Heartless

cracked and then broke, spilling the yellow fluid and with it a strong, suffocating scent. Lady Maccon backed away hurriedly, lifting her ruffled skirts out of the toxic liquid. Her eyes began burning and watering. She coughed as the sensation moved to her throat, and she tried to breathe in shallow gasps. Luckily, most of the liquid was absorbed quickly by the hard, compact dirt of the contrivance chamber floor.

The body inside flopped over and against the cracked side of the tank, one hand dangling out through the broken glass. Quickly, Alexia tugged off her glove and stepped up to it. She touched the cold dead hand once, flesh to flesh, and just like that, it was over.

The wailing stopped. The body part wisps vanished—mist gone to aether. All that remained was the clanking sound of Madame Lefoux’s machines in motion and the empty air.

“May you find your stillness, Formerly Lefoux,” said Alexia.

She looked ruefully at the mess before her: broken glass, fractured tank, dead body. She abhorred such untidiness, but she had no time to see to the cleanup. Best to contact Floote on the matter as soon as she found some time.

With that, she turned away and waddled back out of the chamber and into the passageway. She hoped the clientele above her was still arguing over hairmuffs, for she had no time to scheme her way around exposing Madame Lefoux’s secret entrance this time. She must stop her friend from imprudent action. And, more importantly, she desperately needed to find out why. Why Madame Lefoux, such an intelligent woman, would try to do something so dull-witted as mount a frontal attack on Buckingham Palace in order to kill the Queen of England.

Fortunately, the hairmuff obsession was still in full sway. Almost no one noticed Lady Maccon scuttle, like some kind of gimpy goose, out of the door in the wall. She then made her way through the myriad of dangling hats and out of the shop. A few remarked upon the smell of formaldehyde, and one or two noted her ladyship’s undignified ascension into the depths of her fancy carriage, but few thought to connect the two. However, the head shopgirl did, and made a note to tell the mistress everything, before returning to the sudden increase in hairmuff orders.

Lady Maccon remembered what Madame Lefoux had said about relocation. She’d arranged to utilize space in the Pantechnicon. Alexia was unaware of the location of the warehouse consortium. Being a matter of trade, it was not something Lady Maccon ought to know. Sometimes Madame Lefoux’s engineering interests led her into the most peculiar parts of London. Alexia had, of course, heard of the Pantechnicon but had never had occasion to visit such a thing as the facility in which Giffard’s Incorporated housed and maintained its dirigible fleet. The Pantechnicon stored and distributed a good deal of furniture as well. The very idea of a lady of good breeding visiting such a place. There would be tables lying about, on their sides, naked! Not to mention flaccid dirigibles! Alexia shuddered at the very idea. However, sometimes the muhjah had to go where Lady Maccon would not, and so she gave the order and trusted her driver to know the location, which turned out to be Belgravia, a deeply suspect part of London.

After clattering for some time down one cobbled street after another, having passed through the worst and most raucous crowds of the West End and moving toward Chelsea, the carriage drew to a stop. Lady Maccon’s speaking tube rang imperiously.

She picked up the listening trumpet. “Yes?”

“Motcomb Street, madam.”

“Thank you.” Never heard of it. She looked suspiciously out the carriage window. What Lady Maccon had never quite fathomed was how extraordinarily large the Pantechnicon had to be in order to accommodate both flaccid dirigibles and naked tables. She was in front of a massive caterpillar of warehouses. Each one resembled a barn, only bigger, being several stories high with arched metal roofs. Alexia assumed these must somehow open or come off in order to accommodate the dirigibles. The street was dimly lit by the flickering yellow glow of torchlight rather than by the steady white of gas, and the area was bereft of humanity. This was a part of the city that catered to day dealers, workers of transport and industry who loaded and unloaded their contraptions and carriers under the light of the sun. It was not a place for the likes of Lady Maccon to be traipsing about on full moon.

But Alexia was not going to let a little thing like the dark emptiness of an alleyway prevent her from proceeding with her intent to assist a friend in dire need of sensible council. So she alighted from the carriage, Ethel in one hand and her parasol in the other. She waddled slowly along the row of gigantic structures, listening at the door of each, standing on tiptoe to peer in at small dingy windows—the only means of viewing the interior. She rubbed the grimy coating on leaded glass with her soiled glove. The Pantechnicon appeared to be as abandoned as the street. There was no sign of Madame Lefoux or her contraption.

Then, finally, inside the last building in the row, Alexia caught sight of a spark of light. Inside, Madame Lefoux, or the person she assumed must be Madame Lefoux, wore a glass and metal bucket over her head, like the offspring of a medieval knight’s helmet and a fishbowl. She was also wearing the most hideous pair of coveralls and was busy with a flaming torch, welding great slabs of metal together. Her giant mechanical construct had taken its final form, and Alexia could not help but emit a little gasp of amazement at the sight of the monstrous thing.

It was colossal, at least two stories high. The brimless bowler-hat portion now rested atop eight articulated metal tentacles that hung down like pillars, but if Lady Maccon knew Madame Lefoux, each would be able to move independently of the others. A remarkable creature, indeed. It looked like nothing so much as a massive upright octopus on tiptoe. Alexia wondered what it said about her current state that this comparison made her hungry. Ah, pregnancy.

She banged on the window to attract Madame Lefoux’s attention, but the French woman clearly could not hear, for she did not pause in her activities.

Lady Maccon circumnavigated the building, looking for an entrance. It had massive loading doors street-side, but these were bolted firmly shut. There must be a smaller, more convenient, one-person door somewhere about the place.

Finally, she found it. It, too, was locked. She whacked at it with her parasol in frustration, but brute force was also ineffectual. Not for the first time, Alexia wished she knew how to pick a lock. Conall had frowned most severely upon that particular request and on her proposed venture into Newgate Prison in order to hire the necessary criminally minded individual as instructor.

She went back round to the front and considered breaking one of the lower windows; while it was too small to climb through, even if she were not eight months pregnant, she could at least yell. A massive noise interrupted her right before she was about to swing the parasol.

The building began shaking slightly, the metal roof creaking most terribly, and the two great loading bay doors clattered against their hinges. Gouts of steam billowed from beneath the doors and around the edges. Metal screeched and the trundling thrumming sound of a steam engine in full operation emanated from within. Alexia backed away from the door. The sounds began to get louder and louder and the doors shook with more vigor. More steam puffed forth.

It was getting closer.

Lady Maccon waddled as fast as she could away from the doors, and just in the nick of time, too, for they burst open, crashing against the sides of the building in a great splintering of wood, left to hang askew on their hinges.

A gigantic tiptoeing octopus came through, looking almost as though it floated atop the cloud of steam that gushed forth from under its mantle to swirl about its tentacles. The doors were not quite tall enough to permit an easy exit, but this didn’t seem to trouble the creature. It simply took a chunk of the roof off with its head. Tiles fell and splintered, dust wafted up, and steam wafted down as the world’s biggest automated cephalopod tentacled its way into the London street.

“The octomaton, I presume. I see Genevieve didn’t quite get the size measurements right,” said Alexia to no one in particular.

The octomaton didn’t notice Lady Maccon, a rotund little being far below in the shadows, but it spotted her carriage. It raised up one tentacle and took careful aim. A burst of fire came pouring out the tip. The beautifully matched horses (chosen for appearance and docility around werewolves rather than for bravery) panicked, as did the stunned coachman (chosen for precisely the same reasons). All three took off at high speed. The carriage careened wildly around a street corner, ribbons trailing merrily behind it, and disappeared into the night.

“Wait!” cried Lady Maccon. “Come back!” But the conveyance was long gone. “Oh, bother. Now what?”