The Kraken King (23 page)

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Authors: Meljean Brook

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Adult

BOOK: The Kraken King
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As usual, he jumped straight past the niceties. “How is Cooper?”
“Better.” Only two months away from finishing his contract with her and walking into a safer life with Mara. “The blacksmith told him that he should have his legs replaced in the smugglers’ dens. So when you are finished, we’re ready to go on.”
“We’re finished. If you pack your things, we’ll leave as soon as everything is stowed.”
So quickly. Had one of his men been hurt? Maybe that was a reason for his brusque manner now. “Did you find anything in their camp? Were the marauders waiting?”
“No.” But there was
something
. His jaw tightened briefly before he said, “We’ll prepare the walkers and meet you at your lodging.”
Only a hand at her back could have given a more obvious shove to push her along. Her instinct was to plant her feet and stand her ground, but the pain in her chest urged her to run as fast as she could. She compromised. After offering a brittle smile and a nod, she started down the deserted street at a brisk walk.
What had changed while he’d been gone?
It doesn’t matter,
she reminded herself.
It didn’t help.
***
Trying to keep his distance from her was going to kill him.
Ariq couldn’t stop himself from watching Zenobia until she walked out of sight. With a sigh, he trudged up the stairs to the sundry shop. Only a few minutes before she had arrived, Ariq had paid the shopkeeper for a service; he hadn’t known it would be needed so quickly. When he entered the shop, Jali Bulad already had her letter unfolded on the counter and was tracing the contents with the stylus from a mimic machine. A pencil attached to the device’s arm copied the shopkeeper’s movements and wrote a duplicate onto a blank sheet of paper. Ariq almost pointed out that he was tracing each line backwards before realizing that it didn’t matter. Left to right, right to left. It would all be the same at the end.
Ariq skimmed the upside-down contents as best he could. Nothing that he recognized, except that she was sending it to the same person she’d written previously—Eratosthenes Inkslinger, her supposed brother-in-law in the thieves’ den of Port Fallow. She’d mentioned Cooper and Altun, and she’d signed it as Geraldine again. He couldn’t make out the rest of the message.
“Does anyone in town read English?”
The shopkeeper didn’t look up from his painstaking trace. “I don’t know what that is.”
Not many would. The language wasn’t as common as French.
It hardly mattered, anyway. If this letter was like the one she’d sent from Ariq’s town, it would read as any letter did. Only a code-breaker could tell him whether another message had been included, as her first one had.
The Kraken King suspects me.
Ariq hadn’t. He’d known she had secrets and that she wasn’t a mere companion to her friend. He’d all but discarded the idea Zenobia had been the marauders’ target—they’d struck too many airships, they’d followed no pattern—but her pack full of gold and documents, her desperation to continue on her journey despite the dangerous route, and the coded letters had led him to believe that she was delivering information to someone in the Red City. Ariq hadn’t known what information she carried, and he hadn’t cared. He hadn’t thought it would have anything to do with him—and she was obviously inexperienced with such work, so his only concern had been seeing that she delivered it safely.
He should have cared, though. She’d known his uncle had been a rebel, and the letters in her pack mentioned Temür Agha again and again.
And now he’d found the marauders’ camp.
He’d told her the truth. There’d been nothing left at the site. Just a few impressions in the dirt of tents and equipment. But the layout of a camp could be as distinctive as a face, and Ariq had recognized his own in those tracks.
A rebel camp.
If the rebels were behind the attacks, Zenobia’s letters about Temür Agha might have been the reason for them. And if the rebellion was trying to stop her from delivering that information . . . Ariq would, too.
He’d protect her. But he’d stop her.
And he possessed no illusions about how stopping her would affect any relationship that developed between them. He’d lived with war for too long and he’d seen it happen too often. No matter how much he wanted her, no matter how much he cared, eventually their conflicting needs would ruin anything they’d shared.
Because rebels or not, he
would
destroy whoever had sent those marauders. They’d killed Ariq’s people. He would hold them accountable for the lives they’d taken, and for the threat that now loomed over every person living in his town. But he wouldn’t jeopardize the rebellion itself. If the letters Zenobia carried put the rebellion or his town at risk, and Ariq had to choose between his heart and his people . . . he would sacrifice his heart. Even if it meant sacrificing hers, too.
So he had to stay away from her until he knew for certain. Maybe the camp wasn’t a rebel camp. Maybe the marauders had been led by someone who’d trained and fought with the rebellion, so it only resembled one.
Ariq didn’t know. He wouldn’t know until he discovered who’d bought the flyers and hired the men who’d attacked the airships.
Until then, he would keep his distance.
Try to. Because when she’d looked at him and lifted her chin, as if to say the distance didn’t matter, Ariq wanted to drag her close and show her how much it did.
He wanted to drag her close and keep her there.
The shopkeeper lifted his stylus from Zenobia’s letter. “Should I hold on to this one?”
“Seal it again and send it on,” Ariq told him. If Zenobia had been coerced into carrying information, then someone held something she cared about over her head. If “something she cared about” was a person, her correspondence might mean the difference between life and death.
He tucked the duplicate letter into the fold of his tunic, where it lay over his heart. Never had the words from the battle prayer seemed more appropriate. His heart was iron—heavy and cold. But his will was steel and he wouldn’t falter.
Ariq paid the man another coin and left the shop. Meeng had brought one of the walkers around and was trying to catch more sleep beneath the canvas. Tsetseg and Bartan already snored on the rear benches, and had been for hours; they would be the first to take the flyers, then. From the marauders’ camp, they’d traveled back to Altun through the night, returning less than a half hour before dawn. Ariq had thought they would rest in town today while Cooper’s legs were rebuilt, but his people would have to sleep in the vehicles and drive in shifts, instead.
They would reach the smugglers’ dens by that evening, where Zenobia would be delayed while Cooper consulted another blacksmith and was grafted new legs.
Good. Ariq wouldn’t have to make up a reason for her to stay in the smugglers’ dens while he searched for the marauders—or force her to stay. She wasn’t going anywhere without him. Definitely not to the Red City. Not until Ariq knew whether he’d have to stop her from delivering the letters she carried in her pack.
A pack that she already had strapped to her back. She waited at the gate to her lodging, her small trunk at her feet. Lieutenant Blanchett and his men had begun loading their walker. A sleepy-looking Helene sat in that vehicle. She must have chosen to ride with the Frenchmen, since Mara and an injured Cooper would be taking up the back of Ariq’s walker. Ariq didn’t care, as long as Zenobia rode with him.
And she would. Not to be with Ariq. Her gaze quickly searched his face when he jumped down from the walker, then her chin went up again and her eyes flattened. But when he carried Cooper out, her hardness took on a haunted edge, as if looking at the injured man hollowed her out.
Ariq recognized that pain and guilt. He’d sent men and women into battle knowing they would die. Knowing others would come back with wounds that could never heal. Now the people who had fought with her, who’d fought
for
her, had been hurt—and she wouldn’t abandon them now, not even to get away from Ariq.
He wanted to tell her he knew what she felt. But that wouldn’t be keeping his distance.
So there was only this—his hands on her slender waist as he lifted her onto the ladder. For a brief moment he held her close, her back against his chest. Her duplicated letter crinkled in his tunic. Her brown hair smelled of dust. With ink-stained fingers, she reached for the rung and pulled out of his grip.
He climbed up after her.
X
No respectable western cartographers included the smugglers’ dens on their maps. If the dens were shown at all, they appeared as a single city and were labeled “Bradlinger’s Folly,” after the Dutchman from Johannesland who had attempted to settle the region almost three hundred years before. He’d been told the Australian natives were primitive, docile, and of small stature, so any resistance to the new colony would easily subdued.
Bradlinger had sailed to Australia with seven ships. Only a few members of his company had returned to the Americas alive.
The outsiders who’d eventually settled in the area must have had a better idea how to win over the local clan than Bradlinger had. Zenobia didn’t know who they’d been. No one from Scandinavia or the Americas, she was sure. Maybe exiles from the Horde empire, or pirates hiding from Nipponese forces. While growing up, everything she’d heard and read about western Australia had painted it as a savage land full of disease and war, and the dens populated by thieves and murderers. Archimedes’ travels and his letters had offered her a better picture of the dens—which were one city in appearance, separated into five districts. They
were
full of criminals, but only criminals by civilized standards. The districts were each ruled by a different den lord, and each had its own laws. Not all of them made a crime of murder or theft.
Similar to Port Fallow, Zenobia had believed—a rough town built on the ashes of Amsterdam and controlled by rich mercenary families, and the old canals dividing the population by class and wealth.
But it wasn’t as similar to Port Fallow as she’d thought.
The dens were bigger. From the walker, Zenobia couldn’t determine exactly how much bigger. They’d traveled south along the base of the escarpment before turning west, offering her first view of the dens across the plain—sprawled around a bay, surrounded by a wall, and divided by a river. Even from a distance, the different districts were easy to spot. More walls had been built between the dens, but Zenobia didn’t need them to tell her where the borders were. In the northern district, residences sat amid trees and gardens. Balloons floated lazily over ponds and parks. Over the next wall, buildings were stacked on top of each other, as if they crowded in as many people as possible. Smoke poured from factories on both sides of the river, though the residences on the southern side didn’t seem so small or densely packed.
A faint yellow haze hung over the dens, as if the sky was a glass wiped with a dirty towel. Balloons flew through the haze like bees around a hive. Larger airships hovered above the city and the bay. As soon as Cooper’s legs were rebuilt, one of those airships would take Zenobia and Helene to the Red City.
Of course, these were the smugglers’ dens—so they would have to choose a captain who wouldn’t take their fare, promise them passage, then kill them on the way.
Helene must have been glad to see the airships, despite the danger. Zenobia looked back. Lieutenant Blanchett’s walker wasn’t far behind theirs. Helene sat beside him on the front bench, her face animated as she pointed ahead. Her friend must have found the Frenchman’s company more stimulating than Zenobia’s. She hadn’t seen Helene pick up a book even once that day.
Zenobia glanced at the governor. Though he sat only a short distance from her, they’d barely exchanged a dozen words. She was determined not to care. To harden her heart. To remind herself that soon she would never see him again, so the way he’d dismissed her at the sundry shop that morning didn’t matter.
Despite her resolve, she’d been aware of him. Aware of the black stubble on his jaw and the shadows under his eyes, telling her that he hadn’t rested since returning from the marauders’ camp. Aware of the watchful tension in his big frame. Aware of how many times he’d looked her way and how often he hadn’t. It was irritating, this hold he had over her senses—and with no effort on his part. Even when she didn’t look, she’d noticed his every movement. Not a minute had passed that she hadn’t wanted to talk to him, or wondered what he was thinking. Not a mile had gone by that she hadn’t thought of sliding into his lap and pressing her mouth to his, and of daring him to dismiss her after she’d kissed him.
She feared that he would, anyway.
And she called herself an idiot when her heart lifted, simply because he immediately glanced at her in return—as if none of her movements had gone unnoticed, either, and he was just as aware of her.
An idiot. But the tightness in her chest that had been a constant companion since the morning eased a little.
He glanced at her again. Probably because she was still looking at him.
Zenobia lifted her chin. “When we are ready to continue on, I hope that you might recommend to us a trustworthy airship.”
“I’ll make the arrangements.”
And there was the abruptness again. A short nod accompanied his reply, then he looked away from her—even though nothing lay ahead of the walker but the smugglers’ dens, and those still miles away.
She faced forward again, too, wishing for her notebook. It would have been so much more sensible to work than to sit here with every cell in her body attuned toward his.
Not just her body. Her brain, too.
And that was simply unacceptable.
So blast it. None of this mattered anymore. She pulled out the notebook tucked inside her tunic and began to sketch the scene ahead.
A few straight lines established the city’s shape. “Why the perimeter walls?”
And blast him, too, because even though her fingers were busy she was aware of how he glanced at her notebook, then of the lingering look he gave her profile before answering. “It establishes the boundary of the area they were given to settle.”
“By the local tribe?”
“Yes.”
The Nyungar had been generous. The city was at least four or five times larger in area than Port Fallow. “But
why
walls? Port Fallow and the Ivory Market use them to keep zombies out of the city. But there are no zombies in Australia. And unless boilerworms can fly, that wall is too high to have been meant to stop them. So why not simply mark the boundary as you do in your town? Unless it’s to keep people from moving between dens.”
“It is,” the governor said.
And it didn’t sound as if he approved. His voice had hardened, and his loose grip on the steering lever tightened. She continued sketching. “Which den will we be staying in?”
Hopefully not Lord Duval’s den. Zenobia didn’t know who any of the other den lords were, but she knew all of Archimedes’ smuggling business had come through Duval’s contacts. That had been more than a decade ago, and there was little chance that she would be recognized as the sister to Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste—but if someone did recognize her, it would most likely be some former associate in Duval’s district.
“A man I trust keeps an inn in the twins’ den.”
Not Duval’s. Any relief Zenobia might have felt was erased by the sound of Mara’s sharply indrawn breath behind her.
Alarm filled the mercenary’s voice. “The
twins
?”
The governor glanced back. “Are any of the other dens safer?”
A long second passed before Mara shook her head.
All of them equally dangerous. But he must have chosen that den for a reason. Zenobia looked up from her sketch. “Why there?”
“The twins control most of the Nipponese trade. I want to know where those flyers came from—and who bought them.”
“You expect them to simply tell you?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him. Zenobia didn’t know anything about the twins, but the mere mention had made Mara gasp. Yet he intended to demand information from them—and sounded certain of their compliance.
She didn’t know what to think of that. Thanks to Archimedes’ letters, she’d recognized the Kraken King from the moment she’d seen the tattoo on his back—one of the most powerful and feared commanders of the Horde rebellion. But that was who he’d
been
. He’d left the rebellion and now he was just the governor of a small town on the western Australian coast.
Yet he could still make demands of a den lord.
Unsettled, she looked ahead again. “Which den is theirs?”
“The one farthest south.”
The one that she had the most difficulty seeing from this perspective. Three were readily visible, but the southernmost den wasn’t.
But that wasn’t right. There should be
two
more. “Where is the fifth den?”
“In the water. It’s an island.”
“And known as the Rat Den,” Mara said.
Now didn’t that sound like a lovely place to live? “Do they all have names?”
Mara nodded. “The Wolf Den in the north—that’s Lord Duval’s. Lord and Lady Yudaev control the Bear Den, unless their son has already killed them and taken their place. Who rules over the Tiger Den now?”
“The Kwan clan,” the governor said.
“And the twins’ den?” Zenobia asked, though it probably wouldn’t be hard to guess. “No, do not tell me. Is it the Lion’s Den?”
His firm mouth curved with amusement too brief for her liking. “It’s the Fox Den.”
Oh. Well, then. That sounded like the proper place for Zenobia to stay.
With a smile, she started sketching again.
***
By the time the walker approached the southern wall, Zenobia had changed her mind. None of the dens seemed like the proper place for
anyone
to stay.
Guards in mechanical suits patrolled the tops of the walls. They’d lowered their guns after Tsetseg had landed her flyer at the Fox Den’s gate and told the sentries who was coming, but Zenobia still felt as if their weapons were pointed at her. The terror of being on the wrong end of a gun barrel never went away quickly.
Her heart was still pounding when the gate opened. One of the governor’s men drove a crawler through ahead of their walker, and Lieutenant Blanchett followed close behind. Zenobia wished she’d insisted that Helene ride through the den in their vehicle. The lieutenant was a capable officer, but he was no Mara and he was no Cooper—even when Cooper was legless and blissed on opium.
She looked back as they passed through the gate. Helene had scooted closer to Blanchett. Zenobia couldn’t see any fear in her, only a little wariness and curiosity. As if she trusted the man at her side to protect her, though she hardly knew him and hadn’t paid him anything to do it.
Zenobia couldn’t imagine trusting anyone so easily. The Kraken King sat next to her—but no matter how strong or powerful he was, scooting closer would be more dangerous than staying in her seat. It would reveal far too much.
She would be fine right here, with Mara and Cooper behind her.
And they hadn’t even drawn their guns. Probably because there was no one who needed shooting. They passed through the gate onto a wide street laid with brick. To the left, four men in mechanical suits tramped their way down a wooden walk. Buildings rose around them—not the stacked buildings of the Bear Den, which looked as if they’d tacked rickety new rooms on top of old when they’d run out of space, but tiered structures eight and ten levels high, with stairs climbing the front and topped by sloping red roofs. Rope bridges connected some of the buildings’ upper levels. Children ran across their swooping lengths as the walkers picked their way along the streets below. They passed steamcoaches and carts that might have come from Zenobia’s home in Fladstrand, and spider rickshaws like those she’d seen in London. Two-seater balloons flew swiftly overhead, and it was all loud and busy, but as far as Zenobia could see, no one was being raped and murdered.
That didn’t mean anything. Zenobia had grown up in a town as clean and as orderly as this, and her mother had still died screaming in pain and fear.
They passed more men in mechanical suits. A continual heavy thrum sounded from above, growing louder as they moved deeper into the district—the twins’ hovering fortress. Zenobia could only see bits of the floating palace beyond the tall buildings and the web of bridges: its spinning heliosails, the clusters of balloons, the engines below. Its shadow darkened the heart of the den.
She glanced at the governor. He didn’t return her look, but she didn’t expect him to. Not when he had so many other things to watch out for. “We’re not going to stay beneath that, I hope?”
“It’s not over the inn now.”
“But it might be?”
“Not while we’re here.”
Relief slipped through her. She couldn’t imagine living under that and not feeling as if it might crush her at any moment.
But perhaps that was the point. “I don’t suppose everyone in this den can ask them to move.”
“No.”
She nodded, then confessed, “It’s not what I thought it would be.”
His dark gaze left the street and met hers. “Poverty? Squalor?”
Exactly that. Did he already know her so well? Or had he once expected it, too?
Afraid of the answer, Zenobia looked away. “In Port Fallow, the mercenary families own everything, and except for a favored few, everyone else has almost nothing. They don’t even have enough to leave—so it only worsens.”

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