“No.” When she met his gaze, her emerald eyes had filled again. Her voice was strained. “A part of me just wants to go home.”
She would leave him?
Denial sliced open his chest. Ariq held it in, but his throat felt raw as he asked, “And the other part?”
“Desperately wants to know why I would need three days to recover.”
Relief and surprise shot through him. He dropped his face to her neck again, muffling his laughter. Hers joined in, and she shook beneath him.
He kissed her again before giving her the dagger she’d asked for and forcing himself to his feet. Ariq felt her curious gaze as he began to crank the electrostatic charger. When fully wound, he could set the rotation rate. The more quickly that electric pulses were sent up the wires to the dome overhead, the more frequent the contractions through the translucent bell, and the faster the speed of their flight.
But she didn’t ask about the lantern fish. “How did you know where to find us?”
Because Ariq had fought under Ghazan Bator for most of his life. “I knew the general wouldn’t stay where he was.”
“How did you know where he went, though? Did you persuade the admiral to tell you where the ironship was headed?”
Did she imagine Ariq torturing the older man? He might have, if it would have achieved anything. Or one of the guards. But those aviators had their own code of honor, and every man aboard that airship would have died rather than reveal anything to him.
“I knew that after they realized I was no longer on the airship, they would send a messenger to tell Ghazan Bator. So when they sent a flyer to the ironship, I followed him.”
Confusion furrowed her brow. “But no messenger arrived with a . . . Oh.”
“Yes,” Ariq said grimly. As soon as he’d been certain of the flyer’s heading, he’d shot the man down. If the message had arrived, Ghazan Bator would have known Ariq was coming, and would have been better prepared for him.
She sat up, pencil and knife in hand, and began to sharpen the tip. “How did you escape the airship? Did they put in to port and let you out of the vault? Seems rather reckless of them.”
“It was.” Letting him out of the vault had been, anyway. He didn’t need to tell her the rest.
“Then you stole a jellyfish?”
“I borrowed it.”
She arched her brow, as if asking whether there was a difference.
Amused, he said again, “Borrowed. It belongs to a naturalist. I told him my wife had been abducted and I needed a swift balloon that could be easily concealed. So I asked him for the use of his, and promised to return it and pay him.”
“And he simply agreed.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. But he knew of me.”
“Ah. You scared him.”
A little. Ariq had that effect. Yet that wasn’t why the naturalist had agreed. And with anyone else, Ariq could have just said that the man had been a resident of these islands while the Nipponese and the Golden Empire had waged their war, and that would be explanation enough.
It would mean little to Zenobia, though. She and Ariq were from different sides of the world. She wouldn’t know why the naturalist had been glad of the opportunity to thwart a Nipponese admiral any more than Ariq would know anything about the town where she’d been born. He didn’t even know the name of the province she’d lived in, or who ruled over them, or which language gave her French that guttural bite.
But he knew Zenobia—and that she would rather understand the full history than be given an incomplete explanation.
He eyed her pencil. “Do you intend to take notes? I’ll tell you why he let me borrow it, but there’s much to write.”
“That’s fine.” Pursing her soft lips, she blew a shaving from the lead tip. “I like stories about escapes. Though it seems easier to steal a balloon than borrow one.”
“It would be. And more noticeable. If I’d stolen a balloon, someone would mention the theft when Tatsukawa came to the island to search for me. I didn’t want him to know where to look next.”
He’d learned that while fighting with the rebellion. It was always better to ask, and to let people help. They were far more likely to keep their silence afterward.
Especially since Tatsukawa hadn’t borrowed the flyer his messenger had used. The admiral hadn’t had one on his airship, so his aviators had commandeered one at the port. The people on the island would always remember that.
“I’ve never considered borrowing. I always make my heroes steal.” Dismay chased over her expression, followed by wry amusement. “But they’re never caught, because they’re very clever.”
“Or your villains are fools.”
She responded to his teasing with a narrowed glare. With a disdainful sniff, she put her pencil to the paper. “Then enlighten me, O Mighty Rebel.”
Ariq grinned. One day, he would make her call him that in bed. But for now, both her bludgeon and her pencil were too close to her hands—and although her villains might be fools, Ariq was not. So he kept that thought to himself and enlightened her, instead.
Chapter Twenty
Zenobia liked stories about escapes. She didn’t like plot holes, and the description of Ariq’s escape contained one the size of a kraken. Why had Admiral Tatsukawa needed to arrive at an island before searching for him? The only explanation was that Ariq had escaped from the airship when it was somewhere else—namely, still over the ocean. She doubted that a boat had anchored beneath the airship and Tatsukawa’s men simply failed to notice Ariq climbing down a ladder.
Which left only a few options. And in each one, Ariq ended up in the sea, swimming.
So he could rescue her.
It was the only plot hole that had ever filled her with giddy delight. Oh, she was such a fool. Stories ended, and so did adventures—but life continued on. Theirs would, too. Ariq might stay in the Red City long enough to clear up the mess that their abduction had caused, but surely he would soon have to return to Krakentown. Zenobia was obligated to stay until she saw Helene settled and safe. Then she would go home to Fladstrand.
But this adventure wasn’t over yet. She was still hundreds of miles out to sea, flying above the waves in a jellyfish balloon.
After days of gray, the ocean was a deep blue again. Sunlight danced over the swells, stinging tears from her eyes that the wind whipped back to soak the hair at her temples. The blanket around her shoulders flapped wildly behind her. She’d known few airships that could travel so swiftly—and those were powered by engines. But this . . . she couldn’t look up without being amazed all over again.
From the top of the dome to the rim, the gelatinous mass overhead rhythmically thickened and thinned, as if swimming through the air. Short, gleaming tentacles hung from the translucent body like tassels on a lamp shade. Ariq had told her that war lanterns possessed longer tentacles with venomous stings, which often killed more soldiers within the balloons than the venom killed enemies. But this lantern had been designed for travel, not battle.
Three paces long on each side, the basket was just large enough that two people could ride comfortably, whether sitting or standing.
Or while lying on top of each other.
Her cheeks heated. Her windblown hair swept forward, tangled curls waving like two flags along either side of her face as she looked away from the jellyfish’s pulsating body. Ariq stood at the center of the basket winding the electrostatic charger again. The faster they went, the more often he had to crank it. The rush of the wind almost drowned out the clacking gears and plastered his tunic against the sculpture of his broad chest. Feet braced apart, he rotated the crankshaft overhead, all wide shoulders and flexing muscle.
A sigh of pleasure moved through her. She probably shouldn’t have fallen in love with him. Of all the idiotic, reckless things she might have
done, surely that was at the top of the list. But here she was.
And it was rather marvelous. Her heart was an overfilled inkwell. She couldn’t keep up with the spill. There were words she could write with that ink, phrases that might describe the sensation of his touch or the sound of his voice, but as soon as she captured the right ones they were obliterated by the overflow. No description could capture the joy and pleasure of simply watching him. Or the anguish, too, in the icy lump at the corner of her heart that knew the end of this adventure would come too soon.
But she could push that aside for now. She could drown every doubt. There would be time enough for those later.
For now there was only Ariq.
He finished winding the charger, and her pulse raced off again, leaping as he met her gaze through the lenses of his aviator goggles. A single step brought him to her side, and though she knew by the look in his eyes exactly what would happen, her need still took her by surprise. Before his fingers pushed her tangled hair away from her cheeks, she was tilting her face up. Before his mouth lowered, she was lifting to meet him.
He stole her senses so easily. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything but the warmth of his lips, the scratch of stubble against her chin, and her heart was spilling over again. God, the way he kissed her. The sweetness of it. As if it wasn’t just the first step to her bed, but a pleasure in itself.
Such a pleasure. Every time.
But this kiss had to end, too.
Lifting his head, he searched her face. His thumbs wiped away the wet paths from the corners of her eyes to her temples. “Are you finished?”
Writing. After they’d shared a breakfast of spongy flatbread provided by the naturalist, she’d spent the next few hours on the basket floor, hunched over her notebook, while Ariq stood as lookout. He’d spotted a few vessels in the distance, in both the sky and on the water, but no ironship.
“Finished for now,” she said.
“The same story again?”
Her throat tightened and she shook her head. The loss of her work still hurt. Losing the letters was worse. She could remember all that Archimedes had written, but it wasn’t the same as opening them, or seeing her brother’s familiar hand.
“A new one,” she said. “But I can’t talk about it until it feels more . . . certain. At the start, it’s always too easy to convince myself that it will all fall apart.”
Especially now, with this story. It was truly new for her. No Archimedes Fox or Lady Lynx.
Which might be the worst idea she’d ever had. Her publisher would probably think so.
He nodded. “You’ll watch with me, then?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want the goggles?”
They only had one pair aboard the balloon. “No. I’ll stand with my back to the wind.”
It was easier to see him facing this direction, anyway. The beauty of the ocean and the bright cloud-puffed sky lay before them, but it was his neck that drew her gaze. He’d tied his hair in the thick knot again—probably so that it wouldn’t whip in his eyes as hers kept doing. She liked it down, as it had been this morning, when it framed his jaw and directed her focus to the generous width of his mouth. But she liked this, too, when the side of his neck and the tendon that ran the length of his throat were exposed. She wanted to bite him there, and lick his skin, and it seemed such an odd place to fixate on. Perhaps because necks were supposed to be vulnerable, yet his seemed so very strong.
All of him seemed so very strong. Not just his body. His heart, his will. It might have been foolish to fall in love, but at least her heart had been practical when it had chosen this man. It couldn’t have chosen a better one.
She wished that Ariq’s had chosen her—not the woman he’d thought she’d been. The spy. The woman in distress. Was he still holding on to a false impression of her? Trying to persuade himself that the differences wouldn’t matter? Each kiss said that he must be. One day, he would stop trying to pretend she was the same. Hopefully they would be separated before then. He would be in Krakentown; she would be home. He would still have warm memories of her instead of disappointment and bitterness.
The dark lump in her heart grew, a dull frozen ache beneath her breast. Oh, but not yet. She wouldn’t let it consume her yet. There was still time left.
Time spent with him. She slipped between his big body and the side of the basket, her lower back braced by the guard rail. Her head wouldn’t block his view; she wasn’t that tall. Her hair blew forward, the tips curling against his chest.
Ariq glanced down at her face, then at the narrow space between them. Her breath caught. A small step would fill that space, pressing his length to hers. But he didn’t move, and instead the distance was filled with their shared heat and what felt like a promise. That space wouldn’t remain.
For now, it did. His gaze scanned the water again, searching for the ironship—a ship that, under other circumstances, he might have been serving aboard.
“The general said you abandoned them,” she said.
His jaw hardened. “I left. But I didn’t desert them.”
“I didn’t think you had. You would be dead now. Wouldn’t you?” She didn’t know of any army that didn’t execute its deserters.
“Yes.”
“Why did you leave?” She gripped the blanket tighter at her sternum to stop the wind from skating down her neck. “Not just why—you already said that the rebellion was moving in the wrong direction—but there must have been a moment, something that tipped your decision. Was it your mother?”
His gaze searched her face again. Slowly, he shook his head. “No. I’d already made the decision. I’d told Ghazan Bator of my intentions and had been handing over my duties when news of her execution came. When news of my brother came.”
And he’d gone to rescue Taka from a prison. “What happened?”
“An earthquake.” His chest lifted on a deep breath. “Though I didn’t know anything of it, then. We received word that a regiment was marching quickly south from Ghanzou. Five thousand men. They had supplies but weren’t heavily armed. They seemed an easy target.”
“But they weren’t?”
“They were. I took a thousand soldiers. We ambushed them at the head of a valley. By the time my archers were done, little resistance remained. But when we moved in, I discovered the regiment’s purpose.” He looked to the sea again. Sunlight warmed the high arch of his cheekbones and the clenching muscles in his jaw before he continued, “The earthquake had buried an entire district under rubble. The Khagan had sent the regiment to dig out the survivors, and supplies to help feed and house the remaining families.”
So the tyrant helped his people, sometimes. “What did you do?”
“Took the regiment’s supplies and continued their march to Longnan. But we were only a thousand strong, when there might have been five thousand. I don’t know how many died because we brought fewer hands.”
But the roughness of his voice told Zenobia that he felt every single one. “Then you left the rebellion out of guilt?”
“No.” A cold glaze swept over his eyes. “I left because I received orders from Ghazan Bator to take the supplies and abandon Longnan.”
“While people were still buried?”
He nodded. “Another regiment was coming from the south, but was still three days away. They could help rebuild but not help save those still under the rubble.”
“What did you do?”
“Disregarded my orders to leave immediately. We stayed as long as we could—and we didn’t take the supplies.”
“And you rebelled against the rebellion,” she said.
A faint smile touched his mouth. “Not just me. Most of my soldiers would have disregarded my orders if I’d told them to leave earlier.”
She couldn’t mistake the pride in his voice when he spoke of t
hem. “Then they went with you and helped build your town.”
“Many of them.”
“And you brought your brother, too.”
His penetrating gaze narrowed on her. “The general told you?”
“Yes. While he was telling me you wouldn’t come.”
Ariq abruptly closed the distance. His long fingers swept into her hair and he kissed her, long and hard, before lifting his head.
“I would.” It was an urgent vow against her tender lips. “I always will.”
Throat thick, she nodded. He didn’t step away but turned his back against the basket and held her, his solid warmth against the wind.
He had come. He’d swum through an ocean for her. Maybe jumped from an airship. And as giddy as the knowledge made her there was pain, too, rising. She didn’t know where it was originating from.
Except that she feared this end. And even more, she feared a day when he wouldn’t come.
But she wouldn’t think of that now. She would hide away from those doubts.
There was only Ariq.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “Was it difficult seeing Taka’s father? You wanted to kill him.”
“It was difficult knowing that I couldn’t kill him without endangering my town. But to see him? No.” His hand stroked the length of her back. “The most difficult part was realizing how little of herself my mother had given Taka.”
She glanced up. The sun glinted off the frames of his goggles. He wasn’t looking down at her, but gazing off into the distance, his strong profile a hard line. “How so?”
“She protected Taka by never telling him who she was. But I wonder now if it would have been better to give him that purpose, as she did to me. At least then, when he lost everything—his love, his honor—it would have been for a reason. He was the innocent trampled by a war, because she never gave him that part of herself. And now he is the reflection of his father.”
“Are you her reflection?”
“I think so. Even though my face is my father’s. But we are likely all reflections of our parents in some way.”
The Kraken King, Part 5 Page 6