Crash!

Charlie launched into space through a cloud of glass shards.

London lay beneath him. The whole city stretched in all directions, a dense, sunlit warren around the Thames.

There was nothing between him and the ground, at least a hundred feet down.

“Whoooooooaa!” he shouted.

They fell.

Bob tilted the flyer’s nose downward, and for a second Charlie rushed face-first toward the cobbled street below. Startled travelers coming in and out of Waterloo Station scattered. A cabbie threw his reins aside and jumped out of his hansom. Horses neighed in fright; Charlie barreled straight at them.

“Aaaaaagh!” he yelled.

Ollie the Snake tightened his grip around Charlie’s neck.

“ ’Aaaang oooon!” Bob shouted, and then the flyer’s nose began to come up.

But slowly.

Charlie held the straps of his harness in clenched fists.

A gold-and-green-painted steam-carriage rushed straight toward him. It was idling, its driver sitting on the high seat in front, reading a newspaper. He must be deaf, Charlie thought. Behind the driver rose the steam-carriage’s smokestack, puffing gently in the bright morning.

The flyer hurtled at the steam-carriage.

Bob pulled the nose up a little higher. “ ’Oooold ooon!” she howled again.

Charlie raised his knees up to his chest.

Dong!

Charlie’s left foot just grazed the top of the smokestack. It smarted. The driver dropped his paper and tumbled out of his seat, and then Charlie lost him from view as the flyer pulled up, away from the ground and into the bright blue sky.

“Can’t beat the Royal Magical Society for weather wizards, innit?” Bob yelled as they climbed. She was cheerful, as if they hadn’t just almost died. “I reckon it’s all the practice they get, what with our bad weather an’ all. To ’ear Ollie talk about it, you’d think it was just talent. Like the French an’ the loups-garou, or the Eye-talian illusionists, or the Russian demolitionists.”

Ollie the Snake hissed.

“Demonologists!” Charlie said.

“That’s what I said, ain’t it?” Bob agreed. “Only it ain’t fair to talk about what Ollie thinks when ’e can’t talk back!” She flapped the wings gleefully, and the flyer climbed.

The sky above the station was thick with airships: globe-shaped montgolfiers full of hot air; elongated zeppelins; cylindrical balloons, both vertical and horizontal; craft with propellers, wings, sails; and things Charlie could barely focus on, much less describe, at the speed at which they were rocketing upward.

The airships circled around the mooring towers, except for a lone bulblike montgolfier that floated away from the rest. It tugged at a long anchor rope above Waterloo Bridge, red and gold. One of the men in its basket made a sign with signal flags, probably to direct the flotilla’s traffic. Charlie saw other airships that were blue and brass, and he wondered if they were police vessels.

The flyer looped up and around Waterloo Station. They dove under some Sky Trestle tracks and sailed above others, and Charlie felt like the eyes of the entire world were on him.

“ ’Ere we go!” The London Eye rolled into view. A crowd wound around its base in a long line, but that wasn’t what caught Charlie’s gaze.

Halfway up one side and rising, there were people on one of the carriages.

“There!” Charlie pointed. “That must be my father!”

Bang!

It was far away and almost disappeared in the wind, but Charlie definitely heard a pistol shot.

He looked over his shoulder at the station. The red-and-gold traffic montgolfier now had a shimmering cloud of confetti streaming beneath it. The airships around the mooring tower nearest to the bridge began to unwind their circle and roll slowly out above the river, toward Whitehall and Buckingham Palace.

“The progress flotilla!” Charlie shouted into the wind. It was as glorious as he’d imagined it would be: a parade of airships that would accompany the queen. Bob had planned to launch her public career as an aeronaut by joining the flotilla uninvited, and now she was trying to rescue Charlie’s bap instead.

If the flotilla was starting, the queen’s carriage must be leaving the station.

Time was short.

The flyer zoomed down toward the Eye, homing in on the occupied carriage. Bob must have heard Charlie point out his bap. Charlie squinted, and he could make out four men in the compartment. The Sinister Man stood apart, pointing a pistol at the floor. Two other men held Charlie’s bap.

“Fly close to the windows!” he called to Bob. He pointed, and he started unbuckling himself from the straps.

Ollie tightened his grip around Charlie’s neck.

The flyer zoomed closer. Charlie opened the last buckle and hung by the strength of his arms. Ollie tightened his grip even more. If Charlie were a breathing boy, he’d have choked to death.

The flyer zoomed closer still. It looked to Charlie like Bob was aiming to slide just over the rooftop.

The Sinister Man raised his pistol and pointed it at Charlie’s bap.

“Pondicherry’s of Whitechapel!” Charlie yelled. He jumped.

For a long second he flew through the air.

Crash!

Charlie smashed through the glass of the carriage feetfirst. He bowled into the Sinister Man and knocked him backward, over a wooden bench and to the floor. The Sinister Man’s pistol went off, shattering another window.

The carriage lurched to one side, and Charlie rolled with it. He and the Sinister Man were tangled up in arms and legs.

Ollie uncoiled from around his neck and slithered at the two men holding Charlie’s bap. Charlie grabbed for the Sinister Man’s gun.

Bang!

The Sinister Man’s bullet hit Charlie in the chest and threw him onto the floor.

“That hurt,” he croaked.

Bang! Bang!

The henchmen fired at Ollie. The snake slithered into the corner of the carriage and curled up, still.

The carriage swung wildly. Charlie struggled to sit up, but the Sinister Man rose first. He wrapped one arm around a railing and pointed his long black pistol at Charlie.

“No!” Charlie’s bap shouted, struggling against the henchmen. His face was bruised and his hair was a mess; his eyes were full of sadness, defiance, and fear.

“You are an irritating piece of junk,” the Sinister Man snarled. “Good-bye.”

Bamf!

The smell of rotten eggs filled the carriage, and Ollie stood up in the corner. He was bleeding. He held a wobbling pistol—Charlie didn’t know where it had come from—pointed at the Sinister Man.

The Sinister Man spun.

Bang!

Ollie shot him. The Sinister Man staggered back, bleeding from one arm.

“You ain’t my dad.” Ollie fell to one knee.

Bang!

Ollie’s second shot went wild, and then he collapsed.

The Sinister Man raised his pistol again.

Charlie’s bap broke free, and he rushed across the carriage. He stepped on a bench and launched himself through the air, grabbing for the Sinister Man and his gun.

The Sinister Man shifted his aim.

Bang! Bang!

“No!” Charlie shouted.

Mr. Pondicherry crashed into the Sinister Man, and they fell together.

They rolled across the swinging floor, punching.

“Stop this!” the Sinister Man shouted.

“Leave my son alone!”

They bounced toward a window. Mr. Pondicherry punched the Sinister Man in the throat and in the face, and in return he got the butt of the pistol hammered onto his forehead. Just as he got his thumbs into the Sinister Man’s nostrils and was pushing his head back—

Bang!

One of the Sinister Man’s henchmen got off a shot, and hit.

Mr. Pondicherry fell back, letting go of his enemy. As he slipped, the floor rolled away under him, and he tumbled, bleeding, toward a gaping window.

“No!” Charlie threw himself after his bap, sliding across the floor and grabbing with both hands—and missed.

His bap tumbled through the open window. Charlie got one last look at his father’s face, surprised and frightened, and then he was gone.

The wind sounded like a hurricane in Charlie’s ears.

He had failed.

“Enough of this!” The Sinister Man staggered across the carriage and fumbled with something near the door.

Charlie stared at the open window. The gulf beyond it was infinite and cold. When the carriage again reached the extremity of its arc, Charlie saw a ragged dot below in a circle of bare pavement surrounded by a crowd.

That was his bap.

Dead.

Pffft!

Charlie heard and smelled the match being struck, and finally he looked away from his father. The Sinister Man held a bundle of cords in one hand, and they were all burning. He threw the cords out the window and spat on the floor.

“Come on!” shouted one of his thugs. They had the carriage door open, and Charlie saw beyond it a blue-and-brass zeppelin.

It looked like one long balloon, like a floating blue whale. The gondola hanging underneath it had a very wide door and was full of policemen.

Three looped lines stretched from the gondola’s open door into the carriage. The two henchmen stepped into the loops and pulled the ropes up under their shoulders before jumping out of the carriage and disappearing.

The Sinister Man stepped into the third loop and pointed his pistol at Charlie.

Click.

“Sacre bleu!” he shouted. Then he jumped out of the swinging carriage and disappeared.

Charlie lay on the floor.

He wanted to weep for his bap, broken on the ground below.

He wanted to weep for Ollie, crumpled in the corner.

He wanted to weep for himself.

But he couldn’t.

Ollie wasn’t dead, and the queen was still in danger, so Charlie forced himself to go on. He crawled across the floor to the carriage railing and gripped it tightly. The next time the carriage rolled so that the window faced downward, cold fear seized him.

The cords the Sinister Man had lit were fuses. There were dozens of them, winding toward clusters of Extradynamit packed around the hub of the leisure wheel. The fuses were all out of Charlie’s reach, and they were sparkling.

The Eye was going to explode.

And then the Iron Cog would move against the queen.