you enough clicks Malkin nodded Take your winder anyway John produced a tarnished key on a chain and hung it around the fox’s neck next to the pouch Though heaven knows who’ll wind you if I’m not there Thank you John Malkin stepped into the escape pod and curled up on the seat By all that ticks I hope to see you again And I you old friend John shut the door With a clatter and hum the pod bay doors opened and in a jolt the pod was free As John watched it through the open hatch shrinking away in the sky an image of his daughter Lily flashed into his mind If only he could see her one last time Tell her the truth about the past He should’ve done it long ago but he’d not been brave enough Now Malkin would have to take care of things Everything was in the letter Another harpoon smashed through Dragonfly’s hull and whirring saw blades cut through the steel ribs ripping cracks in the ship’s tin chest In a jagged screech the cracks were wrenched into a doorway and two silhouetted figures appeared Their silver eyes glinted in the light The thinner of the figures raised a stick with a skull handle then John felt a blinding shaft of pain and everything went black
CHAPTER 1 Lily wrinkled her freckled nose as she trudged along at the back of the line of girls With each step her heart beat hard in her chest and her green eyes flicked across the dog-eared pages of her beloved penny dreadful hidden inside her schoolbook She was enjoying a particularly gory scene in Varney the Vampyre Versus the Air-Pirates where Varney had captured the heroine in the disused attic of an Italian boarding school and was preparing to feast on her blood Lily had her pencil poised to mark up the gruesomest passages of the magazine so she could reread them later at her leisure Another dubious volume balanced on the crown of her head wobbled with each step but she didn’t let it distract her from Varney Heads up Eyes straight With one copy of The Oxford Guide to Perfect Poise balanced on her head Mrs McKracken Lily’s middle-aged deportment teacher led the gaggle of girls in a circle around the Great Hall her flat feet slapping across the polished wooden floor The Kraken Lily called her though never to her face that would be far too risky The Kraken was somewhat obsessed with posture As for Lily she barely gave it a second thought In her opinion it was better to read books than balance them That’s what they were designed for after all And if you
wanted to wear something on your head there was a perfectly good item designed for that too It was called a hat Lily sneaked a brief glance at the other girls in her class At the front of the line Miss Lucretia Blackwell had her prim nose stuck in the air and three copies of Sensible Etiquette for the Best Occasions balanced on her perfectly coiffed hair Second came Miss Alice Harvey who had seven copies of Butterwick’s Guide to Better Manners balanced on her doughnut plait With that monstrous hair-buncle it was no surprise she never dropped a single copy Miss Gemma Ruddle was next She had four precarious copies of The Ladies Manual of Politeness balanced and would stop after each step and pretend to scratch her ear so she could adjust her leaning tower of literature Lily had long ago noticed the other girls never read in posture class thinking and walking simultaneously was too difficult for them She doubted a single important thought ever floated through their minds If Spring-Heeled Jack or Varney the Vampyre or the air-pirates or any of the other blackguards who roamed England ever caught any of those girls in a dark alley they’d be dead for sure Dead before they’d practiced their conversational French dead before they’d politely discussed the weather or asked Tea or coffee In short dead before their perfectly poised bodies struck the cobbles And what use was deportment to one dead No use It seemed
No use whatsoever Stop the Kraken yelled and one by one the girls stopped in a neat line behind her All except Lily who having failed to notice her untied shoelaces tripped stepped on Gemma’s foot and fell Ouch Gemma staggered forward clutching at Alice to try and keep her balance but in vain her four copies of The Ladies Manual of Politeness slipped from her head Careful Alice cried dropping seven copies of Butterwick’s Guide to Better Manners Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud Thud Lucretia wobbled from side to side grasping at the top of her head but she was too late Three copies of Sensible Etiquette for the Best Occasions slipped from her brow and scattered at her feet in a crash of fluttering pages Why don’t you pay attention you galumphing lump the Kraken shouted What’ve you got to say for yourself Lily gazed up from the sea of fallen books Was the woman talking to her Sorry she tried The Kraken huffed I said WHAT-HAVE-YOU-GOT-TO SAY-FOR-YOURSELF Oh never mind She took The Oxford Guide to Perfect Poise from her head and threw it at Lily who ducked as the heavy volume glanced past her ear You’ve been reading You’re not allowed to read in my class I thought And no thinking either The Kraken folded her arms across her chest She’d turned a most putrid shade of puce it
