The Iron Duke (42 page)

She kept a firm grip on the harpoon. Below, the
Terror
began to tip sideways, the masts no longer vertical, but swinging toward the water at a sickening angle. The kraken clung to the
Terror
. . . and its enormous body would slowly be exposed against the ship’s bottom as it keeled over. No choice, then.

Mina grabbed the rope and tossed herself over, sliding rapidly down the line with one hand. Friction burned her palm. Her stomach dropped faster than she did, the wind pulling tears. Shouts from above rang out—and then below. Rhys’s unmistakable voice, roaring an order to stop.

So sorry, Your Grace.
It was too late for no.

She stopped ten feet above the water, with not much rope left dangling. The side of the
Terror
was rising above her, and she was too low to see the decks, the angle too steep. The undulating and constricting tentacles were dark gray and slick, and as thick as a railcar where the arms attached to the body. The undersides were covered with plate-sized suckers, pink flesh that pulsed and contracted against the
Terror
’s wooden hull in a manner as obscene as it was horrifying.

Near the base of the bulging, armored body, the lidless black eye was big enough to drive a lorry through, and stared at her through the clear water. Seeing her? Mina didn’t know. And she couldn’t wait.

A swipe of her face against her shoulder wiped away the blur of tears. She breathed deep. Hanging on to the rope with her burned and bleeding hand, she looped the dangling end around her foot, creating a sling step that could take her weight, and secured it by trapping the rope end between her sole and her ankle. She would have one shot, and she needed to be steady, needed to remember that the water would distort the angle.

She aimed low and fired.

The speargun pierced the bottom center of the creature’s eye. Black liquid spewed. The tentacles bulged and the ship’s hull shrieked, then the
Terror
was rolling toward her, bottom crashing back into the sea. Tentacles thrashed the water. Mina reached up, ready to climb, but something struck the rope and whipped her about, ripping the line from her shredded palm.

She fell—and jerked to a halt with a tearing pain through her knee. Mina cried out, dropping the harpoon. Swinging upside down, dangling with her head two feet above the water, she stared at the rope around her foot through a haze of disbelief and pain and tears.

Blessed stars.
Slowly, she crunched the muscles in her stomach and began to roll up.

“Mina!”

Rhys’s shout cut through every other noise, made her glance over. The
Terror
was nearing—Yasmeen must have been bringing the airship closer to its side. Men at the rail were leaning over with fishing gaffs, trying to catch the line and bring her in. Relief burst through her, and turned to horror when she felt the unmistakable sensation of her foot sliding from her boot.

She dropped, splashing into the water. Shocking warmth enveloped her, and a strange, swirling silence. The dark shape of the kraken floated below, no longer thrashing or moving. The sun was above. She tried to turn, flipping her hands. She couldn’t swim. But how difficult could it be? Just splashing and kicking.

Her eyes burned. She clawed at the water, kicked her legs though her knee screamed. Her lungs screamed. The sun seemed farther away, the wavering shadow of the airship. She just needed to kick
harder
.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

A dark figure torpedoed through the water. Rhys—who sank like a stone. He grabbed for her, hauled her against him, and the tightness of his grip hurt more than not breathing. They’d both go down, now. He shouldn’t have come for her.

But they were dragged up. Mina’s head broke the surface and she coughed, throwing up water and sucking in more. The cargo platform floated beside them. Rhys shoved her onto it and hauled himself up, dripping all around them. A thick rope circled his waist, attached to what must have been half the
Terror
’s crew. The platform lifted with a rattle and slowly swung them to the
Terror
’s rail.

Mina coughed again. Her wet stocking slipped on the deck when she stepped aboard, and her knee collapsed. Rhys caught her. All around her, men were cheering. Not Rhys. His face was dark, forbidding. Above them, the airship’s engines cut off. Quiet suddenly fell as Rhys barked an order to tether
Lady Corsair
to the
Terror
’s stern.

Lifting Mina against his chest, he carried her to the quarterdeck and set her down. Bracing her weight on one leg and her hand against the rail, she said, “Don’t let Captain Corsair come down here. She might kill me.”

“I might, too,” Rhys said grimly, but he didn’t—he looked to someone behind her and nodded.

And then Andrew was there. Thin, but strong. Not sick. He threw his arms around her waist. She held him tight.

“If you’re lucky, they
will
kill you,” he said. “Because that will be nothing compared to what Mother will do when she hears that you lost a good boot.”

Mina wasn’t killed, if only by virtue of there being too much work for both captains to waste time with her. She stood out of the way as zombies were thrown overboard, followed by Hunt’s belongings—and the captain’s bed. Heat bloomed through her cheeks as the mattress from the stateroom and her valise came into view on the cargo platform. And because she’d rather tell Andrew that she’d be sharing the Iron Duke’s bed than have him learn from a sailor, she limped across the quarterdeck to ask Rhys for her brother’s help unpacking her things and tidying up the captain’s cabin.

Without glancing away from the men climbing the rigging, he said, “If your brother helps, you’ll stir up trouble between him and the cabin boy.”

Oh.
Yes, she supposed the men would be territorial in their duties. “Will you ask him to help me down the ladder, then—and perhaps write a letter to my mother, so that my family knows I’m shagging the captain?”

His gaze flew to her face, brows raised. Understanding and amusement flickered across his expression. “I see. Take him down, then, and tell him.”

“Thank you.”

He looked her over. “Do you need one of Yasmeen’s cabin girls?”

“Yes.” Her clothes were soaked through, and without help, she wasn’t certain whether yanking off her remaining boot would be possible. “This one time. I ought to be all right on my own once I’m dry. Do I have your permission to look through Haynes’s logs? Perhaps I’ll find information regarding his journey and when the
Terror
was taken.”

He nodded. “And that is what your brother will help you do—sort through the logs and find the relevant cylinders. Until your knee heals, you only sit.”

Which suited Mina perfectly well. After Yasmeen’s girl was done with her, she’d have happily curled up on the bed and slept the afternoon away, but she sat at the captain’s desk instead. A large phonograph had been fastened to the mahogany surface, its tulip-shaped mouthpiece bent to accommodate the height of the captain who should have been sitting in Mina’s chair. Andrew joined her, carrying a collection of wax cylinders that the cabin boy had found scattered about the decks. He dragged up a chair from the table, his thin face solemn and worried.

Bending his head close to hers, he spoke quietly. “Is this what you had to pay to come for me?”

“No.” Mina saw that he wasn’t convinced. “Coming for you gave me this opportunity. I couldn’t have had it anywhere else—and it won’t continue after I return to London,” she added, to be certain that he didn’t form any expectations about his sister and the Iron Duke.

His pale concern gave way to pink cheeks. “Do you expect me to bend prude?”

“No. I wanted to prepare you. The talk amongst the crew might be difficult to hear. Your sister is the captain’s jade wh—”

“Don’t
.
” He sat back. “You
saved
us, Mina. The crew is ready to kiss your feet if you let them.” His grin pushed little apples into his thin cheeks. “In truth, they might confront the captain for not continuing with you after London, because they wouldn’t understand why.”

But Andrew did. And it was a stab through her heart that at only fourteen, he understood why she couldn’t be with the duke, knew the cost of her blood. He’d paid it in small ways before. He’d have been paying it now if she hadn’t slain the kraken. Perhaps only sly digs at first, but continuing and growing bolder with each day, and whether he fought them or ignored them, there would have been no winning.

He was watching her face. “Do you wish you could?”

“Don’t ask me.” Her throat suddenly tight, she shook her head. “That was never a part of it.”

“So you’ll be giving it up.” With a sigh, he looked out the cabin’s windows, to the blue sea and sky beyond. “I think I know.”

Perhaps he did. At fourteen, she hadn’t felt deeply. But without the Horde’s control, Andrew would. The sea might very well seem to encompass all of his heart.

She pushed away her troubles and focused on him. His flat midshipman’s hat and blue uniform coat fit him well, but still managed to look oversized on his gangly frame. He’d tanned in the past few months, and freckles had popped out across the bridge of his nose. She would tease him about them later.

Retrieving one of the wax cylinders, she glanced at the end for the date. Too early. “Do you like it, then?”

“Yes. Though it’s difficult proving that I’m not aboard just because I’m the son of an earl.”

“You
are
aboard because you’re the son of an earl.”

He took offense. His brows rose and temper flushed his skin. But being Andrew, it quickly dissolved into acknowledgement and humor. “That’s how I secured the position. But I have to work twice as hard for the men to think me worthy of it.”

“And by the time you become a lieutenant or captain, they’ll think twice as much of you. They’ll know you aren’t here because of your father, but that you’ve earned it. And they’ll trust you.” She cast him a wry look. “Of course, you’ll have to earn it again with every new ship and crew.”

His tortured groan made her laugh. Picking up another cylinder, she nodded to the phonograph barrel drum and mouthpiece. “This is set up to record. We will need it to play the acoustics on these cylinders, instead.”

Andrew bent over the machine to make the adjustments. “Did you work twice as hard for Hale?”

“Twice as hard? I’m a woman and Horde-blooded, to boot. So double that again.” And she ought to be working a little more now. “What happened when the Dame took the
Terror
?”

He told her, giving her almost the same story that the boys held for ransom had, except most of the
Terror
’s crew had been put in the hold during the demonstration. She looked up from the cylinders when he described the crew who’d remained above contracting bug fever—and all of them dying from it—while the others only suffered minor symptoms. Nor had they felt a thump through their chests, but something that Andrew described as a pressure in his ears, quickly gone.

Protected, Mina thought. Whether because they’d been beneath the waterline or surrounded by steel in the hold, she didn’t know—but the weapon hadn’t hit them as hard.

He hesitated before adding, “They had people watching from
Bontemps
. We saw them before we were taken down into the hold.”

The potential buyers watching the demonstration. Mina nodded. “Yes.”

“I knew one of them—Hale’s airship man, the one who builds the big dreadnoughts for the navy. Sheffield.”

Sheffield?
No. Mina’s heart stuttered. She was convinced that the industrialist loved Superintendent Hale.
Surely
he wouldn’t betray her. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t want to believe it. Her first instinct was to name it impossible—she’d
seen
him the night Haynes had been dropped onto Rhys’s steps, and he’d just returned by airship from Manhattan City. But that might have been a lie; he could have just come from the demonstration on the Gold Coast. And although his presence in London meant that Sheffield couldn’t have attended the auction, a member of the Black Guard could have acted as his proxy in the Ivory Market.

And he hadn’t known that it was Haynes’s murder she’d been investigating that night—but had he been with Hale when she’d received Mina’s wiregram updates, identifying the captain? Had he been the one to contact the assassin in Chatham, and to tell Dorchester that Haynes’s bugs had been destroyed? Through his dreadnought contracts with the Royal Navy, the man had connections with the Admiralty, and if he was Black Guard, reason to hide news of the auction until it was too late for everyone in England.

Sickness roiled in her gut. It wasn’t too late to catch
Endeavour
and stop the weapon, but they were still four weeks out from England. Four weeks until she could warn Hale. Four weeks for Sheffield to escape back to Manhattan City.

Lady Corsair
, however, would collect Fox from Venice and return to Chatham in a little more than a fortnight. Mina could leave for England with the aviators . . . though that would cut her time with Rhys short. Would a message to Hale suffice?

Mina knew it wouldn’t. Sickness became a deep ache.

Pumping his foot against the treadle, Andrew began winding the phonograph’s clockwork drive. “It should be—” The grating of gears cut him off. Brows drawn, he peered into the base of the phonograph. “Ah, blast. The turnstile mechanism has been bumped out of alignment.”

Probably while Hunt had been throwing off his clothes and knocking things about the cabin. “Can you fix it?”

Like their mother, Andrew was mechanically inclined. Mina would just make the problem worse. He hesitated before nodding slowly. “I’ll need access to the machine room.”

Oh.
“I’ll ask the captain to tell you to fix it.”