Too late. She wouldn’t blame Ariq if he sacrificed her for the sake of his town. But she couldn’t be with him, either—not if she was always wondering what else he might sacrifice her for.
Heart aching, she asked, “May I at least send a message to my friends in the Red City and reassure them that I’m well?”
Mara and Cooper might have already arrived in the Red City, only to find her gone. And Helene . . . God only knew what her friend must be going through. To have both Zenobia and an important guest stolen right out of her very home.
He set his tea down. “No.”
“Please. They must be frantic with worry.”
“And in that, you are useful as well. Nipponese flyers circled over the embassy on the night you vanished. Word of that will reach the empress’s ears.”
Nipponese flyers. Not an airship—but the vehicles the marauders had used.
Dear God. Wordlessly, Zenobia stared at him. The abduction wasn’t just intended to force Ariq’s hand, then. It furthered their original plan, too. A French airship destroyed, then an embassy infiltrated and two residents kidnapped. If one didn’t prod the empress to action, the second might.
And the abduction must have been decided on quickly. Zenobia and Ariq had only been in the Red City a couple of hours. The general must have had him under observation—and was prepared to take advantage of any situation.
One thing was certain. She would never be so foolish as to underestimate this man. Even now he was probably manipulating her. But to what purpose? To destroy her hope?
She only had a little bit of that left, anyway.
“This is useful, too.” The general picked up her dagger. “This and the glider. I intend to keep these devices—to have my men replicate them for our use.”
He was welcome to anything on that table except for her letters and manuscript. “Will you return my papers?”
“No.”
Her stomach twisted. “When I go home?”
“I’ve read through the letters, Mrs. Fox. They include intelligence not commonly known.”
“I have no intention of telling anyone about Temür Agha. Take that one, but leave me the rest.” She hated to lose any of Archimedes’ letters, but if the general feared the contents, better to have it out of her hands than one day give him reason to harm her—as Ariq had thought might happen. “Please. They are only from my brother, and only describe his travels. They have value only to me.”
So much value.
“I can’t be certain of that. Some are written in code.”
Her aching heart solidified into a thick lump. “Yes. My brother ran into some troubles and we changed our names. We used code to refer to events from the past, so that we wouldn’t be exposed. That is all. There are no other secrets in those letters.”
“I believe you.” With a heavy sigh, he set down his tea. “But I can’t be certain.”
No. Desperately, she looked to the letters. Over fifty of them. Almost six years of travels. Archimedes had seen wonders. He’d fallen in love. He’d married a woman he’d expected would kill him. He’d been happy. Zenobia had more letters at home, but she couldn’t lose these. Couldn’t.
“Please. Please.”
The general raised his voice and spoke. Two guards entered. They didn’t approach the table, instead taking a post on either side of the door.
But the threat was there, and it was a locked closet. She could fight. She could try to run. But there was nowhere to go, and she would only hurt herself trying.
“Please.” The plea was broken glass scraping her throat. “These letters are a record of places that won’t be visited by living humans again.”
And so many jokes. So many silly titles in the postscripts that Archimedes had hoped she would use in the written adventures. So many confessions—of loneliness and hope and doubt and stupidity. They’d escaped her father, but they’d been apart after that, and almost everything meaningful that she and Archimedes had said to each other had been through those letters. His endless love and affection lived in every single word.
The general gathered up the pile of unfolded letters. “I’m sure your brother can still describe them.”
He dumped the stack onto the brazier. Stunned by disbelief, she sat motionless, staring at the letters on the grate. They weren’t even catching. Just smoking—
The edge of a page flared up and suddenly the whole pile was aflame. With a cry, she dropped her blanket and lurched for them, though she knew it was useless, though she would only hurt herself.
The general snagged her wrist, yanking her hand away from the flames. A guard caught her shoulders and forced her back. Melting wax hissed and popped.
A second stack went in. Hot tears blurred her vision, but she could still smell the smoke, could still hear the crackle. “Please,” she whispered again, though it was too late anyway.
The general reached for the manuscript.
“No!” She ripped out of the guard’s grip, slapping her hands protectively over the pages. “There’s nothing here! You read it yourself!”
“Except that it reflects a plan that we would never want the empress to know.”
And Zenobia could just write it again. But sense made her bite her tongue against that response until she tasted blood. The pain was going now, replaced by hate and anger that was harder and colder and emptier than she’d ever known. Jaw clenched, she stared at him.
The guard dragged her back. The heavy stack of pages landed on top of the remaining letters with a hot whoosh—almost blowing out the fire, but it returned, first with black curling edges and then rising flames.
She couldn’t write it again. Any other time, she would have already had a duplicate ready. But she hadn’t used her typesetting machine for most of her trip, so she didn’t have a copy. And even though she could remember most of the sentences and every plot point, the story would never be what it had been. She would never again be who she’d been.
At a word from the general, the guard released her. She didn’t reach for the brazier. She didn’t look at the flames.
“Thank you for the tea.” Her cup sat untouched on the table. “I would like to go now.”
He nodded. “After you take out your hairpins.”
She did, lining them up beside her teacup like four small daggers. The fifth was missing. She hoped it had fallen out in her cabin. “Will you send someone to sharpen my pencil?”
“I think it’s best if it remains dull.”
Of course. “The soldier friend you had,” she said. “All those people sent to the outposts. The people who lived on the island you showed us. They all have something in common, don’t they? The Khagan perceived a threat, and he silenced them. Some he killed, but some he locked away so that no one could hear them.”
“Yes.”
“I think you are very much like him.”
He looked amused. “This is war, Mrs. Fox. The tactics we use now will not be what we use after the Khagan falls.”
“If people remember that you’re willing to use such tactics, do you really believe the war will ever end? I think they’ll remember that you were no better than him, and continue fighting.” She stood. “I hope that Ariq does escape that airship, even if he has to leave me here. I hope you never see that machine.”
“I think you will get at least one part of that wish. Take the gold, Mrs. Fox. We are not thieves.”
She almost refused. It was the one thing from her satchel which had almost no value to her. But the gold might be useful.
With both hands, she hefted the heavy bag, supporting it against her stomach as she exited the general’s quarters. Her arms quickly ached. Her side hurt, as if Polley’s knife was slicing her open again. She had to walk slowly down the steps and rest on the second landing.
And while she stood catching her breath, she looked through one of the doors, out one of the portholes, and the perspective offered her a view of the stern that she hadn’t had before.
Her heart t
humped. Under a covered hangar, a half dozen jellyfish balloon flyers waited—just like those the marauders had used. Probably the same ones Ghazan Bator had sent to fly over the embassy the night she and Ariq had been taken. Their pilots must have returned to the ironship before the airship had arrived, because she hadn’t heard the distinctive buzzing noise of their engines since coming aboard.
Fast, agile flyers. But they didn’t have a long range.
It didn’t matter. The ironship couldn’t be that far from Australia. She just needed to fly south.
If Ariq wasn’t coming, she would blasted well save herself.
XVIII
Am I an utter idiot?
Not for the first time that day, the question wormed through Zenobia’s mind. Each time it did, the squirming doubt lingered a little longer.
A sleeve lay limply across her lap. After leaving Ghazan Bator’s quarters, she’d spent the morning planning her escape. By noon, the plan had come together, and she’d spent most of her afternoon pulling apart the left shoulder seam of her new tunic.
The fabric was thick and sturdy. When knotted at the end and filled with handfuls of gold, it would make a fine bludgeon. She would only have to cosh a few guards over the head and steal a flyer.
Then make her way back to Australia.
Without running out of fuel.
And without being caught.
She’d plotted out how to avoid those dangers, too. After their abduction, the airship had flown north overnight. Since then, the ironship had steamed forward on a western course. Compared to an airship, the boat plodded—and the silver flyers were faster than both.
Flying directly south, she should reach Australia’s northern shore before dawn. But she needed to travel east, too, and follow the coastline to the Red City. A southeastern course was a lengthier one and required more fuel.
Fuel wasn’t so difficult to find. To prevent the soldiers from following her, she would have to steal a blade from any guard that she coshed, then puncture the balloons of the remaining flyers. At the same time, she could pilfer coal from the other flyers’ fuel bins. The question would be whether she could take enough.
It didn’t matter. She would take all the flyer could carry. The extra weight would initially slow her down, but better than the engine petering out while she was still over the ocean. And if it wasn’t enough fuel . . . well, it would still be worth the risk.
Unless the risk was an utterly foolish one. She only had to wait, and eventually, the general would send her home. Unharmed. If she remained on the ironship, she’d be safe.
So why was she doing this?
Zenobia closed her eyes, shutting out the image of the sleeve. Her head throbbed. In four days, she’d barely slept. Exhaustion weighed down her every muscle. Her chest had hurt unbearably since she’d left the general’s quarters, a hot pain that had burned hotter and tighter with every breath. A terrible ache, hollow and heavy all at once.
Physically and emotionally, she wasn’t in any shape to make this decision. But she couldn’t stay. For hours, she’d been trying to put words to Why? and to answer to doubt worming through her mind. But words like anger and hate and hurt didn’t seem strong enough to match the emotions boiling inside her.
This wasn’t like her. She was practical. Sensible. Such an escape better suited one of her characters. Stories were so easy to control. Lady Lynx escaped because Zenobia created an escapable situation, and if anything unexpected happened to her characters, Zenobia had a clever plan to get them out of their new fix. Lady Lynx escaped because she could knock a guard unconscious with a single kick.
But Zenobia knew it was never so easy. If the sleeve ripped when she swung the bludgeon at someone’s head, or if a guard had a companion with him, or if someone came across her in the hangar, even her wits might not save her. And a single whack to the head rarely incapacitated anyone. It just knocked them down, left them stunned but aware of every single painful blow that followed, yet unable to do more than curl up and wait for the beating to end.
And that was what she’d always done—she’d either waited it out or gone into hiding, knowing that eventually the danger would end. Her father would tire. Archimedes would come with a ransom. Mara and Cooper would arrive with their guns.
It would be far more sensible to wait now. But she couldn’t.
She simply wasn’t the same woman that she’d once been.
When had the change come? Maybe when the general had tossed her letters onto the fire. Maybe when Polley had dragged her into the alley. Maybe when she’d jumped from a collapsing flyer. She didn’t know exactly when. But she couldn’t bear to wait. She couldn’t bear to let Ghazan Bator determine the course of her life. She couldn’t bear to let anyone decide who she would be or what she would do. Not anymore. And the thought of staying here on this ironship with a man who would use her to frighten her friends and threaten thousands of others? Who would wield her like a whip on Ariq’s back? She’d rather burn the ship down and sink with it.
Yet far better to escape—even if she died trying. And if this meant her death, maybe the effort would be all for nothing.
But if she lived, that effort would mean everything.
She knotted the sleeve and reached for her gold.
***
By midnight, the drizzle had become a downpour. Rain drummed loudly on the iron deck and against the sides of the command tower, the noise joining the thrum of the engines and the rush of the sea.
Zenobia stood inside the tower entrance, looking out. Everything above decks was darker than on the previous nights. A few lanterns had been extinguished—probably drowned by the rain and not yet relighted.
A guard stood just outside the shelter of the tower door, hunched against the rain. Rivulets ran down his conical helmet and fell in a steady stream from his neck guard; he’d tipped his head down to keep the water from coursing straight down the back of his tunic. She hoped most of the guards were similarly occupied, defending themselves against the elements. Between the noise and the soaking, she’d be more likely to surprise them.
And she would need surprise. Her gaze returned to his helmet.
A helmet. She hadn’t even thought of those.
Fortunately, it shouldn’t matter too much. When she’d practiced wielding her bludgeon, almost every overhead swing had missed its mark. A lateral swing gave her far better control and more accurate aim. So she’d already altered that part of the plan—instead of coshing the guards over the head, she would bash their faces in. She just hoped there wasn’t anything else that she’d completely overlooked.
She would soon find out.
The guard straightened when she emerged from the command tower. Her heart pounding, Zenobia met his eyes and gave him a pleasant nod. She didn’t need to bash his face. He held a stationary post facing the front of the ship and wouldn’t see what she got up to behind the tower.
He returned her nod and hunched over again as she passed. Within a few steps, the torrent of rain plastered her hair to her skull. The heavy wool blanket she clutched around her shoulders soaked up the rest—but more importantly, concealed the bludgeon dangling from her right hand. Runnels of water flowed across the deck, quickly soaking the curled toes of her new boots. It wasn’t nearly as chilly as she’d expected. In Fladstrand, downpours like this were inevitably bitter and cold. She’d expected a miserable, freezing escape. But this was rather like being deluged with water from a bucket that had been sitting out on a summer’s day.
She reached the starboard rail and gazed out over the side, but didn’t see anything through the darkness. Instead she pictured the route to freedom behind her.
If the ironship had been split into fourths, the command tower would stand at the three-quarter mark. It spanned half the width of the ship, with two broad gangways on either side. An empty deck lay open before it. The smokestacks took up most of the remaining space on the stern; spools of cable and gun turrets filled what was left. A platform had been built abou
t fifteen feet above the decks, accessible by a ladder. Until today, when she’d seen the flyers in the hangar, Zenobia had assumed it was another gun deck or a maintenance access for the chimneys.
More ladders climbed the sides of the stacks; a suspended walkway hung between them. The lanterns that usually glowed on the walkway were out, too. All good for Zenobia.
So it was time. Her knuckles already ached from gripping the end of her bludgeon so tight. She flexed her fingers, tried to slow her rapid breaths.
This plan would be successful. She would soon be away from here.
The guard at the command tower’s entrance was still hunched over. He didn’t look her way as she started down the starboard gangway. No lights shone from the stern. All the lanterns were out? That was odd. So odd. Two guards should be standing at their posts behind the tower. Every fifteen minutes, they took turns making a full circuit of the main deck. When one left his post on his circuit, she’d bash in the remaining guard’s face. Then she’d bash the other guard when he returned, steal his weapons, and run to the hangar.
Why would they be standing in darkness now, though? At the very least, they should have relighted the lanterns closest to them.
But she could barely see anything. Pulse racing, she paused at the corner of the tower and readjusted her grip. Ahead were shadows and more shadows. Faint light shone from one of the portholes on the upper levels—one of the officers was still awake in his cabin. But aside from that . . . nothing.
Maybe they’d guessed her intentions. Maybe Ghazan Bator was just around the corner, waiting for her.
So she’d bash his face, too.
On a deep breath, she charged forward and tripped over a lump.
Arms wheeling, she fought for balance. Her bludgeon thunked to the deck. She fell and her knee smacked iron, trousers instantly soaked, but she caught herself before pitching face-first.
What the blasted hell?
The Kraken King Page 31