Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles

by Zoë Archer

  Indeed, Denisov fairly glowed with arrogant pride as he stared down at her.

  Dear God … they’d come so close to death. But his actions, audacious as they’d been, had prevented that.

  A scoundrel of the first order. Wild, impulsive. Acquisitive and perfectly willing to go to outrageous lengths to save his own skin.

  Yet he wasn’t entirely self-serving. Had she fallen overboard when the ship had raced forward, the gold would be his, and he’d save himself a trip all the way to the dangerous Arabian Peninsula.

  But he’d kept her safe. And she didn’t know why.

  She ducked under his arm. “I need a drink.”

  “There are two things you’re guaranteed to find on a rogue Man O’ War airship.” He offered her a roguish smile. “Outlaws. And an abundance of alcohol.”

  ONLY WHEN MIKHAIL was certain that they’d lost the Zelyonyi Oryol and everything on his ship was relatively undamaged did he finally agree to leave the top deck. For security, he didn’t permit any of the lights throughout the ship to be lit. The crew knew how to move in darkness from years of practice. As for himself, seeing in the dark simply came with the improvements he’d gained with his implants. Something that had taken some getting used to—opening his eyes in the middle of the night and being able to see as clearly as if it were high noon.

  A very useful skill when navigating the night skies, a pitch-black treasure house, or a woman’s bedroom in the smoky, seductive hours before dawn.

  “Come with me,” he said to Miss Carlisle. It was a measure of how shaken she’d been by what they’d just endured that she gave him no argument, no quick retort.

  Instead, feeling her way carefully, she followed him. They walked down the companionway. Once they were below decks, however, the darkness was thick as secrets, and the night vision she acquired topside seemed to fail her in the black corridors. She shuffled along, and he heard the slide of her hand along the bulkheads lining the passageways.

  She started when he took her hand in his.

  “Easy,” he muttered. “Just some guidance.”

  “Yes,” she said. Then, with more strength, “Yes, that’s fine.”

  Hand in hand, they continued down the passageway. Hers seemed tiny and cool in comparison to his, but it surprised him to feel small calluses on her palms and lightly edging her fingers. More surprising were the embers of awareness traveling from her hand to his, and up through his body. He’d been intrigued by her as a woman since the first moment he’d seen her, yet this went beyond his usual fast, simple want of a female’s bodily pleasures. In their shared touch, as he led her through the passageway, he had knowledge of her—the unexpected resilience in her hand, how that same fortitude moved through her, and the surprising amount of desire it stirred within him.

  All from holding a woman’s hand. By God, had it been so long for him that this tiny touch affected him so strongly? He could barely remember the Portuguese courtesan he’d visited weeks ago, all the artful skills she’d employed as distant and uninvolving as if that night had happened to someone else.

  Miss Carlisle’s breathing, which had calmed somewhat, grew shallow again. Tension in her hand, as if she was torn between gripping him harder, or pulling away.

  The same warring impulses he felt.

  He stopped in front of one particular door, glancing back at her. Her eyes were opened wide.

  “We’re here.” He pushed open the door and led her inside. To her eyes, the room would be filled with ashy light and silhouettes of furniture, but she wouldn’t be able to guess where exactly he’d taken her.

  When he released her hand, her fingers briefly curled, like she wanted to keep hold of him. Then they straightened, letting him go.

  He moved through the chamber, closing heavy shutters. All the windows and portholes were covered, as well, throwing the chamber into a darkness as thick as it had been in the passageway.

  Wryly, she asked, “Have you taken me to the brig?”

  “This’d be a damn plush brig. Cover your eyes.” With all the windows and portholes secured, he lit a quartz lamp, keeping it at its lowest setting. Dim green light glowed.

  Slowly, she took her hand away from her eyes, blinking in the light. She turned in a slow circle. He watched her gaze flick around the room, alighting here and there. Bookcase. Chest. Desk. Bed—built to his specifications.

  “This is your stateroom.” She looked again at the bed. It certainly could hold two people comfortably, even if one was his size.

  He didn’t consider himself a particularly imaginative man, but he had no trouble conjuring images of her splayed out there, white sheets rumpled around her slim curves.

  Difficult to read the look on her face as she glanced from the bed to him.

  “If you haven’t brought me here for a drink,” she said, “I’m leaving.”

  He strode to a low cabinet and unlatched it. Cold air wafted out. He grabbed a bottle and two small glasses, and held them up. “This is more than a drink. It’s the essence of Russia.”

  “Vodka.”

  He set the glasses down on the table, and filled them to their rims. “My country may have turned its back on me, but I can’t change my Russian blood.”

  Before he could even offer her one of the glasses, she took it, and swallowed its contents in one gulp. Closing her eyes, she exhaled a low, fiery breath, and gave a delicate shudder. Then held out her glass.

  He considered, then discarded, the idea of warning her about the vodka’s potency. He had no plans to take advantage of an inebriated woman, but she was an adult, and if she wanted to get drunk, he wouldn’t play disapproving nursemaid. So he filled her glass again.

  At least this time she didn’t immediately bolt down the vodka. She studied her drink.

  “Every culture has its fermented beverages,” she said, swirling the vodka around in her glass. “One of the first things any civilization does is find a way to create a drinkable intoxicant. Egyptians and the Babylonians had beer. The Chinese fermented rice and honey. But many of the earliest uses of alcohol were spiritual. A way of gaining a higher consciousness, connecting with the gods.”

  He tossed back his vodka, letting the cold burn all the way down to his belly.

  When she finished her second glass of the spirit, he said, “You’re not searching for God right now.”

  “But I prayed to Him only a few minutes ago.” She set her glass down and began to move restlessly through his stateroom. Observant as she was, he had no doubt she took in every detail, from the naval-issue desk to the rows of bladed weapons mounted on the bulkhead, taken from armories and ships from around the globe. His belongings were scattered through the cabin: pairs of boots, empty bottles, a half-assembled clockwork dirigible he never got around to completing. She saw all of this.

  Picked him apart.

  He saw what she did. A scattered man. Who moved restlessly from one diversion to the other, without any real sense of purpose.

  He’d had purpose once. And threw it away. Because of a moment of temptation offered to him by someone he’d thought a friend, an ally. No, more than a friend and ally—a brother. Who should he hate more—the one who tempted him, or himself, for giving in? It seemed he had enough hatred for both.

  “You handled yourself well enough,” he said. “Didn’t scream or faint.”

  “But I did almost fall overboard.”

  Despite her dismissal, he’d spoken honestly. For someone who’d never been in the middle of an airship battle, she’d kept her wits. Fear hadn’t paralyzed her. A surprise. But then, she’d also walked into one of Palermo’s most dangerous taverns to find him. And she was heading right into the teeth of peril in order to help her parents. Not precisely a sheltered academic, this Daphne Carlisle. Not precisely anything he could easily define.

  And that interested him.

  “Still getting your air legs,” he said.

  She smiled at that, a little curl of a smile. “Air legs. It’s a new world up here
. With its own customs and language.”

  “So long as you only record it up here.” He tapped his temple.

  Folding her arms across her chest, she leaned against the table. “You seem awfully concerned about that.”

  “Secrecy is a rogue Man O’ War’s best weapon.”

  “Here I thought a Man O’ War was himself a weapon and needed nothing else. Or,” she added, tilting her head and studying him, “your insistence on secrecy hides something else. Such as the reason why you went rogue. Why there are no photographs of family members or loved ones in your stateroom. Unless you keep them hidden somewhere. In a locked drawer, perhaps.”

  He poured himself another drink and swallowed it down. Maybe this was why he seldom interacted with women of exceptional intelligence.

  Like a needle she was, Daphne Carlisle, digging and jabbing, searching out the splinters beneath his skin, but leaving him raw and bleeding in the process.

  He was a Man O’ War. Metal and flesh. Science at its most advanced. It took far more than one intriguing woman’s questions to wound him.

  Easy enough to show her how little she or her speculation could affect him.

  From the bookshelf, he plucked out one volume. A Statistical Inquiry Into the Irrigated Horticultural Practices of the Eastern Iberian Peninsula. He handed her the book.

  She read the title, frowning slightly. Then opened it, and her frown cleared.

  The inside of the book had been hollowed out.

  She pulled the small photograph from the compartment within the book. Walked it over to the quartz lamp and stared at the image in her hand.

  He didn’t need to see it. Every one of the people in the photograph, all of their faces, the way they posed formally in front of the photography studio’s provided backdrop of a forest scene—all of it had been branded into the soft flesh of his brain, his eyes, his heart.

  “You have a large family,” she murmured.

  “Had,” he corrected. Four brothers, three sisters. For a time, his grandmother lived with them, but she wasn’t in the photograph. His parents were, however. His father sat on a velvet-covered chair, impressive in his full beard and fierce eyebrows. Surrounding him were his children and wife, like planets around the sun, Mikhail amongst them, skinny and smug in his naval cadet uniform. He hadn’t become a man yet, let alone a Man O’ War. “Had a large family.”

  Her wide eyes met his. “They’re dead? All of them?”

  “I’m the one who died.”

  Photographs were strange things, turning living people into wax mannequins, or stopped automatons. One could never guess by looking at the picture that his mother loved practical jokes, or that his youngest brother Yuri drove them all mad by insisting on singing rather than speaking. Or that his sister Irina had to be bodily dragged from her study to eat. Even then, she’d take a book with her to the supper table. She’d looked up, though, when Mikhail had brought home a friend from the naval academy. Had Mikhail known what the result of that would be, he’d have locked Irina in the study. He’d also have plunged the carving knife into his friend’s chest. But no one had known what betrayal lay ahead, least of all Mikhail.

  One would never know from the photograph, either, that his father had bragged to the neighbors for months when Mikhail had been selected to become a Man O’ War. A proud day that had been, when Mikhail had come home with the news.

  Not just a Gimmel or a Bet, his father had kept repeating to whoever would listen. An Aleph. The highest aurora vires ranking there is.

  None of them knew what lay ahead. If they had known, there would have been far less boasting, and more worry.

  “See,” he said, forcing his voice into a tone of lightness. “Nothing to hide. You wondered if I had any pictures of my family. There they are. As ordinary as bread.”

  “You don’t look much like your father.”

  “I take after my mother’s side. Some Tartar blood in there.”

  She glanced up at him. “I can see that. Here, in your cheekbones, and here, in the shape of your eyes.” As she said this, she lightly skimmed her fingertip across the features in question.

  Silver heat spread through him. He wanted to lean into her touch—he wanted to shy away from it. Instead, he held himself still, as if unaffected.

  “How old were you when this was taken?” she asked, looking back at the picture.

  “Seventeen, eighteen. After that, I wasn’t home long enough for us to get everyone to the photographer’s studio.”

  Why did he continue to talk of this? When every word spoken felt like spikes of ice driven into his chest. But no; he kept speaking, as if to prove to not just her but himself that he was every bit as impervious as he claimed.

  “You’re the first Man O’ War I’ve ever met,” she murmured, “yet it seems odd to think that you have a father and mother, and a whole passel of siblings.”

  “Only part of me was made in a surgical theater.” He nodded down at the implants. “I’ve got parents, just like anyone else.”

  She studied him for a moment, her gaze as uncomfortably precise as always. “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen them, hasn’t it?”

  He snatched the photo from her. Tucking the picture back into its hiding place within the book, he growled, “You don’t know a damned thing.”

  “My research revealed that you went rogue two years ago. Unless you’ve made secret trips back to Russia, or arranged meetings with them in relatively safe places, it’s reasonable to assume you haven’t seen them.”

  “The learned professorsha is right again.” He stalked over to the vodka and drank directly from the bottle. It was getting too warm—the only way to truly drink it was cold as winter—but he didn’t care for nuance. He only wanted a dulling of this unexpected pain. But the trouble with being a Man O’ War was that it now took far more alcohol to achieve any kind of intoxication. A good, solid drunk required a case of vodka, not one paltry bottle.

  In three long swallows, the bottle was empty, yet he couldn’t feel it. “All my telegrams go unanswered.”

  “Maybe,” she said gently, “they never received them.”

  She was the one who’d needed steadying after the airship battle, yet here she was, attempting to comfort him.

  “Oh, they have,” he answered. “Got some secret information channels that confirmed it. My parents are still in Tsaritsyn, same house they’ve been in my whole life. And the telegrams were delivered. But I never got a reply. Not to any of them.”

  “They could be protecting you,” she offered. “In case the telegrams might be traced.”

  The sound he made was more of a rasp than a laugh. “Assigning my family such caution is admirable, professorsha, but unnecessary. I know the reason for their silence.” He stared at her, feeling the twist of his mouth and hard knot in his belly. “They’re ashamed. Of me. And they have every reason to be. I didn’t just betray my country, I betrayed my family.”

  He waited for the disgust or disapproval in her gaze. She’d had a bit to drink, so it might take her a moment to fully understand what he’d just revealed. But when she did understand, she’d turn away from him. As she should.

  But he didn’t realize until that moment how much her condemnation would wound him. This woman who, moments earlier, had defended him despite knowing he was nothing but a mercenary. She insisted that there could be something good within him. But there wasn’t. Now she knew it. So he—who as a Man O’ War could endure injury far greater than a normal man, and trained himself to feel as little as possible—braced himself for pain.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  OF ALL THE things she’d witnessed this evening—the battle between Russian and British airships, the pursuit by a Russian ship, the technologically induced storm—seeing the wariness and raw hurt in Denisov’s eyes shook Daphne the most.

  He played his part well. The braggadocio, the raffishness. The continued assertion that his only concern was profit. A ruthless mercenary. He
claimed to be heartless, but no one without a heart could speak so painfully about the loss of his family.

  Was she grasping at straws? Hoping to find some seed of honor and integrity in him, buried beneath telumium armor? Yet she knew that in everyone, including herself, there were moral ambiguities that made a person neither wholly good nor wholly bad. That there was always the possibility of error and forgiveness.

  She returned the hollowed-out book to its place on the shelf, then crossed the stateroom to where he stood. His chary gaze never left her.

  “You cut your hair after you went rogue,” she guessed.

  He looked briefly surprised at the abrupt change of topic. Had he been expecting a reaction from her at his revelation? It was as if … he feared her response. But that made no sense. To him, she was nothing, a paid assignment. Or so she’d thought. Since they’d gone into the privacy of his stateroom, it seemed as though layers of identity and persona had fallen away. Leaving them more exposed, more real.

  He ran his broad hand over the crest of his hair. “Not standard issue for the Russian Imperial Aerial Navy.”

  “Reminds me of the Mohawk Indians. The Pawnee, too.”

  “Ukrainian Cossacks wear a khokhol. Similar, but not the same.” The face he made clearly evinced that he wasn’t patterning himself after those Cossacks.

  “I wasn’t aware that Russian Man O’ Wars crossed paths with American Indians.”

  He shook his head. “Saw a handful of them once, in Paris. An Indian delegation trying to get French aid. They were on the city street, out of place, but damned proud. Wanted that for myself. That defiance. They wouldn’t change how they looked to make anyone more comfortable.”

  His gaze fixed on the quartz lamp. “The rules for how they wanted us to look in the navy were strict.” He snorted. “Uniformity. The tsar’s naval representatives. We were not ourselves but Russia. Our hair could only be so long, combed in just such a way.”

  “Going rogue, you gave the navy the tonsorial equivalent of this.” She made a rude hand gesture.