Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles

by Zoë Archer

  Skies of Steel

  THE ETHER CHRONICLES

  ZOË ARCHER

  Dedication

  * * *

  To Zack, whose strength helps me recognize my own

  Acknowledgments

  * * *

  Special thanks to Susan Crangle, Jane Johnson, and Adriana Baranello, for their language expertise.

  Contents

  * * *

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Explore the Ether Chronicles

  About the Author

  The Ether Chronicles by Zoë Archer and Nico Rosso

  An Excerpt from The Forbidden Lady by Kerrelyn Sparks

  Chapter One

  An Excerpt from Turn to Darkness by Jaime Rush

  Chapter One

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Palermo, Sicily

  DAPHNE CARLISLE DUCKED as a mechanical arm soared past. It narrowly missed her head and smashed on the wall behind her. Pieces of rusted metal flew everywhere, landing in her hair and scattering on the floor. Someone gave a coarse laugh. Angry shouts ensued, followed by the sounds of fisticuffs and wooden furniture shattering.

  Assuredly, this isn’t the Accademia.

  Straightening, Daphne picked the bits of metal and gearworks from her hair. She tugged on her short, fitted jacket and smoothed out her skirts. This tavern might be the gathering spot for thieves, miscreants, and scoundrels, but she needn’t look as though she was one of their number. Her mission necessitated appearing as respectable and honest as possible. She couldn’t fail. The stakes were far too high.

  She scanned the smoke-filled room. The fight had subsided, or at least the participants had grown bored of their brawl. Men—and some women—of every nation huddled around tables, their hands possessively wrapped around mugs and greasy wine glasses. One group gambled using a clockwork game of chance, others used old-fashioned playing cards. An automaton with a concertina honked out what might be music, but it had to have been years since the mechanized musician had been serviced. It missed every fifth note.

  “Looking for someone, bella?” someone slurred at her in Italian.

  She raised an eyebrow at the poorly groomed man staggering toward her. Stains covered his clothing, and his hair hung in greasy strands over his collar. Wine dribbled from the rim of his cup and onto his worn shoes.

  “You’ve found him,” the man added with a leer. He stood far too close. Fumes of many varieties wafted off of him.

  “If I’m in need of a lesson in bad hygiene,” she answered, also in Italian, “I know precisely who to call upon.”

  The man blinked at her, then slowly realized he’d been insulted. “Hey, now, I’m only being friendly.” He reached for her.

  She knocked his hand back. “I’ve got more than enough friends.”

  He fumbled for her again. “I—”

  Moving as quickly as her skirts would allow, Daphne hooked her foot behind his ankle, then tugged. He stumbled backward, landing with a thud in a nearby chair. An expression of bafflement crossed his face, as though he couldn’t quite understand how he’d wound up sitting.

  “Truly, signore,” she said, shaking out her skirts once more, “there are plenty of women here who will find your … charms … alluring. I’m not one of them.”

  Before he could form a rejoinder, Daphne moved on. She hadn’t time to waste with drunkards and fools.

  Pressing further into the tavern, she saw that it stretched out in a labyrinth of rooms.

  Now I know how Theseus felt.

  Except the creature she sought wasn’t a bull-headed monster, but another kind of hybrid. One that the Ancients would most definitely have found equally fantastic. She had no ball of string to help find her way out of this place, and it struck her again how very alone she was in this endeavor.

  She dodged more groping hands and impertinent questions, all the while conscious of how out of place she had to look. Palermo, and this tavern in particular, served as the gathering place for the seafaring criminals of the western Mediterranean. Part of the Mechanized War was being fought in the sky using airships, but seafaring battles were still common, and the war had destabilized the seas, leaving them ripe for infestation by pirates and smugglers. Not since the days of the wild Spanish Main had the oceans been so perilous.

  Which was precisely why Daphne needed to travel in the sky, and why she’d come to this place.

  But the man she sought was nowhere to be found. She cursed under her breath.

  He had to be here. His airship, Bielyi Voron, had been spotted nearby. Through the judicious use of bribery, she had learned that he frequented this tavern. If he wasn’t here, she would have to come up with a whole new plan, but that would take costly time. Every hour, every day that passed meant the danger only increased.

  She walked past another room, then halted abruptly when she heard a deep voice inside the chamber speaking in Russian. Cautiously, she peered around the doorway. A man sat in a booth against the far wall. The man she sought. Of that she had no doubt.

  Captain Mikhail Mikhailovich Denisov. Rogue Man O’ War.

  Like most people, Daphne had heard of the Man O’ Wars, but she’d never seen one in person. Not until this moment. Newspaper reports and even cinemagraphs could not fully do justice to this amalgam of man and machine. The telumium implants that all Man O’ Wars possessed gave them incredible might and speed, and heightened senses. Those same implants also created a symbiotic relationship between Man O’ Wars and their airships. They both captained and powered these airborne vessels. The implants fed off of and engendered the Man O’ Wars’ natural strength of will and courage.

  Even standing at the far end of the room, Daphne felt Denisov’s energy—invisible, silent waves of power that resonated in her very bones. As a scholar, she found the phenomenon fascinating. As a woman, she was … troubled.

  Hard angles comprised his face: a boldly square jaw, high cheekbones, a decidedly Slavic nose. The slightly almond shape of his eyes revealed distant Tartar blood, while his curved, full mouth was all voluptuary, framed by a trimmed, dark goatee. An arresting face that spoke of a life fully lived. She would have looked twice at him under any circumstances, but it was his hair that truly made her gape.

  He’d shaved most of his head to dark stubble, but down the center of his head he’d let his hair grow longer, and it stood up in a dramatic crest, the tip colored crimson. Dimly, she remembered reading about the American Indians called Mohawks, who wore their hair in just such a fashion. Never before had she seen it on a non-Indian.

  By rights, the style ought to look outlandish, or even ludicrous. Yet on Denisov, it was precisely right—dangerous, unexpected, and surprisingly alluring. Rings of graduated sizes ran along the edge of one ear, and a dagger-shaped pendant hung from the lobe of his other ear.

  Though Denisov sat in a corner booth, his size was evident. His arms stretched out along the back of the booth, and he sprawled in a seemingly casual pose, his long legs sticking out from beneath the table. A small child could fit inside each of his tall, buckled boots. He wore what must have been his Russian Imperial Aerial Navy long coat, but he’d torn off the
sleeves, and the once-somber gray wool now sported a motley assortment of chains, medals, ribbons, and bits of clockwork. A deliberate show of defiance. His coat proclaimed: I’m no longer under any government’s control.

  If he wore a shirt beneath his coat, she couldn’t tell. His arms were bare, save for a thick leather gauntlet adorned with more buckles on one wrist.

  Despite her years of fieldwork in the world’s faraway places, Daphne could confidently say Denisov was by far the most extraordinary-looking individual she’d ever seen. She barely noticed the two men sitting with him, all three of them laughing boisterously over something Denisov said.

  His laugh stopped abruptly. He trained his quartz blue gaze right at her.

  As if filled with ether, her heart immediately soared into her throat. She felt as though she’d been targeted by a predator. Nowhere to turn, nowhere to run.

  I’m not here to run.

  When he crooked his finger, motioning for her to come toward him, she fought her impulse to flee. Instead, she put one foot in front of the other, approaching his booth until she stood before him. Even with the table separating them, she didn’t feel protected. One sweep of his thickly muscled arm could toss the heavy oak aside as if it were paper.

  “Your search has ended, zaika.” His voice was heavily accented, deep as a cavern. “Here I am.”

  She wondered how he knew to speak to her in English rather than Italian, but, glancing down at her painfully tidy traveling costume, she realized she may as well have worn a sash bearing the Union Jack.

  “How do you know it’s you I seek?” she returned.

  With one broad finger, he tapped his ear. The pendant hanging from his lobe swung slightly with the movement. “These tell me everyone’s secrets.”

  Of course. Man O’ Wars had hearing and eyesight far superior to a normal man’s. He’d heard her fumbling her way toward him.

  “What are your secrets, zaika?” Without straightening from his sprawl, he looked her up and down in bold perusal.

  Heat flooded her cheeks and spread throughout her body. One would think, having lived in Italy for as long as she had, she’d be no stranger to a man’s impudent stare. Something about the way Denisov stared at her, though, sent a new, hot awareness through her.

  “I have no secrets,” she lied.

  A corner of his mouth turned up. “Everyone does. The fun is trying to discover what they are.”

  “I wonder at your definition of fun,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “No need to simply wonder.” His smile turned blatantly carnal. “You can find out for yourself.”

  Good God. Blushing virgin, she most certainly wasn’t. So why did she feel like one in his presence, and with every word from his mouth? And why did she get the feeling that most women took him up on his offer?

  She straightened. “Mikhail Mikhailovich Denisov?”

  “Captain Mikhail Mikhailovich Denisov,” he answered. “I may have been drummed out of the tsar’s navy, but I still captain my ship.”

  “Precisely why I sought you out.” Records on rogue Man O’ Wars were scarce, since most governments didn’t like to make such knowledge public. But Denisov had been one of the Russian Imperial Aerial Navy’s finest. Even in Britain, his desertion had been trumpeted in the newspapers. One thing all articles had left out was the reason why he’d gone rogue. Rogue Man O’ Wars were notorious for keeping silent about their rationales for turning their backs on their countries, as if there was some kind of tacit agreement between them. Which only added to their aura of danger and mystery.

  Since Denisov had broken from the Russian Navy, he’d become infamous as a mercenary willing to do almost anything for the right price. Which is exactly why she needed him. He was her only hope.

  “Not for fun.”

  “Not for fun,” she said. Finding him had not been easy, taking valuable time following leads through criminal networks—a world she knew very little about, but had needed to learn to navigate quickly. Fear and urgency had been her constant companions then, just as they were now. Her heart fluttered in her throat, and her palms were damp.

  He affected a sigh, then kicked a chair toward her. “As you like. But if you change your mind …” His grin was all scoundrel. “All the stories you’ve heard about Man O’ Wars are true.”

  As she took her seat, she could only speculate about the content of those stories. She didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed that she hadn’t heard them.

  One thing she now knew for certain: Denisov was not wearing a shirt beneath his coat, only a buckled waistcoat. The deep V-neck of the waistcoat revealed precisely delineated pectoral muscles, sprinkled with dark hair. As Denisov shifted slightly, light from the flickering gas lamp gleamed on a metallic surface on his chest. His telumium implants.

  “Go ahead and look.” His wry voice punctured her thoughts. Pulling aside the edge of his waistcoat, he revealed more of the implants.

  She was a scholar, so she felt no compunction about studying them. Somehow, the metal had been grafted to his skin, covering his left pectoral. It looked as though it continued up onto his shoulder, as well. The telumium had been shaped so that it appeared part of his body, taking on the form of his muscles. Having done some research on Man O’ Wars, she knew that there were telumium filaments leading from the implants to his heart, which created the process by which he powered an airship. Yet she was an anthropologist, not an engineer, and the whys and wherefores of the process remained arcane.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  He frowned, as though the question caught him by surprise, and tugged his waistcoat back into place. “Not anymore.”

  She flattened her disappointment that she couldn’t study his implants further. All that truly mattered was that Denisov had an airship, not how he could power it.

  “Mister Denisov—”

  “Captain Denisov.”

  “Captain,” she began again. “Are you familiar with the current situation in the Arabian Peninsula?”

  “As familiar as I need to be.” He took a deep drink from his cup, and she tried not to watch the tendons in his neck as he swallowed. “Telumium was discovered there a few months ago.”

  “A very rich source,” she confirmed. “Which means that the war has spread as nations vie for the telumium deposit. The allied English and Italians want it, and the Hapsburg-Russian alliance wants it. The entire region has destabilized as a result. Any remnants of the fragile peace between local tribes has been utterly shattered.”

  One of the men sitting with Denisov snorted derisively. “So?”

  She glared at him. “So—my parents are archaeologists in the Arabian Peninsula. They were working on a dig when the telumium was discovered and everything went to hell.” Turning her gaze to Denisov, she said, “My parents have been kidnapped. A warlord by the name of Haroun ibn Jalal al-Rahim has imprisoned them.”

  Denisov whistled lowly. “Heard of al-Rahim. A ruthless bastard, that one.”

  A cold spike of fear jammed into her chest, but she forced herself to ignore it. Nothing could be gained by panicking. The only way she could see this through was to remain calm and in control at all times.

  “He took my parents and the local people working with them on the dig,” she continued, “despite the fact that they were intruding on no one’s territory.”

  “How’d you find out about this?”

  “Al-Rahim sent a package to me in Florence.” She swallowed hard, remembering the terror that chilled her as she’d unwrapped the paper and read the accompanying letter. “It contained my mother’s wedding band and my father’s prized knife. My mother gave it to him as an anniversary gift. They’d never willingly part with either of those things. So I knew al-Rahim’s claims were true. I went straight to the British Embassy in Rome, asking for help.”

  “And they were no help at all,” Denisov said.

  Her hands curled into fists with remembered anger. “The political situation is too tenuou
s. That’s what they told me. It could cause further imbalance in the region.”

  “Meaning,” Denisov said with a smirk, “they were looking after their own arses.”

  “The bloody telumium, too.” She didn’t care if her language was becoming coarse. The more she thought about how the British government, her government and the government of her parents, put its own financial and political interests ahead of the well-being of its citizens, the more infuriated she became.

  Telumium was extremely rare, and an essential component in the creation of Man O’ Wars. Having Man O’ Wars meant a nation could have airships, which expanded their political and economic reach. Europe had been torn apart as countries allied with and vied against one another in the ongoing search for telumium. To Daphne, it seemed a ridiculous cycle. Going to war in order to give a country the resources to perpetuate war.

  She never cared for politics. Her only interest was anthropology, studying the cultures of the world before they vanished beneath the grinding wheels of modernity. Yet now she cared about politics. Deeply.

  “There’s nothing for it,” she said, her words hardening. “I have to try to free my parents on my own.”

  As she spoke, Denisov straightened, and his wry expression grew more serious. Though he was sitting, she still felt herself intimidated by his size. Motorized bicycle races could be held on his shoulders.

  She pressed on. “The only way for me to reach my parents is via airship. Your airship.”

  The glint in his eyes vanished. “No.”

  “But—”

  “The answer is no.” Abruptly, he stood.

  Oh, Lord, he was so … big. She had to tip her head back to look up at him, looming like an omen. An ether pistol was strapped to his thigh. She thought of the revolver in her handbag, and how tiny it seemed in comparison. Did ordinary bullets affect Man O’ Wars? She wished she’d researched that topic more thoroughly before coming here tonight.