Already, the irritation began to set in. “Then it seems I only took French money,” she said.
Understanding finally came to Hassan’s face, and Yasmeen realized that he hadn’t been lost, only having difficulty with the language. “A mercenary?”
“Yes,” Yasmeen said.
Though there was no visible hardening of Hassan’s expression, though he didn’t stand any straighter or raise his voice, he suddenly gave the impression of quiet strength and authority. He looked to Guillouet. “Does her presence mean you will not take my money, Captain?”
The threat was clear. Guillouet’s jaw tightened, the struggle visible on his face. An airship captain who stood on principles over money soon had no ship to stand on. “I will not allow her to share meals in my cabin. You cannot ask that insult of me.”
“You will insult her, too?”
“It’s no insult,” Yasmeen said. She didn’t want to eat with him, either. “The wardroom will do.”
Faint apology entered Hassan’s voice. “The wardroom is taken by the marsouins. I have already displaced several of the captain’s men.”
“We can eat with the crew,” Archimedes suggested. “We’ve made the acquaintance of several, and enjoyed their company before.”
They had?
“Very well, then.” With a sharp nod, Guillouet pivoted on his heel, began shouting orders.
With the only threat to her diminished, Yasmeen finally looked away from Guillouet and glanced over the aviators on deck. Her gaze stopped on one large man who sported a puffy bruise over his left eye and a split lip. The red-shirted twin. She couldn’t suppress her grin when the recently deflowered Henri raced toward them, offering to show them to their cabin. The boy reached for the trunk but was stopped by Archimedes.
“I’ve got that, young Henri,” Archimedes said. “It’s heavier than it appears.”
The trunk wasn’t at all heavy for a man infected by nanoagents, but it did look impressive when he so easily hefted it over his shoulder and turned to Hassan.
“Hassan, allow me to introduce my wife—Captain Yasmeen Fox.”
He took far too much pleasure in saying that. She returned Hassan’s greeting, adding in Arabic, “Thank you for handling that so well. Though I am not surprised by your diplomacy, given all that my husband has told me of your association with him.”
His eyes widened slightly, and his gaze ran over her face, as if trying to place her appearance and dialect. Yasmeen wondered what his reaction would be when she removed the warm hat with the Arctic fox-fur flaps that covered her braids—and her ears.
“It is sometimes the nature of business, unfortunately,” he said. “And now I see that it was wise to bring your husband on as Archimedes Fox. We will hope that Captain Guillouet doesn’t realize who Wolfram was selling those weapons to.”
When her brows rose, Archimedes supplied under his breath, “Primarily, the Liberé.”
Yasmeen laughed, and was favored by a grin from the older man.
“It is very good to meet you, Captain. I hope you will come speak with me later, after you’ve settled—and I have had my midday rest. I am but a frail old man.”
He continued smiling as he spoke, but Yasmeen couldn’t miss the weariness behind the good humor. She nodded and looked to Henri, who had been waiting, listening, and clearly not understanding a word.
“Well, Henri. Show us the way, then.”
Their cabin was tiny, housing two stacked bunks with barely space enough to walk beside. Brass hooks screwed into the bulkhead offered a place to hang their clothing, and their trunk slid below the bottom bunk. A washstand stood in the corner. A porthole offered just enough sunlight to see.
It was perfect.
“Top or bottom?” Archimedes said, indicating the bunks.
“Bottom.” Her knees wouldn’t allow anything else. “That went well with Guillouet, didn’t it?”
“Very. And now it will be easy to avoid him.”
“Yes.” Seeing the man would be inevitable, especially on the main deck, but no one would expect them to exchange any words. “I’d like to go above before we start out.”
“And see how a sailor’s crew handles her?” Archimedes guessed correctly. He retrieved his fur hat and their aviator goggles. “I’ll accompany you, and count the number of faults you add to Captain Guillouet’s character.”
“We will see if they ever equal yours.” Tugging on her own hat, she stepped into the corridor and almost collided with a portly man, face long and belly ample. Receding brown hair had been combed back from his pale features, and he wore a mustache and beard in the current French fashion, with chin and jaw shaven, and whiskers sweeping to his ears like a walrus’s.
Recognition hit her. “Why, it’s Mr. Ollivier!”
“Lady Corsair.” His eyes darted from her face to Archimedes’, then down the passageway as if looking for an escape. “I didn’t realize you were aboard.”
“Oh, yes. With my husband, Archimedes Fox. You’ve heard of him?”
“Yes.” Surprise brought his focus back to Archimedes, and curiosity slipped through his panic. “Yes, of course. I follow your adventures with interest, Mr. Fox.”
“Of course you do,” Yasmeen said. “Tell me, will you be eating at the captain’s table?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.” She grinned. “I have heard we will speak to you about the expedition when our friend Hassan awakes. I look forward to seeing your maps. Until then, Mr. Ollivier!”
She had to give Archimedes credit—he waited until they were up on the main deck before asking, “What was all that?”
“I will tell you.” The engines started, a familiar thrum beneath her feet. Oh. Her heart hitched painfully. On earth or in sky, there was no sweeter sound than a well-tended propulsion engine. “Come with me aft!” she called to Archimedes over the noise. “There’s no net across her bow—we don’t want to be killed by a bird!”
A few aviators heard her. Yasmeen didn’t care. A captain took care of their safety, or he didn’t deserve the title. She led Archimedes to the stern, where the engines spewed clouds of smoke and steam into the air.
He turned his back to the rail. “Also, because it’s loud!” he shouted. “You won’t be overheard!”
“Yes!” she called out and leaned closer. “Do not eat or drink anything without letting me taste it first. Anything. Even something from your trunk, if you keep a flask.”
Suddenly serious, his green eyes met hers. “Why?”
“Ollivier’s an assassin. Or he was, during the war. A Liberé sympathizer. He’d pose as an academic—in truth, he is an academic—and make his way into important households. He uses poisons.” A cowardly way to go about it, in Yasmeen’s opinion, but Ollivier considered poison a more refined method of assassination than knives or guns. “Guillouet probably doesn’t know. He calls me a traitor, but Ollivier is a traitor.”
“Do you think he would poison us, then?”
“I don’t know. The war is long over, but he might fear that I’ll say something—or hold it over his head. So we’ll be careful.”
Archimedes nodded. The engines directly below their feet were huffing hard now. With the propellers beginning to spin, even shouts were difficult to hear. She held up her goggles and gestured to the pair around his neck. When the wind started, he’d want to put them on.
The crew hauled in the canvas sails that had taken them out of the harbor. Ceres skimmed over the snow-covered plain south of Port Fallow, beyond the high wall, where the bodies of zombies lay piled against the base. The sugar sloop wouldn’t gain as much speed as Yasmeen’s skyrunner, perhaps forty-five knots at her best, but even at that speed the wind tangled her hair and the icy cold burned her face. Yasmeen pushed the goggles up to her forehead. Archimedes might wonder if her tears were from the wind or the joy of flying again—but there was no difference. She looked over at him, found him watching her through the smoked lenses of his goggles.
“Do yo
u see how she can make you feel?” she shouted. “And if you care for her, there’s nowhere she can’t take you. So it doesn’t matter how she earns her money. If she can make you feel like this, you treat her like a lady.”
But, oh how she missed hers.
Archimedes remained with her above decks for hours, watching the plains run up into the great forests. Enormous sections had been cut through them, swaths of tree stumps with seedlings growing between. Knowing that stripping the land would leave it useless to future generations, the Horde had established a regulated system of harvesting and replanting over the centuries.
Yasmeen leaned in, called over the wind. “Does it seem that we’re heading toward Vienna?”
He hoped not. Nothing was there. But he couldn’t confirm it; Hassan hadn’t woken from his rest, after which they’d meet with Ollivier.
Shielding her eyes against the setting sun, she pointed west. In the distance, a Horde outpost rose out of the trees like a giant stone citadel.
“They are flying dangerously close,” Yasmeen said. “Who is their navigator?”
He shook his head. They hadn’t had a moment to talk to any of the crew, though several were on deck. Beneath the watchful eye of Captain Guillouet, they probably didn’t dare. Initially, Archimedes had wondered if Yasmeen remained above decks just to piss the man off, but no—she simply couldn’t bear to go below.
A large stand of old forest appeared below them. Archimedes pointed to a path cutting through it. “Is that a road?”
Yasmeen frowned. “I can’t recall seeing it before. Do you have a pair of biperspic lenses?”
She wouldn’t ask the captain or helmsmen for the spyglass, of course. “I do,” he said. “But they’re in my trunk.”
A bell rang. Yasmeen’s head jerked around, and she opened her mouth before snapping it closed. She caught his gaze, sighed. “It’s not my ship.”
He didn’t need to ask how difficult this was for her. She’d remarked many times on what the crew did right and what could be improved. Other times, she simply watched with frustration tugging at her lips, her fingers twitching and reaching for her belt. If he went below for the lenses, he’d probably serve her better by bringing a cigarillo—though she’d have a difficult time keeping one lit when she wasn’t behind the helm’s shield on the quarterdeck. That might irritate her more than the lack of smoke.
She turned her back on the deck to look over the side, as if determined not to be interested in the goings-on. The slowing of the propellers turned her back round.
“Are we stopping?”
Yasmeen looked to him as if he might have seen something while her back was turned, but he shook his head. The aviators had suddenly become more active, and the captain gave orders from the quarterdeck, but Archimedes couldn’t make out the words.
The engines quieted, blowing only steam now, venting the boilers with no propulsion. The aviators extended the spars in preparation for unfurling the sails.
“Oh, look at that.” Yasmeen’s amused voice brought him to the side again. She was looking over into a clearing below. “It’s Jasper Evans’s harvester. I can’t believe he made it all the way here.”
Archimedes believed it. Shaped like a combination of an armored coach and a scorpion, the machine rolled on tracks of steel plates rather than segmented legs, with giant shears in the front and shredders behind. Whether it met a forest or a mob of zombies, the harvester would tear through it . . . and must have torn through almost two hundred miles.
Five months ago, Jasper Evans had famously escaped the English navy, who had been firebombing his underground compound in Calais. He’d taken with him his ladylove, Dame Sawtooth—an airship pirate who was everything that her name suggested. Unlike the laborers in the occupied territories who had tools grafted to their bodies by the Horde, the Dame was a New Worlder who’d chosen her augmentation: a jaw full of sawblades instead of teeth.
He glanced back at the crew. Captain Guillouet had disappeared from the quarterdeck, probably gone below. Most of the aviators on deck were at the side of the ship, looking down at the harvester.
A light dusting of snow covered the machine. The round hatch at the top had been left open. Though Archimedes couldn’t believe that the two fugitives would be hiding inside, Yasmeen knew them better than he. He’d heard tales of Scarsdale and Captain Corsair drinking them under the table in the Port Fallow taverns, simply for the fun of listening to Evans’s soused ramblings.
“Would Evans and the Dame be in there?” he asked.
“No. But if he is, we’re complete fools to be hovering over the clearing like this. Jasper is cracked but he isn’t harmless.” Her gaze swept the edges of the clearing. “No zombies yet.”
“No. But they’ll come.” Archimedes nodded toward the four marines who’d climbed up to the main deck and were setting their rapid-fire guns near the bow. “Especially if they begin shooting.”
Zombies were attracted to noise and movement. When Archimedes was on the ground, he couldn’t always avoid moving, especially if he needed to get around. But avoiding any noise was critical to survival.
Unless he was running for his life. Then noise became optional and better than dying.
Hassan climbed out of the hatchway and onto the deck, rubbing the sleep from his face. He joined Archimedes and Yasmeen at the side and looked over. “Captain Guillouet tells me that this man and woman have a large reward on their capture, whether dead or alive.”
“That’s true,” Archimedes said. The English navy had sent notice to almost every town on the North Sea, spurring too many unprepared excursions into zombie-infested Europe. “It’s fifty livre each.”
“Shall we attempt it, then? I know it is not the sort of treasure we intended to find.”
Not a clockwork army, but still lucrative. He looked to Yasmeen, who was shaking her head.
“The Dame was barely alive when they escaped. She might have died during their journey, but he loves her. He wouldn’t leave her body down there to rot. And leaving the hatch open . . . if he’s alive, he wouldn’t have. If he died inside, he wouldn’t have.”
“He might have left it open while he was gathering provisions.” Archimedes was familiar with that tactic. “If he’s chased, he doesn’t have to take time to open it again.”
“But that also means that he hasn’t returned—so he’d be a zombie or lying dead out there somewhere.” She indicated the dense forest with a sweep of her hand. “But there’s also the way he left the harvester out in the open like this. It’s not like him. After the navy stole the steelcoat suits from him, he guards his inventions.”
Hassan nodded thoughtfully. “I agree, it sounds unlikely that either is inside. But would you be willing to take a closer look to be certain?”
Fifty or a hundred livre was a lot to pass up. “I’ll go down,” Archimedes said.
“Then I will, too.” Yasmeen met his eyes. “At least if Dame Sawtooth’s body is there, she’s easy to identify.”
Archimedes saw the crew moving toward the cargo lift and stopped them. “That makes too much noise. We’ll take the rope ladder.”
They unrolled it quickly. He glanced at Yasmeen, who was slipping off her long coat and heavy hat.
“I’ll go down first,” she said.
“But—”
“I’m faster. If any zombies do come, I can kill them before you do.” She glanced at the marines. “Tell them to hold off shooting.”
Almost faster than he could track, she went over the side. Not bothering with the rungs, she slid quickly down the ropes. Near the bottom, she flipped her legs out, spun through the air like an acrobat, and landed silently in a crouch. God, what an incredible woman. His own descent was embarrassingly slow by comparison.
He reached the ground. Snow crunched softly under his feet. The light was fading quickly, the edges of the clearing lost in shadows.
“Do you see anything?”
“No.” Her voice was as quiet as his. “Let’s go.”
She ran toward the machine. God, she was quick and light on her feet. She rounded the machine and paused. The oval door-sized hatch on this side was also open.
Unease slipped through him. Leaving the hatch open on top made sense—zombies didn’t climb. But they could walk right through the main hatch. “Would he do this?”
“No.” She studied the dark interior. “But I would wager anything that he’s set it to blow.”
“When’s the last time it snowed?” He judged the snow around them. “Two, three days ago? But there’s barely any on the machine, and no tracks. The wind might have cleaned it off, but either way, it hasn’t been sitting long.”
“He’s probably hiding around here somewhere and this is his warning system.” She met his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I trust my gut. If we go in there, we’re dead.”
Yasmeen agreed. They ran back to the ladder, climbed up.
Hassan met them at the top. “You didn’t go inside?”
“She’s rigged to blow,” Archimedes said.
One of the marines stepped forward. The leader of the group, Archimedes guessed. His boots polished to a high shine, each buckle of his jacket in a straight line, his brown beard precisely trimmed, he looked the sort that lived by details and never let imperfections pass by without correcting them—or destroying them.
“What sort of explosive? We’re trained to defuse several types of devices.”
“Including Jasper Evans’s devices?” He looked to Hassan. “You know me well. If there’s a chance to survive, there’s nothing I won’t try. I don’t believe there’s much of a chance here.”
After a brief moment, Hassan nodded. “All right, then. We will let it be.”
“But you didn’t see the device, Mr. Fox?” This from Captain Guillouet. “You only think that it’s there.”
“I didn’t see it,” Yasmeen said. “But I know Evans well enough to say he’d rather destroy the machine than let someone else have it.”
Archimedes gritted his teeth when the captain didn’t acknowledge her answer with so much as a glance. Christ. She had more experience and knowledge than half the men on that deck put together.
Heart of Steel Page 15
