere monitoring the flurry. It couldn’t have been easy. All the boilers were burning, licks of flame coming from the fuel boxes. Steam that didn’t make its way out through the pipes filled the room, clouding the upper portions of the cavernous space and making it seem more intimate. It was incredibly hot.

Sophronia’s only thought was to find Soap. Fortunately, he found her.

“What ho, miss?”

Sophronia babbled, forgetting her manners and grabbing his arms in an excess of emotion. “Soap! The school has to go down with him! His tether will snap!” she yelled helplessly into the loud bustle of the boiler room. “Go down now! Take us down! Please!”

Soap put gentle hands on her clutching arms. “I don’t know what you’re on about, miss, but orders have to come from the pilot’s bubble.”

Sophronia panicked. She remembered only Professor Braithwope’s face when she asked him about tether limits. How terrified he had been. They needed to follow him as quickly and as closely as possible.

“Soap, who is in charge of the boiler room?”

Soap looked at her, mouth open. “What, miss?”

“Take me to him, please? Now.”

Soap lead her through the craziness at a run. Sophronia dogged him in her full dress and hat, looking as if she were about to go for a stroll in Hyde Park. Her skirts were long enough to lift up the soot dust in her wake, like steam from a machine.

They ended up at the base of a tall platform that rose up to one side of the room, allowing the man standing on its top to overlook the entirety of the activity therein.

“You stay here, Soap. No sense in us both getting into trouble.”

“Are you sure, miss?”

“Yes,” said Sophronia. No, thought Sophronia.

Soap’s face puckered in concern, but Sophronia turned her changeable green eyes on him and said, “Please.”

So he let her climb up to the dais alone.

The man who stood on the top was dirty with coal dust and wore simple clothing—jodhpurs, boots, shirt, and vest. He had facial topiary sprouting off of his chin and down his neck like a mountain goat. The beard was red, as was the man’s cruel face.

“Who are you, missy?” he barked.

Sophronia quailed a moment—he was very fierce—and then she remembered Professor Braithwope’s well-tended, if confused, facial hair and found her courage. I must send a beard to rescue a mustache! “Sir, it’s Professor Braithwope. He fell. I saw him. We must track him down or he could be permanently damaged. Please, we have to follow quickly.”

“That’s not possible, little miss. The lever hasn’t dropped. And this is no place for a young lady. Get along with you.”

“Please, listen! We must go down. We must!” This was one of those times Sophronia wished she had blackmail material. Why oh why were those lessons only for older students?

“If we were to go down, that newfangled gadget would have told us.” The man pointed to a small cradle, in which sat a guidance valve. It was partly encased in mechanisms that attached to a lever. Sophronia remembered what she’d learned about the first prototype—that it required two to communicate. This was the second, and Professor Braithwope’s suit housed the first. She remembered Vieve and her troubles convincing the sputter-skates to turn off using her guidance valve. It hadn’t worked properly because she’d needed a second valve. This, then, was supposed to have been the vampire’s safety net. Professor Braithwope, or his suit, should have alerted engineering when something went wrong. That lever should have dropped. But it hadn’t, and the professor was falling.

Sophronia might have argued with the man indefinitely, but there came a screeching, airy, puff noise, and a long metal tube, which ended above the platform, spat out a pelletlike object that nearly hit the man on the head.