Geared for Pleasure (32 page)

He stopped at the sight of her and she stared into his blue eyes, noticing not for the first time that his long lashes appeared more black than blue. He studied her in return.

When Cyrus smiled, she felt a snarl ready to curl her lips, her tail go taut as a wire. If he teased or insulted her, he would trail a bloody path behind him to the palace. She was on the edge. Eager for a fight. For blood.

“Your disguise isn’t working, Seraphina.” He tilted his head, shaking it a bit as if in bewilderment. “As if your firelight could be dimmed so easily.”

He turned his back on her and walked away, leaving her stunned. Had that been a compliment? She replayed his words in her head, certain there was a barb, a tone that she would find that would prove her wrong. But no.

Had Cyrus Arendal seen her covered in muck and dressed in shapeless rags and called her… attractive? More than that. Firelight.

Her claws came out and she cursed under her breath. Damn the man. Now she wanted to scratch another type of itch. He was a bastard for throwing her off by not playing their game. By not hating her and wanting her. And then hating himself for wanting her. She deserved it. She wanted his scorn. It made it easy for her to stay away from him. To not care whether or not he was hurting, or how he had suffered.

Damn him.

On deck the crew had grown quiet. Many had their guns drawn and wore expressions of disbelief. Most had never flagrantly sailed a giant airship over a populated city in the full light of late afternoon, unseen. They would learn. She corrected herself—they would learn if the captain let them live long enough.

It was a bit like tiptoeing past your own pyre. As long as they
never hung from the aether cocoon announcing their arrival, the dodge and the silent running engine would work their marvelous magic and keep them hidden.

No one would ever know they were there.

Captain Amaranthe headed in her direction. “There is no way I am landing in Centre City. I don’t care if he is the Queen’s Sword, her gun, or her entire bloody arsenal.” Her voice lowered when she noticed Phina’s new look. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Phina smiled, knowing that her sharp incisors showed brilliantly white against her dirty face. “I have to. The commands come from the right hand of the queen. More than that, I need to. The cargo I’m returning with is more precious than any weapon.”

The captain nodded, slipping a hand beneath her long dark hair to rub her neck. “Then it is settled. The usual location for the drop, but this time you will have an irritating man who, no doubt, has not the first idea how to get down from an ironwood tree.”

The idea lightened Phina’s mood considerably. She would finally have the upper hand. “Have you told him yet?”

Aramanthe could not contain the obvious sparkle in her hazel gaze. “Why would I want to do that?” She sobered swiftly. “I trust you to keep him safe on the way down. He is the Queen’s Sword, after all. Just remember you’ll need to hurry. We should get you in with not much time to spare for shift change. You mustn’t allow yourself to be sidetracked or you will have to spend the evening inside. And you and I both recall how well that turned out the last time it happened.”

Phina shuddered, her markings tingling in a decidedly unhappy way. She remembered. “I know what I’m doing. I can only hope the Arendal won’t get lost between the settlement and Queen’s Hill. It is farther away than his feet will tell him.”

A world away, despite its proximity. The sun did not shine at the same angle where the settlement stood. The moons were always
shadowed by factory steam and ash. The line of windwinders, with their massive turbines that dotted the grassland before Centre City appeared ensured that the wind always blew from the west. Keeping the smell of Felidae and heated metalworks far away from the Hill and blowing it toward the settlement and the dour, simple fishing village on the coast. A village populated more with retired and posted Wode than fishermen. It had been settled in that location, with that unpleasant aroma, for the singular purpose of bordering the settlement, ensuring Felidae land did not reach to the eastern sea. Penning them in.

She shook herself visibly. She was thinking dark thoughts again. Thoughts she usually killed with drink or intimate pleasures. But there was no drinking for her today, and no one she had the time or inclination to take her grief out on. Almost no one. She had a purpose. She had to keep her head.

There was thieving to be done.

She glanced up over her shoulder at Freeman as he stood at the wheel on the helm’s deck. The three men from Aaru sat once more at the table behind him. A handsome trio, they were. Bodhan, Wulf, and Hadi. She wondered if all Aaruan men looked as they did. If so, the city was blessed with a fortunate inheritance indeed.

The two men were still fussing over that damned game. If only Cyrus hadn’t come aboard, she would have played any game that Wulf or Hadi had in mind.

Hadi snared her gaze and winked. Phina’s smile grew wide. The Khepri must have told him the same thing he’d told her. Even in captivity, the queen would keep her vow to Phina. If she could get Nephi to safety, Hadiyah of the long braid would bring her the rest of the way. To a place that Phina had not believed existed. A place where families of Felidae and humans lived together as equals, and even mingled inheritance. A place called Aaru.

It was a thing Phina had not been entirely sure was possible. But
she
was
sure of one thing. Nephi would be fascinated by those babies. By a life where she no longer had to hide her beauty for fear of abuse or work herself to an early pyre for fear of starvation and scorn. All Phina had to do was get into the palace and out again undetected.

Simple enough.

The low argument Cyrus was having with the captain drew her attention, their words sounding like shouts in her ears.

“You have sailed past the city, Captain.”

“Thank you for keeping me apprised, Arendal.”

He swore. “Any idea when we will be landing? Where?”

The captain pulled her dagger out from the low collar of her vest and studied it, polishing it before displaying it against the black of her long jacket. “
We
will not be landing,” she said without looking at him. “You will. As to where… I suppose that all depends on how gracefully you fall.”

As delicious as this was to Phina’s taste for torture, she felt compelled to join the conversation. Protecting him again. A few long strides took her to their side. “My lovely Captain, if you scare him too badly he won’t be any use to us.”

Cyrus glared at her. “There has been no
scaring
. Frustrating, yes. Bone-grinding irrationality, yes. But no scaring.”

“Shame,” the captain muttered, sheathing her dagger and walking to the center of the deck. “I thought I was doing a fair job of scaring.”

Phina knew what was coming. She looked back at the helm’s deck and watched as Freeman shook his head in subtle exasperation. So did her first mate.

Captain Amaranthe drew her sword and pushed down the false gem on the weapon’s hilt. Its vibration made a sound that always seemed to Phina like a man dying, or a woman finding her pleasure. In the captain’s hands, both analogies could be true.

Most on board had never heard that sound, or had seen the silver steel of a sword blur unless it was swinging toward them. Phina could see more than the blur. She saw turbulent waves like heat rolling across the desert. A storm of motion in one slender, beautifully efficient weapon.

The first time she saw the captain’s sword she’d wanted to steal it. For Phina, considering the danger she had already known would be involved in such an undertaking, it was the highest compliment she could pay.

The captain turned to Cyrus. “You’ll need to take some rope with you.” She raised her voice without looking up. “Freeman, if you could spare a moment.”

Freeman leaned his big frame forward, grabbing a heavy coil of rope easily with one hand and tossing it over the railing toward the main deck.

It soared with his strength, heading directly for the captain. She bent her knees a moment before springing into the air in a way that the Felidae in Phina could only admire seeing in a human.

She made two swift slashes with her sword, the sound a bright song as the steel connected and passed through the thick fibers.

Phina knew to the rest of the crew this would mimic flight. The sword moving so fast it seemed the captain had sprouted steel wings for a glorious instant.

Before anyone could release the surprised breath they had gathered in their lungs, it was over. The captain had landed lightly on the deck in a stance Phina had taught her long ago, her sword tip inches from Cyrus’s left eye.

She stayed perfectly still. They all did. The only things that seemed to move were the four even lengths of rope that fell haphazardly to the deck in front of her.

Captain Amaranthe straightened and stepped away from him, turning off her sword, sliding it back into position on her hip. She
scooped up the rope with her boot and caught it in her hands, handing them to Cyrus. “Here you are.”

Phina watched Cyrus accept her offering, his white-knuckled grip on the lengths of rope the only indication of his reaction to her maneuver.

The rest of the men were not so closed off. Phina heard their gasps, felt their fear. Their awe. Her hearing picked out Wulf’s admiring, “Stunning sword for a stunning woman.”

But it took no special abilities or senses to hear James Stacy. He stood in the middle of the deck, the men behind him wearing identical expressions of shock and pallor when he said, “You do more than a fair job at scaring, Captain. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

The chorus of hearty agreements did something that surprised Phina. It made the captain smile. She had a feeling the crew was as astonished by the change in her appearance as they had been by her sword.

“Why, Mr. Stacy.” The captain ducked her chin in acknowledgment. “I believe that is the nicest thing you could have said to me.” She started to turn away but stopped herself and forced a frown. “Flattery, as a rule, is not tolerated on the Deviant. I’ve shot men for less.”

Phina lifted her hands and bit into the hat she’d been holding to stifle her laughter. It was true. She had shot men for less. But somehow, Phina had a feeling James Stacy would still be here alive and well when she got back.

Cyrus sent her a confused expression and followed her as she walked to the bow of the ship. “Why did she give me rope? Why are we not landing?” When she failed to answer he sighed heavily. “I suppose I shouldn’t have to ask why you’re eating your hat, either. The answers will just come to me.”

She snorted and her face flushed a little at the unexpected sound. She took the partially bitten hat and placed it on her head, tucking
every last strand of hair beneath it as she leaned over the railing, studying the line of tall trees. “Do you enjoy surprises?”

“No.”

She smiled and took some of the rope from his hands, coiling it deftly over her shoulder. “I am torn on the issue myself. I enjoy the giving but not receiving of surprises. That sounded a bit naughty. True in more ways than one.”

She turned her body toward him, meeting his gaze while she gathered the extra fabric of her shirt and formed a knot, which bared her stomach, but it was necessary. “Do not worry, I have done this many times. Tie that cape around your waist. The rope as well.”

He made a move as if to step away from her. “What?”

She blew a frustrated breath upward, wishing she had more time to explain. “She is not landing. Too many chances of being caught, even with the dodge.”

His eyebrows lowered. “She’s not landing.”

“That’s right. We are jumping.”

“Fuck.”

She watched him make quick, sloppy knots as she hopped up and easily balanced on the rail. She reached her hands out toward him. “Not now. Now we jump. If you still want to afterwards we can discuss it.”

When he jumped up beside her, Phina used her strength to stabilize his larger body on the railing’s edge. She leaned in close so he would hear her. “You have to jump out, not down, or you’ll fall into the dodge and take me with you. Do not fall in the dodge.”

He was afraid, but not frozen with it. She could appreciate that kind of fortitude. She could also tell he was listening to everything she said. She appreciated that as well.

He glanced down quickly. “Trees don’t look
that
far. We can do that. Right?”

She fought her smile. Men. “
I
can do that. I am Felidae. We have
to see what you can do. Just keep hold of my hand and when you hit the tree do not let go. Ironwoods only have branches up top. If you fell… Just don’t. Do not fall.”

“Good advice.”

Phina looked down. Perfect alignment. “Jump. Now.”

She launched herself into the air, her hand caught in his bruising grip. Flying. She loved this feeling.

Her laughter drowned out the stream of male cursing she could hear on the wind.

“Are you broken?” Phina used her legs and tail to cling to the sturdy branch, the top half of her body dangling upside down in order to check on him. He was tightly gripping the trunk of the ironwood, balancing on a heavy limb several feet below her. The last limb before a straight, long drop to the ground.

Phina had to admit, she was impressed with how well he had handled himself. She’d known his legs were strong enough to take him past the dodge, but he’d stopped himself from tumbling to his death as well. He had decent survival instincts for a palace Wode. She’d had a feeling he would.

She catalogued him from her unusual angle, hearing his racing heartbeat, seeing the heat that radiated off his body. She assumed it was fear until he looked up at her. He was
not
afraid.

He was angry.

Cyrus moved until he was straddling the thick lower branch, one of his arms grasping a thinner limb just above his head.

“Did you think?” His words came out like shots from a pistol. Short bursts of angry sound. “Did it occur to you even for a moment that I should have been told? Prepared?”