Sophronia summoned Bumbersnoot with an imperious gesture. The mechanimal bumped into her shoe and looked up. “Stay!” she said firmly, and then, “Sleep.” The mechanized dog sat back on its haunches and made a little whistling hum before relaxing down, all internal components stilled. Gracious me, it worked!
Sophronia trotted after the group, ending up behind Sidheag and next to Dimity. “Where are we going?”
“Lessons, I suppose.” Dimity grinned at her.
“At night?”
“Apparently the academy keeps London hours. Might as well get us accustomed to the Season. Or so Sidheag says.”
“I like Sidheag,” said Sophronia, not caring if the tall girl could hear her. “She reminds me of my brother Freddy. Freddy never pinched as hard as the others.”
Dimity lowered her voice. “She’s not very ladylike.”
“I don’t think that is necessarily a character flaw. Some of the most disagreeable people I know are the most ladylike.”
“Oh, I like that!” Dimity pretended offense. She clearly liked to think of herself as a proper lady.
“Present company excluded, of course. Look at Monique. Speaking of which, she and I have an agreement. She won’t tell the teachers about Bumbersnoot if I don’t correct her version of the flywaymen rescue.”
Dimity did not look pleased. “Oh, but Sophronia, she’s such a pollock!”
“I didn’t say you would also hold your tongue. But if you could confine yourself to gossiping with students about it, that would mollify her. And it prevents everyone else from figuring out the real reason for her demotion.”
“Oh, are we keeping the prototype secret, too?”
Sophronia slowed, forcing Dimity to fall back with her and allowing distance to develop between them and the others. “Did you hear the alarm?”
Dimity nodded.
Sophronia explained, “It was flywaymen again. A whole bunch of airdinghies this time, after the prototype. They gave the teachers three weeks to find it. Professor Braithwope and Professor Lefoux are trying to build a fake in the interim. Monique won’t tell them the location of the real one. But I think the teachers are allowing her to keep it secret for some reason.”
“Remind me, why are we so interested?”
“It lost us our luggage. Also, it would prove we were better than Monique if we could produce the prototype for the teachers, now wouldn’t it?”
“But what if Monique stashed it before we even got on board the school?”
“Well, then, we will have to determine a way to sneak off and find it.”
“Already? But we just got here! I haven’t even had my supper.”
All the while they talked, they wended their way through the hallways of the school. As the young ladies were dressed to the height of fashion, this had to be done two by two; any more than that would not fit in the passageway due to the fullness of their skirts. Only Sidheag had a narrow gown, one that looked like it properly belonged on a governess. Sophronia could respect its practicality. Her own Sunday best was not used to such activity as it had seen over the past day. It was beginning to chafe, and she could but wish she had something more sensible to wear.
“What does ‘London hours’ imply?”
Dimity grinned. “Breakfast at noon, morning calls around three, tea at five, supper at eight, entertainment all evening, and bed by one or two. Doesn’t it sound the pip? I’d love to be a London lady. Do you think my parents would be awfully mad if I married a nice politician and gave up on a life of crime? Then I’d get to throw dinner parties all the time.”
Sophronia, country girl, for all she was gentry, found the very idea of London hours shocking in the extreme. “Rise at noon, you say?” Why, that sounds positively decadent!
Much to her shock, Sophronia actually enjoyed the lessons. They were nothing like she expected from either a finishing academy or an ordinary grammar school. She’d had, at varying times in her life, a host of indifferent governesses. They were either overwhelmed by the number of children in the Temminnick household or in possession of the remarkable ability to nap through most everything—including lessons. Education, therefore, had been a matter of Sophronia’s own interest and access to her father’s library, rather than instruction. Consequently, she knew a good deal of ancient history and mythology, something on the fauna of Africa and native hunting practices, and all the rules of cricket, but little else.
“When defending yourself against a vampire,” said Professor Braithwope at the start of the lesson, “it is important to remember three things, whot? He is a good deal faster and stronger than you will ever be. He is immortal, so debilitating pain is more useful than attempted disanimation. He is most likely to go for your neck in a frontal assault. And he is easily distracted by damage to his clothing or personal toilette.”
“That’s four things, Professor,” corrected Monique.
“Don’t be pert, whot,” replied the vampire.
“Are you saying,” Sophronia ventured, “that it’s best to go for the waistcoat? Say, douse it with tea? Or possibly wipe sticky hands on his coat sleeve?”
“Exactly! Very good, Miss Temminnick. Nothing is more distressing to a vampire than a stain. Why do you think containing blood is so important to us? One of the tragedies of any vampire’s life is that in order to survive we must continually handle such an embarrassingly sticky fluid.”
Sophronia wondered whose blood Professor Braithwope drank on board the school. It must be someone loyal to the professor, as if they were a drone. She felt self-consciously for her own neck and thought affectionately of shawls.
The vampire paced back and forth as he lectured, his movements fluid and quick. The room in which they sat in no way resembled a classroom, except that it was called a classroom. A series of brocade settees was arranged in a semicircle around an imitation fireplace, a small piano, and an articulated brass statue of a cow. There were plush carpets on the floor, side tables on which the girls placed their books, and a maid mechanical waiting patiently in the corner in case she was needed to fetch tea. It looked more like a drawing room than anything.
“Another weakness in vampires, of course, is the limited range. A vampire who is hive-bound must stay near his queen, and the queen cannot leave her house. Roves are similarly tethered to a place, although our range is larger. When swarming, of course, all distances are moot, whot. There are some notable exceptions; the queen’s praetoriani has a larger range.”
Monique was trying not to look interested. “Why?”
“Our scientists suspect he is in a constant state of swarm because he is responsible for the queen’s safety.”
This was all very confusing to Sophronia, who had heard very few of the terms he was spouting forth and knew almost nothing—beyond late-night parlor stories—about vampires. I wonder what the professor’s range is? That might be a rude question. She was just about to ask for clarification on the word “praetoriani” when an explosion shook the classroom.
The entire airship lurched to one side and then righted itself. An odd sensation, since, until that moment, Sophronia had quite forgotten they were afloat.
Several of the girls screamed.
Displaying the speed he had only recently described, Professor Braithwope dashed out the door. Rather than waiting to be told to stay put, Sophronia leapt up and followed him.
The hallway was in chaos, filled mainly with young ladies, most of them covered in some kind of soot. Apart from the soot, they were all dressed beautifully, and were chattering among themselves with more animation than distress. Sophronia estimated around two dozen or so; perhaps half the attendees of the school? She hadn’t yet managed a firm grasp on the numbers, but Mademoiselle Grenadine’s seemed to have fewer students than one would expect from a normal finishing school.
Professor Lefoux, taller than most by a head, was trying to control the chaos.
“Now, ladies, calm down, do! Is this any way to behave in a crisis? What has Lady Linette told you time and time again?”
The girls quieted and stood expectantly. One or two took out handkerchiefs and began trying to repair the sooty damage to gown and face.
“That was not a rhetorical question, ladies!” snapped the Frenchwoman. Professor Lefoux herself was far more soot-covered than any of the others, and less inclined to deal with it. She had her hair back in a tight bun that appeared to pull her skin away from her eyes. It made her look like a greyhound that had stuck its head out a carriage window.
“In a crisis, remain calm,” called out one voice from the crowd.
“And?” Professor Lefoux gestured impatiently with both hands.
“Assess any damage to one’s attire. A lady is never disreputable in public, unless intended for manipulation of sympathies.”
“Good. Anything more?”
“Ascertain the nature of the emergency. See if it can be turned to your advantage or used as an opportunity to gather information,” said another voice.
While all this was going on, Sophronia—unconsciously following the instructions being repeated dutifully around her—made her way through the crowd to the open door of Professor Lefoux’s classroom. Professor Braithwope stood on the threshold, staring in. He had out his own handkerchief and was waving it about in front of his face ineffectually, trying to dispel the smoke still permeating the room.
Sophronia nudged up next to him and looked inside. A proper classroom. There were uncomfortable-looking chairs facing tables covered in interesting-looking apparatus and scientific instruments. The walls were tacked with sketches of complex devices. The room, like the hallway, was in chaos. It might have started life as some kind of laboratory or engineering chamber, but its contents were now overturned, smoked, and covered liberally in black powder.
“I suppose Professor Lefoux and her students haven’t had much luck in creating an alternate prototype,” said Sophronia mildly.
“Whot?” The vampire sucked on a fang, looking thoughtful. He turned dark eyes on his newest student. “Appears as if they haven’t. Wait a moment there, whot! Where did you come from, young lady?”
“Your class, sir. Remember, we were just there.”
The vampire only looked at her, not even acknowledging her levity. “Tell me, Miss Temminnick. What was the first thing you wanted to know, just now, before the explosion?”
Sophronia saw no reason to prevaricate. If he really wanted a window to her thoughts, then any possible rudeness was irrelevant. “Your range, sir. Being that you’re a rove, as I’m assuming this school is no hive, I was wondering how a vampire in a dirigible managed to float all over the place the way you do. Then I figured you must be bound to the school itself, or something like.”
“Something like, indeed.”
“Then I was wondering, since you were instructing us in defense against vampires, what would happen if you fell overboard. What would happen to your tether? Would it snap? Would you die?”
The vampire narrowed his eyes, looking down his nose at her. He avoided her question by asking her one of his own. “And the explosion—what do you make of it?”