Oh, sweet lady, Rousseau. She knelt beside him, closed his eyes, smoothed her fingers over his wonderful, bushy brows. If only she’d been here to fight beside him.
His stomach had been opened. All of the aviators had been killed with blades—quietly and quickly. As soon as her crew had become aware of the danger, they’d been able to reach their weapons, but most hadn’t had time to use them.
Whoever had done this, Yasmeen would do the same to them—but she wouldn’t promise quiet or quick.
The sound of grinding metal stopped her heart. No. Yasmeen raced to the capstan. The tether line vibrated with tension. The air around her wavered with heat. Gritting her teeth, she braced her feet against the deck, threw her weight against the capstan’s steel spokes, adding her strength to the machine’s.
It wouldn’t matter. She knew it wouldn’t. The capstan was strong enough to pull the airship down, but not when a fire was heating the hydrogen in the balloon’s envelope, expanding the gas. The capstan couldn’t become any stronger—but her lady would become lighter and lighter. Eventually the tether line would snap.
But more likely, her lady would explode first.
Already stretched tight as a drum, the balloon appeared ready to burst at the seams. It would only take a tiny leak, enough air to fill a sigh.
Or a scream. Yasmeen let hers loose, pushing against the spoke with all her might, her muscles shaking with effort. It didn’t move.
Her lady shuddered again. Yasmeen’s feet skidded out from beneath her. Her knees crashed into the deck. Spikes of pain shot up her thighs.
The deep rumble from below became a roar.
Yasmeen’s throat closed, and she listened to the sound of fire tearing through the lower decks. Her lady’s belly had burned through. Perhaps only a small hole in the hull, but now air was rushing in . . . and there was no hope of saving her now.
A spark landed near her knee. Another. Yasmeen forced herself to her feet. Fire climbed the ropes toward the envelope. Not much time—and there was one thing left to save.
She dropped down through the hatchway into a corridor of smoke and flame. The door to her quarters was burning. She slammed through.
The steel strongbox was closed. That was all she’d needed to know—but she couldn’t return the way she’d come. Flames rolled across the ceiling of her cabin.
Left alone since they’d wound down during Archimedes’ visit, the mechanical lovebirds were still quiet. She ripped the bottom of the cage away, fitted it into the starboard porthole, twisted until the escape mechanism engaged. Glass shattered and wood shredded as the porthole rotated open, doubling in size. With another twist, she could create a standing autogyro from the two portholes, but she had no time, and the turbulence from the fire would likely tip it over, throwing her into the spinning blades. Better to dive into the harbor, and swim for the docks.
Yasmeen hauled herself up to the porthole’s steel ring—and paused to look back once, like a sentimental fool.
The moment she turned away, her lady exploded.
If not for his sister, Archimedes would have abandoned everything at the boardinghouse and kept running. But there were letters in his belongings that connected Zenobia to him, the directions to her home written clearly—and Temür Agha’s guard wasn’t anything like the bumbling assassins he’d sent before.
Everything he needed fit into a single sack. He lay the converted glider on the bed and scribbled a letter to his sister. They’d already determined the safest location if she needed to flee. As soon as he was able—if he was able—he’d contact her there.
With luck, he’d be able to board The Swan tonight and convince the captain to leave immediately. After selling the sketch at the Ivory Market, he’d sail to Morocco and satisfy his debt with Temür.
With enough luck, that would be the end of this, and the rebel would call off his assassin.
Archimedes extinguished the lamp and moved to the window, his gaze searching the docks below. He didn’t see the woman, but there were too many shadows to be certain.
He looked to the harbor. The Swan’s deck lamps were lit. Probably best to run to the airship now rather than to wait—and if The Swan had an early start, Yasmeen’s anger might have cooled by the time she caught up to him.
Perhaps she was already looking. Lady Corsair’s decks were ablaze with light, as if she’d woken the entire crew and planned to—
No. His heart skidded to a stop. Not ablaze with light. Just ablaze . . . and he’d left Yasmeen drugged and hidden in a closet.
Dear God.
The explosion came in a great flare of light. Archimedes shouted, shielding his eyes. The window cracked. The walls shuddered. And then he was flying down the stairs, onto the docks, joined by men, women, all running, half of them still pulling on their clothes. Even in Port Fallow, an airship catching fire was a disaster that brought help, not the vultures. On the water, ships unfurled their canvas sails, moving away from the burning, floating debris that had once been the finest skyrunner on the seven seas. Above, airship engines started, huffing great bellows of steam, dropping their tethers and fleeing the heat and sparks.
Pieces of burning envelope fluttered through the air like confetti. The south dock was ablaze. Archimedes raced down the flaming boards, eyes watering from the intensity of the heat and smoke and he’d left her drugged and helpless.
“Yasmeen!” He shouted over the noise of the engines and cries for help, but the sound was lost beneath the roar of the burning ship. Desperately, he searched the glowing water. “Yasmeen!”
The end of the dock collapsed. Hands gripped Archimedes’ shoulders in an unbreakable hold, yanked him backward, then dragged him when he struggled. He froze when a burning timber crashed into the boards where he’d been standing. He looked back, recognized the giant man.
“Eben Machen?” His voice was hoarse from screaming her name.
The mad pirate’s fingers hardened painfully on his shoulders. “Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste.”
“Yes.” A fool, about to die, but he still had hope. This man was a friend to her. “Yasmeen. Oh, God. She was—Did she survive? Did you see her?”
Hope vanished when Mad Machen shook his head. Archimedes couldn’t mistake the despair in the pirate’s eyes when he looked at the burning ship. It quickly hardened into a mad resolve. He let go of Archimedes’ shoulders, slapped his arm.
“We’ll haul out the boats and search the water. We’ll find her.”
They didn’t find her. They found bodies, so many bodies— all burned beyond recognition but for scraps of cloth, prosthetic limbs, a few gold teeth. No one that fit Yasmeen’s size and shape.
The ship was still burning when it sank beneath the surface. Archimedes dove again and again into the water, trying to fight his way inside before it sank too deep. He tried past the rising of the sun, until his hands shook and his teeth chattered, and Mad Machen threatened to break his neck rather than let him go down again. He attempted to drink the coffee they brought him, but vomited it back up when he imagined her at the bottom of the harbor, still trapped in the hideaway.
A boiler explosion, everyone said. It happened all the time.
And every time it was repeated, Captain Machen got a mad look in his eyes. Only after the man finally called him Archimedes did he realize what the pirate had been thinking when they’d met on the docks: Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste provided weapons and explosives.
But Archimedes Fox hadn’t done this.
He’d killed Yasmeen, though. The knowledge crushed every other thought, every other care. He didn’t remember making his way back to the boardinghouse, or climbing the stairs to his room, but his legs were still trembling from the effort when he opened the door.
The unlocked door.
He stared at the empty bed. The glider contraption was gone. They hadn’t taken anything else, but that was enough. Too much. He dropped his head to his hands, slid to the floor.
And knew his luck had finally run out.
> Chapter Four
Eventually, Archimedes crawled to the bed. Fever set in. For three days, he tossed in his sheets, and woke shivering in clothes drenched with sweat. When the boardinghouse matron came round, he discovered that during his delirium, he’d somehow had sense enough to post the letter to Zenobia. As arranged, she didn’t reply. He didn’t send another message telling her the sketch had been taken. When he could manage the stairs without tumbling down, he took a meal and a pint at the nearest tavern. Around him, everyone spoke of where they’d been when Lady Corsair’s boiler had blown; no one mentioned a da Vinci sketch or a satchel that could convert into a glider. The next day, he chose another tavern, bought a meal and several pints, drinking as he listened to the talk around him. By the next week, he rarely bothered with the meals. He drank and listened, and then drank more.
Two months after Lady Corsair had burned, Archimedes woke with a pounding in his head and a knife at his throat.
A low voice purred in his ear. “What will you call this adventure? Archimedes Fox and the Drunkard’s Filthy Stench?”
Yasmeen? Archimedes opened his eyes to a coal dark room, not daring to hope. Dreams of her had come before. He’d always woken, cold and shaking, his face wet—but it wasn’t wet now, and he wasn’t shaking. A weight pushed on his chest until he could hardly breathe. Was she sitting on him?
“You’re heavier than you look, Captain,” he said on a wheeze.
She hissed. Pain bit his neck with the edge of her blade. Ah, sweet bliss. Not dreaming at all.
And she was alive.
Without any air to laugh, Archimedes grinned as elation poured through him. It didn’t matter if she killed him now. Focusing on the feel of her, he realized that she’d straddled his chest, her knees and shins pinning his shoulders and upper arms to the mattress—but he could bend his elbows. He could lift his hands. He could reach her waist. She stiffened when his fingers slid over her hips.
Solid. Real. Warm.
He felt the trickle of blood down his throat. Her breath skimmed over his jaw. Her hair tickled his face. Was she close enough to kiss him?
Oh, God. Please.
Her voice was soft. “Tell me the truth and I’ll make it quick: Did you set fire to my ship?”
What the hell? No.
But he could only mouth the word—and it was too dark for her to see. Goddammit. He shoved his hands beneath her ass. As if prodded, she jolted forward, her weight shifting long enough for him to breathe.
Long enough for him to bite out, “I never would!”
“So you already said.” She settled back down, trapping his hands, but this time allowing him room for shallow inhalations. “I can see, you idiot. Why would I ask if I couldn’t?”
“Why say you’d make it quick if you wouldn’t?”
Her dark laugh filled the room. “That’s true enough. I’d have flayed you alive.”
Why say it—and why ask? Suspicion crawled into his mind. “Is there someone who needs to be flayed?”
“Yes. It wasn’t a boiler explosion.” A sharp claw scraped down his jaw. “And you don’t have my twenty-five percent, do you? Do you even have the sketch?”
Could she see the flush of his skin? He wasn’t often ashamed or embarrassed, but admitting that someone had stolen the sketch was pure humiliation. “I’ve been searching for it.”
“At the bottom of a pint?”
“I’ve found treasures in odder locations.” He’d found one sitting on his chest.
“Who took it?”
“I wish to God I knew. But if the idiot thief didn’t use the sketch for privy paper, he’ll try to sell it. So I’ll hear word of it soon.”
“Find me when you do. Goodbye, Mr. Fox.”
Her weight lifted suddenly, and he sat up, blindly trying to follow her. His searching hands caught her thigh before she could move away, and he snaked his arms around her hips. Her fingers fisted in his hair, but she didn’t rip his head off.
“Yasmeen. I’m sorry for the hideaway. And I’m so very, very—” He cut himself off, recognizing the swelling through his chest, the choking grief that would come, now overwhelmed by incredible joy. He finished in a rough voice, “Very moved by your survival.”
He released her. She didn’t let go of his hair. “Because of you, Mr. Fox, I couldn’t protect my crew. Instead of fighting when my lady was boarded, I was lying in that closet.”
God. Archimedes closed his eyes.
Pain tore through his scalp as she yanked his head back, forcing him to look up at her. “But I also suspect that if I hadn’t been in that damn hideaway, I’d be dead, and no one would be left to avenge them.”
He would have. If he’d known, he’d have hunted them to the ends of the earth.
If he’d known . . . and now he knew.
Determination filled him. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
Abruptly, she let him go. A spark lighter scraped. The flickering glow illuminated her face. She drew on the cigarillo, the tip burning orange. He stared at her, all but overwhelmed again by the beautiful angles of her cheekbones, the point of her chin, the fullness of her lips.
Icy amusement curled her mouth as her gaze ran from his head to his toes. “Did you have company?”
He looked down at himself. Naked. Ah, yes. It had been snowing when he’d stumbled home. He’d slipped into a garbage heap, and the matron hadn’t allowed the stink to enter her house. Walking up three flights of stairs without a stitch of clothing obviously hadn’t offended her, however. She’d watched him the entire way.
Lying back, he folded his arms behind his head and offered Yasmeen a more flattering view. “My only companions have been my dreams of you.”
She snorted and turned for the door. Terror ripped through to his bones. No, he couldn’t lose her this quickly again. He reared up out of bed, but stopped in surprise when she said, “Zenobia sends her greetings from London. You ought to let her know that you’re not dead.”
Greetings from—“What? When?”
Yasmeen grinned over her shoulder. “Take a bath, Mr. Fox. Then come find me at dawn. Perhaps I can think of a use for a man with balls of iron and a silver tongue.”
He was dreaming. “Find you where?”
“If you can’t figure that out, you’re of no use to me after all.”
By the time the door closed behind her, leaving him in the dark again, he’d already figured it out. Vesuvius had sailed into Port Fallow that evening. He’d find her on Mad Machen’s ship. But that was the easy one—because if an exploding boiler hadn’t destroyed Lady Corsair, then who the hell had attacked her? He’d need to figure that out, too . . . but the why was all too obvious.
They’d been looking for the sketch.
Yasmeen’s knees always ached in the mornings now, as if during the short hours of sleep, her body returned to the three weeks she’d spent in bed, healing her shattered legs. Upon every waking, she stared up at the deckhead over her narrow berth, thinking that she ought to have just let Mad Machen cut them off after his men dragged her out of the water. His blacksmith could have given her better legs. Stronger. Faster. Impervious to pain. Maybe with a few concealed weapons that let her shoot bullets from her toes.
And perhaps Yasmeen would take to wearing a robe and demurely folding her hands, too.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed down the worsted wool blanket and swung her legs around. A film of ice covered the water in the washbowl. She shivered through her quick bath, and dressed in the new clothes that felt as stiff as her body. They’d wear in, eventually. Within a half hour, her damn knees would loosen up, too.
Rubbing warmth into her hands, she paced her tiny cabin, listening to Vesuvius’s crew go about their duties on the deck above. When the ship’s bell rang the hour and she could walk without shuffling like an old woman, she joined Barker and Jannsen, the ship’s surgeon, in the wardroom for breakfast.
Jannsen looked up from his book when she entered, and wa
tched her over his reading spectacles as she crossed to her chair and sat. “You look well.”
“I slept well.”
“Did you use the sleeping draught?”
“No.” She preferred to smoke her opium—and she preferred to wake up aching rather than to wake up needing more. She knew better than to take a draught every evening; too many people went straight from a surgeon’s tender care to the bowels of an opium den. She glanced at Barker and narrowed her eyes. “Why the fool’s grin?”
“You owe me a drink. Tenner saw you leave the ship.”
Ah, her midnight excursion. When they’d been sailing out of London, she’d bet the quartermaster that she could slip away from Vesuvius without being noticed. Last night, she hadn’t even tried to be furtive; she’d asked Tenner to help her lower a dinghy to the water.
But she’d pay up, simply because of how good it had felt to be out and about again—almost as good as it had felt to straddle a naked Archimedes Fox’s chest. She hadn’t expected to take such pleasure in meeting with him. Even now, she couldn’t fathom how the anger that she’d carefully nurtured for months had been disarmed. Perhaps it had been his unabashed joy upon seeing her alive, and his earnest apology for his part in it. Perhaps it had been the dangerous stillness that had overtaken him when he’d determined to avenge her crew. Perhaps it had been the rough shadow on his jaw, the laughter in his emerald eyes, his easy grin.
Perhaps it was the fire that spread through her veins, kindled by every ridiculous word he said. If he hadn’t smelled like a bilgewater trout, she’d have stayed a bit longer and burned it out. No reason not to. They’d played a short game of chase through obstacles of his identity and the sketch, but Yasmeen wasn’t playing anymore. She had a single purpose now: to find the pig bastards who’d attacked her lady. It would take time and money, but she’d happily spend both.
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