8

In the morning, they strip-searched the passengers.

The process required some orchestration, as of course neither Sebastien nor Jack could examine the female passengers. This inconvenience was surmounted by sending Mlle. LeClere, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Zhang, Miss Meadows, and Mrs. Leatherby aside as a group to examine each other, with the airship’s two chambermaids and one female washroom attendant acting as matrons in the smoking room, while the men occupied the larger lounge. From the giggling that ensued, either all eight of them were in collusion, or all eight of them were agreed that men, in general, were a ridiculous species though perhaps best humored.

Meanwhile, Sebastien and Captain Hoak examined the unclothed chest of each of the men.

It was not an absolute test, of course, but if any of them were a university-trained sorcerer (as opposed to a hedge-wizard or conjurer) he would have borne on his chest the ineradicable mark of his training, a sigil tattooed over the sternum. The mark would be red for the great universities at Oxford, Wittenberg, Paris, Rome, and Kyiv, black for lesser colleges.

There were no schools for sorcerers in Spain.

The sigil would be an outline for a wizard who had matriculated, fully inked for a graduate. But it would be there.

It came as little surprise to Sebastien that Oczkar Korvin, who had maneuvered to be last in line, said softly “I believe this is what you are looking for,” and unbuttoned the breast of his shirt to reveal a black-inked design the size of a cigarette case. “Prague,” he said. “Eighteen seventy-nine. Are you going to arrest me?”

“Not only on the strength of that,” Sebastien said. “Mademoiselle LeClere, however, has twice lied–and claimed you as her alibi. Tell me–did she hope to inherit, when Madame Pontchartrain was gone?”

“Neither Mademoiselle LeClere nor I had anything to do with Madame’s disappearance,” Korvin said. “Nor do I expect you have anything but circumstantial evidence to suggest it.”

Sebastien smiled, his shoulders and chest tightening as he considered the probable course of events. “Circumstantial evidence is enough to hold you and your young lady for questioning, however. And Mademoiselle LeClere hardly exhibits the marks of a clean conscience.”

“It’s no crime to study sorcery.” Korvin úr calmly rebuttoned his shirt. “If we’re condemning on history and circumstances, Don Sebastien, what about yourself?”

It had been inevitable. If Miss Meadows knew, then likely so did her entire coterie. Sebastien opened his mouth to respond–

Oczkar Korvin raised his right hand, fingers and palms bent around a hollow concavity, and Sebastien’s world went white.

He folded reflexively against the light, shielding his face, his face scorched and the flesh on his hands and wrists searing. He groaned, or perhaps screamed; his ears were full of the roaring of that terrible light, and he couldn’t hear anything except, suddenly, Jack’s voice shouting.

The pain fell away. The white brilliance darkened, a shadow protecting him: Jack had lunged between Sebastien and the light and then the light was gone, whisked away, as Korvin slipped the enchanted lens into which he had summoned sunlight back inside his waistcoat pocket.

Jack turned, still covering Sebastien with his body, and reached out tentatively to touch his hair. “Are you–”

“I’ll live,” Sebastien answered, and Jack managed a cramped little laugh as Mr. Cui said something quite unintelligible.

Whatever it was, the captain answered with a quick shake of his head.

The skin on Sebastien’s hands was peeled, scorched, pulling back from the flesh in thick curls like a two-day-old sunburn. It ached and itched abominably, already healing now that the affront was ended. Sebastien drew his arms against his chest like a dog protecting an injured paw.

“So,” Korvin said. “Shall we hold the wampyr for questioning, too?”

Sebastien forced his fists to loosen, and disciplined himself into standing straight, to face the silent room without rubbing at his peeling face. The connecting door to the smoking lounge swung open and the blurred face of Mrs. Smith appeared around it. Sebastien, still dazzled, recognized her chiefly by the flash of light off her spectacles and the startling paleness of her hair. She shoved the door wide and stepped through, the other women following behind her.

Mrs. Leatherby came last, still hastily rebuttoning her collar. Sebastien heard her gasping. Her bosom must be heaving over the top of her corset as if the brief run had winded her. She tugged some blurred object–a comb?–from her disordered hair, releasing a wave of perfume as locks fell over her shoulders. The scent sharpened his teeth–a room, full of warm humans, and with his scalded flesh sapping his strength–

The injury would heal, but it would cost Sebastien, cost him resources… and Jack, understanding, would inevitably offer. Sebastien was anticipating that conversation with even less pleasure than the one he was about to have.

Captain Hoak reached out left-handed and grabbed Jack’s wrist, almost hauling him off his feet as he yanked him away from Sebastien. Jack squawked and struggled free, tearing his shirt-cuff in the process, and shied away from Captain Hoak, towards the women. Beatrice Leatherby detached herself from that little group and stepped toward her husband. Sebastien thought she clutched Leatherby’s elbow; in any case, she slid her hand through the crook.

“Don Sebastien,” Mrs. Smith said. She started forward, her quick steps arrested when Korvin caught her arm. She must have glared over her glasses, or shaken him off, because he stepped back abruptly, his raised hands white against the dark suit coat.

“Don’t interfere,” Korvin said.

“Merci à Dieu,” Mlle. LeClere said, pressing her fists to her bosom. “He earlier accosted me on the stairs, Captain. If I had known my danger–”

The captain spared her a glance before turning to keep an eye on Jack. “Lad, no one’s going to make you stay with him. You may think you’ve nowhere to go, but we can make arrangements–”

Sebastien, still blinking tears from his eyes, couldn’t see it. But he could imagine quite plainly that Jack paused, turned–slowly–and balled his hands into fists before pursing his lips into the most condescending consideration imaginable. He would stare the captain in the eye until Hoak flushed and dropped his gaze, and then he would drawl–

“Oh, I think not.”

It was as well that Sebastien’s face hurt too much for smiling, as he heard the hesitancy in the captain’s voice as he said, “Lad?”

“I’m of age,” Jack said. “Eighteen in December, before you ask, and also before you ask, I know everything I need to know about Sebastien de Ulloa. He saved my life, and you’ll have to kill me to take me away from him.” He lifted his chin, arms crossed, the smallest man in the room–shorter than two of the women, in fact–and though Sebastien couldn’t see it, he knew Jack glowered.

Sebastien swallowed a ridiculous, hurtful pride, feeling like a man watching his terrier stare down a room full of mastiffs. “Jack–”

“Shut up, Sebastien,” Jack said. “Let me handle this. Captain, Germany’s laws against vampirism were repealed in the eighteenth century, along with the witchcraft laws. Sebastien has done nothing wrong.”

“Nothing besides child slavery and–” the captain glanced over his shoulder, at the ladies clustered like hens by the door to the corridor, and did not say the words rape or prostitution.

Into his embarrassed silence, Miss Meadows stepped, slim and elegant in her men’s clothing as she sidled between the corseted ladies. She posted herself a little to Captain Hoak’s left, making quite a contrast to the stout, graying captain. She seemed cut more from the same fragile white-gold cloth as Jack. “Jack, darling. How old were you when he bought you?”

Several flinched at the word, and now Sebastien’s vision was clearing enough to tell who. Mrs. Smith was one of them, though Sebastien was wishing he was still dazzled enough to pretend he didn’t see her face. Instead, he focused on Miss Meadows–and was surprised to see that her furrowed brow was an expression of concern, not reproach.

“Seven,” Jack said, folding his arms. “My parents couldn’t afford to feed me; they indentured me at five. There would have been three years left to run on my bill of service by now.”

And that, finally, brought a look of dawning uncertainty to the captain’s face. “Would have been?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “Sebastien emancipated me when I turned fourteen. And settled a considerable trust on me, as well. I’m quite independent, and no more in need of rescuing than Miss Meadows, here.” And then he smiled at the captain and tilted his head, more like the dove he played at than the falcon as which he stood revealed. “And I also know precisely where Sebastien was the night before last, and I assure you, it wasn’t with Madame Pontchartrain. Now, may I see to my patron’s injuries, Captain, or are you going to make me force your hand?”

***

To Be Continued…

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