Riveted

by Brook, Meljean

  He’d have to remember to rile her up more often. God, she was incredible—her color high, her eyes all but sparking.

  “Having smoked fish available in your village might be why you like it,” he pointed out.

  “But that’s not why I love butter candies or maize bread, which I never had before I left Iceland.” She narrowed her gaze at him. “Are you poking at me?”

  “Yes.” And enjoying the hell out of it.

  Her expression softened. “Then tell me why it’s so discomfiting not to know, when a few conversations would tell someone far more about me? Why is everyone in the New World so obsessed with where everyone else came from?”

  “You’re obsessed with concealing it.”

  “For good reason. What is their good reason? What is it about being born in a certain place that somehow allows people to immediately sum me up? As if I can only believe one thing, support one idea.”

  David had no answer to that. “It’s polite. A quick way to discover common ground. It’s well intentioned.”

  “But ultimately false. Everything they think they know is based on assumptions that will be overturned the longer the acquaintance lasts.”

  Their acquaintance had lasted long enough that he could guess why this roughed her nerves so much. She loved her people and missed her home yet had had to disavow them. The common ground was as false as the assumptions she disliked.

  “And every time someone asks, you’re forced to pretend Hannasvik doesn’t exist again.”

  “Don’t try to be clever.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Pfft.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “Everything I said is still true. People always ask, and they think it means something. Don’t tell me you’ve never noticed it?”

  “I suppose I do it all the time,” he said. “I have noticed this: You are irritable after you wake.”

  She grinned suddenly. “My mother called me Annika the Sleeping Dragon because I was such a danger in the mornings. But I never feel as if I get enough.”

  And she truly hadn’t in the past week, David knew. A heavy shift rotation, without the nanoagents to help her along as they did him. It was no surprise she’d dropped off so easily inside the whale, then again the previous night. “And what is your mother like?”

  A laugh rolled through her, and she dropped her head back into her arms with a groan. David resumed rubbing the tense muscles along her spine. He didn’t know which pleased him more: that she welcomed his touch, or her blissful sigh as she did.

  “Stubborn,” she said. “The only argument I ever won was when I told her I was leaving to look for Källa. She eventually agreed that I had to, or I’d never be able to hold my head up at home—and the guilt would crush me. How could I be happy like that? I would be as miserable as she was.” Her lips pursed, her expression pensive. “I think she might be happy now.”

  David frowned. “Because you’re gone?”

  “Oh, no. I think she’s much like your aunt—often sad. There are pieces of her life that gave her joy, however, and I am one of those.” Annika bit her lip. “That’s probably why I liked Lucia so well.”

  Who’d begun a friendship under a false pretense. “She’s sorry.”

  “I know. I knew it then. But I needed to be angry first.” Annika looked up at him. David wanted to turn his face, present his good side. He didn’t. “I’ll miss you so much. I wish we had more time. There are so many things I want to know about you.”

  There were many other things he wanted to know, too. He suspected that a lifetime wouldn’t be long enough.

  At this moment, he wanted to know her taste. He wanted to feel her wet and trembling beneath his mouth, to give her even a fraction of the pleasure she’d offered him.

  Not yet. Not until these knots beneath his fingers had loosened.

  He bent, kissed her nape. “I’ll be improper later.”

  David never got the chance. The distant thrum of an airship engine alerted him after noon. It flew south of them—heading west. Returning to the rail camp, and hopefully abandoning the search.

  He looked for the airship again as the sun set. The sky was clear. Annika stoked the furnace, and soon the troll’s nose steamed, the engines huffed. He watched her ease into the driver’s seat, still stiff. God, David hated that he couldn’t help her.

  She must have caught his look. “It’s not far,” she reassured him. “Only an hour and a half.”

  He nodded, took his place on the ladder behind the head to serve as her eyes—though she wouldn’t need him as much tonight. Few clouds scudded across the sky. The moon shone bright over the snow, illuminating a clear path along the river.

  David remained on the ladder, anyway, watching over her shoulder. She started off at an easy pace. Only an hour and a half. There was too much to ask, too much that he wanted to know. She must have thought so, too. Every breath not spent driving the troll was answering his questions or asking her own.

  The low plains rolled out ahead. Too soon, they reached the shoreline again, the black sand strewn with rounded stones. They spoke less now as Annika had to navigate around basalt flows, to head away from the beach and behind high cliffs, waves crashing at their base. The dogs were everywhere. Not the same ones as at the waterfall, trotting alongside for a while before slinking off into the dark.

  “It used to be hares.” Without a break in the rhythm of her pumping feet and pulling arms, Annika wiped the sweat from her face. “A hundred years ago, when Hanna and the Englishwomen first came, they couldn’t keep a garden because the hares would eat the greens as soon as they shot up out of the ground. It hardly mattered, though; the women got fat on rabbit.”

  A hundred years ago. “After the fissure eruptions?”

  “Not long after.”

  A grimace of dismay suddenly pulled her lips tight. She’d realized what she was revealing, he thought.

  “I still don’t know where it is,” he reminded her. “Everything else hardly matters.”

  She nodded. “About two generations ago, they started speaking of the dogs, instead—how many there were.”

  A few dogs left by the early settlers, and a bounty of hares. It was no surprise that their population had exploded, but that couldn’t last forever. “They’ll likely die off, too, after they eat all of the hares.”

  “They already have. That’s why the dogs have been so bad, we think—why they began attacking us and the flocks eight or nine years ago. They never used to be such a problem.”

  “So the women of Hannasvik aren’t eating hares now?”

  “Sheep, now and again. Mostly fish.”

  “So you’re on the coast.”

  Her jaw clenched. After a moment, she said, “Lake fish.”

  He kissed the side of her neck. “Trust me.”

  “I do. But I shouldn’t be stupid—so careless. That was why Källa left in the first place.”

  Then he was glad that Annika had been careless. He wouldn’t voice that, though.

  She slowed the troll, looking ahead to another cliff, its face jutting into the sea. “We have to go up around those, then Vik should be in the hills beyond it. Do we drive in?”

  Her instinct was to hide the machine, he knew. But as another cur darted in front of the troll’s feet, he shook his head. “We don’t have much choice.”

  She nodded. Only a few minutes more, then. He fell silent, saying as much as he could with kisses to her shoulders, her neck, breathing in the scent of her hair. He would let her go. He would let her go. It wasn’t forever. Just for now.

  God, he was terrified that it would be forever.

  Annika stopped on a snowy rise overlooking the small town. Her breath hitched. She reached back, brought his hand to her mouth. His throat closed when she pressed a warm kiss to the center of his palm, when she vowed, “I will write. And visit, as soon as I’m free.”

  And he would try to make that day come more quickly. “I’ll help you search.”

  “Yes.”


  For a brief moment, her lips trembled against his fingers. Then her shoulders straightened, and she reached for the foreleg pulley again.

  Composed of a handful of houses and shops nestled on the rolling lowlands, Vik was a stone’s throw from the ocean, overshadowed by the rise of the cliffs to the west and the highlands to the north. The town didn’t possess a harbor, but David expected to see more flat-bottomed boats drawn up to the edge of the beach. Only a few were tied upside-down, their keels buried in snow.

  The town lay quiet. Not the deathly stillness of Heimaey, but it still struck David as strange. Though it was early, warm lamplight only glowed in a few windows.

  “No sheep. No ponies,” Annika said. “Though they have fences to keep the dogs out.”

  But not a troll. Slowly, they passed an outlying farmhouse, and followed sled tracks onto the main street through the town. A long rectangle of light suddenly spilled from an open door. Annika stopped the troll. They both recognized the woman coming out into the street, a pistol in hand, and the man behind her. Vashon and Dooley.

  Relief rushed through him. So at least some of the passengers and crew from Phatéon had arrived safely. Now, where was his aunt? The captain appeared to be shouting. He couldn’t hear a word over the huff of the engine.

  Annika pushed up out of the driver’s seat. He helped her down the ladder, opened the chest hatch, and dropped down. Snow crunched under his feet. Vashon stared at him over the barrel of her gun, astonishment widening her eyes. Dooley let out a shout and came forward, clapping David on his back, laughing. More people emerged from the house—some crew he recognized, others he didn’t know. Finally, there was Lucia, rushing to him with tears standing in her eyes.

  She caught him in a fierce hug. Annika disappeared into the troll again, Vashon behind her. His chest tightened. Already out of his sight. He’d known it would happen. He’d hoped it wouldn’t happen so quickly.

  Lucia stepped back, wiping her face. Beside her, Dooley was shaking his head.

  “We were thinking that we’d lost you. A few of the aviators didn’t make it to shore.”

  His gaze swept the gathered men. “Where is Goltzius?”

  “His glider brought him in, then he got himself chewed up by dogs.” Heavy concern lined the older man’s face. “He saved that Lusitanian girl’s nurse when they chased after her, then went down under a tangle of them. It took four of us to beat them off.”

  And Dooley’s own hand was bandaged, David saw. “Was it bad?”

  “He’ll be all right, especially as Miss Neves hasn’t left his side. I’ll tell you, she’s a formidable woman. Goltzius will heal or perish by her wrath.” He looked up at the troll. “Where’d you get this?”

  “We stole it from di Fiore’s camp.”

  Neither Dooley nor Lucia appeared surprised when he said the name. Behind him, Vashon emerged from the troll. Annika came next, her mouth set, her eyes wide and shining. She looked to David.

  “Some more has happened,” Lucia said quietly. “Come on in where it’s warm. We’ve got a decision to make.”

  The small house wasn’t much warmer than outside, and David thought most of that heat was due to the number of people in it—aviators, and a few women and children who must have been local to Vik. He recognized the ship’s senior staff from the wardroom. Elena caught Annika up in a tight embrace, laughing. Annika returned it, though she only smiled and her posture was stiff.

  He was steered toward a wooden table in the hearth room. Annika sat across from him a moment later, with Vashon at the head, her uniform still pressed, her posture regal. Lucia took the chair beside him, and everyone who didn’t sit crowded around.

  It didn’t take long for Annika to recount everything that had happened after the whale took Phatéon. When she was done, Dooley introduced the owner of the house—a thin Norwegian woman who appeared on the edge of exhaustion.

  “They’ve been almost starved out here. No supply ships have reached them in four months—and most of the men in town are dead. The whale swallows up their boats when they take them out fishing.” He looked to the pale woman again. “They’ve lost others, too. Her husband, then her son. He and five others struck out for Smoke Cove and Höfn, seeking help. That was a month ago. They’ve been getting by on rationed stores, but those are about to go dry.”

  And they’d go faster with an airship crew and passengers here.

  Vashon sat forward. “The coal is about to run out, too. So we put as many people as possible into each house—fewer houses to heat, fewer stoves to fire. And today, Vik received a visit from Lorenzo di Fiore.”

  Around noon, David wagered. He’d seen the airship returning to the rail camp. “Is he coming back with supplies?”

  “No.” Vashon’s gaze held his. “Unless we give you up.”

  Annika drew a sharp breath. “Because we took the troll?”

  “He mentioned nothing of that machine—and I don’t think he knew who was in it. Di Fiore wants Kentewess alone,” Vashon said, before looking to David again. “He said that you shouldn’t have turned him down. He thought that Mr. Dooley lied to him when he said you were lost.”

  Jesus Christ. Stunned, David could only shake his head. He’d known di Fiore had been upset when he’d rejected the man’s offer. But these were the demands of a madman.

  Lucia took his hand. Her face was pale, her jaw set. Red stained Dooley’s cheeks—still angered by di Fiore’s visit, no doubt.

  “If we produce you, we’ll receive all of the cargo in Phatéon’s hold,” Vashon said. “Di Fiore will keep the engine and the ship, but all of the food stores bound for Heimaey will be delivered here.”

  Before coming into the house, his aunt had said they had a decision to make. It was clear that David had a decision to make…but it wasn’t one at all. Should he refuse and let everyone starve around him? That was no choice.

  And di Fiore, that damned observationist, was probably only forcing the choice on them to see what they would do. To see what David would do. It shouldn’t have been difficult to guess. Leaving with di Fiore would be a small sacrifice. The man didn’t even ask for his life—just to work with his father. Of course David would accept. Only a monster needed to test it.

  “He’s returning tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  David nodded. “I’ll go.”

  A chorus of denials rose around him, the fiercest one from Annika. Her chair skidded back. Hands braced on the table, she leaned over and stared him down, her jaw set. “You won’t.”

  God, he loved her. “He doesn’t plan to kill me.”

  “Not now, maybe.”

  “I won’t watch you starve, Annika.”

  A dangerous glint lit her eyes. “There are a lot of dogs.”

  “It’s true,” Vashon said. Her voice rose as she spoke, clipped and furious. “And I’ll be damned if I let him take my ship and hold my food hostage until I beg for mercy, then force me to trade over a passenger under my protection.” On a deep breath, her tone evened out again. “At any rate, once we’ve eaten through those stores, what then? It will be easier to leave on foot in the spring, but there’s still a risk. Di Fiore could have Smoke Cove in his pocket the moment he sees a threat.”

  Annika sank into her seat again. “What of Höfn?”

  “And hope di Fiore hasn’t bought that, too?” Vashon shook her head. “He has five hundred and fifty men in Iceland. Perhaps two hundred in Smoke Cove. You estimated fifty more at the camp. That is too many left unaccounted for. Maybe some are working on the drill that Fridasdottor mentioned to me, but perhaps more are in Höfn. He’s locked up half this island; I have to assume that he’s tried to take the other half, too.”

  Annika nodded, her eyes shadowed as she met David’s gaze. Resolve set her expression. “My people can help.”

  Everyone looked to her. Heart pounding, David reached for her clenched fist. “Let me do this, Annika.”

  “No.”

  Vashon frowned. “Where a
re they?”

  She evaded. “We have more trolls. More machines like the one outside.”

  The room had become deathly quiet. Without expression, Vashon studied Annika’s face. David could all but see the captain thinking of witches and trolls, and reconciling those stories with the odd stoker who’d boarded her ship four years ago.

  Finally, the captain nodded. “How long will it take?”

  “Usually only three or four days, but I’ve never crossed during the winter. It might be slower, take twice as long. Add another day if I have to backtrack. After I’ve reached them, we’ll need a few days to prepare, then the same amount of time coming back. At most three weeks, if I have trouble traveling over the highlands. If I’m gone more than a month…I’m not coming back.”

  “In a month, I’ll be taking the few boats left and raiding that rail camp myself,” Vashon said. “What will you need?”

  “The coal bunker is almost full. We’ll leave half here for heating—I know a few places to restock on the way. The surturbrand doesn’t run as hot, but it’ll push her. There are a few potatoes and pieces of bread left in our packs from Phatéon’s galley, enough to last those three or four days, so we won’t have to take any from the stores.” She met David’s gaze again. “I need someone to help me see during the nights, so that I’m not bound by the short daylight hours.”

  “Also, so that he can’t give himself up,” Lucia said, her fingers tightening on his.

  “Yes,” Annika said. “And so di Fiore can’t take him.”

  So it wasn’t his decision, then. That was all right. David liked their choice better.

  “All right,” Vashon said, and her gaze found the first mate standing behind Lucia. “James, please help Fridasdottor secure everything that she needs. Quickly, now. Mr. Kentewess, I hate to push you out the door, but I expect di Fiore to return tomorrow, and we’ll need to erase the tracks from the machine.”