“Fridasdottor! Come in here, girl!”
Annika answered, too low for David to make out—and apparently too low for the chief to make out, too.
“Eh?”
Her voice rose to match his. “I will be leaving Phatéon, monsieur, as soon as we return to Port-au-Prince!”
No. David stood, staggered. Bracing his fist on the table and holding on to the back of his chair, he waited for the dizziness to pass. Lucia caught his arm, looked up at him with dismay.
Walls and the passageway couldn’t muffle the chief’s irritation. “Why would you do that?”
“I’ve been looking for my sister. She’s not on this route, so I’ll be seeking a position on another ship!”
“So now I’ll have to find two new men?”
“Or women, monsieur!”
“You smile at that, girl? Go on, then. It’ll be a waste teaching you about the generator now, but I suppose a stamp on your license will make it easier to get rid of you.”
“Thank you, Chief!”
He made a sound of dismissal. Lucia released David’s arm and moved quickly to the door, opening it.
“Annika!”
She stopped in the passageway just outside the cabin, her expression tightening. Her flat gaze met David’s for an instant before she looked to his aunt. Her voice was a thin layer of civility over steel. “Doctor?”
“I’m sorry, Annika, but we heard—You’re leaving Phatéon?”
“Yes. It’s been four years, and I’ve been to every American port and around the North Sea several times over. I should have done this before, but I kept making excuses not to.”
“I see,” Lucia said, and so did David. He had spurred her into finally making this decision. “What route will you take now?”
“To the Ivory Market, or to Australia.”
“No.” David’s rough reply brought her gaze to his again. She stared at him for a long second, then dismissed him. His fingers tightened on the back of the chair.
What could he do? Tie her here? Force her to stay?
Threaten her again?
He might. God help him, he might.
Lucia wrung her hands. “Those routes are so dangerous for airships.”
With a shrug, Annika said, “I cannot return home until Källa does.”
“Will you send us word, letting us know where you are? How you are?”
“No.”
Clearly taken aback by Annika’s blunt response, Lucia tried again. “If your sister finally answers the advertisement, she will be looking for Phatéon—”
“I’ll change the advertisements and tell her to go home instead.” Her expression softened as she regarded his aunt, but David didn’t see any fondness there. Only the same terrible sadness that he recognized from the wardroom, in the moment after he’d chosen to let her hate him. Only the same terrible hurt. “I’ve been thinking back to the conversations that we’ve had—and in almost all of them, you pried into my past. Why didn’t you just say that I reminded you of Inga Helgasdottor?”
His aunt seemed at a loss. “I didn’t want to intrude on your privacy,” she finally said.
“Yes, you did. You just didn’t want to be caught at it. I thought we’d built a friendship. But when created through an agenda, friendship and trust is nothing. It does you no credit.” Annika’s mouth trembled before she shook her head, firmed her lips. “And it does me even less, that I could not see what you wanted. I’ve learned well, though. I won’t be so eager for company and conversation, next time.”
She walked away, out of David’s sight. As if in a daze, Lucia closed the door and returned to the table, pouring herself a drink.
“I cannot even refute it,” she said softly. “With every conversation, I attempted to discover more about her—but I remembered your mother’s secrecy, and didn’t want to make her wary. So I tried to be clever about it, instead. But I like her so well; that was never a lie.” She sipped the clear liquor, looked up at him with watering eyes. “What did I say about having time?”
Only a week. And David didn’t see a way to have more. He would be leaving Phatéon to begin his survey. Annika wouldn’t be here when his expedition was finished, and she refused to receive any letters from his aunt—and likely from him, too.
“I’ll talk with her,” he said. Though he didn’t know what good it would do.
If nothing else, he would apologize. At least then his threat wouldn’t weigh on him, in addition to the knowledge that he’d lost the chance to fulfill his promise.
But David felt as if he’d lost more than that.
Chapter Five
Bound by the confines of the airship, there were few places to escape someone determined to find her. With assistance from her cabin mates, however, Annika managed to avoid David for the remainder of the journey. When he waited in the passageway on the engine deck, Mary warned her to leave through the boiler room. Elena turned him away at their cabin door and sat beside Annika at the wardroom table; when their watch rotations didn’t match, Marguerite brought Annika’s meals to their cabin.
Annika knew they all thought that a budding romance had turned sour, and she didn’t correct the misperception. She was simply grateful for her friends’ help.
Despite what she’d told Lucia Kentewess, Annika didn’t intend to lose touch with everyone aboard Phatéon when she left the airship—Elena in particular. The second mate had already offered to check on her advertisements, but Annika would have corresponded with her regardless. And despite her angry response to David’s threat, she didn’t want him to be killed. As soon as they reached Smoke Bay, Annika planned to send word to Hannasvik, letting them know Inga’s fate—and that her son sought to bury her beads on the nearby volcano.
As soon as Hildegard heard about Inga, the woman would probably seek out David herself. Annika couldn’t guess what resolution they might reach, but one way or another, Inga’s runes would find their way back to Hannasvik.
They’d probably reach home before Annika did. Flying another route on a different airship, years might pass before she saw Iceland again.
The realization drove her up to the main deck soon after the lookout spotted the island. Though early in the afternoon, the sun was already low in the sky, piercing the clouds with thin gray light. Bitter-cold wind sneaked around the edges of her woolen scarf, carefully wrapped to protect the skin below her aviation goggles. Heart in her throat, Annika stood at Phatéon’s bow, watching the western shoreline and snow-blanketed mountains come ever closer, seeming to increase in height and breadth as they flew in.
The fishing town of Smoke Cove lay on the inland edge of a bay that stretched a hundred miles north; on the peninsula to the south, steam rose like smoke from numerous heated springs. Hannasvik lay hidden among the hills of the peninsula that formed the bay’s upper boundary, and on a clear day, the mountain that David Kentewess sought was visible from Smoke Cove.
Today, though Annika stared north, hoping for a glimpse of land closer to home, clouds obscured both the peninsula and the volcano. Only the smaller mountains closer to Smoke Cove were visible across the water, a long ridge of gently rounded peaks, like a handful of children huddled beneath a blanket of snow.
As they neared the settlement, Vashon ordered the engines stopped and the sails unfurled. With engines silenced, the noise from the decks seemed that much louder—the wind whistling through the lines, every voice a shout, the canvas flapping with sharp snaps. Overwhelmed, Annika covered her ears with mittened hands, focused on the town ahead. Built up on the flats that surrounded a natural harbor, the settlement had once been a trading port until the island had been abandoned. Afterward, only a small fishing community remained.
It wasn’t so small now. Since Phatéon had last come this way four months ago, the number of houses and buildings had doubled—the majority of them concentrated near the lake a mile from the harbor. Unease curled through Annika’s stomach. Were so many people coming already?
She stiffened
as someone joined her at the rail. No, not someone—without looking, she knew who he was. For a week, she’d avoided David Kentewess, but even as she’d ignored him, she’d been aware of him. Every time she’d turned her face away, every time she’d left a room, every passageway she’d walked—she’d known when he was near.
He was here now. She stood frozen, palms over her ears. Walking away would be best. It would be. But he’d be leaving the ship tomorrow; the danger was almost past. Heart pounding, she lowered her hands and clenched her mittened fingers on the edge of the rail.
If he wanted to talk, she would listen. Oh, but she wanted to listen. She’d liked his voice so well, the deep warmth of it, the duhdum rhythm of his speech.
A gust hit the airship, rocking the deck. David gripped the gunwale, his gloved hand next to her left, his steel hand bare. As the ship settled, he said, “Komlan tells us that Fiore has brought in almost five hundred laborers, not including those in the hold.”
Five hundred? She’d known that Phatéon carried fifty men in her cargo hold, but five hundred others had already arrived? That awful sense of inevitability weighed on her chest again. How long before they moved outward and north? “It was just a fishing community a few years ago. Some sheep farmers. Why is he bringing in so many men?”
“To build a locomotive railway from Smoke Cove to Höfn.”
That route followed the southern rim of the island—and would take them away from Hannasvik. Knowing that didn’t ease her worry. Despite Smoke Cove’s sudden growth, the population didn’t compare to any of the New World towns, and couldn’t justify the expense of a locomotive. “Why is he building one?”
“According to Komlan, they’ll mine sulphur to supply the spark lighter manufactories.”
“And the locomotive will provide transport from the mines to the ports?”
“Yes.”
That meant miners—and that likely meant families would be moving in, and the merchants and farmers to support them. Perhaps they’d all stay south for a while. Hannasvik might have a few more years yet. But not long.
Annika expected David to say something similar, to use it as an argument. Why not tell him of her people’s location when exposure was so certain? Closing her eyes, she waited. She didn’t want to fight him now. She didn’t want to run from him again.
“Annika.”
Low and solemn, he spoke her name. Compelled, Annika looked up. He didn’t wear goggles, and the darkness beneath his eyes and the grooves at the sides of his mouth made him appear tense and worn, as if he’d been the one run ragged by a week of four-hour shifts followed by four hours of tossing in his bunk.
Except for the way he looked at her. There was no weariness in his gaze, only intense gravity, pure focus.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have threatened you or your people. I’d never have carried it out. It was said in frustration, and I’ve regretted it from that moment.”
Recalling his horror when she’d thrown his mother’s words back at him, Annika believed him. “Thank you.”
He nodded, holding her gaze. “I won’t ask again. I understand that you have your reasons to protect them, and no reason to trust me. But I hope…I hope for another chance.”
Annika wanted to give him one. But her secret would stand between them, and revealing it would never be her decision to make. “A friendship created on the hope that I might eventually tell you wouldn’t be much of a friendship.”
“There’d be no conditions.” He lowered his head slightly, seemed to erase the distance between them. “Would I like to know? Yes, of course. But that isn’t why I ask. We did get along well. I’d like to try again.”
To go on as they’d begun. Oh, she wanted to. But could she trust him? “Let me think on it.”
“I leave Phatéon tomorrow.”
Her gut twisted at the reminder. He was leaving Phatéon—and so was she. Their paths would likely never cross again. Extending a friendship was all well and good, but Annika knew that her attraction to him could easily deepen, she knew that a part of her longed for more…and he didn’t. Continuing their acquaintance would only serve as fodder for her silly daydreams. For her own sake, she should end this now.
She couldn’t find the words to do it. Each one seemed to catch in the ache beneath her breast and refuse to surface. Perhaps they didn’t have to. David seemed to take her silence as a response and looked away from her with a weary nod.
Her throat tightened. This wasn’t what she wanted, either.
But the opportunity to give another answer passed when Dooley joined them. Taking the open spot on her right, he rested his elbows on the rail and cast his gaze over them, grinning.
“You two have made up, then?”
“No,” Annika said.
He must have thought she was joking. “I’ll say, never have I seen him mope as he did this week.”
“You don’t see it now,” David said quietly.
The older man’s smile froze in place. He glanced from David’s face to hers, and seemed to realize that she’d been speaking the truth. Smoothly, he grinned again and tilted his bearded chin back toward the deck. “Well, I should have said it of Goltzius, of course. Awake until the single hours last night he was, composing a poem to Miss Neves. It’s apparently not gone over well, because now he’s all in a tiff—though he’ll tell you it’s because there’s no flag flying over the harbor. It’s still Dutch land, he says.”
Annika didn’t agree with Goltzius or Dooley’s assessment of him. The younger man didn’t look upset; he looked thoughtful, standing at the starboard rail and staring out over the southern peninsula.
Dooley sighed. “At least there’s no doubt where his loyalties lie.”
“Or yours,” David told him.
“It’s truth. Many an Irishman stood by on these freezing shores, waiting for the Horde. We’ve as much reason to fly our colors here—though by current count, I’d say the Castilians outnumber us all.” His good humor dimmed a bit, and he looked past Annika to David. “Komlan asked us to supper in town, and offered to give us a copy of the survey they made of the lower rim. Shall we join him?”
“That depends on Miss Fridasdottor’s plans.” David looked to Annika. “I owe you a meal.”
“Oh.” No, he didn’t—the obligation had been hers. Turning that obligation around must be part of his apology. She’d have liked to accept. “I can’t go with you.”
“You’re welcome to come along with all of us.” Dooley angled his head toward hers. “Kentewess isn’t familiar with ladies, you understand. He doesn’t realize they can’t be running off alone with a gentleman.”
“I can,” Annika told him. Never would she be accused of proper behavior. She met David’s gaze and explained, “I have only two hours before my watch begins. I must attend to my personal business while I can.”
“Tomorrow, then.” His last day aboard. “I’ll give you time to think. You’ll tell me what you decide.”
The determination in his expression said that even if she didn’t go to him, he’d seek her out. That even if she avoided him, he’d track her down.
He needn’t worry. Annika would let him find her.
She just didn’t know what her answer would be.
David didn’t often fall into a foul mood. He’d learned long ago to focus on that which pleased him, not let himself be eaten up by doubt or anger. Now and again, however, everything irritated him. He sure as hell didn’t want company or dinner. He should have remained on the ship—or walked through Smoke Cove, contemplating how best to persuade Annika not to cut all ties with him. The dread that she might was a dull knife twisting through his gut.
That pain was enough to rouse the sleeping bear of his choler. He shouldn’t have tried to ignore it, and remained alone with his dour thoughts until the mood left him. Instead he watched the town pass outside a steamcoach window, brooding while Komlan and Dooley held a conversation around him. The lorries carrying laborers and supplies rumbled o
n ahead to di Fiore’s section camp near the lake, where a stately residence overlooked the laborers’ bunkhouses.
Goltzius had remained behind in town. David was already wishing he had, too, if only to ask why no one was patronizing the shops. It didn’t make any damn sense. After years of watching his father sweat over a ledger, he was acutely aware of how many customers a shop needed to get by. His father had barely survived on velocipedal sales and repairs, plus the odd tinkering commissions unrelated to pedaling. The number of laborers di Fiore had brought in should have been a boon to shop owners. Instead the locals looked tired, worn—resentful.
Dooley must have thought so, too. “I’d have wagered that we’d see more activity, given that there’re five hundred laborers with money in their pockets just come to town.”
“Only two hundred and fifty men in Smoke Cove,” Komlan said. “Di Fiore insisted that we don’t make any problems for the town. Our men eat at the station and they can order anything else they need through our stores so that we don’t put a hardship on the town, eating through their supplies and leaving them nothing.”
So all the money spent went back into company pockets. That wasn’t how David remembered Paolo di Fiore. He’d been a generous man. David’s father had said so, too, until the day of his death. Paolo di Fiore had given everything he’d earned back to the people of Inoka Mountain—until he’d accidentally destroyed it.
Though Dooley frowned, he nodded. “I suppose it’s no simple thing to restock.”
“That’s truth. Months might pass before an order arrives—and this has been a hard winter for trading.” Komlan grinned suddenly. “But if you’re looking for activity, you’ll only have to wait a few hours and visit the public houses. There’s enough to keep a man entertained.”
David knew that Dooley wouldn’t be looking for entertainment, but rather for stories from local fishermen. What would they say of the railroad men who’d moved in? “Is di Fiore in town?”
“He is.” Komlan gripped the carriage strap as the steamcoach turned onto a narrow drive and stopped. Unlike the houses in town, which were small buildings constructed from dark wood siding and peaked tin roofs, or the weathered stone church, the station house was a three-storied, whitewashed block of a building. “The younger di Fiore, at least—Lorenzo. That was his ferry cruiser floating over the harbor. The elder has his head up in the æther, and is usually at the camp on the southern rim. Smoke Cove is as far as I go. I oversee the work here, while Lorenzo takes his pick of men inland, where the going is rougher. You all right getting down, Kentewess?”
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