15.

3^RD EIGHTMONTH, 277 A.U.

THE MERCY COMMISSION HOME FOR CONVALESCENT GENTRYWOMEN, SOUTHEBY

Deliverance Tegura stepped down from the clockwork carriage, tipped her driver with a slip of paper he frowned at—then goggled at, once he read it—and met Doctor Montgomery, assistant to Doctor Wyndham, on the walk up the pebbled drive of the Mercy Commission Home.

He prattled. Men like Montgomery always prattled. It was such an odd consistency of character, bundled into every gentleman reverend doctor she’d met, as if packets of self-defeating agitation were the semi-nary’s parting gifts after the final examinations. Montgomery was an indifferent, weak-chinned man with a ramrod posture and a concern-ingly hemispherical belly. Gaseous bloat. A slight yellow tinge to his skin. He was, Deliverance surmised, within four or five months of serious medical collapse owing to a failing liver. He lacked the saggy, muddled look of a man caught between draughts at the bottle. Medicines, then. Creator only knew how many tinctures and cordials he prepared for his lady charges daily—or how often he would tip a portion of them back for his own enjoyment.

When they reached Montgomery’s office in the vault-ceilinged study just off the tea room, the doctor’s gabbling finally turned in a direction worthy of Deliverance’s attention.

“—unconscious for three days, after a screaming fit about killer trees,” he said. “When she woke up just yesternight, it was as if she’d missed no time at all. Wondered what became of the luncheon her lady had brought her. Of course, it was days gone, and—”

She raised her hand. Its effect was precisely like muting a trumpet. Montgomery’s voice blurped into silence.

“Mrs. Downshire is awake now?”

“Yes. Quite, Mrs.—”

“Doctor,” Deliverance corrected coolly. As if her colleagues would have accepted her with any less a pedigree. As if the Bishop would have trusted her, without years of training and careful study informing her every move.

“Doctor Tegura. Yes. She is.”

“Then I will see her now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t actually permit that, Doctor.”

She let her arched eyebrow ask the question for her. “Her guardian hasn’t left any instructions indicating you are to be involved in her care or visitation, Doctor,” Montgomery explained sheep-ishly. “Now, perhaps I can offer you a brandy, and then—”

“Her guardian,” Deliverance echoed. It was not a question. Her reverend peer shifted uncomfortably under her gaze.

“Benefactor might be a better term, actually. There are no instructions leaving her in any specific hands while the benefactor is unavailable.”

The Reverend Doctor Deliverance Tegura reached into a small satchel at her hip—tools and notebook and spyglass and reticule all gathered up together—and fetched out a folded letter in an envelope. Doctor Montgomery watched her open its panels, blinking in puzzlement as she pulled out the delicate card of plastine punched with an array of holes down twenty minutely separated rows and forty equally minute columns, each a perfect, tiny oblong, ripe with purpose.

“You have an Engine in this facility, I presume?”

“We have, Madame.”

“Read this card in it, then come back and tell me what privileges I do or do not have in regard to Mrs. Downshire.”

And with that, Deliverance sat down, hands folded on her lap, back straight as a galleon mast. She waited out Montgomery’s absence in precisely that posture. He was back in only ten minutes, all but scrambling in, a tall, dark-haired woman with plaited hair and curious, animal eyes trailing sedately in his wake. Too sedately.

Montgomery had not been gone long enough to make up some fresh tonic for her. He keeps some on hand, Deliverance concluded. For his ladies’ visits. Well. That was one way to ensure the impression of a well-rested, recuperating patient.

“Reverend Doctor Tegura,” Doctor Montgomery said, a nervous smile tugging at his lips, “may I present Mrs. Clara Downshire.”

Deliverance rose to receive her, and the woman bobbed a curtsy in response. She heard something unfamiliar near the office doorway and looked down. A gray-muzzled hound hop-trotted past Mrs. Down-shire’s skirts, its collar jingling. It paused a yard short of Deliverance and snuffled the air around her, tail wagging, though from a wary distance.

“Rabbit,” Mrs. Downshire chided. She had a musical working-class accent, the sort Deliverance had heard sprinkled liberally among the laborers and the shop-keeps of Oldtemple Down. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. He’s a rude imposition on his best days, and this en’t been one of them.”

Deliverance crouched and put out a hand. The dog called Rabbit snuffled her fingers wetly. It rumbled an assortment of noises—grunts and trills and zuffs—before trotting back to Downshire’s side, as if to carry the message that her visitor passed inspection.

Doctor Montgomery cleared his throat altogether too loudly. “So, I’ll—ah, I’ll leave you ladies to it. Please ring the bell for Miss Merri-weather, if you require refreshment. And, erm . . .” He placed the punch card on the edge of his desk, eyeing Deliverance significantly. “I expect you’ll want this back, Madame.”

“Quite,” she answered.

And then the man was gone, as if shot from a gun.

Deliverance turned to offer Mrs. Downshire a seat, but found she was already occupying the settee by the unlit fireplace. The woman sat with her own ramrod straightness. Not, Deliverance noted, the straightness of discipline and study. Mrs. Downshire sat like a woman entirely out of her element—like a small animal in a cage, hoping its utter lack of motion might help it evade a predator.

“So you’ve come to take me away,” Clara Downshire announced.

Deliverance knew herself well enough to bet a hearty sum her surprise hadn’t registered on her face. She had known what to expect.

Or, rather, the Bishop had. “You’re not wrong,” Deliverance answered. “Can you explain how you knew that, Mrs. Downshire?”

“Some days, I have trouble remembering where I’ve been and where I’ve yet to be, but this bit’s clear enough. It’s Vraska you mean to take me to. Vraska hasn’t happened yet. And it’s after the Trees on the ship, which is the start of everything else. Since I know you wouldn’t come here for just any old reason, it must be Vraska is today. Or near enough.”

“You’re not at all interested in why I’ve come for you?”

Downshire smiled. The expression cast a pall over her eyes—distant and abstracted. “There’s really only two reasons folk have ever taken an interest in me. One, I think, might not be your sort of interest.” Deliverance didn’t have to think overlong to imagine what Downshire meant. Not after talking to the brute Tucker Pettigrew. She grimaced. The woman continued. “An’ the other is the only thing anybody ever seems to want to talk about anymore. I’ve gotten used to it. At least this trip will give me what I want.”

“And what is that?”

Downshire’s smile faltered. “They’re good men—at least they’ve tried to be, often as not. But they took my Rowie and she’s never coming back. I can’t just let that go. But you. You’re taking me right to her.”

Deliverance reached behind herself, feeling for a chair. The old dog turned three tight circles by Downshire’s feet and collapsed upon them. Deliverance’s mind ticked through the list of instructions she’d been given, the contingencies she had planned for, or been told to anticipate. Very few avenues of consequence would lead to Mrs. Downshire and her daughter meeting again, if the Bishop’s plan unfolded precisely as intended. The pathways were narrow—vanishingly so.

“You’re certain of that?” she asked, finding her seat. “It’s a twisting sort of way to reach her, but straighter than any I’d walk on my own.”

Deliverance smiled to herself. What a treasure you’ve found, Livvy Tegura. Don’t let her slip away.

“It seems I could tell you we must leave on the instant and it wouldn’t trouble you.”

“I’ve kept a valise in my chifforobe ever since I settled in months ago. But the dog is new,” Downshire added quickly. “He’ll need his effects sorted, I expect.”

Deliverance blinked. “His—I beg your pardon?”

“He’s fourteen years old. He’s got plenty of needs. And so he’s coming with.”

“My travel arrangements included no provisions for an animal.”

“Just as well,” the woman answered crisply. She rose and patted about herself, as if taking a census of her person and its general order. “He’s more people than dog. Who knows how he’d take to a crate in some airship, poor dear. And I promised my Rowie I’d see to all his needs.” She smiled wistfully. “She always wanted a puppy, you know. Good of the angel to let her have his.”

Deliverance raised an eyebrow. “Angel?”

If Mrs. Downshire heard her or marked the query in her voice, there was no sign. She strode to the sideboard and plucked up the bell, ringing for Merriweather.

Only a few minutes before, the Reverend Doctor Deliverance Tegura had been enjoying Doctor Montgomery’s dismay. Now, as she watched Mrs. Downshire rattle off a string of orders as crisp as any housemistress’s, she wondered how much she and the Doctor would come to have in common.

She could suffer a bit of confusion, at least in the near term. Soon enough, Bishop Meteron would have a new source of information, and if there was anything she and her mentor did well together, it was impose order on chaos.