The door flew open, banging hard against the leg of a toppled chair. Hope leapt into Zenobia’s heart—but it wasn’t Mara and Cooper. After weeks of dinners in the captain’s cabin, the face and uniform were familiar. Lieutenant Blanchett. His usually good-natured expression had tightened into sharp lines. Blood dripped from a cut at his hairline.
He held out his hand. “Come. We must run to the lifeboats.”
“Not yet.” Zenobia caught Helene’s wrist when she took a step toward the door. Blanchett was a nice man. Likely a capable one. She wasn’t placing her life into his hands. “We are waiting for my maid and her husband.”
“Geraldine!” Shaking her head, Helene tried to tug Zenobia forward.
“Madame, I must insist—”
A gloved hand clapped over his shoulder. His lean face streaked with soot, Cooper said, “Help the others, Lieutenant. We’ll escort them.”
If Blanchett was surprised to see a maid and valet heavily armed with guns and blades, he didn’t show it. He only glanced into the cabin again. “Is this acceptable to you?”
Zenobia was already rushing forward. “Yes.”
He nodded to Cooper. “Take them through the aft cargo hold. The main deck has caught fire.”
Then she was racing down the corridor, her hand linked with Helene’s, Cooper ahead and Mara behind. The battleship had astonished her with its size when she’d first boarded—at least six times longer than the skyrunner her sister-in-law captained—but now the length of the deck seemed terrifyingly endless. Amidships, smoke boiled from the companionway and rolled across the ceiling. She held her breath passing through the acrid cloud, trying not to hear the screams from above.
Fire. That was almost always the end of an airship. A naval battleship’s balloons were hardier than most, but with a single leak in the envelope, an explosion became inevitable.
She shouted back to Mara as they ran. “Who’s attacking us?”
“Men on flyers!”
From another airship? Or from a boat?
Ahead, Cooper dropped into the companionway to the deck below. Zenobia climbed down the ladder as quickly as she could.
“Pirates?” she asked breathlessly.
Shaking his head, Cooper reached up to help Helene down the last few steps.
Mara joined them. “The flyers are of Nipponese design, but the pilots don’t wear a crest.”
So possibly smugglers, pirates, or mercenaries. But Zenobia couldn’t ask anything more. They rushed down the next ladder to the cargo deck.
Wooden doors barred their way into the hold. With his blunderbuss, Cooper blasted through the wood surrounding the locks before shattering the bolt housing with two kicks from his mechanical legs. Zenobia’s ears were still ringing as they entered the dim, humid bay, quickly making their way past stacks of crates and barrels. Muffled gunfire from outside sounded through the thick hull. No cannon fire. But that had to be the purpose of the smaller flyers: They were more difficult to shoot down than another airship would be. It would be like a bear swatting at bees—except the bees had stingers that could set the bear on fire.
They reached the loading doors built into ship’s hull. Mara urged Zenobia and Helene to the side before hauling down the lever. With a rattle of chains, the heavy steel doors slid apart.
Sunlight spilled in. Zenobia blinked, her eyes watering. Her shoulders ached, the gold in her pack a deadweight on the glider’s wide leather straps. A hot breeze caught her dress, the cotton saturated with sweat and clinging to her skin. Helene’s palm was slick against her own. Her friend’s breath pumped in short, sobbing gasps.
Outside, gunfire cracked over the rattling huff of the airship’s engines. Fewer shots rang out now. Were the marauders being driven off or had the aviators been forced to retreat from the burning deck? Zenobia couldn’t tell.
Gripping the edge of the door in one hand, Cooper leaned out and glanced up before pulling himself back into the hold. “The flyers are concentrating on the upper decks, but a few others are circling.”
A high-pitched engine whined closer, louder. Mara pushed Zenobia and Helene up against the door—out of sight and behind thick steel. A flyer buzzed past, then another.
Zenobia had expected they would look like the machines from New Eden, resembling dragonflies, but these had light, slender frames suspended beneath sleek, silvery envelopes. She’d never seen anything with a balloon move so quickly.
“There,” Mara said, pointing out over the water. Cooper looked through the loading doors and nodded.
Zenobia sidled closer to the opening, the hot wind from outside blowing into her face. Her gaze searched the sky before she spotted a dark shape floating on the horizon. A ship.
“You think that’s where the flyers came from?”
“No. That’s a Nipponese ironship—and that’s where we need to go.”
To an unknown ship? But she wouldn’t question it. She’d hired Mara and Cooper to keep her safe. If she couldn’t trust that they knew how to best go about it, they weren’t worth a single denier.
There was no time to discuss it, anyway. Her heart gave a heavy thump when she saw the smoke billowing from the airship’s bow. The flames hadn’t reached this part of the vessel yet, but it wouldn’t take long.
“What about the lifeboats?” Helene’s voice was high and thin.
Cooper spared her a glance. “There’s blood in the water and this is megalodon territory. Without quick rescue from that ironship, soon there won’t be any lifeboats.”
“They’re coming around again. Two flyers.” Mara’s warning preceded another high-pitched whine. “Back. Get back.”
Holding her breath, Zenobia pressed back against the steel doors, her fingers gripping Helene’s.
But they weren’t the only ones stepping away from the opening in the hull. Cooper dropped a kiss to Mara’s mouth and backed away from the doors, making his way down the narrow row between the stacked crates. Crouching at the edge, Mara lifted her hand, five fingers extended. She began to fold them down, one by one. Counting.
The whine grew louder. Mara’s hand clenched into a fist.
Her husband sprinted to the open doors and leapt from the airship.
The crack of Mara’s pistol cut Zenobia’s cry short. Then astonishment stopped her dead when Cooper slammed into the first flyer pilot.
They’d perfectly timed his jump. The machine rocked wildly, then a body tumbled from the pilot’s seat and Cooper gripped the steering lever, straightening its course. The second pilot had slumped over—shot by Mara, Zenobia realized. His balloon slowed to a stop, hovering beside the battleship’s hull.
She still hadn’t found her voice again when Cooper brought the balloon alongside the loading doors. Mara squeezed onto the seat behind him, the machine bobbing under her added weight. She glanced at Zenobia.
“We’ll return shortly with the second flyer.”
Zenobia nodded. The balloon’s engine wound higher and Cooper flew forward. Less than fifteen seconds later, Mara kicked the dead pilot from his seat and took his place.
“He’s your late husband’s valet!” Helene stood beside her, staring after the pair. “And she is only a maid!”
And Zenobia couldn’t think of a single lie to explain it. Fortunately, their approach saved her from a response.
Hovering just inside the loading bay, Mara pointed to Helene and called over the noise of her engine. “You’re lighter than Mrs. Inkslinger, so you will ride with my husband!”
While the taller Zenobia rode with Mara—keeping their combined weights as low as possible, because the machines were designed to carry one. The flyer tilted when Zenobia stepped onto the runner. She followed Mara’s example and pulled her skirt up over her knees before swinging her leg over the small bit of room left in the saddle. The engine’s vibration instantly made her entire bottom itch.
She didn’t have one. But Helene did—and was already waving it through the air, though they hadn’t yet left the cargo hold.
“Stay close to them,” Zenobia suggested.
“I will.”
And then they were off, Zenobia’s stomach swooping as they fell into a shallow dive—keeping the airship’s bulk between them and the other flyers, she realized. Hiding until they gained more distance from the battleship.
She glanced back. Oh, dear God. The flames had completely engulfed the upper decks. Smoke billowed around the airship’s balloons in an angry cloud, almost obscuring their white envelopes. As if a giant hand had snapped off the tip of the ship, the bow had broken away from the hull and hung suspended over the water by the forward balloon’s tethering cables.
In the ocean below, aviators in lifeboats rowed from beneath the hovering battleship. Silvery, deflated balloons floated on the swells around them. Some of the flyers had been shot down, then. How many more were there?
Her gaze searched the air. At least four or five, their shapes barely visible through the smoke.
Then not-so-barely visible.
Zenobia’s grip tightened on Mara’s hips. “Flyers are coming this way!”
Though not in a straight line toward them. The three flyers at the head were bobbing and weaving—though the two behind held a steadier course.
As if they were giving chase, and the three ahead were fleeing.
Gunshots cracked. One of the retreating flyers’s balloon collapsed, the silvery envelope crumpling in on itself. Engine whining, the machine dropped into a spinning dive, the metal frame flashing beneath the bright sun. The marauder’s scream scraped terror down Zenobia’s spine, then he slammed into the water and the silence was even more horrifying.
But better him than her friends.
“There’s still four!” she cried out when Mara banked right, her gun in hand. Cooper did the same—intending to face the flyers down rather than risk a bullet in the back, Zenobia realized. “But the two behind shot out another’s balloon!”
“I saw,” Mara said. “Hold tight.”
Zenobia did, as tight as she could without restricting the other woman’s movements. Their flyer slowed and turned.
The others were closer now, not coming directly toward Zenobia’s flyer but on a path that would pass by about a hundred yards to their right. The two in front looked just like the other marauders, prepared for flight in goggles and helmets. She’d assumed their pursuers were aviators who’d managed to commandeer the flyers, just as Mara and Cooper had, but they didn’t wear naval uniforms. They weren’t near enough for her to make out their features, just dark hair and white shirts.
The two men in pursuit veered apart, as if flanking their prey. One of the flyers in front turned and shot wildly behind him—then his balloon collapsed, the report of a gunshot echoing through his cry of terror.
The last of the three hunted flyers banked toward them. Arm raised, the pilot leveled his gun in their direction.
Zenobia stiffened, her heart pounding wildly. “Mara?”
“He’s too far away for an accurate shot.” The mercenary’s voice was tense. “But so are we.”
Cooper didn’t seem to care about that. He’d opened fire with both pistols. Maybe hoping for a lucky hit. Behind him, Helene had pressed her face between his shoulders and was desperately waving her handkerchief over her head.
“Come on, you bastard,” Mara muttered. “Just a little closer . . . Ah.”
It was like a sigh of pleasure. The hammer of her pistol fell. A puff of smoke accompanied the loud crack. The marauder’s face exploded and his body toppled backward, his arms swinging up.
Another crack sounded. Not Mara’s or Cooper’s guns. Zenobia had half a second to wonder whether the marauder had managed to get off a shot before Mara’s bullet had killed him or if the squeezing the trigger had been a dying reflex, then the balloon over her head collapsed in a sickening rush of air.
Oh, God.
“Zenobia!” Mara screamed. “We need to jump for Cooper’s—”
Then they were dropping, dropping, but Zenobia had done this before. She and her brother had leapt out of balloons so many times, because he’d needed the excitement, and she’d needed to imagine that it was her father’s airship they were escaping—and that she was free, finally free of his fists and his rules and his locked closets.
She wrapped her arms around Mara’s waist and jumped.
The deflated balloon flipped past them, spinning around and around, and Mara’s weight felt as if it would tear her arm out of its socket when she let go with one hand to yank the lever on the side of her pack.
The glider’s wings snapped open. The frame creaked as the canvas caught air, and Mara was almost ripped out of her grip, but Zenobia held on as the mercenary began to laugh wildly.
Zenobia couldn’t laugh. She could barely breathe. Wind tore at her eyes. Her arms shook with strain. She couldn’t control their direction, there was too much weight and none of it evenly balanced. They descended toward the ocean—but there was nowhere else to go, anyway. At least the landing would be softer than it would have been on the flyer.
Clear turquoise water rolled gently below. She didn’t see any shadows beneath the surface, no monsters of the deep, and she couldn’t believe that she’d ever wanted a glimpse of one.
A flyer engine whined behind them. She couldn’t look around, but wasn’t surprised that Cooper was following.
“Let me go now!” Mara called when they skimmed closer to the water. “It’ll be easier for you to land without me!”
True. And it was only a ten- or fifteen-foot drop.
Letting go was almost as painful as holding on. Her muscles screamed as she eased her arms open, and Mara splashed feet-first into the water.
Zenobia shifted her weight to slowly turn, gliding in a circle back to Mara’s position so that she wouldn’t land too far away from her guard. As it was, she’d probably have to swim until they figured out how to get four people aboard a flyer designed to carry only one.
Swim. Even though her arms were dead things, and she had a heavy bag of gold strapped to her back.
Oh, dear God. Frantically she tried to unbuckle the straps, but her hands were weak and the tension of her weight suspended from the glider prevented her from wriggling out. She pushed at the wing lever and dropped when the wings folded.
The water rushed up, slapping at her feet and her stomach then dragging her down, warmer than she expected, but no less salty and terrifying when it closed over her head. Her skirt tangled around her thrashing legs. A watery buzz filled her ears and the wavering shape of a flyer appeared overhead. Cooper. She just had to reach the surface. She pushed her thumbs under the leather straps at her shoulders, trying to force them off, but they were tight, even tighter now, as if she were still hanging from the glider.
Or being pulled upward. She broke the surface, coughing and grabbing for the flyer’s foot runner.
But that wasn’t Cooper’s boot. Instead of hard brown leather, it was soft and supple, and covered in a fine red dust.
She looked up. Black hair. Dark eyes over high, arching cheekbones. A firm mouth and an angular jaw clenched with effort. He was close, so close, leaning out of his seat and holding her up with his fingers wrapped around the glider’s straps. Then he lifted her out of the water with just one hand, even though she was a tall woman, her pack filled with heavy gold and her skirts soaking wet.
The ocean rained from her dress, splattering his loose trousers and a white tunic streaked with dirt the color of rust. He set her on the runner and slid forward a little, an unspoken invitation to fill the space behind him.
What to
do? She looked for Mara. The mercenary was climbing onto another flyer, taking the seat behind the pilot—her rescuer’s companion. Cooper looked on and nodded at Zenobia when she sent him a questioning glance.
Very well, then. She glanced down at the seat. She couldn’t straddle it properly unless her skirts were up by her knees, but she wouldn’t be missish. She yanked them up and swung her leg over, her dress squelching as she sat.
A moment later they rose into the air—heading toward the ironship. Her body stiff, she gripped her rescuer’s sides. This shouldn’t be any different than sitting behind Mara.
But it was.
He was much taller than she. Even sitting, her eyes were only level with the back of his neck. His shoulders were broad, and his thick black hair was tied up in a short knot. With so little room, she had no choice but to press up against him, and he was hard with muscle everywhere they touched—against her breasts, cradled between her inner thighs, beneath her hands. His abdomen was ridged steel against her fingers.
And she was wet. Dripping everywhere, and she’d soaked him through. He had to be just as uncomfortable as she was.
More so. Blood stained his left sleeve. He’d been shot—yet he’d still pulled her from the drink.
With one hand, and a marvelously strong arm.
She’d never been so glad that Helene had taught her a few Nipponese phrases, including expressions of gratitude. “Arigatou gozaimasu,” she said against the back of his neck, and hoped that she hadn’t garbled the pronunciation.
His body tensed against hers and he responded with a terse nod.
Well. Now this was awkward.
She leaned back a tiny bit, trying to put a little space between her breasts and his back. Saturated, his tunic was all but transparent. The silk clung to the thick muscle hugging the groove of his spine, revealing a design tattooed across his shoulders, black against smooth brown skin. An animal, she thought, but with too many limbs and a cone-shaped head—
Oh, dear God. Her stomach clenched into a tight ball. Those weren’t limbs. They were tentacles.
The Kraken King, Part 1 Page 3