Heart of Steel
Page 27
Hassan shook his head. “No, it is only the symbol.”
“But when the signal suddenly stops, and they are flooded with emotion . . .” He trailed off as Hassan’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“The signal is gone. It has been these past five years.”
Next to him, Yasmeen dropped her fork. She put her elbows on the table, her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.
Was this a joke? Archimedes stared at him. “Five years?”
“Yes. Temür reduced the signal gradually so that we wouldn’t have the same panic. A period of several years at reduced strength, then gone altogether for the past five.” Hassan gave him a strange look, as if suddenly wondering if he was talking to an idiot. Archimedes began to wonder, too. “Those towers are part of the reason the rebellion gathered such support. Why would Temür keep it on after he secured the governorship?”
“Why is the tower still up?”
“It is built on part of an old minaret, a site that many consider a tie to their past and the old religion—something from before the Horde. He did not want to antagonize the recent converts.”
“But you will?”
“It needs to fall,” Hassan said. “It is an old and valuable minaret, but Rabat would be stronger if we built something new in its place, together.”
Not a joke, then. Yasmeen lifted her face from her hands, wiping her eyes. “Oh, damn. I can barely even sit,” she cried, and then burst into laughter again, not bothering to quiet it, this time.
The older man’s eyes were bright with laughter, darting from Yasmeen to Archimedes as if he was enjoying the hilarity without fully comprehending what had happened. Then his head tilted back, as if lifted by realization. “Ah, I see. He thought the tower would affect him.”
Christ. “You talked of blowing it up, just like the Iron Duke had in England.”
“And I see that you ran full bore with the assumptions you made from that, as per usual,” Hassan said, and his laugh echoed in his air tank, reverberating through the cabin. “You fear more, you dare more—and now you love more. It will not be taken away from you in Rabat. Do you know, it was seeing what happened to you that prompted Temür to turn off the signal earlier than he intended?”
Yasmeen’s brows rose. “Truly?”
“Yes. He’d always intended to power it down, but very gradually—over a generation, perhaps. We had heard of England and did not want a repeat of that. But when Wolfram was shot, when we saw the change in him after the infection . . .” He shook his head. “We have seen many who have lived beneath the tower, and then were released from it. The reaction of most warned us to go slowly. There was too much fear, too much wildness. But Wolfram was one of the first we knew who had been free, and then yoked by the tower. It was devastating. Even I felt the horror of it, and I was still under the tower’s suppression. When Temür saw that bravery itself was squashed, he could not bear the thought that there was a city of brave souls, all squashed in the same manner.”
“Temür Agha,” Yasmeen repeated. “The same man who literally squashed a city of brave souls?”
Hassan frowned at her. “You break a man’s neck with no regret before he carried out his intended rape, and yet you let the man who slaughtered your crew choose his own method of death. I love a man like a brother, yet I also know that the best thing for the city I love is to remove that man from power. We are none of us so easy to peg.”
“I am,” Archimedes said.
“You are the worst of us,” Yasmeen said. “Everything you seek, every fear, every thrill, is something that is also gone like”—she lifted her fingers, snap!snap!snap!—“Done so quickly, and you run off to find the next. But you seek love, intend to run to heartbreak, and then you stick with love. You do not regret losing war machines that would lead to too many deaths, and then kill two marines following orders on their ship with barely a blink.”
Mortally wounded, he flattened his hand over his chest. “I had to rescue my beautiful wife.”
“So you did.” She gave him a laughing look from beneath her lashes. “Perhaps next time I’ll wait and let you break a neck.”
He looked to Hassan. “Do you see? She makes offers like that. It would be impossible to fall out of love.”
Chapter Fifteen
Two Horde outposts guarded each side of the mouth of the Mediterranean, overlooking the narrow entrance to the sea. Unlike a sailing ship, Yasmeen could detour around the outposts, taking a southern route directly over land to Rabat. A jewel of a city with a river running through its heart and nestled between the wall and the ocean, there was only one port that all airships and sailing vessels used—and it was under siege.
A fleet of French ships patrolled the waters, supported by two airships overhead. No airships were tethered at the port. They must have let all of the merchants leave, but no one through the blockade.
But unlike most of the airships, Yasmeen wasn’t coming in from the west. She could approach the city from the eastern walled side before they could intercept her . . . though that offered its own dangers, and not only from the French fleet.
At the port, four of Temür’s war machines stood at the edge of the sea, great hulking colossusi guarding the city. Two vaguely resembled elephants, with enormous bodies supported by sturdy legs, and at the front, a bank of long cannons that could be manipulated, elongated to defend at a distance or contracted to fire a barrage up close. The other two were equally bulky and enormous, like an octopus brought out of the water—each tentacle working like a giant grapnel, pulling down airships within range. All four machines had firebomb launching stations, a battery of self-reloading cannons, rapid-fire guns that could be manned from inside or from one of the stations connected by ladders and lifts surrounding the outside. Though at rest, with steam drifting lazily from the vents, they would be ready to stoke at a moment’s notice, pushing them into lumbering mobility and engaging the electrical rail guns—and even with boilers cold, could still use all of its weapons.
Manned by a crew of thirty men, protected by the thick steel hide, a single one of the machines could devastate a city—or a fleet of ships that came into range of its firebombs.
But Temür had not posted them only on the seaside. Two more machines stood at the wall, overlooking the desert. Slightly shorter than the machines at the port, but no less dangerous, they were shaped almost like a Buddha sitting atop a giant mobile chamber that rolled on plated tracks. A body squat and wide housed the bulk of the weaponry, and it was so large that if it had hands instead of two grapnel arms that could easily pull them down into the zombie-infested desert, Ceres would have settled comfortably into its palm.
On the quarterdeck, Yasmeen lowered her spyglass and told the aviator at the helm, “Take her in directly between those machines, at the height of its shoulder. Follow the path of the river into the city.”
“Ma’am? Between the machines?”
“Yes.”
Archimedes said, too softly for anyone to hear, “Are we out of the tentacles’ range?”
“No.” She glanced at him. “No one has begun shooting yet. They likely won’t start for a sugar sloop.”
“Even one with a Huguenot cross emblazoned on her balloon?”
A French symbol. That was unfortunate. “Do you think your luck is still holding up?”
“Well enough.”
Hassan came onto the quarterdeck, peering across the city to the water in the distance. “So they have begun a siege.”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Let me go to the bow so that they will see that I am aboard.”
After sharing a glance with Yasmeen, Archimedes went with him. Yasmeen ordered the engines cut, and slowly, they sailed toward the city.
The great machines rose on each side. Though far enough away that Yasmeen couldn’t have hit them with a thrown rock, their sheer size made it seem they passed at an arm’s length.
And it was, she supposed. The machine’s arm’s length.
&nbs
p; A shout rose from the starboard bow. And there she was. On a path from the city wall to the machine, zombies began to fall in the wake of a small figure robed in black. Moving with astonishing speed, Nasrin cleared the half mile between the wall and the machine’s squat base in the space of ten breaths. Leaping up, she caught the edge of a ladder with gray fingers, flipped up onto the rolling tracks. She climbed to the torso, the shoulders, simply pushing with a foot, a hand, and launching herself higher with each push, so swiftly that she all but flew to the machine’s shoulder.
The crew looked to Yasmeen, wild-eyed, as if waiting for her order. A few had started toward the gun stations.
“Attention!” she shouted. “A lady boards us. You will treat her as such. If you cannot stand as gentlemen, leave this deck.”
Or die.
On the machine’s shoulder, Nasrin flicked her wrist. Several of the men cried out as her hand detached and streaked toward them, trailing thin chains of mechanical flesh. Disembodied gray fingers gripped the gunwale. Nasrin leapt, the chain winding swiftly back into her arm. Within moments, the seam of her wrist sealed, and she climbed over the side of the ship with infinite grace. Her gaze touched Yasmeen, held for a long second, before moving to the men at the bow.
“Hassan, my friend,” she said in Arabic, her voice like honey in spiced tea. “Have you been treated well? You appear sickly, as I have never seen you before.”
Yasmeen curled her fingers to hide the trembling of her hands. The fate of this entire crew likely rested on his answers.
“Very well, Nasrin. The food and cold climes have not agreed with me.”
“And are these friends?”
“Yes. Very good friends to me.”
“And are you still friend to us?”
“Always. To Temür and to Rabat.”
“I am pleased to hear that, Hassan.” Her gaze moved to Archimedes. “Mr. Gunther-Baptiste. It is also good to see you in full, rather than peering at me through a peephole in a crate.”
“You must forgive me,” he said, grinning. “In the New World, men are taught that peepholes are the only proper way to catch a glimpse of a beautiful woman.”
“Then you must have spent every moment aboard looking through a peephole.” She looked to Yasmeen. “Is he yours, sister?”
“Every man aboard is, Lady Nasrin.”
“Then I will call every man aboard a friend. You may enter our city without fear.” On silent feet, she came up to the quarterdeck. “I will show you where to tether your ship. Will you tolerate the company of an old woman while we fly?”
Yasmeen would, gladly—but even if she wouldn’t, it wasn’t as if she had a choice.
Rabat was unlike any city she’d seen before. Though many things were the same—the smoke pouring from the factories along the walls and beside the sea, streets crowded with steam-powered vehicles and pedal-carts, people walking between them, it was also lusher than she expected, even with the presence of the river. As they flew over, there was hardly a building that did not have a garden on its flat roof. Goats and chickens were plentiful.
“If they plan to starve you out,” Yasmeen said, “it will take awhile.”
“Yes,” Nasrin said. “Supplies from the east are not as plentiful, and Temür did not know if we could make friends with the west. So we prepared to have no friends at all. We have repurposed two of the salt factories into water factories to ease the burden on the river, and have spent years laying the pipes that bring fresh water to every part of the city.”
“It is incredible.”
“It has been much work, but well worth it.”
But Nasrin did not smile in full, and her eyes softened as her gaze swept over the city—almost with longing, Yasmeen thought. A city that wasn’t fully hers.
She pointed to a sandstone fortress near the sea. Tall walls surrounded a palace and the great tower, made of red stone and rising tall over the city, impossible to miss. One only had to glance that way, and their vision would be filled with that tower. It looked indestructible, immovable, imposing.
Perhaps Hassan was right. Perhaps such a thing would serve as a constant reminder . . . and even powered down, the fear that it might be turned back on.
“Come in over there,” Nasrin said. “Near the kasbah wall, you may tether your ship.”
Near a large section of the city under tents and stalls. “Is that a marketplace?” Yasmeen asked.
“Yes. But please understand—I know that some of the ports to the north are rough, Captain, especially as regards to the treatment of women. I see that there are no women on your crew, and so your men cannot have much practice with them. I ask that, unless necessary, they remain aboard the ship.”
Yasmeen flushed. Because there were no women aboard, Nasrin thought that Yasmeen could not control her crew or depend on them to behave. But she had never been one to offer excuses. “Our supplies have spoiled along the way. If I may send my steward and one other man to restock them, it would be greatly appreciated. I will remind them to be gentlemen.”
“That would be allowed. If they do not speak the language, I will be happy to send a guide to them, so that they might find everything more easily.”
And keep an eye on them. Though Yasmeen bristled, in truth, she knew little of the crew’s behavior at port except for what she’d seen in the Charging Bull.
To avoid any trouble at all, an escort might be a very fine idea. “Thank you, Lady Nasrin.”
“Very good. Perhaps you would like to speak with your steward now, while I go and properly greet Hassan. As soon as you have tethered, perhaps you and Mr. Gunther-Baptiste would accompany me to the kasbah.”
Such polite orders from a woman who had decided that Yasmeen was a complete barbarian. “We will.”
The heat was welcome after so much cold. Though not sweltering, as he’d experienced it before in Rabat, warm enough to soak into skin and bones. He expected Yasmeen to lift her face to the sun after they came down the cargo lift and climbed up into the crawler’s box, but the expression that he had seen aboard Ceres as she’d spoken to Nasrin—a tight combination of embarrassment, frustration—had given way to the cool amusement that tried to express everything was going her way.
On the padded seat bench behind Hassan and Nasrin, he gave her a searching glance. She met his eyes, gave a tiny shake of her head.
Well, they were not on her decks. He slid his hand into hers, offered the little support he could, and her amusement softened and warmed.
The crawler rumbled lightly and lifted its body from the ground on segmented legs. On its back, their small box of cushioned benches rose too, high enough that the steamcarts and wagons they passed would not belch into their faces. The rounded back allowed them to see over the driver, seated at the crawler’s head, offering a perfect view of the green of the city, the blue of the sea—with the war machines and dreadnoughts the only marring.
Temür had rebuilt this into an amazing city. When last he’d been here, all had been yellow from the desert, a city baked and a people who simply lived and worked. But now, almost all of the buildings had been painted in whites and blues, and trees sheltered the streets from the sun. The people no longer looked so downtrodden. Several called up to Hassan with warmth. But on every face, there was still the wary glance, the tight pinch of a mouth—only the children playing seemed to lack it.
The gates in the kasbah walls were open, and Archimedes saw no guards. The enormous tower filled up the corner of the courtyard on Archimedes’ right. A fountain spilled water on their left. Farther inside, only two guards stood at the palace entrance, and those not heavily armed—and not a single man wore the Horde’s walking suit, that machine of steam and steel that could crush a body beneath its massive feet. A masjid had been built at the end of the courtyard, a simple dome and four minarets. He caught Yasmeen’s eye. Her small nod said that she thought the same thing: Temür had been working very hard to bring the people to him. Judging by the small number who milled about, th
ey hadn’t been coming.
Nasrin turned in her seat. “I have forgotten to tell you, Mr. Gunther-Baptiste—I have greatly enjoyed your stories.”
He was surprised. “You’ve read them?”
“Of course. We have many of the publications from the New World sent to us, and Temür and I have long followed the adventures of Archimedes Fox. We have missed a few chapters, however.”
Yasmeen frowned. “You knew he was also Archimedes?”
“Yes. We were not certain at first, but in every story, a new brightly colored waistcoat for Mr. Fox was faithfully described as if dictated.” Her laugh was delicate, the ringing of a silver bell. “We knew he could not be anyone else.”
“I thought he didn’t know,” Archimedes said. “That the assassins only found me by luck—there were so few.”
“Oh, no. Those are men who Temür deemed incompetent, but for one reason or another, it would have been . . . delicate, to dispose of them. So he sent them to find you, knowing they would not be returning.”
Taken aback, Archimedes shook his head. “That’s oddly flattering.”
Yasmeen said, “So it wasn’t regarding Archimedes’ debt?”
Nasrin’s brows lifted. “Archimedes? You use that name at all times now?”
“Yes,” he confirmed.
Her gaze slipped to Yasmeen. “And you are Captain Fox. I thought you were untethered.”
Untethered? After a second, Archimedes understood. Nasrin’s life was dependent upon Temür’s continuing; she wondered if Yasmeen’s life was tethered to his in the same way.
“She’s not,” he said, but Yasmeen added, “I might as well be,” and he couldn’t speak again immediately, so great was the emotion crushing his chest. She had not even said that she loved him yet, not in as many words. But now she declared, so very simply, that his death would be like her own.
It wouldn’t be—and thank God for it, because that meant if he was ever killed, she would likely go on a tear of vengeance unlike the world had ever seen.