The Kraken King

by Meljean Brook

  Might as well get it over with. “What do you wish to say?”

  Helene glanced over her shoulder, her eyebrows drawing into a delicate frown. Now she would insist that nothing bothered her, and remain silent for another few moments before finally blurting it out.

  Except she didn’t. Her mouth thinned, and she stalked toward the vanity and plucked the ivory comb from the maid’s hand. “I’ll finish this. Thank you. I’ll call for you both if we need you again.”

  Helene must have been more upset than Zenobia had realized. Her scalp was going to suffer for it now.

  She braced herself and met her friend’s gaze in the mirror.

  “I was so very worried when you went missing,” Helene said. “Terribly worried.”

  “Yes.” Zenobia had been frightened, too.

  “We have been friends a very long time, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  Helene’s anger seemed to vanish all at once. Her gaze dropped, and a thready note entered her voice. “But you didn’t tell me you were Zenobia Fox.”

  Oh, and now Zenobia felt wretched. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t have an answer ready. There were reasons—she had so many reasons not to tell anyone. But only a few were reasons not to tell a friend.

  Her mouth firming again, Helene clutched a handful of hair and scraped the comb through the ends. “Do you not trust me?”

  Trust? Zenobia frowned into the mirror. “That had nothing to do with it.”

  “You thought I might expose you?”

  “No. But that was a danger, at first. The fewer people who knew, the safer Archimedes and I were. But I never thought you would expose us on purpose.”

  “‘At first’?”

  “When we first changed our names.”

  “So the danger passed? Then why didn’t you tell me later?”

  “Because you already knew who I was.”

  “But I don’t.” Bending her head, Helene attacked a snarl. “I don’t know who you are. That is the point. You write these stories and you have adventures and you keep it all a secret from me. And I don’t understand why.”

  “I just . . .” A weight had settled in Zenobia’s chest, thick and heavy. “I didn’t want you to change.”

  Even when Zenobia wanted to throttle her, she didn’t want her to change.

  “What?” Helene looked up, her expression still fierce.

  “Everyone does. As soon as they find out. You will see. The next dinner you have, many people who were merely polite before will suddenly show interest in me. Some will ask me about my work, which is fine. But there are always the others who wonder how they will get something from me. And I knew you cared about me, not anything else. I didn’t want that to change.”

  “Well, you needn’t worry. Because I don’t care about you. And I won’t show interest in your work. I read one of your adventures once. Part of it. The rest I threw in the bin!”

  Abruptly she tossed the ivory comb to the vanity, where it clattered across the surface and fell to the rug. Lips pursed, Zenobia looked at it, then up to the mirror, where Helene’s reflection stood with red cheeks and heaving breasts.

  “Which story was it?”

  Helene scowled. “I don’t know. About a blasphemous something-or-other.”

  Archimedes Fox and the Blasphemous Marauder. “That was my first. They’ve gotten better.”

  “They could only get better.”

  Zenobia mashed her lips together. But her shoulders still shook, and her stuttering breath gave away her laughter.

  Eyes narrowed, Helene watched her in the mirror before bending to sweep up the comb. “I might cut all of your hair off,” she declared.

  “Mara would.” The mercenary would have taken one look at the knots, sliced off the locks, and apologized later.

  “And she is a horrible maid!”

  “But an excellent shot.”

  “If you say so.” With a sniff, Helene moved behind Zenobia’s chair again. “So Wolfram is Archimedes Fox?”

  “He is.”

  “But he was so quiet. Always studying. I can hardly imagine him salvaging—and taking up with that lady pirate! Good heavens. I always pictured him at a university or giving sermons.”

  “He was never truly quiet. That was just . . . my father’s influence. He didn’t allow us to be loud.”

  “I suppose not.” Expression pensive, Helene regarded her in the mirror. “And is that why you are so different now, too? You worried that I would change, but I think it is you who has.”

  “How?” Zenobia certainly wasn’t louder—at least not in the way that Archimedes was.

  “You’re harder.” It was said gently. “I thought it was because of your husband. That you grieved for him. But that was a lie, too?”

  “Yes.” She winced as the comb caught on a snarl and nearly ripped the strands from her head. “I lived alone, Helene! What would you have said? You would have thought me a spinster, and pitied me, and written about some eligible man in every letter.”

  Though Helene huffed out a breath, she didn’t deny it. “You could have come to live with me.”

  Zenobia snorted.

  Helene’s lips twitched. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now. And it is still you who has changed. Sometimes it is as if you are not here at all—and I am glad to learn that you are a writer, because I’d begun to fear that you’d struck your head on a rock in the past few years and addled your brains.”

  “Helene!”

  “Oh, hush.” A hard tug followed the shush. “You are like a lionfish, with spines and stripes that warn people to keep their distance. When we were girls, you had this wary look that you would wear when you walked home, and you would wear it until you knew if your father was there. Now you wear that look all the time. And I thought, ‘She doesn’t want her heart broken again so she pushes everyone away.’ I thought you’d closed yourself off with grief. But in truth, you are just a pitiful and wretched human being, and you are afraid of everything.”

  “Yes,” Zenobia said softly.

  “Yet you still managed to get us here, as you promised me you would. And you fought a boilerworm. And escaped from a rebel’s ironship. And married a giant. So I suppose I will still be your friend. Even if you are a difficult one. Oh, don’t you cry!”

  She was trying not to. “It’s because you’re pulling my hair.”

  “I am not. Anyway, it’s almost done. You shouldn’t have too much trouble with the rest.” She gave Zenobia the comb and sat on the edge of the bed, watching her. “Will you keep writing?”

  Zenobia frowned. “When?”

  “Now that you’re married.”

  Only partially. But fully married or not, it hardly mattered. “Why would I stop?”

  Helene shrugged. “You don’t need to.”

  “I didn’t need to before.” Not for the money, anyway.

  “And if the governor doesn’t want you to?”

  “Then this marriage won’t last very long.”

  “You would give him up so easily—for a few stories?” Helene’s brows shot up. “Yet you think you love him?”

  “I think I couldn’t love him at all if he was the sort of man to make me choose between him and my writing.” And she trusted that Ariq wouldn’t make her choose, Zenobia realized. It was one doubt she’d never entertained before Helene had mentioned it—and now that the question had been raised, it easily passed from her mind again. “They took everything else away, but he made them give my notebook to me. And he would have risked going back for my manuscript.”

  “That was good of him.”

  Yes, it had been. So very good of him. Just thinking of it warmed her all the way through. Oh, but she would be such a fool not to hold on to him as tight as she could, and try to make this marriage work.

  So she would get these knots out, and put her hair up . . . so that Ariq could take it down tonight.

  She leaned forward and fli
pped her hair upside down to get at the tangles underneath, then flipped back up again when the bedchamber door banged open.

  Mara stood there, her guns holstered on her hips and eyes narrowed dangerously. “One day! You were gone one day before getting yourself abducted!”

  Zenobia spread her hands. “They weren’t even after me this time.”

  “And that’s better?” She stalked farther into the room and paced a path between the bed and Zenobia’s chair. “My contract with you will expire in a few weeks.”

  Her stomach tightened. “Yes.”

  “You hired Cooper and me to protect you from ransom hunters. Now you are being kidnapped by generals with rebel armies at their command? We ought to charge you twice as much when we renew it.”

  Relief ran through her in a sweet rush. No if they would renew it. When. “I’ll offer a ten percent increase.”

  “Pfft.” Mara looked to Helene. “I pretended to be a maid for her. I had to sew. And she only offers ten percent.”

  Helene held up her hands. “I enjoy sewing.”

  “I enjoy stabbing.”

  Helene glanced at Zenobia. “I think you should double her pay.”

  Her friend had no spine at all. Zenobia crossed her arms beneath her breasts and considered. “A fifteen percent increase,” she said finally.

  “Fifty,” Mara countered.

  Zenobia scoffed.

  The mercenary’s fingers drummed the polished grips of her guns. “Twenty.”

  Which was probably the number Mara had been aiming for to start with. “Twenty,” Zenobia agreed.

  “Good.” Mara gave a sharp nod. “Good. Now excuse me.”

  She abruptly left the room, and threw her arms around Cooper—who had been waiting just outside the door, Zenobia realized. She watched as he smoothed his hand down Mara’s back and spoke quietly to her.

  When Cooper looked up, Zenobia called to him, “You’re all right, then?”

  His expression as serious as always, he said, “I can dance a jig.”

  She wouldn’t have cared if he couldn’t. With or without legs, they were both still well worth the extra 20 percent.

  He and Mara spoke quietly for another minute before she entered the room again. “All right. He’s packing our things.” She paused and glanced around. “You haven’t started?”

  “Packing?” Zenobia shook her head then glanced at Helene, who gave her a blank look. “Where are we going?”

  The mercenary frowned. “Since walking through the front doors five minutes ago, I have only heard three things: You were abducted. You were married. And now you will be staying in the quarantine across the Red Wall.”

  “I am?”

  Mara put her hands on her hips. “Which are you confused about—the marriage or the quarantine?”

  A deeper voice answered her. “The quarantine, I hope.”

  Zenobia’s heart jolted. Her gaze flashed to the door. His dark eyes already locked on her face, Ariq walked into her bedchamber as if he belonged there . . . and he did. She stood, her heart pounding, and if her friends had glanced at her then, Mara and Helene would have known her for the most besotted and lustful woman who’d ever looked at a man, because the last thought in her head was of a quarantine. But Ariq was the only one who saw her, because her friends had turned in his direction, too.

  “Helene, Mara,” she said, amazed at how steady and cool her voice was—apparently the benefit of years spent being a lionfish surrounded by impenetrable defenses. “If you will excuse us, I believe the governor has come to offer an explanation.”

  Ariq bowed as they left, but his gaze was still on hers. He left the door open—not wide enough for anyone to see in, but not closed, either.

  Oh, how she wished he’d closed it. His every step toward her made her more aware of the bed behind her, and of the insubstantial dressing gown she’d belted over her linen shift. The faint whisper of the material against her legs recalled every touch of his fingers, and the memory of how he’d knelt before her, the warmth of his breath and the heat of his mouth.

  Stopping herself from reaching for him was a prodigious effort. The teeth of the comb bit into her fingers.

  Tonight. She would wait until tonight.

  But it wasn’t easy now to be steady and cool. “So you must go across the wall?”

  “Auger thinks it would be best.” His heated gaze slipped down her length before returning to meet her eyes. “Did you rest?”

  “Some.”

  “I’d have come earlier to tell you of the quarantine, but I heard you were in your bath.”

  “You should have come anyway.”

  It felt so wicked to suggest it, even though his visiting her in the bath would have been perfectly proper. She’d had no idea marriage could be so scandalous.

  His smile was slow. “I wasn’t sure of my control.”

  “And now?”

  “I should have left the door open wider. But even that wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t care who saw us. I can still taste you. Even when I should be thinking of—”

  Abruptly he walked to the windows, hands clasped tightly behind his back, his broad shoulders stiff. Never had she imagined that a man turning away could make her feel desired. Yet she felt more wanted now than she ever had.

  “When I see you, I can only think of tasting you again,” he finished roughly.

  It was all she could think of, too. “Tonight,” she whispered.

  His chest expanded on a long breath before he nodded. “Yes.”

  “So am I to come with you?”

  “If you choose to.” His voice was as taut as his posture. “But you spoke of an obligation to stay here.”

  With Helene. The ambassador didn’t yet know of her pregnancy, and her friend might need Zenobia when it was revealed. “Yes.”

  “Every day, Auger will accompany me to these meetings. He said his wife might like to visit you in the quarantine at the same time.”

  That would solve the problem quite neatly, yet it made no sense at all. “How is a quarantine to work if she is always going in and out?”

  “We all wear masks outside of the quarantined sector, so it protects the citizens.”

  She frowned.

  Ariq glanced back at her. “I believe the thinking is that if some plague is carried into the quarantine, we’ll all die in there together.”

  “But if she carries a plague in the day before we are released from the quarantine—”

  “Then we won’t have to worry about stopping the fleet,” he interrupted dryly.

  “It makes no sense.”

  “No. But I doubt it’s about containing plagues. Not anymore.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Most of the military is on this side of the wall. Many of those who would conspire against the empress are on that side. But the masks and the quarantine make it more difficult for both sides to meet without attracting notice, and the empress sees all.”

  The empress sees all. He’d told her that before—that it was a common expression in Nippon.

  “Does she really?”

  Turning to face her again, Ariq met her gaze. “Do you want to find out?”

  Another adventure. With him.

  “I do,” she said.

  XXII

  This adventure began in an unmoving coach queued up at the gate. The redbrick wall loomed overhead in the full glare of the afternoon sun. A blue silk parasol shaded Zenobia’s head, but even with the canvas top down the carriage sweltered. Ahead of them waited a motorized litter with curtained sides and segmented legs, its boiler venting a steady cloud of steam. The faint breeze swept the humid warmth directly into Zenobia’s face. At least she didn’t have to wear the plague mask until they were through the gates. For now, she used the floppy rubber to fan her heated cheeks.

  Beside her, Ariq sat reading a pamphlet. Even relaxed, his muscular thigh was a solid length against hers. He seemed utterly calm. Not the deadly calm of battle, but as if he were goi
ng for a Sunday drive through the countryside rather than heading into a quarantine and campaigning for the lives of everyone on the western coast.

  Was he truly at ease, though? She couldn’t tell. Now and again a slight smile would cross his expression as he read, or he would look up and meet her gaze and ask whether she was still doing well. Zenobia would smile and nod, but she wasn’t all right, and he must have known it, because she hadn’t once taken out her notebook. Every time the notion had crossed her mind, she’d happened to glance at him, and every thought of sketches and notes fled, leaving only memories of her leg on his shoulder and anticipation of the night to come.

  So she wasn’t all right. Ariq had her turned completely inside out.

  A man she’d only known for two weeks.

  But attempting to talk sense into herself did no good. She wanted him too much. She wanted all of this too much: the man, the adventure—even the terrible twist of her heart when she thought that it might all fall apart. This was so unlike her. Her brother often threw himself headlong into every danger, every emotion. Zenobia didn’t. But for the first time, she understood why embracing every emotion was so appealing. Even sitting and waiting was exhilarating.

  It never had been before, and sometimes it seemed that she had spent her entire life waiting. Waiting for her father to leave on his airship again. Waiting to hear from Archimedes, to know that he hadn’t been killed by an assassin or eaten by zombies. Waiting for a ransom. It had never been something she’d enjoyed, just something she did.

  But now she was waiting to see Nippon—and waiting for tonight.

  Ariq drew her gaze by turning the page of his small pamphlet, which had been stitched at the spine like a chapbook. No matter how many times she reminded herself that the book was printed in the direction opposite to that which she was accustomed, the act of turning the page still struck her as odd. Backward.

  She liked the look of his hands as they turned the pages, though. His fingertips were blunt, the tendons strong, and his skin roughened by calluses that had rasped lightly when he’d skimmed his palms up her thighs.