Heart of Steel (10 page)

Yasmeen sank to her heels beside the desk, where a steel strongbox squatted on wide feet—though not quite like any strongbox he'd seen before. Shaped like a fat egg standing on end, the smooth casing possessed no hinges, and he couldn't determine the location of a lid or a door. Curious, he joined her.

She didn't attempt to conceal the movement of her fingers across its face. This close, he could see the thin seams joining the steel, but he still couldn't make out the pattern of a door. She rotated one section clockwise. At the front of the strongbox, a steel panel the size of his palm lifted a few inches, parallel to the casing. Not much room. Archimedes had to lay his cheek against the strongbox to peer beneath the panel to see the twelve flat metal dials, each resembling the face of a clock, and each of them blank except for a faint, raised dot.

“Based on the al-Jazari locks,” she said, sliding her hand under the panel. “But with improvements.”

A combination lock, like the slave bracelet. “You can't see the dials.”

“No.” She grinned. “And neither can you.”

No numbers to memorize, just the position of the dots—and she had to do it blind. “And if you mistake the sequence?”

“Then I'll need to ask my blacksmith to make me a new hand. But not this time.”

She sat back. A series of hollow clangs sounded from deep within, like knocks from inside a tomb. The rounded top slowly unscrewed, widening the gap in the midline seam and revealing the six inches of steel that formed the housing. Christ. When closed, a firebomb could hit it and wouldn't do any more damage than a few scratches and a smear of smoke.

The top finished spinning. With another hollow
thump
, the belly of the strongbox opened like a drawbridge, pivoting on an interior steel rod. Coin bags were stacked neatly inside. She reached in, withdrew a leather portfolio cover, and held it out to him.

“Your sketch, Mr. Fox.”

She'd transferred the sketch from his protective satchel to this? Dear God. He hadn't trusted the satchel to be watertight, but he also hadn't exposed the paper to air and moisture again. Had it been damaged? Heart pounding, he untied the strings and lifted the cover. Two plates of tempered Rupert glass shielded the delicate paper, yellowed with age. Ink had faded to brown, but the elegant lines of the glider and the distinctive backward handwriting were unmistakably da Vinci's.

Or rather, an incredibly well-rendered copy of his work. He closed the portfolio. “Where's the original?”

She bristled. “The
what
?”

“I don't traipse through zombie-infested cities to be fooled by a fake, Captain.” He tossed the portfolio back into her strongbox. “You should sell that. Scholars will be clamoring for a look at the sketch, and a replica will be as close to it as most of them will ever get.”

Her hand dropped to the knife at her thigh. “Mr. Fox—”

“I wondered why you agreed to hand it over so easily. It's a clever ruse. Had someone held a knife to your throat, you could have given them the fake and they wouldn't have known the difference. I do.”

Silence reigned for a moment. Even the lovebirds quieted, as if aware of the tension. Finally, Yasmeen relented and shook her head.

“Very well.” Her smile held no apology as she rose to her feet. “You understand I had to try.”

He'd have been disappointed if she hadn't. A da Vinci sketch falling into the hands of someone unprepared to protect it would only end in tragedy.

Ducking his head, he looked into the strongbox. “Is it hidden in here?”

“Feel around inside and find out.”

Even without the wicked edge of her voice to serve as a warning, he wouldn't have. “Does it close on a timer, too?”

“Yes.”

Clever and useful—his favorite sort of device. Curious, he looked up at her. “What would you have done if I'd left with the forgery?”

“Laughed. Then I'd have sold it for no less than fifteen thousand, and kept a portion.”

Only a portion? Yet she said it so easily that he believed that had truly been her plan. “And what of the rest?”

“I'd have given you your ten thousand.” Her cool smile appeared again in response to his surprise. “If I possess five thousand livre, Mr. Fox, then adding another ten thousand means nothing. It is like having two hundred puddings. It doesn't matter if I give away half, because it's impossible to eat the hundred that remain, anyway.”

A scratch at the door prevented his reply. He stood as Ginger rushed in. She wound through the cushions scattered around the table and set down a covered tray. As she straightened, her gaze darted from the open strongbox to Yasmeen's face.

“Will there be anything else, Captain?”

“No. I'm to be left alone until I call for you.” When the door closed behind the girl, Yasmeen glanced at him. “She'll be upset when she hears that the forgery didn't fool you. But if scholars will buy copies, she won't be too disappointed.”

“
She
created that?” Incredible. “Where did you find her?”

“Oyapock.” She named the Liberé capital on the coast of the southern American continent. “But to hear the rest, you'll have to buy the first Lady Lynx serial adventure.”

Archimedes almost laughed, but the same instinct that often saved him from stumbling into a room full of zombies stopped the sound in his throat. If he'd taken the forgery, she'd claimed her response would have been laughter, too. But she wasn't laughing. Instead, she regarded him with the same cool amusement that she'd used with her crew—the amusement that said everything was happening exactly as she'd anticipated. And it was, in one way: When he sold the sketch, she'd still be receiving a ridiculous fortune. Perhaps not five thousand, but even two thousand was the equivalent of having more puddings than could ever be eaten.

Apparently the money wasn't the issue at all. If he'd taken the forgery, she wouldn't have laughed because she'd gotten away with the fortune—she'd have laughed because she'd gotten away with the sketch . . . and made a fool of
him
. Instead, he'd thwarted her at every turn.

He was treading close to the unforgivable, he realized. His captain possessed a heart of steel, but he'd managed to wound her pride.

God help him when that bracelet came off.

“Zenobia still intends to write those,” he told her. “All of England loves Mina Wentworth. They want more adventures featuring women hunting kraken on airships, and my sister is nothing but practical.
I
am the romantic.”

“The fool.”

“I'm a man of sense and restraint.” To prove it, he walked to the table and lifted the silver dome from the plate. God, a man could weep. Cubes of seasoned lamb on skewers lay atop fluffy yellow rice. The scent of saffron and garlic wafted upward on a cloud of steam. Archimedes prayed he'd be alive long enough to eat a few bites. For now, he only plucked a swollen purple grape from the cluster beside the plate. He turned to Yasmeen and approached her with slow steps. “My sense tells me that I could derive no greater pleasure than to feed you grapes and lick the sweet juice from your lips. A rational man needs only to take one look at your delicate fingers to know that heaven could be found in the scratches across his back, and then to wake you the next morning with a kiss to your mouth . . . and then I'd kiss you everywhere else.”

She watched him come, heat burning through the cold amusement. “This is sense?”

“
And
restraint. Because I also know that if I tried to kiss you now, you'd kill me.” Stopping an arm's length away, he popped the grape into his mouth, and triumphed when she laughed. “Don't pretend that I'm the only fool in these quarters, Captain. My father's cabin spat in the face of love and companionship. Yours invites it in. And he certainly didn't keep a pair of lovebirds.”

“This cabin merely invites my own comfort. The birds remind me of the difference between caged and free—and that cage might free me, one day.” She tilted her head and studied his features, her gaze caressing his face like the flat side of a razor. “Do you love me, Archimedes?”

He couldn't have mistaken the calculation in her eyes. If he loved her, she was already deciding how to use that emotion against him. God, what a woman. Never accepting defeat, and using any means necessary to win.

When he
did
fall in love with her, he'd fall painfully hard. It would be as inevitable as death . . . but he hadn't yet dug his grave.

“Not yet,” he said. “I'll need encouragement first.”

“Encouragement from me?” She laughed when he nodded. “Then we're both safe—and you should be relieved. Two men have said they loved me. You've probably heard stories of what happened to them.”

He had. One gutted, the other stripped naked and hung from her ship, his ass bared to his own city when she'd flown into the Castilian port. “Loving you would be worth it.”

Her laugh seemed to catch on a bitter note. Perhaps some man had said those words to her before?

Perhaps they hadn't.

Unfortunately, he didn't have time to prove that he meant it. “Our hour is almost past. I need the sketch.”

“I don't have it aboard—”

“Use the key around your waist.” He regretted the hardening in her eyes, but it couldn't be helped. “These were my father's quarters—and my sister reminded me of the hideaway behind the wardrobe.”

Archimedes preferred to forget the hideaway behind the wardrobe. Their father had used it to hide them away whenever they'd spoken out of turn—or simply spoken.

“Goddammit.” She turned toward the wardrobe with a growl of frustration. Her fingers dipped beneath the sash at her waist, withdrew the silver key. “You and your sister. Wily foxes, the both of you. You chose your name well.”

“It was a toss between that and the equally apt ‘Archimedes Stallion.' But Zenobia won.”

“Yet she still calls you Wolfram.”

“To her, Archimedes Fox is a character, or a disguise I wear.”

“And you? Do you still think of yourself as Wolfram?”

“Only when I've done something foolish or I'm about to die.”

“And who are you now?”

“The man who plans to fall in love with you.”

“Wolfram, then.”

“No,” he said, and the gravity in his voice must have surprised her. She paused, looked back at him. “With you, I am always Archimedes.”

Her lips parted, but she didn't immediately respond—perhaps she couldn't decide
how
to respond. Her gaze searched his features for a long moment.

“Archimedes Fox,” she mused. The corners of her mouth tilted gently. “With balls of iron and a silver tongue. I admire both in a man.”

His heart almost stopped. Then it began to race, his body tensing—his instincts screaming at him to flee. Captain Corsair would never soften so easily. He was in trouble.

“You're dangerously close to encouragement,” he warned her.

“I forgot to mention your thick head.”

She reached beneath the wardrobe, pulled on some hidden lever, and stepped back. The large cabinet swung open like a door, revealing the small keyhole in the bulkhead behind it.

“My father always had to shove the wardrobe aside.” And then shove it back into place until he was ready to let them out.

“And the scratches in the boards gave away the location,” she said. “So I improved it. I can move the wardrobe from inside the hideaway, too, so that no one can trap me within.”

Archimedes couldn't respond.

“There were scratches inside, too.” She didn't glance back at him as she inserted the key. “All around the lock and in a few places on the walls. Tally marks, as if counting off days. And the name
Geraldine
, written beneath a bawdy little poem.”

Their father had beaten her for that. “She's always been a writer.”

“And what have you always been?”

“Lucky.”

“So it would seem. You are not still in there, after all.”

“Oh, he always let us out in time for the sermon on Sunday. In truth, that was crueler than leaving us inside.”

“After hearing a few of those sermons, I have to agree.” She opened the panels and stepped inside the shadowed closet. For a moment, Archimedes wondered whether to worry that she'd stowed weapons inside—but of course she had. And it hardly mattered, because she'd been armed the entire time.

When she emerged, he immediately recognized the converted glider in her hands.
His
glider, transformed into a reinforced satchel that he'd designed to carry delicate paper artifacts. “You didn't open it?”

“Of course not. Only a look through the glass as we left Venice, and again when Ginger created the forgery. I have not even smoked in my quarters since I've had it aboard.”

Oh, his captain was simply amazing. “I could kiss you.”

“I'll bare my ass for your lips later.”

He laughed and took the contraption, not bothering to hide the shaking of his hands—excitement and relief, a powerful combination. He flicked open the satchel's cover and the familiar pain lodged near his heart, the incredible sensation of beholding something beyond price, beyond beauty. How could she
not
kill him for this?

Intending to ask her, he glanced up, but the words caught in his throat, his voice arrested by her expression. Lips softly parted and eyes bright, her face echoed his emotions as she looked at the sketch, but with something more:
longing.
Then she blinked, and the familiar hardness appeared. Her gaze met his.