He blinked twice then shook his head as though just coming awake.
She drew in a breath, waiting for the shout that would bring the rest running.
Instead, the pool of light shifted as he turned back the way he’d come.
Sam stayed frozen, unable to understand his intentions. In the back of her mind, a voice screamed to run, to burrow deeper into the pipes and engine until no one could find her. She could transform the engine, change it to become a suit of armor, a place of safety where none could disturb her. She could transform the ship itself, using the pipes stretched throughout its form as pathways for the aether necessary to bring it to life.
She did nothing except shudder as the light returned, bobbing with the boy’s motions. He twisted through the pipes, sometimes over, sometimes under, but never away.
He had found her in this place, and he would find her again. She could feel the determination radiating off him as though he too had drawn aether from the air.
Without him, she would have starved.
Without her, he would still hold whatever privileges her interference had cost him.
They were bound together.
35
The path through the pipes seemed as clear as day with the open lantern. He couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to notice a girl. How could she have stayed hidden here, have taken food he’d brought not once but twice, and he’d never caught even a glimpse of her?
The laugh building in his chest threatened to become a hysterical giggle as Nat considered all the scenarios he’d imagined. He never could have come up with something like this.
She’d looked so young and scared, cowering away from him as though he’d landed a blow on her skin rather than simple lamp light. How she came to be there, he couldn’t guess, but she was too far from home at this point to make for an easy return no matter what her circumstances.
At last, the light fell on the bundle he sought, its absence from her hands telling him she’d dropped it in the scramble. Nat swept it up and headed back to her hiding place, half expecting the girl to have vanished, or maybe transformed into a mangy dog with sharp teeth, the vision a consequence of his sickness.
But no, a young girl with a pale face still cowered against the ship’s wall as though frozen.
This time, he leaned over the last pipe to set the lantern on the floor. He needed his hands free to untie the bundle.
Again, she stared at him with the whites showing all around her eyes. Her body shivered without stopping despite the warmth filling the chamber from even a banked fire.
“It’s okay. Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.”
He wondered if she even spoke the English tongue. He hadn’t understood a word coming from her mouth earlier, but her face changed, her eyes narrowing and her brows drawing together as though puzzled.
Nat glanced away long enough to untangle a knot grown tight in their chase.
He heard more than saw her move, his body going tense in expectation of the need to catch her once again.
Instead, she’d drawn her knees up under her and sat much like the dog he’d expected her to be. Her head tilted to one side as she watched him.
The realization brought forth an odd thought.
He wondered how much she’d watched him before. Did she know his disgrace, and how close he’d come to having his neck stretched out over the water?
His fingers continued working at the knot though his thoughts had wandered, and it gave way when he was not ready.
The apple came free to drop to the ground with a thwack. It started to roll under the pipe separating them.
Momentum carried the apple toward the girl. She lowered a hand to stop the fruit from going any further then lifted it up.
He waited for her to bite the desiccated fruit and tear some free. She must have been starved if the last time she’d eaten was when he’d tried to trap her with his porridge.
The girl looked at it for long enough he wanted to say it wasn’t poisoned or foul, but before he could speak, she held her hand out, the untouched apple on her palm.
Nat shook his head. “It’s for you. Eat it.” In case she couldn’t understand, he motioned lifting a sphere to his lips and biting into it.
The gesture was enough to awaken his own hunger, and his stomach growled its anger at the decision to cast food away.
The girl jerked her hand toward him again, but he refused.
She put the apple on the floor as far from her as she could reach without moving.
Nat climbed over the last barrier, finding the space tighter than he’d expected as the pipe cut off the curve of the hull. He squeezed into the farthest corner and crossed his legs under him, trying to remove any appearance of threat.
The apple sat between them, slightly closer to him.
As much as his stomach demanded he accept her refusal, he could guess how long it had been since she’d seen a meal from how tight the skin on her cheeks had stretched.
She sank back onto her haunches, but did not settle, her posture one that could result in an explosion of speed he would never be able to match, folded as he was.
Somehow, Nat didn’t think she had it in her to run again.
His rumbling stomach had been full that noon. Hers had last seen a portion of porridge several days before. The trembling hadn’t stop even now, and he wondered how much was fear, and how much due to a body used past exhaustion with nothing but itself to consume.
Nat nudged the apple closer to her.
The girl didn’t move.
His gaze fell on the bundle, discarded in the confrontation over the apple.
He could just reach it.
Nat pulled the cloth under the pipe until he could lift the hardtack from within its folds. He tapped it against the floor to dislodge any mealworms before setting the bread beside the apple and waving toward her.
“You eat it. I had porridge for breakfast and stew for lunch to keep my strength up. Jenson will give me a meal even now if I go to him.”
She still hesitated, but when he gestured again, she dove on the food, cramming both into her mouth at the same time and choking.
Nat unwound himself faster than he’d have thought possible as he grabbed the food away.
She gave him a wounded look and shrank back into her corner.
“No—”
She flinched before he could finish his sentence.
He put out a hand with the apple in his palm. “It’s yours. Just, you have to go slower. If you don’t choke, you’ll make yourself sick. Slowly.”
The girl reached out and snatched the apple, but this time she gnawed on it, tearing off strips of the dry flesh and staring at him as she chewed methodically before swallowing.
Nat settled again, closer now, and waited for her to tire of the apple before offering the bread. She seemed much like the feral dogs that roamed the docks, fed by all and none, kicked by many.
If he had anything to say about it, she’d be kept safe until she lost that look of fear and the pinch of hunger. She reminded him of his little sister though this girl had reddish hair rather than black curls. The urge to protect her made any other thought of little consequence.
36
Sam kept her attention focused on the boy even as she tore into the food he’d given her. After the trouble she’d brought him, this generosity made her nervous. When he’d leapt at her, she’d expected violence, not rescue.
She didn't understand him at all.
He did nothing more, not talking or moving except to relieve the pressure in his legs, but she knew he’d react quickly enough if she tried to waste his gift.
The aged apple and hard bread made her throat dry, but her stomach welcomed the food even more for its ability to sit heavy without bloating. She drew out the process, at first because of his warning, and then because she didn’t know what to do next.
She owed him something, both for the food and not calling the others when he discovered her presence.
His lips curved in a tentative smile, and Sam felt her face responding in kind despite her questions.
She ducked her head only to catch sight of her now ragged skirt, and the smears of dirt and porridge on her hands.
No, he could have no questions about her.
Sam drew her legs under her, only then remembering she’d removed her boots some time ago and he’d been staring at her bare toes. She must appear no better than a ragamuffin, a child of the streets much like that policeman thought.
Her shoulders slumped, his opinion carrying weight though it should not, but how could this be any worse than when she revealed the truth. His kindness most likely meant he had not tied her to the missing gears, that he accepted the belief they’d been kicked out of sight rather than stolen and returned.
As much as Sam wanted to pretend he wouldn’t care about her nature any more than Henry did, she’d seen what she could have done written in aether when terror took over. Had she possessed only a fraction less control, or had not been starving, this vessel would no longer be afloat.
They might appreciate her work on the engine, much more than the coachman she’d startled, but only because they did not know the source. And she could not deny their fears. Not when she’d laid the groundwork for transforming their whole measure of security in this vast water into a device purposed solely for her own protection for all she had not acted on it.
Sam stared at the edge of her skirt, the last bit of hardtack turning to crumbs in her restless fingers. She could only imagine how many times a Natural bout had sunk a ship before the sailors started comparing notes and determined the cause, the risk, in carrying a Natural. She could almost understand the pressure to lock Naturals away if these were the dangers she posed. Crashing a carriage seemed a minor fault compared to drowning the whole crew.
“Do you really want to waste that?”
She jerked her head up, too caught by her worries to remember his presence. He couldn’t know. And she couldn’t be the one to tell him, her only ally on this vessel.
The crumbs had collected on her dirty skirt. She made a point of picking up each and every one to show she had no intention of wasting this gift or any other.
“Can you talk?” He flushed. “I mean English. Can you understand me?”
A giggle escaped her before she could stop it. A ragamuffin? No, more like some feral child who had been raised by street dogs.
“Yes.”
His eyes widened at her use of the formal term, and Sam realized her language would give her away. She might not have been raised by the nobility, but they’d been with Henry long enough to have picked up his speech patterns, and Sam hadn’t been a street urchin to begin with.
She blushed, heat radiating up her neck. “I kin,” she tried in as good an imitation of the dock voices she’d overheard as she could manage.
Nat lowered his chin in a slow nod. “A foreigner then?”
Her efforts must not have been as successful as she’d hoped, but he offered a way out, an excuse for blunders rising from her isolated upbringing and mangled attempts to fit in. Sam owed him for feeding her, and for how he’d borne the consequences of her actions, but maybe he didn’t need the whole truth. Maybe she could give him enough truth to make him happy without telling him the one thing that would risk it all.
Better to be caught a stowaway than revealed to be a Natural. Maybe they’d make her work for her passage, or maybe he’d find enough sympathy to let her stay hidden.
“You don’t have to answer my questions if it troubles you.”
She’d stayed silent too long, calculating what to say next. Half wild, half mute, and touched in the head on top of it. She wondered why he didn’t run screaming.
“I kin answer. No trouble. Me parents, they sent me to a convent, but carriage crashed.”
Her broken words seemed to satisfy him where her silence had not. The Natural haven seemed a convent of sorts where she’d be cloistered with others of her kind, and Henry and Lily had been her parents in all but birth, especially Lily.
“Why stow away, though? Surely the captain would have honored your passage. This holds more dangers than the starvation you’ve already suffered.”
She hoped he forgave her hesitation as language rather than what it was. How could she explain why she’d gone from a carriage to running ragged on the docks? She’d already thrown away any chance of being the ragamuffin she appeared without realizing it. Her story of carriages and convents drawn from Henry’s books had little to do with a street child’s life.
“Oh,” Nat said, rubbing his forehead as though it pained him. “The crash. You must have been injured, or the coachman. What of your escort?”
Sam raised her arms in the same type of shrug she’d seen Henry’s Continental friends use when she peered down through the bannister instead of keeping hidden. The boy seemed perfectly capable and willing to fill in any holes in her story, meaning fewer lies she’d have to tell and remember.
“The captain will help you. He’s a good man and far traveled. He might even speak your language so you don’t have to struggle.”
She didn’t need to pretend as she shrank back against the rough wood. “Please. Please don’t tell anyone. Just let me hide here until we reach a port. From there I can make my way. I swear I’ll be no trouble.”
Nat paused in the act of reaching for her.
She could tell he’d noticed her failure to maintain the broken English she’d used to create her story.
He settled back on his heels and stared at her. “I said you didn’t have to explain. You didn’t have to lie.”
Tears flooded Sam’s eyes, but she blinked them back, unwilling to show such a weakness. “I’m afraid,” she whispered, giving him some of the truth he wanted. “I need to get to the Continent, and I missed my ship because of the carriage crash. I didn’t lie about that.”
Where she’d expected anger, Nat laughed. “But you weren’t quick to correct me when I made my own assumptions. Fair enough. I can’t just leave you here though. People will notice if I bring food, and I won’t let you starve.”
Sam shook her head. “No more. You’ve done enough. I’ll last. Just forget you ever saw me.”
37
Nat stared at her before he glanced down at his hands, work hardened and little like the soft scholar’s skin he’d once had.
She lied to him even now, and had lied from the very start. He’d be a fool not to turn her in. Stowing away was a crime, one bearing the same punishment as theft, and for the same reason. Supplies were tight, especially when weather or equipment could change how long even a simple voyage took, and they were on no simple jaunt to the Continent as she’d supposed.
He completed the thought, but knew he’d keep her secret.
He couldn’t send her to the noose he’d narrowly avoided, not when he looked in her eyes and saw his little sister. Why ever she hid, whatever put a cultured girl into the engine room of the Company’s weakest vessel in a ragged skirt with hands caked in filth, this had to be more than a schoolgirl prank.
Any able-bodied man was found work in a productive trade. With rare exceptions, though, upper class women retained their traditional roles with the focus being maintaining a home and finding a good husband.
Much of her story rang true. And he remembered hearing of a spectacular carriage crash not far from the docks. None of the gossip had mentioned a female passenger or her companion, but the chance of two such events occurring so close together seemed unlikely.
Nat opened his mouth to ask why her parents thought it best for her to be cloistered, but at the last moment, he regained his wits and remembered his manners. “I don’t know what brought you to this state, but you wouldn’t have come lightly. A stowaway is no better than a thief in the crew’s eyes, in the Company’s too. You’ve suffered too
much to come to that end.”
Color returned to skin that had bleached white as she tried to blend into the rough boards behind her. She relaxed enough to lower her body to the floor. “So you’ll leave me here?”
“How can I? If you deserve no hanging, you don’t deserve this either.”
She reached out a hand toward him but stopped short of touching his calloused fingers. “There is no other choice. I swear. I’ll be quiet. No one will know I’m here.”
Nat’s lips curved. “You shouldn’t be so loose with your word,” he said, parroting the first mate’s favorite phrase.
Her whole body tensed. “I meant it. No more stealing food…no more anything. Just give me the chance to get free.”
“The captain’s different. He’ll recognize you for what you are—”
His reassurance choked off in the face of her terrified expression, eyes wide and hands white around the knuckles under a layer of dirt.
“Please.” She thrust up onto her knees as though in the very cloister she’d been heading for. “Please don’t tell him. Especially not him. Please.”
All thought of turning this problem over to the captain’s more capable hands vanished in the face of her reaction. Nat moved forward to pull her into a reassuring hug without thinking.
Though he’d thought the space too small, she squeezed between the nearest set of pipes to an even smaller place where three crossed over, so desperate to escape his touch that she trapped herself more thoroughly than before.
“Hush, hush,” he whispered as though gentling a wild-eyed foal. “The captain’s a good man, and he’s traveled the world so he knows the kind of things to drive a man…or girl…to desperate measures. He’d help you more than I ever can, but I won’t tell him if you really don’t want me to. You can stay here. I’ll find a way to bring you food.”
She pinched her lips tight together and shook her head violently, rejecting the idea of telling the captain, he knew, not his offer of food.
Secrets (The Steamship Chronicles Book 1) Page 16