languages. You could vanish into any number of places and live very well.”
“That,” Feng spat, “would show cowardice and bring even more disgrace to my family. I will not do that to them.”
“You are not a disgrace,” Alice said tartly. “Just now you helped save Gavin’s life. Surely that should count for something.”
“Perhaps.” Feng sounded more tired than convinced, and fell silent. Alice didn’t know what to say, so she fell silent as well.
At that point, a farm wagon drove by, and Alice’s schoolgirl French was able to persuade the drover to let them ride on the back for a penny. Less than an hour later, they passed through one of the gates of Luxembourg.
The city was cleaner than London. The air smelled of horses and wood smoke and manure, but none of the scents were as cloying as in London, and dirt didn’t hang on the air with yellow coal smoke. A cheerful sun chased away the dank smell and the dampness. The people on the cobblestoned streets bustled about and shouted good- naturedly at one another. Windows stood open to catch the summer breeze instead of locked against the misty damp. A group of chattering children ran past the cart, laughing and shouting their way through a make-believe world of their own. Alice felt her own heart lighten, and wondered what it would have been like to grow up here instead of chilly, drizzly London.
The cart carried the trio to an open market, and they hopped off. A number of church bells rang to announce midday. The metal tones bounced off the hills and scampered up the side streets. Merchants shouted for attention from brightly colored stalls, and a number of surfaces sported garish advertisements for the
Alice bought a loaf of bread and a bit of butter, and they shared it for lunch on a corner. Despite the heat, Alice wore bulky gloves to conceal her spider, but no one seemed to take much notice. Most ladies were wearing gloves of their own.
“What is next?” Feng adjusted his scarf and his pack.
“We need to find paraffin oil for the ship, food stores, and a way to get both back to the ship,” Gavin said. “How much money do we have?”
Alice sighed. It was the moment she’d been dreading. She took the little book of figures from her skirt pocket. “Not near enough,” she admitted. “I performed a few calculations based on how much oil the ship used to get this far, how much weight we need to carry, what the winds are like, and the possibility that paraffin oil prices will be stunningly low—unlikely, considering how difficult it is to make, and how rare.”
“Meaning we won’t have enough money to make it to Peking,” Gavin finished.
“No,” Alice murmured.
“Then,” Gavin said brightly, “our plan is both to earn money and figure out a way to get farther on less oil. So. Feng, you buy supplies and find a way to get them back to the
“What are you going to do?” Alice asked.
“Earn money. Back away.” He whipped out his fiddle, sprinkled a few coins into the case on the ground before him, and began to play. The merry music on the crowded corner attracted attention fairly quickly, and even as Alice watched, a few people tossed coins of their own into Gavin’s case. He winked his thanks at them and continued the song. Alice let the golden song wash over her. Though the violin was playing to the crowd, the musician was playing for her. He smiled at her, and her breath caught.
Feng plucked at her elbow. “We have much to do.”
She reluctantly let him lead her away. A few moments later, he dodged down a less crowded side street and opened his rucksack. “We should do this first.”
“Oh!” she said. “A good idea.”
From the rucksack Feng took a largish jar, the sort that might store pickles. It held a bunch of grass and twigs and bits of food. Amid all this swarmed a large number of little fireflies. They winked green in the shady side street and cast odd shadows into the corners.
“They seem to be reproducing,” Alice observed. “That’s good. Let me.”
She took the jar from Feng and carefully opened the lid just enough to allow perhaps a dozen of them to escape and fly off before she clapped the jar shut again. For a moment, she was back in London, in Hyde Park. Aunt Edwina’s shriveled corpse had just collapsed to the ground and the cloud of fireflies was pouring out. Gavin swept the jar through the cloud, capturing a number of them, while the rest descended upon London to sting and bite. Each firefly carried a tiny organism—a virion, Aunt Edwina had called it—that attacked and destroyed the bacillus that caused the clockwork plague. Eventually the hardy little fireflies would spread throughout the world and cure or inoculate the entire human population, but it would happen faster with help.
One of the fireflies landed on Alice’s neck and bit her. Normal fireflies didn’t bite, of course, but these were different. She only just stopped herself from slapping, allowing it to fly off instead while Feng shoved the precious jar back into his pack. “Now, let us see what we can find for food and oil,” he said, sounding more like his old self. “And perhaps female company.”
“Feng,” Alice warned.
“Male, then.”
“Feng!”
He pulled down his scarf and grinned rakishly at her from beneath the goggles. It wasn’t an expression Alice associated with Orientals. “That was a joke. Maybe.”
“Let’s just do our—” Alice cut herself off. In an alley nearby, a shadow shifted with a small groan, and two figures shuffled into view. They were both male, and dressed in rags. Blood and pus oozed from a dozen sores on their hands and faces. In several places, skin had split, revealing red muscle. Their bodies were thin, almost emaciated, and they smelled of rotting meat. One of them reached toward Alice and Feng, but flinched from even the indirect sunlight afforded by the side street.
