Riveted

by Brook, Meljean

“Are you with us again, then?”

  She couldn’t be real. His hand lifted to her face. Warm skin. Her tears spilled over, wetting his fingers. She turned her cheek into his palm, her breath shuddering.

  “My mother and Hildegard found us.”

  Trying to moisten his dry tongue, he turned to look. A pale woman with hair the color of rust stood in the troll’s hearth chamber. Movement near the head drew his gaze higher. A tall woman—not his mother—climbed down the ladder.

  “Aunt?”

  He could barely form the word. His aunt nodded. “I am Inga’s sister.”

  Annika’s hand flattened on his chest—his bare chest. Only a blanket covered his hips.

  “We had to put you in the snow. Or they did, in truth.” Annika’s voice sounded high and tight, as if skimming the edge of crying. “I was in here, with my sister pouring fish broth into me. It’s been two days. I just woke up this morning, myself. Dooley and Källa are outside. They’re on the dogsled.”

  And she was alive. He looked up into her eyes. Her mouth curved on an unsteady smile. God, he’d never thought he would see that again. But she was here, and so was he. Her curls fell over her forehead. Throat aching unbearably, his chest swelling, he brushed them back. Another tear spilled down her cheek and broke him. She was here. Oh, God, she was here. A harsh sob tore from his throat. He drew her down, buried his face in her neck. She clung to his shoulders, crying against him.

  “We’re all right, David,” she spoke past her tears. Her fingers slid into his hair, holding him tight through each wracking sob. “We’re all right.”

  Her soothing murmurs continued. She lifted her head as his shudders eased. Dimly, he was aware that the huffing had stopped, that the others had left them alone. She raised a tin cup to his lips—warm water, and she only allowed him a few sips, but even that was enough to soothe his parched tongue, his raw throat.

  “I couldn’t bear losing you,” he said roughly.

  “And I couldn’t bear to lose you.” She bent her head, a soft kiss flavored with tears. “We’re not all the way there yet. They’ve been pouring broth down our throats, but we need to keep sleeping, slowly eating more.”

  And he needed to get up. Though shaky, David could sit, then stand. He found his trousers and shirt at the end of the bunk.

  Curled up on the mattress, Annika watched him dress. He heard her envious sigh. “I need nanoagents.”

  Yes, she did. “When we see her, Lucia can perform the transfusion.”

  “Oh. No, now that we are out of danger, I’ll wait until I visit Hannasvik again. My mother will like to celebrate sharing her blood with me—and it gives everyone an excuse to drink and eat too much.”

  A visit to Hannasvik. Not returning to stay. “You won’t be able to travel through the New World.”

  At least not without the bribes that the Society paid during his expeditions through the interior, and those were simply for traveling through the different territories. He could probably find some way to bring her with him…if he continued that, too.

  But he had other options. And he’d choose one that let him stay close to her.

  Now, he just had to figure out what that option might be.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I like traveling, but I’m ready to be home. Your boots are under the bed.”

  He glanced down at his steel feet. “Do you have a pair yet?”

  “No. But I’m not leaving this troll anytime soon. I’ve been forbidden.”

  “By your mother?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Yes.”

  “Good.” He could see that the little bit she’d done since he’d woken had worn her out. He lifted his hand to the beads at his neck. “They came to Vik to find me?”

  “Yes. And learned that we were up on the glacier instead.”

  “So the town wasn’t flooded?”

  “No. But something else happened. I’ll let Dooley tell that story, though. I’ve heard it three times from him already.”

  He grinned, strode over to the bed to kiss her. “I’m sure you will soon hear it again.”

  The muscles in his legs shook when he dropped from the chest hatch into the crunchy snow. Though David was aware of the others turning to look, he ignored them all for the relief of a nearby boulder. They must have stopped near the ocean. He could hear it in the distance, taste it on the air. Rectangular basalt columns stood ahead of him, their sides carved into regular widths, as if with a measuring stick and a sculptor’s adze. But it was just nature.

  Bludging incredible. The whole damn world was incredible, because he and Annika were still in it.

  He started back, his steps slowing as he took his first good look at the troll. By God, it was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen. Mottled patches of hide had been sewn and draped over the frame, hanging loosely. Its enormous, protruding rump steamed. The head was a riot of fur and feathers, and walrus tusks hung over the beard, giving the impression of giant fangs. Though it couldn’t have been much bigger than Austra Longears, the illusion that this thing might be living made it seem twice as large, twice as horrid.

  “It was almost the death of me when I first saw it,” Dooley said beside him.

  Speechless, David nodded then glanced at his friend. High emotion had flushed the other man’s face. Dooley clapped him on the back, shook his hand.

  “Oh, but it’s good to see you up and about, Kentewess. I didn’t think my heart would beat again when I saw them rolling you naked in the snow. It frightened ten years off of me, only a few days after twenty years had been scared off by that troll.”

  David grinned. “So I’m only half as ugly. Well, that’s something.”

  Dooley laughed with him. “I figure that after this expedition is over, I’ll only have three years left.”

  He’d no doubt make the best of them. David glanced over to where his aunt spoke with Annika’s mother and Källa. Just behind them stood four clockwork dogs in harnesses attached to a sled. “So how do they run?”

  “Faster than a live dog can, and thank God for it.”

  David recognized the change in Dooley’s voice—he had a story to tell. He wanted to hear it, but not yet. His aunt’s resemblance to his mother struck him again, a hard spike through his chest. He approached her slowly, couldn’t stop staring.

  Her gaze searched his face in return. “You look very much like Inga,” she said softly.

  “Not as much as you, Aunt.”

  “So I do.” Smiling, she gestured to the woman beside her. “This is Frida Kárasdottor.”

  Without waiting for his response, Annika’s mother wrapped him in a hard embrace before stepping back, her small hands gripping his. “Thank you, David Ingasson, for bringing my daughter back to me. I will never be able to repay you. If ever you need anything, I will scour the world to find it for you. If you ever need help, I will sacrifice all of my strength and blood to give it. If you have any enemies, I will hunt them and strip their flesh from their bones. This I swear to you.”

  Overwhelmed, he shook his head. “I would offer you the same for coming to find us. For helping her when I couldn’t.”

  “She was never in any real danger,” Hildegard said. “She’d have clung to life for thirty years, if she had to, crawling into the snow and hibernating until a meal fell into her mouth. She’s as stubborn as her mother. Look at that.”

  David turned toward the troll. Annika hadn’t come out, but sat at the edge of the chest hatch with her bare legs dangling over, watching them.

  Watching him.

  “She hasn’t let you out of her sight since she awoke,” Källa said.

  He could hardly bear to be away from her, either. His gaze on Annika’s face, he asked, “How is your son? Paolo?”

  “Well. I’m sorry I couldn’t come for you sooner.”

  It didn’t matter. They’d come in time. “Where are we now?”

  “Coming on about five miles from Vik,” Dooley said. “We stopped when you woke. The dogs needed
the rest.”

  He heard Källa’s snort. “I’ll push the sled the remainder of the way, Mr. Dooley. Go on in with your friend. He can’t stand it much longer. Annika can’t, either.”

  David truly couldn’t. He returned to the troll, holding her gaze with every step. She drew back from the hatch and stood, making room for him.

  He caught her up against his chest, loving the warmth of her skin, the silly bows on her drawers, the curve of her mouth, and the dimple in her chin. “Is this Rutger Fatbottom?”

  “Yes.”

  A footstep sounded behind him. “Turn away, Patrick. I need to kiss her properly.”

  Slow and sweet, her arms linked around his neck, her lips clinging to his.

  At his back, another step sounded. A throat cleared. A female throat. “You’re supposed to be resting, little rabbit.”

  Annika quickly pulled away and scampered to the bunk, where she sat with her face in her hands. Heart thumping, David sat next to her. In a wooden seat across the hearth chamber, Dooley laughed himself into tears.

  “In front of my mother,” she whispered, her cheeks blazing. “That was so improper.”

  He grinned. “And I’m just an ignorant man from the New World.”

  But he wouldn’t do it again. Only proper behavior, from this moment on—and until he had something more to offer her, a promise that he could keep.

  Thankfully, Frida didn’t look upset, just amused—and was holding his aunt’s hand. Hildegard dropped a kiss to her mouth before climbing up the ladder. Such an ordinary, familiar gesture. David had done the same to Annika.

  Familiar, but still surprising to see them. David supposed he’d become used to it soon enough.

  He braced his back against the steel wall behind the bed, realizing that his short venture outside had left him out of breath. Annika was, too. She drew up her knees and rested her cheek on her folded arms, already looking worn again. Frida stoked the furnace, then sat on Annika’s opposite side. She removed her heavy coat, revealing a green tunic, and slipped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

  Frida’s gaze moved from Annika’s face to his. A wistful sadness crossed her expression, followed by fierce pride. She tweaked one of Annika’s curls and said in Norse, “I didn’t think I would lose you so quickly again.”

  “You won’t.” She squeezed her mother’s hand.

  David fought the painful twist in his chest. He wouldn’t think the worst. Nothing about the future had been settled. He didn’t even know yet what they’d find in the town ahead. He looked to Dooley. “What happened at Vik, then?”

  “Don’t rush into it now.” Leisurely, Dooley withdrew his pipe and a small bag of tobacco. “There’s only the first telling of it once.”

  “And yet the second telling always takes longer.”

  “That is the natural progression of it, as I recall details that I’d failed to mention before.”

  “Details, or embellishments?”

  “It’s a true thing that I’ve fattened up a story or two. But this one doesn’t need any,” Dooley said. He puffed up a small cloud of pungent smoke. “Well now, then. You and Miss Fridasdottor had been gone two days when di Fiore’s ferry cruiser flies in over Vik, and leaves our cargo sitting pretty in the street. Of course we realize that this means you’ve likely been taken, because we don’t imagine di Fiore had a change of heart—though that’s what the ferry cruiser’s captain says happened. Now, we thought for certain that you were being held at the rail camp.”

  “Because you didn’t know of the glacier camp,” David realized.

  “We didn’t. Now, I’ve worked up some anger by then. All but steam coming out of my ears, I suppose, as everyone walking at me was suddenly taking another path. But that Captain Vashon, she’s got the same bee under her arse. So she comes to me with this flinty look in her eyes and she says, ‘Prepare your sled, Mr. Dooley. I’m taking it to the camp and I’m bringing our people back.’ And my reply is that she sure as bloody hell isn’t leaving without me.”

  Dooley was working himself up a bit now. Red in the face, chest puffing up.

  “Exactly like that?”

  “It must have not been much worse as I wasn’t slapped for it. So we gather up all the weapons we have, and we’re ready to storm that camp looking for you. Vashon was some sort of big cannon in the Liberé war, did you know?”

  “I didn’t.” But David wasn’t surprised. Many of the Vashons were.

  “So we don’t come in straight to the camp, mind you, but looking over the cliffs to the cove below. Getting the lay, she says. That monster whale is floating in the water, and everyone else is sort of moving about. We’re watching, trying to figure out where you might be tied up—but we know for certain that they’ve got you because we can see the troll that you left with, that red ribbon under her nose, standing over two others that are lying on the ground. Then all of a sudden…”

  Pausing, Dooley took another puff. Annika’s hand tightened on David’s—she knew what was coming. She’d heard this before. Her gaze met his, her eyes shining, her lips pressed into a tight line as if holding herself from blurting it out.

  Dooley drew it out, breathing a ring of smoke and nodding with satisfaction at its shape before continuing, “So there we were, up on that cliff, looking down at the camp, when a roar sounds above me as if the devil himself were being booted from Hell, riding a streak of burning brimstone across the sky. Vashon clobbers me from behind, throwing me to the ground like she’s decided to bash my face open”—he pointed to a cut on his bearded jaw—“but then she’s over the top of me, pinning me down, and I’m about to think that I’ll need to be telling her about my wife when the world explodes. It goes with a sound unlike any I’ve ever heard before, even more than when we saw Pegasus blow, you remember that?”

  David could never forget it. The enormous cargo airship had caught fire over a French port six years before and ignited the balloon. The force had shattered windows on the shops below, set fire to the docks, and had created so much heat that every nearby airship had burst and burned. Altogether, almost two thousand aviators and dockworkers had been killed. They’d called it the worst disaster since Inoka Mountain.

  “I remember,” he said.

  “The rocks beneath us shook, harder than any earthquake I’ve ever stood through, but not near as long. And then I look down, and I see that there’s a crater where the camp was, centered right between the first bunkhouse and the cove. That whale’s turned over in the water and the bunkhouses are in ruins. I thought it was a firebomb, though Vashon tells me that it’s not, it’s not like anything she’s ever seen before. Then we see that the ash is coming up over the glacier, so we think the volcano blew a rock.”

  David had been thinking the same, too, until he realized what it must have been. Astonished, he looked to Annika. “Di Fiore’s capsule?”

  Brows arched, she nodded wildly, lips still pressed flat.

  “We didn’t know anything of that, then. We raced down there, searching the remains of those bunkhouses for you, for anyone. But there wasn’t a single man who wasn’t killed, not a single thing still standing.”

  All those men dead, and all of them murderers who’d slaughtered the sailors in the whale. He couldn’t be sorry, but David would have liked them to receive justice another way—one that made them face up to what they’d done.

  And he’d have liked to believe that the capsule had reached the moon. But he couldn’t be sorry that Lorenzo hadn’t succeeded, either—and he was glad that Paolo hadn’t tried.

  “I don’t think that was the destiny he had in mind,” David said.

  Annika snorted. “But it might be the one he deserved.”

  Smiling, he glanced at her. “You are bloodthirsty.”

  “A bit.” She grinned. “And your Mr. Dooley isn’t done.”

  “For a good hour, we were searching through that rubble, then the ash started falling. Now, we’ve got our scarves, but not much else, and I’ve been on e
nough expeditions with you to recognize the danger we’re in if we breathe that. That whale’s belly up in the cove, so we can’t get into her. So we start along the beach toward Vik as fast as we can, and there’re dogs coming from everywhere after us, and we’re keeping just barely ahead, when all of the sudden there’s a noise from above us. There’s di Fiore’s ferry cruiser, and men shouting over her sides in a panic, screaming for help.”

  God. David had to laugh. “The laborers from the glacier camp?”

  “The very same ones. Their engine’s stalled from the ash, because they never closed up the vents—”

  Annika rolled her eyes, shaking her head.

  “—and they’ve killed the crew, so not a one of them knows how to use their sails, and the wind is pushing them out to sea. And so Vashon, she yells up at them to lower their ladder, and they do, but it’s a good five feet above our heads and swinging by as fast as they are. So I’m thinking that they’re lost, but then Vashon jumps off the sled right into the pack of dogs, and while they’re still trying to stop and get their tails turned around, she runs after that ladder like a deer, leaps up and catches hold of the bottom rung, and hauls herself up there. Five minutes later, the sails are out and she’s coming back round for me, and has already made a deal with the men.”

  Awe still suffused Dooley’s voice, so David suspected that he hadn’t embellished any of it. “What sort of deal?”

  “She’s got a crew that needs an airship. They’ve got an airship that needs a crew, and they tell her they’re ready to take on all of Castile. By then, Vashon knows we’ve got to go up to that glacier for you. So she says, you give us the airship to go find our people, we’ll fly you to Castile afterward and smuggle you in. At first they weren’t happy to do it, especially with that volcano erupting, but then they figure out that it’s your girl she’s looking to rescue.” He pointed the stem of his pipe at Annika. “It seems that she’s the one who started all of this. So the captain of the airship—the Castilian who was acting as captain, that is—he says that Miss Fridasdottor is the one who helped him, so he’ll help her in return.”

  Pride swelled through David’s chest. He looked to Annika. The cut across her temple hadn’t completely healed yet. “And you thought you weren’t brave. That you’ve never done anything that matters.”