Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City

by Meljean Brook

  “Bring me in closer, Newberry!”

  The balloon sank lower, barely ten feet above the Reacher’s lorry. A long, skeletal arm suddenly shot upward, almost caught their frame. Newberry shouted, hauled up.

  “Avoid those arms, constable!” she shouted.

  “It would have never occurred to me, sir!”

  Mina grinned, drew her opium gun, and took aim. No good. The balloon frame wasn’t steady enough, and the Reacher was weaving all over, avoiding the obstacles on the docks.

  “Closer, Newberry!”

  “Trying, sir!”

  The two-seater dipped lower again, just above the bed of the lorry. The Reacher’s broad back made a big target. Mina leaned over the side, fired.

  The dart sank into the Reacher’s shoulder. He slumped over. The lorry kept going—straight to the edge of the docks.

  Oh, blast. Mina scrambled up, threw her leg over the side of the frame, cursing as her skirts caught on the edge. “Hold steady, constable!”

  Worry filled Newberry’s shout. “Sir?”

  She leapt. Fabric ripped. The lorry rushed up to meet her, and she landed heavily, sprawled in the bed. Scrambling to her feet—one slipper lost, damn it—she climbed into the driver’s bench, hauled back the drive lever. Gears shrieked. Instead of stopping, the lorry’s engine whined and the vehicle accelerated. Smoking hells. She shoved the lever forward. Nothing. Where were the valves?

  Above, Newberry was shouting something. She couldn’t make it out over the rumbling and huffing. Dockworkers were shouting, too, sprinting out of the way. She looked up, calculated the distance to the water. Too close—and she couldn’t swim.

  Grabbing the Reacher’s shoulders, she dove off the side. She hit the boards hard, the breath smashing out of her. Shot full of opium, the Reacher probably wouldn’t even feel it. Lucky bastard.

  With a great splash, the lorry drove off into the water. She lifted her head to watch. Steam boiled up with a hiss, then a gurgle as it sank under.

  Newberry set the balloon down. He rushed to her. “Inspector?”

  Mina sat up. “I’m fine, constable.”

  “Yes, sir.” He stopped, blushed a fiery red. He averted his gaze. “Your skirts, sir.”

  Oh, she’d forgotten about the rip. Had she shown her ass all over the docks? That would make for an astonishing headline in the newssheets. Mina glanced down.

  The hem had torn, exposing her ankle.

  With a laugh, she got to her feet. She nudged the unconscious Wilbur the Reacher with her toe. “Let’s get him back to the ball.”

  * * *

  But there was no need, Mina quickly learned. Geordie stood beside Anne and Rhys when Newberry set the two-seater on the lawn. Beneath the tents, dancers twirled to music. Laughter floated across the gardens.

  Mina hopped from the two-seater, turned to Newberry. “Will you take the Reacher to the lockup at the Anglesey station, constable? It should only be five or six minutes by balloon.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Hurry back, then. I’m sure your wife would like a dance.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  She stepped away from the balloon and gave him room to lift into the air again, then turned to Rhys. “I want to tell you, before you read it in the newssheets—I was never scandalously unclothed, and it wasn’t that dangerous. I did jump from a two-seater onto a moving lorry, and I did jump from the lorry before it took a dunking, but you can see that I am quite unharmed aside from a few bruises and scrapes.”

  He didn’t take her word for it, but moved in and slipped his hands over her arms, down her back—and she supposed that with her hair a mess, her dress torn, and her slipper missing, he had reason to doubt it.

  She reached up, touched his jaw, hardened with tension. “Do you see?” she said softly. “Perfectly all right.”

  “Yes,” he said gruffly.

  She glanced past him to where Geordie stood with Anne. “And so the Blacksmith arrived?”

  “No.” He pressed a kiss into her palm. “I took care of it.”

  “How?” Had Anne found a flaw in the design after she’d left?

  “Go see,” he said, his eyes on hers. “And then I will meet you in the library.”

  Where he’d shag her. Heat coiled through Mina’s stomach. And even though it was the middle of a ball, why not? Looking at her, no one would be able to tell the difference. She was already mussed.

  “All right.” She looked to Anne. “Will you walk with me to the ballroom? I’d like to hear exactly what happened . . . and whether ‘taking care of it’ came from one of your ideas.”

  A mischievous grin lit the girl’s face. “It didn’t.”

  “Well, then.” Mina took her hand. “Show me.”

  * * *

  Mina burst through the library doors five minutes later, heart pounding. Rhys sat waiting at the edge of his desk, arms folded across his chest. Oh, but he was all right. She’d already known—she’d seen him—but now she had to see again, to make certain.

  She stalked across the room, her gaze searching his face, his eyes, down . . . was he sitting just a little stiffly? Was that a different jacket? Stopping in front of him, she lifted her hands to his face, desperate to know, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said, but it wasn’t enough. She stripped off his jacket, lifted the edge of his shirt. A raw red streak across his side took her breath, squeezed her heart into nothing.

  “Rhys,” she whispered.

  “It’s all right,” he said, catching her hands.

  She rose up, caught his lips with hers. With a groan, he opened his mouth to her kiss. His arms wrapped around her waist, lifted her against him. That wasn’t enough. She needed him inside her, needed to know he was all right, alive, hers. She shoved at his shoulders, pushed him back on the desk. She reached for the flap of his breeches, already stretched by the force of his erection.

  “Now,” she said against his lips. “Now.”

  There was no sheath. She didn’t care. His hot length filled her, and after a long, endless moment she was riding him, riding until her name on his lips was a hoarse cry, his control tenuous. She lifted and moved back, took him in her mouth, and didn’t let up until he shook, shouted her name.

  Then the desperation eased, and she crawled up and kissed him. His arms came around her, and his lips softened beneath hers, sweetening and lingering.

  Her breath was still ragged when she lifted her head. “It seems you are not the only one who must become accustomed to fear. I had no idea that love could be so terrifying.”

  “It is. God, it is.” His body shook with a laugh. With gentle fingers, he smoothed her hair from her face. His eyes never left hers. “I have many enemies, Mina. And I will make more. There will always be someone hoping to kill me—this is not even the first since we have been married.”

  What? “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” he said, and she could not stop her laugh. But she quieted when his expression darkened, his jaw set with determination. “But I swear to you now: When you come home to me, I will always be here waiting for you.”

  Her heart filled. Could she possibly ask for anything else?

  No.

  * * *

  There was no one else in the ballroom. Mina did not care that one half of it still smoked. She did not care that the music from outside was hardly loud enough to guide them. She did not care that strangers kept looking in through the doors, and that her feet were bare, and her dress torn.

  Rhys slid his hand around her waist, took her hand in his. She waited, but he did not start. He closed his eyes.

  “I don’t dare,” he said. “Even if you wore shoes, I could not.”

  “Then this.” Mina stepped onto his booted toes. “Or am I too heavy?”

  His kiss was answer enough. His hand tightened on her waist, and then she was swept around, his strong body moving against hers. Oh, but she could become used to this.

>   “We will do this again next year,” he said. “If anyone has cods enough to return.”

  Mina laughed. He sorely underestimated the fascination everyone held for him; the Wheel of Death would only strengthen that. “I think that next year we will not just have people coming out of mourning to attend, but coming back from the dead.”

  “Zombies?” He grinned when she shuddered. “We’ll kill them together.”

  Put that way, it didn’t sound so awful, after all. She laid her head against his shoulder. Yes, perhaps next year she would kill zombies with him. No matter what the future held, she knew that they would keep fighting to make this place better . . . whatever form that fight took.

  But they could continue that fight tomorrow. Tonight, they did not need to make anything better.

  Tonight, everything was perfect.

  * * *

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  Keep reading for a special excerpt from

  RIVETED

  by Meljean Brook

  Available September 2012 from Berkley Sensation

  Chapter One

  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 bleeding 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 openmouthed 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 onboard 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.