Demon Marked (51 page)

Yasmeen lowered her gaze first; not out of cowardice, but a message that she wouldn't interfere with the woman's business here—and she certainly wasn't stupid enough to challenge the woman.

Releasing her held breath, Yasmeen caught Barker eyeing the woman with a different sort of appreciation. Of course he did. She'd been designed to provoke that response.

“Don't try,” Yasmeen warned him.

“She's a little older, but I like the mature—”

“She's Horde. One of the elite guard who serves the royalty and the favored governors.”

Barker didn't hide his surprise—or his doubt. He studied the woman again, as if trying to see beneath the demure posture and discover what had earned the elite guard their terrifying reputation.

He wouldn't see it. The elite guard earned that reputation when they dropped that modest posture, not when they wore it.

He shook his head. “She's not Horde.”

“She's just not a Mongol,” Yasmeen said. The Horde weren't a single race—only royalty and the Great Khan had pure blood, and they never ventured far from the Horde capital. In five hundred years, their seed and the empire had spread too far for every member of the Horde to be Mongols. “Just as not every man and woman of African descent born on the northern American continent is a Liberé spy . . . or a cart-puller.”

His face tightened. “Cart-puller?”

“I am saying that you are
not
. You cannot even hear it without being ready to go to war again?”

“Because you haven't been called one,” he said, before adding, “I wasn't a spy.”

Yasmeen snorted her response.

He grinned and glanced over at the woman again. “Why is she here? No one in Port Fallow is Horde royalty.”

“Then she's here to kill someone, or to take them back to her Khanate.” Obviously not Yasmeen, or she'd already be dead—but instead, she was forgotten. She'd been pitied for a moment, but now the woman was watching the house again . . . waiting. “Whatever her purpose, don't get in her way.”

“All right.” Barker leaned forward and tapped on the cab driver's shoulder before dropping a few deniers into his palm. “Shall we walk? By the time we get back to the docks, I'll be ready for that drink.”

Yasmeen would be ready for three.

 

Yasmeen drank three, but not quickly. Barker took his leave after finishing the one she owed him, but Yasmeen stayed on, nursing hers until they were warm. Some nights in a tavern were meant for drinking, and others were meant for listening. Fortunately, nothing she heard suggested that word of the sketch had gone beyond Mills and Kessler. She turned down one job—a run to the Ivory Market in central Africa. Lucrative, but he hadn't been willing to wait until she returned from England, and she wasn't inviting anyone onto her airship before the sketch was off of it.

She hadn't always been able to turn down jobs. Now, she had enough money that she could be choosy when she took on a new one. Even without the fortune that would come after selling the sketch, she could retire in luxury at any time—as could her entire crew.

She never would.

Midnight had gone when Yasmeen decided she'd heard enough. She emerged from the dim tavern into the dark and paused to light a cigarillo, studying the boardwalk along the docks. It was just as busy at night as during the day, but the crowd was comprised of more drunks. Some slumped against the buildings or slept beside crates. Groups of sailors laughed and preened and pounded their chests at the aviators—some of them women, Yasmeen noted, and not one of them alone. The shopgirls and lamplighters walked in pairs, and most of the whores did, too.

Yasmeen sighed. Undoubtedly, she'd soon be teaching some drunken buck a lesson about making assumptions when women walked alone.

She started toward the south dock, picking out
Lady Corsair
's sleek silhouette over the harbor. Familiar pride filled her chest. God, her lady was such a beauty—one of the finest skyrunners ever made, and she'd been Yasmeen's for almost thirteen years now. She knew captains who didn't last a month—some who weren't generous toward their crew, or were not strict enough to control them. Some who were too careful to make any money, or too careless to live through a job.

She'd made money, and she'd lived through hundreds of jobs: scouting, privateering, moving weapons or personnel through enemy territory, destroying a specified target. Both the French and the Liberé officers sneered when she'd claimed that her only loyalties were to her crew and the gold, but they used her when they didn't have anyone good enough or fast enough to do what she could.

Then the war had ended—fizzled out. All of the same animosities still simmered, but there wasn't enough money left in the treasuries to pay for it. So Yasmeen had left the New World, returned back across the Atlantic, and carved out her niche by taking almost any job for the right money.

Lately, that meant carrying a lot of passengers over Horde territory in Europe and Africa—a route that most airships-forhire would never take. Sometimes she acted as a courier, or she partnered with
Vesuvius
when that ship carried cargo that needed airship support, and then fought off any ships that tried to steal it from them.

A routine life, but still an exciting one—and the only kind of settling down that she would ever do.

Yasmeen flicked away her cigarillo, smiling at her own fancy.
Routines, excitement, and a particular version of settling down.
She'd have to record that thought and send it to Zenobia—along with an account of the little excitement that was about to take place.

Someone was following her.

A man had been trailing her since she'd left the tavern. Not some drunken idiot stumbling into a woman walking alone, but someone who'd deliberately picked her out—and if he'd seen her in the tavern, he must have known who she was.

But he must not have been interested in killing her. Anyone could have shot her from this distance. Instead he tried to move in closer, using the shadows for cover . . . but he was very bad at stalking. He paused when she did, and though he tried for stealth by tiptoeing, his attempts only made him more obvious. Of course, he couldn't know that Yasmeen was at her best during the night—and that she had more in common with the cats slinking through the alleys than the lumbering ape that had obviously birthed him.

She'd only taken a few more steps when he finally found his balls and called her name.

“Captain Corsair!”

The voice was young, and quivering with bravado. He'd either taken a bet at the tavern or was going to ask for a position on her ship. Amused, Yasmeen faced him. A ginger-haired boy stood quivering in the middle of the—

Something stabbed the back of her leg. Even as she whipped around, her thigh went numb, her leg rubbery. An opium dart.
Oh, fuck.
She ripped it out, too late. Pumped with this amount, her mind was already spinning. Hallucinating. A drunkard rose from a pile of rags, wearing the gaunt face of a dead man.

No, not a drunkard. A handsome liar.

Yasmeen fumbled for her guns. Her fingers were enormous. He moved fast—or she was slow. Within a blink, he caught her hands, restrained her with barely any effort.

She'd kill him for that.

“Again?” he asked, so smooth and amused. “You'll have to try harder.”

The bastard. She hadn't tried at all. And though she tried now, she sagged against him, instead—and for a brief moment, she wondered if she'd fallen against a zombie. Each of his ribs felt distinct beneath her hands.

But zombies didn't swing women up into their arms. And they didn't talk.

“My sister sends her regards,” he said against her cheek. “And I want my sketch.”

“I'd have given it to you.” She couldn't keep her eyes open. Her words slurred. “You just had to ask.”

“Liar,” he said softly.

Ah, well. He was right about that.

DEMON ANGEL
DEMON MOON
DEMON NIGHT
DEMON BOUND
DEMON FORGED
DEMON BLOOD
DEMON MARKED

 

THE IRON DUKE

 

 

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