The twins liked to experiment.
Ariq suspected they always had. They’d come to the dens from Nippon almost fifteen years ago—only a few months after power had changed hands from the former empress to her daughter. Upon arriving in the Fox Den, the twins had immediately killed the den lord and taken his place, then built their fortress in the sky.
And that was all most people knew about the twins. Despite his contacts, Ariq hardly knew any more for certain. Most valuable information from Nippon passed through the Fox Den and was brokered by the twins. If any rumors about their history had existed, they’d managed to quash most of them.
Not all. Bits and pieces of rumors often became larger stories, but there was still a kernel of truth in some. One story was that the empress had wizards at her command. In the Golden Empire, many people believed the same of the Khagan. But they weren’t magicians; they were scientists, given leave to protect the royals at any cost. Their experiments had created the zombie infection, the monsters in the sea, the war machines that had helped them conquer continents—and much more. Nippon’s scientists had built the imperial city and developed creatures like the screw beetles that had tortured Ariq’s brother in their prison. Such scientists might be called soldiers, fighting wars and defending their empires. But creating weapons that could kill and torture so many required a different, crueler sort of mind than any warrior whom Ariq had ever fought with possessed.
He thought the twins both possessed that sort of mind. But if they had once served the empress by experimenting on others, they weren’t serving her now, and they hadn’t spared themselves.
The attendants showed him into a great hall. Unlike the lower chambers, the walls were of wood and the ceilings high. Hissing gas torches stood in columns and cast a warm glow over painted panels. In the first, Empress Go-Jingu led her people out of Nippon, flying upon a chrysanthemum, her hair unbound and clutching a spear in her fist. A fleet of ships as plentiful as a school of herring followed her, with Fuji standing in the background—art making victory of a defeat. Sartaq Khan had taken that island shortly after that empress’s escape, and centuries later, Ariq’s mother had been born a citizen of the Golden Empire in the shadow of that mountain.
More wall panels showed the empress meeting the Turrbal and Jagera tribes on Australia’s eastern shore. Ariq had seen similar scenes in many Nipponese homes. Most didn’t possess paintings of the slaughters and the plagues that followed. The twins did, the panels stretching far down the hall. He might have commended them for not forgetting that part of the past, but he suspected that the blood and death pleased them to look upon, in the same way that a beautiful landscape might please another.
They waited for him on a dais covered by a mat of woven gold silk. Lady Amako sat with her steel hands clasped on her lap and legs folded beneath her. Ariq didn’t think Lady Shizuko still had human legs. She sat higher than her sister, as if squatting on a block, and the bottom of her robe covered a rounded mass that rumbled like a well-oiled engine. On both women, bursts of scars surrounded the bulging dark lenses embedded in their eyes. Their faces were unlined, but gray threaded through their black hair. Had his mother still lived, she would have been of the same age.
“Good evening, Kraken. We are so very honored by your presence.”
Amako greeted him, her voice soft and cultured, her expression smiling. Already enjoying herself. Every conversation with him was an experiment of another sort, to see what she could take from him. She would probably like today’s results. He rarely needed anything from them.
More acerbic than her sister, Shizuko added her short welcome and invited him to sit. He joined the twins on the mat, facing them. The attendants remained behind, silent. He didn’t want them at his back. But he could see their reflections as pale spots in the twins’ lenses, so they couldn’t move without his noticing.
Though she also smiled, Shizuko wasn’t taking the same pleasure in his presence that her twin did. “It has been some time since you visited us.”
And the last time had been to tell them to stop killing the people in the den who couldn’t pay their tribute—a difficult command for Shizuko to hear, because he could still hear the bitterness in her voice, as if it had echoed within her over the years.
He didn’t care. Let it fester. “I come with news.”
“And with westerners,” Amako said. The torchlight gleamed against her dark lenses. “French aviators . . . and women. Tell us of the women.”
“An ambassador’s wife and her companion.” He told the same lie Zenobia had. He wouldn’t give the twins any reason to look twice at her.
“Their airship was destroyed?” Shizuko asked.
Ariq didn’t know if they’d already learned of the attack or were guessing. It didn’t matter. If the marauders continued their attacks, then the dens were in the same danger as Ariq’s town. The twins believed the strong could destroy the weak at will—but none of them was as strong as the empress. By helping him, they could save themselves, too.
“Yes,” he said. “Just like the others—except it was a French naval ship.”
Amako pulled in a breath and looked to her sister. No words passed between them—not that Ariq could hear. But they were communicating somehow. Through the devices in their eyes or by some other method, Ariq didn’t know.
But he expected that they reached the same conclusion Commander Saito had: The empress wouldn’t tolerate an attack against a foreign government’s ship while she was opening trade to her cities. If the empress can’t remove a splinter from a finger, she’ll cut off the arm. The marauders were the splinter, and the arm was every settlement on the western Australian coast.
Shizuko looked to Ariq again. “So why have you come to us?”
“They rode jellyfish balloon flyers. Fourteen, at least. I want to know who bought them.”
“We did not sell them,” Shizuko said slowly. “But it came to our attention last year that two dozen balloons had been procured and sold.”
Two dozen. More flyers that had been destroyed in the attack on the French airship. “By whom?”
Amako’s smile widened, revealing the glint of polished steel teeth. “That is not our business. Our business is trade.”
“And your price?”
“Only what your Khagan has already discovered, and that we have been trying to duplicate,” Amako said.
“Strength.” A gasp of steam escaped Shizuko’s lower block as she spoke. Her body rose three inches, and two segmented legs emerged from the sides of her robe before she settled again. “We make it for ourselves, but that strength is only a shell. It does not live within us. We cannot pass it on. Yet you were born with it.”
“So we want your seed,” her sister finished. “And our issue will be the strongest this land has ever seen.”
His child. Not even for his town would Ariq put an infant into their hands—his or any other.
“No.” He didn’t conceal his disgust. “Not ever.”
Amako recoiled. “We do not ask you to mount us,” she said, equally disgusted. As if that horror was the only objection Ariq could have. “We would collect it. Our attendants will service you.”
Shizuko gestured them forward. “Girl or boy, whatever your preference.”
The attendants moved closer. To take his seed. Rage boiled up, hot and sharp.
He’d kill them all if they touched him.
“Stop!”
The pale reflections in the twins’ dark lenses froze.
Ariq closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Let the building anger out.
Finally, he said, “A kraken beached near my town. It was male.”
The twins looked to each other. Their displeasure vanished in a gleam of avarice. Just slivers of meat from a kraken’s penis sold for a fortune on the mainland and in Nippon.
“Adult?” Shizuko asked.
Ariq nodded. “Young. But its organ fully intact.”
The tips of Amako’s fingers chimed merrily when she
tapped them together. “Its length?”
“Like another tentacle.”
The sisters grinned. “The upstart Lord Jochi sold the flyers,” Shizuko said.
The lord of the Rat Den. Ariq hadn’t dealt with him before, except as the second-in-command to the former den lord, Merkus. Young and quiet, Jochi hadn’t made a strong impression when Ariq had met him. He’d been overshadowed by his belligerent and stupid den lord. But two years ago, in an arena full of spectators, Jochi had challenged Merkus and taken his place.
So Ariq would soon discover the sort of man that Jochi was. Not from the twins, though. He wanted more important information from them—now, while the fortune he’d given them had the sisters in a generous mind.
“What do you know of Archimedes Fox?”
Shizuko gave a strangled cough. Steam burst from beneath her robes.
“What do we know of him?” her sister echoed, utter surprise slackening her expression. Then she cackled and rocked back and forth. “We know that he has not earned us as much as your squid penis will. But he has earned us gold enough.”
By selling what? More letters like Zenobia carried?
“Where do I find him?”
“You do not follow his adventures?” Shizuko’s laugh echoed her sister’s. “Of course, there is a real man named Archimedes Fox. To locate him, look to Lady Nergüi.”
Ariq frowned. He knew several women named Nergüi.
But, no—he realized. Shizuko didn’t mean a woman. She meant an airship. And he did know one by that name. A skyrunner, it had flown into his town the previous year, then was gone the next morning. He’d known the passengers—westerners who’d hid in his town for a brief time. He hadn’t met anyone else aboard.
“What is your interest in Fox?” Amako asked.
Their amusement still hadn’t abated. He’d taken a risk mentioning the man’s name. If they managed to link Fox to the companion of an ambassador’s wife, Zenobia might be in danger. Yet they were treating his question as a joke.
Ariq didn’t understand it. But he wouldn’t reveal that. Silent, he waited.
Amako’s fingers chimed again. Still enjoying herself. “Do you think his stories seditious, too? You must admire that, a rebel yourself.”
Seditious stories? “I haven’t read them.”
“Ah. So you have only heard rumors from the imperial city and a name.”
“Yes,” Ariq lied. Nothing he’d seen in Zenobia’s letters had mentioned Nippon’s imperial city.
Shizuko shook her head. “Fox’s story was the same as every one of his adventures—nothing but fanciful rubbish.”
“Popular rubbish,” her sister said. “Particularly with women.”
“We cannot print enough translations to send across the wall. Even the empress reads them.”
Even the empress. Every merchant and smuggler with a ware to sell made that claim—even the empress loved their merchandise.
And it was clear now what they had been speaking of: adventure stories. Fanciful rubbish, and a man called Archimedes Fox wrote them.
That wouldn’t be the man who’d written letters about Ariq’s uncle to Zenobia. There was nothing fanciful about exposing one of the Khagan’s most celebrated generals as a rebel.
Except the name. Archimedes Fox. A character in these stories. It wouldn’t be the first time that a rebel had used the name of a folk hero to conceal his true identity. Was Zenobia his ally? Or had she been forced to carry the letters?
“The latest story was no different in essentials,” Amako said. “The hero has changed—the adventures feature a woman now—but the content is as foolish.”
“A thinly veiled retelling of Bushke’s overthrow at New Eden,” Shizuko told him. “There were rumors Lady Nergüi and Fox visited that city.”
Bushke. A tyrant who had ruled over a balloon city, forcing airships and their crews into service. “Fox killed him?”
“We have heard it was another—Miles Bilson. Others have said it was his partner.” Amako looked to her sister. “What was his name? The ridiculous, beautiful one.”
“Gunther-Baptiste,” Ariq said. He knew them both. Bilson had smuggled war machines for the rebellion more than a decade ago. Gunther-Baptiste had been his business partner, a reckless idealist who walked a line between stupidity and bravery.
Exactly the type who might have taken on Bushke.
“That is he,” Amako said, then shrugged. “Bilson’s brother leads New Eden now. Any one of them might have overthrown Bushke.”
“And a similar insurgence was the only difference in the story,” her sister said. “A revolt against a king. A bit of nothing. But the empress’s advisers said it would incite unrest and disorder, and all of the copies across the wall were destroyed. We had to have a new translation made, with a new ending—in which the king keeps his head. Now the original translation fetches one hundred times the price.”
No doubt they continued to print and smuggle them over the Red Wall. “I want one,” Ariq said.
Shizuko inclined her head without comment, but Amako was amused again. “You wish to follow his adventures?”
“No.” Ariq wanted to know more about Zenobia, and why she might have chosen a name based on Archimedes Fox’s fanciful rubbish. “You said they are popular with women. The ambassador’s wife lost her belongings in the attack, and she is always reading the same book.”
“How very thoughtful to give her another.” Amako’s teeth gleamed as she smiled. “It would give us great pleasure to host a dinner for you and your guests.”
No. They wanted to see whether Ariq’s gift indicated a warmer interest in an ambassador’s wife. They would be disappointed. But the twins were clever enough to see that Zenobia was more than she appeared to be.
“We cannot.”
“We will invite the other den lords,” Amako pressed. “You can make your inquiries of them all at once.”
“But then he would miss Lord Jochi’s games, sister.” Shuziko’s soft voice took on the edge of a knife.
“Just the ladies, then.”
“No,” Ariq said. “The only hospitality I want is the guarantee of your protection during their stay.”
“You will have it,” Shizuko said. With a sharp click, her segmented legs drew back beneath her robes. “As will your guests.”
Amako sighed. “It’s a pity, though. We’ll miss the fun of seeing the other lords realize that you will soon be at their gates. I do love to watch them scramble.”
XI
There was a typesetting machine in the tinker’s shop down the street.
Zenobia froze in her seat with a looking glass against her eye, the lens trained on the machine. Oh. It was so beautiful. A wondrous clickity-clackety ball that would write evenly across a page, and she wanted it. Desperately.
“We should go out,” she said.
Helene didn’t glance up from her book. “And be killed?”
Zenobia had been sitting near this window for almost three and a half days, and she hadn’t yet seen anyone killed. No one had been ravished, or abducted, or their throats slit and purses stolen, or any of the other reasons Helene had given for not wanting to step a foot outside the inn.
With a sigh, she lowered the looking glass. Iron lattice guarded the large round window, with enough space between the decorative bars to offer a view of the street four levels below. A garden wall topped with broken glass surrounded the inn. None of the suspended bridges that connected the higher levels of adjoining buildings led here. It was a small fortress inside of the den—and staying here was much like being in the airship again, except she wasn’t going anywhere.
Thankfully there was more to see than water.
Much more. Vehicles filled the street, some stationary and some moving, and all of it so chaotic that Zenobia didn’t know how anyone got where they were going. Now and again, balloon cabs descended to a shop front and let off or picked up a passenger. Guards patrolled the row every hour, clanking along in their m
echanical suits. Most pedestrians seemed not to notice them, hurrying on with their own business. Many were women. Some walked alone and didn’t appear in any more danger here than they would have been in Fladstrand.
Of course, Zenobia had been kidnapped from that sleepy seaside town several times over, so that hardly meant anything.
She set the looking glass on her desk. She hadn’t been anywhere since arriving at the inn, but at least she’d been able to write. Kraken ink stained every fingertip and the side of her right hand a dark brown. The ink was wonderful. Her handwriting had begun to resemble the desperate scratching of a headless chicken.
She needed that typesetting machine.
A heavy sigh came from Helene’s direction. She’d been sighing like that ever since they’d learned it might take a full week to replace Cooper’s legs. The blacksmith had had to separate the remnants of the old prosthetics from his bones and flesh first. Tomorrow, he would graft on the new legs. Then the wait began to make certain fever didn’t set in.
Zenobia tried not to resent those sighs. She didn’t always succeed.
She wasn’t successful now. The ache in her chest was too heavy—an ache that had started when she’d seen what the boilerworm had done to Cooper’s legs. “I wish you would just say that you’re upset by the delay,” she said.
“Of course I’m not upset.” Mild as milk, Helene smoothed a page over.
Zenobia waited.
“Though,” Helene said after a moment, “I suppose I wonder why you and I don’t travel ahead to the Red City. Mara and Mr. Cooper could catch up as soon as he is able to travel.”
“They saved our lives on the airship. Yet you’d leave them behind?”
“We aren’t abandoning them, Geraldine. They would return to your service inside a fortnight.” With a frown, Helene glanced up from her book. “And you know what the delay means for me.”
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