Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03]

by Skies of Gold

  “I think we’ve both got our share of secrets,” she answered. “But I won’t ask about yours if you don’t ask about mine.”

  He debated for a moment, then stuck out his hand.

  For a moment, she just looked at it. Then, guardedly, she held hers out as well. His fingers easily enfolded hers as they shook to seal the bargain—she had slim hands, perfect for designing and building wickedly clever devices. Compared to her, he had a beast’s clumsy paws. But her skin wasn’t soft and delicate. Calluses lined her fingers, her palm, just as they did his.

  They comforted him, those calluses on her hand. But at the touch of skin to skin, filaments of light and warmth threaded up his arm and through his body. It had been a long time since he’d touched a woman. Not since Emily.

  He let go of her hand, resisting the impulse to rub his palm against his thigh—though he didn’t know if it was to scrub the feeling away or push it more deeply into his skin.

  Her cheeks darkened, and she turned away to pull a tin down from the cupboard. He knew before she opened it what it held, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply the green and woody scent of tea. His body responded almost as strongly as it had when he’d held her hand.

  He opened his eyes and saw her staring at him. Then she spooned some of the dried leaves into a glazed earthenware teapot.

  “I . . . ran out of tea two weeks ago.”

  She gave a small shudder. “My God, I can’t believe you haven’t gone mad.”

  “That fact hasn’t been established.”

  Instead of looking at him with fear, she chuckled. A velvety sound resonating from the back of her throat.

  “Us being on Eilean Comhachag voluntarily doesn’t speak well of either of our mental states.” She peered at him more closely. “You didn’t know the name of the island.”

  “Never said that.”

  “But you blinked quickly when I said the name, so either you got a speck of dust in your eye—which is impossible, because I cleaned the hell out of this place—or you had no idea the island was called Eilean Comhachag.”

  Bugger, she was a perceptive one. “Not knowing the name of this heap of stone doesn’t mean anything. I’d wager you don’t know the names of half the islands in these parts.”

  “Yet this was the one I wanted to find.”

  Why would she come to this desolate pile of rocks of her own volition? Maybe it had something to do with Liverpool. Or her injured leg. She seemed as cautious as a bird in the snow being offered a handful of crumbs, flitting forward, then back, ready to fly. Yet hungry, too.

  The kettle whistled, and the flame beneath it automatically went out. She grabbed a padded square of calico and used it to pick up the kettle, then filled the teapot.

  He glanced around the cottage. There was a second table, one that looked like she’d recently built herself. Pieces of brass, wood, and leather lay in a neat jumble atop the table, the sign of a thought in progress. “Got enough here to keep you occupied.”

  She followed his gaze to the unassembled mechanical pieces. “Tea and inventions. The two things I need to retain my sanity.” But her voice was wry, as if she didn’t fully believe herself.

  Damn. It’d be difficult to hold to their bargain when the glimpses of who she was continued to intrigue him. He thought for certain he’d toss the rabbits at her and leave as fast as he could—which was bloody fast. The tea hadn’t been the lure that kept him at the cottage, though. It was her. This sharp, damaged woman, more edged than a cutlass, but with an unspoken, invisible yearning he felt with a surprising instinct.

  “I’ve planned better than you,” she added. “The ferryman comes back in a month with more supplies, and more tea.”

  His muscles tightened. A ferryman. That meant a greater chance of discovery. But Fletcher kept his expression neutral.

  She filled the two cups with tea, and only years of rigorous naval training kept him from lunging for his mug when she offered it to him. Instead, he was like a trained bear, he sat at her table and held the cup between his hands. The mug felt small as a thimble, but he nursed his tea slowly, he and Kali sitting in a silence that wasn’t exactly friendly, but wasn’t hostile, either. She kept eyeing him as if he might suddenly kick down the door and run off into the mists.

  He glanced at the cooking apparatus, and she followed his gaze.

  “It folds nearly flat,” she said. “It doesn’t weigh too much, either. I thought it would be good for scientific expeditions. This is the prototype, though.”

  She’d built that, too? “Seems to be working fine.”

  She shrugged, and there was an economic grace in her movements. “It’s been a process. I keep having to make adjustments with the fuel system. Yesterday it smoked up the place so badly I had to sleep outside.”

  He scowled. “Not safe to do that.”

  “I had flannels over my flannels, so I wasn’t cold.”

  “There’s more to be afraid of than the chill.”

  “The only predators I’ve seen on the island so far are the owls.”

  “I could be one, too,” he felt compelled to add.

  She gazed at him across the table. “I would’ve known that by now.”

  “A fifteen-minute meeting doesn’t tell you anything.” An odd anger surged, that she’d be so naïve as to trust him on such short knowledge.

  “A considerable amount can happen in fifteen minutes.”

  He saw experience in her eyes. No, she wasn’t naïve, but he still didn’t care for the idea of her sleeping outside on her own.

  “Besides,” she added, pouring herself another cup of tea, “secrets or no secrets, if there’s something you want, I’d wager you just take it.” After refilling his mug, she looked pointedly at his shoulders. No use in being modest—he had wide shoulders. Everything about him was big, a fact that had taken him some getting used to. At first, he’d kept knocking his head against doorjambs and trying to squeeze into chairs that couldn’t possibly hold him.

  “There’s a difference between a man who’s in the navy and a privateer,” he answered.

  “Out here”—she waved at the isolated landscape on the other side of the window—“nothing can stop you from doing what you want.”

  “You trying to provoke me into ravishing you?”

  The moment the words left his mouth, a heated awareness crept between them. Dark and shrouded in mysteries.

  “What a high opinion you’ve got of yourself.” Yet she set her cup down, then nudged it around, making tiny adjustments to its position.

  He drained his cup in one gulp, and pushed back from the table. She stared up at him, her dark eyes wide. “Three months I’ve lived on this island, Kali. I don’t have all this fanciness”—he nodded at the cooking apparatus—“but even if I did, I wouldn’t count on anything. You want to survive, you need to be on guard. Against everything.”

  “It sounds like you’re including yourself in that list.”

  Threatening a woman tasted acrid. “Everything,” he prevaricated.

  She, too, stood from the table but kept its width between them. “No need to worry,” she said tightly. “You won’t find another woman more guarded than myself.”

  But she didn’t act like a frightened person, didn’t cringe and huddle into herself. Kali had boldness. Tenacity. Strength. It was easy to forget that she’d been at Liverpool, and that she’d not just seen the battle, but suffered a terrible injury because of it. Sailors and soldiers were only human, and could be hurt or killed like anyone, but they had a bleak familiarity with violence, with blood.

  She was a civilian. An engineer. A woman.

  And he was an ass.

  “I . . .” He bolted toward the door. “Remember what I said about the rabbit,” he said over his shoulder. Then he was outside, all but running back to his side of the island.

  As he strode across the fields and along the base of the hills, he called himself a long and extensive list of names, none of which he’d say in the presence o
f women, children, or the elderly.

  He shouldn’t have gone to see her. He should have known better, and kept away. His steps slowed. Maybe he should go back and tell her that he’d stay out of her way if she didn’t bother him.

  I won’t go to the cottage anymore. I’m a dead man, aren’t I? Dead men don’t have friends. Even pretty, wickedly clever ones. It’s safer this way, for everybody.

  But he didn’t turn back. He hesitated, then continued striding toward his end of the island.

  Tomorrow. I’ll tell her I can bring her food if she needs it, but we won’t be having tea together. Won’t talk or try to cleverly figure out each other’s secrets. And she can’t tell the ferryman about me.

  But he’d do all that tomorrow. With his mind made up, he kept hiking toward his home. Yet his steps were a little slower. Knowing that he wasn’t alone on the island—Eilean Comhachag, she’d called it—made his isolation that much sharper.

  Sodding damn. She’d ruined his perfect loneliness.

  Watery afternoon sunlight spilled across Kali’s makeshift worktable. It wasn’t the strongest illumination, but she’d always preferred working by natural light rather than gaslight or oil lamps. Her colleagues at the engineering firm in Liverpool had joked that if she kept that practice up, she’d be out on the street, just another blind girl selling poesies. But her eyesight stayed strong as ever, and the lenses of her goggles were only to protect her eyes, not to strengthen her vision.

  She was the only one who’d survived, out of everyone at Drogin & Daughters Mechanical Engineering and Fabrication. Not even young Fred Gorman, her assistant—half her age and already thinking of ways to make flight without ether possible. The building hadn’t survived, either. After she’d been released from the makeshift hospital, she’d returned to where her workplace had once stood. Most of the debris had already been cleared away by that point, save a smoldering heap of bricks and a few charred blueprints. The bodies had been removed and buried. She’d missed the mass of funerals, laid up in bed and fighting infection.

  Kali now rubbed the heel of her palm against her forehead. She made an adjustment on the delicate brass leg of the cricket. When the tiny automaton worked, it was supposed to rub its legs together in a soothing imitation of real crickets, and its abdomen would softly glow. It would help children afraid of the dark—or so she hoped. Normally, she worked on larger-scale projects, things with broader technological and economic uses.

  She couldn’t bring herself to think of the larger world now. Only these little designs that might make someone’s life feel safer—even if it was only an illusion.

  When she almost twisted the cricket’s leg beyond fixing, she tossed her screwdriver down in disgust. Her thoughts were wayward as welding sparks, cascading everywhere. She stared out the window at the scrubby field surrounding the cottage.

  Three days had passed, and not a word or sign of Fletcher. He hadn’t returned since he’d rushed out, advising her about how to eat rabbit.

  She stood up from her workbench and stretched, then untied her waxed canvas apron and tossed it onto her chair.

  Tea the other day had been . . . strange. She hadn’t planned on inviting him inside, but the words had leapt from her mouth as if some hidden part of her had summoned them. Having him at her table, with them cagily drinking tea, she’d wondered who would get up and run off first—her, or him. She didn’t think him a ghost any longer—more like a feral animal cautiously nosing its way toward the fire, in search of warmth and companionship.

  Should she chase him away from the fire, or try to lure him closer? Both impulses wrestled within her. Maybe they were both ghosts, pale shadows of who they’d once been, brought to haunt this island. She’d come here to be by herself, and never had she been in the company of a creature more isolated than Fletcher. He was her dark reflection, and the tea they’d shared had been an education in what it meant to be alone.

  Her gaze caught on the cricket. If she focused, she could have it finished within half an hour. True to her calculations, in thirty minutes, the little automaton hopped and chirped, its belly glowing gently.

  She threw on her cloak and strapped on her tool belt and tucked in her revolver. She wrapped the cricket in some muslin, and also packed a satchel with a lamp and a few other supplies, just in case she was caught after dark or the weather turned inclement.

  Heading out, she saw the mists still lying across the island in patches. Since her arrival, she’d explored her half of Eilean Comhachag, and now recognized more landmarks. The twisted rowan tree right before the ridge of hills began. Where to avoid the scree at the base of the hills so she didn’t lose her balance again. The gradual slope upward of the field, leading to the pond.

  Strange disappointment twisted in her when she reached the pond and found no sight of him. Then again . . . if she met up with him before she reached his home, she’d have less of an excuse to see where he lived. Would it be a cottage like hers? Some rough lean-to or structure of barest survival? Hell, he could have found a cave in one of the hills and made his home there. But that wouldn’t explain the light or humming, which she’d continued to hear every night since she’d arrived.

  Past the pond, the terrain opened up into a rocky, rolling moor. Gorse and heather sprung up in surprised tufts, as if unable to believe that they’d endured in such an inhospitable environment. The mists hung lower here, caught in bowls formed by the moorland. She pulled her cloak closer as she trudged over the heath. It brought to mind her father’s tales of malevolent fairy folk and monsters—creatures like the hideous Arrachd, lurking on the moors, waiting for the unwary traveler to feast on his or her bones.

  Her feet demanded she turn around and go back to her cottage. Fletcher hadn’t invited her. He’d made it clear enough that he wanted to be left alone. But she kept walking, hunching her shoulders against the creeping chill. She’d survived a city being destroyed all around her. She could manage something as minor as a stroll across a moor.

  The land rose up, a small hillock hiding the next expanse of moorland. Unused as she was to so much exercise, her breath rasped in her throat while she climbed the low hill. But when she reached the very top and looked down into the vale below, she lost her breath completely.

  An airship had crashed into the moor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  It hadn’t been a recent crash. Gorse and grasses poked through cracks in the airship’s hull. The ship itself was mostly intact. Some time ago, it had plowed into the moor, stern first, digging a massive trench behind it. The front of the airship had broken off, its figurehead and bowsprit were only jagged shards of wood after gouging through the rocky soil.

  To see something as incongruous as an airship in the middle of a moor—she must be dreaming. But the cold air in her tight lungs and the growing wind scraping at her cheeks proved she was awake.

  It was a British airship, or had been, before it had crashed. Her experience in Liverpool had taught her that this vessel had the layout of a British ship, with its central support curved in an arc from stem to stern. The ether tanks that would be mounted to that support had broken off, and lay upon the deck. The turbines had partially cracked off, but were still attached to the stern of the ship. The ship wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  “The hell are you doing here?”

  She whirled and found Fletcher standing just behind her. He loomed out of the fog. It amazed her that such a big man could move so quietly—though her attention had been focused on the mysterious airship, and nothing else.

  “Pray God the Queen never visits you,” she snapped. “You’d run her off with your abysmal manners.”

  “She won’t come here,” he answered flatly.

  Kali glanced back and forth between the massive man and the crashed airship. “It’s yours.”

  He gave her a terse nod. His eyes were chips of cold blue quartz, his mouth a hard line. He had an ether rifle slung across his wide back and carried a canvas sack stain
ed with blood. Supper.

  “I’ve never seen the inside of an airship before,” she said. She’d observed them from the outside, locked in fiery combat, the sight wonderful and terrible, but she knew nothing about the interior of one of these vessels. The navy let no one outside of their ranks learn the layout of the ships, or indeed, much of anything. All nations’ navies guarded their ships carefully. They were the key to winning this endless Mechanical War..

  Airships had torn her life apart. But airships had kept her and Liverpool from total annihilation. Terrible beasts they were, but fascinating.

  “It’d be rude not to offer me a tour,” she said.

  Fletcher said nothing, only glared at her. Yet she felt something, an almost palpable pulse of energy traveling between him and the airship.

  Gods and goddesses. He’s a Man O’ War.

  The captain of the airship, and its source of power and ether.

  She took an involuntary step backward. His mouth twisted, as if he expected her reaction.

  As extraordinary as the airship was, it was just a thing. Seafaring craft had existed in different forms for thousands of years.

  But Man O’ Wars—nothing like them had existed until less than a decade ago. They were combinations of man and machine. At some point in the past, Fletcher had undergone the procedure to turn him into this amazing hybrid. Telumium plates had been embedded in his skin, with filaments of the rare metal threaded around and into his heart. Not every man could become a Man O’ War. They needed to have an aurora vires rating of Gimmel or higher. It took an extraordinary individual to make this transformation. And Fletcher had done so.

  He muttered something now under his breath. A curse. Realizing the moment that she understood what he was. Beneath all his wild hair, he looked angrily resigned.

  So much for keeping secrets. No way to hide this one: he was the Man O’ War captain of a British Aerial Navy airship.