Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School, #1)(67)

“Dimity, this is Soap. Well, Phineas B. Crow is his proper name.”

Soap grinned his perfect grin and doffed his cap at the still-dumbstruck Dimity. “How-d’ye-do, miss?”

“This is Dimity Plumleigh-Teignmott.”

Dimity bobbed a curtsy and recovered her voice, fortunately remembering to keep it low. “How do you do, Mr. Soap?”

“Oh, just Soap will do, miss.”

Dimity looked up at him, eyes wide. “You know we have a stable lad just like you. You know, in color. Perhaps you know him, name’s Jim, he—”

“I’m loath to cut introductions short, but we really must get moving,” said Sophronia, mostly to forestall anything further Dimity might come up with.

The three of them turned and proceeded in a measured way toward the teachers’ section of the ship. They spent a good deal of time pausing to let the obstructor work its invisible magic, dashing around a frozen mechanical, and then going onward.

Fortunately, the record room was exactly where Vieve said it would be: on the upper floor of the front section of the airship.

Getting there was rather less easy than it might have been. Dimity was no climber, and she kept wobbling around and squeaking abo sqirship.

Directly above was the forward squeak deck, where Sophronia had stood on her first day and acquired Bumbersnoot. Below were the levels containing the teachers’ private quarters; below that, the massive boiler room. The forward section housed everything important, and the attic level was one of the only ones Sophronia hadn’t visited. Consequently, she was dying of curiosity.

Dimity signaled them to keep their voices down. “Professor Braithwope, remember? He’s still awake, and he’s only a level or two below us, with vampire-acute hearing.”

Wish she’d thought of that when she was squeaking, thought Sophronia.

They continued along in silence. The level was somewhat squashed. Even Sophronia felt cramped, and she was by far the littlest of the three. It was not rigged with gas parasol lighting. They had to feel their way along in the dark.

They found the room, conveniently labeled RECORD LIBRARY—CONTAINING RECORDS OF IMPORT in big gold letters.

There was a soldier mechanical directly outside the door. It spotted them approaching and whirred to life, puffing smoke out from below its headpiece in a huff of alarm. Before Sophronia could even raise the obstructor, the mechanical raised one cannonlike arm and shot at them.

Soap dove down on instinct. Sophronia and Dimity flinched.

They found themselves covered in a net of some spongy, sticky material, like tripe, that was nevertheless very strong. The mechanical advanced toward them, hissing menacingly.

I feel like a partridge wrapped in bacon, thought Sophronia. Most unpleasant. Sophronia couldn’t raise her arm to point with the obstructor, as the netting held it firm at her side. “Dimity, can you reach your sewing scissors?”

“I can’t move,” peeped Dimity, and then she made a puft noise as some of the sticky netting got into her mouth.

“Soap?” Sophronia tried to look about to see the sootie.

“I’m better off than you are, miss. But it’s a mite embarrassing.”

Sophronia glanced down. In diving to avoid the blast, Soap had ended up partly shielded by the skirts of her dress. Only one side of his body was trapped to the floor by the netting; the other half was under her petticoats.

The mechanical was upon them, and had apparently been instructed to try to capture any intruder, but was confused to have caught three at once. It was making bewildered whirring noises and rocking side to side on its track as it sifted through its protocols for the correct approach.

“Do you have any sewing scissors?” Sophronia asked Soap.

“No, miss, but I have a knife.”

“Can you get to it and try to free up my wrist?”

Soap squirmed, fluffing out petticoats as he wiggled his free arm. Dimity made a muffled squeak of alarm at this indignity to Sophronia’s person. Soap managed the task barely, cutting away enough of the strands to allow Sophronia to raise her arm and point it at the mechanical. Unfortunately, the strands were now stuck to his knife.

The soze=theldier mechanical appeared to have reached a decision. It leaned back and brought up its other arm, this one spouting smoke.

“It’s going to burn us alive!” gasped Dimity.

Before the mechanical could do anything further, Sophronia hit it with the invisible blast from the obstructor. The mechanical froze, but they still had to extract themselves from the net. Soap continued to hack from below with his knife, using the hem of Sophronia’s gown to clean it as he did so. Sophronia managed to access her reticule with her free hand and pulled out her sewing scissors. She cut away at the netting around Dimity until she, too, could get to her scissors.

“This stuff is so sticky. I’m sure it’s food by nature. Should we be handling raw foodstuffs? My dress is entirely ruined, and even using it to wipe with isn’t very effective.” Dimity was not pleased.

Sophronia checked the tackiness of the net between two fingers. I wonder if oil might work. She fished some perfume oil out of her reticule—rose-scented. She cleaned her scissors as best she was able and then coated the blades with the oil. It worked a treat.

“Would you look at that?” Soap was impressed. Sophronia dropped the bottle down to him. He coated his knife, then handed the oil up to Dimity. Things went much faster after that, although they all ended up smelling like roses.