11

The Leatherbys walked into quite a different luncheon than they must have been anticipating. Captain Hoak was waiting for them, flanked by the burly crewmen–alike as a brace of hounds–who had been guarding Korvin and Sebastien. “Your bags will be searched for a bottle of laudanum and for a magical hair-comb, which Korvin úr will inspect for enchantments related to concealing the presence of the wearer.” he said. “You are accused of the murder of Leonelle Pontchartrain, and as master of this ship, I am placing you both under arrest.”

“Konrad,” Beatrice Leatherby said, and laid a hand on his arm. “Surely–in front of all these people–”

The captain flushed red to the roots of his hair. In the corner by the piano, Mr. Cui bent down to whisper something in his wife’s ear, and she covered her mouth with both hands. Michiel van Dijk laid down his silver fork, but did not stand. “We’ll not speak of it now.”

Hollis Leatherby retained his composure, and bulled forward, pulling his wife away from Captain Hoak. “On what evidence?” His gaze swept scornfully over the assemblage, hot enough that Sebastien almost felt it curl the fine hairs on his skin. “I suppose the vampire and the sorcerer have joined forces to save their necks?”

“That’s the tone I object to,” Sebastien murmured in Mrs. Smith’s ear, drawing a short sharp laugh before stepping forward, around her and away from Korvin and Jack. “Mr. Leatherby,” he said, “would you like a list?”

“By all means, Mr. de Ulloa,” Leatherby said. He stepped away from his wife and the captain, but there was nowhere for him to run on a dirigible, and Sebastien wasn’t worried. “List away.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, frowning intently.

“You snore,” Sebastien said, lifting his finger to tick off the first point. “Abominably. And yet I do not recall hearing your snores, even muffled by distance, the first night of the voyage. I have abnormally acute hearing, Mr. Leatherby. Interestingly, I would have thought nothing of it if your wife hadn’t commented that your snoring had kept her awake, so that she happened to notice an argument between Korvin úr and Mlle. LeClere. Which was Mrs. Leatherby’s first attempt to cast suspicion on them.” He drew a breath. “Additionally, someone was able to come and go, both in my cabin and in Madame Pontchartrain’s, without leaving any evidence–and your wife has a hair comb that masks her scent and prevents trace evidence–fibers and fingerprints and such–from being left behind. A pretty toy, and one I hadn’t seen before, though Korvin úr assures me that they are not uncommon in Prague and Moscow, where certain of the security forces are staffed by wampyr and lycanthropes. And last, but not least, Mrs. Leatherby was the only passenger unaccounted for when my bags were riffled and evidence stolen.”

Mr. Leatherby glanced at his wife and swallowed. “That implicates Beatrice, sir. Not me.”

“Hollis,” she said, in exactly the tone in which she’d said Konrad. “Hollis, you can’t–”

“Oh, but I can,” he said.

“Never fear, Mrs. Leatherby. We know your husband disposed of the body.”

“You can’t know that either,” said Leatherby.

“But I can,” Sebastien said. Nothing gave the sense of satisfaction this did: watching a murderer scramble to avoid justice–and failing–was a most fulfilling side effect of his avocation. “Because I know that your wife met Captain Hoak on his three a.m. rounds, promised to come to the control cabin to meet with him while the pilot was on his dinner break, and there distracted him so thoroughly that he forgot to enter the time of his three a.m. rounds until much later, when he also entered the data of the five a.m. rounds. Between those times, he filled out other paperwork, or perhaps he wrote a letter to his wife, and in the course of those tasks he emptied and refilled his fountain pen. I know that you, Mr. Leatherby, had arranged to meet with Madame Pontchartrain by the washrooms a little after three, ostensibly to deliver the next installment of her blackmail demands. After having arranged to take this particular flight solely to encounter her. In any case, it would be the least conspicuous place to meet, as you’d both have ample excuse to visit them on midnight errands. Your wife had already poisoned Mme. Pontchartrain’s supply of laudanum, and when, after a stressful conversation, Madame slipped into the ladies’ washroom to refresh her nerves, you remained waiting outside. Disposing of the body was easy, but unfortunately, when the bottle of laudanum fell from Madame Pontchartrain’s clothes and was lost behind the rubbish bins you did not notice.

“Afterwards, when your wife left the Captain, she crept up to Mme. Pontchartrain’s cabin and liberated her blackmail papers, and also the remaining poisoned opium. Because what opium eater would travel with only one bottle of her drug? I imagine those joined Madame Pontchartrain in her journey down the garbage chute?”

Hollis Leatherby stared at Sebastien with white-rimmed eyes.

Sebastien shrugged. “It must have been very difficult for you to meet her payments–and such a tragic result to a brief dalliance, wasn’t it, and perhaps an ill-considered note or two to Mademoiselle LeClere. Your wife’s gloves need mending, and your collars are worn. And no doubt, your new position in the Puritan atmosphere of the Colonies would place you in an even more fragile position. Were the blackmailers increasing their demands?”

When Beatrice Leatherby fainted dramatically, sliding out of Captain Hoak’s arms, Sebastien was ready. Hollis Leatherby backpedaled under cover of the flurry of activity surrounding his wife, and Sebastien was half a step behind him–but when his hand emerged from his pocket clutching the requisite gun, Sebastien hesitated.

He would let the criminal withdraw into the hallway, he decided, and then intervene. Gunfire on a dirigible in mid-ocean was an unacceptable risk.

Unfortunately, Virgil Allen responded like a frontiersman. His revolver was in his hand far faster and more smoothly than Hollis Leatherby’s had been, and he cleared his field of fire with a quick crabwise sidestep. “Put it down, Hollis.”

Leatherby’s hand tightened convulsively on the pistol, his other hand groping behind him for the door latch. “You won’t fire.”

Sebastien was just calculating his angle of attack when Jack slipped past him. Jack did know how fast he could be, and dodged his grab as slickly as the guttersnipe he had been. Sebastien’s fingers brushed Jack’s wool suitcoat, and before he could grab again Jack had walked between the men with the guns, his arms spread wide.

“Neither of you is going to fire,” he said. He faced Leatherby, his back to Allen, and Sebastien saw Allen’s hand tremble. And he also heard the soft, near-silent scrape of chair legs on the carpet’s pile, and knew that Michiel van Dijk was standing, cautiously.

Please don’t, Sebastien thought, wondering if he was fast enough to intercept a bullet, if that was what it took.

“Dammit,” Allen said. “Get to one side, boy.”

And how ridiculous was it for a vampire to pray? He did, anyway; if he’d been a breathing man, he would have held his breath. And beside him, all but forgotten, Lillian gave a little squeak.

“Mr. Allen,” Jack said, “put up your weapon. There’s nowhere for Mr. Leatherby to run.”

“He could sabotage the airship,” Allen argued, and Jack shrugged.

“So he could. And you could set us all on fire over the North Atlantic. Let him go for now. He’s got nowhere to run to, until we reach New Amsterdam.”

Allen shuddered, shook his head, and leveled the revolver again. He closed one eye, the revolver at arm’s length, and squinted at the iron sight.

He was going to try to shoot past Jack, Sebastien saw, and he almost turned aside. Almost. Instead, he drove his nails into his palms and forced himself to watch.

“Your logic is impeccable,” Virgil Allen said, and with a single crisp motion, elevated the muzzle of his gun.

No one intervened as Leatherby coughed out a labored breath and fumbled with the door. He slipped through it, back first and gun following.

Sebastien heard him moving on the far side of the doped fabric the way a cat hears rustling mice. Sebastien was much stronger than a cat, and much faster than a man, though Allen and van Dijk were both lunging for the door by now, along with one of the brawny crewmen. He simply moved through lathe and fabric, shredding it like crepe.

And on the other side, he broke Hollis Leatherby’s right arm in two places in the process of relieving him of his gun. A spiral fracture, a nasty one.

It would likely never heal quite right.

#

Jack came to find him after dark. Sebastien stood on the promenade, his hands laced behind his back, and stared out at the air. The vast curve of the airship blocked any chance of stars, but the night was soothing, and there was moonlight in the east. They stood silently for a little, shoulder to shoulder, and Sebastien sneaked a sideways glance.

Jack stared straight ahead, his spine stiff. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

Sebastien winced. “What you said to Captain Hoak is true, you know.”

“That I’m a free man? I know it.” Jack sighed, and let his hands fall to his sides. “They’ll take the Leatherbys and Mademoiselle LeClere back to Germany for trial on their charges of murder and blackmail, respectively. And I don’t think any of the passengers for America will spread tales about you. I had a word with Miss Meadows and with Korvin úr.”

“Thank you, Jack. Actually, we’ve been invited to visit Boston.”

“We?”

“Oh, yes,” Sebastien answered, letting his teeth show when he smiled. “You know, I think our Mrs. Smith quite fancies you.”

They fell silent again. For a little while, Sebastien listened to Jack breathing, and considered what to say, to let Jack know it was all right, that Sebastien wouldn’t hold a grudge. Jack frowned sideways at him, and Sebastien shrugged, and smiled slightly. But Jack spoke first. “Forgive me?”

“What’s there to forgive?” Honestly startled, Sebastien turned and looked at Jack. And–at last–Jack was looking back.

“I was unreasonable about Lillian.”

“You are never unreasonable,” Sebastien answered.

“Will you visit her again?”

“Atlanta is far from New Amsterdam.”

“Actresses and wampyr both tend to travel.”

Sebastien shrugged. “I won’t, if you forbid it.”

They stood for a little while, becalmed in silence, until Jack spoke. “I talked to her a little. Her patron… she burned.”

Sebastien winced. Vampires only passed one way: by violence, either at their own hand or that of another. Suicide was far more common than angry mobs, these days. And Sebastien knew very well that there were mornings when it would be far too easy to walk into the sun.

She burned.

“Whose was she?” he asked, because he had been avoiding asking.

“Jayne Fortescue,” Jack answered, quickly. He’d been prepared with the name.

Sebastien sighed–a human habit he had never quite lost. He’d never heard of her. “An American?”

“I don’t know.” Jack licked his lips. “There aren’t supposed to be any of the blood in America. It wasn’t Evie, Sebastien.”

“Of course not.” Evie Péletier was the name she had burned under, but he had met her as Eudeline la Noire.

Names changed; the woman never.

Sebastien continued, “Evie burned years ago.”

Almost five years, and Sebastien had only just learned of it, hadn’t he? Five years of silence, not so much as a letter, and he’d thought nothing of it. They’d encounter one other by chance sooner or later, he reasoned, in Paris or in Bonn. Europe was small, and unlife was long.

And there would always be time.

Burned, this Jayne Fortescue. As his Evie had burned, all alone in tiny, crowded Europe with its clubs and lineages and complicated alliances and agreements and rules. All alone, and empty with it.

“Lillian’s scars are old,” Jack said. “The casually visible ones, anyway. You might have thought–”

He had thought, though he silently thanked Jack for permitting his dignity the lie. It would have explained too easily how she knew his name, and on some level, he had wanted to believe.

He shrugged and said, “That must be very hard for Lillian.”

It didn’t fool Jack. He caught Sebastien’s sleeve and forced him to turn, to look Jack in the eye. “Promise me you won’t.”

“Jack–”

“Promise, Sebastien.”

“You didn’t know Evie.” What shall I tell you, Jack Priest? That it’s very odd realizing that you are the oldest person that you are ever likely to know? That it is also very lonely?

At least in America, I shall be able to pretend I have a reason to feel so alone.

“No,” Jack said. “But I know how I feel about you. Don’t think I don’t know what this sudden emigration is about. You’ve left everything. Sold your house, lied to your court. You’re never going back to Spain.”

“And what of it?”

“Nothing.” Jack turned and pressed a warm hand to Sebastien’s cheek. “But you’re not going to shake me that easily. That emancipation means you don’t get to tell me to go away any more than you get to tell me to stay.”

Mulishly, Sebastien plowed ahead. “I can’t give you a life. Life is for the living, not the undead.”

Jack dropped his hand and stared at Sebastien, chin tilted up. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Jack?”

Shaking his head, Jack lifted himself up on tiptoe and kissed Sebastien quickly on the mouth. Sebastien closed his eyes for a moment, to savor the passing warmth, and so happened not to see when Jack turned on the balls of his feet and strode away. He’d gone three steps by the time Sebastien stirred himself to movement and caught up. Without looking at him, Jack coughed and ran one frail-seeming hand through his hair. “I don’t need you to give me a life, you old fool. Or haven’t you noticed that I’ve got my own?”

Sebastien blinked. Slowed his steps, so that Jack slowed to stay alongside him. “There’s no such thing as forever.”

“That’s all right. I haven’t got forever. So if you leave me like Lillian got left, I shall be quite cross. Promise.”

It was harder than it should have been, so he knew he wasn’t lying.

Sebastien touched Jack’s arm, and said, “I promise.”

***

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