Etiquette & Espionage

LESSON 12: PROPER COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL SITUATIONS

Who’s that?” came a querulous voice into the darkness. “I know you’re there; show yourselves!”

Sophronia stepped forward. “Buck up, Pillover. It’s only me.”

Pillover squinted. “Miss Sophronia? What are you doing here? How’d you get in? Is that my sister with you?”

Sophronia dragged a reluctant Vieve and Soap forward. “No, but I do have company. Pillover, may I introduce Genevieve Lefoux and Phineas B. Crow? Vieve, Soap, this is Pillover Plumleigh-Teignmott, Miss Dimity’s brother.”

Pillover gave his two new acquaintances a very haughty look. “Riffraff?”

“Only on the surface. They’re both good eggs. Vieve here is an intellectual, and Soap’s, erm”—she paused, struggling—“an engineer of a kind,” she managed to come up with.

Soap gave a little snort, but Vieve looked childishly delighted to be described as academic in any way.

Pillover looked Vieve over and seemed to accept her title readily enough for all that she was nine. Then he turned to look up at Soap, illuminated by a bit of moonlight. “But Miss Sophronia, he’s colored!”

Sophronia tilted her head and contemplated Soap as though she had never noticed his skin tone before. “It’s irrelevant. Or do I mean irreverent?”

“It is?” Pillover arched one brow.

Sophronia nodded firmly. “Yes.”

Pillover bent and picked up his book. “If you say so.”

“Pillover, what are you doing here, instead of at the theater?”

The boy shrugged. “I’m tired of dealing with Pistons. Oily pains, the lot of them.”

“Pistons?” He can’t possibly mean roving bits of steam engines, can he?

Soap sidled in. “Miss Sophronia, we don’t have much time.”

“Oh, of course. Want to come, Pillover? We’re going to the roof to look at a transmitter.”

“Rather!” Pillover’s normally dour face brightened at the idea.

So the infiltration party increased to four, and they trotted onward.

“Is he going to be useful?” Soap asked Sophronia.

“You never know,” replied Sophronia wisely. She turned to their new companion. “So, these Pistons?”

“Oh, they think they are something quite exclusive, skulking about in riding boots, and wearing black shirtwaists, and being all gloomy about the state of the Empire. They sew cogs on the breasts of their jackets in a non-useful manner. Really it’s only an excuse to push everyone else around. And no one does anything about them, because half of them are supposedly the sons of Picklemen. I think it’s all faked, but they’ve got most of the school stitched up. You’d think we were here to learn, but apparently not.”

Sophronia was awed by Pillover’s chatter. “Oh, I know what you mean. We’ve got Monique de Pelouse living with us.”

Pillover wrinkled his nose. “Must be quite the lark.”

“Indeed. She’s already tattled me out.”

“No?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And how’s my pestilence of a sister settling?”

“Better than I. Although she fainted again.”

“Blood?”

“Blood.”

“From what I hear of your school, that’s to be expected.”

“We had lessons in knife-fighting from a werewolf.”

“Werewolf? Bully! We don’t have any supernaturals here. It’s quite a dearth in the deanship if you ask me. Any reputable school ought to have at least one vampire professor. Eton has three. You lot are only girls, and you’ve a vampire and a werewolf. Jolly unfair, that’s what I call it.”

By this time they had climbed up several flights of stairs, getting ever closer to the roof, when they came face-to-face with a maid mechanical. Instantly, Vieve and Soap stepped in front of Sophronia and began bouncing about.

“What are you doing?” Pillover demanded.

“Keeping it from deducing that I’m a girl,” explained Sophronia.

“Oh, of course, I forgot.” After a hesitation, Pillover too began an awkward gyration. They all looked so ridiculous that Sophronia had to suppress a giggle. She managed to slip past the distracted maid and thought about reminding Vieve of her obstructor, but it was so much fun watching them dance she decided not to.

They climbed the last set of stairs up into one of the many turrets, only to be faced with a locked door. Sophronia rattled the handle hopefully. Nothing.

She looked around. “Anyone know how to pick a lock?”

“Some intelligencer you are,” complained Pillover.

“I’ve only been there a month! I can curtsy now, and my eyelash fluttering is practically unparalleled.”

“Well, why not flutter your way into the locked room, then?”

Sophronia ignored this and looked at Vieve hopefully. “Inventions?”

Vieve shook her head.

“Stand aside, ladies,” said Soap gallantly. “I shall rescue you.”

Pillover gave Soap a disgusted look at being included with the “ladies,” but made room for him to approach the door.

The tall sootie pulled a tiny leather pouch from some mysterious inside pocket and unrolled it to reveal a set of variously sized metal rods. He examined the lock closely and then selected one of the rods. He stuck this into the keyhole, and after a good deal of fiddling, there came a click.

Before they could push inside, Pillover said, “Careful! It might be booby-trapped.”

Everyone stopped and looked at him.

“Evil genius training school, remember? I’d booby-trap it, if I were them, and I’m only discourteous genius level.”

Sophronia stepped forward. “This was my idea. I’ll do it.”

Acting on instinct—they had yet to cover contravention of houses, house parties, and seating arrangements—Sophronia opened the door a tiny fraction and ran her finger slowly down the crack. A handbreadth up from the ground, she encountered a taut piece of twine. She twisted her fingers around the door, following the string, feeling along the jamb for a tie point. She found it with some relief, as the trap would be impossible to thwart without knowing which end activated it.

She pulled out her sewing scissors, and keeping the twine taut with one hand, cut it with the other. Is it activated by additional tension from the door opening, or a release in tension when the string snaps? she wondered. She put her sewing scissors back in her pinafore and pulled out a hair ribbon. She had to give her teachers credit: they were right to insist all students carry scissors, handkerchiefs, perfume, and hair ribbons at all times. At some point she’d learn why they also required a red lace doily and a lemon.

She tied the hair ribbon carefully to the end of the twine and then, keeping the tension as steady as possible, pushed open the door, belaying the hair ribbon at the same time.

The boys and Vieve watched all of this in impressed silence.

Finally, Pillover said, “You are getting a good education!”

I suppose I am. By that time Sophronia was all the way inside the room, hand extended, twine and ribbon stretching toward a crouched toadlike device to the right, slightly behind the door.

Vieve bustled over to it. “Compressed tension vent with boiled beet projectiles. Ingenious! Not dangerous, but it would cause quite the mess and definitely identify any intruders. Just a moment; let me disarm the catapults.”

The young girl made a few adjustments. There was a sad squelching noise, and the pull against Sophronia’s hair ribbon relaxed. She untied it from the twine and put it back into her pinafore. This is fun!

The room in which they found themselves was built of gray stone and was bare of all furniture, even chairs. There were only the trap and a series of telescopes and other devices set to look up at the skies. These were spaced out, with one to each of the many slotted windows, none of which had glass. The place felt very old, as if they had stepped into some fairy tale. Rapunzel, perhaps? If Rapunzel were a particular fan of astral observation.

One of the windows was bare of devices, and outside it, someone had built an unstable-looking balcony.

“There we are,” said Vieve proudly.

They all went over to the window and looked.

“Rickety,” pronounced Pillover.

Sophronia pointed to a lever and pulley system on one side. “I think it raises and lowers, like a dumbwaiter. Follow me.” She climbed out onto the platform.

“This is not a good idea,” Pillover said, following her.

Soap only grinned and bounced after. Vieve came last and immediately went over to examine the pulleys.

“Looks sound to me,” she pronounced.

Well, Vieve hasn’t led us astray so far, thought Sophronia. “Shall we?”

Vieve turned a little crank. Nothing happened.

“You aren’t strong enough,” accused Soap.

Vieve looked frustrated and not a little offended. “Actually, I don’t have enough mass. Being young is so terribly inconvenient!”

“On the bright side, you’re only nominally young,” consoled Sophronia. “You don’t act your age at all.”

Vieve blushed crimson in delight. “Oh, why, thank you very much!”

Soap went over to help her man the lever. He looked gangly, but with all the coal he had to move every day, Sophronia suspected him of being quite strong. So he proved.

The contraption raised them up to the roof, where they disembarked to finally face the infamous communication machine. It looked like a deformed cross between a potting shed and a portmanteau.

“That’s it?”

“I guess so.”

“It looks like two privies,” objected Soap.

Sophronia elbowed him. “Don’t be crass.”

“Well, it does!”

They made their way over to the structure. It looked, if possible, even more odd up close, perched in embarrassed shabbiness atop the turret, which was all ancient stone and crenellated edges. They opened the door. The shed was divided into two human-sized compartments, each filled to bursting with a peculiar assortment of tangled machinery. There were tubes and dials, and what looked to be glass boxes filled with black sand, and here and there blank cradles in obvious want of further enhancements.

Vieve immediately dropped down and crawled in, squirming her small form under various compartments to examine the undersides and any attachment points.

Pillover looked around in a lackluster manner, poked at a few things, and then mooched away. Sophronia and Soap were more entertained by watching Vieve’s antics than by the communication machine itself, which was utterly incomprehensible to both of them.

“Well, I’m glad we came all this way for this,” said Soap eventually.

“I did think it might give us some kind of indication as to the nature of the prototype, and thus where Monique might have stashed it.” Sophronia’s tone was apologetic. It seemed like a wasted trip.

Vieve reemerged at that juncture, very animated. “This is amazing! This isn’t like that benighted telegraph invention. I don’t think it requires any kind of long-distance wiring!”

“Then how could it possibly communicate from point to point?” Sophronia’s forehead crinkled.

“It looks like there might be an aether conductor in there!” Vieve came over, wiping her small hands on her jodhpurs, leaving greasy black streaks.

Sophronia frowned, wishing she’d read more on the atmospheres. “Do you think they might be trying to bounce directed messages through the aethersphere?”

“It would explain why it has to be on the roof—closer to the aether.” Vieve dimpled at her.

“And why they would involve our school. If necessary, we could lift the whole thing right up inside the aether,” added Sophronia.

Vieve’s eyes glowed. “Can you imagine, point-to-point messaging, long distances? It would revolutionize the whole world.”

Soap and Sophronia exchanged looks. Sophronia was thinking about the fact that she’d had no letters from her family on board, nor had she been able to write any. Theoretically, the students should have been asked for letters before arriving in Swiffle-on-Exe. But nothing had been said on the subject, and Sophronia was pretty certain her punishment, like Monique’s, probably extended to communication off-ship. She wondered if Pillover had received anything since she saw him last. I suppose it’s possible parents simply ship us away and then forget about us.

Soap was probably thinking about the nefarious applications for a communication device. Vieve, a true scientist, saw only the upside of any contraption. Sophronia could imagine why flywaymen might want access.

Sophronia said, “So we are thinking that the missing prototype must be a valve that somehow facilitates… bouncing?”

Vieve nodded. “Which explains the dodecahedron shape you said you saw. Multifaceted for multiple directions and to sympathize with the aetheric humors, which we have always hypothesized are trapezoidal.”

Sophronia looked at Soap and Pillover. “You understand any of that?”

Soap shook his head.

Pillover shrugged.

Sophronia said, “Well, I understand I can clean that glove of mine now.”

“Come again?” Pillover looked at her in confusion.

“Long story, you were in it, and it was all for naught.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Only if you’re interested in the postal services.”

Pillover looked as though he might be, but Sophronia was starting to worry about the time.

Vieve was practically vibrating. “This is so exciting!”

“Yes, well, that said, we had better return to the airship, now that we have a bit of a better idea what’s going on.”

“Yes, I think we better had,” Soap agreed. He was looking at the position of the moon, clearly concerned.

They made their way safely back through Bunson’s—well, mostly.

About halfway down, they rounded a corner and ran smack-dab into a maid mechanical. Literally. Sophronia hit up against her with an oof and stumbled backward, banging into Pillover and stepping on Soap’s foot. This did not give them enough time to do the little dance of obscurity, nor for Vieve to use her obstructor. The maid identified Sophronia as female and instantly sounded the alarm—a high-pitched whistle. This, in turn, triggered a schoolwide alert.

Unlike the bells of Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, Bunson’s alarm seemed to be based on the noise made by a wobbling saw, only louder. It was an amusing wob-woob that vibrated through the entire hodgepodge building. The hallways were instantly filled with mechanicals, and one or two humans as well. Sophronia leapt for a nearby door, opened it, and dove inside. The other three crowded after, only to find they had trapped themselves in a broom closet with no possible avenue of escape.

“Simply marvelous. What do we do now?” wondered Pillover.

“Quiet,” said Sophronia.

He ignored her, continuing gloomily, “We’re damned. I’ll be turned away, having achieved only discourteous. What will Father say? No Plumleigh-Teignmott has ever been lower than spiteful genius. The family honor is at stake.”

“What’re you still larking with us for?” Soap wanted to know. “You’re allowed to roam free, remember?”

“Oh, good point.” Pillover straightened out of his slouch and made to leave the closet.

Sophronia grabbed his arm. “You can’t leave now! You’ll give away our hiding place.”

“It’s only a matter of time.” Pillover was unsympathetic. “They’ll do a schoolwide sweep.” Then he pointed to a nearby broom sharing the closet with them. “Sweep. Ha.”

“Delightful. Now we’re trapped in a closet with puns.” Sophronia gave him a dirty look. “Wait, of course—you are meant to be here. Perfect! Everyone turn away from me for a moment.”

The three others looked at her in confusion.

“Simply do as I ask, please?”

Despite being crowded into the closet, the other three all managed to turn their backs on her.

Sophronia shimmied out of one of her two petticoats. “All decent.”

They turned back around.

She handed the undergarment to Pillover.

“Ugh. What’s this for?”

“If you put it on and go out there, they will think it was all a false alarm.”

“Absolutely not!”

“Oh, come on, Pill, please?” Sophronia tried batting her eyelashes.

Pillover appeared to be immune to eyelashes. “The indignity of it!”

“We could come up with a reasonable explanation for your wearing it. Would that help?” wheedled Sophronia.

“Justification for my trotting around wearing lady’s undergarments? I hardly see how.”

Soap’s eyes were sparkling with amusement, and Vieve was dimpling openly at the very idea of Pillover in a skirt. Pillover stood holding the petticoat between thumb and forefinger as if it were contaminated with some dreaded chemical.

“Go on, pull it on over your clothes and go out there,” Sophronia urged.

“You could say you were running some experiment dangerous to your nether regions,” suggested Vieve.

“You could say you were testing the response time of the maid mechanicals,” suggested Sophronia.

“You could say you like lady’s undergarments,” suggested Soap.

“I’m doomed.” Pillover rolled his eyes and flapped the petticoat.

“Oh, go on, Pill,” Sophronia pushed.

Pillover, grumbling, pulled the petticoat on and all the way up to his armpits, as it was far too long for him. Sophronia handed him her hair ribbon to use as a belt. Soap was clearly holding in laughter. Pillover took a deep breath and straightened upright with great dignity and aplomb.

Sophronia listened at the door, hand up to keep the others quiet. Then, when there seemed to be a lull in the activities outside in the corridor, quick as she could, she opened the door, dragged Pillover forward, and thrust him out, slamming the door closed behind him.

The rumbling in the hallway escalated for a minute and then quieted. Into the silence a deep voice boomed out, “Pillover Thaddeus Plumleigh-Teignmott, what are you wearing?”

They heard Pillover reply querulously, “A petticoat, Headmaster.”

“So I see. You had better have an excellently malevolent explanation as to why.”

“Well, you see, sir,” Pillover started to say, then, “Ouch. Please, sir, not the ear.”

“Come with me!”

“Yes, sir.”

A clatter of mechanicals on rails and the thud of footsteps followed, leaving the hallway in silence.

“What do you know?” whispered Soap at long last. “He was useful.”

After that, they managed to escape Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique without further incident. Running up the goat path, Sophronia turned back to look at it only once. She thought that the school looked like an ill-decorated, oversized mangle of chess pieces.

“Our academy is much nicer,” she asserted between breaths as they jogged along. The moor mists had not arisen, and the great caterpillar of multiple dirigibles pressed together that was Mademoiselle Geraldine’s floated gamely before them, lit by a picturesque golden moon.

“You believe so?” Vieve tilted her head in the manner of one who rarely considered the aesthetics of buildings. “Well, ours floats.”

“I mean, it’s less cobbled together.”

Vieve said, “I always thought it had a rather hatlike aspect—like a great floating turban.”

Sophronia tilted her head, but did not quite see it.

They raced on.

Sophronia was worried. “Do you think we made our window?”

Soap nodded. “Yes, but there might be another problem.” He pointed over at a distant hill on their right. There, under the light of the moon, was the shadowy form of a wolf. Wearing a top hat.

“Is that who I think it is?” Sophronia hoped despite herself that it might be some kind of very large dog.

“Know of any other wolves roaming the moors in evening dress?”

“He’s not supposed to be near civilization at the full moon!” Vieve objected.

“Guess someone made a mistake somewhere,” said Soap.

“This is not good,” Sophronia said, stating the obvious. The wolf’s muzzle was up and he was scenting the air. Almost as she spoke, his shaggy head turned in their direction.

“We’re closer to the school than he is,” Soap pointed out.

“Yes, but he’s supernatural,” said Vieve, who clearly had some experience in the matter of werewolves. Her little face, normally open and friendly, was pale with fear.

Sophronia took the lead. “Enough talk, everybody—run!” Hiking up her skirts, she suited her actions to her words, feeling no shame over the fact that she was down one petticoat and showing ankle to all the world.

Soap quickly outpaced her. His legs were longer, and he was unencumbered by skirts. When he reached the underside of the forward section, he began frantically hopping about and gesticulating wildly. Only then did Sophronia realize that the rope ladder from the boiler room had yet to be dropped down.

She and Vieve came panting up. “Are we too early?”

“Possibly.”

Sophronia picked up a clod of dirt and threw it at the underside of the hull, close to where she thought the hatch might be. She missed completely; the ship was higher up than she thought. Soap and Vieve followed her lead. Vieve also missed, but Soap’s clod hit and spattered against the hatch.

Nothing happened. The werewolf had nearly reached their hill.

At the last possible moment, the hatch popped open and the rope ladder dropped.

“Soap, you go first; you’re fastest.”

“But Miss Sophronia, you’re a lady. Ladies always go first!”

Sophronia threw her shoulders back and looked him in the eye. “I am trained for this.” She wasn’t yet, but it was worth the lie. “Don’t contest a direct order during an active intelligencer undertaking!”

Soap frowned, but he clearly hated to argue with a lady. Least of all Sophronia. He began climbing up.

“Vieve, you next.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Vieve began climbing.

Sophronia started up last, and just as she did so, she snuck one last look at the werewolf.

With a vicious growl, he was upon her.

For the second time that night, Sophronia was grateful to have worn proper dress. Captain Niall dove for her in a tremendous leap of the kind described in countless gothic novels. His jaws were open, his mouth an angry cavern of teeth and dripping saliva, and when he struck he bit down hard, ruthlessly savaging her… other petticoat.

Sophronia screamed and kicked out.

The werewolf’s teeth were stuck in the bottom reinforced hem. This was her strongest-starched underskirt, the kind designed to support a gown in a full and feminine pouf.

Sophronia kicked again and her foot struck the beast’s sensitive nose.

Captain Niall shook his huge, shaggy head, partly in pain and partly to get loose from the petticoat. His top hat wiggled back and forth hypnotically. The combined weight and motion dragged the undergarment off Sophronia. Both the werewolf and the petticoat fell to the ground. Sophronia, remembering that amazingly high leap the captain had performed in order to get them up on board the ship originally, began climbing as fast as she possibly could.

Sophronia’s under-petticoat was of good-quality horsehair, thick and very durable. It should be; it was a hand-me-down that had survived three sisters before her.

But the werewolf, with supernatural strength, tore through the thick fabric as if it were fine muslin. Captain Niall wrestled with the garment briefly before shaking himself loose from the tatters. He crouched down and leapt for Sophronia again.

Sophronia angled her bottom around and swung the rope ladder to one side, avoiding the werewolf by the narrowest of margins.

“Captain Niall,” she said between pants, “I liked you very much better when you weren’t trying to kill me!”

The werewolf landed, shook his head, and whined as from the hatch above someone pelted him with a handful of coal. One particularly large lump hit his already-abused nose.

He tilted his head back and howled.

Sophronia attained the safety of the hatch. Multiple soot-covered hands reached for her and dragged her inside. Meanwhile, Soap threw another handful of coal down at the werewolf. Next to him, a few of the larger sooties stood grimly clutching steel stoking poles, ready to fend off the beast if necessary.

There was no need, for as soon as Sophronia tumbled inside they hauled the rope ladder up after her and slammed the hatch closed. The wolf jumped up, crashing hard into the underside of the airship. Had the hull’s wooden beams not been reinforced with iron bracings, Sophronia was certain they would have shattered.

“What does he think he can do?” wondered Vieve, while Sophronia recovered her breath and brushed herself off.

“I don’t think he’s thinking at all,” replied Sophronia, rising from her hands and knees to her feet, panting and shaking. That was the werewolf of her childhood nightmares. “Someone ought to lock him up! He’s dangerous,” she said finally, when she felt her voice wouldn’t shake.

“And he’s ruined your other petticoat.”

“Oh, goodness. How will we get it back? Someone might realize it was mine!”

“Not a chance. See?” Soap pointed down out of the hatch, which the sooties had cracked open slightly. He had his eyes pressed to the gap.

Sophronia went over and joined him. She looked down.

Captain Niall, having apparently resigned himself to losing his quarry, was savaging her horsehair petticoat into teeny, tiny shreds.

“Really, what did my poor petticoat do to offend?”

Vieve said, “I can see now that your insistence on ladies’ dress is very useful, in its way.”

Sophronia looked the nine-year-old over. “You going to give it a try, then?”

“I didn’t say it was that useful.”

Sophronia had a sudden, terrifying thought. “Oh, goodness, the other students! They don’t know Captain Niall is here, do they? What if they happen upon him on the way home from the play? We must warn them!”

“But how to warn them without explaining that you were out?” wondered Soap.

“I’ll claim I saw him out the parlor window. I must go.” Sophronia stood. She was covered in soot, her face smudged, her skirts flat, and her hair loose.

“But Miss Sophronia, look at you!”

“Can’t be helped, have to chance it. Lives are at stake.”

“But who are you going to tell? Everyone is at the theater.”

“Not everyone. Come on, Vieve! The last thing I need is to be trapped by mechanicals again. I need you and the obstructor.”