Read Etiquette & Espionage for Free Online Page A

know,
dark
and
brooding
. I should dearly love to be
dark
and
brooding
. It’s so romantic and fortune-teller-like. I couldn’t brood if my life depended on it.”
    “Well, the ribbon around your shoulder makes for a certain fortune-telling appeal.”
    “Oh, does it? Splendid. You know, Sophronia,
you
could probably do it if you put your mind to it.”
    “Do what?”
    “Be
dark
and
brooding
.”
    Sophronia, with middling brown hair and moderately green eyes set in a freckled face, would hardly have described herself as brooding. Or dark, for that matter.
    Dimity’s attention, lightning fast, shifted to a new topic. “Where are we?”
    “Bunson’s, finally,” said Pillover, snapping his book shut. He made a show of organizing for arrival. Given that he no longer had any luggage, this was rather like the action of a mechanical without instructions, trundling idly in circles until he ran out of steam.
    The carriage door was opened by a stiff domestic mechanical of some advanced outdoor nature.
    “What is that?” gasped Sophronia. She’d never seen anything to equal the monstrosity. It was taller than Frowbritcher and conically shaped, with a wheelbarrow attached to its back. Where a face facsimile should be was a confusion of gears and cogs, like the back of a clock.
    “Porter mechanical.” Pillover stood, clutching his literary tome, and jumped down. “You two coming?” he asked, without turning to see.
    “Where is your luggage, young sir?” asked the mechanical. Its voice was louder and brassier than Frowbritcher’s. It wore a gray cap, backward, and a brass octopus pin on a cloth cravat around its neck.
That’s too bizarre.
Sophronia had never seen a mechanical wear clothing before.
    Pillover answered. “Oh, about ten miles back in the middle of the road.”
    “Sir?” The porter rocked sid car rockee to side in confusion. It was riding on a set of rails, like a very small train.
    Sophronia climbed out of the carriage to get a closer look, wondering if she could take the porter apart.
    Dimity followed.
    The mechanical’s attention instantly shifted to them.
    “No females, young sir.” It made a whirring, hissing noise and ejected a puff of steam from below its cravat. The material fluttered up against its clockwork face and then flopped back down.
    Pillover turned back. “What?”
    “No females allowed, young sir.” The porter puffed again.
Flap, flap
, went the cravat.
    “Oh, those aren’t females. They’re only girls. They’re slated for the finishing academy.”
    “They read as females, young sir.”
    “Oh, I say. Don’t be difficult.”
    Sophronia took the diplomatic route. “We need to speak with an authority. Our carriage was attacked and our guardian is overset.”
    “No females!” The porter mechanical was quite firm on this. Its chest panel moved aside to reveal some kind of weapon, too large to be a gun.
    As Sophronia stood, transfixed, it sparked and then
whooshed
to life, hurling blue flames that got close enough to singe Dimity’s hair.
    The girls dove back inside the cab, and the coachman, who was not having any more tomfoolery on his watch, drove the carriage away at once. The flame-throwing porter did not follow them.
    The carriage halted outside the school grounds. Sophronia pressed her nose against the glass above the cab door and looked out. Bunson’s was massive, but oddly hodgepodge—not like a respectable educational facility at all. A few of its towers were square, but others were round; some were old, others new; and some were positively
foreign
looking. There were wires stretching between the towers, and sticks jutting outward with netting dangling off their ends. An orange glow lit up various windows, here and there puffs of steam emanated forth, and one large smokestack belched plumes of black smoke up into the sky.
    Sophronia looked at Dimity. “What now?”
    “Well, my brother’s no good. He’ll have forgotten about us the moment he got