Fire & Frost (30 page)

“I thought I’d killed you.” A harsh sob ripped from him. “I thought I’d killed my daughter.”

His daughter.
Elizabeth couldn’t breathe. “Papa.”

“I should have known you weren’t dead when he came to tell me you were. You always fought everything. You wouldn’t give up and jump to your death.” He cupped her cheek in a burning hand. “Now you look at Trachter as she looked at me. And my heart is full and glad, knowing that you weren’t alone.”

He thought she and Caius had been together the past two years, Elizabeth realized. That they had falsified her death. But there was no reason to tell him differently.

“And you took the young one as your daughter—as it should be. I never meant for this. We wanted a daughter and I tried to make her something else, Mary. I betrayed you and I betrayed our daughter.”

Looking at Elizabeth, but talking to her mother. Slipping out of lucidity.

“I’m here, Papa.” Her throat aching, she kissed his hand. “I’m here.”

The sharpness returned to his gaze, but the same pain was still there. “Forgive me, Mary. My daughter.”

Eyes swimming with tears, she nodded. “Yes, Papa.”

“Is the young one well?”

Rainbow. She glanced up at Caius.

“She is,” he said.

Her father gave a weak nod, closed his eyes. “I left the sanctuary to my daughter. I had meant the younger Mary Elizabeth, but the solicitors will know you and they won’t quibble over which one of you it goes to. It could be yours or hers, if either of you want the responsibility.”

“I do.” She’d always wanted it. “I’ll take care of it.”

He squeezed her fingers, and she saw the pride in his smile. “There’s enough coal in the two-seater to take you to England. There are other survivors waiting at the wreck. They’re depending on you now.”

“We won’t let you down.”

“You never have.” His voice rough, he kissed her, then looked up. “You’ve already loved her better than I did, Caius. Please take care of her.”

“I will.”

That wasn’t enough, because he couldn’t fulfill that promise if she returned to the sanctuary—and she wanted him to be with her. “You must give him his freedom, Father,” she said. “He’s a fugitive.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Caius said. “I’ve already taken it. I won’t let anyone take it away again.”

“It
does
matter,” her father said. “And you will have it. Upon my death, all debts will be considered paid, all contracts fulfilled.”

She hadn’t known that. “Truly?”

“I never made it common knowledge. That might speed my end.” He gave a wry laugh that faded quickly into a short breath. He pushed weakly at her hand. “Go on, now. Be away from me. Take my coat with you. You’ll need the extra warmth in the two-seater.”

Tears spilling over, she nodded and pressed her forehead to the back of his hand. She couldn’t let him go yet. Not like this. Not yet.

“Elizabeth.” Caius gently touched her shoulder. “Go on and wait by the door.”

Wait for what?
But she knew. Dear God, she knew.

Her father couldn’t use a gun to end it—the noise would just bring the zombies. And if he used the machete, it wouldn’t be enough to stop him from coming back as one.

Caius had to finish him.

“Take Artemis,” her father breathed.

Blindly, she nodded. Artemis trotted at her heels as she made her way to the small, tipped-over table. Righting it, she sat and buried her face in Artemis’s warm ruff, clinging to the hound as the terrible noises came from behind her. She didn’t look around.

Caius joined her a few minutes later, carrying her father’s coat. His face was tight and his eyes flat as he draped it over her shoulders. And they had to go—but first, she wrapped her arms around his stiff form and held him tight.

He hadn’t had an Artemis to cling to.

Slowly, his arms came around her. He didn’t say a word. Nothing could make any of it better, she knew. But this helped.

With a deep breath, he finally stepped back and looked down at her. “When we return with help for the others, we’ll see that he’s properly taken care of.”

Throat too raw to speak, she could only nod.

His gloved hands cupped her face. “Ready, then?”

As she could be.

They quickly located the two-seater—and a zombie wandering nearby. Caius destroyed it with brutal efficiency, and the controlled rage in his eyes told her part of him was still back in that stone building with Matthias and her father.

Or perhaps just remembering how she’d cried.

Digging her spark lighter out of her satchel, she lit the two-seater’s furnace. Now they had to wait for the boiler to heat—a silent process, fortunately. As soon as they engaged the engine, every zombie remaining in the outpost would come running toward them. They’d have to quickly fly into the air soon afterward; the aluminum frame provided almost no protection.

When steam billowed from the vents, she climbed into the rear seat and urged Artemis in. With Caius’s help, the hound crowded in, sitting on the floorboards between Elizabeth’s feet with her forepaws on her lap.

He looked down at her. No rage burned in his eyes now. Just love and determination.

“We’ll make it through this, Elizabeth.”

“I know it.”

She lifted her face for his hard, swift kiss. A moment later, he closed the vents and the engine rattled to life. Her fingers tightened on Artemis’s ruff.

Caius jumped into the front seat and shoved the lever between his legs forward, lifting the flaps. The small propeller at their tail began to spin. Slowly, they began to skim a few feet over the snow.

Not high enough yet.

Her heart pounding, she looked back. Nothing to see through the smoke and steam, nothing to hear over the engine. But they had to be coming—and a zombie only had to grab on to the frame to pull them back down.

Higher, higher. They were approaching the outpost wall. Caius banked slowly to the right and the zombies were suddenly there, running just below, grasping over their heads. A zombie’s fingers brushed the bottom of the frame and Elizabeth cried out in terror, leaning over the rail and slapping it away. The two-seater rocked wildly and then they were safe, safe, flying over the courtyard that was teeming now, the zombies following them across the snow until the two-seater passed over the high outpost wall.

Artemis whined softly and licked her cheek. Laughing, Elizabeth kissed her furry face.

In front of her, Caius turned his head and she saw his grin. He shouted over the noise of the engine. “You always were good at escaping!”

Yes, she was.

NIGHT WAS FALLING again when they flew in to Brighton’s airship field. Exhausted, cold, and hunger digging a hole in her stomach, Elizabeth didn’t wait to land before she was pointing out a skyrunner and calling to Caius, “That one!”

His jaw tightened, but he nodded and turned the two-seater toward the mercenary’s ship. She tried to stand as soon as they landed, but the second she stepped out of the frame her legs folded. Sitting too long. But Caius caught her and swept her up against his chest, carrying her toward the docking station with Artemis at his heels.

“Are you certain?” He looked up at the skyrunner. “This one?”

“I’ve hired her before. Her captain will go anywhere for the right price.” And more importantly, would get them there in one piece. “I used her to escape you once—though she captained a different airship then.”

“I know,” he said. “I bribed her for information later. She took ten livre of your father’s money and sent me five thousand miles in the wrong direction.”

Elizabeth laughed, then looked up as the skyrunner’s platform chains rattled and began a slow descent. A woman stood on it—not the captain but the quartermaster, as tall as an Amazon and rigid in her aviator’s uniform, a pistol tucked into her belt.

She looked them over, her accent heavily French. “You have interest in hiring
Lady Nergüi
’s services?”

“A rescue,” Caius said. “Our airship went down on the plain southeast of Old Chartres. We’ve people waiting for our return.”

“Then we need passage to Krakentown, by way of the Ivory Market,” Elizabeth added, and Caius’s arms tightened around her.

“Krakentown?” The quartermaster’s brows rose. “That’s a dangerous route.”

Not for this airship. And it was the reason why Elizabeth had chosen it. These mercenaries weren’t just the best choice for the rescue. They were also as dangerous as any pirate or smuggler that flew round the bottom. “Only because women like your captain are flying it.”

The woman’s expression didn’t change. “An
expensive
route.”

Which was what she’d really meant. “I have the money,” Elizabeth said. “And we need to leave as soon as possible.”

“Then I’ll ask the captain if she’s interested. Do you have a name?”

“I hired her before as Katherine Wallace,” she said. “But we are Elizabeth Jannsen and Caius Trachter—and Artemis.”

The quartermaster nodded and clanged her weapon against the platform chains. As it began to rise, Elizabeth glanced up at Caius, who no longer appeared doubtful at her choice of airships, but slightly stunned.

Carefully, he set her down. “Krakentown? You’ll come with me?”

“Yes.” Elizabeth grinned and rose onto her toes, linking her arms around his neck. “We’ll have that airship tryst, after all.”

Pain suddenly swept across his features and made a bleak wasteland of his face. “For as long as you’ll have me.”

Her heart clenched. He’d thought that was
all
she wanted? Urgently, she pulled herself closer to him.

“No, Caius. I want to go to Krakentown with you. Then I want
you
to come with
me
—back to the sanctuary. With Rainbow, too. And your mother and sister. Anyone you want, as long as you’re with me.” She caught his face in her hands. “And I’ll have you forever, if you’ll let me. I’ll even ask the captain to marry us—though she’ll probably ask a fortune to perform the service.”

Caius stared at her. The pain and bleakness gone, thank God. But disbelief remained.

Nervous, she said, “Is that all right?”

“I’m wondering if I’m awake,” he said hoarsely. “You want forever?”

“I do.” But now she worried. “We don’t have to marry, though. Or return to the sanctuary. If you feel that marriage is another shackle…and at the
same
place—”

“No.” Caius shook his head, voice suddenly rough. “It’s
not
the same, Elizabeth. Freedom is having a choice to make, to be who we want to be. And I want to be yours.”

And she wanted to be his. “Then I’m going arrive in Krakentown a married woman,” she said. “But first, I’d like to have an
exceedingly
illicit tryst.”

He laughed, and she felt his smile against her lips. “I swore that I’d always help you, Elizabeth. As your friend, you can be certain that I’ll help you with this.”

“I knew you would,” she said, and lifted herself into his kiss.

BY THE TIME THE AIRSHIP REACHED Krakentown, Elizabeth had indulged in a tryst that would have set a society matron’s hair afire and married the man she loved. She couldn’t have said which was better.

With a man such as Caius, both the tryst and the marriage were the sweetest pleasure.

She stood near
Lady Nergüi
’s bow as they flew over the darkened town, Caius at her side. Nervousness bubbled in her stomach and perspiration dotted her brow. The cold of winter in the north had given way to summer in the south, and even though night had fallen, the heat of the day lingered on.

Below, the airship’s lanterns glinted off the carapace that had once been the armored shell of a giant kraken. There were other carapaces throughout the town, large and small. Many of them were used as residences, surrounded by more buildings made of red clay brick. It was a smugglers’ town unlike any other, orderly and quiet instead of a glorified rum dive—and all of it humble compared to the city-towers on the opposite side of the continent.

At the southern end of town, the airship slowed to a hover over a modest brick house. A woman with dark hair stepped out of the front door and looked up before darting back inside.

“My sister,” Caius said, and Elizabeth’s nervous stomach tripped over into roiling anxiety.

As they rode the cargo platform to the ground, Caius’s sister returned outside accompanied by an older woman. Caius’s mother, Elizabeth knew, but she only had eyes for the little girl in nightclothes holding her hand.

It was like looking at a tintype photograph of herself at the same age. The same hair, the same eyes. And when Caius jumped from the platform while they were still a full three meters above the ground and the little girl flung herself into his arms, there was no doubt: Rainbow was very much like Elizabeth.

And her heart filled tight as a balloon when she saw Caius’s face, eyes closed as he hugged the girl close, spinning her around. A father, with
so
much love for his daughter. She wondered how he had any left over.

But he did. So very much. There was no doubt of that, either.

The platform jolted to a stop. Elizabeth stepped off and felt the curious looks from his sister and mother—then from the little girl, who spotted her over Caius’s shoulder.