The Kraken King

by Meljean Brook

  “Do you speak French?” Zenobia asked.

  The girl lifted her gloved hands and replied.

  Zenobia didn’t understand a word. That might have been Mongolian or Nipponese, or any of the myriad other languages spoken in this part of the world.

  But one language was always the same.

  Zenobia withdrew a gold coin and held it up, then pointed to the typesetter.

  The girl pushed her goggles back, revealing dark eyes widened in surprise. As if in a trance, she set aside her tools and walked to Zenobia’s side, her gaze locked on the coin.

  The gold was worth far more than the typesetter—but the machine was worth every extra denier to Zenobia.

  Smiling, the girl took the coin, hefted its weight, then made a sweeping motion that encompassed the entire shop. Inviting Zenobia to take something in addition to the typesetter.

  Well. Zenobia couldn’t carry half of it, especially since she would be hauling the typesetting machine back to the inn, too. But she would look. Maybe there was something that Helene could stuff into her ears while Zenobia wrote.

  Like every other tinker’s shop she’d been in, most of the items seemed to be salvaged and repaired instead of built by the tinker. Miniature windups of the Nyungar’s walking machines and hopping kangaroos waited on the shelves. Lamps of all sizes hung over a case full of lenses polished to a high gleam. There were small devices whose purpose she couldn’t fathom, and others that she figured out when the tinker’s eyes rounded again and color darkened her cheeks.

  Oh. So she would not give those to Helene. But curiosity made her linger over them a while longer, looking at their shapes and trying not to think of the governor.

  That might have been a thrilling adventure, too.

  A tug at her sleeve made her look up. The tinker didn’t direct her attention to another shelf, as she expected. Instead the girl was frowning toward the storefront window.

  Zenobia didn’t see anything. Only a few passing vehicles and a pair of men loitering on the walk. One was looking into the shop. At her typesetter? He wasn’t going to get it—

  Her heart froze. Oh, dear God. She knew him.

  His mouse-brown hair was longer. His face was redder, his body heavier. But she recognized him. Polley, one of the mercenaries aboard the airship The Kite—the airship on which she’d spent weeks waiting for her first ransom. After Archimedes had paid a fortune for her return, The Kite’s captain had split the money with his men. Not all of them thought they’d received a fair share.

  Polley looked as if his share had gone into a bottle.

  Wearing a cocky grin, Polley offered her a little salute. His eyes never left her when he spoke to his companion, a short, dark-haired man who gave Zenobia a calculating once-over.

  Damn him. Damn them both.

  They moved past the window, out of sight, but she knew. They’d be waiting. Kidnapping Zenobia Fox was a tried and true path to easy riches. But this time, she was far from home, far from Archimedes—and payment would be a long time coming.

  Her throat closed. She’d just wanted one bit of freedom. Just one adventure without fear.

  She’d just wanted a blasted typesetting machine.

  Anger burned through the frozen despair. Striding to the window, she looked out. No sign of Polley and the other man. She couldn’t hope for help from the men patrolling in mechanical suits—they’d just watch her be taken. She had to do this herself. All right, then. The inn was just down the row. She could run like hell.

  The tinker joined her. A knife flashed in her grip. Without a word, she offered it to Zenobia.

  Zenobia pulled up her sleeve and showed her the spring-loaded sheath strapped to her forearm. A gift from Archimedes, she usually kept it in her pack. He used similar weapons when he explored zombie-infested cities. The dens had seemed a suitable place for Zenobia to wear hers. She only had to flick a small lever and a dagger would jump into her palm.

  The girl grinned. Zenobia wished she could smile back. Instead she stared at the inn, trying to build her courage. Just a short run. And someone would probably see her coming. The innkeeper emerged from the entrance, looking up at a balloon cab descending toward the inn’s gate. A single passenger sat beside the pilot. A single passenger with broad shoulders and a wonderfully, beautifully familiar profile.

  Oh, thank God.

  She burst through the shop door and shouted with all of the breath she didn’t need to run. “Governor!” Sprinting, her boots pounded on the boards. So loud. Everything so loud, the engines and the people and could he hear her at all? He hadn’t turned her way. “Ariq!”

  Polley came from nowhere. His thick arm whipped around her stomach.

  It was like she’d barreled full-tilt into a log. The air slammed from her lungs. Stumbling, she tried to keep going, but he dragged her back, his sweaty palm smothering her scream.

  Desperately, she clawed at his fingers before regaining her sense and pushing her hand into her sleeve. Polley hadn’t come from nowhere, but an alley, just a tiny space between two buildings that opened onto another street.

  No, no, no. Not this time. The dagger’s leather grip popped into her hand. She swiped wildly behind her.

  “Get that knife!”

  Rough fingers squeezed her wrist. Polley’s companion. She cried out as he squeezed harder and pried her fingers open. They kept dragging her back. God. If she disappeared down that alley Zenobia knew she would never be seen again. Archimedes was too far away, the kidnap unplanned, and quietly getting rid of her would be easier than keeping her for months. She had to stop them.

  She kicked backward, using her heel. Polley grunted but kept going. She opened her mouth and clamped her teeth on the fleshy bit of palm that pushed past her lips.

  With a shout, Polley jerked his hand away.

  She hauled in a breath to scream. “Ar—!”

  Pain exploded across her face. White burst through her vision and for an instant she didn’t see the alley at all, but her father, his hand still raised, his knuckles red.

  She’d written a poem that time. A bawdy little poem, carved into the wall of the closet that he’d locked her in.

  Vicious fingers grabbed the back of her neck and Polley shoved her forward into the side of a shop. Pain burned a hot slice in her side. Blood coated her tongue. Her cheek grated against rough wood and she stood pinned against the building, her breath coming in ragged sobs.

  “Now just stop.” His hand tightened on her neck, his fingertips digging into the sides of her throat. He pressed the edge of the dagger harder into her left side. “You know we won’t hurt you, so if you fight us, anything that happens is your own fault. You just got to be quiet until our money comes.”

  She’d give him money now. A fortune of gold coins back at the inn. But she couldn’t speak—could barely breathe.

  Polley’s grip eased slightly. “So are you settled? Just—”

  His fingers tore away from her neck. The dagger vanished from her side. Zenobia sagged against the wall and gulped in air, dizzily aware of the harrowing scream that ended on a wet, crunching thud. A man cried out. Polley’s companion. She looked back just as he slammed into the opposite wall, held up off the ground by the hand locked around his throat. A tall figure stood before him. Tears blurred her vision, but she only knew one man that big.

  Ariq.

  Shaking, she turned and braced her shoulders against the wall behind her.

  Ariq spoke, his voice even. “Are you all right?”

  She’d never heard calm like that. Terrifying. Like the lull in a typhoon. Like death.

  “Yes,” she managed to whisper. Polley hadn’t stabbed her. He’d just sliced her skin.

  But she couldn’t see. With a trembling hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes and spotted the body on the ground.

  Her stomach heaved into her throat. Polley’s head lay between his ankles, as if he were bowing—but he was bowing the wrong way. His back had been snapped. Glassy eyes stared at her
from between his boot heels. Blood dripped from his slack mouth.

  Broken in half. Ariq had broken a man in half.

  Polley’s accomplice had seen, too. The man had begun crying, begging. A fog seemed to muffle her brain. She heard everything. But it was all nothing, nothing.

  Still so calm, Ariq said, “Who sent you after her?”

  “No one! My mate told me, ‘We’ll get some money if we take her.’ That’s all, God, I swear!”

  “Listen, then. There’s only one reason you live now. You are going to tell everyone that Zenobia Fox is under my protection. Anyone you meet, those will be the first words out of your mouth for the rest of your life.”

  “Yes!” The man babbled his agreement before Ariq finished. “Yes, yes!”

  “You know who I am? Let me hear it.”

  Under his protection. Numb, Zenobia lifted her hand away from her side. Crimson stained her fingers. Blood over kraken ink.

  They’d never made her bleed before.

  “Zenobia Fox is under the protection of the Kraken King!”

  “If I ever hear that you haven’t said it, I’ll come for you.” Ariq paused, and seemed to grapple for his calm again before he said, “Did he touch you, Zenobia?”

  “My wrist,” she answered dully. The skin where he’d grabbed her was raw and red. Pain shot through her knuckles when she tried to bend them. Her writing hand. “He hurt my fingers when he took my dagger away.”

  Without a word, Ariq gripped the man’s wrist. From far away, she heard the crack of bones, saw his elbow twist and jut backward.

  Ariq set the screaming man on his feet and shoved him toward Polley’s body. “Now drag him down the street so everyone can see. And you tell them all what will happen if anyone touches her again.”

  Then he came to her, his calm seeping away with every step. His skin seemed tightly stretched over his cheekbones, and white edged his mouth. Eyes dark with concern swept her face. Gentle fingers tilted her chin up, and at his touch, the fog tore away and she was there again, against the side of a shop where she’d almost been kidnapped. Polley’s companion lurched toward the mouth of the alley, dragging the body, his screams sounding almost like laughter, but it was just agony and hysteria and the words Ariq had ordered him to say.

  Zenobia Fox is under the protection of the Kraken King!

  His thumb slid across her cheek, wiping away tears. Zenobia hadn’t realized she was still crying, but now she felt the sting of salt against the corner of her mouth.

  She lifted her hand to her jaw. It was tender. Her lips felt hot and swollen. “Does it show?”

  Ariq stilled. For one terrible second the calm descended over him again, as if he might break the world in half.

  Then he nodded, and his hand left her face to work open the wide sash that belted his tunic.

  “Blast his soul.” On a shuddering breath, she rested the back of her head against the wall. Her neck ached. “Helene is going to say, ‘It’s your own fault for going out.’ Mara is going to say it’s her fault. But it’s not hers or mine. Just him. That bastard. Thinking he could have something from me. I just wanted to walk down a street. Even here, I should be able to. Is it so foolish to want that?”

  “No.”

  His voice was like gravel. Carefully, he wound the sash around her waist, binding the cut on her side.

  It hurt. Clenching her teeth, Zenobia turned her head. A crowd had begun to gather in the street, though no one had dared venture into the alley. Hysterical shouting still sounded in the distance.

  Oh, Mara would hear that. The mercenary probably already had. And she’d been right. The world hadn’t left Zenobia alone for even a week.

  “Maybe it was foolish,” she whispered. “But other women were out there. I thought if no one knew who I was, I’d be safe. But he recognized me.”

  And Polley wasn’t the only one who had. She dragged in a quavering breath and looked up into Ariq’s face. His head was bent, but he was focused on tying the sash, not on her, and his expression was as hard as the wall behind her. A man who’d broken another in half, then patched her up so gently. He knew who she was.

  Could she trust him?

  She didn’t know. But at least she could trust him not to hurt her.

  “You told him I was Zenobia Fox.”

  His gaze met hers. “Yes.”

  She laughed and sniffed up everything that she hadn’t already wiped on her sleeve. “Well, then. Will you help me carry my typesetting machine?”

  “In a minute.”

  His big palm cupped the back of her head. He drew her against his broad chest, his arm sliding around her back to hold her close. Oh. He said something roughly against her hair and she didn’t understand a word of it, but she knew the tone, and that this embrace wasn’t to reassure her. It was for him. Because she was all right now, but she almost hadn’t been.

  With new tears clogging her throat, she clung to his solid form and buried her face against his shoulder. So strong. So warm. He smelled like smoke and the sea, and this was the only time, the last time she could hold him like this.

  “I’m leaving tonight,” she told him hoarsely. “I’ve arranged for an airship.”

  “I know. I’m leaving with you.”

  Nonsense. But her fingers twisted in his tunic, holding him closer. “You don’t have to protect me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I’ll hire someone until Mara and Cooper come. You have a town to worry about.”

  “And that business takes me to the Red City.”

  Her heart squeezed. “Oh.”

  “But I would go anyway.”

  This time her heart gave a wild thump. “Oh,” she said again, and was smiling when he drew away.

  But he wasn’t smiling. He cupped her face in his hands and his dark eyes searched hers. “When we left my town, I meant to let you go. I have to choose battles. You weren’t as important.”

  Always blunt. She loved that.

  “I tried to keep you away,” she reminded him.

  “I tried to keep you out. We should have both tried harder.” His heavy-lidded gaze dropped to her lips and her breath caught. His head dipped closer to hers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You will if you kiss me.”

  His thumb brushed the corner of her bruised mouth. His voice roughened. “Yes.”

  So he wouldn’t. Then she just had to hurt herself.

  Her sore knuckles protested when she gripped his tunic front and dragged him down. He didn’t have to come. The Kraken King, formed of solid muscle and so much taller than she was. But he was a man who chose his battles, and denying her must have been a fight he didn’t want to win.

  And it did hurt. But she expected that. She expected the pain in her knuckles and the burning sting of her lips. His mouth was what she’d expected, too. Warm and firm against hers.

  No one had told her about the rest. She’d thought a kiss was just a pleasurable meeting of lips. No one said anything of the incredible prickling all over her skin or the sweet ache building beneath her breast.

  She would have left without this? But now she would have no regrets.

  Her fingers curled against his chest. A sigh escaped her.

  As if he’d been waiting for that tremulous breath to part her lips, Ariq leaned in, surrounding her, his right hand sliding into her hair and his left flattening against the wall beside her shoulder. Dense muscle flexed beneath her fingers. His mouth moved tenderly against hers, as if taking delicate sips. Oh, but he might as well have been gulping, consuming her, hollowing her out. Her heartbeat filled all the empty spaces, throbbing deeper with every soft kiss.

  With a low groan, he licked the seam of her lips. She gasped his name and he swept in, tasting her, his tongue hot and slick. Sudden need yanked her body up like a puppet, onto her toes, trying to get closer. Her arms rose to loop around his neck.

  Pain ripped up her side.

  She froze. Oh, God. She shouldn’t have lifted her a
rms so high. But it was too late now. Ariq was pulling away, his body rigid.

  “All right?” His voice was taut with strain.

  Zenobia nodded. Mostly all right. She wouldn’t be bowing or bending for a while. Hopefully there would be more kissing, though.

  Even if it hurt.

  A crimson streak stained his lower lip. She touched her own mouth. “Is it bleeding again?”

  “Yes.” A sudden tremor wracked his body. His fingers tightened in her hair, his gaze intense on hers. “I won’t see you hurt again. You have to tell me the rest. Why this man attacked you. How much you know of my uncle—and how you know of him at all.”

  She couldn’t follow. He knew who she was but didn’t know why Polley had tried to kidnap her? And she didn’t understand the rest at all. “Your uncle?”

  “Temür Agha.”

  The rebel general who’d sent assassins after her brother. He was Ariq’s uncle? Mutely, she stared at him.

  What could she say without endangering Archimedes? Ariq thought his uncle was dead. He couldn’t know that her brother had paid his debt to the man.

  What did he know? He’d called her Zenobia Fox. But did he know that she was also a Gunther-Baptiste?

  “Not now.” Gently, his fingers brushed back through her hair, trailed down her spine. “I’ll give you time. Tomorrow night, we’ll reach the Red City. Tell me then.”

  She shook her head. Not a denial. She just didn’t know how to answer. But she wasn’t going to lose her head just because a handsome man kissed her senseless. She would take the time he’d promised.

  “Trust me,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Zenobia had heard that before. “And if you have to, it’s my own fault?”

  A frown darkened his face. “No.”

  “Then I’ll consider it.”

  She pulled away and started toward the mouth of the alley, where the gathering crowd still stared. What a blasted mess she was. Face bruised, her green tunic ruined, and her hair hanging loose. A few minutes ago, she’d been no one while walking down this street. Now everyone looked and knew her name.