The Kraken King, Part III: The Kraken King and the Fox's Den
Author: Meljean Brook
Date: 2014-04-29 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Romance; Fantasy; Adventure; Paranormal; Science Fiction
Description: Experience the incredible adventure and heart-stopping romance of the Iron Seas in this thrilling steampunk tale from New York Times bestselling author Meljean Brook. The Kraken King , Part III *The Kraken King and the Fox’s Den* After a harrowing escape, Zenobia, Ariq, and their company take refuge in a gold rush town—but their temporary port is just a respite before traveling to the dangerous smugglers’ dens. Ariq is determined to uncover the men responsible for the threat to Krakentown, even if it means confronting the notorious den lords. But when he discovers evidence in Zenobia’s letters
Publisher: InterMix (Penguin)

Titles by Meljean Brook

The Guardian Series

DEMON ANGEL

DEMON MOON

DEMON NIGHT

DEMON BOUND

DEMON FORGED

DEMON BLOOD

DEMON MARKED

GUARDIAN DEMON

Novels of the Iron Seas

THE IRON DUKE

HEART OF STEEL

RIVETED

MINA WENTWORTH AND THE INVISIBLE CITY

(A Berkley Sensation Special Novella)

TETHERED

(A Berkley Sensation Special Novella)

HERE THERE BE MONSTERS

(A Berkley Sensation Special Novella)

THE KRAKEN KING

Part I: The Kraken King and the Scribbling Spinster

Part II: The Kraken King and the Abominable Worm

Part III: The Kraken King and the Fox’s Den

Anthologies

HOT SPELL

(with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Shiloh Walker)

WILD THING

(with Maggie Shayne, Marjorie M. Liu, and Alyssa Day)

FIRST BLOOD

(with Susan Sizemore, Erin McCarthy, and Chris Marie Green)

MUST LOVE HELLHOUNDS

(with Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, and Ilona Andrews)

BURNING UP

(with Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, and Virginia Kantra)

ANGELS OF DARKNESS

(with Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, and Sharon Shinn)

ENTHRALLED

(with Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day, and Lucy Monroe)

The Kraken King

Part III

The Kraken King and the Fox’s Den

Meljean Brook

InterMix Books, New York

INTERMIX BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE KRAKEN KING AND THE FOX’S DEN

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / April 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Meljean Brook.

Excerpt from Heart of Steel copyright © 2011 by Meljean Brook.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63922-1

INTERMIX

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and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

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Version_1

Contents

Titles by Meljean Brook

Title Page

Copyright

Letter

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Excerpt from Heart of Steel

About the Author

Altun Mining Camp, Nyungar Territory

Southwestern Australia

May 22

My dear brother,

In the past two days, I have received four offers of marriage. Either I have bloomed into a ravishing beauty on this route from Krakentown to the smugglers’ dens, or the men in Altun are desperate enough to ask for the hand of any female passing through.

I suspect it is the latter. I’m told that gold was discovered in the region a dozen years ago and the population of this town swelled to over ten thousand souls. Only a few prospectors remain now, unless their ghosts are residing in the abandoned buildings, and the men outnumber the women twenty to one.

The town’s blacksmith was the first to ask me—not because he was the most eager, but because his shop was the first we visited after my hired man Cooper was injured by a boilerworm. I might have been hasty refusing his proposal. The blacksmith has proved quite competent while treating Cooper, and he possesses a great many tools in his workshop. If he learned how susceptible I am to men who bathe more than once every year, he would have leapt into a tub that very moment, and my heart would be in certain danger. But he hasn’t washed, so I will continue on to the Red City and live with the regret of knowing that happiness was within my reach, but the soap was unfortunately not.

Still a wretched and lonely widow,

Geraldine

Chapter Nine

Zenobia sighed as she folded the letter. She’d already warned Archimedes to stay away from Krakentown, so there was no need to send another message in code, but guarding her identity had forced her into the habit of caution. Therefore her letter said almost nothing, except that she was alive and traveling to the Red City via the smugglers’ dens.

There was much more she would have liked to tell her brother. But within a few months, she would be able to tell him in person. When he learned of the attack on the airship, nothing would stop Archimedes and his wife from coming. But at least they would fly to the Red City instead of Krakentown, where he might be recognized as the smuggler Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste.

One day, she might write a story inspired by that part of his career. She would call it The Idiot Smuggler Who Destroyed the Horde Rebellion’s War Machines and Changed His Name to Avoid the Rebel Assassins.

Zenobia would take pity on the idiot’s sister and leave her out of the tale.

She doused the candle. Above the desk, shutters listed on rusted pegs, letting in triangles of early-morning light. Helene lay sleeping on their makeshift pallet. They’d had their pick of abandoned houses when they’d arrived in Altun, though few were larger than shacks and even fewer had furnishings. The blacksmith had pointed them toward a recently vacated home—which, happily, wasn’t a shack, but more like the residence she and Helene had shared in Krakentown.

Quietly, she left Helene sleeping and made her way down the stairs to the courtyard. Unlike Krakentown, which kept the boilerworms away by driving steel posts into the ground around the perimeter, the buildings in Altun stood on stilts. If a boilerworm attacked, nothing could protect the structures. But the distance between the houses and the ground helped keep the cooking fires and furnaces from attracting the monsters.

The garden in the courtyard had grown wild. Zenobia rather liked the unkempt look of it. She liked the decorations on the building walls, the wood carved in shapes of lions and trees and flowers, then painted red and gold. The paint was peeling now and the rooms were empty except for dust, but there were stories here. The shacks in town were to be expected—just temporary quarters for hopeful prospectors. But someone had tried to make a permanent home in this place. Yet still they’d left. Why?

Someone might know the story. Zenobia would like to hear it. But if she never learned it, she would make up her own.

A happy family. A jealous villain. A flick of a spark lighter, and they’d all been eaten by boilerworms.

She should probably continue writing Lady Lynx’s adventures instead of trying her hand at family dramas.

The door to the Coopers’ quarters was one of the few with the intricate latticework screen still intact. Zenobia tapped on the wood and it folded open to reveal Mara, her dark eyes rimmed in red. Her glossy cheeks told Zenobia that the mercenary had been crying. The hitch in her breath said the crying wasn’t quite over.

Behind her, Cooper sat propped against a cushion. Bandages wrapped his mutilated legs. His lean face was a mask—but not from pain. Between the healing nanoagents in his blood and the opium, he wouldn’t be in much discomfort. But something was wrong. His jaw was hard and his back stiff, and temper burned behind Mara’s tears. The room seemed thick with tension, as if words hung in the air waiting to be spoken—or shouted.

Had they been fighting? Oh, Zenobia didn’t want to know. She just wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere the air was easier to breathe.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll come back.”

“It’s fine.” With a voice as stiff as her husband’s spine, Mara stopped her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes!” And that response was far too chirpy. “I wanted to let you know that I was going out to mail this letter.”

“You want me with you?”

“No. I just . . . didn’t want you to worry if you noticed I was gone.” Not that there were many places in town to go—or be taken to. Zenobia glanced at Cooper and hesitated. The bandages covering the stumps of his legs were new. “Did the blacksmith already visit? What did he say?”

“That any prosthetics he creates here will be crude compared to what Cooper used to have, but there are blacksmiths in the smugglers’ dens who can do the work. So we can travel if you’re ready to continue on.”

Zenobia was, but didn’t know if that was true of everyone. “I’ll ask the governor when I see him next.” It was ridiculous how much she looked forward to whenever that might be. “And your ear?”

Mara’s gaze shuttered. “It’s better. I’m not hearing at full range yet. But I will be with a few more days’ healing.”

“Of course.” At full range or not, Zenobia was just glad that Mara hadn’t suffered permanent damage when the bomb had detonated—and even if her hearing device didn’t work, her aim would still be true.

She turned to go, but Mara stopped her again. “Cooper and I won’t be at our full capabilities when we reach the smugglers’ dens. You should think of hiring someone else for the duration.”

And there it was. Zenobia’s throat closed. She’d expected this, hadn’t she? From the moment of the airship attack. She’d hired them to guard a writer. They’d expected to live in a quiet town in Denmark and to prevent a few kidnappings while they settled down and started a family. Instead they’d been dragged along on a trip to the wilds of Australia, and suffered attacks from marauders and a boilerworm. Cooper had almost been killed.

Now Mara told her to hire someone else. Only temporarily, but likely a way to ease their separation from her in a few months when their contract came up for renewal. God knew where Zenobia would find any guards that she liked as well—or that she could trust.

But perhaps liking them and trusting them was the problem. They were her guards, yet they’d become her friends, and she could hardly bear seeing her friends hurt like this.

She should begin hiring people she wanted to see dead. That would be far more practical.

“I will consider it,” Zenobia said, then left as fast as she could. She couldn’t outrun the ache in her chest.

Outside, quiet greeted her. Their residence lay a short distance from the center of the once-prosperous mining camp. Now ponies grazed between tumbledown shacks, lifting their heads to watch her pass, their tails flicking away flies. Weeds grew on abandoned wagons and steamcarts. She’d joked of ghosts in her letter, but away from the main street it truly seemed that little else was left in this town—and what remained didn’t look as if it would last much longer.

A weathered box on stilts, the sundry shop stood across from the blacksmith’s. To her surprise, Meeng sat on the rickety stairs. The Wajarri man looked half-asleep, eyes closed against the sun. Though he couldn’t see her, Zenobia lifted her hand in greeting, because everything within her was lifting a little bit. Meeng’s presence meant the governor had returned. After the boilerworm attack he’d brought an injured Cooper to Altun, then left the next morning with his men to search for the marauders’ camp in the nearby hills. Zenobia had believed they were still out looking, but they must have returned during the night.

Nearing the sundry shop, she finally said “Good morning.” She and Meeng didn’t share any languages in common, but passing him without a greeting seemed unpardonably rude.

He peeked one eyelid open and peered up at her face before closing his eye again.

Well. Maybe disturbing him was unpardonably rude, too.

Heavy steps sounded from inside the shop. The governor appeared a moment later. Pulse suddenly thumping, Zenobia stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Her body never seemed to behave itself near him, and she feared her feet might trip along with her heart.

So silly. But it didn’t matter. This was only for a few more days.

“Good morning, Governor!” Though perhaps it wasn’t a good one for him. His posture was as straight as ever and his stride long and firm, but when he came down the stairs each movement seemed slow and deliberate, as if he was weighed down by a burden and being careful not to tip it. And no wonder. The safety of his town depended on his discovering the marauders. “Were you able to find the camp?”

“We did.”

That was all he said before looking away from her to speak with Meeng. No smile, no “Good morning,” no telling her what he’d found.

The tightness in her chest returned. This was the first time he hadn’t given her his immediate attention, as if he pushed everything aside to focus on her. The first time he didn’t seem glad to see her.

It didn’t matter. A few more days, and he’d never see her again.

She brushed past him and climbed the stairs to the shop entrance. Bags of dry goods leaned against the walls and tins sat on half-empty shelves. Brightly colored woven blankets hung above bolts of drab cloth. Rows of bins held neatly sorted tick-tocks and tools, all labeled in a language Zenobia couldn’t read. Bottles lined the shelf over the register—medicine or liquor, she wasn’t sure. Probably liquor. Medicine usually came in smaller quantities than drink did.

Though the surfaces were clean, everything smelled of dust. An old man with wisps of black hair covering his pate stood behind the counter, polishing the scale.

“I was told that you have a post service,” Zenobia said, hoping that the ten thousand souls who’d passed through this town had brought the western trader’s language with them.

Apparently they had. He put away his rag and shuffled along the counter. “I do,” he said—heavily accented, but in French. “Though I cannot promise it will go before the year end.”

“There’s no rush.” If she didn’t arrive in the Red City and Archimedes had to go searching for her in the smugglers’ dens, then the worst had already happened. The letter would just tell him where to look for her bones. She scanned the shelves. “Do you sell pen nibs?”

“In that second bin.”

“How much?”

“A denier each.”

Absurd. “I will pay a denier for five.”

And even that was generous.

The shopkeeper shook his head. “You won’t find nibs anywhere else in town.”

“Perhaps not. But I am not in dire need of one today, and by tomorrow I’ll be in the smugglers’ dens. I daresay that it will be easier for me to find nibs there than it will be for you to find more customers here.”

Through narrowed eyes, the old man stared her down. Zenobia didn’t relent.

“Three for a denier,” he finally said.

Good enough. She searched through the bin he’d indicated, aware of him watching her as she picked out three nibs. She returned to the counter.

Her gold coin clinked dully when he dropped it on the scale. Zenobia didn’t look away from his hands when he added the counterweight. Thumbs had a way of straying onto the pan when women made purchases alone.

He removed the weight and gave her a considering glance. “Do you have a man? My eldest son is up the river. He’s got a strong back. Still has all his hair and teeth.”

“I don’t have a man,” she said. “And I’m not in the market for one.”

“Are you in the market for two, then? I’ve got another son, and you seem woman enough to take on both.”

“Just the pen nibs, please.”

She waited as the shopkeeper weighed the change and wrapped her purchase, trying not to hear the governor’s voice outside. When she left the store, would his manner be as abrupt? They’d last spoken shortly after the boilerworm attack, and all had been well then. She’d thanked him for saving Cooper and he’d teased her about the size of his worm. She couldn’t account for the difference.

But she couldn’t demand the reason for it. Her manner had once changed toward him, too, and she’d never told him why.

That wasn’t the same, though. He’d called her ugly and wanted to know her secrets. She’d done nothing between the last time they’d spoken and now.

So perhaps the reason had nothing to do with her at all. He’d just returned from his search for the marauders’ camp. If he hadn’t found anything there, of course he would be preoccupied. His town was in danger. Lives were at stake—and she was just a woman passing briefly through his.

Still, his town had been in danger from the day they’d met and he’d never been so abrupt with her before.

Maybe it had just been of the moment. Maybe he’d been distracted or preoccupied. Maybe hadn’t really looked through her as if she didn’t exist. She collected the package of pen nibs and stepped out into the sun.

The governor glanced up at her. Nothing. Where there had once been interest and encouragement, now she only saw cool indifference, as if he’d never wanted her in his bed. As if he’d never stood before her in the moonlight and made her heart pound.

It didn’t matter. This ache in her chest would pass.

Blast him, though. She wanted to know why. But the world would disintegrate into dust before she asked. She descended the stairs with her chin high. Hands clasped behind his back, he watched her with dark, unreadable eyes. His tunic matched hers again. The moment she returned to her temporary home, she was going to change her clothes.

As usual, he jumped straight past the niceties. “How is Cooper?”

“Better.” Only two months away from finishing his contract with her and walking into a safer life with Mara. “The blacksmith told him that he should have his legs replaced in the smugglers’ dens. So when you are finished, we’re ready to go on.”

“We’re finished. If you pack your things, we’ll leave as soon as everything is stowed.”

So quickly. Had one of his men been hurt? Maybe that was a reason for his brusque manner now. “Did you find anything in their camp? Were the marauders waiting?”

“No.” But there was something. His jaw tightened briefly before he said, “We’ll prepare the walkers and meet you at your lodging.”

Only a hand at her back could have given a more obvious shove to push her along. Her instinct was to plant her feet and stand her ground, but the pain in her chest urged her to run as fast as she could. She compromised. After offering a brittle smile and a nod, she started down the deserted street at a brisk walk.

What had changed while he’d been gone?

It doesn’t matter, she reminded herself.

It didn’t help.

***

Trying to keep his distance from her was going to kill him.

Ariq couldn’t stop himself from watching Zenobia until she walked out of sight. With a sigh, he trudged up the stairs to the sundry shop. Only a few minutes before she had arrived, Ariq had paid the shopkeeper for a service; he hadn’t known it would be needed so quickly. When he entered the shop, Jali Bulad already had her letter unfolded on the counter and was tracing the contents with the stylus from a mimic machine. A pencil attached to the device’s arm copied the shopkeeper’s movements and wrote a duplicate onto a blank sheet of paper. Ariq almost pointed out that he was tracing each line backwards before realizing that it didn’t matter. Left to right, right to left. It would all be the same at the end.

Ariq skimmed the upside-down contents as best he could. Nothing that he recognized, except that she was sending it to the same person she’d written previously—Eratosthenes Inkslinger, her supposed brother-in-law in the thieves’ den of Port Fallow. She’d mentioned Cooper and Altun, and she’d signed it as Geraldine again. He couldn’t make out the rest of the message.

“Does anyone in town read English?”

The shopkeeper didn’t look up from his painstaking trace. “I don’t know what that is.”

Not many would. The language wasn’t as common as French.

It hardly mattered, anyway. If this letter was like the one she’d sent from Ariq’s town, it would read as any letter did. Only a code-breaker could tell him whether another message had been included, as her first one had.

The Kraken King suspects me.

Ariq hadn’t. He’d known she had secrets and that she wasn’t a mere companion to her friend. He’d all but discarded the idea Zenobia had been the marauders’ target—they’d struck too many airships, they’d followed no pattern—but her pack full of gold and documents, her desperation to continue on her journey despite the dangerous route, and the coded letters had led him to believe that she was delivering information to someone in the Red City. Ariq hadn’t known what information she carried, and he hadn’t cared. He hadn’t thought it would have anything to do with him—and she was obviously inexperienced with such work, so his only concern had been seeing that she delivered it safely.

He should have cared, though. She’d known his uncle had been a rebel, and the letters in her pack mentioned Temür Agha again and again.

And now he’d found the marauders’ camp.

He’d told her the truth. There’d been nothing left at the site. Just a few impressions in the dirt of tents and equipment. But the layout of a camp could be as distinctive as a face, and Ariq had recognized his own in those tracks.

A rebel camp.

If the rebels were behind the attacks, Zenobia’s letters about Temür Agha might have been the reason for them. And if the rebellion was trying to stop her from delivering that information . . . Ariq would, too.

He’d protect her. But he’d stop her.

And he possessed no illusions about how stopping her would affect any relationship that developed between them. He’d lived with war for too long and he’d seen it happen too often. No matter how much he wanted her, no matter how much he cared, eventually their conflicting needs would ruin anything they’d shared.

Because rebels or not, he would destroy whoever had sent those marauders. They’d killed Ariq’s people. He would hold them accountable for the lives they’d taken, and for the threat that now loomed over every person living in his town. But he wouldn’t jeopardize the rebellion itself. If the letters Zenobia carried put the rebellion or his town at risk, and Ariq had to choose between his heart and his people . . . he would sacrifice his heart. Even if it meant sacrificing hers, too.

So he had to stay away from her until he knew for certain. Maybe the camp wasn’t a rebel camp. Maybe the marauders had been led by someone who’d trained and fought with the rebellion, so it only resembled one.

Ariq didn’t know. He wouldn’t know until he discovered who’d bought the flyers and hired the men who’d attacked the airships.

Until then, he would keep his distance.

Try to. Because when she’d looked at him and lifted her chin, as if to say the distance didn’t matter, Ariq wanted to drag her close and show her how much it did.

He wanted to drag her close and keep her there.

The shopkeeper lifted his stylus from Zenobia’s letter. “Should I hold on to this one?”

“Seal it again and send it on,” Ariq told him. If Zenobia had been coerced into carrying information, then someone held something she cared about over her head. If “something she cared about” was a person, her correspondence might mean the difference between life and death.

He tucked the duplicate letter into the fold of his tunic, where it lay over his heart. Never had the words from the battle prayer seemed more appropriate. His heart was iron—heavy and cold. But his will was steel and he wouldn’t falter.

Ariq paid the man another coin and left the shop. Meeng had brought one of the walkers around and was trying to catch more sleep beneath the canvas. Tsetseg and Bartan already snored on the rear benches, and had been for hours; they would be the first to take the flyers, then. From the marauders’ camp, they’d traveled back to Altun through the night, returning less than a half hour before dawn. Ariq had thought they would rest in town today while Cooper’s legs were rebuilt, but his people would have to sleep in the vehicles and drive in shifts, instead.

They would reach the smugglers’ dens by that evening, where Zenobia would be delayed while Cooper consulted another blacksmith and was grafted new legs.

Good. Ariq wouldn’t have to make up a reason for her to stay in the smugglers’ dens while he searched for the marauders—or force her to stay. She wasn’t going anywhere without him. Definitely not to the Red City. Not until Ariq knew whether he’d have to stop her from delivering the letters she carried in her pack.

A pack that she already had strapped to her back. She waited at the gate to her lodging, her small trunk at her feet. Lieutenant Blanchett and his men had begun loading their walker. A sleepy-looking Helene sat in that vehicle. She must have chosen to ride with the Frenchmen, since Mara and an injured Cooper would be taking up the back of Ariq’s walker. Ariq didn’t care, as long as Zenobia rode with him.

And she would. Not to be with Ariq. Her gaze quickly searched his face when he jumped down from the walker, then her chin went up again and her eyes flattened. But when he carried Cooper out, her hardness took on a haunted edge, as if looking at the injured man hollowed her out.

Ariq recognized that pain and guilt. He’d sent men and women into battle knowing they would die. Knowing others would come back with wounds that could never heal. Now the people who had fought with her, who’d fought for her, had been hurt—and she wouldn’t abandon them now, not even to get away from Ariq.

He wanted to tell her he knew what she felt. But that wouldn’t be keeping his distance.

So there was only this—his hands on her slender waist as he lifted her onto the ladder. For a brief moment he held her close, her back against his chest. Her duplicated letter crinkled in his tunic. Her brown hair smelled of dust. With ink-stained fingers, she reached for the rung and pulled out of his grip.

He climbed up after her.

Chapter Ten

No respectable western cartographers included the smugglers’ dens on their maps. If the dens were shown at all, they appeared as a single city and were labeled “Bradlinger’s Folly,” after the Dutchman from Johannesland who had attempted to settle the region almost three hundred years before. He’d been told the Australian natives were primitive, docile, and of small stature, so any resistance to the new colony would easily subdued.

Bradlinger had sailed to Australia with seven ships. Only a few members of his company had returned to the Americas alive.

The outsiders who’d eventually settled in the area must have had a better idea how to win over the local clan than Bradlinger had. Zenobia didn’t know who they’d been. No one from Scandinavia or the Americas, she was sure. Maybe exiles from the Horde empire, or pirates hiding from Nipponese forces. While growing up, everything she’d heard and read about western Australia had painted it as a savage land full of disease and war, and the dens populated by thieves and murderers. Archimedes’ travels and his letters had offered her a better picture of the dens—which were one city in appearance, separated into five districts. They were full of criminals, but only criminals by civilized standards. The districts were each ruled by a different den lord, and each had its own laws. Not all of them made a crime of murder or theft.

Similar to Port Fallow, Zenobia had believed—a rough town built on the ashes of Amsterdam and controlled by rich mercenary families, and the old canals dividing the population by class and wealth.

But it wasn’t as similar to Port Fallow as she’d thought.

The dens were bigger. From the walker, Zenobia couldn’t determine exactly how much bigger. They’d traveled south along the base of the escarpment before turning west, offering her first view of the dens across the plain—sprawled around a bay, surrounded by a wall, and divided by a river. Even from a distance, the different districts were easy to spot. More walls had been built between the dens, but Zenobia didn’t need them to tell her where the borders were. In the northern district, residences sat amid trees and gardens. Balloons floated lazily over ponds and parks. Over the next wall, buildings were stacked on top of each other, as if they crowded in as many people as possible. Smoke poured from factories on both sides of the river, though the residences on the southern side didn’t seem so small or densely packed.

A faint yellow haze hung over the dens, as if the sky was a glass wiped with a dirty towel. Balloons flew through the haze like bees around a hive. Larger airships hovered above the city and the bay. As soon as Cooper’s legs were rebuilt, one of those airships would take Zenobia and Helene to the Red City.

Of course, these were the smugglers’ dens—so they would have to choose a captain who wouldn’t take their fare, promise them passage, then kill them on the way.

Helene must have been glad to see the airships, despite the danger. Zenobia looked back. Lieutenant Blanchett’s walker wasn’t far behind theirs. Helene sat beside him on the front bench, her face animated as she pointed ahead. Her friend must have found the Frenchman’s company more stimulating than Zenobia’s. She hadn’t seen Helene pick up a book even once that day.

Zenobia glanced at the governor. Though he sat only a short distance from her, they’d barely exchanged a dozen words. She was determined not to care. To harden her heart. To remind herself that soon she would never see him again, so the way he’d dismissed her at the sundry shop that morning didn’t matter.

Despite her resolve, she’d been aware of him. Aware of the black stubble on his jaw and the shadows under his eyes, telling her that he hadn’t rested since returning from the marauders’ camp. Aware of the watchful tension in his big frame. Aware of how many times he’d looked her way and how often he hadn’t. It was irritating, this hold he had over her senses—and with no effort on his part. Even when she didn’t look, she’d noticed his every movement. Not a minute had passed that she hadn’t wanted to talk to him, or wondered what he was thinking. Not a mile had gone by that she hadn’t thought of sliding into his lap and pressing her mouth to his, and of daring him to dismiss her after she’d kissed him.

She feared that he would, anyway.

And she called herself an idiot when her heart lifted, simply because he immediately glanced at her in return—as if none of her movements had gone unnoticed, either, and he was just as aware of her.

An idiot. But the tightness in her chest that had been a constant companion since the morning eased a little.

He glanced at her again. Probably because she was still looking at him.

Zenobia lifted her chin. “When we are ready to continue on, I hope that you might recommend to us a trustworthy airship.”

“I’ll make the arrangements.”

And there was the abruptness again. A short nod accompanied his reply, then he looked away from her—even though nothing lay ahead of the walker but the smugglers’ dens, and those still miles away.

She faced forward again, too, wishing for her notebook. It would have been so much more sensible to work than to sit here with every cell in her body attuned toward his.

Not just her body. Her brain, too.

And that was simply unacceptable.

So blast it. None of this mattered anymore. She pulled out the notebook tucked inside her tunic and began to sketch the scene ahead.

A few straight lines established the city’s shape. “Why the perimeter walls?”

And blast him, too, because even though her fingers were busy she was aware of how he glanced at her notebook, then of the lingering look he gave her profile before answering. “It establishes the boundary of the area they were given to settle.”

“By the local tribe?”

“Yes.”

The Nyungar had been generous. The city was at least four or five times larger in area than Port Fallow. “But why walls? Port Fallow and the Ivory Market use them to keep zombies out of the city. But there are no zombies in Australia. And unless boilerworms can fly, that wall is too high to have been meant to stop them. So why not simply mark the boundary as you do in your town? Unless it’s to keep people from moving between dens.”

“It is,” the governor said.

And it didn’t sound as if he approved. His voice had hardened, and his loose grip on the steering lever tightened. She continued sketching. “Which den will we be staying in?”

Hopefully not Lord Duval’s den. Zenobia didn’t know who any of the other den lords were, but she knew all of Archimedes’ smuggling business had come through Duval’s contacts. That had been more than a decade ago, and there was little chance that she would be recognized as the sister to Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste—but if someone did recognize her, it would most likely be some former associate in Duval’s district.

“A man I trust keeps an inn in the twins’ den.”

Not Duval’s. Any relief Zenobia might have felt was erased by the sound of Mara’s sharply indrawn breath behind her.

Alarm filled the mercenary’s voice. “The twins?”

The governor glanced back. “Are any of the other dens safer?”

A long second passed before Mara shook her head.

All of them equally dangerous. But he must have chosen that den for a reason. Zenobia looked up from her sketch. “Why there?”

“The twins control most of the Nipponese trade. I want to know where those flyers came from—and who bought them.”

“You expect them to simply tell you?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him. Zenobia didn’t know anything about the twins, but the mere mention had made Mara gasp. Yet he intended to demand information from them—and sounded certain of their compliance.

She didn’t know what to think of that. Thanks to Archimedes’ letters, she’d recognized the Kraken King from the moment she’d seen the tattoo on his back—one of the most powerful and feared commanders of the Horde rebellion. But that was who he’d been. He’d left the rebellion and now he was just the governor of a small town on the western Australian coast.

Yet he could still make demands of a den lord.

Unsettled, she looked ahead again. “Which den is theirs?”

“The one farthest south.”

The one that she had the most difficulty seeing from this perspective. Three were readily visible, but the southernmost den wasn’t.

But that wasn’t right. There should be two more. “Where is the fifth den?”

“In the water. It’s an island.”

“And known as the Rat Den,” Mara said.

Now didn’t that sound like a lovely place to live? “Do they all have names?”

Mara nodded. “The Wolf Den in the north—that’s Lord Duval’s. Lord and Lady Yudaev control the Bear Den, unless their son has already killed them and taken their place. Who rules over the Tiger Den now?”

“The Kwan clan,” the governor said.

“And the twins’ den?” Zenobia asked, though it probably wouldn’t be hard to guess. “No, do not tell me. Is it the Lion’s Den?”

His firm mouth curved with amusement too brief for her liking. “It’s the Fox Den.”

Oh. Well, then. That sounded like the proper place for Zenobia to stay.

With a smile, she started sketching again.

***

By the time the walker approached the southern wall, Zenobia had changed her mind. None of the dens seemed like the proper place for anyone to stay.

Guards in mechanical suits patrolled the tops of the walls. They’d lowered their guns after Tsetseg had landed her flyer at the Fox Den’s gate and told the sentries who was coming, but Zenobia still felt as if their weapons were pointed at her. The terror of being on the wrong end of a gun barrel never went away quickly.

Her heart was still pounding when the gate opened. One of the governor’s men drove a crawler through ahead of their walker, and Lieutenant Blanchett followed close behind. Zenobia wished she’d insisted that Helene ride through the den in their vehicle. The lieutenant was a capable officer, but he was no Mara and he was no Cooper—even when Cooper was legless and blissed on opium.

She looked back as they passed through the gate. Helene had scooted closer to Blanchett. Zenobia couldn’t see any fear in her, only a little wariness and curiosity. As if she trusted the man at her side to protect her, though she hardly knew him and hadn’t paid him anything to do it.

Zenobia couldn’t imagine trusting anyone so easily. The Kraken King sat next to her—but no matter how strong or powerful he was, scooting closer would be more dangerous than staying in her seat. It would reveal far too much.

She would be fine right here, with Mara and Cooper behind her.

And they hadn’t even drawn their guns. Probably because there was no one who needed shooting. They passed through the gate onto a wide street laid with brick. To the left, four men in mechanical suits tramped their way down a wooden walk. Buildings rose around them—not the stacked buildings of the Bear Den, which looked as if they’d tacked rickety new rooms on top of old when they’d run out of space, but tiered structures eight and ten levels high, with stairs climbing the front and topped by sloping red roofs. Rope bridges connected some of the buildings’ upper levels. Children ran across their swooping lengths as the walkers picked their way along the streets below. They passed steamcoaches and carts that might have come from Zenobia’s home in Fladstrand, and spider rickshaws like those she’d seen in London. Two-seater balloons flew swiftly overhead, and it was all loud and busy, but as far as Zenobia could see, no one was being raped and murdered.

That didn’t mean anything. Zenobia had grown up in a town as clean and as orderly as this, and her mother had still died screaming in pain and fear.

They passed more men in mechanical suits. A continual heavy thrum sounded from above, growing louder as they moved deeper into the district—the twins’ hovering fortress. Zenobia could only see bits of the floating palace beyond the tall buildings and the web of bridges: its spinning heliosails, the clusters of balloons, the engines below. Its shadow darkened the heart of the den.

She glanced at the governor. He didn’t return her look, but she didn’t expect him to. Not when he had so many other things to watch out for. “We’re not going to stay beneath that, I hope?”

“It’s not over the inn now.”

“But it might be?”

“Not while we’re here.”

Relief slipped through her. She couldn’t imagine living under that and not feeling as if it might crush her at any moment.

But perhaps that was the point. “I don’t suppose everyone in this den can ask them to move.”

“No.”

She nodded, then confessed, “It’s not what I thought it would be.”

His dark gaze left the street and met hers. “Poverty? Squalor?”

Exactly that. Did he already know her so well? Or had he once expected it, too?

Afraid of the answer, Zenobia looked away. “In Port Fallow, the mercenary families own everything, and except for a favored few, everyone else has almost nothing. They don’t even have enough to leave—so it only worsens.”

“The twins brand and toss out anyone who can’t pay their tribute.”

“Brand? Burn a mark onto them?” In shock, she looked to him for confirmation.

A nod was his only reply, but for the first time that day, she saw more in his expression—as if the stone face of a mountain had shifted and exposed a volcano. Just a little quake before quieting again.

Not much. But it told her how much he hated the twins.

Zenobia liked him all the more for it.

“They used to execute anyone who couldn’t pay,” Mara said.

“No longer?”

“They were told to stop,” the governor said grimly.

Told to stop. “By you?”

He looked at her briefly and didn’t reply. Her heart was pounding. She didn’t know why. Her gaze rose to the spinning heliosails. “I suppose it wouldn’t be so terrible if the Nipponese empress decided to destroy them.”

“Except for the people she would destroy with them,” he said. “Better that the people rise up and destroy the twins themselves.”

She had to laugh. “And that was spoken like a true rebel. They should ask you to lead them.”

“They need better than me.” The governor wasn’t laughing. A muscle worked in his jaw. “The rebellion gave the den lords their money and power. And I will soon give them more, because I need information.”

“So you helped create this. You can’t change it now?”

Another tremor in his expression revealed frustration, anger. Then he was solid rock again. He didn’t answer.

Maybe it had been unfair to ask. She was here and had no plans to start a rebellion. And he’d obviously already forced the twins to change a little. Maybe he’d used his influence in the other dens, too.

That was the difference between them, though. He had power here. She didn’t.

The sound of the walker’s legs clicking against the bricks, the thrum of the palace, and the rattle of a passing rickshaw filled the silence between them. She turned her face away from a steamcoach’s belch of smoke and held her breath.

When she opened her eyes the governor was staring at her, and nameless emotion burned beneath the hard stone again. It suddenly cooled and he looked away, but his voice was rough, as if the tremors hadn’t quite stilled. “They’ll rise up. Until then, they are all welcome in my town—and they know it.”

Something in her chest pulled tight. He hadn’t told her that to excuse himself, she realized. He’d told her because he didn’t want her to believe that he wasn’t doing anything. As if her opinion of him mattered.

Yet he’d looked through her that morning and convinced her it didn’t matter. She’d spent all day telling herself that none of this mattered. But if it did, why had he been so dismissive of her?

Maybe that was what didn’t matter.

Before Zenobia could think better of it, she scooted closer. Not touching. Just closer, with only a hand’s span between them.

His body went rigid. Tension hardened every muscle that she’d admired when he’d walked naked out of the sea.

She prayed the closeness was as torturous for him as it was for her. It would be easy to keep going, to slide onto his lap, and kiss him as she’d imagined. To press her lips to the firmness of his, to taste the heat of his mouth. To make him dismiss her again or admit that he didn’t want to. But they were in the middle of the street, with Mara and Cooper sitting behind them, and Zenobia wasn’t yet that adventurous.

Still, overwhelming temptation prevented her from speaking for a long second. Finally she managed to ask, “If they can’t pay their taxes, how can they pay for passage to your town?”

His dark brows shot together. Whatever he’d expected her to say, that apparently wasn’t it. He stole a look at her face as if to determine her intention.

She’d moved closer; maybe he’d thought she would flirt.

Zenobia would have if she wasn’t terrible at it. Making her characters spout charming lines was easy, but similar words in her mouth always sounded false. So she had to make real conversation instead.

She arched her eyebrows, waiting for his answer.

“If they come to the inn, we provide their passage.” Some of his rigidity eased, yet his voice was low and still rough. “But few come.”

“Why?” Krakentown had to be preferable to this.

“Because some think I’ll be the same as the den lords. Others think I’m worse.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

Zenobia frowned at him. They were in the smugglers’ dens. Soon they would part forever. And he would give her more than a dismissive one-word answer.

He responded with his own frown. His was probably more frightening than hers, because her brows weren’t so heavy nor her eyes so dark, and she wasn’t clenching her teeth, so the muscles in her jaw didn’t knot like his did. If she kissed him now, it would likely feel as if she were smashing her lips against a brick.

She considered it, anyway.

His gaze fell to her mouth as if he considered it, too. Abruptly his stiffness returned, locking his frown in place. Glowering, he looked ahead.

“I have rules,” he said.

Three words had never pleased her so much. They hadn’t been dismissive. His tone said that more would follow. “Horribly unfair rules?”

“Some here think so.” He indicated the buildings around them—and the people within, Zenobia assumed. “Many believe in Arslang’s Order. The twins do, too.”

She didn’t know what that meant. “Arslang?”

“A den lord, about a hundred years ago. He kept a beast sanctuary in the Lion Den—mostly animals taken from Africa before the zombies destroyed them.”

“A naturalist,” Zenobia realized. There were similar conservatories scattered across the Americas.

“That’s what he called himself.” The look the governor gave her said Arslang didn’t meet his definition of a proper scientist. “He believed that humans were only beasts with larger brains. And, as with animals, there is no wrong in killing another to survive—and that it was a natural right for the strong to lead. It is a natural advantage—so it is the right of the clever to cheat and the quick to steal.”

“Without consequence?”

“Yes.”

So that was why there were no laws here—except the laws of nature. She’d heard of similar beliefs discussed before, but never had she heard of them implemented. Uneasy, Zenobia studied the people they passed. She had to be weaker than many of them but no one was leaping onto the walker to kill her.

“Why is it not utter chaos?”

A tight smile pulled at his mouth. “Arslang’s followers would point to a herd. They spend most of the day grazing peacefully. And when an attack comes, the frail and the sick are weeded out, which strengthens the herd as a whole. The believers can find any example to justify whatever they choose to do.”

So society only functioned because most people were like herd animals? Everything in Zenobia revolted at the thought. “Why do you think it isn’t chaos?”

“Because most people are better than that. Most choose not to kill or steal, even if they believe they have the right to do it. And for those who would choose to, fear holds most of them back.” He directed her attention to a pair of men in mechanical suits. The guards had been on every street so far. Not doing anything that Zenobia could see. Just watching. “Killing is no crime—but even the weak have family or friends, and there is the danger of angering someone stronger. Or if someone murders a person the twins favor, he risks their wrath. The guards won’t help anyone. But they will report what happened.”

Zenobia’s gaze shot up the cluster of balloons tethered to the side of the hovering fortress. They’d taken the long way around, she suspected, just to avoid passing beneath it.

She didn’t understand why everyone here wasn’t running to Krakentown. “And yet you are worse?”

“Because I have rules,” he said again. “Rape, theft, murder—none are welcome in my town. But even those people who don’t kill believe I’m taking away their right to do it. They fear the twins’ strength, but that is the natural order, and they’d rather live under the twins’ feet than sacrifice their natural rights.”

Oh. Zenobia understood that too well, then. Not believing that she had a right to murder, but choosing what to give up—or not to give up—just to feel a little safer.

She’d already sacrificed her privacy. Mara had overheard every part of her life for almost a year now. Even this conversation. She and the governor sat close together and spoke in low voices, but they might as well have been shouting. The mercenary was discreet and Zenobia trusted her. Still, she felt the loss of privacy keenly.

Yet Zenobia had considered sacrificing even more. She’d been Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste’s sister before he’d run afoul of Temür Agha. She’d changed her name and started a new life as Zenobia Fox. Now she was Archimedes Fox’s sister, and she could do the same thing again—just leave Zenobia Fox behind. Give up writing her famous adventures and move somewhere no one knew her face.

And no longer be someone’s sister.

She could take a new name. Start writing again—maybe even become successful again. But it wouldn’t be enough this time. She would have to leave her brother behind, because for all of Archimedes’ talents, he was never good at hiding. If she didn’t sever ties with him, she would be discovered again.

But she wouldn’t sacrifice her brother. And she wasn’t willing to sacrifice Zenobia Fox. She loved her life, everything she’d built and created. She wasn’t willing to give it up—and she would fight anyone who tried to take it from her.

Even if it meant never having privacy and always living with fear.

“So they choose what they believe is more important.” She couldn’t agree with their beliefs, but she could respect that. “Even though it means giving up something else they want.”

The governor nodded. His dark gaze lingered on her face before he turned his attention to the road ahead.

“As we all do,” he said.

***

Walls were never sufficient defense. Every commander in the Golden Empire knew that. Centuries ago, continents had fallen before their hordes. Cities and nations protected by walls lasted longer than others, but a weak spot would be discovered in the stone or the besieged citizens would surrender, and the wall would be breached.

Zenobia had torn Ariq’s down in less than a day.

He tried to re-create his defenses as they continued through the city, and knew anything he constructed would be useless. Her every word, every look, every breath were like battering rams. No siege engine could equal the destructive power of Zenobia sitting so close.

Ariq couldn’t recall steering the last mile to the inn. There was only Zenobia beside him. Only her clever mind and her sharp smile, and the haunted pain in her jade eyes that said she knew exactly what it meant to give up something she wanted.

Whatever she’d sacrificed, Ariq wanted to give it back to her.

And he wanted more than that. He wanted his hands in her hair and her mouth open beneath his kiss. He wanted her bare skin against his and secrets tumbling from her lips. He wanted her to trust him.

But that was only what he wanted. What he needed was distance. Not emotional walls that crumbled in hours. Not a few inches across a bench. Real distance. Then he could focus on what was important: discovering whether the marauders had been rebels, and whether the rebellion had been trying to stop her—and discovering whether he would have to stop her, too.

Both distance and answers waited for him when he reached the inn. A balloon with the twins’ seal painted on the cruiser’s wooden side hovered over the street. Guards in mechanical suits flanked the inn’s entrance.

Dayir Sunid came through the gate. Rotund and gray, Dayir’s years of fighting had long passed, but Ariq recognized the irritation burning behind the innkeeper’s warm greetings with Tsetseg and Meeng. Given the choice, Dayir would have shot the balloon out of the sky and crushed the guards. But the innkeeper had already made a different choice. He didn’t fight now. He only protected those who came to him—and for the next few days, Ariq trusted him to protect Zenobia and her companions during their stay in the dens.

He stopped the walker’s engine. Before he could speak, Zenobia sat forward on the bench, her back rigid and her eyes narrowed.

“Those are the twins’ mechanical men,” she said.

“Yes.”

Her gaze swung toward his like a green blade. “Do they summon you?”

She spoke as if she wanted to march up to the guards and send them to hell. As if she would fight rather than allow them to drag Ariq away.

How could anyone build defenses against such a woman? She’d jumped fearlessly from a falling balloon flyer and lured a boilerworm with fire, and now she was willing to stand up to men in mechanical suits.

But she’d misread this situation. The twins were arrogant, but they knew better than to summon him.

“It’s an invitation,” he said. “And authorized transportation to their fortress.”

Ferocity turned to worry. “Then they know you’re coming to see them.”

They would have been told of Ariq’s arrival within minutes of his entering the den. He nodded, then rose from the bench and started for the ladder.

The twins would also be told if he showed any preference toward one of his passengers. He didn’t hold Zenobia too close or for too long when he helped her down, though her warm scent filled his every breath and his hands never wanted to leave her waist. The need to reassure her burned within him, but he pretended not to see her concern when she glanced from the guards to him. He turned away and boarded the twins’ balloon instead of watching her pass through the inn’s gate, and was halfway to the fortress before he stopped wondering if she’d glanced back when he’d left.

Smoking hells. Why hadn’t she come into his life a year ago, before the marauders’ attacks had threatened the destruction of his town? Or a year from now, when it would be over? Why couldn’t she simply be the clever woman who’d made him laugh and who’d set fire to his blood? Why did she have to be the woman who carried dangerous information in her satchel and lied about who she was?

He needed to shove her out of his mind. Yet as he watched the city pass below and familiar frustration rose from his gut, he still thought of her.

You helped create this. You can’t change it now?

Ariq could. Waging war was in his bones. He could destroy the twins and anyone who took their place. But he knew the cost of that war would be far too many of the lives below. Thousands would die. And if Ariq started the battle it would be his war, not theirs.

Whatever the twins professed to believe, they didn’t rule by strength alone. They relied on fear, just as the Great Khagan did. Eventually the people would rise up against that terror, just as the rebels in the Golden Empire had. But Ariq wouldn’t force them into a fight they weren’t ready for, and weren’t ready to die for.

So for now, he studied the hovering fortress ahead and imagined all the ways he could blow it out of the air.

It wouldn’t take much, despite the fortress’s impressive defenses. The twins had based the layout of their fortress on designs from an old Nipponese imperial palace, including a tenshu surrounded by roughly concentric moats and with no direct approach from the perimeter. Only the technology they’d used had altered. Watchtowers mounted with rail cannons stood at regular intervals; the tower guards would shoot any unauthorized airship that came near. Flyers waited to defend against a multipronged attack. If an enemy managed to land, they would have to fight their way across the air moats to reach the engine controls and the twins, both protected within the keep.

But the fortress had one unalterable weakness: they’d built it in the sky—and the designers of ancient imperial palaces never had to plan for that vulnerability. Targeting the engines and balloons would bring it down. By gun and gravity, the fortress would fall.

So the watchtowers and the guards weren’t the fortress’s real defense against men who waged war as Ariq did. The people living beneath it were the defense. Anyone who chose to attack the twins with guns and cannons would sacrifice every person living below.

No one had done it yet. The twins would have called that reluctance weakness. To Ariq, it disproved the notion that humans were only animals, clawing out their continued survival by strength alone.

One day, someone would find a way to change the dens for the better. Someone smarter than Ariq. Because the only way that he could see was destruction and death.

The balloon tethered above a small courtyard in the second circle. There was no proper ground to walk on, only steel grates. The reverberation of the engines hummed like a hive of bees beneath Ariq’s feet. The heliosails spinning above pushed a continual breeze through the compound, along with the heavy odor of hot metal and burning oil.

Guards in mechanical suits flanked the narrow bridge to the inner circle. Extra weight consumed extra fuel, so no water filled the wide moats. Instead, any enemy who tried to cross them risked plunging into the engines below.

But any enemy who managed to fly onto the fortress wouldn’t land in one of the outer circles or attempt to cross the moats. They’d fly straight for the keep.

It rose before him, a graceful tower atop a steel base. Gabled roofs painted a bold blue topped each level; guards walked the balustrade of each tier. If the twins had spared any materials to lighten the structure’s massive weight, it didn’t show, and unlike the fortress’s other defenses inspired by ancient designs, the keep would be equally difficult to penetrate on the land or in the sky.

The gate opened at Ariq’s approach. A chill tightened his skin as he stepped through. Even the warmth outside had difficulty penetrating the keep. Bare steel walls welcomed him in. His topknot brushed the low ceiling. He didn’t bend his head.

Two attendants greeted Ariq and led him deeper into the keep. Fifteen or sixteen years of age, slender, with shaved heads and plain robes, they might have been boys or girls. Ariq couldn’t tell. Both were pale. Not light-skinned like Zenobia, but with the pallor of a corpse. Either they never saw the sun or the twins had already begun altering them. Aside from their color, however, there were no visible changes.

There were visible changes on other servants. They passed a maid who bowed and backed up to the wall, her eyes lowered and sweepers grafted to her legs. Most of the guards wore mechanical suits, but others had limbs replaced with weapons and armor melded to flesh. There were likely more elsewhere, some with less successful modifications.

The twins liked to experiment.

Ariq suspected they always had. They’d come to the dens from Nippon almost fifteen years ago—only a few months after power had changed hands from the former empress to her daughter. Upon arriving in the Fox Den, the twins had immediately killed the den lord and taken his place, then built their fortress in the sky.

And that was all most people knew about the twins. Despite his contacts, Ariq hardly knew any more for certain. Most valuable information from Nippon passed through the Fox Den and was brokered by the twins. If any rumors about their history had existed, they’d managed to quash most of them.

Not all. Bits and pieces of rumors often became larger stories, but there was still a kernel of truth in some. One story was that the empress had wizards at her command. In the Golden Empire, many people believed the same of the Khagan. But they weren’t magicians; they were scientists, given leave to protect the royals at any cost. Their experiments had created the zombie infection, the monsters in the sea, the war machines that had helped them conquer continents—and much more. Nippon’s scientists had built the imperial city and developed creatures like the screw beetles that had tortured Ariq’s brother in their prison. Such scientists might be called soldiers, fighting wars and defending their empires. But creating weapons that could kill and torture so many required a different, crueler sort of mind than any warrior whom Ariq had ever fought with possessed.

He thought the twins both possessed that sort of mind. But if they had once served the empress by experimenting on others, they weren’t serving her now, and they hadn’t spared themselves.

The attendants showed him into a great hall. Unlike the lower chambers, the walls were of wood and the ceilings high. Hissing gas torches stood in columns and cast a warm glow over painted panels. In the first, Empress Go-Jingu led her people out of Nippon, flying upon a chrysanthemum, her hair unbound and clutching a spear in her fist. A fleet of ships as plentiful as a school of herring followed her, with Fuji standing in the background—art making victory of a defeat. Sartaq Khan had taken that island shortly after that empress’s escape, and centuries later, Ariq’s mother had been born a citizen of the Golden Empire in the shadow of that mountain.

More wall panels showed the empress meeting the Turrbal and Jagera tribes on Australia’s eastern shore. Ariq had seen similar scenes in many Nipponese homes. Most didn’t possess paintings of the slaughters and the plagues that followed. The twins did, the panels stretching far down the hall. He might have commended them for not forgetting that part of the past, but he suspected that the blood and death pleased them to look upon, in the same way that a beautiful landscape might please another.

They waited for him on a dais covered by a mat of woven gold silk. Lady Amako sat with her steel hands clasped on her lap and legs folded beneath her. Ariq didn’t think Lady Shizuko still had human legs. She sat higher than her sister, as if squatting on a block, and the bottom of her robe covered a rounded mass that rumbled like a well-oiled engine. On both women, bursts of scars surrounded the bulging dark lenses embedded in their eyes. Their faces were unlined, but gray threaded through their black hair. Had his mother still lived, she would have been of the same age.

“Good evening, Kraken. We are so very honored by your presence.”

Amako greeted him, her voice soft and cultured, her expression smiling. Already enjoying herself. Every conversation with him was an experiment of another sort, to see what she could take from him. She would probably like today’s results. He rarely needed anything from them.

More acerbic than her sister, Shizuko added her short welcome and invited him to sit. He joined the twins on the mat, facing them. The attendants remained behind, silent. He didn’t want them at his back. But he could see their reflections as pale spots in the twins’ lenses, so they couldn’t move without his noticing.

Though she also smiled, Shizuko wasn’t taking the same pleasure in his presence that her twin did. “It has been some time since you visited us.”

And the last time had been to tell them to stop killing the people in the den who couldn’t pay their tribute—a difficult command for Shizuko to hear, because he could still hear the bitterness in her voice, as if it had echoed within her over the years.

He didn’t care. Let it fester. “I come with news.”

“And with westerners,” Amako said. The torchlight gleamed against her dark lenses. “French aviators . . . and women. Tell us of the women.”

“An ambassador’s wife and her companion.” He told the same lie Zenobia had. He wouldn’t give the twins any reason to look twice at her.

“Their airship was destroyed?” Shizuko asked.

Ariq didn’t know if they’d already learned of the attack or were guessing. It didn’t matter. If the marauders continued their attacks, then the dens were in the same danger as Ariq’s town. The twins believed the strong could destroy the weak at will—but none of them was as strong as the empress. By helping him, they could save themselves, too.

“Yes,” he said. “Just like the others—except it was a French naval ship.”

Amako pulled in a breath and looked to her sister. No words passed between them—not that Ariq could hear. But they were communicating somehow. Through the devices in their eyes or by some other method, Ariq didn’t know.

But he expected that they reached the same conclusion Commander Saito had: The empress wouldn’t tolerate an attack against a foreign government’s ship while she was opening trade to her cities. If the empress can’t remove a splinter from a finger, she’ll cut off the arm. The marauders were the splinter, and the arm was every settlement on the western Australian coast.

Shizuko looked to Ariq again. “So why have you come to us?”

“They rode jellyfish balloon flyers. Fourteen, at least. I want to know who bought them.”

“We did not sell them,” Shizuko said slowly. “But it came to our attention last year that two dozen balloons had been procured and sold.”

Two dozen. More flyers that had been destroyed in the attack on the French airship. “By whom?”

Amako’s smile widened, revealing the glint of polished steel teeth. “That is not our business. Our business is trade.”

“And your price?”

“Only what your Khagan has already discovered, and that we have been trying to duplicate,” Amako said.

“Strength.” A gasp of steam escaped Shizuko’s lower block as she spoke. Her body rose three inches, and two segmented legs emerged from the sides of her robe before she settled again. “We make it for ourselves, but that strength is only a shell. It does not live within us. We cannot pass it on. Yet you were born with it.”

“So we want your seed,” her sister finished. “And our issue will be the strongest this land has ever seen.”

His child. Not even for his town would Ariq put an infant into their hands—his or any other.

“No.” He didn’t conceal his disgust. “Not ever.”

Amako recoiled. “We do not ask you to mount us,” she said, equally disgusted. As if that horror was the only objection Ariq could have. “We would collect it. Our attendants will service you.”

Shizuko gestured them forward. “Girl or boy, whatever your preference.”

The attendants moved closer. To take his seed. Rage boiled up, hot and sharp.

He’d kill them all if they touched him.

“Stop!”

The pale reflections in the twins’ dark lenses froze.

Ariq closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Let the building anger out.

Finally, he said, “A kraken beached near my town. It was male.”

The twins looked to each other. Their displeasure vanished in a gleam of avarice. Just slivers of meat from a kraken’s penis sold for a fortune on the mainland and in Nippon.

“Adult?” Shizuko asked.

Ariq nodded. “Young. But its organ fully intact.”

The tips of Amako’s fingers chimed merrily when she tapped them together. “Its length?”

“Like another tentacle.”

The sisters grinned. “The upstart Lord Jochi sold the flyers,” Shizuko said.

The lord of the Rat Den. Ariq hadn’t dealt with him before, except as the second-in-command to the former den lord, Merkus. Young and quiet, Jochi hadn’t made a strong impression when Ariq had met him. He’d been overshadowed by his belligerent and stupid den lord. But two years ago, in an arena full of spectators, Jochi had challenged Merkus and taken his place.

So Ariq would soon discover the sort of man that Jochi was. Not from the twins, though. He wanted more important information from them—now, while the fortune he’d given them had the sisters in a generous mind.

“What do you know of Archimedes Fox?”

Shizuko gave a strangled cough. Steam burst from beneath her robes.

“What do we know of him?” her sister echoed, utter surprise slackening her expression. Then she cackled and rocked back and forth. “We know that he has not earned us as much as your squid penis will. But he has earned us gold enough.”

By selling what? More letters like Zenobia carried?

“Where do I find him?”

“You do not follow his adventures?” Shizuko’s laugh echoed her sister’s. “Of course, there is a real man named Archimedes Fox. To locate him, look to Lady Nergüi.”

Ariq frowned. He knew several women named Nergüi.

But, no—he realized. Shizuko didn’t mean a woman. She meant an airship. And he did know one by that name. A skyrunner, it had flown into his town the previous year, then was gone the next morning. He’d known the passengers—westerners who’d hid in his town for a brief time. He hadn’t met anyone else aboard.

“What is your interest in Fox?” Amako asked.

Their amusement still hadn’t abated. He’d taken a risk mentioning the man’s name. If they managed to link Fox to the companion of an ambassador’s wife, Zenobia might be in danger. Yet they were treating his question as a joke.

Ariq didn’t understand it. But he wouldn’t reveal that. Silent, he waited.

Amako’s fingers chimed again. Still enjoying herself. “Do you think his stories seditious, too? You must admire that, a rebel yourself.”

Seditious stories? “I haven’t read them.”

“Ah. So you have only heard rumors from the imperial city and a name.”

“Yes,” Ariq lied. Nothing he’d seen in Zenobia’s letters had mentioned Nippon’s imperial city.

Shizuko shook her head. “Fox’s story was the same as every one of his adventures—nothing but fanciful rubbish.”

“Popular rubbish,” her sister said. “Particularly with women.”

“We cannot print enough translations to send across the wall. Even the empress reads them.”

Even the empress. Every merchant and smuggler with a ware to sell made that claim—even the empress loved their merchandise.

And it was clear now what they had been speaking of: adventure stories. Fanciful rubbish, and a man called Archimedes Fox wrote them.

That wouldn’t be the man who’d written letters about Ariq’s uncle to Zenobia. There was nothing fanciful about exposing one of the Khagan’s most celebrated generals as a rebel.

Except the name. Archimedes Fox. A character in these stories. It wouldn’t be the first time that a rebel had used the name of a folk hero to conceal his true identity. Was Zenobia his ally? Or had she been forced to carry the letters?

“The latest story was no different in essentials,” Amako said. “The hero has changed—the adventures feature a woman now—but the content is as foolish.”

“A thinly veiled retelling of Bushke’s overthrow at New Eden,” Shizuko told him. “There were rumors Lady Nergüi and Fox visited that city.”

Bushke. A tyrant who had ruled over a balloon city, forcing airships and their crews into service. “Fox killed him?”

“We have heard it was another—Miles Bilson. Others have said it was his partner.” Amako looked to her sister. “What was his name? The ridiculous, beautiful one.”

“Gunther-Baptiste,” Ariq said. He knew them both. Bilson had smuggled war machines for the rebellion more than a decade ago. Gunther-Baptiste had been his business partner, a reckless idealist who walked a line between stupidity and bravery.

Exactly the type who might have taken on Bushke.

“That is he,” Amako said, then shrugged. “Bilson’s brother leads New Eden now. Any one of them might have overthrown Bushke.”

“And a similar insurgence was the only difference in the story,” her sister said. “A revolt against a king. A bit of nothing. But the empress’s advisers said it would incite unrest and disorder, and all of the copies across the wall were destroyed. We had to have a new translation made, with a new ending—in which the king keeps his head. Now the original translation fetches one hundred times the price.”

No doubt they continued to print and smuggle them over the Red Wall. “I want one,” Ariq said.

Shizuko inclined her head without comment, but Amako was amused again. “You wish to follow his adventures?”

“No.” Ariq wanted to know more about Zenobia, and why she might have chosen a name based on Archimedes Fox’s fanciful rubbish. “You said they are popular with women. The ambassador’s wife lost her belongings in the attack, and she is always reading the same book.”

“How very thoughtful to give her another.” Amako’s teeth gleamed as she smiled. “It would give us great pleasure to host a dinner for you and your guests.”

No. They wanted to see whether Ariq’s gift indicated a warmer interest in an ambassador’s wife. They would be disappointed. But the twins were clever enough to see that Zenobia was more than she appeared to be.

“We cannot.”

“We will invite the other den lords,” Amako pressed. “You can make your inquiries of them all at once.”

“But then he would miss Lord Jochi’s games, sister.” Shuziko’s soft voice took on the edge of a knife.

“Just the ladies, then.”

“No,” Ariq said. “The only hospitality I want is the guarantee of your protection during their stay.”

“You will have it,” Shizuko said. With a sharp click, her segmented legs drew back beneath her robes. “As will your guests.”

Amako sighed. “It’s a pity, though. We’ll miss the fun of seeing the other lords realize that you will soon be at their gates. I do love to watch them scramble.”

Chapter Eleven

There was a typesetting machine in the tinker’s shop down the street.

Zenobia froze in her seat with a looking glass against her eye, the lens trained on the machine. Oh. It was so beautiful. A wondrous clickity-clackety ball that would write evenly across a page, and she wanted it. Desperately.

“We should go out,” she said.

Helene didn’t glance up from her book. “And be killed?”

Zenobia had been sitting near this window for almost three and a half days, and she hadn’t yet seen anyone killed. No one had been ravished, or abducted, or their throats slit and purses stolen, or any of the other reasons Helene had given for not wanting to step a foot outside the inn.

With a sigh, she lowered the looking glass. Iron lattice guarded the large round window, with enough space between the decorative bars to offer a view of the street four levels below. A garden wall topped with broken glass surrounded the inn. None of the suspended bridges that connected the higher levels of adjoining buildings led here. It was a small fortress inside of the den—and staying here was much like being in the airship again, except she wasn’t going anywhere.

Thankfully there was more to see than water.

Much more. Vehicles filled the street, some stationary and some moving, and all of it so chaotic that Zenobia didn’t know how anyone got where they were going. Now and again, balloon cabs descended to a shop front and let off or picked up a passenger. Guards patrolled the row every hour, clanking along in their mechanical suits. Most pedestrians seemed not to notice them, hurrying on with their own business. Many were women. Some walked alone and didn’t appear in any more danger here than they would have been in Fladstrand.

Of course, Zenobia had been kidnapped from that sleepy seaside town several times over, so that hardly meant anything.

She set the looking glass on her desk. She hadn’t been anywhere since arriving at the inn, but at least she’d been able to write. Kraken ink stained every fingertip and the side of her right hand a dark brown. The ink was wonderful. Her handwriting had begun to resemble the desperate scratching of a headless chicken.

She needed that typesetting machine.

A heavy sigh came from Helene’s direction. She’d been sighing like that ever since they’d learned it might take a full week to replace Cooper’s legs. The blacksmith had had to separate the remnants of the old prosthetics from his bones and flesh first. Tomorrow, he would graft on the new legs. Then the wait began to make certain fever didn’t set in.

Zenobia tried not to resent those sighs. She didn’t always succeed.

She wasn’t successful now. The ache in her chest was too heavy—an ache that had started when she’d seen what the boilerworm had done to Cooper’s legs. “I wish you would just say that you’re upset by the delay,” she said.

“Of course I’m not upset.” Mild as milk, Helene smoothed a page over.

Zenobia waited.

“Though,” Helene said after a moment, “I suppose I wonder why you and I don’t travel ahead to the Red City. Mara and Mr. Cooper could catch up as soon as he is able to travel.”

“They saved our lives on the airship. Yet you’d leave them behind?”

“We aren’t abandoning them, Geraldine. They would return to your service inside a fortnight.” With a frown, Helene glanced up from her book. “And you know what the delay means for me.”

That her husband might discover she was pregnant with another man’s child. “Why don’t you go on, then,” Zenobia suggested. “The lieutenant and his men can see to your safety.”

“Leave you alone in this place? I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

“Yet you would leave Mara and Cooper here?”

“They have proved perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.”

“And were hurt taking care of us.”

“Mr. Cooper is healing. Mara is well. If you asked her, she would tell you the same thing—to go on ahead.”

Mara was well. And perhaps listening to them argue now.

Zenobia could easily imagine the mercenary’s response. “She would say that I should stay where I am safe.”

“Would you not be safe with Lieutenant Blanchett and his men? You said that I would be.” Helene’s pointed look aggravated Zenobia all over again, then the smugness in her friend’s expression softened to pleading. “We both are women alone. We shouldn’t separate. And I need to go, Geraldine.”

The pain in Zenobia’s chest deepened. Helene needed to go, and Zenobia needed to help her. She owed her friend that much. Even if Helene’s trouble was of her own making, her pregnancy could have devastating consequences. Helene had no one except her husband. And if her husband rejected her, she would need Zenobia’s help again to establish a new home. But more than money, Helene would need acceptance and understanding—often available in short supply to a woman in her condition.

Zenobia had not been so generous with either the past few days.

She did hope Helene would patch everything up with her husband. Not just for Helene’s sake. Perhaps it was selfish of Zenobia to pray that Helene remained in the Red City, but Zenobia was a selfish woman. She liked the order of her life. No one except Archimedes came barging into it. Most of her friends resided in cities other than Fladstrand and she only communicated with them by letter. Their lives never interrupted hers unless she opened an envelope, so she could always choose how much time she devoted to them.

If this trip had taught her anything, it was how much she valued that space. So she didn’t look forward to setting up a home for Helene next door to her own.

Of course, that wasn’t what Helene hoped for, either.

With a sigh, Zenobia rose from her chair. “I’ll speak with Mara, and make certain there is no other reason to wait.”

Helene nodded, but she didn’t look as pleased as Zenobia expected. Instead, her friend regarded her with concern. “I don’t suppose . . . you were waiting for someone else?”

“Who?”

Helene sent an exasperated look toward the ceiling. “The governor.”

Oh.

No. Zenobia hadn’t been waiting for him. She had hoped the delay meant that she would see him again. She’d wanted to know what the twins had told him, and how his search for the marauders progressed, and just to be with him for a little longer. After they’d arrived at the dens, however, he hadn’t been able to spare a minute for her. Each day, he left the inn before dawn and returned after midnight. Zenobia had no reason to believe that would change before Helene and she departed for the Red City.

But she’d always known they would go separate ways here at the dens, so it would have been foolish to expect anything to come of it. Still, she’d hoped for a few more hours with him. A night with him.

She wasn’t going to get it.

Throat suddenly aching, she shook her head. “I’ll speak with Mara,” she said again.

***

The knot in Zenobia’s chest tightened with every step. She’d hoped for a little more time with the governor. But he hadn’t been the only reason she’d been glad of the delay. Staying here had meant she wasn’t moving toward a permanent separation from Mara and Cooper.

She found the couple in the garden, sitting in the shade of a gum tree spotted with bright red flowers. Immediately the back of her neck tensed. The easy affection between the couple had been strained since the boilerworm attack. Every time she visited them was like walking through a field of broken glass, uncertain if a step would rip open a new wound. Judging by their stiff postures now, the strain was still there.

Mara stood as she approached.

“You heard?” Zenobia asked.

“Yes.” The mercenary’s expression gave nothing away. She might have been disappointed or relieved. Zenobia couldn’t tell.

“I want to stay, but—”

“There’s no reason to,” Mara finished for her.

The ache in Zenobia’s chest spread to her stomach. There were reasons. They were her friends.

Cooper shook his head, his lean face drawn and tired. “Go with her, Mara.”

Fire blasted through Mara’s expression. Not broken glass, but an explosive—and Cooper had apparently just set it off.

“Oh, no.” Zenobia stepped back. “That’s really not necessary.”

“Maybe I should leave him here,” Mara spat. “He was so ready to let go of me.”

So that was what they’d been fighting about. When he’d been in the boilerworm’s jaws, Cooper had forced Mara to let him go instead of letting the monster pull her in.

Softly, Cooper said, “You would have done the same.”

“I would have dragged you in with me!” Mara shouted. Cooper stared back at her. Jaw clenched, she whirled and stalked away.

Her stomach roiling, Zenobia followed her. She wanted to run in the other direction, but the glistening tears in Mara’s eyes might as well have been glue. Zenobia couldn’t leave her alone like this.

They stopped beside a small pond, where Mara stood with her head bowed and her arms crossed over her chest. Zenobia watched a turtle lie motionless in the sun, wondering if it was alive or dead, and feeling as awkward as she’d ever felt.

With a heavy sigh, Mara glanced up. “Forgive me.”

Zenobia shrugged. What was there to forgive? “He didn’t want you hurt.”

“I know. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Losing him would have killed me.” Her head fell back and she took a deep, shuddering breath. “I should go with you.”

“Not a blasted chance.”

Mara frowned at her, but no explosion followed. She only said, “I should. I’m ashamed because I’m not going. But I don’t feel sorry for staying.”

“Of course not. Don’t be an idiot. I can manage alone for a week.”

“You could manage longer than that if the world let you alone. But it doesn’t.”

It would this week. “The Frenchmen will escort us on the airship, and we’ll be with Helene’s husband afterward. I’ll be perfectly well.”

“We thought that on the last airship,” Mara said dryly.

“That had nothing to do with me. And since no one knows who I am, I don’t expect the usual trouble. I’m just a companion.”

“And the only person who doesn’t think so is engaged in other matters.”

The governor. A pang struck her chest, deepening the endless ache. “Yes.”

Mara gave her a long look, but didn’t comment. Grateful for her restraint, Zenobia left her in the garden and went in search of the innkeeper. She’d asked the governor if he would arrange for a reputable airship when the time came for her to leave, but considering that he’d left them in the innkeeper’s care, he must trust the other man’s judgment—so Zenobia would, too. Within minutes, the innkeeper sent a message to the docks and the plans had been made. She and Helene would depart early that evening and they’d be in the Red City by tomorrow afternoon.

When she returned to the parlor, the news sent Helene into ecstasies. But of course it did. Everything her friend cared about was in the Red City. She wasn’t leaving anything she wanted behind.

While Helene fluttered about, Zenobia sat at her desk and looked out the window. Balloons and vehicles came and went. None of them carried the governor. She would probably be gone before he returned.

Should she leave a note? She was so very good at writing letters. God knew what she would say, though.

Thank you for dragging me out of the sea. I’m sorry I didn’t kiss you at least once.

So very sorry.

This journey was supposed to have been an adventure. Perhaps if she’d been a little braver, she wouldn’t be regretting everything she hadn’t done.

More vehicles rattled down the street. Zenobia searched the passengers’ faces with her looking glass, wondering where they were all going, before settling on the tinker’s shop down the way. Maybe she didn’t have to leave everything she wanted behind.

And she desperately wanted that typesetter.

***

Finding someone in the dens who spoke English was easy. A number of sailors and aviators had spent time in Manhattan City or tried their luck in England. Finding someone who read the language—who could read any language at all—proved more difficult.

Not impossible, though.

“‘ . . . still . . . a wretched and . . . lonely widow, Geraldine.’” Finishing his labored translation, the ferry pilot looked up from Zenobia’s letter. “A woeful bit of news that was.”

Woeful? Shaking his head, Ariq tucked the letter away. Her message could only sound woeful if a man didn’t know Zenobia. The pilot didn’t.

But Ariq could picture her wry smile. He could all but hear the amusement in her voice. And he could imagine everything she hadn’t said—her worry for Cooper and her determination to reach the Red City.

What she had said was exactly as he’d expected: just a typical letter. But he hadn’t known how hearing the pilot read her words would hit him in the chest and lift through him—as if she stood at his side, sly and amused and silently worried. He hadn’t known how glad he would be to have this small, new connection to her.

He missed her. Only three days, yet he missed her.

Distance hadn’t helped. Ariq hadn’t seen or spoken to her, and he’d tried to turn the separation into a wall. But he should have realized how pointless it was. She wasn’t with him, but he only had to close his eyes to see her bare legs against his or the sun shining through her wet shift, the transparent linen clinging to her slender form. He carried the memory of her arms wrapped around him, her sharp smile and her delighted laugh. She wasn’t here, yet he knew that her fingers would be stained with ink, and that staying at the inn when there were so many things outside to see and take notes on was probably killing her.

So it didn’t matter if he built walls now. She was already in. And a letter was a poor substitute for the woman.

But he’d be done here soon. Three days spent making his presence felt in the dens and gathering information on Lord Jochi, and now it was almost over. Soon he’d know who had bought the marauders’ flyers.

He looked out over the bow of the ferry balloon. From this distance, the Rat Den didn’t look changed from when Merkus had overseen the island. Boats crowded the bays and shacks crowded the land. Filth darkened the small lakes.

But he hoped that Lord Jochi was different than Merkus had been. Everything he’d heard since coming to the dens said that Jochi was. Ariq could only know for certain by meeting the man.

“How long?”

“Five minutes,” the pilot said. “We’ll tether in the visitors’ bay. They don’t make you wait to go through.”

“Use the citizens’ bay.” Two of Ariq’s men had already visited the island several times and reported to him, but he wanted to see how the people were treated for himself.

The other man shrugged. “It’s your coin.”

Ariq thanked him and left the wheelhouse. He’d hired the ferry for his personal use and the covered decks were empty but for a few deck hands. His soldiers sat together in the shade, sweat glistening on their brows, their shoulders slumped and legs stretched out. Bartan looked up at his approach and spoke to the others. They all straightened.

The old soldier smiled a bit when Ariq slumped down with them. “No speech for us?” Bartan asked.

He used to give one before they went into battle. He wasn’t their commander now and this wasn’t the rebellion. But they were still fighting for their homes and families.

“May your heart be iron.” Ariq said the same words he’d said hundreds of times before, and that had been said thousands of times before he’d first spoken them. “And your will be steel.”

No more needed to be recited. They all knew the rest. They’d learned it before they’d walked, and many would speak it as they died.

But Tsetseg added, “And remember that winning a battle without shedding a drop of blood is a greater victory than the slaughter of a thousand armies.”

Yes. Ariq had said that before, too. But it hadn’t been passed down from other commanders and soldiers. His mother had told him that when he’d been a boy. Years had passed before he’d understood it.

Blood would be shed today. But Ariq would consider it a victory if none of the blood was human.

“Keep your weapons holstered,” he told them.

***

Despite the pilot’s warning, they didn’t have to wait. Lord Jochi arrived at the docks as their ferry did. The den lord must have had someone watching Ariq and reporting his movements, preparing for his arrival.

Ariq would have done the same. It was why he’d sent Jeong-hak and Vasili to the island ahead of his visit. Ariq liked to make his own preparations before engaging in battle—even a bloodless one.

“Any change?” he asked quietly.

Jeong-hak looked to the gates, where a line of incoming passengers waited to have the money in their purses counted. More passengers were searched before they boarded departing ferries. The lines were orderly, the officials efficient—but that could be for show.

“It’s the same,” Jeong-hak said. “Coins counted, but none taken, and if they’re leaving to work they have to report their earnings when they return.”

“And Jochi?” he asked Vasili.

The gunner’s blond eyebrows jerked up and down in the big man’s version of a laugh. “He gussied himself up. He didn’t wear anything as fancy yesterday, or the day before.”

Hoping to make a good impression—if an odd one. Though he’d originally come from the heart of the Golden Empire, just as Ariq had, Jochi didn’t wear a topknot. He’d cut his hair short and grown a beard, trimmed to a point beneath his chin. He wore a tunic, but had topped it with an embroidered waistcoat, and his trousers were in the western style, stiff and tight. Those must be damned hot on a day like this. Jochi’s balls were probably sweltering in them—but even in the winter, Ariq’s visit might have had him sweating.

He was younger than Ariq had remembered. No more than a few years past twenty.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t rule over a den, or do it well. Children became adults quickly in the dens—and in the rebellion. At the same age, Ariq had been commanding armies.

He’d also been making mistakes. By all accounts, Jochi was making his own.

“So you are finally here!” The den lord’s smile was welcoming, if thin. “For three days, I have heard nothing but ‘the Kraken has come.’ That you will ask me about the silver flyers and show me photographs of dead men, and tell me that the empress will destroy us all. So we rats are the last?”

“The twins pointed to you,” Ariq told him. “So I expected to find answers elsewhere.”

A lie. Ariq knew the twins had spoken the truth. But it would allow Jochi to save face. Ariq knew a young man’s pride. If that was damaged, so would any hope of resolving this peacefully.

“Of course the twins would.” Jochi shook his head and laughed, then clasped Ariq’s forearm in greeting. “And you are welcome here, whether I have answers or not.”

The other man’s grip was strong, but Ariq saw the uneasy moment when Jochi realized that Ariq could have crushed him. Still, he didn’t flinch or pull away. He looked to Ariq’s companions. His smile froze when he spotted Vasili—as if recognizing the big man. He probably did. The gunner was difficult to overlook. But if the den lord was dismayed by the realization that Ariq had been watching him, he didn’t show it.

“Come then,” he said. “I will tell you what I can, and show you the stadium.”

That was bold. Ariq had expected that Jochi would direct him away from the arena. He started down the walk with him, the boards well-worn beneath his feet. This route had seen heavy traffic. Ahead, the wooden stadium rose like a giant tortoise over the twigs of nearby buildings. “Your games have been all that I’ve heard about from the other den lords. Your games and your taxes.”

Some had been coy and only hinted at it, like the twins. Others had told him directly. Jochi had been staging fights in his stadium, but not just between men or machines. He’d brought in death itself—and with it, a paying audience from the other dens.

“I can imagine what they’ve said. They haven’t liked the changes I’ve made.” Jochi gestured to the lines of passengers at the gates. “I don’t tax my people. I don’t ask for tribute. I only ask that they spend what they earn here.”

Keeping the money local instead of watching it bleed off the island. But that wouldn’t be why the other den lords didn’t like it. “And in the other dens, people are asking why their taxes are so high.”

“They do. If you’d come this morning, you wouldn’t have found any laborers left on the docks. Those bastards at the other dens come here looking for workers, and they pay them less—because my people are hungrier.” Anger hardened his voice as he spoke. His face dark, he glanced at Ariq again. “They were hungrier. I don’t take any of what they earn, so my people can live on what little they get. The games bring in the rest, for those that can’t work.”

Ariq nodded. Here was the poverty that Zenobia had expected, threadbare clothes and ramshackle homes that only seemed to stand with the support of the other shacks crowded next to them. But unlike his last visit, he didn’t see squalor. The stench of shit and decay hadn’t slapped him when he’d stepped onto the docks. And instead of abject misery when the people looked at the den lord, they regarded Jochi with wary hope, and there were not so many hollow cheeks and empty eyes.

“It is changed from when Merkus stood in your place,” Ariq said.

“Merkus was a drunken pig on human legs.” Jochi spoke matter-of-factly. Either his anger had ebbed or he’d controlled it. “And he rode this den into the ground—starting when he lost his port contracts with the rebellion. But I’m bringing it back.”

Unless he ruined it all before he could. “Then let’s see your arena—”

“Ariq Noyan!”

Frowning, Ariq looked back—then up. The shout had come from a silver flyer approaching the docks. Unease clutched his chest. That was one of the marauders’ flyers he’d brought from his town. Meeng had one, but he’d remained outside the dens. The other flyer had been stored with the mountain walkers at the inn—and Meeng wasn’t piloting this one. Instead Ariq recognized one of Dayir Sunid’s guards. When Ariq had left the inn that morning, the guard had been standing at the entrance.

A message. An urgent one, if Dayir was using the flyer to deliver it.

Zenobia. Was she all right? Ariq’s heart drummed as he strode forward and waved the guard in.

He shouldn’t have left her. Dregs and hell. The inn should have been safe. Dayir was a good man, a good soldier. But Ariq should have kept her beside him.

He didn’t wait for the man to land. The flyer hovered overhead, the propellers blasting heated air into his face. He shouted up to the guard. “What is it?”

A note fluttered in his gloved hand. Ariq snatched it and read the message as the flyer settled onto the boards.

No danger. Zenobia had asked Dayir to hire an airship.

He hadn’t thought she would. Not until Cooper was ready to go. Ariq hadn’t misread her guilt over the man’s injuries. If she had a choice, Zenobia wouldn’t leave the mercenaries behind.

She must feel that her time was running out—and that she had to deliver those letters soon.

All right, then. All right. His business here was almost done, anyway.

“Make the arrangements,” he told the guard. “But the airship doesn’t leave until I’m on it.”

The man nodded. Ariq stepped back. The engine wound to a buzzing whine before the flyer lifted off the ground.

Jochi watched it go, then looked down as Ariq joined him. “Is everything well?”

No. Zenobia would have left without seeing him again.

But Ariq only said, “You’ve seen that flyer before.”

The den lord’s expression flattened. “I have.”

“Who bought it from you?”

Jochi shook his head.

“You don’t know?” Ariq didn’t believe it.

“I won’t say.” Jochi’s gaze was steady. “My people have lost enough, and I’ve fought for everything I’ve given back to them. I won’t risk that by giving you a name.”

He didn’t need to. He’d already told Ariq enough.

Jochi hadn’t bowed beneath the pressure from the other den lords to tax his people—even though his refusal had probably put a price on his head. And he would have heard by now that Ariq had given the twins a fortune in return for information. He must know Ariq would do the same now. But there was one person who could give the Rat Den more than Ariq could offer: Ghazan Bator. A general for the rebellion, he could renew the port contracts that would allow Jochi to broker smuggled technology from the Golden Empire. That wasn’t just worth the money to Jochi. It would give the Rat Den back something they’d lost under Merkus.

Or so the young man thought. But he didn’t know Ghazan Bator as well as Ariq did.

Feeling suddenly tired, he gestured that they continue on toward the arena. Ariq only wanted to return to Zenobia’s side. Even if the marauders weren’t rebels themselves, the rebellion was responsible for the attacks—and the letters in her pack might as well have painted a target on her back.

He’d stop them. He’d stop her. But first, he had to stop Jochi.

As if disbelieving that Ariq had finished his questions, Jochi watched him warily for a long moment, then looked to Ariq’s soldiers before starting along the boarded walk.

“You should come tonight,” he said, then added dryly, “I’ve heard that all of the den lords intend to see the games. Even the twins.”

Of course they would. They hoped to watch Ariq destroy him.

Ariq didn’t intend to do it in front of an audience. “They will be disappointed.”

“I hope so.” With a shrug, Jochi seemed to discard thoughts of the den lords. A grin made him look even younger than he already did. “Do you still wrestle? We could put you in the arena and make a fortune.”

Ariq did, but not as he once had. “Only during celebrations.”

“And he was finally beaten last New Year,” Tsetseg said behind him.

So he had been. And she’d been in the pile.

“Ariq Noyan wasn’t beaten.” Though at the time, Vasili had crowed about the victory as much as Tsetseg had, the blond soldier was frowning at her now. He didn’t like Jochi hearing of Ariq’s defeat. “It wasn’t a fair fight. There were eight of us, and he’d drunk enough arkhi to drop an elephant.”

“I was beaten,” Ariq said. “‘Fair’ means nothing in battle. Enemies won’t always be weaker.”

“‘Fair’ means something in a game.” Jochi stopped and looked up at him. “It meant something when you fought the Butcher—and he was stronger than you were.”

That story would live longer than Ariq did. “So you’ve heard of that.”

“No,” Jochi said. “I saw it.”

While still in swaddling? It had been Ariq’s fifteenth summer, and his first time accompanying Ghazan Bator to the dens. Hoping to win favor with the general, Lord Duval had greeted them with a celebration in his honor, and invited the other den lords to bring three of their strongest to compete in his sand pit. Though the rebels were only meant to be spectators to the tournament, Ghazan Bator had put Ariq in the arena, too.

He’d earned his name there. The Kraken. Because of the tattoo already on his back, his unbreakable grip, and—after the den lords had each begun sending in all three of their champions against him at once—because his opponents had begun to joke that Ariq seemed to possess more than two arms.

Unfair had been pitting one man against Ariq. Even three men barely had a chance. His general hadn’t cared. Most of the den lords hadn’t, either. Merkus had. He’d brought in a new champion, one that he’d claimed would even the odds—a man who’d once been a butcher in the Moroccan labor colony. After he’d moved to the dens, the knives and cleavers grafted to his arms had been traded for mechanical hands, and a full pneumatic exoskeleton strengthened his frame.

No one who’d looked at the Butcher believed the odds were even.

It hadn’t mattered. Ariq had fought; he’d won. And when they’d returned to the mainland, Ghazan Bator had given him command of his first unit of soldiers.

The name had followed him, too. But he’d earned it again on the battlefield—the commander with the unbreakable grip and who never failed to reach his enemies.

Almost twenty years had passed since then. “You watched the fight?”

“I’ll never forget it.” Jochi shook his head. “Everyone thought you would lose. Everyone. Then you locked your arms around the Butcher’s shoulder pistons and it was over. Merkus said you must have known how to defeat his gear—and that was why you accepted the challenge.”

Ariq hadn’t known how to defeat him. He just hadn’t had any other choice.

“No,” he said. “I had one purpose in that sand pit: to show the rebellion’s strength. I’d have lost everything if I failed or if I walked away from a challenge. I would never have commanded a unit. I’d have been left in the dens to rot. Because Ghazan Bator discards anyone he doesn’t have a use for, or who no longer serves a purpose.”

Just as the Rat Den would no longer serve a purpose when the Khagan finally fell. It wouldn’t be long. Then a port contract would be worth nothing.

Judging by the stiffness of Jochi’s shoulders, Ariq’s message had hit exactly where he’d intended. But the den lord couldn’t argue without betraying the name he’d sworn to keep secret. So Ariq only added, “Fair didn’t mean anything against the Butcher, because my fights in that sand pit were never a game.”

Jochi nodded tightly. They continued on to the arena in near silence, picking up a retinue of curious, giggling children in their wake. For once, Ariq wasn’t the focus of their attention. Vasili’s blond braids were.

At the entrance, Ariq gestured for the gunner to stay outside. The children would try to sneak in after him. Better for them to wait here until this was finished.

There was no question where the money from the flyers had gone. The arena had once been little more than a sand pit surrounded by boards laid over wooden pilings. Now benches rose around the stadium floor, with boxes for visiting lords and merchants. A high wall ringed the arena; no one sat level with the pit. Staging theaters had been built at both ends.

So Jochi hadn’t relied on the port contracts. He’d invested in this—and his wrestlers. Ariq had already heard complaints about how the den lord had lured the fighters away from other arenas. They practiced now at the edge of the pit, their bodies glistening with oil. Tan lines showed where they usually wore armor protecting their necks, their arms and legs.

Against another man, clothing and armor meant certain failure. Unlike oiled skin, an opponent could grab onto armor and force a man to his knees.

Against zombies, that armor meant life.

He looked over the wrestlers before turning to Jochi. “Where are your pens?”

“Pens?” The young man’s brow furrowed. He shook his head. “I don’t have pens.”

Jeong-hak stepped forward. “Under the stadium. They come through that entrance.”

He pointed to the east staging area. So Jochi had kept the creatures here, despite knowing Ariq was coming. That might have been arrogance, but probably just meant Jochi had a working brain in his head. Moving the zombies off-site posed more risk than Ariq ever could.

Ignoring the den lord’s denials, Ariq started toward the staging theater. By the time they reached the door, Jochi’s protests had turned to resigned, frustrated silence. The wrestlers had stopped their practice, watching quietly as Ariq left the arena.

Cages stood open around the chamber. On the night of a game, the zombies would be kept here until they were released into the stadium. Now they were empty. Without pausing, Joeng-hak led them to a cargo lift.

Jochi didn’t attempt more denials. He tried to salvage. “We’re careful. Two doors at every junction. The outer doesn’t open if they aren’t under control.”

“You’ll never have control,” Ariq said. The cargo lift rattled and the young man became more frustrated with every foot they descended.

“We do.” Anger bit through his reply. “They’re handled with poles. One man to keep it contained, and another always ready to shoot. We check every guard for bites before he leaves.”

The stench hit when the lift docked. Decay. Rotting flesh. The rattling stopped and growls filtered through from the pens.

He left Tsetseg, Bartan, and Jeong-hak to guard the lift and prevent anyone else from coming down. Strong doors secured the next chamber. Thick, heavy doors. They would never be enough.

More cages stood in the pens. Fingers grasping like claws, skin hanging loosely from gaping wounds, two dozen zombies pushed against the thick iron bars—brought in from Europe, from Africa. There was no way to tell. They were all the same. Ravenous. Mindless.

Ariq drew his pistol.

“No!” Jochi grabbed his wrist. “You think anyone would come to see men grappling with each other? They won’t pay for that. They want men like the Butcher. They want machines. They want to see blood and death, and they’ll spend money to get it. These things feed my people.”

“They’ll feed on your people.”

The fingers on Ariq’s arm tightened. “You can’t destroy them.”

“I won’t. You will.” He twisted his arm out of the den lord’s grip and held out his pistol to him. “When this is empty of bullets, I will give you another. Now shoot them all. In the head.”

Wildly, Jochi waved toward the pens. “They are contained! The cages and the doors—”

“Are not enough!” Ariq thundered. “Do you forget Kiev? We built the strongest wall that the world has ever seen, and it did not save the people there. Instead Vasili killed his own parents and his brother. Bars and doors did not save Marrakesh. It didn’t save Tyre or Madurai. They all thought they were safe. They thought the zombies were contained. They never were. Never. They always get through. And we burned every person in those cities. Every one.”

Defeat weighed upon him, but Jochi didn’t give up. “The den lords don’t protest.”

“Because they are up in their fortresses and behind their walls, and they believe the water around your island makes them safe. But it will only take one bite, one person hiding away on a ferry because he knows that death awaits if he’s discovered. One bite, and you will kill everyone in the dens, and everyone on this continent.”

Including Ariq’s own town. And if Jochi didn’t have the balls or the brains to do this, Ariq would make certain that he never posed a threat to his people again.

Jochi took the gun. Jaw clenched, he looked down at the weapon, then up at Ariq.

“You can try,” Ariq said softly.

A long second passed before the den lord’s arm came up. He pulled the trigger.

A zombie’s face caved in. Another. When the hammer fell with a dull click, Ariq gave Jochi another pistol and reloaded the first.

Aroused by the noise and the blood, the creatures lined up for their slaughter. Then it was done. No more growls. Just Jochi’s labored breathing and the corpses piled against the bars.

The empty despair on the den lord’s face looked too familiar. Ariq’s brother often wore the same expression.

With a knot in his chest, Ariq took the weapon from Jochi’s hand before the den lord could raise it to his own head. “You’ve done well by your people. Don’t bring their ruin in under their feet.”

“This is ruin.” His voice was hoarse. “You’ve taken everything we have.”

“No. These things are not your assets. Your people are. So don’t risk their lives like this. Tell them that was why you destroyed the zombies.” And it had been why. If Jochi hadn’t recognized the danger and the truth of what Ariq had said, the den lord would have turned the gun on him. “And when the time comes for the other dens, when they burn down the fortresses and the walls, your people will stand by you, instead.”

Jochi stared bleakly at the zombies, then looked to Ariq. “Is that time coming?”

“It always does. And when it comes, I’ll stand by you, too.”

With surprising resilience, his good humor returned. “Is that what you tell all the den lords?”

“No. I just give them kraken cock.” Ariq clapped him on the shoulder and started for the door. “I also haven’t told them of the contract I need for one of the mining settlements up north. If Merkus stood where you are, I wouldn’t make this offer. If you’re interested, I’ll make it to you.”

“I am.” No hesitation.

Good. Shipping iron ore wouldn’t bring as much money as the rebellion could, but would help keep the den on its feet.

Jochi glanced back at the zombies before they left. “The twins and the others are still coming tonight. I don’t suppose you’ll add a few rounds inside the arena to that offer?”

“I’ll throw in someone better.” He pushed through the chamber door and nodded to his soldiers. This had been a victory, with no human bloodshed. But it could be a greater victory yet. “Tonight, you’ll have Tsetseg.”

Ariq planned to have Zenobia—along with answers. It was time she told him what the hell she carried in her pack.

And why the rebellion was after her.

Chapter Twelve

Now this was an adventure.

A street. Alone.

Zenobia’s heart pounded harder now than when she’d escaped from the burning airship.

Oh, this was wonderful. She could hardly take it in. A blur of color and sound surrounded her, yet everything seemed so sharp and clear: the lorry that had almost run her over. The old woman crossing one of the rope bridges above—oh! Zenobia simply had to run across one of those before she returned to the inn. Another woman passed her on the walk, her lips painted a brilliant red and her black hair up in the fluffiest, loveliest bun that Zenobia had ever seen.

She hadn’t been able to fix her own hair that way. She’d settled for a twist and a few pins. After studying the women out the window, Zenobia was certain she didn’t stand out. They were of all races, all attitudes. Some kept their eyes on the ground; others strode boldly. They all seemed to wear more color than the women at home, so Zenobia had chosen a tunic in bright, bright green, a brighter color than she’d ever worn—and yet she was as unremarkable as the smoke stains on the building walls. She was no one here. There was no reason for anyone to look twice, or to kidnap her and hold her for ransom. And her heart raced, but it wasn’t from fear—just the thrill, the freedom of it all.

It was incredible.

She stopped at the tinker’s shop window and looked through the iron bars. On the way here, she’d realized that the typesetting machine might not even place letters on the page. Most of the signs she’d seen were written in kanji or the Mongolian script. But there they were, a, b, c, and God bless whoever had brought the machine to these dens.

Maybe it had been a secretary who’d killed his employer and fled, then sold the typesetter when he’d run out of stolen funds. Or a pirate with no tongue and no fingers, who could only make his outrageous demands by typeset letters, and who had retired with a fortune and no need to write again.

It didn’t matter how the typesetter got here. It was hers now.

She went in. The humid shop smelled of oil and sounded like a pit of hell. The grinding screech of metal stopped when the tinker looked up from her lathe. Young, not more than sixteen or seventeen, she had straight black hair and goggles protecting her eyes. An older woman snored while sitting upright on a mat against the far wall.

“Do you speak French?” Zenobia asked.

The girl lifted her gloved hands and replied.

Zenobia didn’t understand a word. That might have been Mongolian or Nipponese, or any of the myriad other languages spoken in this part of the world.

But one language was always the same.

Zenobia withdrew a gold coin and held it up, then pointed to the typesetter.

The girl pushed her goggles back, revealing dark eyes widened in surprise. As if in a trance, she set aside her tools and walked to Zenobia’s side, her gaze locked on the coin.

The gold was worth far more than the typesetter—but the machine was worth every extra denier to Zenobia.

Smiling, the girl took the coin, hefted its weight, then made a sweeping motion that encompassed the entire shop. Inviting Zenobia to take something in addition to the typesetter.

Well. Zenobia couldn’t carry half of it, especially since she would be hauling the typesetting machine back to the inn, too. But she would look. Maybe there was something that Helene could stuff into her ears while Zenobia wrote.

Like every other tinker’s shop she’d been in, most of the items seemed to be salvaged and repaired instead of built by the tinker. Miniature windups of the Nyungar’s walking machines and hopping kangaroos waited on the shelves. Lamps of all sizes hung over a case full of lenses polished to a high gleam. There were small devices whose purpose she couldn’t fathom, and others that she figured out when the tinker’s eyes rounded again and color darkened her cheeks.

Oh. So she would not give those to Helene. But curiosity made her linger over them a while longer, looking at their shapes and trying not to think of the governor.

That might have been a thrilling adventure, too.

A tug at her sleeve made her look up. The tinker didn’t direct her attention to another shelf, as she expected. Instead the girl was frowning toward the storefront window.

Zenobia didn’t see anything. Only a few passing vehicles and a pair of men loitering on the walk. One was looking into the shop. At her typesetter? He wasn’t going to get it—

Her heart froze. Oh, dear God. She knew him.

His mouse-brown hair was longer. His face was redder, his body heavier. But she recognized him. Polley, one of the mercenaries aboard the airship The Kite—the airship on which she’d spent weeks waiting for her first ransom. After Archimedes had paid a fortune for her return, The Kite’s captain had split the money with his men. Not all of them thought they’d received a fair share.

Polley looked as if his share had gone into a bottle.

Wearing a cocky grin, Polley offered her a little salute. His eyes never left her when he spoke to his companion, a short, dark-haired man who gave Zenobia a calculating once-over.

Damn him. Damn them both.

They moved past the window, out of sight, but she knew. They’d be waiting. Kidnapping Zenobia Fox was a tried and true path to easy riches. But this time, she was far from home, far from Archimedes—and payment would be a long time coming.

Her throat closed. She’d just wanted one bit of freedom. Just one adventure without fear.

She’d just wanted a blasted typesetting machine.

Anger burned through the frozen despair. Striding to the window, she looked out. No sign of Polley and the other man. She couldn’t hope for help from the men patrolling in mechanical suits—they’d just watch her be taken. She had to do this herself. All right, then. The inn was just down the row. She could run like hell.

The tinker joined her. A knife flashed in her grip. Without a word, she offered it to Zenobia.

Zenobia pulled up her sleeve and showed her the spring-loaded sheath strapped to her forearm. A gift from Archimedes, she usually kept it in her pack. He used similar weapons when he explored zombie-infested cities. The dens had seemed a suitable place for Zenobia to wear hers. She only had to flick a small lever and a dagger would jump into her palm.

The girl grinned. Zenobia wished she could smile back. Instead she stared at the inn, trying to build her courage. Just a short run. And someone would probably see her coming. The innkeeper emerged from the entrance, looking up at a balloon cab descending toward the inn’s gate. A single passenger sat beside the pilot. A single passenger with broad shoulders and a wonderfully, beautifully familiar profile.

Oh, thank God.

She burst through the shop door and shouted with all of the breath she didn’t need to run. “Governor!” Sprinting, her boots pounded on the boards. So loud. Everything so loud, the engines and the people and could he hear her at all? He hadn’t turned her way. “Ariq!”

Polley came from nowhere. His thick arm whipped around her stomach.

It was like she’d barreled full-tilt into a log. The air slammed from her lungs. Stumbling, she tried to keep going, but he dragged her back, his sweaty palm smothering her scream.

Desperately, she clawed at his fingers before regaining her sense and pushing her hand into her sleeve. Polley hadn’t come from nowhere, but an alley, just a tiny space between two buildings that opened onto another street.

No, no, no. Not this time. The dagger’s leather grip popped into her hand. She swiped wildly behind her.

“Get that knife!”

Rough fingers squeezed her wrist. Polley’s companion. She cried out as he squeezed harder and pried her fingers open. They kept dragging her back. God. If she disappeared down that alley Zenobia knew she would never be seen again. Archimedes was too far away, the kidnap unplanned, and quietly getting rid of her would be easier than keeping her for months. She had to stop them.

She kicked backward, using her heel. Polley grunted but kept going. She opened her mouth and clamped her teeth on the fleshy bit of palm that pushed past her lips.

With a shout, Polley jerked his hand away.

She hauled in a breath to scream. “Ar—!”

Pain exploded across her face. White burst through her vision and for an instant she didn’t see the alley at all, but her father, his hand still raised, his knuckles red.

She’d written a poem that time. A bawdy little poem, carved into the wall of the closet that he’d locked her in.

Vicious fingers grabbed the back of her neck and Polley shoved her forward into the side of a shop. Pain burned a hot slice in her side. Blood coated her tongue. Her cheek grated against rough wood and she stood pinned against the building, her breath coming in ragged sobs.

“Now just stop.” His hand tightened on her neck, his fingertips digging into the sides of her throat. He pressed the edge of the dagger harder into her left side. “You know we won’t hurt you, so if you fight us, anything that happens is your own fault. You just got to be quiet until our money comes.”

She’d give him money now. A fortune of gold coins back at the inn. But she couldn’t speak—could barely breathe.

Polley’s grip eased slightly. “So are you settled? Just—”

His fingers tore away from her neck. The dagger vanished from her side. Zenobia sagged against the wall and gulped in air, dizzily aware of the harrowing scream that ended on a wet, crunching thud. A man cried out. Polley’s companion. She looked back just as he slammed into the opposite wall, held up off the ground by the hand locked around his throat. A tall figure stood before him. Tears blurred her vision, but she only knew one man that big.

Ariq.

Shaking, she turned and braced her shoulders against the wall behind her.

Ariq spoke, his voice even. “Are you all right?”

She’d never heard calm like that. Terrifying. Like the lull in a typhoon. Like death.

“Yes,” she managed to whisper. Polley hadn’t stabbed her. He’d just sliced her skin.

But she couldn’t see. With a trembling hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes and spotted the body on the ground.

Her stomach heaved into her throat. Polley’s head lay between his ankles, as if he were bowing—but he was bowing the wrong way. His back had been snapped. Glassy eyes stared at her from between his boot heels. Blood dripped from his slack mouth.

Broken in half. Ariq had broken a man in half.

Polley’s accomplice had seen, too. The man had begun crying, begging. A fog seemed to muffle her brain. She heard everything. But it was all nothing, nothing.

Still so calm, Ariq said, “Who sent you after her?”

“No one! My mate told me, ‘We’ll get some money if we take her.’ That’s all, God, I swear!”

“Listen, then. There’s only one reason you live now. You are going to tell everyone that Zenobia Fox is under my protection. Anyone you meet, those will be the first words out of your mouth for the rest of your life.”

“Yes!” The man babbled his agreement before Ariq finished. “Yes, yes!”

“You know who I am? Let me hear it.”

Under his protection. Numb, Zenobia lifted her hand away from her side. Crimson stained her fingers. Blood over kraken ink.

They’d never made her bleed before.

“Zenobia Fox is under the protection of the Kraken King!”

“If I ever hear that you haven’t said it, I’ll come for you.” Ariq paused, and seemed to grapple for his calm again before he said, “Did he touch you, Zenobia?”

“My wrist,” she answered dully. The skin where he’d grabbed her was raw and red. Pain shot through her knuckles when she tried to bend them. Her writing hand. “He hurt my fingers when he took my dagger away.”

Without a word, Ariq gripped the man’s wrist. From far away, she heard the crack of bones, saw his elbow twist and jut backward.

Ariq set the screaming man on his feet and shoved him toward Polley’s body. “Now drag him down the street so everyone can see. And you tell them all what will happen if anyone touches her again.”

Then he came to her, his calm seeping away with every step. His skin seemed tightly stretched over his cheekbones, and white edged his mouth. Eyes dark with concern swept her face. Gentle fingers tilted her chin up, and at his touch, the fog tore away and she was there again, against the side of a shop where she’d almost been kidnapped. Polley’s companion lurched toward the mouth of the alley, dragging the body, his screams sounding almost like laughter, but it was just agony and hysteria and the words Ariq had ordered him to say.

Zenobia Fox is under the protection of the Kraken King!

His thumb slid across her cheek, wiping away tears. Zenobia hadn’t realized she was still crying, but now she felt the sting of salt against the corner of her mouth.

She lifted her hand to her jaw. It was tender. Her lips felt hot and swollen. “Does it show?”

Ariq stilled. For one terrible second the calm descended over him again, as if he might break the world in half.

Then he nodded, and his hand left her face to work open the wide sash that belted his tunic.

“Blast his soul.” On a shuddering breath, she rested the back of her head against the wall. Her neck ached. “Helene is going to say, ‘It’s your own fault for going out.’ Mara is going to say it’s her fault. But it’s not hers or mine. Just him. That bastard. Thinking he could have something from me. I just wanted to walk down a street. Even here, I should be able to. Is it so foolish to want that?”

“No.”

His voice was like gravel. Carefully, he wound the sash around her waist, binding the cut on her side.

It hurt. Clenching her teeth, Zenobia turned her head. A crowd had begun to gather in the street, though no one had dared venture into the alley. Hysterical shouting still sounded in the distance.

Oh, Mara would hear that. The mercenary probably already had. And she’d been right. The world hadn’t left Zenobia alone for even a week.

“Maybe it was foolish,” she whispered. “But other women were out there. I thought if no one knew who I was, I’d be safe. But he recognized me.”

And Polley wasn’t the only one who had. She dragged in a quavering breath and looked up into Ariq’s face. His head was bent, but he was focused on tying the sash, not on her, and his expression was as hard as the wall behind her. A man who’d broken another in half, then patched her up so gently. He knew who she was.

Could she trust him?

She didn’t know. But at least she could trust him not to hurt her.

“You told him I was Zenobia Fox.”

His gaze met hers. “Yes.”

She laughed and sniffed up everything that she hadn’t already wiped on her sleeve. “Well, then. Will you help me carry my typesetting machine?”

“In a minute.”

His big palm cupped the back of her head. He drew her against his broad chest, his arm sliding around her back to hold her close. Oh. He said something roughly against her hair and she didn’t understand a word of it, but she knew the tone, and that this embrace wasn’t to reassure her. It was for him. Because she was all right now, but she almost hadn’t been.

With new tears clogging her throat, she clung to his solid form and buried her face against his shoulder. So strong. So warm. He smelled like smoke and the sea, and this was the only time, the last time she could hold him like this.

“I’m leaving tonight,” she told him hoarsely. “I’ve arranged for an airship.”

“I know. I’m leaving with you.”

Nonsense. But her fingers twisted in his tunic, holding him closer. “You don’t have to protect me.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ll hire someone until Mara and Cooper come. You have a town to worry about.”

“And that business takes me to the Red City.”

Her heart squeezed. “Oh.”

“But I would go anyway.”

This time her heart gave a wild thump. “Oh,” she said again, and was smiling when he drew away.

But he wasn’t smiling. He cupped her face in his hands and his dark eyes searched hers. “When we left my town, I meant to let you go. I have to choose battles. You weren’t as important.”

Always blunt. She loved that.

“I tried to keep you away,” she reminded him.

“I tried to keep you out. We should have both tried harder.” His heavy-lidded gaze dropped to her lips and her breath caught. His head dipped closer to hers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You will if you kiss me.”

His thumb brushed the corner of her bruised mouth. His voice roughened. “Yes.”

So he wouldn’t. Then she just had to hurt herself.

Her sore knuckles protested when she gripped his tunic front and dragged him down. He didn’t have to come. The Kraken King, formed of solid muscle and so much taller than she was. But he was a man who chose his battles, and denying her must have been a fight he didn’t want to win.

And it did hurt. But she expected that. She expected the pain in her knuckles and the burning sting of her lips. His mouth was what she’d expected, too. Warm and firm against hers.

No one had told her about the rest. She’d thought a kiss was just a pleasurable meeting of lips. No one said anything of the incredible prickling all over her skin or the sweet ache building beneath her breast.

She would have left without this? But now she would have no regrets.

Her fingers curled against his chest. A sigh escaped her.

As if he’d been waiting for that tremulous breath to part her lips, Ariq leaned in, surrounding her, his right hand sliding into her hair and his left flattening against the wall beside her shoulder. Dense muscle flexed beneath her fingers. His mouth moved tenderly against hers, as if taking delicate sips. Oh, but he might as well have been gulping, consuming her, hollowing her out. Her heartbeat filled all the empty spaces, throbbing deeper with every soft kiss.

With a low groan, he licked the seam of her lips. She gasped his name and he swept in, tasting her, his tongue hot and slick. Sudden need yanked her body up like a puppet, onto her toes, trying to get closer. Her arms rose to loop around his neck.

Pain ripped up her side.

She froze. Oh, God. She shouldn’t have lifted her arms so high. But it was too late now. Ariq was pulling away, his body rigid.

“All right?” His voice was taut with strain.

Zenobia nodded. Mostly all right. She wouldn’t be bowing or bending for a while. Hopefully there would be more kissing, though.

Even if it hurt.

A crimson streak stained his lower lip. She touched her own mouth. “Is it bleeding again?”

“Yes.” A sudden tremor wracked his body. His fingers tightened in her hair, his gaze intense on hers. “I won’t see you hurt again. You have to tell me the rest. Why this man attacked you. How much you know of my uncle—and how you know of him at all.”

She couldn’t follow. He knew who she was but didn’t know why Polley had tried to kidnap her? And she didn’t understand the rest at all. “Your uncle?”

“Temür Agha.”

The rebel general who’d sent assassins after her brother. He was Ariq’s uncle? Mutely, she stared at him.

What could she say without endangering Archimedes? Ariq thought his uncle was dead. He couldn’t know that her brother had paid his debt to the man.

What did he know? He’d called her Zenobia Fox. But did he know that she was also a Gunther-Baptiste?

“Not now.” Gently, his fingers brushed back through her hair, trailed down her spine. “I’ll give you time. Tomorrow night, we’ll reach the Red City. Tell me then.”

She shook her head. Not a denial. She just didn’t know how to answer. But she wasn’t going to lose her head just because a handsome man kissed her senseless. She would take the time he’d promised.

“Trust me,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

Zenobia had heard that before. “And if you have to, it’s my own fault?”

A frown darkened his face. “No.”

“Then I’ll consider it.”

She pulled away and started toward the mouth of the alley, where the gathering crowd still stared. What a blasted mess she was. Face bruised, her green tunic ruined, and her hair hanging loose. A few minutes ago, she’d been no one while walking down this street. Now everyone looked and knew her name.

Well, no matter. Zenobia lifted her chin.

Ahead, the crowd parted like water. She didn’t need to look back to see why. Ariq had glowered at her before, too. If she feared him, that might have been enough to make her get out of the way—but knowing that he’d just broken a man in half would have convinced her.

Ariq caught up a moment later. His palm settled against her lower back, where the tips of her hair brushed against his hand. The fingers of his left hand were curled loosely around a few familiar objects.

“You found my hairpins?”

“No.” He met her gaze evenly. “I stole them.”

From her hair? “I want them back.”

“I’ll buy new ones for you.” He tucked the pins into his tunic as if daring her to go in after them.

Maybe next time. She couldn’t lift her arms to twist up her hair, anyway.

So she only sniffed, as if his taking her hairpins during their kiss didn’t please her, and Ariq grinned, as if he knew it did. His big hand felt like a brand in the small of her back all the way to the tinker’s shop. His fingertips lightly stroked circles through her tunic. If he meant that subtle massage to soothe away the pain of the attack, he was doing a blessed good job of it. Her side hurt, her mouth stung, and her neck ached, but she was only aware of his possessive touch creating a disconcerting tension all over her skin.

The tinker met them at the shop entrance with impossibly wide eyes and a wet cloth. Zenobia took it gratefully and pressed it to her lip before leading Ariq to the typesetting machine.

He frowned at the heavy ball. “This?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Even as he asked, he picked it up. Not denying her. Just wondering why Zenobia Fox would need a clickity-clackety ball that wrote evenly over a page.

He didn’t know who she was, Zenobia realized. He knew her name. But he didn’t know anything else about her.

That couldn’t last. Maybe she would even tell him herself. But not yet. Not until she knew how much she could say without risking her brother.

“I can write my letters more quickly with it.” She told him a half-truth. “But also because the clacking drives Helene mad. So when she chastises me for leaving the inn, I’m going to write as vigorously as I can until she lets me be.”

He gave a short laugh and hefted the machine under one arm, then offered the tinker a gold coin. The girl opened her mouth as if to tell him that she’d already been paid, but Zenobia stopped her with a sharp shake of her head. If he was going to assume that Zenobia hadn’t already given over a gold coin for that machine, then he deserved to be fleeced.

Besides, the girl had offered her a knife. “Tell her that if she goes to your inn, she can make her way to your town,” Zenobia said to him.

Ariq did. A moment later they were out on the street again, his hand at her back. She tried to ignore the stares. At least no one would try to grab her now. And no one blocked her way. Those who didn’t scramble back at Ariq’s approach stood as far to the side of the walk as possible when they passed.

“How does your search for the marauders go?” she asked him. Three days, without a word. She could make up for it now—not just talking, but looking. His strong profile made her almost stupidly happy. “What have you been doing when you aren’t breaking men in half?”

“Killing zombies and destroying the hopes of a good man.”

A grim note in his voice told Zenobia he wasn’t joking.

“No wonder everyone here fears you.” But not in his town. His people trusted him instead of fearing him. She looked toward the inn, where the balloon he’d arrived in still waited. “Where are Tsetseg and the others? They didn’t return with you?”

“They’re going home tomorrow. But today Tsetseg is teaching Jochi’s wrestlers how to disable a mechanical suit with their bare hands.”

“Why?”

“Because his zombies are dead. Now his men don’t have anything to fight tonight when the den lords attend the games. So he’ll ask the twins to send a few of their guards into the arena. The twins will, because they’ll assume their men will win.” Hard satisfaction firmed Ariq’s mouth when he glanced down at her. “And no one in that arena will ever forget seeing unarmed wrestlers defeat those suits.”

Her heart jumped against her ribs. “You said you couldn’t change anything here. But you just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“I can’t,” he admitted and his deep laugh made her heart leap again.

Oh, she loved the sound of it. Loved watching him—the rebel who no longer fought, but showed others how to.

“I wish I could see it.” Her gaze settled on the pair of guards patrolling the opposite side of the street. Guards who would report to the twins, but would never have helped her. “I suspect your days have been more interesting than mine. I should have gone with you.”

His humor fled. “I knew you had secrets to keep. So I didn’t want to give anyone reason to notice you.”

That would have been best. “They have reason now.”

“They have reason to be afraid.” Steel hardened his voice. “Because if anyone comes after you, first they’ve got to go through me.”

Kidnappers were more likely to come now that they all knew her name. But maybe the Kraken King’s name was terrifying enough to keep them away, even after she’d returned home. She wouldn’t need mercenaries to protect her then. She wouldn’t need anyone.

And maybe she could walk alone down a street again.

“I hope you’re right,” she said softly.

***

Does it show?

Zenobia’s question wouldn’t stop ringing in his head. That wasn’t disbelief that she’d been struck. That was the reaction of a woman who’d been hit before. A woman who was so accustomed to it, her first thought had been whether the bruises would upset someone else.

A woman who’d hidden evidence from a beating before.

She was up in her rooms now, hiding it again. Concealing the damage.

Fists clenched, Ariq stalked a path in front of the Coopers’ quarters, waiting for Mara. He couldn’t stop moving, not yet. If he did he might tear them all apart.

But he wouldn’t. Zenobia had feared the couple would blame themselves. They probably would. Ariq blamed himself for leaving her here.

She would have called them all fools. The first night he’d met her, she’d told him she wasn’t in the habit of letting other people make her decisions. If she’d made up her mind to go after that typesetter, there was nothing the Coopers could have done to stop her. And if she’d been determined to go alone, she’d have made certain they didn’t even know she was leaving.

And if she’d known that someone would recognize her, Ariq knew she wouldn’t have stepped outside the inn.

Does it show?

A door opened on the upper levels. Mara emerged from Zenobia’s chambers. The mercenary had been waiting for her when they’d returned to the inn, her stern expression failing to conceal her concern. Zenobia had sighed and said, “I will tell you about it upstairs.”

Now Mara would tell Ariq what he needed to know.

If she told him anything at all. Her face was a tight mask as she opened the door to her rooms. Cooper sat inside, and his reaction on seeing his wife’s expression was a mixture of relief and worry. “She’s all right? What happened?”

“He told everyone who she is.” She indicated Ariq with a backward jerk of her thumb.

“She’s been exposed?” Dismay tightened Cooper’s features. “You’ll have to go with her to the Red City.”

Cooper had spoken to Mara, but Ariq answered, “I am.”

With an angry hiss, Mara pivoted toward him. “So I’ve heard. And she won’t let me go until Cooper is ready, so you’d better hope that your name is enough to protect her.”

“If my name isn’t, then I will be.” And now the rebellion would come to him instead of going after her. “But I need to know more.”

“We won’t tell you her secrets—”

“Not that.” Ariq would wait until Zenobia trusted him enough to tell them herself. “If I’m watching over her, what will I not expect?”

Jaw clenched, Mara stared at him for a long, hard moment. Then she sighed and pulled her hand through her hair. “She’s wary. So you might think she’s always on guard. But she’s distracted when she’s working—when she’s writing her letters and notes. It’s like she’s somewhere else. You can walk up behind her and she won’t notice.”

Ariq nodded. He’d seen that.

“She’s up early and late to bed,” Cooper added. “And she doesn’t sleep well. She’ll get up in the night and won’t be where you expect her to be.”

That wouldn’t be a problem if she was in Ariq’s bed. Everything would be better if she was there.

“Who am I watching for? Who hurt her?”

“Who hasn’t?” In a sharp burst, Mara laughed at him. “Everyone who learns who she is wants to use her for something. She knows it. She’s careful with strangers. She doesn’t trust anyone to be who they’ve said they are, or to truly want what they say they want. So you watch out for strangers—but it’s the people she’s let in who you have to pay close attention to, because her shields are gone with them.”

Mara’s words twisted in Ariq’s chest. With him, Zenobia’s shields were still strong. She’d kissed him. That didn’t mean she would ever let him in. “She’s vulnerable to anyone she cares for?”

“Anyone who cares for her,” Mara said. “So few do. She doesn’t have defense against it.”

No defense. Neither did he. She’d destroyed Ariq’s walls.

Now he knew how to get through hers.

As if realizing what she’d just given away, Mara dropped her hand to her pistol. He’d seen that look in her eyes before—just before she’d shot a marauder in the face. “Understand this, Ariq Noyan: We’ll kill you if she’s hurt.”

He wouldn’t have expected anything less. But they wouldn’t have to kill him.

If anything happened to Zenobia, it would be only because there wasn’t anything of Ariq left.

Look for Part IV

THE KRAKEN KING AND THE INEVITABLE ABDUCTION

Available from InterMix May 6, 2014

Keep reading for an excerpt from Meljean Brook’s novel of the Iron Seas

HEART OF STEEL

Available now from Berkley

Yasmeen hadn’t had any reason to fly her airship into the small Danish township of Fladstrand before, but her reputation had obviously preceded her. All along the Scandinavian coast, rum dives served as a town’s only line of defense against mercenaries and pirates—and only as soon as the sky paled and Lady Corsair became visible on the eastern horizon, lights began appearing in the windows of the public houses alongside the docks. The taverns were opening early, hoping to make a few extra deniers before midday . . . and the good citizens of Fladstrand were probably praying that her crew wouldn’t venture beyond the docks and into the town itself.

Unfortunately for them, Lady Corsair’s crew wasn’t in Fladstrand to drink. Nor were they here to cause trouble, but Yasmeen wasn’t inclined to let the town know that. Let them tremble for a while. It did her reputation good.

Dawn had completely faded from the sky by the time Lady Corsair breached the mouth of the harbor. Standing behind the windbreak on the quarterdeck, Yasmeen aimed her spyglass at the skyrunners tethered over the docks. She recognized each airship—all of them served as passenger ferries between the Danish islands to the east and Sweden to the north. Several heavy-bottomed cargo ships floated in the middle of the icy harbor, their canvas sails furled and their wooden hulls rocking with each swell. Though she knew the skyrunners, Yasmeen couldn’t identify every ship in the water. Most of Fladstrand fished or farmed—two activities unrelated to the sort of business Yasmeen conducted. Whatever cargo the ships carried probably fermented or flopped, and she had no interest in either until they reached her mug or her plate.

When Lady Corsair’s long shadow passed over the flat, sandy shoreline and the first rows of houses overlooking the sea, Yasmeen ordered the engines cut. Their huffing and vibrations gave way to the flap of the airship’s unfurling sails and the cawing protests of seabirds. Below, the narrow cobblestone streets lay almost empty. A steamcart puttered along beside an ass-drawn wagon loaded with wooden barrels, but most of the good people of Fladstrand scrambled back to their homes as soon as they spotted Lady Corsair in the skies above them—hiding behind locked doors and shuttered windows, hoping that whatever business Yasmeen had wouldn’t involve them.

They were in luck. Today, Yasmeen only sought one woman: Zenobia Fox, author of several popular stories that Yasmeen had read to pieces, and sister to a charming antiquities salvager whose adventures Zenobia based her stories on . . . a man whom Yasmeen had recently killed.

Yasmeen had also killed their father and taken over his airship, renaming her Lady Corsair. That had happened some time ago, however, and no one would consider Emmerich Gunther-Baptiste charming, including his daughter. Yasmeen had seen Zenobia Fox once before, though the girl had been called Geraldine Gunther-Baptiste then. As one of the mercenary crew aboard Gunther-Baptiste’s skyrunner, Yasmeen had watched an awkward girl with mousy-brown braids wave farewell to her father from the docks. Zenobia had been standing next to her pale and worn-looking mother.

Neither she nor her mother had appeared sorry to see him go.

Would Zenobia be sorry that her brother was dead? Yasmeen didn’t know, but it promised to be an entertaining encounter. She hadn’t looked forward to meeting someone this much since Archimedes Fox had first boarded Lady Corsair—and before she’d learned that he was really Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste. Hopefully, her acquaintance with his sister wouldn’t end the same way.

A familiar grunt came from Yasmeen’s left. Lady Corsair’s quartermaster stood at the port rail, consulting a hand-drawn map before casting a derisive look over the town.

Yasmeen tucked her scarf beneath her chin so the heavy wool wouldn’t muffle her voice. “Is there a problem, Monsieur Rousseau?”

Rousseau pushed his striped scarf away from his mouth, exposing a short black beard. With gloved hands, he gestured to the rows of houses, each one identical to the next in all but color. “Only that they are exactly the same, Captain. But it is not a problem. It is simply an irritant.”

Yasmeen nodded. She didn’t doubt Rousseau could find the house. Though hopeless with a sword or gun, her quartermaster could interpret the most rudimentary of maps as if they’d been drawn by skilled cartographers. That ability, combined with his expressive grunts and eyebrows that could wordlessly discipline or praise the aviators—and a booming voice for when nothing but words would do—made him the most valuable member of Yasmeen’s crew. A significant number of jobs that Yasmeen took in Europe required Lady Corsair to navigate through half-remembered terrain and landmarks. Historical maps of the continent were easy to come by, but matching their details to the overgrown ruins that existed now demanded another skill entirely—that of reading the story of the Horde’s centuries-long occupation.

Though not ruins, Fladstrand’s identical rows of houses told another tale, one that Yasmeen had seen repeated along the Scandinavian coastlines.

In one of her adventures, Zenobia Fox had written that the worth of any society could be judged by measuring the length of time it took for dissenters to go from the street to the noose. Zenobia might have based that statement on the history of her adopted Danish home; a few centuries ago, that time hadn’t been long at all. Soon after the Horde’s war machines had broken through the Hapsburg Wall, they’d deliberately created a zombie infection that had outpaced their armies, and the steady trickle of refugees from eastern Europe had opened into a flood. Those who had the means bought passage aboard a ship to the New World, but those without money or connections migrated north, pushing farther and farther up the Jutland Peninsula until they crowded the northern tip. Some fled across the sea to Norway and Sweden, while others bargained for passage to the Danish islands. Those refugees who were left built rows of shacks, and waited for the Horde and the zombies to come.

Neither had. The Horde hadn’t pressed farther north than the Limfjord, a shallow sound that cut across the tip of Jutland, separating it from the rest of the peninsula and creating an island of the area. The same stretch of water stopped most of the zombies; walls built near the sound stopped the rest. Poverty and unrest had plagued the crowded refugees, and the noose had seen frequent use, but the region slowly recovered. Rows of shacks became rows of houses. Now quiet and stable, many of the settlements attracted families from England, recently freed from Horde occupation, and from the New World. Zenobia Fox and her brother had made up one of those families.

“We are coming over her home now, Captain.” Rousseau’s announcement emerged in frozen puffs. “How long do you intend to visit with her?”

How long would it take to say that Archimedes had discovered a valuable artifact before Yasmeen had killed him, and then pay the woman off? With luck, Zenobia Fox would send Yasmeen on her way in a fit of self-righteous fury—though it might be more entertaining if she tried to send Yasmeen off with a gun. In both scenarios, Yasmeen would hold on to all of the money, which suited her perfectly.

“Not long,” she predicted. “Lower the ladder.”

Rousseau relayed the order and within moments, the crew unrolled the rope ladder over Lady Corsair’s side. Yasmeen glanced down. Zenobia’s orange, three-level home sat between two identical houses painted a pale yellow. Unlike many of the houses in Fladstrand, the levels hadn’t been split into three separate flats. The slate roof was in good repair, the trim around the windows fresh. Lace curtains prevented Yasmeen from looking into the rooms. Wrought-iron flower boxes filled with frosted-over soil projected from beneath each windowsill.

Large and well-tended, the house provided ample room for one woman. Yasmeen supposed that much space was the best someone could hope for when living in a town—but she couldn’t have tolerated being anchored to one place. Why would Zenobia Fox? She had based her adventures on her brother’s travels, but why not travel herself? Yasmeen couldn’t understand it. Perhaps money had been a factor—although by the look of her home, Zenobia didn’t lack funds.

No matter. After Yasmeen paid her off, Zenobia wouldn’t need to base her stories on Archimedes’ adventures. She could go as she pleased—or not—and it wouldn’t be any concern of Yasmeen’s.

As this was a social visit, she removed the guns usually tucked into her wide crimson belt. At the beginning of the month, she’d traded her short aviator’s jacket for a long winter overcoat. The two pistols concealed in her deep pockets provided enough protection, and were backed up by the daggers tucked into the tops of her boots, easily reachable at mid-thigh. She checked her hair, making certain that her blue kerchief covered the tips of her tufted ears. If necessary, she could use her braids to do the same, but the kerchief was more distinctive. There would be no doubt exactly who had dropped in on Zenobia Fox today.

The ladder swayed when Yasmeen hopped over the rail and let the first rung catch her weight. Normally she’d have slid down quickly and landed with an acrobatic flourish, but her woolen gloves didn’t slide over the rope well—and Yasmeen didn’t know how long she would be waiting on the doorstep. Cold, stiff fingers made drawing a knife or pulling a trigger difficult, and she wouldn’t risk them for the sake of a flip or two.

The neighbors might have appreciated it, though. All along the street, curtains twitched. When Yasmeen pounded the brass knocker on Zenobia’s front door, many became bold enough to show their faces at the windows—probably thanking the heavens that she hadn’t knocked at their doors.

No one peeked through the curtains at Zenobia’s house. The door opened, revealing a pretty blond woman in a pale blue dress. Though a rope ladder swung behind Yasmeen and a sky-runner hovered over the street, the woman didn’t glance up.

A dull-witted maid, Yasmeen guessed. Or a poor, dull-witted relation. Yasmeen knew very little about current fashion, but even she could see that although the dress was constructed of good materials and sewn well, the garment sagged in the bodice and the hem piled on the floor.

The woman must have recognized Yasmeen as a foreigner, however. A thick Germanic accent gutted her French, the common trader’s language. “May I help you?”

“I need to speak with Miss Zenobia Fox.” Yasmeen smoothed the Arabic from her own accent, hoping to avoid an absurd comedy of misunderstandings on the doorstep. “Is she at home?”

The woman’s eyebrows lifted in a regal arch. “I am she.”

This wasn’t a maid? How unexpected. Despite the large house and obvious money, Zenobia Fox opened her own door?

Yasmeen liked surprises; they made everything so much more interesting. She’d never have guessed that the tall, awkward girl with mousy-brown braids would have bloomed into this delicate blond thing.

She’d never have guessed that her first impression of the woman who penned clever and exciting tales would be “dull-witted.”

Archimedes certainly hadn’t been. Quick with a laugh or clever response, he’d perfectly fit Yasmeen’s image of Archimedes Fox, Adventurer. She could see nothing of Archimedes in this woman—not in the soft shape of her face or the blue of her eyes, and certainly not in her manner.

Blond eyebrows arched ever higher. “And you are . . . ?”

“I am Lady Corsair’s captain.” Kerchief over the hair, indecently snug trousers, a skyrunner that had once belonged to Zenobia’s father floating over her house—was this woman completely blind? “Your brother recently traveled on my airship.”

“Oh. How can I help you?”

How can I help you? Disbelieving, Yasmeen stared at the woman. Could an aviator’s daughter be this sheltered? What else could it mean when the captain of a vessel appeared on her doorstep? Every time that Yasmeen had knocked on a door belonging to one of her crew members’ families, the understanding had been immediate. Sometimes it had been accompanied by denial, grief, or anger—but they all knew what it meant when Yasmeen arrived.

Perhaps because Archimedes had been a passenger rather than her crew, Zenobia didn’t expect it. But the woman should have made the connection by now.

“I have unfortunate news regarding your brother, Miss Fox.”

The “unfortunate news” must have clued her in. Zenobia blinked, her hand flying to her chest. “Archimedes?”

At a time like this, she called him “Archimedes”—not Wolfram, the name she’d have known him by for most of her life? Either they’d completely adopted their new identities, or this was an act.

If it was an act, this encounter was already turning out better than Yasmeen had anticipated. “Perhaps we can speak inside, Miss Fox.”

With an uncertain smile, the other woman stepped back. “Yes, of course.”

Zenobia led the way into a parlor, her too-long skirts dragging on the wooden floor. A writing desk sat by the window, stacked with blank papers. No clickity transcriber’s ball was in sight, and no ink stained Zenobia’s fingers. Obviously she hadn’t been busy penning the next Archimedes Fox adventure.

A shelf over the fireplace held several baubles, some worn by age, others encrusted with dirt—a silver snuff box, a lady’s miniature portrait, a gold tooth. All items that Archimedes had collected during his salvaging runs in Europe, Yasmeen realized. All items that he’d picked from the ruins but hadn’t sold. Why keep these?

Her gaze returned to the lady in the miniature. Soft brown hair, warm eyes, a plain dress. The description seemed familiar, though Yasmeen knew she hadn’t seen this portrait before. No, it was a description from Archimedes Fox and the Specter of Notre Dame. In the story, he’d found a similar miniature clutched in a skeleton’s fingers, and the mystery surrounding the woman’s identity had led the adventurer to a treasure hidden beneath the ruined cathedral.

How odd that she’d never realized that fictional miniature had a real-life counterpart. That she’d never imagined him digging it out of the muck somewhere and bringing it to his sister. That he’d once held it, as she did now.

The stupid man. Yasmeen lied often, and so she didn’t care that he’d lied about his identity when he’d arranged for passage on her airship. It did matter that she’d allowed Emmerich Gunther-Baptiste’s son aboard her airship without knowing who he really was. A threat had sneaked onto Lady Corsair right beneath her nose.

She couldn’t forgive him for that. Too often, she led her crew into dangerous territory, and they would only be loyal to a strong captain. A captain they could trust. She’d invested years making certain that her crew could trust her, and rewarded their loyalty with piles of money. There wasn’t enough gold in the world to convince a crew to follow a fool, and Archimedes Fox had come close to turning her into one when he’d boarded her ship. She’d only been saved because he’d openly thanked her for killing his father, negating his potential threat. He’d become a joke, instead.

And later, when he had threatened her in front of the crew, she’d gotten rid of him . . . maybe.

Yasmeen turned to Zenobia, who stood quietly in the center of the parlor, tears trailing over her pink cheeks.

“So Archimedes . . . is dead?” she whispered.

Funny how that terrible accent came and went. “As dead as Genghis Khan,” Yasmeen confirmed. “Unfortunate, as I said. He was a handsome bastard.”

“Oh, my brother!” Zenobia buried her face in her hands.

Yasmeen let her sob for a minute. “Do you want to know how he died?”

Zenobia lifted her head, sniffling into a lace handkerchief, her blue eyes bright with more tears. “Well, yes, I suppose—”

“I killed him. I dropped him from my airship into a pack of flesh-eating zombies.”

The other woman had nothing to say to that. She stared at Yasmeen, her fingers twisting in the handkerchief.

“He tried to take control of my ship. You understand.” Yasmeen flopped onto a sofa and hooked her leg over the arm. Zenobia’s face reddened and she averted her gaze. Not accustomed to seeing a woman in trousers, apparently. “He hasn’t come around for a visit, has he?”

“A visit?” Her head came back around, eyes wide. “But—”

“I tossed him into a canal. Venice is still full of them, did you know?”

Zenobia shook her head.

“Well, some are more swamp than canal, but they are still there—and zombies don’t go into the water. We both know that Archimedes has escaped more dire situations than that, at least according to his adventures. You’ve read your brother’s stories, Miss Fox, haven’t you?”

“Of . . . course.”

“He mentions the canals in Archimedes Fox and the Mermaid of Venice.”

“Oh, yes. I’d forgotten.”

There was no Mermaid of Venice adventure, yet the woman who’d supposedly written it didn’t even realize she’d been caught in her lie. Pitiful.

But the question remained: Did that mean Zenobia wasn’t the author after all, or was this not Zenobia? Yasmeen suspected the latter.

“So he might be alive?” Zenobia ventured.

“He still had most of his equipment and weapons. But if he hasn’t contacted you after two months now . . . he must be dead, I’m sorry to say.” Yasmeen meant it, but she wasn’t sorry for the next. “And so he is the second man in your family I’ve killed.”

Surprise and dismay flashed across her expression. “Yes, of course. My . . .”

She trailed off into a sob. Oh, that was good cover.

“Father.” Yasmeen helped her along.

“Yes, my father. After he . . . did something terrible, too.”

That was good, too. Smart not to suggest that the armed woman sitting in the room had been at fault.

Obviously this woman had no idea who she’d targeted by taking Zenobia Fox’s place. If asked, she’d probably say that her father’s surname had been Fox, as well. She wouldn’t know that Emmerich Gunther-Baptiste had once tried to roast a mutineer alive. Yasmeen hadn’t had any love for the mutineer—but she’d shot him in the head anyway, to put him out of his misery. She’d shot Gunther-Baptiste when he’d ordered the other mercenaries to put her on the roasting spit in the mutineer’s place. When Yasmeen realized that she’d attained a beauty of an airship in the process, she’d shot every other crew member who tried to take it from her.

After a while, they’d stopped trying and began taking orders, instead.

“Did he do something terrible? I’ve killed so many people, I forget what my reasons were.” A lie, but Yasmeen wasn’t the only one telling them. Now it was time to find out this woman’s reasons. With a belabored sigh, she climbed to her feet. “That’s all I’ve come to say. A few of Archimedes’ belongings are still in my ship. Would you like to have them, or should I distribute them among my crew?”

“Oh, yes. That’s fine.” For a moment, the blond seemed distracted and uncertain. Then her shoulders squared, and she said, “My brother hired you to take him to Venice, and was searching for a specific item. Did he find it . . . before he died?”

Ah, so that’s what it was. Yasmeen had spoken to three art dealers about locating a buyer for the sketch Archimedes Fox had found in Venice. A flying machine drawn by the great inventor Leonardo da Vinci, the sketch was valuable beyond measure.

She’d demanded that the dealers be discreet in their inquiries. Not even Yasmeen’s crew knew what she’d locked away in her cabin. But obviously, someone had talked.

“It was a fake,” Yasmeen lied.

No uncertainty weakened Zenobia’s expression now. “I’d still like to have it. As a memento.”

Yasmeen nodded. “If you’ll show me out, I’ll retrieve it for you now.” She followed the woman from the parlor and into the hallway. “Will you hold the rope ladder for me? It’s so unsteady.”

“Of course.” All smiles, Zenobia reached the front door.

Yasmeen didn’t give her a chance to open it. Slapping her gloved hand over the blond’s mouth, she kicked the woman’s knees out from beneath her. Yasmeen slammed her against the floor and shoved her knife against the woman’s throat.

Quietly, she hissed, “Where is Zenobia Fox?”

The woman struggled for breath. “I am Zen—”

A press of the blade cut off the woman’s lie. Yasmeen smiled, and the woman’s skin paled.

Her smile frequently had that effect.

“The dress doesn’t fit you. You’ve tried to take Zenobia’s place but you’ve no idea who you’re pretending to be. Where is she?” When the woman’s lips pressed together in an unmistakable response, Yasmeen let her blade taste blood. The woman whimpered. “I imagine that you’re working with someone. You didn’t think of this yourself. Is he waiting upstairs?”

The woman’s eyelids flickered. Answer enough.

“I can kill you now and ask him instead,” Yasmeen said.

That made her willing to talk. Her lips parted. Yasmeen didn’t allow her enough air to make a sound.

“Is Zenobia in the house? Nod once if yes.”

Nod.

“Is she alive?”

Nod.

Good. Yasmeen might not kill this woman now. She eased back just enough to let the woman respond. “Where did you hear about the sketch?”

“Port Fallow,” she whispered. “Everyone knew that Fox boarded your airship in Chatham. We realized he must have found the sketch on his last salvaging run.”

Yasmeen had only spoken to one art dealer in Port Fallow: Franz Kessler. Damn his loose tongue. She’d make certain he wouldn’t talk out of turn again—especially if this had been his idea. This woman certainly hadn’t the wits to connect the sketch to Zenobia.

“You and the one upstairs. Was this his plan?”

Yasmeen interpreted her hesitation as a yes—and that this woman was afraid of him. She’d chosen the wrong person to fear.

“What airship did you fly in on?”

“Windrunner. Last night.”

A passenger ship. “Who’s upstairs?”

“Peter Mattson.”

Miracle Mattson, the weapons smuggler. A worthy occupation, in Yasmeen’s opinion, but Miracle Mattson sullied the profession. He always recruited partners to assist him with the job, but as soon as the cargo was secure, the partners conveniently disappeared. Mattson usually claimed an attack by Horde forces or zombies had killed them, yet every time, he miraculously survived.

No doubt that if this woman had secured the sketch for him, she’d have disappeared soon, too.

“Did he hire you just for this job?”

“Yes. I’m grateful. I’ve been out of work for almost a full season.”

A full season of what? This woman’s soft hands had never seen any kind of labor. Only one possibility occurred to her.

“Are you an actor?”

The blond nodded. “And dancer. But the company replaced us all with automatons.”

If this woman’s performance was an example, Yasmeen suspected that the automatons displayed more talent. “All right. Call Mattson down.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll make you a better deal than he will.” Yasmeen wouldn’t kill her, anyway. Probably. “And because if I go upstairs holding a knife to your throat, he might do something stupid to Miss Fox.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “How do I call him?”

God save her from idiots. “I’ll let you up. You’ll open and close the door as if you’ve just come in from outside, and yell, ‘I’ve got it! Come see!’ You’ll be very excited.”

“And then?”

“I’ll do the rest.” She waited for the woman to nod, then hauled her up. “Now.”

Yasmeen had to give the actress credit; even with a knife at her throat, she played her part perfectly. Mattson must have realized that something was amiss, however. No answer came from upstairs. Perhaps he’d taken a look out the window and saw that Yasmeen had never climbed back up to the airship. She didn’t think he’d heard their whispers. When noise finally came from above, the walls and ceiling muffled Mattson’s low voice.

“Get up.” A thud followed the rough order, the sound of a body falling onto the floor, then the slow shuffle of feet and the heavy, regular tread of boots. “Stay quiet. Don’t try anything stupid.”

Ah, Mattson. Always predictable. Of course he wouldn’t come down alone and risk his neck. He was bringing Zenobia with him, probably with a gun at her head—and he likely intended to offer the woman’s life in exchange for the sketch. Yasmeen couldn’t imagine why he thought it would work. Did she look that foolish? After she handed over the sketch, nothing would stop him from shooting them all.

No, Mattson was the only fool here. Knife still at the actress’s throat, Yasmeen dragged her into the parlor. She stopped with her back to the window, the actress in front of her and facing the parlor entry—an escape in one direction, a shield in the other. If Mattson began firing, Yasmeen preferred that the bullets didn’t hit her first, and the actress’s body hid the gun Yasmeen tucked into the sash at her waist. No need to draw it yet. Her blade would do until she tired of talking.

As if suddenly realizing what her position meant, the actress emitted a desperate squeak. Yasmeen hissed a warning in her ear, and the woman fell silent, trembling.

The tread of boots reached the stairs. Slowly, they came into view, Zenobia’s pale bare feet and Mattson’s shining black boots. Her hands had been bound at the wrists. He must have surprised Zenobia while she slept. Rags knotted her brown hair, and she wore a sturdy white sleeping gown. A wide strip of torn linen served as a gag, stretched tight between dry lips and tied behind her head. Her eyes were the same shade as Archimedes’—emerald, rather than the yellowish-green of Yasmeen’s—and bright with anger and fear.

Zenobia’s gaze locked on Yasmeen’s, but aside from a quick glance at the woman’s face and at the revolver that Mattson held to the side of her throat, Yasmeen didn’t bother to pay her any attention. Mattson served as the greater threat here, and Yasmeen wasn’t a fool to be taken unawares while making cow-eyes at a writer whose work she adored.

Though Zenobia was a tall woman, Mattson’s height left him completely exposed from chin to crown. Idiot. He ought to have been crouching, but perhaps he considered any sort of cower an affront to his dignity. Sporting a neatly trimmed blond mustache and wearing a pressed jacket and trousers, he stood straight as any soldier, but Yasmeen had never known any soldier who took offense as easily as Peter Mattson. The sun reddened his skin rather than tanned it, so that he always appeared flushed with anger—as he often was, anyway. Belligerent the moment anyone questioned his character and big enough to pose a challenge, he’d become a favorite amongst the regulars at the Port Fallow taverns who found their entertainment by picking fights.

He stopped just at the entrance to the parlor, standing in the foyer and with Zenobia filling the door frame. He’d have a direct line to the front door—so he also kept a shield and an escape. The fool. If Mattson didn’t want to be shot, he shouldn’t have come down the stairs with his gun already drawn.

Pale blue eyes met hers. “Lady Corsair.”

Captain Corsair. Her airship was a lady, but Yasmeen certainly wasn’t. She didn’t bother to correct him, however. Everyone called her by the wrong name. No surprise he did, too.

“Mr. Mattson,” she said. “I believe you are here to make an exchange. Your woman for mine, perhaps?”

“I want the sketch.”

Of course he did—and of course he’d never get it. But as a woman of business, she was curious as to what he’d offer. “In exchange for what?”

“Nothing.”

“So generous, yet I’m not tempted to accept.”

“You should be. Give the sketch to me now, and my associates might let you live. I’ll tell them you cooperated.”

Yasmeen couldn’t have that. “And ruin my reputation? I don’t think so, Mr. Mattson—especially since you usually kill your associates. I doubt I’ll have much to fear from them.”

“You have no idea who you’re up against.” His gaze left Yasmeen and fell to the knife at the actress’s throat. His lips curled. “Do you think I care whether she dies? Go on, slit her—”

The crack of Yasmeen’s pistol cut off the rest. Mattson’s brains splattered against the foyer wall. His body dropped, gun clattering against the wood floor—and luckily, not discharging on impact.

Eyes wide, Zenobia lifted her bound hands and touched the blood sprayed across her cheek and temple. She startled from her stupor and almost tripped over Mattson’s boots when the actress suddenly shrieked, ducking and covering her ears. A bit late for that—though if she kept screaming, Yasmeen might shoot her just to shut her up.

She tucked the weapon back into her sash and crossed the room to nudge Mattson’s thigh with her toe. Dead. Yasmeen knew many people who seemed to function well without brains, but her bullet had definitely done this one in. Blood pooled beneath his head.

“A hell of a mess,” Yasmeen said, and slipped her blade between Zenobia’s wrists, slicing through the ties. She did the same to the woman’s gag. “If you need to vomit, I suggest you do it on him. There’s less to clean up.”

“Thank you,” Zenobia rasped. The corners of her mouth were raw. “But I don’t need to.”

Then she glanced down at Mattson’s face, bent over, and did.

Meljean Brook lives near Portland, OR with her family.