xiv

Captain Qi Zang stood on the bridge of the Frozen Beauty. The deck throbbed with the power of the furnace. She could feel the ship coming alive as the super-heated steam flowed through the pipes and into the seven balloons, heating the air and expanding it until the envelopes bulged with lift.

The generators hummed. The Faraday grid was ready to receive the electrical power that would cancel out gravity and allow them to lift.

The ship was ready to depart, but they were forced to wait. Out on the field a horse-drawn hansom rolled towards them at a rapid pace, carrying the passenger and the new crew member.

The cabbie brought the rig round the Frozen Beauty at an angle, so the blinkered horse would not be scared by the shifting and twisting balloons above the ship.

Smoke pumped steadily from the stack and steam escaped from some of the pipe joints. The ship appeared to be making ready to lift. It was not that Fanning disbelieved Captain Qi—she knew the captain would wait, as she had given her word—but Fanning had been betrayed more than once in both her lives, and the experiments of Dr Munroe had not been the first of those betrayals. Trusting did not come easily any longer.

The hansom came to a stop and Fanning swung down, holding out a hand to assist Mrs Cameron so that she did not trip on the hem of her long and impractical dress.

The woman looked at the Beauty with some concern. It was true the ship was not a passenger vessel and would not provide all the comforts of home. But it was an escape from her boorish and dangerous husband. The captain had offered Mrs Cameron—Beatrice—free passage to any port in exchange for her assistance in saving the Beauty from the hands of Kuan-Yin Sun.

Fanning went to the back of the hansom where the driver had unloaded the baggage. One small case for Fanning, and two cases and a trunk for Beatrice. Fanning piled the cases on the trunk and, with the driver, lifted them all together and headed for the ship.

Beatrice lifted one of the smaller cases from the trunk. It did not make a great deal of difference to the bearers, but they smiled politely regardless.

Mrs Beatrice Cameron stared at the gaudily coloured ship; the entire hull had been painted in bright blue with flowing white figures, accented by flowers and Chinese characters in brilliant red. Fanning had told her the vessel was christened the Frozen Beauty; the colours reminded her of winter snow and ice and blood. It had been years since Jeremy had brought her out to India, and that long since she had seen a real winter. Delhi was hot all the time, and worse when it rained.

She glanced up as she saw a movement against the blue sky. A man stood on the top deck, looking down. She looked away in embarrassment. He was stripped to the waist, revealing lithe musculature. He did not look at all rough, and both the hair on his head and his moustache were neatly trimmed in a cut she thought might be French.

They moved into the shadow of the ship and out of the sun. From a wide door—presumably used when loading and unloading the ice—a thin man in British army khaki scurried. His bold moustache would have suited any military man. Thankfully he was wearing a shirt, albeit with rolled-up sleeves, undone at the neck and discoloured with his perspiration.

So many men, almost pirates, and she was willingly going on board. Still, Fanning said the captain was a woman. That idea still resounded in Beatrice’s mind: The captain is a woman. And a Chinese. A woman in charge of a sky vessel. It was like a story. As if she had opened a book by H G Wells, Conan Doyle or Jules Verne, and stepped into its pages.

Fanning and the driver put down the trunk. The wiry man took the driver’s place; his muscles bulged as he lifted the weight at his end. Fanning once again took the strain at the other.

Her thoughts lingered briefly on her ne’er-do-well husband. It did not matter what Jeremy thought anymore. He was just a memory. Let him see how he would manage without her support. She was taking ship with ice pirates.

Captain Qi was informed that the passengers’ gear had been stowed. Accommodations had been tricky to organise, as they only had one spare cabin and it was quite small. In the end she had decided to put Fanning in that one, and have Mrs Cameron share with her.

It was better than the other way around. Though it was clear Fanning had the body of a woman, she insisted on behaving like a man, which made bunking with her ... him ... feel somewhat awkward.

Otto had programmed the Babbage and a course had been decided. Steam pressure was high; Monsieur Darras reported the balloon envelopes to be tight.

“Faraday in one minute,” she said. Dingbang operated the steam klaxon that sounded both inside and outside the ship. The ground crew released the remaining hawsers at the prow and stern. Tying the ship down was an antiquated concept, since the vessel would go nowhere until the Faraday was engaged. Still, the British felt better following their rules—no matter how out of date.

The letter written by Kuan-Yin Sun had ordered the Frozen Beauty restocked and refuelled. With the money they had made from selling the vase, even after having paid Mrs Cameron her share, they could afford to seek new trading grounds without taking a cargo this time around.

But it just felt wrong for a trading vessel to travel without a cargo, so she had managed to get some trade goods to carry south. Their first stop would be Kerala, on the southeast coast.

Ding broke her out of her reverie; the minute was long past. At her signal he gave another quick burst on the klaxon. She counted to ten and engaged the Faraday device.

She felt the comforting lightening and the ship floated up from the ground, gathering speed. Qi engaged the driving rotors. The Beauty, light of any significant cargo, shot away like a tiger through the grass.

As Qi spun the helm the ship turned like a sailing vessel in a strong breeze, leaping away to the south. And Qi’s heart leapt with her.

~ end ~

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