The Kraken King Part V: The Kraken King and the Iron Heart
Author: Meljean Brook
Date: 2014-05-13 13:31:02+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Romance; Paranormal; General; Science Fiction; Steampunk; Action & Adventure
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 VThe Kraken King and the Iron HeartWith their lives and the fate of an empire at stake, Ariq is forced to leave Zenobia behind. Held captive by their enemies, Zenobia can only pray that Ariq keeps his promise to come for her—until a terrible loss prods her to action. Ariq has no intention of handing over the Skybreaker to the two men responsible for the marauders’ attacks against Krakentown—but without a ran
Publisher: 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

Part IV: The Kraken King and the Inevitable Abduction

Part V: The Kraken King and the Iron Heart

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 V

The Kraken King and the Iron Heart

Meljean Brook

InterMix Books, New York

INTERMIX BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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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 IRON HEART

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / May 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Meljean Brook.

Excerpt from Riveted copyright © 2012 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: 978-1-101-63924-5

INTERMIX

InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group
and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

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INTERMIX® and the “IM” design are registered trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Version_1

Contents

Titles by Meljean Brook

Title Page

Copyright

Letter

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Special Excerpt from Riveted

About the Author

On an ironship, somewhere north of Australia

May 29

Archimedes,

I hardly know what to write. I hardly know if there is even any purpose to writing a letter, or whether you’ll receive it. If you ever do, I doubt it is because my captors have put a message in the post for me. I’ve probably ripped this page from my notebook and given it to you in person.

As you have likely guessed, I have been kidnapped again—but at least my abductors do not want gold this time. It’s somewhat flattering that my worth is equal to the worth of a giant war machine that could change the course of history. Whether that ransom will be paid is another question entirely.

One day, perhaps, I will transform this all into an adventure. Lady Lynx will go in search of a kidnapped friend, but when she finds the ironship her friend was taken to, the only evidence that remains is a note crumpled and stuffed beneath a cot.

At least I would not be forced to write the note in my own blood—though such drastic measures might not be far off. My pencil is worn to a nub and I doubt they will give me a penknife to sharpen it again. (Do not ask how I will draw blood to use as ink if I don’t even possess anything sharp enough to give my pencil a new point. Discussion of such details is best left to critics, and pathos always trumps plot.) Oh, how angry Lady Lynx will be when she reads that crimson plea for help! So many heads will be bashed; the adventure almost writes itself.

As for me, I am quite weary of adventure. Never have I longed so deeply for my own desk, and my own bed—even the bitterly cold sea.

Held for ransom, again,

Zenobia

P.S. Hairpins! They could draw blood, yet could never sharpen a pencil. I could stab a guard with one, too.

Chapter Sixteen

Low clouds crowded the evening sky. Ariq had been waiting for them the past two days. To return for Zenobia, he needed a cloud cover, an island port, and blood. He could arrange for the latter two. The clouds were beyond his power, but the eternal blue heavens had favored him with a thick blanket overhead.

It was almost time, then—and best not to delay too long. A seaport’s beacon flickered in the distance. He’d told the admiral the Skybreaker lay hidden near the Karakorum Pass, sending the airship northwest toward the mainland and past the heavily inhabited islands in the southern sea. Ariq would find transportation in one of those ports. But first he had to reach one.

Leaning over the rail, he looked to the dark water below. It was a long drop. A damned long drop.

But that didn’t matter. His wife was waiting for him.

Voices rose over the rumble of the airship’s engine. Whenever Ariq stepped out of his cabin, two guards shadowed his every movement. Only two guards. There might as well have been none. They should have locked him in the vault again.

The reason Ariq hadn’t been locked away was speaking with his guards now. Tatsukawa Hideyasu—the lynchpin in Ghazan Bator’s plan to threaten Ariq into giving up the Skybreaker. No doubt the admiral had the empress’s ear. Tatsukawa could prod her to action if her response to the marauders’ attacks wasn’t what Ghazan Bator expected. And if Ariq submitted to their demands, the admiral could reassure her that the marauders had been destroyed and action against the settlements on the western coast was unnecessary. Without Tatsukawa, Ghazan Bator couldn’t be certain that the threat against Ariq’s town would be strong enough to force his hand.

Without Tatsukawa, the general’s plan might fail. But Ariq couldn’t kill the admiral and destroy the lynchpin without bringing the empress’s forces to his shore. Ghazan Bator couldn’t have found a more useful ally, one who could tie Ariq’s hands while forcing him to his knees.

Taking Zenobia had done the same thing—and was more expedient.

And unexpected. He’d only known her just short of two weeks and he hadn’t intended to visit the Red City when he’d left his town for the dens. Their abduction from Zenobia’s bedchamber must have been hastily planned, unless the admiral and general had originally planned this course of action using someone else. Ariq’s brother, maybe.

But Ghazan Bator might not have trusted that Tatsukawa could abduct and torture his own son. It would have to be torture. Simply hiding his brother away wouldn’t have created the same urgency as taking Zenobia did. Ariq would have freed his brother, eventually. But he needed to do more than free Zenobia. He needed to erase the fear in her eyes—the terror of being taken, yet again. Of being locked away. It didn’t matter that she was in a cabin on an ironship instead of in her father’s closet. Ariq couldn’t leave her there.

He looked over the rail again. The water waited.

Escape wouldn’t have been so easy if the admiral had left him in the vault. There was no sensible reason to let Ariq out or to return his clothes. But he suspected Tatsukawa wanted more from him than the location of the machine, and that he hoped to gain Ariq’s forgiveness on the journey.

Ariq wouldn’t offer it. He wasn’t a forgiving man.

Light steps warned him of the admiral’s approach. Tatsukawa’s gaze searched Ariq’s face—probably looking for Ariq’s mother in his features. Ariq had never been so glad to resemble his father.

With a sigh, the admiral turned his gaze toward the islands in the distance. “You are always watching the horizon. Do you think of your wife?”

Who else would Ariq think of? But he remained silent.

“She was not your bride when we took you from her bedchamber. And she didn’t sound as if she wanted to be.”

Lynchpin or not, Taka’s father or not, Ariq would have liked to kill the admiral simply for listening to them. Ariq had hurt Zenobia in that bedchamber by revealing that he’d read her letters. Then, he’d understood her anger, but not her pain.

He understood it now.

He’d thought she hadn’t trusted him with the truth, spinning a tale about writing the Archimedes Fox adventures and of her kidnappings. He’d believed there was nothing to lose by admitting that he’d invaded her privacy. But she had trusted him. He’d betrayed that trust.

Never again. “She’s my wife now.”

The admiral nodded and his gaze rose to Ariq’s face again before falling to his shoulder. “The kraken on your back—that is your mother’s work?”

“Yes.”

Tattooed when he was ten years of age. She hadn’t told him what it meant until later—until she knew the sort of man he would become.

“She had such a beautiful hand.” Emotion thickened the admiral’s voice. “Her paintings captured such light and life.”

So they had. “Did you destroy them, too?”

Tatsukawa’s silence answered for him. After a moment, he asked, “May I see it again?”

Ariq’s tattoo? “No.”

The other man’s face tightened. Denying the admiral that small connection to his mother was a cruelty, and Ariq enjoyed twisting that knife. But he wouldn’t have shown Tatsukawa, regardless. His mother had used her paintings to deliver messages hidden in the artwork. Ariq didn’t know if the Nipponese had ever determined how she’d sent so much information to the rebel forces. But if they had, the admiral might realize that the image on his back was more than a kraken—and would know the Skybreaker wasn’t in the direction they were traveling now.

He glanced south. Choppy waves broke the surface of the water. Wind buffeted Ariq’s face from the east. That wasn’t just from the airship’s flight. The wind shouldn’t make a difference during the drop, but the swim would be more difficult.

If he waited too much longer, the distance to the port might become too far to swim. Though willing to risk everything for Zenobia, he couldn’t be reckless. Dead, Ariq would be no use to her.

“Your anger toward me is misplaced and does your mother no credit.” The admiral’s shoulders had stiffened. He seemed to be fighting his own anger now—or frustration. “She was a soldier. She would have suffered in the prison. I gave her the most honorable death I could.”

Yes, she’d been a soldier. She’d risked her life, just as Ariq had on the battlefield. She’d known that she might die in the effort.

Ariq had never been angry because she’d given her life to the rebellion. He’d been angry because so many excuses surrounded her death. From Ghazan Bator, who hadn’t even tried to secure her release because she was no longer useful—so she hadn’t been worth the effort of even attempting a trade. And from her own husband, who’d put the blade to her neck. It might have been the most honorable death. But it was still death, and Tatsukawa could have prevented it. He could have helped her escape. He just would have had to risk his own honor. But his wife apparently hadn’t been worth that, either.

Nothing under the heavens could have compelled Ariq to put a sword to Zenobia’s neck. Nothing. He would have sacrificed his honor and his life just to keep her safe.

So the admiral’s words meant nothing to him. “You let your son suffer in that prison.”

Moisture gathered in Tatsukawa’s eyes and glittered in the lantern light. His gaze was distant, far beyond the night’s horizon. “I have no son,” he said. “He was lost.”

No, Ariq couldn’t be sorry for his cruelty toward this man. He twisted the knife again.

“And I gained a brother who has no father worthy of the name. Only a man without loyalty, who intends to manipulate and lie to his empress.” Which personally meant nothing to Ariq, either. He’d rebelled against his own emperor. But it must have meant something to Tatsukawa, because he’d killed his wife and disowned his son to prove his loyalty. “Yet now you assist the same man who sent my mother to spy on you.”

“I seek to defeat the threat that still lingers over my home—and to complete what your mother fought for, as well. I do this out of loyalty to them both.”

By defeating the Khagan. “Your empress withdrew her soldiers.”

“Her mother never would have. She would have finished the war. Her dying wish was to finish it. But her daughter is young—and I will sacrifice everything to protect her, even from dangers she doesn’t have the wisdom to acknowledge.”

“And if you fail? The Khagan’s armies will attack her again.”

“We won’t fail. We will defeat him.” His gaze searched Ariq’s face again. “Your mother wanted the same.”

“Not with the Skybreaker. She believed the machine should only be used to defend.”

The admiral hadn’t known that. He blinked and his eyebrows twitched higher. But he didn’t call Ariq a liar. And he could never claim to know better—he’d never known Ariq’s mother as the soldier, only as the woman who’d pretended that love was the only reason she’d married him. But like any strategist, Tatsukawa attempted to turn a setback into an advantage.

“And what is using the machine but a defense? To defend all of those the Khagan has oppressed or attacked, we will strike before he can strike again.”

More excuses. Ariq had to laugh.

The sound must not have held much humor. As if uncertain whether they needed to protect the admiral, the waiting guards edged closer.

Tatsukawa stopped them with a lift of his hand. His gaze remained fixed on Ariq. “Is that not defense? What would you call it if your wife was threatened? If you knew that she would be attacked? Would you wait for someone to appear with a weapon before defending her by destroying the source of the threat?”

“No.”

The admiral nodded. “You would protect her. You would defend her. Even if she hated your method, even if she hated you for it. Better to have her hate than to see her hurt.”

Ariq agreed. But he didn’t know why the admiral thought that argument would persuade him. “That isn’t the same as using the machine. If I had to kill thousands of innocents to reach my enemy, I would find another way to defeat him—or I would create another way.”

“And if there is no other way?”

Irritation began to build. Within the half hour, Ariq needed to be in the water, or be forced to wait until they flew nearer to another port. Did the admiral intend to keep him here, insistently comparing scenarios that weren’t equal?

“There is another way.” Even if Ghazan Bator and Tatsukawa refused to see it. “It marches from the west, led by my mother’s brother—and she would prefer that plan to destroy the Khagan’s power over yours, because instead of crushing people along the way, it would inspire them to stand and fight.”

The admiral shook his head. “As many people would die.”

Another unequal comparison. Did Tatsukawa truly not see the difference between the deaths of those people who chose to fight and those people who were killed simply for being in the way? An admiral, who commanded men of his own? Who protected his own people? He didn’t want to see it.

So there was nothing further to say. Frustration joined Ariq’s irritation. The admiral was a willfully blind and stubborn—

And this was exactly how Ariq often felt when speaking to his brother.

Another laugh broke from him. Perhaps it all made sense using that comparison. Taka felt he had no worth and honor, and would never hear any argument to the contrary. A son, tortured for a betrayal that he didn’t commit; the father, lauded for a victory he didn’t earn. Tatsukawa must always hear of his honor and worth. Perhaps the admiral felt that he could finally deserve that praise after destroying the Khagan.

It didn’t matter. The admiral could speak of finishing the work of Ariq’s mother and protecting the empress all that he liked. But he clearly only wanted that machine for himself.

So Ariq said nothing. For a long minute, Tatsukawa watched him with a combination of sorrow and frustration etching his features—probably thinking Ariq was also willfully blind and stubborn—before finally taking his leave.

Then Ariq’s anger returned, burning through his gut and tightening every sinew, though he couldn’t immediately place the reason for it. He walked to the rear of the airship, guards trailing behind.

As they had every time Ariq had made this short trek along the decks.

That was reason enough for his anger. He knew his guards’ names: Tajimi no Yatarou and Ohoshika Akihira. Young men who fulfilled their duties well; Ohoshika had already earned honors. They deserved better than an admiral who let his sentimentality endanger his aviators by allowing someone like Ariq to freely roam the decks. They deserved better than a commander who assigned only two guards to watch over the Kraken.

Ariq had spoken true: If innocents stood between him and his wife, he wouldn’t kill them. He’d find another way to save her. But the admiral and Ghazan Bator had declared war on him the moment they’d taken Zenobia from her bedchamber and held her in exchange for the Skybreaker—and Tajimi and Ohoshika fought at his enemies’ sides. Ariq wouldn’t show mercy, except in a quick death.

It should have been Admiral Tatsukawa, instead.

My heart is iron.

The airship’s design resembled a black marlin—a sleek, narrow cruiser with a long, sharp prow was suspended beneath a pair of cylindrical balloons that ran the length of the ship. A propeller shaft emerged from the machine house on the upper decks and blocked a narrow view of the airship’s stern. The flickering lanterns cast shadows, transforming that stretch of the stern into a well of darkness. The lookouts in the pilot’s tower would see almost nothing.

But for several minutes, they would see Ariq at the rail, looking south into the horizon—as he had so often. As before, his guards stood in the shadows behind him, flanking the entrance to the propeller shaft housing and out of sight of the pilot’s tower.

My will is steel.

The propeller and engines roared a continuous thunder. Wind tugged at his tunic and roughened the dark sea below, the whitecaps barely visible. The heavy clouds had smothered the slice of moon. The giant sharks that hunted these waters would have poor visibility, but megalodons sometimes took their prey in full dark. Ariq didn’t know if they smelled or heard their prey, or sensed them in another way. But two things drew megalodons more quickly than any other bait—noise and blood—and Ariq needed to distract any sharks in the area.

He would take a risk; he wouldn’t be reckless.

My mind is my blade.

His absence would go unnoticed for a half hour, perhaps a little more. The crew would waste time searching each deck of the airship, because no one would imagine that he’d jumped. Most likely the full night would pass before they realized where he’d gone.

That would be long enough.

His breathing slowed. His blood calmed. The anger had cooled. Only purpose remained. Only Zenobia.

I am coming for you.

Now.

Ariq abandoned the rail and strode toward the passageway through the machine housing, as if returning to his quarters. The guards stepped apart, preparing to let Ariq walk between them before following him through the entrance—as they had each time Ariq had taken this route. Initially they’d given him a wide berth as he’d passed them. Two paces distant. By this morning, they’d simply begun stepping aside.

They stepped aside now. Both within arms’ reach.

Ohoshika was the more experienced guard and needed to be incapacitated first. Aiming for his windpipe, Ariq pivoted and jabbed. Cartilage crushed beneath his knuckles. The guard reeled back, hands flying to his smashed throat—unable to cry out.

Ariq spun back to Tajimi just as the young guard started forward, eyes wide and his hand outstretched. Whipping to the side, Ariq snagged Tajimi’s helmeted head and snapped his neck.

Choking and spitting blood, Ohoshika was sprawled on the deck and reaching for his weapon. Ariq crossed the short distance and finished him.

Lifting his head, he listened over the roaring engines. No one sounded an alarm. No one had seen.

He crouched beside the bodies. Both guards possessed blades but Ariq wouldn’t disrespect them by using their own weapons to do this. The hairpin he’d stolen from Zenobia’s hair was hidden in the seam of his tunic. He tugged the sharp steel pin out and stabbed it into their stomachs and throats. The wounds bled sluggishly—but they bled enough. One at a time, he dragged the bodies to a shadowed part of the rail and threw them over.

Ariq couldn’t jump after them yet or he would be the megalodons’ first meal. The airship had to carry him far enough away from the blood. Ten minutes at this speed. Longer, if any of Tatsukawa’s men came to this part of the deck and noticed that his guards were gone, and Ariq had to toss them over, too. Then he would have to wait another ten minutes until he’d gained enough distance from the new pool of blood.

None came.

He moved farther back into the shadows. Though he strove for calm, his blood thundered. Chilled sweat trickled down his spine. But his heart was iron. His will was steel.

The face of the sea would be as hard as a board. His body had to be a nail.

He took a running start and leapt.

For a brief moment, a cloud of steam from the engine enveloped him in warmth, then the propeller swept cold wind into his back and seemed to push him, faster and faster, whipping the loose edges of his tunic against his skin and ripping tears from his eyes. Fighting the urge to spread his arms, to slow his fall, he drew his hands in. Straight legs. Tense muscles. Not diving, but feet first.

My body is a nail.

Gravity was a hammer, pounding him in.

The shock splintered up his legs and back as if he’d been hit by a steamcoach. Pain whitened his vision. The cold sea swallowed him.

Darkness threatened to rush in. Shaking his head, Ariq struggled against it. How far down had he plunged? Sweeping his arms, he kicked. Was he propelling himself deeper into the sea? The swirling water seemed darker now, his body heavier. No direction seemed brighter than any other. Clouds blocked the moon; no light would guide him upward. He fought for his bearings, fought the uncertainty crushing his chest . . . and exhaled the breath from his lungs.

The bubbles rose. Ariq followed them.

Just as his lungs felt ready to burst he broke the surface, coughing. Waves slapped his face and stung his eyes. The airship’s engine droned overhead.

And there it was. In the distance. The port beacon—leading him back to Zenobia.

He began to swim.

Chapter Seventeen

I am coming for you.

Hugging a blanket around her shoulders, Zenobia stood at the ironship’s portside rail and looked into the dark water below. The heavy vessel left a foaming trail in its wake that disappeared like footsteps in melting snow. Behind her, the smoke from the stacks dissipated into the night sky, leaving no trace to follow.

Admiral Tatsukawa’s airship—with Ariq on it—had barely been out of sight when the ironship’s engines had fired. For four days, they’d plowed through the ocean on a western course, and Zenobia’s heart clenched tighter with every league they sailed.

Would Ariq guess that she wouldn’t be where he’d left her? He’d anticipated the rest: that he would be taken to locate the Skybreaker while she was held on the rebellion’s ironship, and that she would be returned to him after the war machine had been delivered into the rebellion’s hands. But had he guessed the general and admiral would trade her new location for the machine?

They must have suspected Ariq might not give them the Skybreaker—that he might attempt to escape and return for her.

I am coming for you.

But not tonight. Or the night before. And if he couldn’t find her, maybe not any night of the tomorrows to come.

Still, she hoped. If he came, it would probably be under cover of darkness. Zenobia hadn’t slept the past four nights so that she would be prepared to leave when he arrived. Lifting her face to the drizzling rain, she searched the dark clouds. Two hours remained before dawn. Ariq had promised to return before the new moon rose, but a waxing half moon had shone overhead the previous evening. The new moon was almost three weeks away.

She desperately hoped his vow had been more poetic than literal.

Three more weeks wasn’t so long to wait. She’d waited longer than that for a ransom before, and in worse conditions than this. There was nowhere to go but into the shark-infested waters, so she’d been given freedom to walk the upper deck instead of being locked in a cabin. But in the past, kidnapping had always been a business transaction. Someone abducted her, Archimedes paid them, Zenobia was freed. It wasn’t so simple this time. It was war. It was life and death. The question wasn’t when she would be released or how much gold they would want, but how many people would die as a result of the ransom being paid . . . or not.

And she’d never been held so far from home. She’d never been so tired, or felt so very small.

I am coming for you.

She was clinging to that promise as tightly as she’d clung to his hand. Clinging to the memory of the gravel in his voice as he’d spoken it, clinging to the image of his eyes, dark and intense, clinging to the pleasure of his sweet, urgent kiss. But with every passing mile, it all seemed to be slipping out of her grasp.

Hoping so much was exhausting, like exercising an unused muscle. Had she hoped so infrequently in the past that she couldn’t maintain the effort now? Zenobia didn’t know. But it seemed that hope quickly wore itself out and made room for doubt.

No, it didn’t just make room for doubt. It built a pantry, with shelves stuffed full of worries. And Zenobia couldn’t stop herself from nibbling, but those doubts didn’t nourish her or vanish with each bite. They only grew fatter.

If only the general would return her satchel—or even a pen. But every request she made was ignored or denied, and she had nothing but hope and worry to keep her occupied. The first day, she’d written her pencil lead down to the wood. Now all that she could do was think think think, all day and night, think think think, revisiting that pantry of doubts.

Then she would force herself to remember what he’d said. I am coming for you. And when she could bear it, Zenobia made herself remember the other, too. You are everything to me.

That one was harder to cling to. The doubts were sharper, and hurt so fiercely—probably because she hoped those words were true even more than she hoped for rescue.

Which was foolish. So foolish.

Behind her, boots sounded on the metal deck—the guard was making his rounds early. Blast him. She’d been memorizing their schedule and creating a mental map of where they stood at their posts. Now she would have to alter them.

Except it wasn’t a guard. The man who came to the rail wore the same high knot in his hair that Ariq did, but it was brown instead of black, and his eyes were a blue more common to the western end of the Horde Empire than to the east. Tall, lean, weathered by the sun and grayed by time, he seemed still and watchful. Like a tree, perhaps. Unyielding and strong, providing protection and shade.

But trees could become battering rams. Zenobia wouldn’t let herself forget that.

She greeted him with an inclination of her head. “General.”

“Madame Fox.” Ghazan Bator replied in French. Each word was slow and formal, but so far, he was the only one Zenobia had spoken to aboard the ironship who knew the language. “My men tell me that you wandered the deck this night, and each night previous. Can you not sleep?”

“I have been too busy thinking, sir.”

“Of what?”

“I was thinking that the Horde Empire is very large, and that the machine could be hidden anywhere from Old Nippon to the western shores of Africa. It might be some time before Ariq and the admiral reach its location.”

“Yes.”

So perhaps the new moon wasn’t a poetic promise, but an accurate estimate of how much time Ariq would be away. A knot of anxiety twisted in her chest. “I need occupation, sir. I would be grateful if my papers were returned to me—or even blank pages with a pen.”

“Come.” The general pushed away from the rail. “We will discuss it.”

Why not discuss it here? But she remained silent as they walked along the broad, empty decks to the ship’s stern. The command tower stood in front of the smokestacks. Topped by an open observation deck, the wheelhouse filled the uppermost level, with windows offering a view on all sides. A spiral staircase wound up through the tower’s heart, but Zenobia hadn’t climbed it yet. Her quarters were in the lowest level of the tower—a small cabin with a porthole that overlooked the bottom of a stack. She hadn’t been invited any higher. Nor had she been sent to the lower decks, where most of the crew resided.

“The fourth level.” The general gestured for Zenobia to precede him.

The steps were cold beneath her bare feet, but better than the wet metal decks outside. The second level opened to more doors, each one an iron oval in a bolted frame. Officer quarters, perhaps. The third level had windows facing the front of the ship, and through an open door she saw consoles crowded with dials and controls.

“I will have boots and a warmer tunic found for you,” the general said as they reached the fourth landing. “I cannot promise they will be a proper fit, but they will be better to wear on the open deck than what you have.”

“Thank you.” She hated being grateful to him. If she’d known that he would be taking her hostage, she’d have worn something more substantial than silk.

He inclined his head and opened the hatch to his quarters. Though larger than hers, his cabin wasn’t much bigger than the one she’d shared with Helene on the French airship. There were no decorations to speak of, only bare walls. More windows looked out over the primary deck. She didn’t see a place to sleep. His berth must have been through the hatch on the aft wall. The function of this cabin seemed more like a sitting room.

The contents of her satchel were neatly piled on a low table.

Zenobia froze, staring at them. Those letters and that manuscript were the reason why she was here, but he obviously hadn’t invited her in response to her request. He’d planned to invite her before going outside.

“Come and sit.” Moving to the table, he sank onto the mat and waited for her to sit on the opposite side, facing him over her letters—all unfolded, as if they’d been read. “Tea?”

“Yes.” She would drink anything if it meant getting her letters back. “Thank you.”

The general spoke and a boy seemed to appear from nowhere, cracking a window and lighting the copper brazier beside the table. He clanked a tin kettle onto the grate and was gone as silently as he’d come.

“Do you speak English as fluently as you write it?” the general asked in that language.

Zenobia’s heart sank. “Yes.”

“It’s easier for me.” He regarded her steadily, and in that long second she felt as if he stripped away every secret she’d ever tried to hide. She clutched the blanket tighter around her shoulders as he continued, “I spent almost five years in England when I was a young man—a soldier for the Golden Army. A faithful, steadfast soldier. I’d heard of the rebellion, but their disloyalty to the Khagan disgusted me. That changed in the labor colony.”

Of England. She’d never thought of it as a colony. Instead it had been invaded, occupied, enslaved. She supposed colonized was more palatable to those who’d done it. “Why?”

“Have you ever seen a young girl beg not to have her legs cut off and replaced with rickshaw levers?”

“No.” And she thanked God for it. “But I’ve seen the women those girls have become.”

He nodded. “You’ve been?”

“To London and Brighton.”

“They’re better off now.”

Since the revolution against the Horde? “Yes.”

“We would all be better off.” His gaze fell to the papers piled on the desk. Her dagger contraption was there, too, sheathed and the spring loaded. The fat bag of gold lounged next to it. “After England, I was plagued by uncertainties. Change was necessary, but I didn’t know if it should be attempted from the inside or out—whether I should bring my concerns to my commanders and, eventually, the Khagan and his ministers, or join the rebellion. That uncertainty cost a good man his life. Another soldier and I had been sharing our concerns, our uncertainties, and he attempted to speak with our superiors. Testing the waters, as they say. Those were the last words he spoke.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. But it taught me well. Never since have I risked indecision, for in those moments of wavering we are most vulnerable.”

So the general wasn’t the sort to ramble on without a point. “And what are you deciding now?”

He smiled faintly. “I have already decided. But tell me—why do you write in English? It’s not your natural language.”

“Because if the letters are intercepted, fewer people can read them,” she said dryly, and his chuckle acknowledged the irony.

He tapped her manuscript pages. “And this?”

“The people in England seem more eager for stories like these.”

“So it was a calculated decision.”

Partially. And partially because she remembered how desperate she’d once been for escape. A locked closet or a fist wasn’t the same as being invaded and enslaved. But she liked to think those girls wanted adventures, too.

“Perhaps poorly calculated. As I said, fewer people can read the language.” In England, groups crowded around a literate friend who would read aloud—and she sold one copy of a story per dozens of listeners. “But they became popular elsewhere, as well, so I was fortunate.”

“And seditious.”

“And . . . What?”

Beside her, the boiling kettle began to rattle. The boy appeared and poured the steaming water into a pot.

“Your last story was labeled seditious.” The general seemed amused. “Or so the Nipponese ministers believed. Copies were burned. The ending had to be rewritten.”

Lips parted in shock, she stared at him. “I don’t know whether I’m proud or offended.”

“Be proud.”

“I’m offended. I’m certain I was never paid for Nipponese translations.”

His laugh was a pleasant one, low and deep. “Have you met the twins?”

“In the Fox Den?” She shook her head. “I’ve only heard of them.”

“And you’ll only hear of the money your work earns for them. You’ll never pry a coin out of their hands.” He spoke to the boy, who left them again. “I cannot see anything seditious in what I read here.”

Because there wasn’t anything. But Zenobia watched him uneasily, because he might have recognized the plot she had been building since the marauders had fired on the French airship. Lady Lynx had stopped her attackers and saved her crew from megalodons, but that had only been the first act.

“Yes.” He confirmed her unspoken question. “The destruction of the airship. Not by pirates intending to plunder, but serving another purpose.”

To prod the empress into sending her forces to the western Australian coast—to threaten Ariq’s town. “Then why am I here?”

“Admiral Tatsukawa believed this would be more efficient.”

More efficient to threaten a single woman than to follow through on a convoluted plot involving the empress and her navy? “I have to agree. But you don’t?”

“Love is a powerful motivator.” He continued regarding her steadily, but the warmth of amusement faded, as if now he was observing an insect pinned to a board. “And the admiral remembers how Ariq risked a Nipponese prison to free his brother.”

Her heart thudded. “He did?”

“Fourteen guards dead. Twice as many injured. So the admiral believes that if he risked so much to save his brother, he will easily sacrifice a machine to save you. But what Ariq did in the prison was not out of love.”

It sounded like love to her. “What was it, then?”

“Anger.” He poured the tea into two cups. “He didn’t even know his brother. But his mother was dead. He was angry—at me, at the admiral, at everyone.”

“He might be angry now.”

“He probably is. But there was one factor in that rescue the admiral didn’t consider: It was against the Nipponese. Though Ariq abandoned us, he remains loyal, and he would never jeopardize the rebellion or his people.” The general set the teapot on its tray and met her gaze. “And he won’t come for you.”

Her chest seemed to cave in, crushed beneath the agony of those words. But Zenobia wouldn’t let the general see. She only looked at him.

“He won’t give over the machine, either,” he continued. “At least not now. He won’t give it over until the empress is firing on his town. When he escapes the admiral’s airship, he might make an attempt to find you. After he realizes that we’ve gone, however, he’ll have to decide between leaving you here or returning to his town to prepare. He’ll leave you—because he knows that we won’t harm you, and because his loyalty to his people is greater than his loyalty to his heart.”

Each word was another blow that ripped open her insides and left her bleeding. She could barely breathe past the pain. Everything he said made sense. She wouldn’t even blame Ariq if that was the choice he made.

He barely knew her. And even though he’d claimed to be falling in love with her, that was with a woman who didn’t exist—the spy, the desperate woman who’d needed his help. It wasn’t Zenobia, the writer with a few secrets, a reckless brother, and a pregnant friend.

Though it felt as if a burning coal had lodged in her throat, she managed, “You won’t harm me?”

“No.”

“Will you let me go?”

“Not yet.” Lips pursed, he cooled the surface of his tea before sipping. “You’re still useful. But when you are not, we will send you home to the North Sea. And perhaps when this is all done, Ariq will come for you.”

Too late. She wouldn’t blame Ariq if he sacrificed her for the sake of his town. But she couldn’t be with him, either—not if she was always wondering what else he might sacrifice her for.

Heart aching, she asked, “May I at least send a message to my friends in the Red City and reassure them that I’m well?”

Mara and Cooper might have already arrived in the Red City, only to find her gone. And Helene . . . God only knew what her friend must be going through. To have both Zenobia and an important guest stolen right out of her very home.

He set his tea down. “No.”

“Please. They must be frantic with worry.”

“And in that, you are useful as well. Nipponese flyers circled over the embassy on the night you vanished. Word of that will reach the empress’s ears.”

Nipponese flyers. Not an airship—but the vehicles the marauders had used.

Dear God. Wordlessly, Zenobia stared at him. The abduction wasn’t just intended to force Ariq’s hand, then. It furthered their original plan, too. A French airship destroyed, then an embassy infiltrated and two residents kidnapped. If one didn’t prod the empress to action, the second might.

And the abduction must have been decided on quickly. Zenobia and Ariq had only been in the Red City a couple of hours. The general must have had him under observation—and was prepared to take advantage of any situation.

One thing was certain. She would never be so foolish as to underestimate this man. Even now he was probably manipulating her. But to what purpose? To destroy her hope?

She only had a little bit of that left, anyway.

“This is useful, too.” The general picked up her dagger. “This and the glider. I intend to keep these devices—to have my men replicate them for our use.”

He was welcome to anything on that table except for her letters and manuscript. “Will you return my papers?”

“No.”

Her stomach twisted. “When I go home?”

“I’ve read through the letters, Mrs. Fox. They include intelligence not commonly known.”

“I have no intention of telling anyone about Temür Agha. Take that one, but leave me the rest.” She hated to lose any of Archimedes’ letters, but if the general feared the contents, better to have it out of her hands than one day give him reason to harm her—as Ariq had thought might happen. “Please. They are only from my brother, and only describe his travels. They have value only to me.”

So much value.

“I can’t be certain of that. Some are written in code.”

Her aching heart solidified into a thick lump. “Yes. My brother ran into some troubles and we changed our names. We used code to refer to events from the past, so that we wouldn’t be exposed. That is all. There are no other secrets in those letters.”

“I believe you.” With a heavy sigh, he set down his tea. “But I can’t be certain.”

No. Desperately, she looked to the letters. Over fifty of them. Almost six years of travels. Archimedes had seen wonders. He’d fallen in love. He’d married a woman he’d expected would kill him. He’d been happy. Zenobia had more letters at home, but she couldn’t lose these. Couldn’t.

“Please. Please.”

The general raised his voice and spoke. Two guards entered. They didn’t approach the table, instead taking a post on either side of the door.

But the threat was there, and it was a locked closet. She could fight. She could try to run. But there was nowhere to go, and she would only hurt herself trying.

“Please.” The plea was broken glass scraping her throat. “These letters are a record of places that won’t be visited by living humans again.”

And so many jokes. So many silly titles in the postscripts that Archimedes had hoped she would use in the written adventures. So many confessions—of loneliness and hope and doubt and stupidity. They’d escaped her father, but they’d been apart after that, and almost everything meaningful that she and Archimedes had said to each other had been through those letters. His endless love and affection lived in every single word.

The general gathered up the pile of unfolded letters. “I’m sure your brother can still describe them.”

He dumped the stack onto the brazier. Stunned by disbelief, she sat motionless, staring at the letters on the grate. They weren’t even catching. Just smoking—

The edge of a page flared up and suddenly the whole pile was aflame. With a cry, she dropped her blanket and lurched for them, though she knew it was useless, though she would only hurt herself.

The general snagged her wrist, yanking her hand away from the flames. A guard caught her shoulders and forced her back. Melting wax hissed and popped.

A second stack went in. Hot tears blurred her vision, but she could still smell the smoke, could still hear the crackle. “Please,” she whispered again, though it was too late anyway.

The general reached for the manuscript.

“No!” She ripped out of the guard’s grip, slapping her hands protectively over the pages. “There’s nothing here! You read it yourself!”

“Except that it reflects a plan that we would never want the empress to know.”

And Zenobia could just write it again. But sense made her bite her tongue against that response until she tasted blood. The pain was going now, replaced by hate and anger that was harder and colder and emptier than she’d ever known. Jaw clenched, she stared at him.

The guard dragged her back. The heavy stack of pages landed on top of the remaining letters with a hot whoosh—almost blowing out the fire, but it returned, first with black curling edges and then rising flames.

She couldn’t write it again. Any other time, she would have already had a duplicate ready. But she hadn’t used her typesetting machine for most of her trip, so she didn’t have a copy. And even though she could remember most of the sentences and every plot point, the story would never be what it had been. She would never again be who she’d been.

At a word from the general, the guard released her. She didn’t reach for the brazier. She didn’t look at the flames.

“Thank you for the tea.” Her cup sat untouched on the table. “I would like to go now.”

He nodded. “After you take out your hairpins.”

She did, lining them up beside her teacup like four small daggers. The fifth was missing. She hoped it had fallen out in her cabin. “Will you send someone to sharpen my pencil?”

“I think it’s best if it remains dull.”

Of course. “The soldier friend you had,” she said. “All those people sent to the outposts. The people who lived on the island you showed us. They all have something in common, don’t they? The Khagan perceived a threat, and he silenced them. Some he killed, but some he locked away so that no one could hear them.”

“Yes.”

“I think you are very much like him.”

He looked amused. “This is war, Mrs. Fox. The tactics we use now will not be what we use after the Khagan falls.”

“If people remember that you’re willing to use such tactics, do you really believe the war will ever end? I think they’ll remember that you were no better than him, and continue fighting.” She stood. “I hope that Ariq does escape that airship, even if he has to leave me here. I hope you never see that machine.”

“I think you will get at least one part of that wish. Take the gold, Mrs. Fox. We are not thieves.”

She almost refused. It was the one thing from her satchel which had almost no value to her. But the gold might be useful.

With both hands, she hefted the heavy bag, supporting it against her stomach as she exited the general’s quarters. Her arms quickly ached. Her side hurt, as if Polley’s knife was slicing her open again. She had to walk slowly down the steps and rest on the second landing.

And while she stood catching her breath, she looked through one of the doors, out one of the portholes, and the perspective offered her a view of the stern that she hadn’t had before.

Her heart thumped. Under a covered hangar, a half dozen jellyfish balloon flyers waited—just like those the marauders had used. Probably the same ones Ghazan Bator had sent to fly over the embassy the night she and Ariq had been taken. Their pilots must have returned to the ironship before the airship had arrived, because she hadn’t heard the distinctive buzzing noise of their engines since coming aboard.

Fast, agile flyers. But they didn’t have a long range.

It didn’t matter. The ironship couldn’t be that far from Australia. She just needed to fly south.

If Ariq wasn’t coming, she would blasted well save herself.

Chapter Eighteen

Am I an utter idiot?

Not for the first time that day, the question wormed through Zenobia’s mind. Each time it did, the squirming doubt lingered a little longer.

A sleeve lay limply across her lap. After leaving Ghazan Bator’s quarters, she’d spent the morning planning her escape. By noon, the plan had come together, and she’d spent most of her afternoon pulling apart the left shoulder seam of her new tunic.

The fabric was thick and sturdy. When knotted at the end and filled with handfuls of gold, it would make a fine bludgeon. She would only have to cosh a few guards over the head and steal a flyer.

Then make her way back to Australia.

Without running out of fuel.

And without being caught.

She’d plotted out how to avoid those dangers, too. After their abduction, the airship had flown north overnight. Since then, the ironship had steamed forward on a western course. Compared to an airship, the boat plodded—and the silver flyers were faster than both.

Flying directly south, she should reach Australia’s northern shore before dawn. But she needed to travel east, too, and follow the coastline to the Red City. A southeastern course was a lengthier one and required more fuel.

Fuel wasn’t so difficult to find. To prevent the soldiers from following her, she would have to steal a blade from any guard that she coshed, then puncture the balloons of the remaining flyers. At the same time, she could pilfer coal from the other flyers’ fuel bins. The question would be whether she could take enough.

It didn’t matter. She would take all the flyer could carry. The extra weight would initially slow her down, but better than the engine petering out while she was still over the ocean. And if it wasn’t enough fuel . . . well, it would still be worth the risk.

Unless the risk was an utterly foolish one. She only had to wait, and eventually, the general would send her home. Unharmed. If she remained on the ironship, she’d be safe.

So why was she doing this?

Zenobia closed her eyes, shutting out the image of the sleeve. Her head throbbed. In four days, she’d barely slept. Exhaustion weighed down her every muscle. Her chest had hurt unbearably since she’d left the general’s quarters, a hot pain that had burned hotter and tighter with every breath. A terrible ache, hollow and heavy all at once.

Physically and emotionally, she wasn’t in any shape to make this decision. But she couldn’t stay. For hours, she’d been trying to put words to Why? and to answer to doubt worming through her mind. But words like anger and hate and hurt didn’t seem strong enough to match the emotions boiling inside her.

This wasn’t like her. She was practical. Sensible. Such an escape better suited one of her characters. Stories were so easy to control. Lady Lynx escaped because Zenobia created an escapable situation, and if anything unexpected happened to her characters, Zenobia had a clever plan to get them out of their new fix. Lady Lynx escaped because she could knock a guard unconscious with a single kick.

But Zenobia knew it was never so easy. If the sleeve ripped when she swung the bludgeon at someone’s head, or if a guard had a companion with him, or if someone came across her in the hangar, even her wits might not save her. And a single whack to the head rarely incapacitated anyone. It just knocked them down, left them stunned but aware of every single painful blow that followed, yet unable to do more than curl up and wait for the beating to end.

And that was what she’d always done—she’d either waited it out or gone into hiding, knowing that eventually the danger would end. Her father would tire. Archimedes would come with a ransom. Mara and Cooper would arrive with their guns.

It would be far more sensible to wait now. But she couldn’t.

She simply wasn’t the same woman that she’d once been.

When had the change come? Maybe when the general had tossed her letters onto the fire. Maybe when Polley had dragged her into the alley. Maybe when she’d jumped from a collapsing flyer. She didn’t know exactly when. But she couldn’t bear to wait. She couldn’t bear to let Ghazan Bator determine the course of her life. She couldn’t bear to let anyone decide who she would be or what she would do. Not anymore. And the thought of staying here on this ironship with a man who would use her to frighten her friends and threaten thousands of others? Who would wield her like a whip on Ariq’s back? She’d rather burn the ship down and sink with it.

Yet far better to escape—even if she died trying. And if this meant her death, maybe the effort would be all for nothing.

But if she lived, that effort would mean everything.

She knotted the sleeve and reached for her gold.

***

By midnight, the drizzle had become a downpour. Rain drummed loudly on the iron deck and against the sides of the command tower, the noise joining the thrum of the engines and the rush of the sea.

Zenobia stood inside the tower entrance, looking out. Everything above decks was darker than on the previous nights. A few lanterns had been extinguished—probably drowned by the rain and not yet relighted.

A guard stood just outside the shelter of the tower door, hunched against the rain. Rivulets ran down his conical helmet and fell in a steady stream from his neck guard; he’d tipped his head down to keep the water from coursing straight down the back of his tunic. She hoped most of the guards were similarly occupied, defending themselves against the elements. Between the noise and the soaking, she’d be more likely to surprise them.

And she would need surprise. Her gaze returned to his helmet.

A helmet. She hadn’t even thought of those.

Fortunately, it shouldn’t matter too much. When she’d practiced wielding her bludgeon, almost every overhead swing had missed its mark. A lateral swing gave her far better control and more accurate aim. So she’d already altered that part of the plan—instead of coshing the guards over the head, she would bash their faces in. She just hoped there wasn’t anything else that she’d completely overlooked.

She would soon find out.

The guard straightened when she emerged from the command tower. Her heart pounding, Zenobia met his eyes and gave him a pleasant nod. She didn’t need to bash his face. He held a stationary post facing the front of the ship and wouldn’t see what she got up to behind the tower.

He returned her nod and hunched over again as she passed. Within a few steps, the torrent of rain plastered her hair to her skull. The heavy wool blanket she clutched around her shoulders soaked up the rest—but more importantly, concealed the bludgeon dangling from her right hand. Runnels of water flowed across the deck, quickly soaking the curled toes of her new boots. It wasn’t nearly as chilly as she’d expected. In Fladstrand, downpours like this were inevitably bitter and cold. She’d expected a miserable, freezing escape. But this was rather like being deluged with water from a bucket that had been sitting out on a summer’s day.

She reached the starboard rail and gazed out over the side, but didn’t see anything through the darkness. Instead she pictured the route to freedom behind her.

If the ironship had been split into fourths, the command tower would stand at the three-quarter mark. It spanned half the width of the ship, with two broad gangways on either side. An empty deck lay open before it. The smokestacks took up most of the remaining space on the stern; spools of cable and gun turrets filled what was left. A platform had been built about fifteen feet above the decks, accessible by a ladder. Until today, when she’d seen the flyers in the hangar, Zenobia had assumed it was another gun deck or a maintenance access for the chimneys.

More ladders climbed the sides of the stacks; a suspended walkway hung between them. The lanterns that usually glowed on the walkway were out, too. All good for Zenobia.

So it was time. Her knuckles already ached from gripping the end of her bludgeon so tight. She flexed her fingers, tried to slow her rapid breaths.

This plan would be successful. She would soon be away from here.

The guard at the command tower’s entrance was still hunched over. He didn’t look her way as she started down the starboard gangway. No lights shone from the stern. All the lanterns were out? That was odd. So odd. Two guards should be standing at their posts behind the tower. Every fifteen minutes, they took turns making a full circuit of the main deck. When one left his post on his circuit, she’d bash in the remaining guard’s face. Then she’d bash the other guard when he returned, steal his weapons, and run to the hangar.

Why would they be standing in darkness now, though? At the very least, they should have relighted the lanterns closest to them.

But she could barely see anything. Pulse racing, she paused at the corner of the tower and readjusted her grip. Ahead were shadows and more shadows. Faint light shone from one of the portholes on the upper levels—one of the officers was still awake in his cabin. But aside from that . . . nothing.

Maybe they’d guessed her intentions. Maybe Ghazan Bator was just around the corner, waiting for her.

So she’d bash his face, too.

On a deep breath, she charged forward and tripped over a lump.

Arms wheeling, she fought for balance. Her bludgeon thunked to the deck. She fell and her knee smacked iron, trousers instantly soaked, but she caught herself before pitching face-first.

What the blasted hell?

She tightened the blanket around her shoulders again and groped through the shadows for her bludgeon. Her fingers struck the gold bulging beneath the sleeve. The material was wet now. Hopefully all the knots down its length would prevent it from slipping from her grasp.

What had she tripped over?

Climbing to her feet, she shuffled forward until her toes hit the lump. She reached down. Her fingers met stiff wet leather and traced a familiar rectangular shape, then another. Armor. This was one of the guards’ cuirasses.

This was one of the guards. She’d tripped over a body.

Dear sweet Heaven. What had happened? Did he need help?

Her eyes were adjusting to the faint light. She couldn’t see anything clearly yet, but the shape of the body against the deck was a darker shadow than the darkness around it. Her hands searched upward. The skin was still warm. Had he simply fallen dead? Killed by exposure to the elements?

No. She froze as her fingers brushed his wet throat. A feathered wooden shaft protruded from it.

An arrow.

Heart bolting against her ribs, she scrambled back and glanced frantically around. Oh, dear God. Another shadowy lump lay at the port end of the command tower. The other guard. Someone was killing the people on this ship.

She’d apparently chosen a very, very fortunate time to escape.

Was anyone here now? She could only hear the engines and the rain, could only see the dark. The hangar lay ahead and up one ladder.

Gathering her courage, she sprinted for it—then cursed and splashed to a stop. Weapons. She needed to disable the other flyers or the general’s men could chase her down.

If any of them were still alive.

Better not to think of that. Whoever had done this had saved her from bashing the guards, but she didn’t want to be lying beside them.

She raced back to the guard’s body and stopped dead as a figure dropped into the shadows just ahead of her, landing with a heavy thunk against the iron deck. Not another body. A man—rising from a crouch. Huge, with the unmistakable silhouette of a bow slung across his back.

The killer.

A cry of terror jumped into her throat. Zenobia choked it back and swung.

The bludgeon hit with a solid thunk and the chink of gold. Not his head. His shoulder. Oh, God. He was so tall, she’d misjudged her aim. Panicked, she drew back for another swing.

A strong grip snagged her wrist, spun her around. A big hand over her mouth stifled her curse and easily pulled her back against a tautly muscled frame. No! His palm muffled her infuriated scream. Desperately she kicked and tried to swing her cosh again. Her struggles were nothing against his merciless strength.

The rain drummed. A familiar, deep voice sounded in her ear.

“Good evening, wife.”

Zenobia froze. Ariq?

Disbelieving, she stood trembling as he uncovered her mouth. She spun in his arms and looked up, trying to see him through the dark. The night was cruel, concealing his features, but his clothes smelled like stale seawater and fresh rain, and he was warm and solid and undeniably here.

Ariq had come for her.

His gentle fingers traced her jaw. “You’re all right?”

No. Something was building inside her, something big and indescribable that lodged in her chest and pumped it unbearably full, and she was a breath away from crying.

How could she be all right? Her heart had been shattered and healed in the same day. All right didn’t begin to describe her state of being now.

But it would have to do. They hadn’t escaped yet, so this wasn’t time to break down.

Her breath shuddered as she finally nodded. Taking his big hand in hers, she started for the hangar. “The flyers are this way.”

Ariq tugged her back against him. “Who has your pack? Your letters? I’ll find them for you.”

The tears were suddenly closer, her chest tighter. “They’re gone. Let’s go.”

“Gone?”

“The general burned them.” Her voice broke. “Please. Let’s go.”

A long second passed before Ariq asked, “What flyers?”

“The silver flyers. They used them to make everyone in the Red City believe the marauders had taken us from the embassy. But we can use them to get away.”

“Where are they?”

She pointed to the hangar.

“We’ll destroy them on our way, then.”

“We don’t need them?”

“I have a balloon.” Taking the bludgeon from her aching fingers, Ariq tucked a dagger into her tunic’s sash and led her to the platform ladder. “Go up to the suspended walkway. Be careful—the rungs are slick. I’ll be right behind.”

But not directly behind. He stopped at the hangar and urged her ahead. She climbed the smokestack’s ladder. From below came the distinctive clicking sound of a windup device.

He probably wasn’t winding a toy. She climbed faster.

Rain lashed her face when she reached the walkway. On the decks, she’d barely felt the motion of the heavy ironship, but up here the bridge seemed to sway and pitch. She clung to the rail and waited.

He was here. Ariq was here.

And her body was shaking. Giddiness? Fatigue? She didn’t know anymore. Suddenly, none of this felt real. Just a fantasy conjured out of her exhausted dreams. She was probably lying on the deck, bleeding to death with an arrow through her throat.

Only she wasn’t. Ariq appeared and took her hand, leading her quickly across the bridge.

“I set it for five minutes.”

She didn’t ask what he’d set. He’d already stopped and placed her fingers on a stiff rope.

A ladder. She looked up and got an eyeful of rain.

Ariq’s warm hand cupped her face. “It’s anchored to the ship now, but I’ll have to release the tether before I climb. The ladder will fall away. Just hold on tight and keep going up.”

Just keep going up. That had to be easier than bashing faces in. She nodded against his palm. “Five minutes?”

“Four minutes now.”

She gripped the ladder. His steadying hands remained on her waist until she’d climbed out of his reach. She glanced back. A few lanterns still glowed on the opposite side of the command tower. Dear God, the deck was so far down. She was high enough to see over the top of the wheelhouse—

How could the pilot not see her? There was always someone in that part of the tower.

Her gaze shot to the windows. Inside, a gas lamp cast a soft golden light that gleamed in a pool of blood.

Oh. Ariq hadn’t just been looking for her. He’d made certain that no one would interfere with their escape.

The sudden addition of his weight made the ladder lurch in her grip. She clutched it tighter, her heart pounding, then almost lost her stomach when the ladder swung free.

Smoke from the stacks billowed into her face before she swung into clean air again. The ironship steamed on—and she was hanging from a balloon over the sea.

Well. She had wanted adventure.

Steeling her nerves, she pulled herself up to the next rung. The swaying wasn’t so bad now. Worse were the little jolts that ran through the rope every time Ariq rose up another step. Each jolt threatened to tug the wet rope from her hands and slip the rungs from under her feet. She didn’t know how her heart wasn’t bursting.

How long did they have? Three minutes? And she still couldn’t see the balloon. She could barely even see the ladder she was climbing.

The jolts against her hands weren’t so terrible now, as if she was reaching the point where the ladder anchored to the balloon. The rain had stopped—and the air was warmer. A solid shape resolved against the dark sky. The balloon’s basket.

Gratefully, she gripped the side and dragged herself over. Ariq was there a second later, pulling up the ladder.

She looked out over the ironship. The glow of the deck lanterns was the only thing visible on the wide expanse of the sea. The rain hadn’t stopped, she realized—it was just the balloon overhead acting as an umbrella. “How much time?”

“Another minute.” He moved past her. A soft metallic thunk sounded, as if he’d pulled a lever. “They’re only grenades—they’ll destroy the flyers, but won’t do much damage to the ship. They’ll start looking for us, though.”

“Can they see us up here?”

“No. And they’ll see even less when we’re up in the clouds. But sound carries on the open water, and we don’t want to give them anything to aim their rail cannons at.”

The ship’s engines concealed any noise they made now. But when the explosives went off, the general would order the engines stopped. She and Ariq would have to be utterly silent after that.

Ariq joined her. His arm circled her waist and he drew her back against his broad chest. Throat thick, she leaned into him.

She managed a husky whisper. “Thank you.”

His arm tightened. The lanterns below seemed to be drifting farther away—not just because the ironship was still underway, she realized, but because the balloon was rising.

“What is this?” His voice was a low rumble against her back. “Your gold?”

He held her bludgeon in his free hand. She touched the knotted sleeve. “Some of it.” The rest was still in her cabin. “I intended to bash the guards’ heads in and take a flyer.”

His body stiffened. “I vowed to return for you. Did you not believe it?”

“I believed you would try. I waited for you on the deck each night.” Below, a bright flash lit the ironship’s stern. A crack sounded, like the roll of thunder. “But we weren’t where you’d left us. I didn’t know if you could come. And I wasn’t going to let the general use me any longer. Not against you, not against your people, and not to hurt my friends.”

He didn’t respond. Mist swirled around them.

More lights appeared on the decks. The engines quieted. The mist thickened as shouts echoed from below.

Her heart seemed suddenly heavy, and her body so tired, as if every bit of the energy that had carried her to this point simply drained away. She whispered, “Am I an idiot for trying?”

Ariq gathered her closer and she felt the soft brush of his lips against her wet hair before he murmured, “No.”

Good. Zenobia laid her head back against his shoulder. Warm and solid, Ariq held her as the cloud swallowed them up, as she closed her eyes.

And he was still holding her when she floated away.

Chapter Nineteen

By dawn, the numbness in Ariq’s left shoulder had bloomed into a dull, throbbing ache, but he could finally raise his arm above chest-level again. He’d taken blows from soldiers in mechanical suits that did less damage than Zenobia’s bludgeon had. He was fortunate she’d hit muscle, not bone. Even he would have had to slow down for a shattered knee or a cracked skull.

Ariq had known Zenobia might destroy him. He just hadn’t thought she might literally pulverize him.

She wasn’t pulverizing anyone now. Sitting against the side of the basket, Ariq cradled her against his chest, her head pillowed on his right shoulder. She’d barely stirred through the night. Now he could see why. Gray light had begun filtering through the clouds, revealing her face, partially hidden beneath the fall of her tousled hair. The sight made his chest constrict. Even asleep, she looked exhausted. She’d said she’d waited up for him each night. Now he suspected she hadn’t slept at all. The darkness under her eyes looked like bruises. Her pale skin seemed tightly drawn.

How could he have ever told her she wasn’t beautiful? In all the world, there was nothing Ariq would rather look at than her face. That had to be beauty. Not the shape of a nose or the fullness of lips, but that she could draw his gaze so powerfully and fill his heart every time he saw her.

His wife. Ariq had expected to love her. He hadn’t known that simply holding her in his arms would feel like a gift.

Before, holding her had merely been something he’d wanted. It would have led to a kiss, a touch, her bed. He still wanted that. Needed that. Now he needed this just as much.

Unwilling to wake her, he traced the curve of her cheek with his fingers hovering just above her skin. Her steady breaths warmed his fingertips.

Her hand lay against his chest. Blue silk covered her wrist. She’d layered a sailor’s tunic over the one she’d been wearing the night they were abducted, but only the first layer still possessed a left sleeve. She’d made her bludgeon from the missing length—knotted and as dangerous as a mace.

So clever, his wife. She’d wondered if her plan had been foolish? It had been far less reckless than his own escape had been. Bash a few guards. Take a flyer. Simple.

Not so simple for her, though. It would have been easier for her to stay on the ironship. But she hadn’t.

Just thinking of the risk she’d taken made his heart swell and ache. When he’d promised to come, Ariq had humbled himself before her. He’d let her step on his hand to show everyone that there was nothing he would place above her. It was a gesture meant to show loyalty to a khagan, but by kneeling, by submitting to her foot upon his palm, he declared that she was his queen.

But until now, he hadn’t truly been humbled before her.

Fighting came easy to him. His body had been made to destroy his enemies. From almost the date of his birth, his mind had been filled with the fires of rebellion.

Yet it wasn’t so easy for others. And seeing her sleeve, Ariq felt as he often had while traveling through villages and cities back home, listening to the stories people told. There were always incredible tales from the battlefield, of great warriors whose legends were recounted through the centuries—but the tales that affected Ariq most were the ones often forgotten. Men who stood in front of their homes, protecting them from the Khagan’s armies until their last breaths. Women who cut out their own tongues rather than reveal the locations of families in hiding. Anyone who refused to be trampled beneath the Khagan’s feet.

Neighbors sometimes called those people reckless and foolish, too.

Ariq would never blame those who chose safety over rebellion. He didn’t know what it was to live in fear, so he couldn’t know how difficult it was to stand against the terror. But he knew those who stood risked more than he ever had.

So had Zenobia. No wonder she held his heart in her hand.

Her ink-stained hand.

Remembering his earlier assumptions, Ariq grinned against her hair. Not a spy. His wife was a writer.

A popular writer of fanciful rubbish, according to the twins.

The twins’ judgments meant nothing. Any story that didn’t include the torture of innocents would likely be rubbish to them. But fanciful? They probably weren’t mistaken in that.

He wouldn’t have guessed. Zenobia seemed so practical. Yet if she had written so many of these stories, something of the fanciful must appeal to her.

The twins had given him one of her stories—the one that had been called seditious in the imperial city. Ariq wished he’d read it. He wished he had it now. They had been drifting with the clouds throughout the night, putting distance between their balloon and the ironship. Ariq should be getting up, setting the course back to the Red City. But he didn’t want to wake her, so, if necessary, he would sit here for the next few hours. A story would have passed the time. He couldn’t remember ever reading any fanciful tales before, though he’d heard his share in the soldiers’ tents. He’d only read histories, some poetry, descriptions of battles—nothing fictional. So his wife’s would be the first fanciful adventures he read.

He looked forward to them. He looked forward to discovering everything about her—and to the day when she loved him in return.

Maybe she already did. If so, Ariq didn’t think she would let him know yet. Her walls were too high, too strong.

He looked forward to breaking through them. Whatever it took.

His gaze fell to her soft lips. Whatever it took—but he hoped it required using his mouth over every inch of her body.

Her eyelids suddenly squeezed tighter. She frowned in her sleep and shifted in his lap, wriggling closer and turning her face against his shoulder. Her hip nudged the hardening length of his cock. Ariq stifled a groan, then tugged the edge of her blanket up, shielding her eyes from the early morning light. She needed to rest.

A balloon basket was no place to bed his wife for the first time, anyway.

And he would continue reminding himself of that. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back.

Almost six days had passed since they’d left the smugglers’ dens. Meeng, Tsetseg, and the others should have returned to Ariq’s town by now. They’d have carried the news that the rebellion was responsible for the marauders’ attacks. Ariq had told them to prepare the town’s defenses.

They wouldn’t need those defenses against the marauders. Lord Jochi had sold about two dozen of the silver flyers. Most of them were destroyed now. If Ghazan Bator wanted to continue attacking airships, he would have to procure more flyers. No doubt he could, but Ariq would hear about it. And now Ariq knew what to look for. The ironship had most likely served as the marauders’ base. Before the attacks, they’d made temporary camps inland to launch from, but Ariq probably hadn’t found any other sign of them on the ground because there wasn’t any sign. Commander Saito could hunt the waters if the attacks resumed.

Unless Saito received orders to fire on Ariq’s town, instead.

It shouldn’t happen that quickly. Saito believed the empress would order a fleet to the western coast as a deterrent first. Only after another attack would she send men to each of the settlements to search out the marauders. If they found nothing and the attacks continued, firing on the towns would be her final order. But if Ghazan Bator used the flyers to suggest the marauders had abducted Ariq and Zenobia from the embassy, that might have changed everything.

Instinct railed at him to return home, to defend. But he couldn’t do anything there that his brother and his soldiers wouldn’t do just as well. He had to stop this at the source. Not Ghazan Bator or Admiral Tatsukawa. He knew the general too well. If Ariq killed him, Ghazan Bator would have another plan in place, and Ariq wouldn’t be prepared for it. Better to face the enemy he knew.

And he couldn’t touch Tatsukawa. If he did, Ariq might as well be declaring war on Nippon.

So Ariq had to appeal to her empress, instead. That wasn’t the sort of battle he was accustomed to fighting. He could be diplomatic. But he had little proof. It was his word against the admiral’s—and that was only if his word even reached the empress or one of her ministers; he couldn’t simply stride into the palace and request an audience. And if they knew that Ariq had infiltrated one of their prisons and killed fourteen guards while freeing an accused traitor, he might never get the opportunity to speak at all. The attempt might be for nothing, but he had little other choice.

He had hope, though. Ironically, Tatsukawa had given it to him. The admiral had been disappointed that this empress hadn’t continued the war with the Golden Empire as her mother had wished. It was possible that she would want to avoid starting a war with Ariq, too. He’d lose . . . but he wouldn’t lose easily. The cost might be higher than she wanted to pay.

And he hoped, because he didn’t want to lose anything.

Starting with the woman in his arms. He looked down. Her dark eyelashes fanned shadows over her cheekbones. Still sleeping, but he would have to risk moving her. The sun was brighter now. The clouds had begun to dissipate around them. He needed to see where they were.

Gently, he laid her on the blanket that had been folded beneath him. She stirred before turning on her side, her cheek pillowed on her hand and her lips softly parted. He tucked her blanket back around her shoulder and stood. His stiff joints protested, a reminder of the jump from Tatsukawa’s airship. Every time he rested, his body tightened up again. But it would pass, just as the soreness from Zenobia’s bludgeon would.

The mist around them had paled and thinned. Blue water sparkled below. No sign of a ship; no noise from any engines. But he couldn’t be certain it was safe until he dropped out of their cloud cover and scanned the horizon.

Basic need called first, though.

A drowsy whisper sounded from behind him. “Is the ironship still down there?”

Ariq glanced over his shoulder. Zenobia had rolled to her right side and propped herself up on her elbow. She watched him from beneath lids still heavy with sleep.

With his back to her, he looked at the stream of piss arching from the side of the balloon.

“I wish it was,” he said.

Silence. Then she sucked in air, coughed, and a moment later the muffled sound of her laugh rolled through him. He glanced back. She’d buried her face in her blanket. Her shoulders shook.

Grinning, he finished up. The wash water was cold but better than nothing. Before she used it, he’d warm the water over the gas burner. Belonging to a naturalist who spent hours at a time in the basket observing the ocean, the balloon had some small comforts.

Zenobia suddenly sucked in air again, but the sound was more of a strangled gasp than choking on a laugh. Alarmed, Ariq looked away from the burner. She lay on her back, staring upward, her green eyes wide.

Delight danced through her voice. “It’s a jellyfish.”

He glanced up. It wasn’t really a jellyfish any more than a kraken was a squid. But it still resembled one. A translucent body formed a billowing dome. The digestive stalk hung from the center of the bell and terminated in the feeder apparatus. The feeder formed the upper portion of the basket’s support frame, with access to the electrostatic wheel and navigation controls through a panel overhead.

“It’s a lantern fish,” he said.

“Does it glow? I’ve heard that some glow.”

“Not this one.” A glowing balloon would have exposed their position. “Some say that they’re called lanterns because they reminded Munduhai Khatun of the floating lanterns released in the southern provinces during their festivals. Others say that the scientists who created them during her rule were inspired by the sky lanterns, and that is how they received their name.”

“How does it work? Does it— Blast it all. Do you have a knife? Didn’t you give one to me last night?” Sitting up, she searched along her sash before pulling her notebook from her tunic, followed by a pencil. She showed him the dulled point. “I need to sharpen it.”

“I took the dagger back. I didn’t want you to roll onto the blade.”

But he didn’t immediately reach for it. He crouched beside her. Without anything to write with, had she been forced to scratch more notes under her sleeves? Ariq wouldn’t let himself look. That would only spark his anger, and he didn’t want that now.

She stilled, looking up at him. Her gaze slipped to his mouth.

Ariq wanted that, too. But this, first.

“Your letters?” he asked softly. “Your story?”

The dimming of her eyes tightened a band of pain around his chest. Her voice was hollow. “Gone.”

That was all she’d said before—and that Ghazan Bator had burned them. His gaze dropped. A reddened patch marked the back of her hand. That might have been an abrasion from the bludgeon, the material scraping her skin. It might have been a burn. Perhaps from reaching into flames.

“You saw it happen?”

Swallowing hard, she nodded, then looked down at her hand, too. Her fingertips traced over the red mark, as if she was remembering when she’d gotten it.

His blood began to thrum. He wouldn’t let the anger through. Ghazan Bator wasn’t here. Only his wife, and she was hurting. Ariq knew little about those letters—just that they’d been written by her brother on his travels—but she’d guarded them more closely than she had her gold. There was no question how much she’d valued them.

And her work, too. He’d seen the stack of pages she’d written.

“The general said that he couldn’t be certain whether my story would expose him and his plans.” She raised her gaze to Ariq’s. The dark pain had vanished; determination hardened them to jade again. “So that’s all right. I’ll just write another. And this time, he’ll be absolutely certain I did.”

Ariq didn’t doubt it. “And you’ll include lantern fish and boilerworms?”

“Yes,” she said, and her smile was everything. “As soon as you sharpen my pencil.”

“That has to wait. Something more important comes first.”

“Such as?”

Despite her question, she knew. She looked to his mouth again. Ariq tilted her chin up and held her gaze as he leaned in.

“I didn’t greet you properly last night.”

She laughed, a breathless sound against his lips. “You said ‘good evening.’”

It had been. The best evening, because she’d stood before him, fierce and fighting.

He cupped his palms under her jaw, his thumbs in the hollows beneath her ears. Her eyelashes fluttered closed, and he savored the sigh that escaped her.

“Good morning, Zenobia,” he said softly, before capturing her lips.

Her notebook flapped to the basket floor. Her arms wreathed his neck. She kissed in the same way she wielded a bludgeon—with haphazard aim, and as if she put everything she had behind it. Need pounded through him, aching and hot. Her fingers wound tightly in his hair and dragged him forward, and Ariq went, the heavens help him, he went, catching her as she tipped backward onto her blanket.

A groan ripped from his chest as he settled into the cradle of her thighs. Weight braced awkwardly on his forearms, feet wedged against the side of the basket, this was no way to make love to his wife for the first time. But her body arched tautly beneath his, as if trying to press closer, and his arousal had never been so sharp.

His cock rigid, he rocked between her legs and she cried out, her fingernails digging into his shoulders. His hunger surged. Urgently, he took her mouth again, and she responded to the slick thrust of his tongue with a low, ragged moan.

Her heated taste flooded his senses. Zenobia. Her name drummed in his ears like the beat of his heart. Every thrust of his hips tightened her legs around him. What lay between them? His trousers, her trousers. They both had to go, then he’d be deep inside her. So deep.

His fingers fumbled with the buckle of her tunic. Knotted blue silk lay beneath. The tunic that he’d ripped, the night in her bedchamber, head dizzy from the gas and his control gone—and the rebels waiting just outside the balcony doors.

Dregs and hell. He couldn’t lose control again. Not here. He hadn’t even descended from the clouds to determine whether their position was safe.

Slowing the desperate need took all the strength he had. His cock was a solid aching stone. When he stopped rocking against her, the roll of her hips as she urged him on again was torture.

The passion in her kiss became frustration. Her fingers twisted in his hair.

“I know,” he said roughly against her lips, then gentled and deepened his kiss.

It wasn’t just desire between them. Not just lust. Did she know he would have done anything to find her? That he would never let her go?

Ariq told her now with this kiss. When he lifted his head, her breath shuddered and her jade eyes were bright with unshed tears. Her hand cupped his jaw.

Her voice was thick. “Good morning.”

He grinned and kissed her again. But the need was still too sharp, the arousal too hot. It slammed through him and he felt her instant response in the clenching of her thighs around his waist, in her soft pleading moan.

Tearing his mouth from hers, he buried his face in the crook of her neck and shoulder. “When we’re back to the Red City, I’m going to slide into you as deep as I can, then have you so hard and so long that we’ll need three days in bed just to recover.”

She gave a breathless laugh that suddenly quieted. He lifted his head. Her lower lip was pinched between her teeth, her expression uncertain.

About returning to the Red City? Or spending the time in his bed? “What worries you?”

The uncertainty cleared and she shook her head. But it must have been something. Probably the return. Not the time in his bed. She’d been married—

No, she hadn’t.

His thoughts ground to a halt. He hadn’t given much thought to her confession, but now he remembered: She’d only pretended to be a widow to stop Helene from asking why she was still unmarried.

But that didn’t mean Ariq was her first. Her age wasn’t much younger than his. “Have you bedded other men?”

She scowled at him. “That’s hardly an appropriate question.”

Usually he’d agree. But he didn’t want to hurt her. Every touch tested his control. By the time they reached the Red City, he’d be a rutting beast.

As he watched her, pink flooded her skin. Perhaps that was answer enough.

“I’ll be gentle,” he told her.

She balled her fist and thumped his shoulder. “Blast you.”

He laughed. Despite her words and that soft punch, she didn’t seem angry. Just irritated. And she was still beneath him, her thighs still cradling his hips, and didn’t seem in a rush to push him off.

“Why?” It wasn’t Ariq’s place to ask that either, but if Zenobia didn’t want to tell him, she wouldn’t. “If everyone thought you were a widow, why didn’t you?”

“With whom?” Her scowl deepened. “How could I know he wouldn’t be an assassin waiting for my brother to visit? Or that he wasn’t after me for the same reasons the pirates are, and just preferred seduction to abduction? After everyone learned of my brother’s fortune, and that his sister was writing the adventures, do you know how many men I’ve received letters from? How many showed up at my doorstep? Who could I trust enough to take to my bed?”

Ariq couldn’t stop his grin. She was trusting him enough to.

Her cheeks scarlet, she thumped his shoulder again. “This is different.”

“How?”

“I want you,” she said baldly. “And I would have even without trust. I intended to visit your bed in Krakentown.”

Before she’d heard his brother’s damnable insult. “Why then?”

“Because you didn’t know who I was. So you couldn’t have wanted me for money.” She turned her face to the side, as if suddenly embarrassed. As if suddenly uncertain again. “So you would have been . . . an adventure.”

Then she would have been gone—leaving his town for the Red City.

Except maybe her plans would have changed. Ariq had intended to court her before the marauders’ threat forced him to leave his town, too. Perhaps if he’d been able to, she might have stayed.

And yet here she was, his wife anyway.

He brushed his thumb across her trembling lips. “This hasn’t been the adventure you expected.”

“No.” When she met his gaze, her emerald eyes had filled again. Her voice was strained. “A part of me just wants to go home.”

She would leave him?

Denial sliced open his chest. Ariq held it in, but his throat felt raw as he asked, “And the other part?”

“Desperately wants to know why I would need three days to recover.”

Relief and surprise shot through him. He dropped his face to her neck again, muffling his laughter. Hers joined in, and she shook beneath him.

He kissed her again before giving her the dagger she’d asked for and forcing himself to his feet. Ariq felt her curious gaze as he began to crank the electrostatic charger. When fully wound, he could set the rotation rate. The more quickly that electric pulses were sent up the wires to the dome overhead, the more frequent the contractions through the translucent bell, and the faster the speed of their flight.

But she didn’t ask about the lantern fish. “How did you know where to find us?”

Because Ariq had fought under Ghazan Bator for most of his life. “I knew the general wouldn’t stay where he was.”

“How did you know where he went, though? Did you persuade the admiral to tell you where the ironship was headed?”

Did she imagine Ariq torturing the older man? He might have, if it would have achieved anything. Or one of the guards. But those aviators had their own code of honor, and every man aboard that airship would have died rather than reveal anything to him.

“I knew that after they realized I was no longer on the airship, they would send a messenger to tell Ghazan Bator. So when they sent a flyer to the ironship, I followed him.”

Confusion furrowed her brow. “But no messenger arrived with a . . . Oh.”

“Yes,” Ariq said grimly. As soon as he’d been certain of the flyer’s heading, he’d shot the man down. If the message had arrived, Ghazan Bator would have known Ariq was coming, and would have been better prepared for him.

She sat up, pencil and knife in hand, and began to sharpen the tip. “How did you escape the airship? Did they put in to port and let you out of the vault? Seems rather reckless of them.”

“It was.” Letting him out of the vault had been, anyway. He didn’t need to tell her the rest.

“Then you stole a jellyfish?”

“I borrowed it.”

She arched her brow, as if asking whether there was a difference.

Amused, he said again, “Borrowed. It belongs to a naturalist. I told him my wife had been abducted and I needed a swift balloon that could be easily concealed. So I asked him for the use of his, and promised to return it and pay him.”

“And he simply agreed.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. But he knew of me.”

“Ah. You scared him.”

A little. Ariq had that effect. Yet that wasn’t why the naturalist had agreed. And with anyone else, Ariq could have just said that the man had been a resident of these islands while the Nipponese and the Golden Empire had waged their war, and that would be explanation enough.

It would mean little to Zenobia, though. She and Ariq were from different sides of the world. She wouldn’t know why the naturalist had been glad of the opportunity to thwart a Nipponese admiral any more than Ariq would know anything about the town where she’d been born. He didn’t even know the name of the province she’d lived in, or who ruled over them, or which language gave her French that guttural bite.

But he knew Zenobia—and that she would rather understand the full history than be given an incomplete explanation.

He eyed her pencil. “Do you intend to take notes? I’ll tell you why he let me borrow it, but there’s much to write.”

“That’s fine.” Pursing her soft lips, she blew a shaving from the lead tip. “I like stories about escapes. Though it seems easier to steal a balloon than borrow one.”

“It would be. And more noticeable. If I’d stolen a balloon, someone would mention the theft when Tatsukawa came to the island to search for me. I didn’t want him to know where to look next.”

He’d learned that while fighting with the rebellion. It was always better to ask, and to let people help. They were far more likely to keep their silence afterward.

Especially since Tatsukawa hadn’t borrowed the flyer his messenger had used. The admiral hadn’t had one on his airship, so his aviators had commandeered one at the port. The people on the island would always remember that.

“I’ve never considered borrowing. I always make my heroes steal.” Dismay chased over her expression, followed by wry amusement. “But they’re never caught, because they’re very clever.”

“Or your villains are fools.”

She responded to his teasing with a narrowed glare. With a disdainful sniff, she put her pencil to the paper. “Then enlighten me, O Mighty Rebel.”

Ariq grinned. One day, he would make her call him that in bed. But for now, both her bludgeon and her pencil were too close to her hands—and although her villains might be fools, Ariq was not. So he kept that thought to himself and enlightened her, instead.

Chapter Twenty

Zenobia liked stories about escapes. She didn’t like plot holes, and the description of Ariq’s escape contained one the size of a kraken. Why had Admiral Tatsukawa needed to arrive at an island before searching for him? The only explanation was that Ariq had escaped from the airship when it was somewhere else—namely, still over the ocean. She doubted that a boat had anchored beneath the airship and Tatsukawa’s men simply failed to notice Ariq climbing down a ladder.

Which left only a few options. And in each one, Ariq ended up in the sea, swimming.

So he could rescue her.

It was the only plot hole that had ever filled her with giddy delight. Oh, she was such a fool. Stories ended, and so did adventures—but life continued on. Theirs would, too. Ariq might stay in the Red City long enough to clear up the mess that their abduction had caused, but surely he would soon have to return to Krakentown. Zenobia was obligated to stay until she saw Helene settled and safe. Then she would go home to Fladstrand.

But this adventure wasn’t over yet. She was still hundreds of miles out to sea, flying above the waves in a jellyfish balloon.

After days of gray, the ocean was a deep blue again. Sunlight danced over the swells, stinging tears from her eyes that the wind whipped back to soak the hair at her temples. The blanket around her shoulders flapped wildly behind her. She’d known few airships that could travel so swiftly—and those were powered by engines. But this . . . she couldn’t look up without being amazed all over again.

From the top of the dome to the rim, the gelatinous mass overhead rhythmically thickened and thinned, as if swimming through the air. Short, gleaming tentacles hung from the translucent body like tassels on a lamp shade. Ariq had told her that war lanterns possessed longer tentacles with venomous stings, which often killed more soldiers within the balloons than the venom killed enemies. But this lantern had been designed for travel, not battle.

Three paces long on each side, the basket was just large enough that two people could ride comfortably, whether sitting or standing.

Or while lying on top of each other.

Her cheeks heated. Her windblown hair swept forward, tangled curls waving like two flags along either side of her face as she looked away from the jellyfish’s pulsating body. Ariq stood at the center of the basket winding the electrostatic charger again. The faster they went, the more often he had to crank it. The rush of the wind almost drowned out the clacking gears and plastered his tunic against the sculpture of his broad chest. Feet braced apart, he rotated the crankshaft overhead, all wide shoulders and flexing muscle.

A sigh of pleasure moved through her. She probably shouldn’t have fallen in love with him. Of all the idiotic, reckless things she might have done, surely that was at the top of the list. But here she was.

And it was rather marvelous. Her heart was an overfilled inkwell. She couldn’t keep up with the spill. There were words she could write with that ink, phrases that might describe the sensation of his touch or the sound of his voice, but as soon as she captured the right ones they were obliterated by the overflow. No description could capture the joy and pleasure of simply watching him. Or the anguish, too, in the icy lump at the corner of her heart that knew the end of this adventure would come too soon.

But she could push that aside for now. She could drown every doubt. There would be time enough for those later.

For now there was only Ariq.

He finished winding the charger, and her pulse raced off again, leaping as he met her gaze through the lenses of his aviator goggles. A single step brought him to her side, and though she knew by the look in his eyes exactly what would happen, her need still took her by surprise. Before his fingers pushed her tangled hair away from her cheeks, she was tilting her face up. Before his mouth lowered, she was lifting to meet him.

He stole her senses so easily. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything but the warmth of his lips, the scratch of stubble against her chin, and her heart was spilling over again. God, the way he kissed her. The sweetness of it. As if it wasn’t just the first step to her bed, but a pleasure in itself.

Such a pleasure. Every time.

But this kiss had to end, too.

Lifting his head, he searched her face. His thumbs wiped away the wet paths from the corners of her eyes to her temples. “Are you finished?”

Writing. After they’d shared a breakfast of spongy flatbread provided by the naturalist, she’d spent the next few hours on the basket floor, hunched over her notebook, while Ariq stood as lookout. He’d spotted a few vessels in the distance, in both the sky and on the water, but no ironship.

“Finished for now,” she said.

“The same story again?”

Her throat tightened and she shook her head. The loss of her work still hurt. Losing the letters was worse. She could remember all that Archimedes had written, but it wasn’t the same as opening them, or seeing her brother’s familiar hand.

“A new one,” she said. “But I can’t talk about it until it feels more . . . certain. At the start, it’s always too easy to convince myself that it will all fall apart.”

Especially now, with this story. It was truly new for her. No Archimedes Fox or Lady Lynx.

Which might be the worst idea she’d ever had. Her publisher would probably think so.

He nodded. “You’ll watch with me, then?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want the goggles?”

They only had one pair aboard the balloon. “No. I’ll stand with my back to the wind.”

It was easier to see him facing this direction, anyway. The beauty of the ocean and the bright cloud-puffed sky lay before them, but it was his neck that drew her gaze. He’d tied his hair in the thick knot again—probably so that it wouldn’t whip in his eyes as hers kept doing. She liked it down, as it had been this morning, when it framed his jaw and directed her focus to the generous width of his mouth. But she liked this, too, when the side of his neck and the tendon that ran the length of his throat were exposed. She wanted to bite him there, and lick his skin, and it seemed such an odd place to fixate on. Perhaps because necks were supposed to be vulnerable, yet his seemed so very strong.

All of him seemed so very strong. Not just his body. His heart, his will. It might have been foolish to fall in love, but at least her heart had been practical when it had chosen this man. It couldn’t have chosen a better one.

She wished that Ariq’s had chosen her—not the woman he’d thought she’d been. The spy. The woman in distress. Was he still holding on to a false impression of her? Trying to persuade himself that the differences wouldn’t matter? Each kiss said that he must be. One day, he would stop trying to pretend she was the same. Hopefully they would be separated before then. He would be in Krakentown; she would be home. He would still have warm memories of her instead of disappointment and bitterness.

The dark lump in her heart grew, a dull frozen ache beneath her breast. Oh, but not yet. She wouldn’t let it consume her yet. There was still time left.

Time spent with him. She slipped between his big body and the side of the basket, her lower back braced by the guard rail. Her head wouldn’t block his view; she wasn’t that tall. Her hair blew forward, the tips curling against his chest.

Ariq glanced down at her face, then at the narrow space between them. Her breath caught. A small step would fill that space, pressing his length to hers. But he didn’t move, and instead the distance was filled with their shared heat and what felt like a promise. That space wouldn’t remain.

For now, it did. His gaze scanned the water again, searching for the ironship—a ship that, under other circumstances, he might have been serving aboard.

“The general said you abandoned them,” she said.

His jaw hardened. “I left. But I didn’t desert them.”

“I didn’t think you had. You would be dead now. Wouldn’t you?” She didn’t know of any army that didn’t execute its deserters.

“Yes.”

“Why did you leave?” She gripped the blanket tighter at her sternum to stop the wind from skating down her neck. “Not just why—you already said that the rebellion was moving in the wrong direction—but there must have been a moment, something that tipped your decision. Was it your mother?”

His gaze searched her face again. Slowly, he shook his head. “No. I’d already made the decision. I’d told Ghazan Bator of my intentions and had been handing over my duties when news of her execution came. When news of my brother came.”

And he’d gone to rescue Taka from a prison. “What happened?”

“An earthquake.” His chest lifted on a deep breath. “Though I didn’t know anything of it, then. We received word that a regiment was marching quickly south from Ghanzou. Five thousand men. They had supplies but weren’t heavily armed. They seemed an easy target.”

“But they weren’t?”

“They were. I took a thousand soldiers. We ambushed them at the head of a valley. By the time my archers were done, little resistance remained. But when we moved in, I discovered the regiment’s purpose.” He looked to the sea again. Sunlight warmed the high arch of his cheekbones and the clenching muscles in his jaw before he continued, “The earthquake had buried an entire district under rubble. The Khagan had sent the regiment to dig out the survivors, and supplies to help feed and house the remaining families.”

So the tyrant helped his people, sometimes. “What did you do?”

“Took the regiment’s supplies and continued their march to Longnan. But we were only a thousand strong, when there might have been five thousand. I don’t know how many died because we brought fewer hands.”

But the roughness of his voice told Zenobia that he felt every single one. “Then you left the rebellion out of guilt?”

“No.” A cold glaze swept over his eyes. “I left because I received orders from Ghazan Bator to take the supplies and abandon Longnan.”

“While people were still buried?”

He nodded. “Another regiment was coming from the south, but was still three days away. They could help rebuild but not help save those still under the rubble.”

“What did you do?”

“Disregarded my orders to leave immediately. We stayed as long as we could—and we didn’t take the supplies.”

“And you rebelled against the rebellion,” she said.

A faint smile touched his mouth. “Not just me. Most of my soldiers would have disregarded my orders if I’d told them to leave earlier.”

She couldn’t mistake the pride in his voice when he spoke of them. “Then they went with you and helped build your town.”

“Many of them.”

“And you brought your brother, too.”

His penetrating gaze narrowed on her. “The general told you?”

“Yes. While he was telling me you wouldn’t come.”

Ariq abruptly closed the distance. His long fingers swept into her hair and he kissed her, long and hard, before lifting his head.

“I would.” It was an urgent vow against her tender lips. “I always will.”

Throat thick, she nodded. He didn’t step away but turned his back against the basket and held her, his solid warmth against the wind.

He had come. He’d swum through an ocean for her. Maybe jumped from an airship. And as giddy as the knowledge made her there was pain, too, rising. She didn’t know where it was originating from.

Except that she feared this end. And even more, she feared a day when he wouldn’t come.

But she wouldn’t think of that now. She would hide away from those doubts.

There was only Ariq.

She laid her head on his shoulder. “Was it difficult seeing Taka’s father? You wanted to kill him.”

“It was difficult knowing that I couldn’t kill him without endangering my town. But to see him? No.” His hand stroked the length of her back. “The most difficult part was realizing how little of herself my mother had given Taka.”

She glanced up. The sun glinted off the frames of his goggles. He wasn’t looking down at her, but gazing off into the distance, his strong profile a hard line. “How so?”

“She protected Taka by never telling him who she was. But I wonder now if it would have been better to give him that purpose, as she did to me. At least then, when he lost everything—his love, his honor—it would have been for a reason. He was the innocent trampled by a war, because she never gave him that part of herself. And now he is the reflection of his father.”

“Are you her reflection?”

“I think so. Even though my face is my father’s. But we are likely all reflections of our parents in some way.”

A brittle laugh escaped her. “I hope not.”

“No?”

“My father was a controlling bastard.”

“And your mother?”

“She—” Had done everything she could.

Guilt rose, heavy and bitter in Zenobia’s chest. Would she truly not want to be her mother? A gentle and kind woman. Zenobia wasn’t that. But if she had been, there would have been no shame in being her mother’s reflection. She’d been thoughtless to even suggest it.

“I’m not like her,” she finally said. “It wouldn’t be so terrible if I was. But I hope that my circumstances are never the same. That I would never be so . . . trapped.”

“How?”

By her husband, by the law, by her gender, by society. “In just about every way possible.”

“Is she still alive?”

Was Ariq imagining another rescue? Such a man he was. She closed her eyes against the sudden sting. “No. She died shortly after my father did.”

“Did she enjoy any freedom in that time?”

“No. She never learned that he was dead.” And died fearing his return. Died because she’d feared his return. The sting in Zenobia’s eyes became a flood. Her throat began to ache. Hoarsely she whispered, “I can’t.”

“Then don’t.” His arm tightened around her. “How did your father die? Do you want to describe it?”

Another laugh burst from her. That would make her feel better.

She wiped her eyes. “He owned an airship. One of his aviators shot him when he tried to roast her for mutiny, then she took over his position as captain. My brother married her.”

Ariq’s deep chuckle rumbled through his chest. “Did he? Was that brave or reckless?”

“A little of both.” But her brother was not the only one who loved Yasmeen for it. “She’s inspired some of my stories, too.”

Captain Corsair and Archimedes Fox. They would come for her soon. A few weeks. Helene might be settled by then. Zenobia would be free to return home.

On a shuddering sigh, she turned in the circle of his arms, her back against his chest and her face to the wind. “How long will you stay in the Red City?”

The warmth of his mouth caressed the side of her neck, drawing a shiver over her exposed flesh. “Until the empress or her advisers hear my appeal.”

“You’re going directly to them?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“It depends if they listen. Why? Do you need to stay in the Red City?”

“For Helene.”

“Why?”

That wasn’t Zenobia’s secret to tell. She only shook her head and closed her eyes against the buffeting wind.

The arm around her waist tensed. “I prefer that you’re with me. I’ll stay in the Red City as long as I can.”

To protect her? Anxiety fluttered in her stomach. “Do you think the general will attempt to take me again? To use me against you?”

“He would try.”

Ariq’s tone said that Ghazan Bator wouldn’t succeed. Zenobia didn’t intend to let him, either. This time they would be better prepared. “I’ll be all right if you have to go.” Her body would be safe, at least; she couldn’t vouch for her heart. “Mara and Cooper should be at the embassy by now.”

Unless they were tracking down the marauders, trying to find her.

“Yes. But that isn’t the only reason I want you with me,” Ariq said, and his teeth caught the lobe of her ear.

God. The blood seemed to drain from her head. She sagged against him, feeling that tiny pinch over every inch of her skin. Heart racing, she gripped his arm for balance, his muscles like iron beneath his sleeve.

What had he said? Three days, recovering. Because he would have her deep and hard.

Recovery might take longer than that if he could shatter her equilibrium with a single nip of his teeth.

Zenobia fought for coherence. “Because I’ll warm your bed? That can’t possibly take precedence over the safety of your town.”

“No.” This time the nip was sharper, as if in gentle admonishment. “Because you’re my wife.”

Despite the painful clench in her chest, she had to laugh. “So we’ll continue telling everyone that? Why?”

Ariq didn’t answer.

Her heart gave a heavy thud. He didn’t answer and he’d been a solid presence behind her, but now his body felt like steel. Not just quiet, but rigid with tension.

“Ariq?”

Firm hands caught her hips and spun her around, pressing her back against the rail. Stunned, she stared up at him. Her hair streamed across her face and snapped in the wind. Trepidation tripped through her chest.

His expression had darkened but he didn’t look angry. Just intensely focused on her. He’d pushed the goggles up over his forehead, his brows drawn and his gaze like a blade. And calm. So calm. As he had been while freeing Cooper from the boilerworm’s jaws. As he had been after breaking Polley in half. As he had been when the admiral had first stepped into the vault. The calm that signaled he was ready for battle.

Against her?

Softly he asked, “Why wouldn’t you continue telling everyone that we’re married?”

Was she supposed to? Did they still need to pretend? She hadn’t thought so.

Uncertain, she clutched the blanket tighter and futilely tried to hook her streaming hair behind her ear. “Because we’re not.”

“No?” He leaned closer, gripping the edge of the basket at either side of her waist. “You agreed to be my wife.”

“Yes. But we were in a vault. Alone.”

As if that meant nothing, he discarded it with a shake of his head. “Do you need the approval of your family? You once told me that you don’t let others make decisions for you, so I didn’t think I needed to ask anyone else. Should I have approached your brother first?”

“No.” God, no.

“You were there. I was there.” The wooden rail creaked under his fingers. “Who else would we need?”

“A magistrate or a reverend, to start. And a witness.”

“You need an official?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll find one when we reach the Red City.”

“To marry us? That wasn’t what I— Wait.” Breathless, her thoughts in a whirl, she held up her hand. “Just wait.”

This was happening too quickly. He was far ahead of her, or she was far behind, and nothing made sense.

She drew a deep breath. Another. Silent, with his heavy arms caging her in, Ariq watched her.

Her confusion began to subside. But although her tumbling thoughts settled, her emotions would not. Disbelief still reigned.

“You married me? Truly married me?”

His chin dipped in a slow nod. “You are my wife.” The gravel in his voice was the only indication that his calm might not be as deep as it appeared. “But it seems I am not your husband.”

Her husband. Hers. Because he’d married her.

The realization filled her chest like laughter, light and warm and wonderful. It must have shown. Some of his tension seemed to ease.

“I thought it was a strategy,” she confessed. “Just a way to protect me.”

“It was strategy.” Gently, he pushed her hair away from her face, but the moment his hand returned to the rail it streamed between them again. “But not just strategy.”

“You didn’t have to, though.” Zenobia could still barely believe that he had. But despite the doubts that wanted to slip in, she was beginning to embrace the idea. “It’s a rather extreme tactic, marriage. Have you used it before? Is that how you won all of your battles? Do you have brides all across the Horde Empire, unaware that they’re married?”

Without a change in his expression he said, “Thousands.”

Her laughter bubbled out. “So what else has been a strategy? Stealing my hairpins? Telling me that I’m everything?”

Something flickered over his features. Her laugh faltered.

What had that been? Just a subtle tightening of his mouth, a flash through his eyes. So fleeting, she couldn’t describe the emotion behind it. But she felt the meaning in the sudden, painful clutch of her chest.

She stared up at him, at the clench of his jaw, at the resolve hardening his eyes, and knew she wasn’t mistaken. “That was a strategy—telling me that I’m everything?”

A frown darkened his face. “It was true.”

Pain sliced through her gut. That might as well have been a confirmation. “But was it a tactic? For what purpose?”

“You were pushing me away. I knew you were vulnerable to those who cared for you. So I bared my heart.”

In her bedchamber. When she’d learned that he’d read her letters and betrayed her trust. She hadn’t been pushing him away—she been trying to get away, because everything inside her had been hurting as much as it did now, and her chest had been tight and heavy, her throat aching with hot tears.

But there hadn’t been anywhere to go. There wasn’t anywhere to go now, either.

Except to turn away from him. Turn away and blame her tears on the wind.

She did, facing an ocean that blurred before her. At least she understood his reading the letters. He’d been protecting his town. But why had he taken aim at her heart? “You told me you were falling in love so that I would trust you?”

And she had. Fool that she was, she’d fallen straight into his arms.

Those arms flexed, his big hands clenching on the rail as if he wanted to rip it away. “And because you are everything.”

“How can I believe that?” Every word caught on the ache in her throat, shuddering as it emerged. “If you hide your reasons, how can I trust anything you say?”

“Dregs and hell! Because it’s the truth!”

“And only spoken because it served a purpose!” Chest heaving with sudden anger, she pivoted and met his thunderous gaze.

No longer calm, he loomed over her, his powerful arms braced at her sides. “But it was the truth. You cannot say the same of everything you’ve said to me.”

And she was supposed to be sorry for that?

“I lied to protect myself! I never used my feelings as a weapon against you. But you attack me with yours—as if I’m an enemy you have to defeat.”

“You’re not an enemy. But you build walls. You build them high and thick, and don’t allow anyone through. So, yes. I waged an assault against them.” Lowering his face to hers, he vowed through gritted teeth, “And I will do it again, Zenobia. Because you’re building them now. Next you will run and hide. And this will be the excuse you use to go.”

Wildly, she shook her head. Every wall she’d ever built stood for a reason. Now she had another one. Every time Ariq said he cared for her she would wonder what he really wanted. “It’s not an excuse—”

“Do you believe that I love you? Because if you know that’s true, then you’re just grabbing for stones to build your walls again—because if having a hidden purpose means you don’t trust me, you only have to say as much and I’ll never do it again. So do you believe that I’ve spoken the truth?”

The question seemed to shatter the anger inside her, breaking it into sharp edges that ripped and tore. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to answer.

Mutely, she stared at him.

The skin across his cheeks drew taut. Hoarsely, he asked, “You don’t?”

She swallowed past the ache in her throat. “You don’t even know me. You concocted a story in your head to explain my presence here. And that’s who you thought I was when you were in my bedchamber, when you told me . . .” She couldn’t continue. Eyes burning, she turned her face away. “You thought I was someone I’m not. You loved her. And you married her.”

Silence. Was he realizing that truth? How could she bear it when he looked at her differently?

“Zenobia.” Strong fingers lifted her chin. His eyes were dark, and intense, and he was calm again. “I learned who you were before I married you.”

“All you learned was a name. I wasn’t who you loved.”

“And I never loved the spy as much as I did you last night when you bludgeoned me. Or today, when you told me good morning.” His thumb slipped across her trembling lips. “Is this why you’re pushing me away?”

Throat aching too much for words, she shrugged. How could she trust any of this? She felt foolish, and hurt, and certain that the second she reached for him, he would step away. No need to push him.

“You are my wife,” he said, and the rasp in his voice shredded her heart a little more. “Am I your husband?”

She wanted him to be. So much. But her heart was a selfish, stupid thing. Only an idiot would listen to it.

“It’s not at all sensible,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“We barely know each other.” Only two weeks. And they’d spent half the time apart.

“That’s true,” Ariq agreed, and the cold rushed in around her when he suddenly stepped away. He watched her from the center of the basket, arms folded over his chest. “So we can resolve this simply. You can be my wife now and when we reach the Red City. If you’re with me, living as my wife, we’ll soon know each other well. And when you’re satisfied, you can make me your husband.”

“But that’s so . . .” Practical. Eminently practical.

Yet would be so painful if what she feared was true—that Ariq would discover he didn’t love her.

He must have read her hesitation. “You would be certain of my feelings for you.”

So she would. And maybe the coming pain didn’t matter. It was already painful now.

“All right.” She stopped his forward motion with a lift of her hand. Her heart pounded, fear crashing with hope. “But if I’m not convinced, then I’ll leave with my brother when he arrives.”

His expression froze. Utterly still, he watched her. The kraken, waiting. “You’re already planning to leave?”

“No. Just planning.” So that she didn’t feel utterly lost when it happened.

His predatory stillness continued. “Are you afraid?”

The laugh that burst from her held no amusement. But if the point of the next few weeks was to learn about each other, she might as well admit this. “I’m always afraid.”

Ariq stiffened. “Of me?”

“No.” Oddly enough. “Not at all.”

“Good.”

He strode forward, tearing his tunic open. Sunlight rippled over sculpted flesh. By the time he reached her, he’d bared shoulders heavy with muscle, and her scattered wits had finally stitched together to form a complete thought. Then his tunic dropped to the basket floor and she had to gather her words again.

Ariq didn’t give her a moment to say them. “I have no hidden purposes. I’m taking this off because it excites you to look at me.”

The unbelievable arrogance. “No—”

“No lies.” Abruptly he caught her chin and tipped her gaze up to meet his. “If I’m to learn about you, do not block me by putting lies in my way. The walls you already have are enough.”

That was fair. She recanted her denial. “I do like looking.”

So much. Just a glimpse of his body kindled a fire in hers, heat licking over her skin.

Gaze dropping to her lips, he nodded. “Know this, too: Everything I do is to persuade you to stay. Every time I touch you, every time I look at you, every time I kiss you. Every time I get inside you I won’t stop until you’re crying my name. I intend to brand myself so deep into you that you could write a thousand stories but still not picture life without me. That is my purpose. If you put obstacles between us, I will use any strategy to tear them down. So that when your brother comes, you don’t think of leaving with him. Is that direct enough?”

It couldn’t be any clearer. Breathless, she said, “Yes—”

His mouth seized hers. Oh, God. Not a sweet kiss this time, but rough and possessive. His big hand clasped her nape, holding her still as he invaded her lips. The bold stroke of his tongue staked his claim. Staggering under the assault on her senses, she let her blanket fall from nerveless fingers and clung to him, his bare skin hot beneath her hands.

But this wasn’t a surrender. Even if he knew her most vulnerable points. Even if he could make her gasp when he cupped her bottom and lifted her against him, and cry out when the long ride over his rigid shaft transformed her arousal into raging, aching need.

At least she wasn’t the only one devastated. An agonized groan tore from his chest as he held her with only a few layers of clothing between them, her thighs wrapped around his hips. He buried his face in her throat. She felt the battle that shook through him, his every muscle taut from the strain of simply holding her.

She wasn’t that heavy. It could only mean that he was fighting himself—and his control was failing, too.

Better if she made it crumble. She anchored her arms around his neck and rocked against him.

Ariq groaned again, even as tension steeled his powerful frame. He looked up at her, and she loved the subtle flush beneath his skin. Her own felt tight and hot, her lips swollen, her body a tumultuous mass of nerves and fire.

Slowly, he lowered Zenobia to her feet, her aroused flesh slipping down his length and dragging another moan from her throat. His voice was a soft growl, feral in its intensity. “Do you still want an adventure?”

An adventure. That was what she’d called her intention to take him to her bed.

The needy ache inside her deepened. “Yes.”

He stripped off the goggles. “You’ll need these.”

That wasn’t what she’d expected. Bemused—and not a little confused—she took them. “Why?”

“You have to stand as lookout.” He steered her against the side of the basket. “Where’s your blanket?”

“I . . .” She looked around. Not on the floor. His tunic still lay crumpled where he’d dropped it. “It must have blown over the side.”

Because he’d kissed her senseless. Her brain still hadn’t quite pulled back together.

“Are you cold?”

Now that he’d mentioned it, yes. Despite the two layers she wore, the wind seemed to slip under her collar and through every seam. “A little.”

He scooped up his tunic. “Put this on.”

“Then you’ll be cold.” She didn’t know how he wasn’t already, but his skin was smooth, and his dark nipples flat.

“Not where I’m going,” he said and, when she didn’t immediately look away from the hard slabs of his pectorals, slung the tunic around her shoulders.

It was far too big, but she immediately felt warmer. Her arms slipped into sleeves that dangled past the ends of her fingers.

“Where are you going?” Jumping into the ocean again? She doubted it, but glanced over the side anyway. “Down there?”

“No.” His hands caught her hips. “But I hope to make it as wet.”

Her face flamed. She couldn’t mistake his meaning, though she didn’t know how he intended to—

Gaze holding hers, he sank to his knees in front of her.

Her heart tripped to a stop. “Ariq?”

“You need to watch for ships so I’ll know you’re safe as I do this.” His palms smoothed down her hips. “Put the goggles on.”

Breath suddenly ragged, she buckled them behind her head. The thick frames narrowed her vision. The lenses shielded her eyes from the wind. She didn’t know if it would matter. Her focus seemed scattered, the sky blurred and the sun too bright, and the waves drawn in sharp lines.

Long fingers trailed down the sides of her thighs, three layers of tunics and a pair of pantaloons separating their skin. “Take off your boots.”

Her boots? But a second later his hands slipped under the hems of her tunics and she understood why. He intended to remove her bottoms.

Gripping the rail for balance, she toed off her boots. They slid off easily and she stood in her bare feet on the cool wooden floor. The silk of her pantaloons suddenly felt no more substantial than tissue. The heat of his hands burned through the thin material on their way up her legs. She trembled as his fingers hooked the tie at her navel and gently tugged. The waist fell loose.

Slowly, without touching her skin, he dragged the silk down her thighs. Shivering wildly, she clung to the rail. The roar of the wind seemed to fill her ears, but his graveled voice penetrated the din.

“Cold?”

“No.” Her blood was on fire. Was this how he meant to brand her? He would. God, he would. From the inside out. She’d probably never be cold again.

His fingernails skimmed the backs of her knees as he continued downward. Another shudder wracked her body. Tendrils of cooler air were slipping up between her legs now, a whisper against her skin and an icy breath where she was wet.

And she was so wet. Already.

Silk pooled at her ankles. Ariq looked up at her, stark need written in the lines of his face. “Step out.”

She did, kicking the pantaloons aside. Her pulse drummed a dizzying beat. She was bare. But she wasn’t exposed. Not yet. Her tunics were long; the blue silk fell past her knees and the others hung low on her thighs. Each buckled at her shoulder and side, and a belt cinched the first two layers at her waist like the tie of a robe. Ariq couldn’t see anything but her shins and her feet.

It didn’t matter. Ariq wore less than she did and yet she seemed more bare. And when his callused palms cupped the backs of her calves and began a rough upward slide, she’d never felt so utterly naked.

“Watch.”

Another harsh command. He’d barely gritted out more than a few words at a time since he’d begun touching her. But she had been watching, transfixed by the ridged muscles of his abdomen that flexed as he sat back on his heels, by the rampant thrust of his erection outlined beneath his trousers. She’d been watching it all through the narrowed field of her goggles, arrested by the rich warm tones of his skin and the sight of her wrapped tunic slowly parting as his hands rose higher and higher beneath the hem.

Those hands stilled. “Zenobia. Watch.”

Not him, she realized. The horizon. She was supposed to be watching for other ships.

Reluctantly, she tore her gaze away and stared blindly into the sky. Her legs were trembling, but they shouldn’t. He wasn’t touching her in any way that she hadn’t done herself. She knew what to expect. Never had such acute arousal accompanied her explorations, but it would be the same. Fingers on flesh.

Except she’d never shaken in anticipation of her own touch. His palms slid higher, his fingers curling inward. Her head fell back, the muscles of her neck feeling loose though the rest of her body was strung with unbearable tension. Overhead, the lantern fish undulated, pumping through the air, and the motion of its translucent flesh seemed lascivious now, pulsing to the same beat as the throbbing ache between her legs.

Cool air slipped through her parting tunic and swept her upper thighs. Rough fingertips slicked over wet skin. Zenobia whimpered low in her throat. Just a little higher now.

With a grinding moan, Ariq stopped. Gripping his taut shoulders, she pushed her hips forward, urging him. But when his hands began moving again they flattened and rose past the heated juncture of her thighs, until his big palms cupped her bare bottom.

Her face caught fire. She’d just wantonly tried to push her sex into his hands, assuming he would touch her there. But that apparently hadn’t been his goal. Now she didn’t know what—

“Hook your leg over my shoulder.” Voice hoarse, Ariq sank lower and dipped his head. “Let me taste you.”

Dear God. She knew this. Had seen drawings. But she’d never imagined it.

A true adventure. One that made her entire body shudder with need.

“I’ll fall over,” she whispered. Her trembling legs barely supported her now.

“I’ll hold you.” With his left hand steady behind her, his right hand slid to the back of her knee, gently lifting it forward. “Just keep watch.”

She couldn’t. The sky and sea were a blur of blue, not the deeper blue of her tunic as it fell away from her leg. His shoulder and back were solid and hot beneath her skin, her calf a pale stripe against his tattoo. A black tentacle curled beneath her heel. The kraken, pulling her deep. With a kiss to the inside of her thigh. With a lick that went higher. She couldn’t see Ariq’s face, only his dark head as he bent to the shadows beneath the V of blue silk. His fingers tightened on her bottom and hauled her closer.

The molten heat of his mouth claimed her flesh. Zenobia curled forward with a strangled cry, her fingers digging into his hair. No teasing. No buildup. Just direct, like everything he did.

As if a single taste deepened his hunger, a ravenous groan tore from his chest. Roughly his tongue slicked up her center and destroyed her ability to breathe, her every thought.

“Ariq.”

It was all she had left. A gasp. His name. And the pleasure ripping her apart as he licked a hot path to her clitoris. Sucking the aching bud into his mouth, he stroked it against his tongue.

Her knee folded. His strong hands caught her, her body anchored between the support of his palms and the hunger of his mouth. Her every breath was a sob. Her hips jerked with each flick of his tongue and the throbbing tension wound tighter, like a pain that would only feel better if it hurt more. Then it was too much, she needed to get away, and the grip of his hands became iron and his devouring mouth opened wide, teeth grazing her clitoris as his stiffened tongue speared inside.

For an instant she froze, hands fisted in his hair, ecstasy stretching to the edge of erotic anguish. Then his tongue thrust into her again, and she screamed as the orgasm broke through her in erratic waves, her hips rocking in an uncontrolled rhythm that sharpened unbearably when he rode with her, still feasting from her clenching sex.

His tongue slicked over her clitoris and she came again, sobbing his name and collapsing forward. Hands sliding up to her waist, Ariq lowered her over him, her bare thighs straddling his hips, his trousers rough against her oversensitive skin. Her back arched as the pressure of his rigid length against her need-swollen flesh sent new ripples of pleasure through her core.

His mouth captured hers, silencing her cry, and with the wetness of her arousal still glistening on his lips, the languid kiss seemed more carnal than his deep taste between her legs.

Eventually Ariq lifted his head, need still burning in his gaze. “My wife,” he growled fiercely, as if daring her to deny it.

She wouldn’t. Especially if he kept doing everything he’d just done.

But he wasn’t finished. His hand slipped beneath her hair to clasp the back of her neck. “If I hadn’t vowed not to take you here, I’d have both your legs on my shoulders. Then I’d have made you stand as lookout while I slid deep into you from behind, and had you until your sheath squeezed my cock as hard as it did my tongue.”

So blunt. With a breathless laugh, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hid her burning face in his warm neck. “I think I awakened a beast slumbering below.”

“You already knew what I was.” Voice still rough, he held her closer. “Do you feel trapped?”

No. She felt safe. Even though she’d known that part of him, too. The Kraken. Who fixated on his prey and never let go. Who would hold on, even if they were both dragged down.

But although she was always afraid, she wasn’t afraid of that. And it was difficult to hope—yet she was now. This wasn’t ending yet. So even if he loved the woman he’d thought she’d been, maybe she had time to brand herself on him, too.

Her heart full, she tightened her arms around him. “I haven’t looked for a ship since the second I felt your mouth.”

“Look now.” He sounded amused—and not surprised.

So arrogant. “I can’t even stand.”

Slipping his hands beneath her bottom again, he rose just high enough to glance over the side.

“Still safe,” he said.

***

Still safe.

Hours later, there were still no ships in sight. Zenobia glanced away from the twilight horizon to search the dark waters below. The moon had risen, shedding weak light across the waves.

Diffused blue light.

Blinking, she rubbed her sleeves over the lenses of her goggles. The lantern fish was still clipping along a hundred feet above the water’s surface, the electrostatic charger clicking as it unwound. Now and again, Zenobia fancied that she could see the sparks running up the wires to the jellied flesh. The blue in the water ahead looked like that—not the blue of the ocean or sky, but the blue of an electric spark or a gas flame, as if giving off its own light.

She glanced straight down. More blue shimmered under the water. Not the diffuse glow ahead, but more like a squiggle of glowing blue ink. Definitely not the moonlight. And not an electric spark. The balloon was flying faster than the light was moving; she’d never heard of slow electricity.

And there was another, bigger. She gripped the rail and leaned over, squinting into the dark until the shape beneath the surface resolved.

An undulating bell. Long trailing tentacles.

A glowing jellyfish.

Grinning, she glanced at Ariq. He sat beside her, his back against the basket wall and his eyes closed. She couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or simply resting. That afternoon, she’d realized that he’d probably slept as little—or even less—than she had in the past few days, and had insisted on taking watch. They would be in the Red City by dawn; God knew how much time would pass before he could rest again.

But she didn’t know if he was sleeping now. His chest rose on deep, even breaths, but every time she made a noise or moved quickly, she would turn to find his eyes open. Every time the clicking of the charger stopped, he rose to wind it again before she could make a move toward the crank handle. If he was sleeping, it was very lightly, and she probably should let him rest. He’d likely seen glowing jellyfish before.

Biting her lip, she turned back to the sea. The horizon was still clear—and the glow ahead was brighter, so bright that the hand she held out was illuminated by the faint blue light.

A giant jellyfish, maybe. And they were on course to fly right over it.

Her heart raced as they neared, as she imagined the stinging tentacles whipping up out of the water like a kraken’s and dragging them down. That was absurd, of course—oh, but it definitely had to happen in the next adventure she wrote. Because the reality was not all dangerous. It was just heart-stoppingly beautiful.

She must have gasped. In the next moment, Ariq stood beside her, the angular planes of his face washed in that soft blue light.

“A bloom,” he said.

“How many?”

“I can’t imagine.”

Neither could she. But it must have been so many. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. A long swath of the ocean was aglow, the mass rippling underwater in a fluid dance of light. “It’s incredible.”

Ariq didn’t answer. When she glanced up, he was looking south over the bloom, his eyebrows drawn. She followed his gaze.

Lights on the edge of the horizon. Not jellyfish, but the familiar yellow glow of gas lanterns. As she watched, darker shapes resolved against the night sky.

Ships and airships. Not Tatsukawa and Ghazan Bator. Their lantern fish flew faster than either the ironship or airship could travel, and these were coming from the wrong direction. Yet Ariq had stiffened as if he’d sighted their vessels, instead.

She took his hand. “What is it?”

“A Nipponese fleet,” he said flatly. “Fifteen ironships. Six airships. Headed west.”

Her mind raced. Headed west. Of everything he’d just stated, that seemed to hold the most import. “Do you think they’re headed for the western coast? For Krakentown?”

Jaw clenched, Ariq nodded.

Oh, God. “How much time?”

“I don’t know. They might intend to search for the marauders first.”

“Then we have time.” She squeezed his fingers. “We have time to make it right when we reach the Red City. We can let everyone know what really happened.”

“Yes,” he said. His voice was rough, his expression troubled. Not the calm she’d come to expect.

Her stomach cramped. If Ariq was openly worried, then clearly everyone on the western coast should be terrified.

“I don’t know anything about war, but if there’s anything you need from me, just ask.”

He tore his gaze from the horizon to search her face. His palm cupped her cheek. “Stay.”

She would. Until everything was settled, one way or another.

At her nod, he drew her against him. His dark gaze returned to the fleet.

What was he seeing? A formation that told him more about the ships and their intentions? Or did he simply see the threat they posed to everything he’d fought for and loved?

She slipped her arms around him. “Are you all right?”

He slowly nodded. His hand stroked down her back.

“My heart is iron,” he said.

Look for Part VI

THE KRAKEN KING AND THE CRUMBLING WALLS

Available from InterMix May 20, 2014

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

RIVETED

Available now from Berkley

Before Annika had begun her journey, her mother had assured her that the people in the New World weren’t all that different from the women in their village of Hannasvik. Annika’s mother reminded her of how the peoples of Africa and Europe had sailed across the Atlantic four hundred years ago, fleeing from the Mongol Horde that had ridden from the east on the backs of their conquering war machines—just as Hanna and the Englishwomen had escaped the New World slavers and had made their home in Iceland a century before. She’d spoken of the enormous mechanical warriors that the New Worlders had built on their coastlines, sentinels that served a warning to the Horde, should that great empire ever develop a navy and follow them across the sea—just as Hannasvik’s trolls protected their village and intimidated any enemies who might attempt to drive them from their home.

The Horde never followed the New Worlders, however. The sentinels stood for centuries, staring out over the open sea while wars over territory and trade routes were fought behind their backs, and they were slowly stripped of their armaments and engines.

And they were slowly falling apart. Annika glanced up through the drizzling rain and eyed the immense Castilian warrior guarding the gates to the port city of Navarra. In the four years since she’d left Hannasvik and joined Phatéon’s crew, Annika had come to accept the truth of her mother’s words: Individually, the people of the New World weren’t that different from those in her village.

The governments and rulers, however, must have been.

No elder in Hannasvik would have allowed Annika or any of the other engineers to neglect their trolls, not when lives depended upon their maintenance. The same obviously wasn’t true in the New World, and Castile’s sentinel was the worst. Aboard Phatéon, Annika had seen every machine still standing along the Atlantic coastline—from Johannesland’s colossus in the north to the Far Maghreb’s twin warriors, three thousand miles south of the equator—and the warrior in Navarra was by far the most decrepit. Rust ate away at its plate armor and crested helmet; corrosion pitted the iron around every bolt and rivet. Sand had drifted into the crevices, forming a solid mass at every joint, topped by grassy nests. Gray seagull dung crusted the spiked shoulders and gauntlets.

Once a marvelous and deadly machine, now it was simply dangerous. Even if the sentinel had still possessed the engines to walk, the great hinged knees would have buckled after a single step. Struts buttressed its lower half now, a framework of steel supporting the towering legs that served as Navarra’s port gates.

What a horrible waste. If the Horde had come to the New World, they likely wouldn’t have been intimidated by such useless machines . . . unless the New Worlders’ defensive strategy was to crush any invaders beneath a rusted ruin. More likely, however, visitors to the city would be killed by falling pieces.

Visitors like Annika. Only an hour earlier, she had walked the north port road through the gate and into the Castilian city without being crushed—but while she’d been at the printer’s office purchasing another season of personal advertisements, an icy breeze had begun to blow in from the ocean, stinging her cheeks with rain and sand. A strong gust might rip away the sentinel’s giant hand or armored shoulder and throw it to the ground, squashing Annika in the street.

If a steamcoach didn’t squash her first.

A horn blasted near her right ear. Two tons of rolling iron sped by, the front wheel whipping her skirts forward. With a yelp, Annika yanked the red silk tight to her leg before the rear wheel could catch the fabric and rip it away—or drag her along the sandy road behind it. That damned idiot driver. Only a blind man wouldn’t have seen her walking along in a brilliant crimson skirt and canary yellow coat.

Though the coach was already lost from her sight beyond its dense trail of smoke and steam, she yelled after him, “You rotting rabbitchaser!”

Pointless, but satisfying—until she sucked in a lungful of the acrid smoke. Coughing, she pounded her fist over her chest, then glanced over her shoulder just in time to avoid the three-wheeled cart that rattled around a horse-drawn wagon and attempted to squeeze between the plodding beast and her leg. Her fierce scowl went unnoticed by the driver.

Well, hang them all. It was true that the row of shops that separated the north and south roads made narrow corridors of each street, leaving little room to maneuver—but they were headed in the same direction, and the port gates were only a hundred yards away. Was running her down to gain a few seconds truly necessary? Given the manner that some of them handled their vehicles, she suspected they were aiming for her.

Perhaps they were. Perhaps she’d broken some unspoken Castilian rule that no one aboard Phatéon had thought to warn her about. Perhaps she was unintentionally giving a message: Please crush me to a bleating pulp alongside this road.

And now that the thought had entered her mind, it wouldn’t leave. She looked over her shoulder again. No vehicles were bearing down on her . . . yet.

Oh, and her mother would have been shaking her head now, telling Annika that her dread was a product of her imagination. That might have been true, once. Growing up, Annika’s tendency to woolgather had been a source of consternation and amusement for the women in the village. Her imagination had continually gotten the best of her—and was precisely why she currently served as second engineer aboard an airship, flying from port to port, rather than eating supper every night in her mother’s cozy earthen home. She’d often fancied dangers that weren’t there and daydreamed when she should have been wary.

No longer, though. Within a few months of joining Phatéon’s crew, Annika had discovered that port cities in the New World each came with a unique set of dangers, and she’d learned to be wary until she was familiar with them. Manhattan City’s entry inspectors didn’t just examine the documents proving her origin and certifying that she wasn’t infected by the Horde’s nanoagents. They groped her legs and arms to make certain she wasn’t hiding a mechanical apparatus beneath her clothing—and swinging a fist at an officer who groped too fervently would land her in a cell until her airship’s captain bailed her out. Inside the city, a curse spoken within hearing distance of a constable resulted in a hefty fine; exposing a bare ankle or elbow earned a rebuke and a trip in a paddy wagon back to the port’s gates, where her salacious behavior was reported to Captain Vashon and the airship threatened with docking sanctions.

In Oyapock, however, Annika could have walked naked down the paved streets without garnering a second look—and given the number of light-fingered war orphans who swarmed visitors entering Liberé’s capital city, it was only by virtue of her trouser buckles that her pants weren’t stolen off her bottom while she wore them. On her first visit to Oyapock, Annika might have considered nudity a blessing, however. The city sat at the mouth of the Orinoco River; accustomed to colder climes, even Annika’s lightest clothing had seemed to suffocate her. But the urchins hadn’t left her nude on that trip—they’d taken her money and her hair instead. She hadn’t felt them lift the purse from her waist. A slight tug at the back of her head had been the only warning before her thick braid had disappeared and her curls sprang into a dark halo. With her hand in her newly shorn hair, she’d stared in open-mouthed shock as they’d scampered away. She’d learned, though. Now she kept her hair short and only carried as much money as she needed into Oyapock, leaving the bulk on the airship.

Annika took her valuables with her in Port-au-Prince. Though a Vashon airship was welcome at any of the French islands in the Caribbean, Phatéon wasn’t exempt from arbitrary searches by the king’s men looking for treasonous nobles or cargo left unaccounted for on the tariff sheets. When Annika had reported her money missing from her berth after a search, Phatéon’s old goat of a quartermaster had laughed before informing Annika that she’d paid “le fou de l’impôt.” She hadn’t known enough French to understand him then, but his meaning had been clear: Only a fool left her money on-board when the king’s men came. Annika preferred to take it with her, anyway. Though many of the French cities seemed to be sinking into an elegant ruin, all trading routes led through the Caribbean, and the islands were ripe with spices and fruits unlike any she’d ever had in Iceland. The fish seemed flakier and the mutton lighter when eaten in a French market, and the stalls were filled with lustrous fabrics that she couldn’t resist purchasing. King’s men or no, Annika always left the islands with an empty purse.

Now, Annika knew each city’s quirks well enough that she rarely felt trepidation passing through the port gates. Navarra was no exception—and in many ways, was pleasant to visit. Entering the city was painless, the inspection process consisting of a glance at her papers and a wave through the gates. No orphans waited to steal her money. The drapers sold cloth that matched the French markets in quality, if not quantity; the food was bold and tangy, and the people she spoke with no more rude or friendly than in any other city, even when she stammered along in her butchered Spanish.

But she knew not to enter the city if any part of it was burning. She knew that if a crowd began forming in the streets, she needed to return to Phatéon as quickly as possible. The queen’s guard wouldn’t care whether she was actually participating in the bread riots—simply being in the area was enough to justify arrest, and Annika had never heard of any crew member of any airship returning from a Castilian gaol.

Since leaving home, she’d been as wary as her sense and instincts dictated. And if her imagination suggested a danger that didn’t exist, no harm was done . . . except to her nerves.

A shout came from another vehicle, the words barely audible over the huffing engine—but she didn’t understand much Spanish, anyway. Shoulders stiff in expectation of being run down, she glanced around. A cab driver gestured and shouted from two feet away, probably telling her to use the wooden walkway that ran along the front of the shops.

She would have used it, if there’d been room. But a church must have been distributing food nearby—men, women, and children with sunken cheeks and tired eyes stood in lines on the weathered boards, shuffling forward now and again, everyone quiet and orderly.

The fried sweetbread Annika had purchased near the printer’s office suddenly weighed like a rock in her stomach. In many ways, the New World was nothing like Hannasvik. There was hunger in her village—oh, she’d known it many times, when the winters had been long and the nets empty, when the flocks had been thinned by the wild dogs, when even the rabbits seemed scarce—but if one person lacked food, then everyone in the village did. Here, she dared not even give any of the people the few coins left in her purse. If seen, she’d be arrested for inciting disorder.

And though she could imagine many ways to secretly pass the money to someone, she could also imagine the gaol too well if she were caught.

What a strange land, where giving a small bit of help might put a noose around her neck.

Oh, but she missed home. Longing gripped her chest—to see her mother, to feel the heat of a troll’s belly as she stoked its furnace, to smell the sea and the smoking fish and the sheep. But she couldn’t return, not yet. Not until she found her sister, Källa.

Until then, she was fortunate that Phatéon had become something of a home, too—and it was not far away now. She was almost to the port gates. Prudently, she opened her canvas umbrella to shield herself from the seagulls’ rain that fell from the buttresses. Ahead, directly beneath the center of the sentinel, port officers watched the south road from a wooden guardhouse, making certain that no one attempted to avoid the inspections on the north road and enter Navarra via the southern gate. Beyond the guardhouse, the sand-strewn cobblestone road widened to accommodate the shops and pubhouses serving the aviators and passengers who weren’t allowed into the city. Steamcoaches idled in front of the inns, the liveried porters loading and unloading luggage.

A strong gust blew more sand into her face. Around her, above her, the sentinel and the supporting framework seemed to shudder. With the sound of droppings splattering against the taut canvas, Annika didn’t dare look up—and she resisted the urge to break into a run. Sense reminded her that the sentinel had weathered the hurricanes that roared up the coast every summer; surely it could survive a bit more wind.

On the other hand, how many times had she heard the story of the shepherdess who killed a giant with a single stone . . . ?

Annika quickened her step. Over the docks, the airships swayed and bobbed in the wind, pulling against their tethers like fat haddock fighting on fishing lines. A large cargo carrier, Phatéon didn’t appear to move as much as the smaller airships, but Annika knew the mooring anchors groaned under the strain and the cables vibrated with tension.

Far ahead, dark clouds crowded the eastern horizon. If that storm moved in before Phatéon had been fully loaded, the night promised to be a rough one. They’d be jostled in their bunks and stumbling around the decks until the tether was unhooked.

Not so terrible, except that the second mate—who slept in the bunk above Annika’s—tended to become portsick on such nights.

Another shout, this one from her left. Annika paid it no mind. If the person wasn’t set to run her down, their business was none of hers, and the noise simply added to the cacophony on the road. Someone was always shouting near port gates; only the language changed. She thought it had been either Spanish or Portuguese, but was only certain the voice had been male.

Even that had become familiar. Since leaving Iceland to search for Källa, she’d become accustomed to new cities, a new life—and to seeing men everywhere. They were exactly as Annika’s mother had described them: much like women, but hairier. And, when part of a group, stupider.

The shout came again. Closer, louder. Annika slowed. A uniformed port officer had left the guardhouse and strode in her direction, his thick mustache shadowing his frown. Annika glanced to the side. No one stood nearby. The guard’s gaze had fixed on . . . her.

Her heart clenched, then began racing. Oh, no. But he was only one man, and not in a group. Whatever it was, surely she’d be able to reason with him.

A gray dropping splattered against his hat brim. The officer didn’t seem to notice. He spoke again and she felt stupid. She didn’t understand a single word. Most likely it was Spanish, but so quickly said that she couldn’t make it out. Stopping a short distance away, he held out his hand, impatiently flicking his fingers.

He wanted something from her. But what?

Annika glanced down at herself, looking for the answer. She didn’t carry anything but her umbrella, and didn’t know how to ask him what the problem was. Her knowledge of the language didn’t extend far beyond No estoy infectada and ¿Cuánto cuesta?

Her fingers tightened on the umbrella stem. Her imagination didn’t help her now. She could only picture the worst. Sudden nerves made her words loud and shrill. “Parlez-vous français?”

Annika had been forced to learn French when she’d joined Phatéon’s crew, and not just because Captain Vashon hailed from the Caribbean islands. French was the trader’s language—and this was a port city. Surely he understood a little.

Dismay slid through her when his mouth firmed. Slowly, he said, “Muéstrame . . . sus . . . cartas.”

His voice sharpened on cartas. Annika wracked her brain. Had she been blocking a cart or another vehicle? Was it something else? Not the identifying papers she had tucked away in her purse; she knew the word they used for that: documentos.

But they only asked for those when she was passing the inspection point on the sentinel’s north side. Why stop her while she was leaving?

Once, she’d been briefly detained in Manhattan City when a constable had asked where she’d acquired her clothing. Even though he’d spoken English—an odd version of it, to be certain, even odder than she’d heard spoken in London—it had still taken Annika several minutes to realize that he suspected her of stealing the clothing, because the expensive fabric lay beyond a stoker’s means. And despite her explanation that she’d purchased the silk on the cheap at the French markets and sewed the pieces herself, he hadn’t seemed to believe her until a nearby group of women had come to her aid. Laughing at the constable, they’d assured him that Annika couldn’t have stolen the clothes, because no woman of quality would own anything so ridiculous as a white skirt over indigo trousers, pairing it with a lavender blue bodice.

No lady would ever be seen in a costume resembling a Liberé flag.

Today, Annika wore crimson and yellow. Perhaps the colors had marked her in some way—and she supposed that she did resemble a Lusitanian flag. But what of it? They weren’t at war with Castile.

There were no women to save her now. She scanned the faces of the people nearby, hoping to recognize someone whom she could call upon. Though several travelers had turned to watch the encounter, she didn’t see any of Phatéon’s crew members.

And what stranger would dare help? Not here, not in Castile.

Panic fluttered wildly in her chest. She faced the guard again. “Do you speak English?” As he had, she spoke slowly, trying to make herself understood. “Please tell me, what is the matter?”

With another sharp word and gesture, he shook his head. His hand shot out, seizing her wrist. He turned toward the guardhouse.

“No, please! Wait!” She dragged her heels, trying to slow him without openly resisting. Her heart pounded. Only with great effort did she stop herself from smashing her umbrella over his head and sprinting to the docks and Phatéon. Desperate, she tried again. “Norse? Mælt kann norse?”

“He demands to see your letters of entry.”

A male voice came from behind her. She barely had a moment to feel her relief when the newcomer spoke again, but not in English—and not directed at her.

The guard looked around and stiffened, as if in alarm. He let Annika go, his hand dropping to the short club at his belt. “¡Retírese, señor!”

Whoever he was, the stranger apparently posed more of a threat than Annika did. She opened the purse tucked within her skirts, stealing a glance back. Beneath a wide-brimmed hat, the man wore a faint smile—not exactly an expression of amusement, she thought, but as if he’d heard an old, worn-out joke. A gleaming monocle concealed his left eye. Focused on the guard, he lifted his hands as if to show the officer that he was unarmed.

Oh, but he was armed. Annika’s fingers froze around her folded papers, and she took another, longer look.

His right hand resembled every other person’s—large, perhaps, with broad palm and long fingers, but proportional to his height. His left hand and wrist were of the same size, yet they were human only in shape; the skeletal limb had been constructed of steel. The fluid movement as he spread his mechanical fingers was indistinguishable from the same movement in his right hand, and spoke to the intricacy of the design—the contraption wasn’t stiff, but responsive . . . and probably incredibly strong.

No, he didn’t carry any weapons. But from the guard’s perspective, the man’s hand was a weapon—and the man himself a danger to Castile.

Prosthetic limbs were common enough in the New World; if not used by soldiers injured at war, then laborers who’d suffered accidents in the factories and fields. Those replacement limbs were often stiff and clunky, however—a hook for a hand, a wooden leg strapped into a boot—and only if replacements were used at all.

But there was nothing clunky about this man’s elegant hand, which meant that it hadn’t just been contoured around his arm or strapped on, but grafted on so that the steel contraption had become a working part of his body. Only the Horde’s nanoagents could graft a mechanical apparatus to human flesh, making it as maneuverable as a natural arm. This man had to be infected with those tiny machines—the same machines that the Horde had used to forcibly graft tools onto their laborers. Most of those tools hadn’t been designed to function or appear as human as this man’s did, but Annika knew that it wasn’t the hand itself that alarmed the guard. It was the nanoagent infection.

Although an infected person was stronger and could heal faster, the nanoagents had also allowed the Horde to control the populations in the occupied territories of England and North Africa, using radio signals from tall broadcasting towers. A few of the towers had been destroyed, freeing the people in England and Morocco—but many in the New World thought the revolutions were only a temporary setback in the Horde’s inevitable advance across the ocean. Others in the New World feared that the nanoagents would reanimate their corpses after death and transform them into hungry, savage monsters, like the zombies who roamed much of Europe and Africa, leaving it uninhabitable. Others were revolted by the idea of tiny machines crawling around inside their bodies like bugs.

Annika knew too many of the infected to share the same fears, but the port officer obviously did not—or he knew many infected people, and still feared that the nanoagents might spread.

Brandishing his club, the officer gestured toward the nearest inn. Annika didn’t need to understand his sharp commands to know that he was ordering the stranger to turn back, away from the gates.

The stranger didn’t retreat. He looked to Annika, and the turn of his head offered a better impression of the features between his hat brim and gray wool scarf. He possessed a clean-shaven jaw, perhaps in the native style—or simply because a beard would never grow in evenly. Pale scars raked the left side of his face, with several wide, ragged stripes running diagonally from forehead to cheek. Oh! And that was not a monocle at all, but some sort of optical contraption that had been embedded into his temple, which shielded his left eye with a dark, reflective lens.

Utterly marvelous. What could he see through that?

“A noble was poisoned last week.” He spoke clearly, the tones deep. She couldn’t place his accent but had no trouble understanding him. “Rumor is that the assassin was a Liberé woman who carried Lusitanian papers.”

So she had been marked—not just by the colors of her dress, but also by the darkness of her skin. Truly, if Annika were the assassin, she wouldn’t have announced it so boldly. With a sigh, she unfolded her documents and presented them to the guard.

“Norway,” she said, and because the officer seemed reluctant to look away from the stranger long enough to verify her origin, Annika helpfully pointed to the proper line. “Born in Bergen.”

His gaze darted to the papers. Apparently not the least bit concerned about an assassin now, he waved her on. For a moment, she stared at him in disbelief. He could have so easily disrupted—no, destroyed—her life, as if she were nothing. Now he set her free in the same dispassionate manner. It did not engender grateful thoughts, yet she still managed a “Gracias, señor.”

It did not come out as genuinely as she intended, but he didn’t seem to note the bitter anger lacing her reply—and Annika was not a fool to wait around long enough for him to recognize it. She turned and set a brisk pace, her heart still hammering. The stranger waited, as if making certain that she wouldn’t be further disturbed, before falling into step beside her, his hands clasped behind his back.

Since coming to the New World, she’d often been told that her manners were coarse, but Annika thought that the application of genuine gratitude could never be found lacking.

“Thank you, sir. I can’t express how much I appreciate your interference.”

He nodded. She thought that would be the end of it, that now he would return to the two men waiting in front of a nearby inn, and who were obviously his companions. Dressed in the same style of wool overcoat that buckled asymmetrically across the chest, long trousers, and sturdy boots, the men watched them pass. The young one sporting a pointed red beard and curling mustache seemed to make a remark; the elder shook his head and laughed, his breath puffing in the cold air. Beside them, porters loaded crates onto a lorry.

They all must have been standing there when the port officer had shouted for her to stop, she realized. Her rescuer had heard her desperation and come to her aid.

She glanced up at the stranger again. He walked to the left of her, his eye contraption only visible as a glint of metal beyond the bridge of his aquiline nose. His hair was as black as hers, though without a hint of curl. The straight ends touched his shoulders, the forward strands drawn away from his face and contained by four steel beads tucked behind his ears.

Did he intend to accompany her all the way to Phatéon? Surely that wasn’t necessary. “I’m out of danger now, if you wish to return to your people.”

“My people?” His brow rose, and he glanced toward the men. “Ah. They’ll manage without me.”

And she wouldn’t? She ought not to say that, however, not after he’d rendered such an incredible service to her.

She ought not say it, and so of course she did. “But I can’t manage without you?”

His sudden grin was nothing like his earlier smile, which had seemed a weary response to an old jest. This appeared to burst through him as if he knew laughter was the only reply he could give.

Annika had to smile in return, and then laugh when he asked, “I trust you were not hired to kill a Castilian noble?”

“Perhaps I was,” she said. “If I were a clever assassin, I’d carry fraudulent papers that claim I was born in Norway, not Lusitania.”

“Are they fraudulent, then?”

Yes. Not for the purpose of assassination, however, but for the purpose of mobility. This exchange had become unexpectedly fun, however, and so she played along. “Oh, of course.”

“And what is your true origin?”

A hidden village on Iceland’s western shore. But even as a joke, she could not risk exposing her people, and chose the farthest location away from them. “A smuggler’s haven in Australia.”

That seemed to disappoint him. His grin had already faded to a pleasant, amused expression, but now she detected a hint of frustration in the tightness of his mouth and the intensity of his gaze. He was truly looking for an answer, Annika realized. This was not simply polite conversation to pass the time; he wanted to know where she was from.

Or was that just her imagination? She had guarded the truth of her origin for four years. Perhaps the constant vigilance made her suspect everyone of trying to discern it.

When he didn’t respond to that lie, she covered her unease with a dramatic sigh. “In truth,” she said, “Australia would be far more exciting, but alas, Norway it was—and is where I am bound again.”

“You fly out immediately?”

Perhaps Annika imagined the sudden tension in his voice, but she couldn’t mistake the way his gaze moved over her face, as if searching for the answer—or hoping for a specific reply. “The airship departs later tonight,” she confirmed.

The stranger’s lips tightened before resolve seemed to firm his expression. He nodded. “En route to Bergen?”

Eventually. Phatéon was scheduled to fly to the Norwegian port within a month, but it would not be a direct flight.

“Yes,” she said, her unease deepening. Why did he ask so specifically? Perhaps he was only making small talk, but she wasn’t comfortable with the direction he’d taken. Best to change the subject.

And if this truly was conversation, it was time that she held up her part and made intrusive inquiries of her own. “Will you also be departing soon? Or do you make a habit of waiting near port gates and running to a stranger’s aid?”

“No. Typically, I run after erupting volcanoes.”

“To study them?” Annika guessed. She couldn’t think of any other reason to do such a thing—and only if it paid well. “That is your profession?”

When he nodded, she studied him more closely. What sort of person made a living from such a thing? She had witnessed eruptions in Iceland before, and would have said that only a reckless fool would go chasing after one. This man didn’t appear foolish, however, and his manner seemed too contained to be reckless. Something else must be driving him to pursue such a dangerous occupation, something that he didn’t readily show.

Asking him to reveal that reason, however, would require Annika to venture beyond the boundaries of intrusive and into unforgivably rude. Even she couldn’t cross that line. She settled for, “I didn’t realize volcanoes were so fast that one had to run after them.”

His amusement returned. “In truth, I more often run away from them.”

She arched her brows and glanced at his mechanical hand, still clasped behind his back. “Not always fast enough?”

“No, that was another sort of explosion.” His gaze narrowed. “You’ve spent time in England.”

“In England? Well— Yes?” Confusion tripped her up. What an odd response. She had spent a little time in that country when Phatéon’s route took her there. But why would such a statement follow hers . . . Oh.

Fierce heat bloomed in her cheeks. Prosthetics and mechanical apparatuses were so common in England as to be unremarkable. But in the New World, such topics were handled with delicacy, if not outright avoided. Her insensitive comment must have distressed him, though he hid it well. Perhaps that was an indication of his fine manners; he didn’t point out her lack of them, though he had every reason to.

She had long come to terms with her failings, but Annika hated knowing that she might have hurt someone with them. “I am so sorry. How horrid of me to make light of injuries that must have been painful.”

He shrugged. “And long ago.”

Was he dismissing the topic or her apology? He didn’t seem distressed, but rather uninterested in discussing himself—and examining her features as if interested in her. Well, if he wanted to know what sort of woman she was, he was soon to learn that she had difficulty letting anything go without proper resolution.

“Whenever it happened, I am sorry for my words now,” she said. “I’m often told that I don’t possess any proper sensibilities, but that doesn’t excuse—”

“Who tells you this?”

“Everyone,” she said ruefully, and the stranger laughed before subjecting her to a considering look.

“If you wish to make amends,” he said, “eat supper with me now.”

That was not an offer she expected to come from someone with manners. Not offended, but incredibly surprised, she shook her head. “Pardon? I believe I misheard.”

“Share a meal with me at the inn,” he said unmistakably, before softening his expression with a smile. “I wouldn’t take advantage of a woman’s obligation to me, but I have no choice. If you leave this evening, I’ll have no other opportunity to enjoy your company, and I want to know you better.”

The intensity of his gaze deepened as he spoke, as if the entirety of his being had focused on gaining her consent. Annika stared up at him, uncertain how to respond. She’d have liked to spend more time with him, too. She wanted to know why he chased volcanoes, and what had possessed him to come to her aid—and there was nothing that forbade her from sharing a meal with someone. But her instincts were ringing, and she couldn’t ignore the alarm they raised. She had been propositioned before. She’d been flirted with before. This was . . . different. Though she couldn’t have articulated why she felt the need to be wary, Annika was certain that this man wanted something from her—but not company, not courting, not even to share a bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling very stiff. “The captain has asked that we all return to the airship early, so that we’re aboard before the storm hits.”

He nodded, but she saw the clench of his jaw, the frustration that suddenly shadowed his expression. Annika continued her brisk pace. The stranger remained at her side, but as they crossed from the cobblestones onto the wooden docks, the rumble of lorry engines and the shouts of the stevedores made further conversation impossible. Annika walked in silence, her thoughts in tumult. Perhaps she’d been mistaken? Perhaps she was only wary because his offer had been so unexpected. Perhaps she’d just insulted him again.

If so, nothing could be done now. With relief, she reached Phatéon’s mooring station. The cargo lift had been raised against the side of the airship, but the ladder hung down to the docking boards.

Annika stopped and folded her umbrella before turning to the stranger, who had tilted his head back to look up at the airship. She had to tilt her head back to look at him. Oh, he was quite tall—and so close. Rarely did Annika feel small, but standing next to him, she did. “Thank you again.”

His gaze lowered. Though his smile had not returned, she thought he seemed pleased. Satisfied, perhaps. “You travel aboard Phatéon? I’ve heard that she’s a fine ship.”

“Yes.” She caught the rope ladder, steadied it. “Very fine.”

He nodded. “I will leave you, then. I wish you a safe journey, miss.”

“I wish the same for you.”

Politely, he touched his hat—and stood, waiting . . . for her to climb safely aboard, she realized, and felt silly of a sudden. All this way, he had only been helpful. It had been kind of him to stay with her until he’d made certain that she’d arrived at her destination unharmed. It had been kind of him to offer a meal.

Still, Annika sensed his gaze on her as she climbed the ladder—and could not shake the feeling that the stranger hadn’t gotten what he wanted, and that he wasn’t done with her. That she would see him again, that he would be waiting for her in Bergen . . . or somewhere else.

But perhaps that was only her imagination.

Meljean Brook lives near Portland, OR with her family.