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Riveted

Page 19

by Brook, Meljean


  Annika had emerged from another cottage. The weight of sorrow had returned, slumping her shoulders. Despite the bulk of her heavy clothing, she appeared small and fragile. Brittle.

  His voice roughened. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s awful work. I wouldn’t want to be in her place for anything,” Goltzius said quietly.

  David would give anything to take her place, but he could only watch and wait.

  Hours passed. Several soiled handkerchiefs found in the cottages showed evidence of winter colds and put paid to suspicions that the women had been infected. His aunt finished her examination—and due to the concentrations of blue-burning gas in her lungs, she believed the woman had died of asphyxiation, but she couldn’t be certain.

  The afternoon light had faded by the time Annika and the others returned to the ship. David waited on the deck. The devastation and sorrow had passed. In their place he saw utter exhaustion.

  Should he go to her? Annika took the decision out of his hands. She came toward him, dragging off her hat. Her arm fell back to her side as if the motion had been a momentous effort. Even her black curls lay flat, hours under the wool plastering them to her head.

  He frowned at her. “You should rest.”

  “We have to be ready to fly in thirty minutes, so I have to be in the engine room in five.” She glanced over as Mary Chandler stopped at her side. Puffy red skin surrounded the woman’s eyes. “Go on to your bunk. I’ll take the first watch.”

  The older woman patted her shoulder. “You’re a good one, Annika. Don’t you let Elena tell you you’re wrong.”

  Sudden tears shone in Annika’s eyes. She nodded and waved the older woman on. “Thank you.”

  David waited until she’d gone. “What happened?”

  “The rumors about the island are true. Elena thought the women deserved it—and that it was the Horde’s fault. I told her that was all guff, and she said I was naïve and stupid. Then she said the same about the women to Mary later, and Mary laid into her.”

  Good for Chandler. She couldn’t have known how much Annika would have needed to hear that.

  Perhaps she needed to hear it now. Her tears spilled over. She bent her head, turning away from the deck to hide her face.

  “Is there anything I can do?” His chest ached. God, he wanted to hold her. “Anything at all?”

  “Yes.” She looked up with a watery smile. “Pretend that I’m brave.”

  “I don’t have to pretend.”

  A quick laugh escaped her. She wiped her cheeks. “You’re good at this.”

  He’d persuade her. “You’re brave to trust me.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” He lowered his head toward hers. “I could use what you’ve told me of my mother’s people—and your own history. I could trade my silence for Hannasvik’s location.”

  Her smile returned again. “That doesn’t require trust. I’d never reveal it.”

  “Never?” He might not have helped, but at least he’d distracted her. “Is that secret worth dying for?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say it so quickly.”

  “So you don’t trust that it’s true? But it’s an easy answer. It must be the easiest way to die: protecting someone you love. Your mother did.”

  “Yes.” Without hesitation.

  A long breath shuddered from her. Her smile faded. “For someone, it’s easy. For something, though…I think it’s harder to die for something you believe in. To stand up and to say that something else is wrong. I said it to my friend, but would I shout it aboard this ship? I don’t know. I’d be too afraid of what would happen to me, because so many think as she does. I hate myself for this.”

  “When you’re surrounded by stupidity, self-preservation isn’t a sin.”

  “Refusing to challenge that stupidity and letting it continue might end up hurting someone you love, later. I’d die to protect them, but not to tell people that I’ve kissed a woman, too?”

  Alarmed, David shook his head. Though he agreed with her in principle, he’d be the first to knock her off the pulpit if she intended to shout it from the deck. If she intended to risk herself, to stand for her people, he’d be there with her—but there had to be better ways of going about it.

  “And would your mother want you to die for someone else’s stupidity?”

  “No. But I don’t know that what she wants would matter, because she’d risk herself for me, too.” Her expression slowly deflated on a sigh. She looked exhausted and miserable again. “Excuse me. I’m going to hide in the engine room and cry.”

  She returned to the deck earlier than he anticipated. The sun still shone in the southwestern sky, casting golden light across the water. Behind her aviator goggles, her eyes were red.

  “The chief sent me up to eat until the engine needs stoking again. I can’t take a bite.”

  After the day she’d had on Heimaey, he wasn’t surprised. “You’re brave to defy his orders.”

  “Oh, you are good at that.” She laughed a little, shaking her head. “I’ll be stupid if I’m caught. But I realized that it’s less than an hour’s flight to Vik.”

  And she’d wanted to spend that time with him. Pleasure swelled in his chest—and was joined by tearing pain.

  They had less than an hour.

  Her gaze met his. “And I wanted to tell you how much I admire you.”

  Sudden dread weighed heavy in his gut. He’d heard that before. If she admired him for losing his legs, he wouldn’t be able to bear it. “Why?”

  “Because you intervened at the port gate in Navarra. No matter your reason, you risked yourself to help me. I’d just passed a line of people waiting for food. I thought, I could give them the few coins I have. But I didn’t dare. I could have probably done it without being seen, but I didn’t take that risk.”

  So this still ate at her. “A few coins isn’t worth dying for, Annika,” he said. “They wouldn’t buy more food than the Church gave them. And if you had been caught, the people you tried to help would have been arrested, too.”

  “Perhaps.” Her forehead creased as she considered it. “I’m not even certain if it would be about helping a person, or just making a statement of how stupid it is that I wasn’t allowed to help them.”

  “So you’re a troublemaker at heart? Ah, well—I suppose I am, too. I want to walk through the gates simply because I’m not supposed to. The restrictions against the infected are idiotic.” The result of fear cultivated over centuries. Eventually, they’d all pull their heads out of their asses. “If you broke every stupid rule in the New World simply because it was stupid, you’d never have time for anything else.”

  “I should choose one or two that matter, then.” Though she wore a faint smile, her gaze remained serious. “If I had been caught, died for it—perhaps someone would realize how stupid it is to die for a few coins. If enough people recognized it, they could make a change. But I didn’t risk anything. And when I was stopped by the port officer, I thought, Who would come help me? I wouldn’t even risk giving money to the hungry. You risked it, though. You came to help me.”

  She gave him far too much credit. “Because I heard your voice.”

  “Would you have helped me anyway?”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t the risk you imagine. I knew the port officer’s attention would shift to me, and that he’d feel threatened by either my hand or the infection.”

  “He could have clubbed you.”

  “I heal quickly.”

  “But you can be hurt just as easily as I can, and I’d fear a club even if I was infected. Stop arguing, David. You risked your life to save me.” Her eyes narrowed behind the goggle lenses. “Would you have killed me to fulfill your promise?”

  “What? No.” He’d die to protect her.

  “I’m glad.” For the first time since arriving at Heimaey, real humor lit her face. “You’d be a bad friend if you did.”

  “Yes. But I’d be a good son.”

  Her l
augh lifted through him. He loved her mouth, her teeth, the flush of cold on her cheeks.

  A bell rang on the quarterdeck. Annika glanced over her shoulder, then south, out over the sea. “We’re hailing a ship.”

  A wooden ship, wide at the bottom and narrowing as it rose to the main deck, with a high stern. Under full sail, her white canvas bowed in the wind.

  “A fluyt, I think,” Annika said, squinting against the sun. “A cargo ship—usually Norwegian or Dutch.”

  “They’re flying Norwegian colors.”

  She nodded and looked toward the quarterdeck, where Vashon issued orders. “We’ll hail them and ask their captain if they’ve heard of anything similar to Heimaey. Since they’re sailing around the rim, they might be headed there—or to Smoke Cove.”

  “So we can warn them, spread the news.”

  “Yes.”

  Phatéon slowly banked south—taking them farther away from Iceland’s shore. “This will delay our arrival in Vik.”

  “Yes.” She held his gaze for a long second. Then her smile faded, and she looked west. Heimaey rose in the distance. “Do you think the women were killed because of what they did?”

  “An act of God?”

  “No. Someone else.”

  “Someone who hated them enough to kill them all?”

  “Or feared them.”

  It would probably be a combination. He hesitated, but there was no delicate way to say it. “If someone hated them that much, I don’t think he’d kill them so painlessly.”

  “‘He?’”

  “Or she.” Though David couldn’t imagine that.

  Annika nodded. “I’ve seen that before—a crowd cheering as two men were hanged.”

  Jesus Christ. She’d seen that? David never had, but he’d heard of the mob executions. “Yes.”

  “So you believe it was a natural death?”

  He nodded. “Probably a toxic gas that formed naturally.”

  “Like the fissure eruptions? The gases poisoned some—and others were smothered by ash.”

  “Yes. That’s not what happened here, but it could be similar.”

  She seemed to take comfort in that. He wished to hell that it was appropriate to do more. Hold her, perhaps—or touch her hand.

  In all this time, he hadn’t touched her. Not her skin, not her clothes. He wanted to, before leaving Phatéon. He would hold the memory close until he saw her again.

  Her mittened fingers rested lightly on the rail. He could slide his gloved right hand against her left—or cover it with his. Maybe she wouldn’t pull away.

  His heart raced as he screwed up his courage. Damn it, he should just kiss her. She’d admired him for taking a risk. But he’d never feared the port officer’s reaction—and he’d never longed for anything as much as this.

  He’d wait until she closed her eyes.

  They widened, instead, at the same time a commotion on the deck alerted him. Aviators shouted to each other, while Vashon trained her spyglass to the south.

  David looked out toward the ship. “What happened?”

  “The fluyt ran up a flag,” Annika told him. “They’re asking for help.”

  A puff of smoke appeared at the fluyt’s side. Another. Behind the ship, two geysers of water erupted.

  Annika’s mouth dropped. “Did they fire their cannons?”

  “Yes,” David said, watching.

  Men scrambled on the decks. The cannons blasted again. What were they shooting at? He searched the rolling waves behind the ship. No other vessels…just an enormous shadow on the water.

  He glanced up. Aside from Phatéon, the skies were clear of airships. Not a shadow, then. Something under the water. Something huge—four times the length of the cargo ship.

  Impossible.

  David shook his head, looked again. His estimate had to be wrong, or his perception of the depth and distance was. The shadow followed directly behind the ship’s tail. “How long is a fluyt?”

  “Sixty feet or so. What are you seeing? What are they firing at?”

  A megalodon? But he’d never heard of those giant sharks approaching this size. Only krakens, yet they were all south of the equator.

  “I don’t know, but—”

  A whale. The massive squared head burst up out of the water, dwarfing the fluyt. Heavy jaws yawned open. Masts snapped, sails crumpling. The monster engulfed the cargo ship in a single bite.

  Annika shrieked, clapped her hands over her mouth. The shouts from Phatéon’s deck echoed David’s own disbelief. Impossible. The jaws clamped shut. The head submerged, followed by the sleek back of the long body as it dove.

  The fluyt was gone. A thick swell rolled out from the site, the edges of the water churning.

  Annika’s breath came in gasps. “Was that a whale?”

  “A machine,” David said, then repeated it as Vashon appeared at the side, looking over with a stunned expression. “It was a machine, Captain. A steel submersible.”

  The biggest one he’d ever seen or heard of.

  “The megalodons have steel armor,” Vashon said.

  “Not armor made of square plates.”

  “A submersible, then. Pirates?”

  “I didn’t see any people.” But what other reason to come up from beneath to snatch a ship? “It’s a good strategy, if so.”

  “Like a whale attacking a seal,” Annika said.

  Vashon nodded. “Do you see any survivors?”

  “Only crates, a few timbers.” His telescopic lens showed little else. His thermal lens revealed less. If a sailor had dropped into the water, he might not appear much warmer than his surroundings. “A man could be clinging to the other side of one.”

  “Thank you. If you ever give up vulcanology, Mr. Kentewess, I will take you on as a lookout.” Vashon clapped him on the shoulder, and called as she walked away, “Forward and on! We’ll fish out any survivors. Fire up the generator! I want a rail cannon on that water.”

  Aviators ran to carry out her orders. The quartermaster shouted into the bank of pipes, alerting the rest of the ship. Dooley joined them moments later, shaking his head.

  “We’ve just heard. Is it true? A whale swallowed a ship?”

  “A submersible did.” He glanced at Annika, who still stood wide-eyed and dumbstruck, her fingers gripping the gunwale as she searched the water for survivors—or another glimpse of the whale. “We’re almost over the site now.”

  They all looked over. Floatsam bobbed in the water. No men clung to any of the crates.

  A shadow rose beneath the water. A trail of bubbles preceded it, collecting at the surface and washed away by the rolling sea. Beneath the huff of the engine, the deck had gone deathly quiet. Aviators lined the rail, waiting.

  Annika’s mittened hand covered his. David froze. She folded her fingers over the back of his gloved hand, their tips curling round to his palm—holding on as anticipation mounted. Heart pounding, he stared at her profile, watched her full lips part on a gasp. Her fingers tightened, and he felt the impression of each one through the thick wool, the strong clasp of her middle fingers, the soft pressure of her smallest.

  Almost dizzy with the unexpected pleasure of it, he followed her gaze down. The top of the whale’s head surfaced, revealing steel sheets riveted like an old ironship hull, so broad that an airship twice Phatéon’s length could have landed on the head without wetting its keel. The rest of the body floated beneath the water, the water churning above the tail.

  With a hiss, a circular plate near the front opened like a blowhole. Steam billowed out.

  Astonished murmurs rose around them. A tremor shook Annika’s fingers.

  “Ships and airships.” She looked up at him suddenly, eyes wide with alarm. “Lisbet said that ships and airships had been disappearing. Captain Vashon!”

  Pulling away, she ran for the quarterdeck. The whine of the electrical generator sounded. The deck crew mounted the rail cannon.

  Too late. In a burst of steam, a harpoon launched from th
e blowhole. Aviators shouted, ducked. David forced himself to wait, to see what happened.

  Tipped by a barbed steel head and trailed by a long chain, the massive spear hurtled past the cruiser, ripping through the metal fabric of the envelope and piercing the side of the balloon.

  “Dear God in Heaven protect us,” Dooley breathed.

  Chaos erupted on the deck. David glanced back, searching for Annika, and saw her racing toward the warmers. Vashon shouted for everyone to toss over their lamps, their cigarillos, to stop all fires on the ship.

  With a winding clack, the chain drew tight. David braced his hands against the rail, prepared for the jolt as it dragged them down. It didn’t come. The spear slipped out, fell onto the submersible’s head with a loud clatter. The winding continued, pulling the harpoon back into the blowhole. David glanced up. A narrow hole remained in the metal fabric, the ragged edges fluttering as the hydrogen escaped.

  He hoped to God all of the flames were out.

  For a breathless instant, he waited, but they didn’t explode. The balloon would slowly deflate, instead, the ship sinking onto the water. Below Phatéon, the whale submerged again—to wait, David realized, like a predator that lamed its prey and waited for it to fall.

  Vashon strode to the side of the ship, looked up. For a long moment she stared at the balloon, her jaw clenched. Grief passed through her expression, her face closing in on itself; then she opened her eyes and issued orders in a voice like iron. Aviators scattered.

  Annika raced toward him, fear and determination tightening her features. She glanced at Dooley, indicated them both. “Get your things ready, but don’t carry much. We’ll try to make it to shore, but if we can’t, we’ll take the gliders.”

  They wouldn’t risk the lifeboats with the whale in the water. “Are you coming directly back?”

  “Not yet. I have to stoke her as high as possible—we’ll let the engine take us as far as she can back to shore before they ring the bell to abandon ship. I must go.” She backed away, holding his gaze. “Safe journey, David. Mr. Dooley.”

  She turned and ran for the ladder. David glanced at Dooley.

 

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