The Kraken King Part VII: The Kraken King and the Empress?s Eyes (A Novel of the Iron Seas)

by Meljean Brook

  “Yes. If the ambassador comes looking for us, he might be allowed through the air blockade. Let him know what is happening—and leave with him, if you can.”

  Her head bowed and her fists clenched, as if she fought against her protest. But she must have realized that escape would be easier if he was alone. Finally she said, “I will.”

  He drew her close and gently pressed his lips to her hair. “All will be well,” he said.

  It wasn’t a lie. Not completely. But he suspected that it would be very bad before it was better again.

  She nodded against his shoulder before drawing back, her face pale and mouth tight with determination. “I need my typesetting machine so that I can stay busy instead of worrying myself to madness.”

  “You’ll have it.”

  A guard already had the typesetter in hand when they returned to the chamber—so either Lady Nagamochi had a listening device or she already knew that much about Zenobia. Perhaps both.

  Zenobia clung to his hand until the last moment. When the chamber door closed behind her, Lady Nagamochi sat at the table, which she had turned so that they could face each other without putting their backs toward the automaton. The empress could look in at any time, Ariq understood.

  The captain lifted a steaming pot of tea from the hearth and poured for Ariq. “Please drink,” she said. “You’ll find it bitter.”

  Drugged. But he had little choice. Not with so many guards still here and Zenobia so vulnerable. “Will I sleep?”

  “It encourages truthfulness. And you will not be as quick or as strong.” She replaced the pot. “I had considered transferring you to a more suitable location for our discussion, but I recalled how easily you stole your brother from one of our prisons. So this tower will serve, instead. It is completely surrounded and the residents have been cleared from the other levels. You will find no escape and no help.”

  Their defenses were strong, but every wall could crumble. Every shield could be penetrated. It was only a matter of time.

  He would buy that time now. Ariq drained the teacup, containing his grimace. Bitter and foul, it burned in his stomach like acid.

  She refilled his cup. “Another. One usually suffices, but you are larger than most men.”

  And she probably wasn’t exactly certain how strong he was, or how quickly he could recover from the effects of the drug. Ariq didn’t know how quickly he would, either. He supposed he was about to find out. The burn in his stomach thickened and spread, warming the muscles in his limbs. Lifting the teacup was easy, but his fingers seemed dense and slow.

  “I don’t intend to lie,” he said. Truthfulness was not an issue. “I just don’t intend to tell you what you want to know.”

  “Perhaps we will persuade you.” She watched him down the second cup, and her gaze seemed to weigh his every movement. “Why will you not give us the machine’s location?”

  “Because I will not see it used to attack the people in the Golden Empire or my town.”

  “We would not use the machine against them.”

  Did she believe that? Ariq didn’t. “If your empress saw us as a threat, she would. How quickly did she send her fleet to the western coast?”

  “The fleet only looks for the marauders.”

  Ariq shook his head, then regretted it when the chamber began a lazy spin. “And if the fleet doesn’t find them, what would her next step have been? I have been told that to remove a splinter from a finger, she cuts off the arm. Do you disagree?”

  “No. Her majesty protects her people using whatever means necessary.”

  “Even if she is mistaken or misled?”

  “Her actions are always in the best interests of her people.”

  “So are mine.”

  “Then you must understand that we cannot allow this machine to fall into the hands of those who might be our enemies.”

  “And I cannot put it into the hands of those who might be my enemies or who will strike at my town the moment they perceive a threat—even if that threat is manufactured.” Especially if one day he might need the machine to defend his people against them.

  Lady Nagamochi cocked her head. “Are we enemies, Governor?”

  “We don’t have to be. You only need to leash Tatsukawa. I’ll stop Ghazan Bator and see that he pays for the lives taken by the marauders he hired. And the people in my town and in Nippon will continue on as peacefully as we have been.”

  She studied him silently for so long that Ariq suspected she saw the practicality of that compromise, and was trying to make it fit with her objectives. “And the Skybreaker?”

  Heavy as stone, his body burned like a kiln. “The machine will remain hidden, and I’ll see that no one ever takes possession of it.”

  “How will you guarantee that? You have said the admiral and general intended to use the threat of her majesty’s fleet to force you to reveal the location. Won’t others be able to force you?”

  “They can try.”

  The captain sighed. With a curl of her fingers, she gestured one of the guards nearer and took an etched steel box from him. She set it on the table. “Her majesty does not agree with many of the views her excellent mother held. Before her ascension to the throne, there were a pair of . . . unconventional scientists who served her venerated mother. Her majesty prefers that her guards and soldiers do not avail themselves of many of those scientists’ crueler inventions, but some of their creations have proved useful enough to keep.”

  The twins, Ariq realized. The den lords had been the pair in the former empress’s service—and had created whatever torturous device the box contained. It would likely be worse than what he’d expected.

  But he’d known pain would be coming. And though his head would not stop twirling, his mind descended into calm. The heaviness of his body seemed deeper now.

  She lifted the lid and sudden rage fired through Ariq before his calm enfolded it. Within the box, screw beetles skittered along the steel bottom, their sharp legs clicking faintly against the metal. Just as they’d used on his brother.

  My heart is iron.

  “You must be familiar with these, though not personally—and not exactly in this form,” she said. “In the prisons, the larvae are preferred, because they burrow through the flesh more slowly and the damage is not so extensive. But we do not have weeks or months to extract information from you now, and so I will use the adults, instead.”

  And deliver a speech intended to dishearten Ariq before the first one dug under his skin. Torture was not only pain, but the anticipation of it.

  My will is steel.

  “I am fortunate that the empress no longer allows the cruel inventions to be used,” he said dryly.

  She smiled but her gaze remained level on his. “You are.”

  He would show his gratitude some other day. “My brother knew nothing of my mother’s work or her loyalty to the rebellion. You tortured an innocent.”

  The captain inclined her head. “So we discovered. We chose the safety of many over mercy for one—just as you have done the unspeakable to protect your own when you threw a pair of honorable airmen into the ocean to feed megalodons and to cover your escape. When you shot arrows through your fellow rebels during your wife’s rescue.”

  The drug had made the room spin but it hadn’t scrambled his brains. She knew of the guards on Tatsukawa’s airship. She knew what had happened on the ironship.

  That only meant one thing. “You said the admiral was a friend to the throne, but you already suspected his betrayal. You have a spy close to him.”

  Lady Nagamochi didn’t confirm or deny it. She only said, “The Empress sees all.”

  “Then she knows there are no marauders on the western shore,” he said. “She knows there is no threat except from Tatsukawa and Ghazan Bator. Honor demands that she recall her fleet.”

  “Except that we have discovered a new threat in the Skybreaker. We will recall our fleet when the machine is no longer a danger to us.”

 
“It isn’t a danger to you now.”

  “Her majesty doesn’t agree.” With bare fingers, she gently pinched a beetle’s rounded back and lifted it from the box, turning its spiraling jaws toward Ariq. “They’re odd creatures. The mandibles are sharp but the beetle won’t chew through the skin. They’ll search for a softer point of entry—the eye, or the mouth, or any other orifice. But if they take that route their path is difficult to follow, and if they converge on the internal organs death is usually inevitable. We prefer to make an incision in the skin, so that they’ll burrow through the muscle and we can easily monitor their progress. It is extraordinarily painful. I have undergone it myself so that I would know how those people on whom I used the beetles were feeling.”

  She raised her sleeve to show him the thin scar on her forearm—the incision point, he realized—and the scarring and pitted depression near her inner elbow.

  “That is where I cut it out,” she said softly. “I lasted longer than most.”

  Ariq only had to last as long as it took for them to believe the answer he finally gave. My heart is iron.

  Lady Nagamochi’s eyes were dark with sympathy as she withdrew a small blade. “Where is the machine’s location, Governor?”

  My will is steel.

  His response was silence.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  For the first time since discovering that she’d been married, Zenobia watched the sunrise alone. It didn’t matter. Heavy gray clouds shrouded the horizon and there wasn’t much of a sunrise to see. So she stared blindly out over the dull water, her body sick and heavy from the fatigue of a sleepless night.

  No word from Ariq. More than twelve hours had passed since Lady Nagamochi had arrived. A full night of discussions, yet they still hadn’t reached a compromise? Gunships still hovered around the quarantine. Submersibles waited below. Guards stood at the entrances to every room and the courtyard, and she could see more moving on the lower balconies. The imperial guard hadn’t just taken over their quarters but the entire tower. What was happening?

  She didn’t know. The guards at the chamber doors had blocked her entry and refused to honor her requests to see her husband. They wouldn’t even deliver a message, and her worry had slowly escalated to terror.

  But it would be all right. Ariq had said it would be all right.

  Unless he’d just been telling her what he thought she needed to hear again.

  “Madame Fox?”

  Startled, Zenobia spun to find one of the female guards who’d been standing in front of Ariq’s chamber—one of the same guards who had denied her entry before. “Yes?”

  “The captain requests your presence.”

  Finally. But if the negotiations were over, why hadn’t Ariq come for her himself? She hurried down the courtyard, dread and relief pounding through her with every slam of her heart against her ribs.

  The doors stood partially open, with two guards just inside. She pushed past them, her gaze sweeping the chamber. After the dreary gray outside, the lamps seemed to bathe the room in a soft golden glow. The automaton was still on its throne. Lady Nagamochi was turning away from it, as if she’d just finished speaking to the empress. Ariq sat at the table with his back to her, his head bowed and a teacup in front of him. And—

  Blood stained the mat around him. So much blood.

  Oh, dear God. Zenobia froze. He wasn’t even wearing his tunic. Instead it had been draped over his shoulders as if to cover him. Which meant it had been off at some point.

  What had they done?

  The guards caught her as she bolted forward. She cried out, struggling against their grip.

  Ariq’s head shot up. “Don’t . . . hurt . . . her.”

  Each word had been slow and thick, as if he’d spoken them with great effort. Terror stretched her voice thin. “Ariq?”

  Lady Nagamochi faced her. Crimson stained her white sash. “Madame Fox—”

  “What have you done?”

  “—you have just provoked your husband’s first words and emotional response since we began our questioning,” the captain continued easily, ignoring her shout. “I apparently should have brought you in sooner. But first, we have questions for you.”

  Questions. Rage and horror boiled inside her, filling her eyes with hot tears. Everything blurred as the guards urged her forward. Fiercely she blinked them away, her throat burning and tight, and her stomach roiling.

  They wanted the machine. Ariq apparently hadn’t told them anything.

  Zenobia wouldn’t either. Not that she knew anything, but God help her, she wouldn’t say a word either.

  And Ariq— Oh, God. Oh, God. She cried out in helpless anguish as the guards marched her past the table, letting her see him from the front for the first time. Her hands flew to her mouth to hold in her sobs.

  His dark gaze rose to meet hers, his eyes glazed with pain. “Don’t . . . cry.”

  What else could she do? Blood streaked his bare skin and matted his hair. And she’d never seen him sit like this, with his shoulders slumped and his forearms resting heavily on the table, as if he barely had strength enough to hold himself up.

  His left fist suddenly clenched. Her gaze dropped to hand and sheer horror locked her chest. Something was squirming under his skin, bulging like a small wriggling stone on the back of his wrist. Another was burrowed into his right pectoral—and even as she watched, the fabric covering his right shoulder seemed to shift as if a mouse was moving beneath it.

  “It isn’t as terrible as it appears,” Lady Nagamochi said, then spoke in Nipponese to one of the guards before lifting the lid of a steel box. The guard took Ariq’s wrists and drew them behind his back.

  Ariq didn’t—or couldn’t—offer any resistance.

  “His flesh heals even more quickly than we anticipated. So we’ve been forced to make additional incisions and use additional beetles.”

  Beetles? Zenobia’s stomach lurched into her throat. “Take them out,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Soon. You need to tell us what you know of the machine first.”

  “I don’t know where it is!”

  “Then tell us everything you do know.”

  “No.”

  Steel glinted in the captain’s hand. A horizontal slice opened up on Ariq’s cheek, spilling blood down his jaw. Zenobia screamed and threw her weight forward. The guards’ grip didn’t slip.

  The captain placed the beetle against the cut. “This is fitting, I think. The only way to kill a kraken is by spearing its eye. This beetle will burrow in the same direction—and after it takes your husband’s eye, it will drill into his brain.”

  Sour bile filled Zenobia’s mouth. Desperately, she choked out, “Don’t—!”

  Lady Nagamochi did. The cut widened and split as the beetle began to screw beneath Ariq’s skin. His jaw clenched, his eyelids squeezing shut, and Zenobia screamed again, pleading, because she didn’t know anything, and the beetle squirmed up over his cheekbone.

  The captain pinched the beetle through his skin, stopping it just beneath Ariq’s eye. “Tell me what you do know. You’re an observant woman, Madame Fox. I don’t believe you haven’t learned anything about the machine.”

  “I . . . I don’t—” She could hardly form a word past her terrified sobs. “His father ordered it made. He wanted to tear the gods from the sky.”

  “Go on.”

  “Ariq’s mother knew where it was because she was a spy and she shared his bed.” And none of this mattered. It wouldn’t be anything the empress or Lady Nagamochi probably already hadn’t guessed. Ariq’s eyes opened and his gaze held hers, and she didn’t see any dismay there—only pain. “Most of the people who know where it was died when his father was assassinated.”

  “What else?”

  God. Desperately she wracked her brain. “It’s taller than this tower. Ariq said that if it passed our balcony we would still only see its base.”

  Lady Nagamochi hadn’t known that. She blinked and appeared doubtful for
a moment before nodding. “Anything more?”

  Zenobia hesitated.

  The captain released the beetle.

  “No! I don’t know!” she cried. “It’s only a guess.”

  Lady Nagamochi pinched the beetle again. “You know where it is?”

  “No.” Though God help her, if Zenobia really thought about it, she could probably guess that, too. “I think it’s made of mechanical flesh.”

  Ariq stiffened. He hadn’t protested any of the other information she’d given—but he probably hadn’t realized she knew this.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. But it’s over thirty years old. What machine is going to last so long, especially one neglected and hidden? What machine could be so huge yet not be crushed by its own weight? It must be at least partially constructed of mechanical flesh because that doesn’t corrode and it won’t buckle. And you said that it would burn a path to the Horde’s royal city. It doesn’t matter how big it is; any army could destroy a normal machine. One made of mechanical flesh would be almost unstoppable. I’ve heard what your uncle’s personal guard can do, but she’s just the size of a woman. A machine like that could level mountains.”

  “A royal guard—one of the gan tsetseg? Temur Agha’s guard?” When Zenobia nodded, Lady Nagamochi watched her for a long moment. “And you don’t know where the machine is?”

  “No! I swear. Please.”

  The captain’s blade flashed again, piercing the skin stretched tautly over the beetle’s back as if she were lancing a boil. She plucked out the insect and more blood poured down Ariq’s cheek.

  But he would live. He would live. Crying from sheer relief, Zenobia dropped her face into her hands.

  “Sit at the table, Madame Fox,” Lady Nagamochi said, and must have repeated the order to the guards. They marched her to the table and urged her down to the mat, facing Ariq. The guard holding his wrists released him, and Zenobia gripped his right hand across the table, clinging tight.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered brokenly.