Rip sat next to a very ticked off Blair in a Hansom cab heading toward Doctors’ Commons the next morning.

She practically seethed, gripping the side of the chair so tightly, her knuckles turned white.

He knew it was not anything he had done, but rather that Darhaven had the temerity to attack her home. Last night when he told her what he had done with the dynamite, she heartily approved, especially when she realized what the sewer troopers had planned to do to her house with it.

They had no sleep after the attack, dealing with the police and others from that point forward. This also contributed to Blair’s foul mood, he thought.

Rip felt content to remain silent and let her stew in peace as the cab made its way to their destination.

At an intersection he heard a newsboy calling out headlines, and he stuck his head out the window.

“Arbeiter Extra! Read all about it! Police find evidence of giant bats under Chelsea! Extra! Extra!”

Well, that’s one way of explaining the Verez sisters’s meals, he thought.

He smiled at Blair, but she wore such a foul expression on her face he decided not to make the comment out loud.

“Standard Trumpet, above the fold! Otherworlder Downs Another Black Airship!”

This caught his interest. He leaned out the window with a coin and waved at the boy, who jogged over to the cab. They made an exchange. The newsboy handed up the paper to him with one hand while pocketing the coin with the other.

Rip sat back and read through his latest exploits, as filtered through the lens of the reporter on the scene.

“This just happened a few hours ago,” he said, marveling again at the speed of the local news despite not having what he considered modern technology.

Blair crossed her arms and said nothing, turning her head away.

“Pretty good reporting, too. Not too biased. Fairly accurate, all things considered.”

The cab lurched to a halt suddenly as the driver reined in his horse.

“Go on now, biters! Off with you! You’re blocking the way!”

“Sod off! Wait your turn, burgher!”

Rip poked his head out the window again for a look. Blair did the same on her side.

A string of movers busily emptied a covered wagon, pulling furniture out two by two and marching across the street, blocking traffic in both directions. Their Hansom cab happened to be the first vehicle stopped in this lane of traffic.

One of the men sneered at the driver as he carried a heavy table, walking backward while his partner hauled the other half.

“Burghers! Always in a hurry.”

This, Rip decided, was like striking a match, and Blair was the proverbial open container of gasoline.

She exploded, screaming a long and vicious stream of hate-filled profanity at the workers.

She cursed Prussia, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Hungarians, Czechs, Italians, and last but in no ways least, the French which she seemed to hold in special contempt.

She insulted the parentage of every man on the street blocking their way, questioning the moral fiber of their mothers, the legitimacy of their births, and wondered openly if incest dominated their family trees.

As the profanity laced tirade extended, continuing on for several minutes, the men stopped and stared at her with blood draining from their faces.

The cab’s horse flattened its ears and a mother half a block over covered the ears of her daughter as Blair continued screaming at the men.

When she finally stopped, breathing hard and hanging halfway out the window, she let out one last high-pitched snarl.

“Now get out of our way!”

Dumbfounded, the men in front of the horse hurriedly moved aside, opening up their lane.

The driver, clearly shaken, tipped his hat at them. He had to nudge his horse three times with the whip. The horse still had its ears down and looked ready to fight for its life.

“Come along, Bessie. That’s it. Steady now. Let’s go.”

Reluctantly, the horse tromped forward and they passed the workers. Most of them stared after the cab with looks of awe plastered on their faces.

Rip heard one of them mutter as they passed, “I don’t think she repeated a single curse!”

After several minutes of silence, Blair looked up and noticed him staring at her across the seat. He had a slight smile on his lips.

She blushed.

“Sorry about that. It’s just that, with everything that happened last night, and their insolence with our driver . . . I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“No, don’t apologize. That’s quite alright. You obviously needed to blow off some steam. Ouch. That’s kinda ironic in this world, isn’t it? But I guess that’s where the expression came from in my world, back when we used steam for power.”

Blair stared out the window.

“I just . . . really shouldn’t lose my temper like that. At least, not in public. My father would be so ashamed if he were with us now.”

“Well, it’s a good thing he’s not. And so long as a reporter doesn’t get wind of it, I think your secret is safe.”

She smiled at him, tentatively.

“Thank you, Ripley. You’re a true friend, you know? First you saved my house from getting blown up, saving my maid in the process . . .”

“Oh, I didn’t save her. She turned around and ran out of the room almost as fast as she ran in. She saved herself.”

“That’s not how she describes it. She told me you single-handedly shot a dozen sewer troopers who were trying to kill her so they could desecrate her body and who knows what else.”

“There were only four.”

“There’s more each time she tells the story.”

He chuckled at that, and she smiled some more.

Just like that, the mood lifted, and the dark cloud over Blair disappeared.

As the cab neared the street entrance to Doctors’ Commons, Rip said, “Well, at least we learned something new on the way here.”

“We did? What was that?”

“We learned what your superpower is.”