He should have known. Should have realized. His mother had simply smiled whenever someone had asked where she’d come from and who her people were. For years, David had assumed that she’d hidden the truth in order to sever ties to that place—perhaps to forget some shame she’d endured, or to escape her past. He’d assumed that she concealed the truth to separate herself from her people…not because she’d wanted to conceal them.
But his mother hadn’t even told his father, someone she’d loved and trusted, and who would’ve loved her no matter what secrets she might have revealed. And in all this time, it had never occurred to David that his mother’s smiles might have served another purpose.
A smile allowed her to remain silent. A smile meant that she didn’t have to lie to his father. A smile suggested that the answer was a game or a puzzle to figure out; a smile allowed her to keep a secret without suggesting that his father couldn’t be trusted with it.
But his mother had never needed to work aboard an airship, where a smile alone wouldn’t have secured a job. His mother had never had to maintain a lie that might be picked apart by a man who’d lain awake with their conversation echoing in his head. His mother had never had someone tell her that they would soon be conducting a survey of Iceland.
Would she have been able to smile then? Or would she have appeared just as worried as Annika did?
David thought she would have.
If Annika was protecting her people, as he’d begun to suspect, and if she had reason to lie, a week of flirting wouldn’t tell him where his mother had come from. He’d do better to tell Annika of his own reasons for wanting to know—and that she had no need to fear him—instead of trying to tease those answers from her.
Resolved, he headed down the stairs. Though most of the crew below decks was abed, finding the engine room was simple: he followed the noise. By the time David reached the door, he couldn’t hear his own footsteps over the rattling and huffing. The boards vibrated beneath his boots, through his metal feet—a muffled, almost ticklish reverberation.
Years ago, he’d sometimes caught himself trying to scratch an itch below a knee that wasn’t there. Now, nearly a decade after buying his mechanical legs, he still found himself surprised when something was there.
Ticklish, of all things.
A blast of humid air greeted him when he opened the door, the smell of hot iron and oil. Ahead, an array of six enormous pistons rapidly alternated in time to the huffing, the giant shafts cranking flywheels into a spinning blur. A woman in trousers stood in front of the engine, with her back to him. He recognized Mary Chandler’s red hair before she tied a scarf over her head, carefully tucking away the loose ends. Coming onto watch, apparently. Had he missed Annika, then?
No. Arms akimbo, Mary braced her hands on her hips. She shifted her weight to one leg, revealing Annika, crouching sideways to her at the base of the engine…without a shirt. Just a thin chemise, almost transparent with sweat and steam.
Shock and desire pummeled David like iron fists. His body clenched, senses reeling. He should look away.
He couldn’t.
Tiny sleeves capped her shoulders, leaving her arms bare. Spanner in hand, she tightened the bolt over a valve. Smooth biceps flexed beneath skin glistening with perspiration and darkened by a fine layer of coal dust. The same dust streaked her face, grayed her cotton chemise and buff trousers. A wide leather belt cinched her waist and held spanners of various sizes.
David’s pulse pounded in his ears, seemed louder than the engine. With her profile to him, Annika glanced up at Mary Chandler. Like the other woman, she’d tied a scarf across her forehead and down around her ears, knotted at her nape; unlike the other woman’s, it was a brilliant orange, seemingly untouched by coal dust and sparkling with sequins. Annika gave an absent nod, watching the woman.
Who was shouting, David realized when he heard his own name.
He shouldn’t listen. Experience had taught David that he wouldn’t want to overhear anything Mary Chandler had to say—and a few sentences confirmed it. He’d met Chandler in the wardroom not long after Annika had left. Judging by her comments now, he’d made quite the impression. Still, he wanted to see Annika’s reaction to her words.
She didn’t have much of a reaction at all. Tucking her spanner into her belt, she simply nodded again while Chandler spoke. She rose, caught sight of David. Her eyes widened with surprise. Full lips curved into a welcoming smile.
Chandler abruptly stopped shouting. She glanced over her shoulder. Red flooded her cheeks. She quickly turned away, patting Annika’s shoulder and moving past her, deeper into the engine room.
Annika gave her a curious glance before starting toward David. His breath stopped. The damp cotton of her chemise clung to her breasts, revealing their soft shape, the darkness of her nipples. Jesus Christ, help him. The sight hardened his cock, thick and aching.
He forced his gaze up—and froze on her throat, at the necklace made from a leather thong and small bones inscribed with runes. He couldn’t read them. His eyepiece clicked, cycling through his lenses as he tried to see the glyphs, but it wouldn’t matter—the faces of a few runes lay against her skin, concealing the names there.
He resisted the urge to reach for his own runes, the names his mother had worn. Not here. He’d show her them when he told her his mother’s story.
Elated by the discovery, he met her eyes, matched her smile.
Hers widened. With a sweep of her hand, she drew the scarf away from her head…and took a wad of cotton from each ear. David choked back a sudden laugh. So she hadn’t reacted to Mary Chandler’s comments because she hadn’t heard them?
“Mr. Kentewess!” she shouted. “May I help you? If you’re coming to ask us to quiet the engine, I assure you we can’t!”
As he shook his head, his gaze involuntarily dropped to her breasts again. Her dark nipples had beaded, pressing against the thin cotton. God. She didn’t even seem to realize—or didn’t care.
If so, he liked her impropriety. But he absolutely wasn’t prepared for it. He tugged the front of his jacket together, praying it concealed his body’s turgid response.
Clearing his throat, he forced himself to look at her face again. “Do passengers often ask you to quiet them?”
“Never directly. But we hear complaints about the complaints!” She moved past him to a workbench, where she tugged the tools from her belt. With a twist of a valve, steaming water from a copper pipe overhead filled a basin. Dipping a cloth into the small bath, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “You can’t sleep?”
“I wanted to continue our conversation!” he shouted back.
She nodded, then turned away from him to wipe down her face, her arms. A square swath of blue wool hung on the wall near the door, a hole cut in the center. When she dropped it over her head, the wool covered her in front and back from neck to thighs. She gestured for him to precede her into the passageway, then laughed when he held the door open, letting her go through first.
In the corridor, she turned to him. “I have to check the warmers on deck! Are you accompanying me?”
“Yes!”
She led him forward through the dim passageway, past the companionway he’d used to reach this level. When distance muffled the din from the engine, she looked to him. “We’ll avoid waking everyone in the aviator’s berth if we head to the forward ladder. Should I ask what Mrs. Chandler said? By her expression, it must have been about you. She loves to gossip, but never likes to be caught.”
Who did? “You didn’t hear anything of it?”
“No. Is it better I didn’t?”
Probably. But he still wanted to see her reaction. “She told you that I asked after your watch schedule in the wardroom, and that Dooley teased me about being sweet on you.”
“Sweet on me?” Her laugh wasn’t what he expected. It could have been cruel, but was warm and inviting, instead—asking him to laugh with her. “I’ve never seen anyone fall in love who didn’t know eac
h other for years first.”
“Truly?” He’d known several people who’d loved each other within days, his parents and Dooley among them.
“Yes.” She slanted a playful look at him through her lashes, and he was sorry that they had no need for a stoker on their expedition. He suspected that she’d have fit into their group even more quickly than Goltzius had, and that he’d have enjoyed her company as much as Dooley’s. “Are you sweet on me, Mr. Kentewess?”
“Not yet.”
“Then whatever Mary said means nothing. Did she say more?”
Goddamn him for wanting to know. This shouldn’t matter. It did. “She said that you ought to rethink your interest in me, because I’m horrid.”
“You’re horrid?” She stopped at the foot of a ladder. “What have you supposedly done?”
“I look horrid, rather. My face is melted and my hand is gone.”
“Ah.” She frowned. “That was rather horrid of her to say, wasn’t it? That won’t stand. I’ll give her a talking-to.”
Blast it all. While fishing for her reaction, he’d caught one he hadn’t intended.
“That wasn’t to tattle,” he said. In the wardroom, he’d told Annika he’d never felt stupid. He did now.
“She won’t know who it came from, Mr. Kentewess. By tomorrow morning, she’ll have said the same to everyone.” She studied his face for a long second. “Why would she say melted? It doesn’t even look burned. Nothing like this.”
Twisting around, she pulled up her shawl and showed him the back of her right arm, from the elbow to just below her shoulder. The ridged scar there was paler than the rest of her skin, mottled with pink.
“What happened?”
“I backed up against a furnace.” She tugged down the wool again. “My mother always told me that someone with no scars was either very lucky or hadn’t ever had to work very hard. This wasn’t from working hard, but from daydreaming when I should have been. I learned a bit of a lesson, too.”
“So you weren’t lucky.”
“No. My mother wasn’t, either. She lost four toes to the ice one winter. Another girl I know had her nose torn away by a wild dog.” She paused, her expression thoughtful. A small crease formed between her brows. “It could be said that she was very lucky, I suppose. The result might have been worse.”
“Then I’m either unlucky or incredibly lucky, depending on how you look at it.” He preferred to think he was lucky.
“Yes. And sometimes, I think it’s not about luck at all; you lift your face to say a prayer to the gods, and the answer they give is a bird shitting in your eyes.” She pursed her mouth, watching him. “What is it?”
David shook his head, unable to describe the ecstatic leap of his heart. In his life, he’d only heard one other person use that expression. His mother, whenever something unlucky had happened, would say that a bird had shit in her eye—that the gods had answered a prayer, but that the answer wasn’t one anyone would like.
Finally he said, “I’m fortunate, then, that one of my eyes is always covered.”
“Yes.” She laughed suddenly, glancing at his eyepiece. Few people looked without staring—or without pretending that it didn’t exist at all, looking everywhere but his prosthetics or his scars. She didn’t do either. Her gaze moved to his cheek again. “Whatever Mary thinks, it’s obviously not melted. Mostly, it looks like someone shoved your face against a rotary sharpener. Or you lost a tangle with a wolf.”
“If I’m alive, I must have won that tangle.”
She grinned. “Yes. So Mary doesn’t think you’re handsome?”
“Horrid, yes.” David had to agree.
“And she’s not any judge. In port, she once pointed out a man to me who she thought was handsome—and the moment I saw him, I looked for the nearest tree to climb, thinking that I’d just seen a bear.” She preceded him up the ladder. By the time David reached the top, where she stood waiting, he was sweet on her. “I’ve never been able to determine what ‘handsome’ means. You aren’t as hairy as most men. I think that’s lovely. So that must be how I determine it.”
He’d accept that, especially since she didn’t seem to be stroking him on, hoping to spare his feelings. His gaze dropped to her smiling mouth. Perhaps this journey wouldn’t only last a week. After she knew where he was headed, why he was headed there, she might want to join him.
“My aunt tells me that you’ve searched for your sister four years now,” he said. “Do you miss home?”
She didn’t need to answer; the wistful expression softening her eyes told him. She looked away, toward the companionway leading to the main deck. Faint lamplight spilled through the open hatch to the wet boards. With a sigh, she pulled the orange scarf over her hair.
“It looks like we haven’t yet flown out of the wind and rain. Are you still coming up with me?”
“If I’m not in your way.”
“You won’t be.”
“Then I will.” When she lifted her chin to tie the ends of the scarf beneath her throat, he said, “The runes on your necklace. May I look?”
Her fingers stilled. After a long second, she nodded.
David wanted to step close to examine it, to lift the leather string in his hands and steal a moment against her skin. He didn’t need to. She pulled the necklace away from her throat, twisting the small bones until the runes faced him. His nanoagents detected the shift of his focus and adjusted his lens.
“Annika, daughter of Frida,” he said softly. “Daughter of Kára, daughter of Astrid, daughter of Agnes, daughter of Jane.” He looked up, saw the surprise in the parting of her lips and widening of her eyes. She hadn’t thought he’d be able to read the runes, and no wonder—he’d searched long before finding a historian who could teach him. With his gaze on her face, he unbuckled his jacket collar, tugged out his own runes. “This was my mother’s.”
Astonished, she sucked in a sharp breath and reached up, rolling the first bone between her fingers. “Inga.” Her gaze jumped to meet his again, searching his features. For a resemblance? “You are her daughter?”
“Her son.” Joy and triumph surged through him. Yes, this was closer to fulfilling his promise, the closest he’d been. He recited the runes from memory. “Inga, daughter of Helga, daughter of Sigrid, daughter of Ursula, daughter of Hanna. Did you know her?”
Dropping the runes, she let her hand fall to her side. The wondering light in her eyes faded. She shook her head, her expression closing. “No. I’m sorry.”
Oh, no. He wouldn’t let her shut him out now. “She died wearing these, Annika. She died saving my life. She asked me to bury them on her people’s holy mountain so that her soul can find her mother’s, but I don’t know where that is. Help me. Please.”
She cast a stricken glance at his runes. “I can’t.”
But his mother’s request had affected her. Heart pounding, he stepped closer and said softly, “Whatever secret you’re keeping, I won’t expose it. Please, Annika. Please let me do this for her.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” Hugging her arms against her chest, she backed up a step, then turned for the companionway. “Don’t follow me up, Mr. Kentewess. You’d only get in my way.”
He’d damn well get in her way until she gave him what he needed. David started after her—then forced himself to stop. Fists clenched, he watched her disappear up the stairs. She’d been taken off-guard and her defenses were up. He’d let her go for now, give her time to think.
But he wasn’t done with Annika Fridasdottor.
It seemed only seconds after Annika had fallen into a fitful sleep that Elena nudged her awake again. Blearily, she glanced at the clock. Ten minutes until the four-to-eight watch began. A month of this would kill her.
Maybe she’d begin to sleep easier after David Kentewess left the airship. Annika doubted it.
Elena lit the lamp. With a sigh, Annika rolled over. Just two more minutes. Of course, her mind wouldn’t let her have it. Closing her eyes, she could
only see the hope on David’s face after she’d spoken his mother’s name. Could only hear him beseech her for help again. Giving up, she watched the flickering light dance across the bulkhead instead. So bright against the darkness—and from one small flame.
Five years ago, Annika had nearly exposed everyone in her village by building a fire. Such a simple act. She wasn’t sure anyone aboard could have understood the harm she’d almost done. Secrecy had kept the women of Hannasvik safe for a century, and her fire had shouted their presence to the outside world.
She’d been woolgathering that day. Looking out over the sea and thinking about the women who’d first settled there. Every girl in Hannasvik had grown up hearing the story of how sixty laboring women had been smuggled out of Horde territory in England aboard an ironship. Rescued, some might have said, but no one taken from Horde-occupied lands was destined for anything but slavery and servitude—in the Lusitanian mines, most likely, but it was impossible to know what their destination might have been. Not a single sailor who could have told them survived the journey.
Not far from England, the smugglers had come upon a more lucrative bounty: a Dutch noble’s ship, on a honeymoon journey from Norway to the New World. Kidnapping and ransom had long been traditional upon the high seas; typically, the hostages walked away alive and the kidnappers sailed away richer.
It all might have happened exactly as the smugglers had planned if Hanna, who’d been forced into a marriage with a prince’s son, hadn’t risked her life to free the Englishwomen chained in the ship’s hold—and if the ironship hadn’t sailed out of range of the Horde’s controlling tower in the same hour. The signal that had stifled the women’s emotions for decades had abruptly disappeared, overwhelming them with the strength of their own unfamiliar feelings. Led by Hanna, the ensuing revolt left everyone else on the ship dead, including her husband—who, it was said, had been the last man killed, and who had been locked in a cabin during the fighting.
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