Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles

by Zoë Archer

  His laugh was low, but genuine. “Just so.” Yet it faded all too soon. “Their lands were being taken away, the Indians. The American government made promises. Worthless promises.”

  “Did the ones you saw get the help they sought?”

  “No idea. Doubt it, though,” he added with a shrug. “The Americans might not have telumium, but they do have soya fields.”

  “Which means they have tetrol fuel.”

  “France won’t risk breaking its trade alliance with the United States for the Indians’ sake.”

  Her mouth tightened. “A common story,” she muttered bitterly. “Progress and politics mercilessly move onward. And the price? Whole civilizations and cultures are being destroyed. Wiped clean from the slate of history.”

  “That makes you angry.”

  “Not angry—sad.” She paused. “No, I’m angry, too. That any one culture decides it’s more valuable than another, or that any human being considers itself superior to someone else. Think of everything that’s being lost because of it!” She paced. “Vehicles that choke the air with smoke, and flying machines engineered strictly for war and destruction. How’s any of that made the world a better place?”

  Too late she realized how utterly insensitive her words must sound to him, the man who powered the flying machine.

  She whirled to face him. “Oh, God, I didn’t mean—”

  “You meant it.” He walked slowly toward her, the quartz light carving him into severe angles.

  “I suppose I did.” She lifted her chin to meet his gaze. “I do mean it. Sometimes I feel that technology ennobles humanity, and other times … most times, I feel it strips away the best part of us.” She looked away, then back to him. “I imagine that must lower your opinion of me.”

  “Here I believed you didn’t care what I thought of you.” Humor tinged his voice. “If it helps you at all, I think you’re right.”

  She gaped at him. “You do?”

  “Partially right. Won’t say what part, though. Can’t make it easy on you.” Reaching out, he playfully tugged on the end of her braid.

  Just a quick, casual movement, that little tug, yet it made her heart beat a bit faster. It spoke of a growing intimacy, one she feared. And wanted.

  “Have faith, Captain Denisov, that I am never at ease around you.” Indeed, the more they spoke, talking of family, of beliefs, the more uncomfortable she became. Her awareness of him as a man only increased, as did a nascent, gleaming attraction. His outsized masculine appeal couldn’t be denied, and there was something dreadfully alluring about a scoundrel that called to a usually well-behaved academic such as she. Made her wonder what kind of wildness within herself she could discover—with his expert assistance.

  Worse, she was coming to know more of the man behind the telumium. She rather liked him.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. It shouldn’t happen. Yet, like so much of life, things had a way of slipping out of one’s control, no matter how hard one struggled to keep hold.

  “A shame,” he murmured. “I’d like you to be relaxed around me.”

  A half smile teased his lips, and she wanted to trace her fingers along their intriguing curves. It had to be the two glasses of vodka she’d imbibed that made her want to do something so outrageous. No—she’d always had a strong tolerance for spirits. Her wits were as sharp as ever. This desire came from intoxication, but not from alcohol.

  Somehow, the distance between them diminished, but whether it was because he drew nearer to her, or because she’d stepped closer to him, she couldn’t tell. Whatever pulled them together, it seemed its own force, incapable of being reasoned with or neatly compartmentalized.

  Danger from outside enemies had passed, for now. They were here, together, in his stateroom. The glow of the quartz lamp made the space seem small, intimate. Possibility and recklessness thickened the air.

  Heat surrounded her, and the scent of hot metal. “Letting my guard down around you wouldn’t be wise,” she said, breathless.

  “Most pleasure isn’t wise, yet we crave it.” His gaze went heavy-lidded. Each word he spoke strummed through her in low, sonorous ripples.

  “We do.”

  She couldn’t stop herself. She lifted her hands and ran them up his chest, over the silk and wool of his waistcoat, feeling the fabric, the buckles, and the solid form of his torso beneath. He hissed in a breath as her hands traveled higher, to his exposed flesh above the vee of his waistcoat. He was impossibly firm under her palms. Yet through the telumium, she felt his heart beating furiously—as hers did.

  A growl sounded deep in his chest. His expression tightened. He brought his own hands up, cupping one around the back of her neck, the other curving at her waist. Her eyes drifted shut from the feel of their bare skin touching. He was so warm, she felt as though she melted.

  His head lowered. At the same time, she rose up on her toes. Bringing their bodies flush against each other. She thought she’d never felt anything as hard and unyielding as his body. Then their mouths met, and everything became satiny and sleek.

  You shouldn’t be doing this, her mind shouted.

  I know and I don’t care, her body shouted back.

  His kiss was … overwhelming. Not in terms of physical force—his lips against hers were surprisingly tender. At first. But she sank into the kiss, and together they became resolute, determined to taste and know each other. Their boldness increased from breath to breath. His mouth was intent on seducing hers. He was audacious, then sensuous, then gentle, and back again. This was a man who knew the power of a kiss, who treated it not as a precursor to other pleasures, but as the pleasure itself.

  It resonated everywhere in her. Her mouth was merely the conduit. She felt his kiss in her breasts, between her legs, all the places she might expect would respond to a devastating kiss. But also in the arches of her feet. In the crook of her elbows. Behind her eyelids. Not one part of her went unaffected.

  His hands stayed precisely where they were, one covering her neck, the other at her waist. His fingers tightened, but only slightly. He was holding himself back, and for some reason, that touched her. That he could be so protective. A Man O’ War’s strength was legendary, but he wouldn’t use it on her. He wouldn’t hurt her.

  Still, he pressed her closer, kissing her with growing hunger. Her own built to a towering height. She needed this, needed him. Needed to forget everything but the pure heat of desire.

  Impossible. She couldn’t allow herself that indulgence. Not now. Not with this man. Not with the secret weight on her conscience.

  She made a pained sound, and ended the kiss. It was surprisingly easy to break from his hold, and she realized again how careful he’d been with her. Damn it.

  “I hurt you,” he said, voice rough with self-recrimination. His hands dropped to his sides, and he scowled fiercely.

  “Not a single bruise. It was … I’ve never had a kiss like that.” She backed toward the door. “I must get back to my cabin.”

  “Stay.” His words were rumbled seduction. “It’s good between us. That kiss was just the beginning.”

  A belated drunkenness seemed to hit her. Her legs were unstable, and when she shook her head, she did so wildly. “Have to go.” She stumbled for the door.

  When he appeared beside her, she started. But it was herself she feared, not him.

  “Take this.” He thrust the quartz lamp into her hand. “Don’t want you out there losing your bearings in the dark.”

  She barely managed a thanks before opening the door and lurching into the passageway. With a sense of dreamlike unreality, she navigated her way back to her cabin. Once inside, she sank down onto her cot.

  He’d warned her about going astray, but it was too late.

  I’m already lost.

  MIKHAIL WASN’T SURPRISED that Daphne Carlisle kept herself scarce for the rest of the night and most of the following day. Much as she’d enjoyed the kiss—and participated eagerly—something about it had upset he
r. Maybe she considered the idea of going to bed with a mercenary distasteful, when she herself seemed to possess such high scruples.

  But, damn, she didn’t kiss him like a high-minded woman.

  He now stood on the forecastle, watching the approaching Egyptian coastline. The ship cruised at half a mile up.

  But he barely saw the shore. His thoughts and body remembered the taste of her, the feel of her. The glittering flame she became when finally allowing herself to burn brightly. His hands tingled, recalling the feel of her slim but soft curves, and his cock stirred with memories of her hips pressed tight to his.

  More than the desire between them, there was a pull stronger than just physical need. She didn’t know the facts of what he’d done to go rogue, though he’d made it clear he deserved censure. No condemnation in her gaze, however. Whatever she thought of him, she spoke to him as though he wasn’t a technologically enhanced soldier of fortune, and she wasn’t a stiff-backed academic. As if they were simply a woman and a man. Equals.

  It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed a woman’s company so much, even out of bed. But if he got her into bed … They’d set the skies to burning, the air thick with smoke from the fire they created between them.

  He gritted his teeth. Later. He’d consider those delicious possibilities later. Right now, the ship was about to make landfall, a critical juncture at this point in the voyage.

  “Fetch Miss Carlisle,” he said to a crewman. “And have her bring her strongbox.”

  The crewman hurried off to obey the order. She appeared a few minutes later, carrying not only the strongbox, but a sharp sense of caution. In the bright light of the eastern Mediterranean sun, she looked more severe, shadows of fatigue ringing her eyes. She hadn’t slept well. Because of him?

  “We cannot be at Medinat al-Kadib yet,” she said without preamble.

  “Half day from here.”

  “Then there’s no need for me to bring this”—she hefted the strongbox—“to you.”

  “There’s every need.” He nodded toward the coastline, and its fringe of palm trees. “We’re nearly in the Shepherdess’s territory. She’s the eyes of this part of the sea. Knows about everyone coming in and going out.”

  Miss Carlisle frowned. “Does she have her own airship?”

  “That’d be impossible, since there are no female Man O’ Wars, and she doesn’t have a rogue one in her employ.” He pointed at a small shape half a mile distant from the ship. “There, and there. Autonomously controlled observation dirigibles.”

  “No one pilots them?”

  “Not a soul. All day and night, they follow prescribed patrol patterns.”

  “They can’t run continuously.”

  “Every now and then they land to be rewound. Then, it’s back on patrol. The Shepherdess has them all over the coast. Their lenses send visual data to the ground, and she collects it all on specially engineered cinemagraph screens.”

  Her eyes widened. “I had no idea such a thing was possible.”

  He grinned. “Clever thinkers they have out in this part of the world.”

  “Arabic inventors are more advanced than the ones in Europe, but this goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Self-propelled surveillance dirigibles.” She squinted at one of the small craft.

  Her caution had been forgotten in the discovery of the Shepherdess’s mechanical spies, and it troubled him how her soft smile of wonderment echoed in warm pulses in his chest.

  But he had to be pragmatic, especially at this critical juncture of the voyage.

  “Astonishing, yes,” he said. “Regular old human spies are on the ground, too. Know why she’s called the Shepherdess?”

  “I haven’t the smallest idea.”

  “She’s not a shepherdess of a flock, not even of people. Information is what she herds. Anyone clamoring to get into the Arabian Peninsula has to pay the Shepherdess. They pay for intelligence about who else might be lurking around the area. And they pay to keep her quiet about their own presence.”

  Miss Carlisle nodded. “Baksheesh. A common and venerable practice in these parts.” She raised a brow. “But if the Shepherdess is paid to be silent about our presence here, what’s to say she won’t stay mute on the possibility of other threats in the area? The airspace could be thick with enemies who’ve also paid her. She could be playing everyone for fools, and collect as much baksheesh as she likes.”

  He had to appreciate how quickly her mind moved to devious schemes. “Pay her enough, we get the most reliable information. That’s why I had you bring up this.” He rapped a knuckle against the strongbox. “Nothing ensures security and intelligence like a bar of gold.”

  She took a step back, cradling the strongbox against her chest. Her arms shook with the effort of holding the heavy container, but she didn’t loosen her hold. “Use your own gold.”

  “That is my gold,” he pointed out. Kiss or no kiss, he was in the business of protecting himself and his crew, and earning profit. “Here or in Medinat al-Kadib, it’s mine. And it’s what I’m going to use to pay the Shepherdess.”

  “There has to be something else on this ship that can serve the same purpose.”

  “Nothing as valuable as what you’ve got there.” He made an impatient gesture. “Hand it over.”

  She scowled, but clearly saw that there was no winning this argument. Crouching, she set the strongbox down onto the planks and entered the combination. It unlocked with a hiss. She lifted the lid, shielding the contents from his sight.

  All the color drained from her face, turning her white as ash, with her freckles standing out like scars. Her breathing stopped. For a moment, Mikhail actually thought she might be sick, or faint.

  “Oh, God,” she croaked. “Too soon.”

  His first thought was that she’d been struck by air madness, a rare ailment that briefly robbed airgoing travelers of their senses. But they hadn’t been flying for more than a few days, not long enough for her to succumb to that sickness.

  Concerned, he stepped closer. And saw the interior of the strongbox.

  The ingots of gold were gone. In their place were bars of clay.

  “The hell?” he growled. Picking up one of the bars, he saw it was exactly the same shape as an ingot of gold. Its heft wasn’t the same, though. With one hand, he snapped the bar in half. Dried clay sifted away on the wind. Particles caught in her hair and dusted her clothing. The rest disappeared, blown out to sea.

  He’d given express orders to his crew not to go into Daphne Carlisle’s cabin, nor disturb any of her belongings. Including the strongbox. He didn’t doubt that for someone like Akua, breaking the code for the combination lock was as easy as cracking a walnut. But Akua prided himself on not just his mental skill, but his scrupulous integrity. The chief engineer would never break into Miss Carlisle’s strongbox, steal the gold, and replace it with bars of clay.

  The answer was as obvious as the freckles on her chalky face. She’d fooled Mikhail.

  “How’d you do it?”

  She tore her horrified gaze from the strongbox to him. Slowly, she rose. He watched her silently debate her different options. Lie to him? Jump overboard and hope she survived the fall?

  Finally, she said, “An alchemical process I’d learned in Morocco.” Her voice was surprisingly steady for a woman caught in the middle of a massive lie.

  Anger like acid poured through him. “Didn’t think I’d notice the difference between clay and gold?”

  “The transformation was supposed to last longer. The saline air might’ve affected its stability. The alchemist who showed me the process didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Should’ve been more thorough in your education.” He picked up the strongbox and flung it overboard.

  She winced, but he couldn’t find the means to care. This little Englishwoman with her notebooks and moss green eyes and sweet, hot kisses—she’d played him for a fool, deceiving him ever since the beginning. Duping him, the mercenary.

 
It wasn’t the first time he’d been led astray by someone he thought he could trust, and the burn of it singed through his veins.

  “Set the ship down,” she said after a moment. “Or we can use the jolly boat.”

  “Now you’re giving orders on my ship? What the hell for?” he demanded.

  “All you need to do is drop me off as soon as we make land. I can go the rest of the way on my own.”

  From where the ship was now, it was a journey of nearly eight hundred miles to Medinat al-Kadib. A journey she planned on making by herself. With the Shepherdess aware of her every movement.

  “Not a damned chance,” he snarled, taking a step closer. “Tell me what you plan on using to pay for your parents’ release. Better not be more of that false gold.”

  She hesitated. “There’s a diamond mine—”

  He snorted in disbelief.

  “There truly is,” she retorted. “An ancient mine I found with my parents several years ago. We didn’t tell anyone about it because we were afraid it would draw unscrupulous treasure hunters into the area.”

  “So you were going to lead al-Rahim to the mine in exchange for your parents.”

  She swallowed, and nodded.

  He swung away to pace the length of the forecastle. They were a half mile in the air, and just making land now. The waves lapped at the sandy coast in a froth of blue and white. Palm trees waved gently like dancers. But he barely saw the beauty of the scene. His mind churned. Anger continued to pump poison into his chest. He couldn’t decide with whom he was most angry—her, for deceiving him, or himself, for being misled. Again.

  But he’d survived this long because he was a devious bastard. That hadn’t changed.

  He shouted down the length of the ship, “I want Petrovsky!” Mikhail could have used the shipboard auditory device to call for his master-at-arms, but it felt a hell of a lot more satisfying to yell.

  Petrovsky appeared a minute later. His broad chest and thick arms usually intimidated the crew into maintaining order, as his duties demanded. Seeing him, Miss Carlisle’s brief display of bravado withered a little. She looked back and forth between Petrovsky and Mikhail.