Riveted

by Brook, Meljean

  “Not with your legs, Rabbit. Here.” She pointed to her head. “Always running off to somewhere safe. You’re only brave when you’re inside a troll, Annika. If you’d been sent out of Hannasvik and into the New World, you’d have found the nearest hole and never climbed out.”

  But Annika wouldn’t have been exiled as she had been—only after Källa’s temper had erupted had she been sent away. That didn’t matter now. Obviously, Källa thought that she’d saved Annika from exile.

  And even if that were true, Annika wouldn’t have found the nearest hole. Phatéon had been a safe haven of sorts, yes—but she’d left it often to visit the port cities. She’d been planning to leave the airship permanently for a more dangerous route.

  A route that Källa wouldn’t have been anywhere near. Annika had never expected to find her here in Iceland. Four years of searching, and she’d been a few days’ journey from home. Annika didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Cry, most likely. Had her sister truly believed that she wouldn’t survive outside of Hannasvik?

  “Källa.” It was a struggle to keep the hurt out of her voice. “I have been in the New World for four years.”

  “Well, now you can run back home, and I will continue protecting you all.”

  “Protecting us?” Annika shook her head in disbelief. The resentment in Källa’s voice didn’t surprise her. She’d been tossed out of Hannasvik, after all. She’d made a sacrifice that Annika had thrown back at her. But she was also with the man who posed the most danger to everyone in Iceland. “Do you know what Lorenzo di Fiore has done?”

  “Yes. Perhaps not all of it, but enough.” Her eyes hardened. “Who do you think that I’m protecting you all from?”

  Annika didn’t know. She didn’t understand any of this. “How is being here protecting Hannasvik?”

  “I met Paolo only a day after I left, Annika. He and Lorenzo were on the peninsula—he needed a volcano, and he’d chosen ours. So I convinced him to go south, away from Hannasvik, where the volcanoes are more active.”

  “And then you stayed with him?”

  “Lorenzo is ready to take all of Iceland over to help his father. I had to make certain that Lorenzo never looked in that direction.”

  Stunned, Annika stared at her. “You knew all of this about him and still had a son with him? You lay with him?”

  “With Lorenzo?” Disgust curled Källa’s mouth. “I lay with Paolo. I would as soon bed an orca as I would his son. There’s something wrong in him, Annika.”

  It wasn’t Lorenzo? Relief swept through her, lightening some of the weight around her heart. “Is he forcing you to stay here?”

  “No. I’m protecting you all, as I said. And Paolo, too. As I understand it, there are many men in the New World who would be glad to hurt him. Lorenzo worries that one of them might come for Paolo, if they knew he was here.”

  Because of the disaster that had killed Inga. “Why not kill Lorenzo?”

  “I promised that I wouldn’t until his father passed on.” Källa held her gaze. “I don’t want to see Paolo hurt, either.”

  And if she’d bedded him, she must believe that Paolo was a good man. “But Lorenzo knows you will kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why keep you on?”

  “I make Paolo happy. And because I know the island, and told him how to build the trolls. I was hoping to hurry all of this up. Until it is over, I’ll protect Paolo, watch over him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Paolo is not always here to look after himself.” With a soft smile, she glanced down at her son. “Paolo is much like you, too, Annika—a dreamer. But his dreams are much bigger.”

  Though he and Lorenzo walked alone through the tunnels, David chose not to beat the man bloody, drag him up to the airship, and demand they return to Vik. David might have risked the guards. He wouldn’t risk Annika.

  In relation to the rest of the camp, these living quarters made up the southern leg of the three-sided layout. The snow tunnels led through several ice-walled chambers of the same size as the hearth chamber, with more tunnels leading offside to smaller, individual chambers. The sides of each chamber were only waist high but with the peaked center of the ceiling rising to a comfortable height. Most were empty, and though David didn’t remark on it, Lorenzo offered that he preferred not to be disturbed while sleeping—and which David took to mean that he didn’t trust anyone to be near him during that time.

  Paolo’s laboratory formed the corner between the southern and eastern sides of the camp, where the laborers and guards resided. The laboratory could have fit two of the hearth chambers inside, and another stacked on top. They’d dug deeper into the ice before laying the floor, and the blue ice walls rose twice as high. The effect was strangely beautiful—though the laboratory itself could have come directly from the New World. Slate boards had been nailed into the ice walls, with diagrams and calculations scrawled in chalk. Long tables held an array of equipment and glass tubing. Machine parts lay scattered beneath a drafting desk. Chickens clucked in a wire pen.

  A tray of half-eaten food teetered on the corner of one table, as if abruptly forgotten. Deeper into the laboratory, a man sat on the wooden floor, bent over the domed helmet in his lap. No shirt covered his upper body, revealing age-softened muscles. He wore no proper trousers, only a pair of woven short pants and boots.

  In the twenty years since David had last seen him, Paolo di Fiore had lost most of his dark hair. A faint brown tattoo wound from the top of his head to the nape of his neck, resembling the twisting figure of a branching tree.

  “Father!”

  Though he frowned, Paolo didn’t look up. He lifted the helmet to look inside the steel dome. Much like a diving helmet, David thought, except that it wasn’t brass. Lorenzo had mentioned a suit, too. David glanced up, saw it hanging on a metal frame that stood beside a glass chamber in the corner. Unlike a canvas diving suit, it appeared to be made from the same metal fabric used to make airtight envelopes for balloons and airships.

  He glanced back at Paolo as the man set the helmet into his lap again. Oh, good God. Pity roiled heavy and sick in his gut. Two short metal posts protruded from the top of his skull. At first glance, David had thought the posts belonged to something behind the man, but when Paolo had moved, he saw that they had been attached to his head. Screwed into the bone.

  Jesus. And so that wasn’t a tattoo, either, but a scar. He’d heard of such things—the electric shocks applied to the residents of insanitariums. But they’d always seemed too cruel to believe, more like the fear-driven rumors that often spread about the Horde.

  Lorenzo placed a coat over his father’s shoulders. Paolo gave an irritated shrug, looked up. “Eh? What is it?”

  “Your clothes, Father.”

  Paolo glanced down. His irritation smoothed into a laugh. “Ah, yes. I put on the æther suit, but I was so eager to make the adjustments, I forgot to dress again. Thank you, son.”

  Concern creased Lorenzo’s brow. “Where did you wear the suit?”

  Paolo pointed to the corner of the laboratory. The glass chamber, David realized. Sealed at the edges and taller than a man, it possessed a single small door. A pipe led into the back wall, originating from somewhere outside the laboratory. Dead mice lay on the floor.

  “I already tested the suit, Father.”

  “Yes, but until there is something else in that chamber to prove that the gas is inside, we can’t be certain it works. We can’t smell the gas. We can’t see it. We can’t know if it’s there unless something else perishes. It will be the same when the gas is æther, instead. And that is why I went in.”

  Lorenzo shook his head. “I made certain, Father. With better examples than mice.”

  Heimaey, David realized. He’d tested the suit on Heimaey.

  Hot rage pushed through his chest. Lorenzo met David’s gaze, a cold warning. David clenched his jaw.

  “Dogs are not better than mice,” Paolo muttered, bu
ckling his coat.

  “They’re larger and they were out in the open, just as you will be. I wouldn’t risk your life, Father, by only testing on mice in that chamber. The gas is cold when it comes in from the balloon outside; it’s heavier. You could be breathing good air up top while the mice die below.”

  “That is why I lay on the floor while I was inside.” The older man stood, spotted David. His body stilled like a startled deer’s. He offered a faint, hesitant smile, then an uncertain glance at his son.

  “This is David Kentewess. Stone Kentewess’s son.”

  “Oh.” Friendly curiosity suffused his expression, but he walked almost sideways as he approached, as if keeping open the option to race the other way. “I see the scars. But Kentewess’s boy wouldn’t walk again.”

  “Show him your hand, Kentewess.”

  Pity competed with anger—but David had no interest in hurting this man. He held up his hand, spreading his fingers. “My legs, too.”

  But he’d be damned before putting the rest of himself on display.

  Paolo’s mouth opened on an O of wonder. “How marvelous it is,” he breathed softly. His gaze rose to David’s again. Deep lines settled in his face. “But I’m so very sorry for it.”

  “He has no hard feelings, Father.”

  “It’s true,” David confirmed. He felt them for the son instead. “We are well met.”

  “And he’s a vulcanologist. He has come to help.”

  Paolo’s eyes rounded, delight pushing his face into a smile. He suddenly started toward the drafting table, gesturing for him to follow. “Oh, come then! Has Lorenzo told you? I’ve calculated the amount of ice necessary to propel the capsule, the rate of melting and conversion to steam after it reaches the magma. But how do I trigger the eruption? I’ve thought to collapse the magma chamber”—he slapped his hands together with a loud crack!—“and those explosive charges are being laid in the ice tunnels. But what am I not accounting for?”

  David tried to catch up. “You want to cause an eruption?”

  “Yes! The pressure required, the amount of ice, it’s all calculated. We just need to make certain it will blow at the right time. If it goes without me in the capsule, it’s all for nothing.”

  “The capsule on the tower?” Resembling a vertical submersible, David recalled. A borehole had been drilled beneath it.

  “Yes, yes. It will drop in!”

  With Paolo inside the capsule. Inside a suit. David shook his head. Did the man intend to pilot the capsule through molten rock, propelled along by steam? Even surrounded by steel, he’d be dead within moments. Or did he believe the quacker scientists who claimed that a magical Underworld lay below the earth’s crust? Or even more absurd—that a primeval world existed at the center of Earth?

  He looked to Lorenzo, who was staring at him with bullet-hard eyes. Don’t express any doubt, he remembered.

  David couldn’t doubt anything yet. First he had to understand what Paolo wanted to do. “For what purpose do you intend to use the capsule?”

  Paolo’s brows lowered. He frowned at his son. “Did you not tell him?”

  “I haven’t had the opportunity,” Lorenzo said mildly.

  “We will take that opportunity now. Where’s my coat?” With his hands in his pockets, he looked around for it. “We’ll go out and show him.”

  “Show me?”

  “The tower, the capsule. Look.” Paolo waved to the slate board, then turned to Lorenzo, who held out a pair of trousers.

  Crossing to the wall, David studied the chalk drawing. Two circles each took up one half of the board, one smaller than the other. On the larger circle, a small tower had been drawn on the upper arc. A line spiraled outward from the tower and around the larger circle, until the spiral reached a distance halfway across the board. The trajectory changed, and the spiral continued inward around the smaller circle, drawing closer with each revolution until it finally met the circle’s edge. With disbelief, David read the labels beneath the two circles:

  EARTH. MOON.

  “I’ll ride in the capsule across the æther, and build a new home on the lunar surface.” Beside him, Paolo was looking up at the board with a brilliant smile. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Annika spent most of the afternoon wandering through the chambers and tunnels. Källa had informed her that she could move through the camp as she liked, and Annika took full advantage of it. Still, she found little in the way of weapons or to use as a means of escape. The furnace could create a possible distraction, as could piercing the pipes that carried heated water through the chambers, warming the air—a safer method of heating in the enclosed spaces than multiple stoves would be, unless the water flooded everything.

  She paused once, frozen as a small tremor shook the ground. A muffled cracking sounded from deep below. Annika was accustomed to quakes, but not while walking through tunnels of snow. She hurried outside.

  In the clearing, she was relieved to see that none of the tunnels had collapsed. The sky was clear overhead; the airship had already gone. She hoped that Lorenzo kept his promise and sent Phatéon’s cargo to Vik, but didn’t trust that he would. Why give them food then threaten to kill them all? He could just as easily lie, say the cargo had been delivered, and she and David would have no way to know.

  Escape was still their best option. Of course, now she had to wonder whether Källa would go, too. Annika couldn’t imagine leaving her. But if her sister was determined to stay, she might have to.

  She circled the clearing, aware of the watchful eyes of the guards. The balloons were tethered, she saw, but not locked. Good. She paused at the entrance to the laborer’s quarters, then moved on when a guard approached her, frowning.

  Källa soon joined her with a fussy Olaf in tow, tugging at her hand and trying to get away. She let the boy go and they watched him run for the nearest mound of snow. Within seconds, his coat was on the ground.

  Her sister sighed. “I don’t know how he opens the buckles so quickly.”

  Especially while wearing mittens. Annika could only shake her head. Of all the roles she’d imagined Källa in when she’d found her—adventurer, shieldmaiden, perhaps even a mercenary or pirate—Annika had never imagined that her sister might also be a mother.

  And she was still a shieldmaiden. Annika glanced to one of the guards standing at the edge of the clearing. “Why do you protect Paolo when Lorenzo has all of these men to do it?”

  “Because he doesn’t trust them to do it properly.” A wry smile twisted her sister’s lips. “He doesn’t trust me, either. But at least he knows I will protect Paolo and wait to kill him.”

  “Then who are the guards for?”

  “The workers.” They both paused as Olaf tumbled down the snow mound. Laughing, Källa called encouragement to him. When the boy regained his feet, she continued, “Lorenzo pushes the laborers as far as he can. He hires the guards to have protection near in the event he pushes them too far.”

  Annika hadn’t seen any of the laborers since she’d come back out to the clearing. Why weren’t they outside? Surely they didn’t like to be cooped inside throughout the day. “Are they not allowed to come out?”

  “They are.” Källa gave her a sideways glance. “But they are like boilerworms.”

  The giant mechanical worms that bored their way beneath the Australian deserts. Valdís had brought back tales of the dangerous creatures, and the hunters who’d died trying to capture the worms as trophies.

  The laborers were like those? “How so?”

  “They lie in wait. They play dead. Lorenzo thinks that the men are beaten, their spirits broken, but…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I don’t believe the same. I think they merely bide their time.”

  “Until what?”

  “Until they are done waiting.” Källa met her eyes, suddenly serious. “If that happens, Annika, do what you do best: hide. Find me if you can, but if not, find a hole and wait for the fighting to end.”


  Annika stared at her. “Do you think it will be so dangerous?”

  “I don’t know. I have seen how they look at the guards, Annika, when they think no one sees. Just a glance now and then, as if they forget to hold it in…or can’t any longer.”

  But di Fiore was an observationist. “Lorenzo doesn’t see?”

  “He does. But he has made up his mind that they will never act upon it.”

  That couldn’t be true. “Then why the guards?”

  Källa laughed a little. “Because he isn’t a fool, Annika. Even he knows that he might be wrong—Oh, Olaf! You silly flounder.”

  She strode forward to pick up the boy, who’d landed on his face in the snow. He opened his small mouth and a horrid wail split the quiet in the clearing. Källa cooed and brushed away tears while Annika watched, trying not to laugh too loudly. The sobs didn’t stop. With a sigh, Källa gave Annika a long-suffering look and headed back toward the living quarters.

  Not long afterward, a troll ambled into the clearing. A new driver, she thought, watching each stiff step. It stopped, settled with a huff of steam. The chest hatch opened, and men emerged one at a time, their eyes downcast and walking in a line. Each one carried a mask of leather and glass, with two circular protrusions on each side of the mouth. If they were on the verge of rebelling against di Fiore, Annika couldn’t see a sign of it. Without speaking or looking up, they trudged across the clearing and into their quarters. A few minutes later, a new line of men—twenty-five in all, Annika counted—climbed into the troll. It rose and ambled off to the south.

  Disturbed, she returned to Källa’s hearth chamber. Her sister sat at the table, looking harried and with her braid in disarray, rocking a sleeping Olaf against her chest. She held her finger to her lips when Annika entered.

  Annika stifled her laugh. Källa responded with a deathly glare and a wrinkle of her nose, then pointed to the snow tunnel.

  “I’ve had them put your packs in the last chamber,” she whispered. “You’ll have more privacy there.”

  The individual chamber was smaller, the roof lower. A bed stood in the center of the floor, a trunk at its foot. An oil lamp with its sconce embedded in the ice wall provided a dim light.