Tethered (18 page)

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have stopped there,” Archimedes said easily, and offered an unrepentant grin when she snorted. “I’m not about to rule it out. The device would have to be easy to get to, wouldn’t it, because anyone who had to make an effort to retrieve it and put it away would have been noticed.”

That was true. Everyone had their place on the ship, and it didn’t go unremarked when someone ventured outside of their place.

“We’ve searched everywhere,” he said. “Except where decency tells us that we can’t—such as looking under a woman’s dress.”

“So I’ll order them to hike up their hems and give you a good look.”

His chuckle stopped abruptly. His brows drew together. “I can’t decide if you’re serious. Would you?”

“Yes.” But not in front of any male, even Archimedes. “There are only four women who wear skirts. It won’t be difficult to check each of them.”

And at this point, foolish not to check. The device had to be somewhere, and beneath a skirt was as good a place as any.

Archimedes grimaced, clearly not liking the idea. “We’re fortunate that everyone else wears trousers. There aren’t many
places to carry a foot-long obelisk around without having it bulge like Longcock’s guns…”

Oh, hell
. She realized at the same moment he did. His eyes widened and met hers.

“No,” he said, though clearly not believing his own denial.

“Yes,” Yasmeen said. “It has to be.”

He shook his head. “If we’re wrong…An apology could never be enough. God, I can’t even
think
it.”

She couldn’t either. So they had to make certain they weren’t wrong, eliminate every other possibility first, no matter how intrusive and awkward. It couldn’t be as horrible as the final option.

“When we return,” she said. “I’ll ask the others to lift their skirts.”

*   *   *

When the bell for first watch rang, Yasmeen wasn’t
surprised to find Maria Barriga de Lata alone in the galley kitchen. The scullery woman was surprised to see
her
, and her dark eyes widened farther when Archimedes and Vashon came in after. The quartermaster slid closed the door leading to the crew’s mess.

“Don’t stand up, senhora,” Yasmeen said when the woman made an awkward effort to rise. “Remain on your stool with your hands to your sides.”

The woman’s expression fell. Quietly, she complied, looking past Yasmeen to focus on Archimedes. Her bottom lip trembled. “I am so sorry, senhor.”

Until that moment, Yasmeen hadn’t been absolutely certain. She didn’t feel any better for being so; instead, her heart felt heavy and tired as she said, “Will you open your stomach, please? Do it slowly. Mr. Fox, perhaps you might turn around while she does.”

Yasmeen wanted to turn away, too. She’d thought that discovering the device would be a moment of triumph, not a painful exposure. The woman lifted her tunic. The tin can that the Lusitanian butchers had made extended from her pelvis to beneath her breasts. The graft had been horribly done, among the worst that Yasmeen had ever seen; instead of the smooth melding of metal to flesh, the edges were ragged and scarred,
the skin pulled tight over the unevenly sawed ends of her ribs. The smooth tin belly latched at her breastbone and opened like the door of an oven. Yasmeen braced herself, willing away the automatic revulsion, breathing shallowly through her mouth. She knew what to expect: guts and gears.

But, no. There were barely any guts. Perhaps there had been, once, but they’d all been replaced with windups and tubes. She shouldn’t have been alive—and wouldn’t have been, if not for the nanoagents. Yasmeen didn’t know how; only someone like the Blacksmith could explain how the tiny machines performed all of the necessary bodily functions, using only a few pipes, hoses and small clockwork devices with winding levers. The rest was an open cavity, empty except for the Horde device.

Maria reached in.

“No!” Yasmeen stopped her. “Please put your hands to the sides again. Vashon?”

Eyes wide and fixed on that dark cavity, the quartermaster came to her side. “Ma’am?”

“Retrieve the device and hand it over to Mr. Fox, please. Be careful not to twist the base. That will activate it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Not hesitating, Vashon knelt in front of the scullery woman. Yasmeen heard her murmured
I’m sorry
as she reached in. And she must have truly gone soft, because instead of reprimanding the quartermaster, she was only sorry that she couldn’t say it, too. “Please tell me if I touch anything I shouldn’t, senhora.”

Maria stared fixedly over Vashon’s shoulder, as if determinedly not thinking about having another person’s hands in her stomach. “You are fine.”

Vashon scooted back and rose to her feet with the device cradled gingerly in her hands. Archimedes sigh of relief lightened Yasmeen’s heart for the first time since she’d come into the galley.

“Now how do I destroy it?” he asked.

“The furnace would be best,” Yasmeen said, still watching the scullery woman. “Please close up, senhora, and explain your reasons for this. How do you know Mr. Bilson?”

“I had no work. I couldn’t stay in my country. After I escaped the mines, I was forced to go to the ports because of
the infection. I was supposed to leave Lusitania, but I had nothing. No money for passage.” Her hands came up to cover her face. “I met him on the docks. I was trying to…No one would have me.”

Trying to earn her passage by whoring. It wasn’t an unfamiliar story. “And what did he do?”

“He wouldn’t, either. But he said
Lady Nergüi
was looking for new crew, including a scullery maid—and that he would pay me to carry this thing for him, and to turn it on when he gave the signal.” Tears streaked her face now as she looked to Archimedes. “He said it wouldn’t hurt you, and that I would only have to do it once. Then I was to give it back to him after you rescued his brother, and he would pay me the rest.”

Yasmeen’s pity cooled. “What was the price?”

“He told me that I’d receive enough money to pay for a body that allowed me to be a woman again.” Her breath hitched, echoed a sobbing rattle through the can of her stomach. “So that someone
would
have me.”

Another weakness exploited, and damn Bilson to hell for it. Vashon looked away from the woman, her eyes stricken. Yasmeen couldn’t see Archimedes behind her, but could easily imagine his feelings now: pity for the woman, anger toward the bastard Bilson.

And what solution now? Even as she watched, the woman’s sobbing quieted, and a stoic acceptance seemed to come over her. With a tired sigh, Maria squared her shoulders and met Yasmeen’s eyes.

Ready for death.

Yasmeen had no intention of dealing it out here. “Did you read your contract when you came aboard, senhora?”

“I cannot read.” She gave a weary shrug. “The steward offered to read it to me, but I only cared that there was work.”

“And there still is, so we will soon leave you to it.” Yasmeen gestured to the pots still waiting to be scrubbed. “After we’ve gone, you will tell
no one
of this device or your part in this plot. Tomorrow morning you will report to the steward’s quarters, and ask him to read the section of the contract which states that
Lady Nergüi
’s captain will pay for any augmentation or changes to existing prosthetics that allow a crew member to better fulfill her duties. Then you’ll report to Tom
Blacksmith, so that he can clean up the graft and make it easier for you to sit. When we return to England I’ll see that you have an appointment with
the
Blacksmith.”

The woman stared at her, eyes filling again. “Captain?”

“Don’t mistake me, senhora,” Yasmeen said. “I will toss you overboard without a second thought if anything of this sort ever happens again. Do you understand?”

Sobbing again, Maria could only nod.

“Mr. Fox, do you have anything to add?”

“Nothing,” he said quietly. “I’ve got what I came for.”

Yasmeen nodded. “We will leave you to it, senhora.”

Vashon trailed them out of the galley. Though too well trained to gape, the quartermaster’s surprise and confusion were almost palpable. “Captain. A word, please?”

Would it be quick? Yasmeen hoped so. She stopped and glanced at Archimedes, who nodded and continued on toward the boiler room and the furnace.

Frowning, Yasmeen looked to the quartermaster. “You have a concern, mademoiselle?”

“Not a concern. Quite simply, ma’am, I can’t help but wonder: Is that all you will do to her?”

“Yes.” When the quartermaster seemed to struggle with that simple answer, Yasmeen expanded on it. “What should I do with her? She’s already so miserable that a whipping wouldn’t even touch her. Should I lock her up? She has nowhere to go anyway, unless she wants to jump off the ship—and then we will be short a scullery maid. Do
you
want to take on her duties? Do you think any of the crew does?”

Vashon sighed. “No.”

“But she will be damned grateful to do it now. Have you ever seen any person who was happy to scrub?”

A smile touched Vashon’s mouth. “This would be the first one.”

“And likely worth her weight in gold. I can’t tell you how valuable a woman who can smuggle items in her belly would have been during some of my past jobs.” Yasmeen fished out the cigarillo case tucked into her sash. “Now, please go up top and throw the engines to full steam. I want to be back to England within the week.”

An eager “Yes, ma’am” followed her order, then Yasmeen
was making her way to the boiler room. Covered in coal dust and stripped down to a thin sleeveless tunic, Anisa Stoker stood casually off to the side, her elbow propped on the handle of a shovel. Archimedes waited for Yasmeen in front of the open furnace, looking down at the device.

She touched his arm, spoke over the noise of the nearby engines. “May I see it?”

At his nod, she lifted it. The solid base was heavy, the obelisk more fragile. The black surface was smooth, like polished stone. She turned it over, then closed her eyes in disbelief when she read the Horde markings on the base.

“Yasmeen?” Archimedes had seen her reaction.

“It only has one setting,” she told him, then shook her head with a laugh. “It can’t kill you. He bluffed.”

“No.” He took the device and tossed it into the orange mouth of the furnace, where it landed amid the white-hot coals. “That one setting did exactly what he threatened. Perhaps it was only for a few minutes, but for those few minutes, when I couldn’t feel my love for you, he stopped my heart—and I might as well have been dead.”

She slid her hand into his, threaded their fingers. “But you came back.”

“I always will,” he said, then sighed. “And Bilson?”

“I leave him to you.”

He gave her a wry look. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

Ah. So he was torn. Like her, he had no compunction against killing someone when they posed a threat. When that person didn’t pose a threat, the decisions were more difficult, and his relationship with the man was already complicated.

“Think on it,” she suggested. “When he wakes up tomorrow we’ll be three hundred miles north and over dry land. Perhaps his reaction to seeing that his plan has failed will help determine yours.”

Archimedes nodded and looked into the furnace, then met her eyes again. He didn’t have to say it; she already knew what he was thinking.

With a grin, she said, “And after we are back in England, perhaps we’ll see about hiring on more mercenaries and a few more airships, and coming up with a more solid plan to rescue
his damn brother—and anyone else who wants to escape New Eden. But don’t tell Bilson.”

“I wouldn’t.” He shook his head, laughing. “And that sounds like a fine plan.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Lighting a cigarillo, she smiled up at him—then stiffened as an insistent clanging sounded through the pipes.

The alarm from the deck. Now, just as they’d turned for home? It had to be a joke. Had to be.

But Vashon wasn’t the sort to joke while on duty.

Yasmeen took off at a run, Archimedes’ boots pounding behind her, up the companionways. Everyone on board was in motion, shouting as the ship came to full alert. When she reached the main deck, the lanterns had been doused, but everything was bathed in the silvery light of a full moon. By the lady, what terrible luck. The dark couldn’t hide them when
Lady Nergüi
’s white balloon was illuminated by that light. All of the aviators stood quietly, waiting—and all staring in the same direction.

Yasmeen narrowed her eyes. Far north, a spot of orange seemed to burn like the beacon of a lighthouse. Vashon leapt down from the quarterdeck, expression tight, spyglass in hand. Yasmeen brought the lens to her eye.

A ball of fire flickered on the water.
Oh, don’t let it be.
Dreading the answer, Yasmeen asked, “Is that
The Blue Canary
?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her stomach plummeted. By the lady’s shining teeth. Forty people had been on that airship.

“Their captain must have tried to run,” Vashon added, just as Yasmeen spotted the long trails of smoke across the night sky—not from the fire, but from steam-powered flyers.

“May they all rot into a zombie’s gut,” she said softly, and looked to Archimedes. “It’s New Eden. They shot down the
Canary.
”

His mouth grim, Archimedes said, “Have they seen us?”

She studied the trails of smoke, and a leaden weight settled in her chest. “Yes. They’re flying in this direction.”

So that was it, then. Yasmeen lowered the spyglass and
drew a deep breath, hoping to lighten the sudden heaviness around her heart. They’d intended to return to New Eden, eventually. Not like this…but they’d make do with what they had.

“Well,” Archimedes said, and she saw the determination set in…along with the inevitable excitement and anticipation. With raised brows, he glanced at her, and began to grin. “It’s fortunate that we’re prepared for this, isn’t it?”

Yasmeen wasn’t prepared, though it all happened
exactly as she’d expected.

Like a swarm of dragonflies, the flyers came. A dozen surrounded
Lady Nergüi
, the pilots’ eyes hidden behind the smoked lenses of aviator goggles. They sat astride the flyers’ long bodies, and the buzzing of the three propellers on the forward edge of each wing drowned out the huffing of the engines hanging beneath the seat. Yasmeen ran up a flag of surrender. The lead pilot signaled a direction, and
Lady Nergüi
followed him.