Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles

by Zoë Archer

  “Keep an eye on Miss Carlisle,” Mikhail ordered. “Take her to her cabin and post a guard outside. I don’t want her trying to sneak off the ship while I’m gone. And confiscate the knife in her boot.”

  Petrovsky reached for her, but she jerked away from his grasp. “Physically accosting me isn’t necessary,” she said tartly. “I’ll go to my cabin peaceably. And unarmed.” She handed over her knife.

  After taking the blade from her, the master-at-arms looked to Mikhail for guidance. He gave Petrovsky a small nod. Unlikely that Miss Carlisle would attempt an escape, or a fight with any of his crew. Unexpectedly fierce as she might be, his crew were all trained in combat. They could easily overpower her.

  Hell—did she know what kind of a risk she’d been taking? Paying a rogue Man O’ War with false gold? The danger she’d taken upon herself made his blood cold … until he realized he was furious with her, and he wasn’t supposed to care if anything happened to her.

  “Let’s go, miss,” Petrovsky said. He motioned for her to walk ahead of him.

  She took a step, then stopped.

  “You said that I was to be guarded while you were off the ship,” she said. “Where are you going?”

  His lip curled into a sneer. “Not in any position to ask me questions. But it doesn’t matter.” He planted his hands on his hips. “The Shepherdess and I are going to have a little chat. Baksheesh she wants. Baksheesh she gets. Damn lucky I keep a cache of jewels for times just like this.”

  Miss Carlisle stared at him. “We’re continuing on to Medinat al-Kadib?”

  “We are.” His smile was merely a baring of his teeth. “Now you can sit in your cabin and think of all the ways you’ll have to repay me.”

  DAPHNE WAS NEVER comfortable with keeping still, and was even less enamored of being confined in small places. But with a large crewman outside her cabin door, she had no choice but to pace as best she could in the narrow berth and stew over Denisov’s words.

  What did he plan? For her and for the rest of the voyage? How was she supposed to repay him? Her resources were extremely limited, and they had to be reserved for freeing her parents. Beyond that, she had nothing to offer him.

  A woman always has one means of payment.

  It was a sad truth, but an old one. Women frequently paid with their bodies. It was often their most valued commodity. Could she do it? Be forced to sleep with him? The attraction between them couldn’t be refuted—if he even still desired her after her deception—but going willingly to someone’s bed and being coerced into doing so were vastly different things.

  But if it meant saving her parents’ lives …

  God, she’d never been in this kind of a quandary before; it was far more complex than anything she’d ever faced. Made worse by the fact that, much as she tried, she couldn’t get her brain to function logically. The violent, blistering-hot simoom wind was trapped in her mind, and a suffocating khamsin whirled in her heart. She couldn’t document and analyze what she felt, what she thought. Always so much easier to pick apart someone else’s culture than scrutinize herself.

  What she did know: Denisov had been enraged at her deception. With good cause.

  She stopped her frantic pacing and tried to look through the porthole. As usual, she could barely see anything, just a sliver of sky. How long had Denisov been gone? She’d been too preoccupied to check her pocket watch, and now she’d no idea if it had been ten minutes or two hours. And she didn’t know what would happen when he finally did return to the ship. This fretting and worrying was driving her closer and closer to madness.

  She had to remain as collected as possible. No matter what happened with Denisov, she still had to consider what to do about her mother and father. They were relying on her. Whatever it took, she’d find a way to get them free. She had to think of solutions, possibilities.

  With that in mind, she grabbed her notebook. Thoughts came more easily to her if she wrote them down. Yet no sooner did she reach for her pencil than the sound of heavy footfalls resounded in the passageway. Only one person on this ship walked with such weight and single-minded purpose.

  She managed to compose herself just as the door to her cabin banged open, revealing Denisov.

  Though she’d seen him many times, his appearance continued to rob her of breath. He was so large, so dangerous with his untamed air. She’d thought him menacing the first time she’d ever seen him—had it only been a few days ago?—but they had started to build a strange, fragile connection during the voyage, especially after they’d kissed.

  That connection was gone now. His expression was hard as granite, and his eyes blasted her with cold as he stared at her.

  He stepped into her cabin and kicked the door shut behind him. It rattled all the way into her bones as she faced him.

  “The Shepherdess is paid,” he said without preamble. “We’re in the clear. Now, you’re going to take me to that diamond mine.”

  “Give up my only leverage?” She shook her head. “No one goes near the mine until I get my parents back.” Her own audacity stunned her, but she had to play the game intelligently.

  He, too, looked momentarily surprised that she would dare contradict him. “Could force you to tell me where it is. The navy taught me all kinds of techniques for obtaining information. And I’ve since learned some things that would make the Russian Admiralty choke on their tea.”

  She could believe that. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me. The only person who gets the location of the mine is al-Rahim.”

  Though he didn’t move, she had the sense that he seemed to grow even larger, filling the cramped space of her cabin with his presence. Her heart slammed in her chest, a drum beating the march to the gallows.

  Finally, he said, “This is how it’ll work: I’ll take you to get your parents back. You tell al-Rahim where the mine is. He gets the diamonds from the mine. Then I’m taking the diamonds from al-Rahim.”

  “Those are quite a few steps until you receive any sort of financial recompense,” she answered. “Why not simply cut your losses and put me down here? Let me deal with al-Rahim on my own.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, muscles bunching impressively, and the miniscule cabin shrank even more. “I’ve flown across the whole damned Mediterranean, skirted a battle between airships, outrun a Russian ship eager for my blood. My crew and I have to get something out of this. A mine full of diamonds should settle the bill.”

  She supposed she ought to be grateful that he’d take her the rest of the way. Crossing the Arabian Peninsula on her own could be done, but the trek would be much longer and far more dangerous.

  “All right,” she said after a moment.

  “Delighted that you approve of my plan. Until we reach Medinat al-Kadib, you’re confined to your quarters.” He turned on his heel and took a step toward the door.

  “Is that … all?”

  Her voice stopped him, and he turned back to face her. “Ah, I see. The professorsha thinks I’m going to demand another kind of payment from her.” His gaze raked her, and he smirked. “I don’t force a woman into my bed. When she comes, she comes willingly. And she always wants to stay.” His smirk faded, replaced by cold scorn. “You’ve lost any chance of ever becoming my lover.”

  He left her then. She didn’t know if she was relieved that he wasn’t coercing her into his bed, or if she was disappointed that she’d cost them whatever chance they might have had to become something more to each other.

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  DAPHNE HAD LEARNED patience early in life. One couldn’t grow up in innumerable archaeological dig sites without developing some sense of equanimity. Digs were most assuredly not hotbeds of excitement—involving long, tedious hours of carefully sifting through dust, meticulously brushing away said dust from minute fragments, and painstakingly documenting every step of the process. And this could go on for weeks, months.

  She’d always received stern rebukes from her parents if she e
ver whined, or if she kicked up dust as she ran around the site. So she’d forced herself to become calm, the very soul of self-restraint. One of her parents’ long-term workers was from Gujarat, and had helped immensely by teaching Daphne meditative techniques to make those interminable, sunbaked hours tolerable.

  Then again, as soon as she was old enough to go to university, she hadn’t studied archaeology, as her parents had hoped, but anthropology. Far more interesting, and active, living with people of different cultures and participating in routines of their daily lives.

  Academic life could try anyone’s patience, so she spent as little time at the Accademia as possible.

  But now she had to draw on her early training, spending the whole of the day confined to her cabin as the airship traveled toward Medinat al-Kadib. She would’ve gone quite mad if she didn’t invoke some of Chandra’s techniques in quieting her mind for the duration of the journey. The sky outside the porthole shifted from the bright blue of morning to the deeper sapphire of approaching dusk. She made herself watch this slow transformation with infinite calm, emptying her thoughts of everything but the color of the sky.

  Even so, by the time Denisov appeared at her door, she leapt to her feet, all sense of peace forgotten.

  It wasn’t merely the endless day spent trapped in her cabin. It was him. He had a way of doing that to her—shattering her calm, unsettling her profoundly.

  “We’ve reached the periphery of the city,” he said, voice flat.

  “I could see the lights,” she answered, and felt ridiculous for offering up such an inane observation.

  “How are you going to let al-Rahim know you’ve arrived?”

  She pulled a piece of crumpled paper from a pocket in her satchel. “I’m to find a telegraph office and send a wire to this address. Then an emissary is supposed to respond with the location of our meeting. That’s what al-Rahim said in his letter to me. From there …”—she shrugged—“I’m to receive further instruction.”

  “Makes sense al-Rahim wouldn’t come in person,” Denisov murmured to himself. “He’d keep your parents in his custody until he was certain of payment.” His gaze was glacial. “His caution’s understandable.”

  Perhaps it was being too long imprisoned in her cabin, but she snapped, “I’m an academic, Captain. I can barely afford to eat. Did you really think I’d have bars of gold in my possession?”

  “I’ve got the vision of a hawk, but your virtuous appearance fooled me, professorsha,” he replied, “as much as those fake gold bars. But I’m a quick study, and won’t be deceived again. Not by you.”

  She hurriedly grabbed her satchel, avoiding his eyes. “I’ll need someone to ferry me down in the jolly boat.”

  “Come on, then.” He jerked his head toward the passageway, and she tried to walk past him. He made no move to step aside or get out of her way, so she was forced to edge around him, feeling the heat radiating from his body and brushing up against the unyielding muscles of his chest and arms. A flare of a different heat moved through her, reminding her how only last night she’d been pressed close to him, his hands holding her with a rough tenderness.

  She shoved such thoughts away. They’d serve her no purpose now.

  Denisov led her through the ship, back down to the cargo hold. The jolly boat waited there, along with Levkov and the crewman named Herrera.

  “You’re to take the jolly boat back to the ship,” Denisov said to Herrera. “Wait for me on the outskirts of the city. Should be back within a day, but if I’m going to be any longer, I’ll send word.”

  “Aye, sir. Hear they’ve got clockwork scarabs that carry messages. Cheap, and reliable, too. You can use one of ’em.”

  “Why, Herrera,” Denisov said with a wry smile. “Here I thought we kept you around for your pretty face.”

  “Ain’t that your job, Captain?”

  While Levkov rolled his eyes, Daphne frowned.

  She stared at Denisov. “Wait—you’re coming with me? I thought you’d just have a crewman drop me off.”

  “Protecting my investment,” he answered. “Medinat al-Kadib isn’t the Boboli Gardens. Who knows what kind of trouble you’d get yourself into down there.”

  “Your master-at-arms could accompany me.”

  Denisov snorted. “Petrovsky’s strong, but a Man O’ War is stronger than any man.” He glanced down at the visible edge of his implants. “Only person I trust for this job is me.”

  “Are you my protection,” she demanded, “or my warden?”

  His mouth firmed. “Wardens are for people who can’t be trusted. You figure out what I’m supposed to be.” He nodded toward the jolly boat. “Get in and secure yourself.”

  She had to agree that having a Man O’ War accompanying her in what was a notoriously dangerous city had its merits. Not all of Medinat al-Kadib was perilous—most of its citizens made their living through honest means such as trade and manufacturing—but she had a feeling that al-Rahim’s emissary wouldn’t want to meet anywhere respectable.

  So without further disagreement, she climbed into the jolly boat and fastened the safety harness around her lap. Herrera took up a position in the front of the boat.

  Denisov slipped his arms through the straps of a pack. Levkov was placing brass cylinders the size of loaves of bread into it. A band of leather wrapped around the middle of each cylinder, and they were topped by plates of what appeared to be telumium.

  “Spare batteries,” Herrera explained.

  “For the jolly boat?” she asked.

  “For me,” Denisov said, jumping lightly into the vessel. He positioned himself at the tiller. “If a Man O’ War’s away from his ship for more than a few days, the energy within him builds up. A lot.”

  “Too much,” Herrera added. “Could trigger an uncontrollable rage. Battle madness.”

  “Getting damned mouthy, Herrera,” Denisov growled. The crewman looked away, chastised.

  “God,” she said. “I had no idea.” Being so utterly out of control … it sounded terrifying.

  He shrugged. “You become a Man O’ War, you take some risks.”

  “And the spare batteries in your pack draw off your energy when you’re apart from your ship,” she deduced.

  “Gives me a week away rather than just a few days.” He made adjustments to the jolly boat’s control panel, readying it for flight.

  As indifferent as he sounded to the prospect, it distressed her. “In essence, you’re tethered to your ship. It’s part of you, and you’re part of it. Does that … trouble you?”

  “No.” He scowled at her. “Think I’m going to overload on purpose and punish you for your deception?”

  She swallowed hard. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “I’m not going to put myself through that just for you.”

  Well, that was a relief. “I just mean …” She struggled to find the right words. “It’d be like I had an airship-sized millstone around my neck. Shackled. I can’t think you’d find that to be a pleasant feeling.” She eyed his crest of hair, the rings in his ears, everything that proclaimed him to be a maverick. “Freedom’s very valuable to you.”

  He started, as if she’d jabbed a knife between his ribs. “You don’t know a damned thing about me.” Busying himself with preparing the jolly boat, he muttered, “Long as I have these”—he glanced at the pack containing the batteries—“I can have as much life on land as I want. But the skies are a hell of a lot more free. Better to have wings than be trapped on the dull ground like a commonplace man.”

  “You most certainly aren’t commonplace.” She smiled.

  He didn’t return the smile. “Flattering me is a useless pastime.”

  “I wasn’t trying to. Merely stating a truth.”

  The look he gave her showed just how much faith he had in her definition of truth. She deserved his mistrust. Yet she couldn’t dwell on it. At last, she’d reached Medinat al-Kadib, which meant she was one step closer to freeing her parents. As perilous as th
e past few days had been—on many levels—the real danger was about to begin.

  Levkov pulled the lever opening the cargo doors, and the jolly boat plunged downward.

  She clung to the sides of the vessel as it plummeted. A terrifying sensation. Yet oddly familiar. Ever since she’d received word that her parents had been kidnapped, her life had been in perpetual free fall. It would be a long, long time before she felt solid ground beneath her feet.

  MIKHAIL HAD BEEN to Medinat al-Kadib only once, but it was a city that left an indelible impression, like a burn. Its outer walls ran right up against the coast of the Red Sea, thick fortifications built to repel the water pirates that had long plagued the city. Ether cannons atop the battlements stood poised to repel any seagoing threat, and steam-powered dhows patrolled the harbor, Gatling guns mounted on their prows.

  Safer for him and Daphne Carlisle to approach from the landward side. Dusk fell rapidly as they neared the eastern gate. The walls enclosing the city had been built hundreds of years ago, but now the huge, elaborately carved wooden door at the gate had a complex mechanical lock that could bolt into place at the first sign of trouble.

  A stream of traffic led both into and out of the city. Shepherds and farmers poured out, having concluded their business for the day. Many drove steam wagons, no longer reliant on donkeys or horses to draw their vehicles. They seemed eager to leave the city, eyeing warily the men and women who deliberately came to Medinat al-Kadib at night in order to sample its sensual pleasures.

  Mikhail wouldn’t be enjoying those pleasures. Not tonight. Right now, his task was to escort Miss Carlisle to the nearest telegraph office, and then see what the rest of the night brought.

  They joined the line of people making their way through the eastern gate. Fortunately, he didn’t have to tell Miss Carlisle to stay close. She did so on her own. She had a strong sense of self-preservation—he’d had ample evidence of that already. He kept one eye on her, one on their surroundings. He had no doubt he could handle any trouble that came his way, but she was far more vulnerable in a place known for its wildness.