“Good luck!” Agatha said quietly. Agatha rarely spoke, so it had to be something serious.
Sophronia sidled up next to Dimity. The hallway was hardly big enough to accommodate two ladies in full day gowns side by side. Their multiple skirts smushed together. Neither minded the wrinkles as they linked arms for comfort. Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy was housed in a massive airship that looked like three dirigibles crammed together. Its corridors twisted and turned in a noodlelike manner. Sometimes the passageways led up stairs or out onto balconies. Most of the time, they simply got darker, lit by gas lamps that looked like upside-down parasols. Whatever attire the corridors had been designed to accommodate, proper lady’s dress was not one of them.
Lady Linette led them toward the upper squeak decks. These open-air decks sat under the massive balloons that kept the academy afloat and adrift over Dartmoor. It was an odd place to be headed at this time of day. Dimity’s hand on Sophronia’s arm tightened.
The two girls swung to flatten themselves against the wall, like a hinged gate, so a maid mechanical could roll past. Its face was a mosaic of gears instead of the metal masks worn by most menials. It had a white pinafore over its conical body and gave the impression of busy superciliousness.
If the students had been alone, the maid would have whistled the alarm upon encountering them, but Dimity and Sophronia were in the company of Lady Linette. All the models, from buttler to footmech to clangermaid, had protocols that instructed them to ignore students in the company of teachers. Most of the hallways were laid down with a single track upon which the school’s many mechanical servants trundled, performing the myriad of menial tasks needed to keep a ladies’ seminary running smoothly. Sophronia had once seen a footmech model carrying a whole stack of doilies, some of them quite deadly, from Sister Mattie to Professor Lefoux. In her parents’ country estate, such an important task would never have been entrusted to a mechanical, but here steam-powered staff far outnumbered human.
Sophronia had thought, after six months, that she had most of the school mapped. But as they walked from the midship student section, which housed classrooms and sleeping quarters, to the rear recreation area, they entered a place she’d never seen before. While the massive dining hall and exercise facilities above the warehouse and propeller engine areas were familiar to her, Sophronia and Dimity were being taken farther up.
“I didn’t know there were rooms above the dining hall,” said Sophronia to Lady Linette.
Lady Linette was not going to play into Sophronia’s hunt for information. She ignored the comment and quickened her pace.
Sophronia and Dimity bounced in order to keep up—they had not yet had lessons on rapid walking in full skirts, though both of them were admirable gliders at a more leisurely pace.
This section of the ship smelled of old candle wax, chalk powder, and pickled onions. The mechanical track was not oiled properly, and there was dust in the corner grippers. The walls were hung with paintings of disapproving elderly females and framed feats of crochet.
Finally, Lady Linette stopped in front of a door. The sign read ASSESSMENT CHAMBER ONE: ENTER AT RISK. It reminded Sophronia a little of the record room. She didn’t say anything about that, though. The record room infiltrators of several months ago had never been caught. Sophronia wanted to keep it that way.
Underneath the sign someone had scrawled in white paint NO MUFFINS FOR YOU! Underneath that, it said NOR GALOSHES, NEITHER, in what Sophronia knew was not proper grammar.
“Miss Temminnick.” Lady Linette gestured. “If you would?”