I DON’T KNOW what I expected to see when they let us out of the carriage. Whatever it was, I didn’t see it. Instead, we stepped out onto the Mall in a Washington DC that was recognizable and completely alien at the same time. The Mall and the reflecting pool were the same, but the Capitol was different; the dome wasn’t white but gilded so that it shone like a golden egg under the morning sun. Other details of the neoclassical building had been gilded as well, pickings of gold against a building that I always remembered as pure white. It was as if someone had spent a great deal of thought into picking one architectural detail that could symbolize the distinction between a constitutional republic and an empire.
If that wasn’t enough to drive the point home, the larger-than-life equestrian statue between the Capitol steps and the Mall itself was there to proclaim the Empire’s sovereignty. Even at a distance I could see the unmistakable hat and cloak that had defined Napoleon I in so many paintings. His mount faced the reflecting pool, both hooves raised, and Napoleon held a sword aloft as if directing a charge at the Washington Monument.
Then there was the Washington Monument itself.
The monument itself was as I remembered it, at least as I remembered pictures of it—a white-clad obelisk without the gratuitous gilding that had been added to the Capitol. We were close enough that I didn’t really understand what had changed until I heard Jacob whisper, “Holy crap.”
I looked at him, and he was looking up at the monument. I followed his gaze and sucked in a breath. They had led us out facing the Capitol, so my first impressions had been of the changes on that end of the Mall. The shadows over the Mall I had unconsciously interpreted as cloud cover. It wasn’t.
The sky wasn’t overcast at all. Above the Mall was a massive airship, nose moored to the tip of the Washington Monument. The length of it pointed back toward the Capitol. From where we stood, it might have been easily as long as the monument was tall. The Empire’s crest was painted on its side, the image probably a hundred feet wide, large enough so individual feathers on the double-headed eagle were easily discerned from the ground.
The massive airship bore a large resemblance to pictures of airships I’d seen from the 1930s; the basic shape was a long cigar with large control surfaces on the tail bearing smaller versions of the Imperial crest. But there were differences. First, I saw no sign of any sort of gondola below the main ship. The underside was completely smooth. Also, for some reason, the thing had wings. Broad stubby wings stuck out along its length at various heights.
“What does an airship need with wings?” I asked no one in particular. “I thought they didn’t work like that?”
“They aren’t wings,” Jacob said. “Look at what’s attached to them.”
I did and realized that what I had originally taken to be little underslung propellers like I’d seen in more conventional aircraft were airplanes themselves. A dozen biplanes were slung under the airship’s “wings.” The behemoth was a flying aircraft carrier.
“I think Nazi Germany was experimenting with that idea before the Hindenburg.”
“Isn’t that a little advanced for 1908?”
Jacob shrugged. “Not by much, they had planes like that in the First World War, 1915 or so. And I think Zeppelin patented his first airship designs in the 1890s.”
“You really are a history buff.”
While we were surrounded by armed guards, they kept a respectful distance and didn’t try to manhandle either of us. An officer came for us after about ten minutes; the same one who had called me, “my Lady.” I recognized his hat.
“If you both would follow me?” he said. He bowed slightly.
Jacob looked at me, pointedly waiting to follow my lead. We were surrounded by armed guards, so it wasn’t as if I wasn’t going to follow instructions. Polite or not, we were certainly prisoners.
I decided to push my luck, a little. I stood as straight as possible and held out my wrist with the iron bracelet on it. “What about this?”
“I apologize, my Lady,” he said, a hint of tension in his voice. “It is necessary.”
Well, if they were going to pretend that I was some form of aristocracy, I might as well act the part. “Is this how your Empire treats all its guests?”
“Those that arrive unannounced. Again, my apologies. Please, come with me.” The officer was very polite, almost deferential, but we were still surrounded by a lot of armed men who, I suspect, would be considerably less polite if they had to be.
Still, since I seemed to be getting some response, I folded my arms, “What about my car?”
“Your . . . car?” He spoke the words as if he wasn’t sure what I was talking about.
“My vehicle? Automobile?”
“Oh, the carriage.”
“What did you do with it?”
“It’s safely under the Emperor’s protection. It will be returned once you leave the Emperor’s demesne. Such artifacts are not permitted here outside the control of the Emperor.”
“Of course not.”
“Now, my Lady, we must go. They are waiting for us.”
I sensed that I’d reached the limits of stalling, and I followed him, silently hoping that whoever had the job of moving my Charger could figure out a stick shift. If I was lucky, Ivan had been paying attention when I was driving.
The officer led us across the Mall, toward the Washington Monument, under the tethered airship. The thing was even more imposing when it was directly overhead. And it quickly became obvious that the airship was, in fact, our destination. We entered the monument, and walked back through unfinished-looking hallways, into a massive and cranky-looking elevator.
The majority of our escort stayed on the ground, while the officer and one token rifleman accompanied us on the shaky ascent as the machine took us six hundred feet up to the tip of the monument. I stood as close to the center of the elevator as I could. There were no walls or doors. The iron framework was wide open, so I could see cables, wheels, and gears above us, and the stone and brick of the shaft sliding by us with agonizing slowness. I could understand how some people got claustrophobic on elevators, but the openness felt much worse to me. My palms became sweaty, and I was very aware of the beating of my heart.
Heights had always gotten to me a bit. It worsened after I had become aware of my Mark. The more I had used it, even in the limited fashion I had, the more I’d grown aware of the dangers of any temporary perch above the ground. My first big mistake using the Mark was in high school. I’d slipped into a parked school bus to hide my disappearance and used my Mark to Walk to a point where the school bus wasn’t parked there anymore.
I’d fallen four feet into the asphalt and twisted my right ankle badly. When I finally made it back home, hours later, I had to go to the ER and I was on crutches for a couple of weeks.
So, while having access to the Mark made me a little reckless about some risky situations, it also made me a little more afraid of being too far off the ground. Just knowing that a step to the side with my Mark could send me tumbling six hundred feet down the elevator shaft made me tense up even though the band on the wrist prevented me from doing any such thing.
The elevator came to a stop facing a small room that had windows looking out at blue sky all around us—except directly in front. Ahead of us, a large doorway stood open, flanked by a pair of windows that were blocked by shadowy gray, flat and featureless. Two guards flanked the doorway, dressed in elaborate uniforms that matched the coloring of our officer’s uniform, navy jackets with brass buttons and gold braid, pressed scarlet trousers with black piping, boots polished to a mirror shine. They wore peaked caps with the Imperial insignia on them, and even the stocks of their rifles had been polished.
A pair of flags also flanked the doorway and the guards. Even draped on their flagpoles I could see that the one to the guard’s right was—again—the gold double-headed eagle on a blue background. The one on the left was more interesting. At first, I saw the red-and-white stripes and thought it was a normal American flag. But there were no stars. Instead, in the upper quarter where the stars would be, on the blue field was a duplicate of the Imperial eagle. I saw what looked to be a banner with some sort of motto above the figure, but I had no time to read it. The guards came to attention at the appearance of our officer, and he ushered us through the door.
The elevator was disconcerting, but what greeted me on the other side of the door induced something close to full-bore panic. I think I only kept moving because my brain froze up so badly that I couldn’t even coordinate the motor control to stop.
We walked out onto a catwalk. The air had been still on the ground, but up here the wind whipped against us with a tearing, flapping noise, striking me with the immediate visceral realization that I had walked outside. To the left and right, Imperial DC spread out below us, the ground terrifyingly far away. The sides of the catwalk were walled with some sort of mesh netting, but it didn’t seem nearly strong enough. And neither did the cables that slung the catwalk under the airship’s nose. To my panicked eyes, they seemed less substantial than the netting.
It seemed to take forever to cross the suspended walkway to the airship itself, though it probably only seemed so in retrospect. The shock of finding myself in the open air so far above the ground took much longer to process than it did to walk across. It was something I was grateful for, because by the time it had sunk in enough for me to think about screaming in terror, we were already inside the airship.
“Wow,” Jacob whispered. I was envious of his ability to speak. I was still concentrating on steadying my breathing.
The room the catwalk led into did not belong in anything that wasn’t solidly attached to the ground. The oval chamber belonged in a European castle, with its elaborate mosaic floor, the Corinthian pillars lining the walls, the paintings displayed on the walls, and the crystal chandelier suspended from the domed ceiling. The only sign of where we were happened to be the placement and orientation of the windows.
The windows all faced out the front half of the oval room, in the direction we had come. They were each five feet wide and ran from the floor to the start of the domed ceiling twelve feet above us, and they tilted outward between the columns that lined the room’s parameter, following the outer skin of the airship, and not the vertical walls of the room. The eight windows dominated the forward third of the room, flanking the entrance, so that looking in that direction felt as if we stood on a huge balcony looking down on Washington DC.
I only glanced that way once. Then I quickly turned and focused my attention on the half of the room that resembled a very expensive hotel, trying not to think about where that room was.
In front of us, at the rearward-facing end of the room, a staircase unfolded upward in curves of faux marble and carved wood. At least I assumed the marble was fake. It seemed to me that real marble would be a weight issue. Along the walls flanking the stairway, I saw dozens more flags. In addition to what I thought of as the Imperial US flag that I had seen back by the entrance, I saw the familiar UK flag with the addition of a shield bearing the gold double eagle in the center.
Before I had a chance to look at more of them, someone cleared his throat. I focused my attention to our right, and saw a couple waiting for us with a posture somewhere between calculated disinterest and military parade rest. The man wore a black tuxedo jacket and a gray-striped cravat under a collar so starched and upright that it seemed as if it could keep his neck clean shaven all on its own. He wore a pair of pince-nez that, with his mustache and round face, made him resemble Teddy Roosevelt. The woman wore a black dress and an apron in a frilly ensemble that was probably several shades too modest for any French maid fantasies Jacob might have had.
Once I had taken notice of them, the man gave a slight bow with such military precision I almost expected his heels to click.
Behind us, our military escort said, “Will you escort the Lady and her Gentleman to their rooms?”
“Yes, sir, General Lafayette.”
I glanced at Jacob, and he looked at me with an expression that mirrored my reaction. I wondered if he was surprised at the “General,” who’d been our escort, or at being my “Gentleman.”
Either way, despite the armed troop that had taken us prisoner, and the bracelets they’d slapped on us, they weren’t treating us the way I’d expect for typical prisoners. If I’d rated a general, maybe Ivan had been telling the truth about the whole “Prince” thing.
Teddy and the maid led us up the staircase, through a hallway filled with textured wallpaper, scrollwork, and brass fittings more appropriate to Versailles than an airship. The only sign of the nature of the vessel showed in the doorways and in the way the passage was segmented. I could see, every twenty feet or so, recesses where a bulkhead door waited to divide the hallway. And the doorways off the hall seemed to come not from a palace, but from the submarine in a Jules Verne novel: all metal with a smoky-colored oiled finish that went with the wallpaper and wood scrollwork, the locking wheel and other fittings in gleaming brass.
We stopped in front of one of those anachronistic doors, and I noticed an enameled plaque with cursive black numerals on a white background: “0230.” Teddy stepped forward and turned the brass wheel in the center of the door. It spun silently, and I saw long rods slide back from ceiling and floor and from the wall opposite the hinges.
It glided open on a small alcove that opened into a huge chamber beyond.
“Your stateroom, my Lady, with the Emperor’s compliments.” Teddy indicated the room inside with a minimal hand gesture. I had to suck in a breath once I stepped across into the stateroom proper. It had seemed large from the doorway, but from there I had only seen part of the sitting room. Once past the alcove, I could see the whole sitting room, complete with a Louis XIV settee and a window with navy-and-gold–brocade curtains large enough to cover three king-size beds. On either side, doors led into other rooms; on one side was a lavatory complete with a claw-footed bathtub, on the other was a bedchamber with a four-poster bed with a canopy.
A canopy bed. In an aircraft.
I’d only flown once, a nerve-wracking experience, and I’d been happy for the extra bag of peanuts.
I walked to the window that dominated the sitting room. It tilted out, but less so than the windows by the gangway entrance. I looked out and saw the White House. It looked pretty much as I remembered it, and it only served to reinforce how weird things seemed. I almost preferred the gilded Capitol Building with its Napoleonic equestrian statue.
I heard a very soft impact behind me, and I spun around. The door had shut, leaving me alone in the room with the maid. “What? Wait a minute. Where are they taking Jacob?”
“Your Gentleman is going to his own rooms, my Lady,” the maid said. She had a Germanic accent that worked at cross-purpose to her uniform.
“Of course, he is,” I muttered. I suspected Jacob had just become a hostage to my good behavior.