Heart of Steel

by Meljean Brook

  He’d owed someone, and whoever it was intended to collect. Few debts would need a da Vinci sketch to cover them, though. Even small salvaged items like those Archimedes usually collected sold high at auction. Of the baubles in Zenobia’s parlor, the miniature alone would purchase a luxury steamcoach.

  “Does he really owe so much?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you changed your names and went into hiding.” Not that Archimedes Fox had done a good job of hiding, traipsing all over the world as he did.

  “Yes.” Zenobia’s sigh seemed to hang in the air. They’d almost reached the Rose & Thorn before she spoke again. “Is there anything else? For Lady Lynx,” she added, when Yasmeen raised a brow.

  “Yes.” The walk here had reminded her of one rule that she’d been fortunate to have learned before Archimedes Fox had boarded her airship. “Don’t let her go soft for a man.”

  Zenobia stopped, looking dismayed. “A romance adds excitement.”

  “With a man who tries to take over everything? Who wants to be master of her ship, or wants the crew to acknowledge that she’s his little woman?” Yasmeen sneered. God, but she imagined it all too easily. “What man can tolerate his woman holding a position superior to him?”

  Zenobia apparently couldn’t name one. She grimaced and pulled out her notes. “Not even a mysterious man in the background? More interest from the readers means more money.”

  Yasmeen wasn’t always for sale, and in this matter, the promise of extra royalties couldn’t sway her. “Don’t let her go soft. Give her a heart of steel.”

  “A heart of steel,” Zenobia repeated, scribbling. She looked up. “But . . . why?”

  Why? Shaking her head, Yasmeen signaled for the rope ladder, which would take her back to her lady. Zenobia had begun that morning tied up and gagged, then had a gun shoved against her throat and her body used as a shield—and yet she had to ask Why?

  The answer was obvious. “Because there’s no other way to survive.”

  Yasmeen flew into Port Fallow from the east, high enough that the Horde’s combines were visible in the distance. After their war machines had driven the European population away and the zombies had infected those remaining, the Horde had used the Continent as their breadbasket. They’d dug mines and stripped the forests. Machines performed most of the work—and what the machines couldn’t do was done by Horde workers living in enormous walled outposts scattered across Europe. Soldiers within those compounds protected the laborers from zombies and crushed any New Worlder’s attempt to reclaim the land.

  But thirty years before, Port Fallow had been established as a small hideaway for pirates and smugglers on the ruins of Amsterdam, and had boomed into a small city when the Horde hadn’t bothered to crush it. Either they hadn’t considered the city a threat or they hadn’t been able to afford the effort. Yasmeen suspected it was the latter.

  Two generations ago, a plague had decimated the Horde population, including those living in the walled compounds. A rebellion within the Horde had been gaining in popularity for years, and after the plague, had increased in strength from one end of the empire to the other. Now, the Horde was simply holding on to what they still had, not reclaiming what they’d lost—whether that loss was a small piece of land like Port Fallow or the entire British isle. No doubt that in the coming years, more pieces would fight their way out from under Horde control.

  Just as well. A five-hundred-year reign was long enough for any empire. Yasmeen would be glad to see them gone. But then, she’d be glad to see a lot of people gone—and currently, Franz Kessler was at the top of her list.

  It wouldn’t be difficult to find him. Port Fallow contained three distinct sections between the harbor and the city wall, arranged in increasing semicircles and divided by old Amsterdam’s canals: the docks and warehouses between the harbor and the first canal, with the necessary taverns, inns, and bawdyrooms; the large residences between the first and second canals, where the established “families” of Port Fallow made their homes; and beyond the second and third canals, the small flats and shacks where everyone else lived. Kessler’s home lay in the second, wealthy ring of residences, and he sometimes ventured into the first ring—but he’d never run toward the shacks, and only an idiot would try to climb the wall. Few zombies stumbled up to Fladstrand, but not so here. The plains beyond the town teemed with the ravenous creatures, and gunmen continually monitored the city’s high walls. Kessler couldn’t run that way. The harbor offered the only possibility for escape, but Yasmeen wasn’t concerned. Though dozens of boats and airships were anchored at Port Fallow, not a single one could outrun Lady Corsair.

  And of those ships, only one made her glad to see it: Vesuvius. Mad Machen’s blackwood pirate ship had been anchored apart from the others, floating in the harbor near the south dock. Yasmeen ordered Lady Corsair to be tethered nearby. She leaned over the airship’s railing, hoping to see Mad Machen on his decks. A giant of a man, he was always easy to spot—but he wasn’t in sight. She caught the attention of his quartermaster, instead, which suited her just as well. Yasmeen liked Obadiah Barker almost as much as she liked his captain.

  With a few signals, she arranged to meet with him and descended into the madness of Port Fallow’s busy dockside. Men loaded lorries that waited with idling engines and rattling frames. Small carts puttered by, the drivers ceaselessly honking a warning to move out of their way, and rickshaws weaved between the foot traffic. A messenger on an autogyro landed lightly beside a stack of crates, huffing from the exertion of spinning the rotor pedals. Travelers waiting for their boarding calls huddled together around their baggage, while sailors and urchins watched them for a drop in their guard and an opportunity to snatch a purse or a trunk. Food peddlers rolled squeaky wagons, shouting their prices and wares.

  Yasmeen lit a cigarillo to combat the ever-present stink of fish and oil, and waited for Barker to row in from Vesuvius. His launch cut through the yellow scum that foamed on the water and clung to the dock posts.

  Disgusting, but at least the scum kept the megalodons away. In many harbors in the North Sea, a sailor couldn’t risk manning such a small boat—barely more than a mouthful to the giant sharks.

  His black hair contained beneath a woolen cap, Barker tied off the launch and leapt onto the dock, approaching her with a wide grin. “Captain Corsair! Just the woman I’d hoped to see. You owe me a drink.”

  Possibly. Yasmeen made so many bets with him, she couldn’t keep track. “Why?”

  “You said that if I ever lost a finger, I’d cry like a baby. But I didn’t. I cried like a man.”

  Yasmeen frowned and glanced at his hands. Obligingly, he pulled off his left glove, revealing a shining, mechanical pinky finger. The brown skin around the prosthetic had a reddish hue to it. Still healing.

  She met his eyes again. “How?”

  “Slavers, two days out. I caught a bullet.” He paused, and his quick smile appeared. “Literally.”

  “And the slavers?”

  “Dead.”

  Of course they were. Mad Machen wouldn’t have returned to port otherwise. He’d have chased them down.

  She looked at the prosthetic again. Embedded in his flesh, the shape of it was all but indistinguishable from a real pinky, the knuckle joints smooth—and, as Barker demonstrated by wiggling his fingers—perfectly functional. Incredible work.

  “Your ship’s blacksmith is skilled.” So skilled that Yasmeen would have lured her away from Vesuvius if the idiot girl hadn’t been soft on Mad Machen.

  “She’s brilliant,” Barker said. He replaced the glove and glanced up at Lady Corsair. “None of your aviators have come down. Is this just a stopover?”

  “Yes.” Even if it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t leave the airship unmanned while the sketch was aboard. “I’m only here long enough to have a word with someone. We’ll fly out in the morning.”

  “A word with someone?” Barker had known her long enough to guess exactly what that meant. “Wou
ld you like me to come along?”

  She didn’t need the help, but she wouldn’t mind the company. “If you like.”

  “I would. I’ll fetch a cab. Where to?”

  His brows lifted when she told him their destination, but he didn’t say anything until they’d climbed into the small steamcoach.

  He had to raise his voice over the noise of the engine. “Why Kessler?”

  “He talked when he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “Is anyone dead?”

  “Miracle Mattson. Kessler gave information to him.”

  Barker’s frown said that he was having the same thought Yasmeen had: Men like Kessler and Mattson didn’t usually do business together. Though plenty of art was smuggled into the New World, it wasn’t something Mattson ever handled. If Kessler needed weapons, yes. Not a sketch.

  The coach slowed over the bridge across the first canal, crowded with laborers passing from the third rings to the docks. Three ladies wearing narrow lace ruffs around their necks and dresses of embroidered linen over corsets and crinolines stood at the other end, as if waiting for the bridge to clear of rabble before they crossed it. Yasmeen watched them, amused. Five years ago, the residents of the second circle had tried building bridges that were only for their use. That arrangement hadn’t lasted beyond the first week.

  By the time the bridge was out of Yasmeen’s sight, the ladies still hadn’t crossed it. She looked forward again. Kessler’s home lay around the next corner.

  “Do you want me to go in with you?” Barker asked.

  “Just wait in the cab. I doubt I’ll be long.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  The same that she’d done to Mattson. “Make certain he won’t talk again.”

  The cab rounded the corner and slowed. Yasmeen frowned, rising from the bench for a better look. Wagons and carts blocked the street ahead, each one loaded with furniture and clothes. Men and women worked in pairs and small teams, hauling items from Kessler’s house.

  Barker whistled between his teeth. “I don’t think he’s talking now.”

  Barker was right, damn it. The households in Port Fallow operated in the same way as a pirate ship. When the head of the business household died, the household’s members voted in a new leader who took over the family. But Kessler’s business was in knowing people, and keeping those names to himself. No one could carry on in his profession, and his blood family had no claim—and so everyone who worked for him, from his clerk to his scullery maid, would split his possessions and sell them for what they could.

  Seething, Yasmeen leaned out of the coach and snagged the first person who passed by. “What happened to Kessler?”

  The woman, staggering under the weight of a ceramic vase, kept it short. “Maid found him in bed. Throat slit. No one knows who.”

  He’d probably flapped his lips about someone else’s business. Yasmeen let the woman go.

  “So we turn around, then?” the driver called back.

  If he could. Carts, wagons, and people were in motion all around them, crowding the narrow street. Several more had already parked at their rear. A steamcart in front of them honked, and earned a shouted curse in response. Beside them, a wagon piled high with mattresses lurched ahead, giving them more visibility but nowhere to move.

  The cart that took its place didn’t block Yasmeen’s view. Her gaze swept the walkway across the street—and froze on one figure. Oh, hell. Her muscles tensed, ready to fight . . . or flee.

  Dressed in a simple black robe, the woman stood facing Kessler’s house. Unlike everyone else, she wasn’t in hurried motion. She watched the activity with her hands demurely folded at her stomach and her head slightly bowed. Gray threaded her long brown hair. She’d plaited two sections in the front, drawing them back . . . hiding the tips of her ears.

  As if sensing Yasmeen’s gaze, she looked away from Kessler’s home. Her stillness didn’t change; only her eyes moved.

  Yasmeen had been taught to stand like that—to hold herself silent and watchful, her weight perfectly balanced, her hands clasped. She’d been taught duty and honor. She’d been taught to fight . . . but not like this woman did. Yasmeen knew that under the woman’s robes was a body more metal than flesh. Designed to protect. Designed to kill.

  It was difficult not to appreciate the deadly beauty of it—and hard not to pity her. Yasmeen couldn’t see the chains of honor, loyalty, and duty that bound the woman, but she knew they were there.

  And she knew with a single look that the woman pitied her in return. That she saw Yasmeen as a woman adrift and without purpose—a victim of those who’d failed to properly train and care for her.

  Yasmeen lowered her gaze first; not out of cowardice, but a message that she wouldn’t interfere with the woman’s business here—and she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to challenge her.

  Next to Yasmeen, Barker eyed the woman with a different sort of appreciation. Of course he did. She’d been designed to provoke that response.

  “Don’t try,” Yasmeen warned him.

  “She’s a little older, but I like the mature—”

  “She’s gan tsetseg, one of the elite guard who serves the Horde royalty and the favored governors.”

  Barker didn’t hide his surprise—or his doubt. He studied the woman again, as if trying to see beneath the demure posture and discover what had earned the elite guard their terrifying reputation.

  He wouldn’t see it. The elite guard earned that reputation when they dropped that modest posture, not when they wore it.

  He shook his head. “She’s not Horde.”

  “She’s not a Mongol,” Yasmeen corrected. The Horde weren’t a single race. In five hundred years, their seed and the empire had spread too far for every member of the Horde to be Mongols. Only royalty and the officials from the heart of the empire were still relatively unmixed, but since they provided the face of the Horde to New Worlders and the occupied territories, the assumption that everyone in the empire were Mongols had been carried along with it. “Just as not every man and woman of African descent born on the southern American continent is a Liberé spy . . . or a cart-puller.”

  His face tightened. “Cart-puller?”

  “I am saying that you are not. You cannot even hear it without being ready to go to war again?”

  “Because you haven’t been called one,” he said, before adding, “I wasn’t a spy.”

  Yasmeen snorted her response.

  He grinned and glanced over at the woman again. “Why is she here? No one in Port Fallow is Horde royalty.”

  “Then she’s here to kill someone, or to take them back to her khanate.” Obviously not Yasmeen, or she’d already be dead. Instead, she was forgotten. The woman was watching the house again . . . waiting. “Whatever her purpose, don’t get in her way.”

  “All right.” Barker leaned forward and tapped on the cab driver’s shoulder before dropping a few deniers into his palm. “Shall we walk? By the time we return to the docks, I’ll be ready for that drink.”

  Yasmeen would be ready for three.

  Yasmeen drank three, but not quickly. Barker took his leave after finishing the one she owed him, but Yasmeen stayed on, nursing hers until they were warm. Some nights in a tavern were meant for drinking, and others were meant for listening. Fortunately, nothing she heard suggested that word of the sketch had gone beyond Mattson and Kessler. She turned down one job—a run to the Ivory Market along the Gold Coast of Africa. Lucrative, but he hadn’t been willing to wait until she returned from England, and she wasn’t inviting anyone onto her airship before the sketch was in the Iron Duke’s fortress.

  She hadn’t always been able to turn down jobs. Now she had enough money that she could be choosy. Even without the fortune that would come after selling the sketch, she could retire in luxury at any time—as could her entire crew.

  She never would.

  Midnight had come and gone when Yasmeen decided she’d heard enough. She emerged from the dim tavern into
the dark and paused to light a cigarillo, studying the boardwalk along the docks. It was just as busy at night as during the day, but the crowd was comprised of more drunks. Some slumped against the buildings or slept beside crates. Groups of sailors laughed and pounded their chests at the aviators—some of them women, Yasmeen noted, and not one of them alone. The shopgirls and lamplighters walked in pairs, and most of the whores did, too.

  Yasmeen sighed. Undoubtedly, she’d soon be teaching some drunken buck a lesson about making assumptions when women walked alone.

  She started toward the south dock, picking out Lady Corsair’s sleek silhouette over the harbor. Familiar pride filled her chest. God, her lady was such a beauty—one of the finest skyrunners ever made, and she’d been Yasmeen’s for almost thirteen years now. She knew captains who didn’t last a month—some who weren’t generous toward their crew or not strict enough to control them. Some were too careful to make any money or too careless to live through a job.

  She’d made money, and she’d lived through hundreds of jobs during the French war with the Liberé: scouting, privateering, moving weapons or personnel through enemy territory, destroying a specified target. Both the French and the Liberé officers sneered when she’d claimed that her only loyalties were to her crew and the gold, but they used her when they didn’t have anyone good enough or fast enough to do what she could.

  Then the war had ended—fizzled out, with the Liberé possessing the most territory and thereby considered the victor. All of the same animosities still simmered, but there wasn’t enough gold left in the treasuries to pay for more fighting. So Yasmeen had left the New World, returned back across the Atlantic, and carved out her niche by taking almost any job for the right money.

  Lately, that meant ferrying passengers over Horde territory in Europe and Africa—a route that most airships-for-hire would never take. Sometimes she acted as a courier, or she partnered with Vesuvius when Mad Machen carried cargo that needed airship support, fighting off anyone who tried to steal it from them.