Heart of Steel (13 page)

“I slept well.”

“Did you use the sleeping draught?”

“No.” She preferred to smoke her opium—and she preferred to wake up aching rather than to wake up needing more. She knew better than to take a draught every evening; too many people went straight from a surgeon's tender care to the bowels of an opium den. She glanced at Barker and narrowed her eyes. “Why the fool's grin?”

“You owe me a drink. Tenner saw you leave the ship.”

Ah, her midnight excursion. When they'd been sailing out of London, she'd bet the quartermaster that she could slip away from
Vesuvius
without being noticed. Last night, she hadn't even tried to be furtive; she'd asked Tenner to help her lower a dinghy to the water.

But she'd pay up, simply because of how good it had felt to be out and about again—almost as good as it had felt to straddle a naked Archimedes Fox's chest. She hadn't expected to take such pleasure in meeting with him. Even now, she couldn't fathom how the anger that she'd carefully nurtured for months had been disarmed. Perhaps it had been his unabashed joy upon seeing her alive, and his earnest apology for his part in it. Perhaps it had been the dangerous stillness that had overtaken him when he'd determined to avenge her crew. Perhaps it had been the rough shadow on his jaw, the laughter in his emerald eyes, his easy grin.

Perhaps it was the fire that spread through her veins, kindled by every ridiculous word he said. If he hadn't smelled like a bilgewater trout, she'd have stayed a bit longer and burned it out. No reason not to. They'd played a short game of chase through obstacles of his identity and the sketch, but Yasmeen wasn't playing anymore. She had a single purpose now: to find the pig bastards who'd attacked her lady. It would take time and money, but she'd happily spend both.

Outside the wardroom's porthole, the sky was dark, with only a faint lightening in the eastern sky. Work would begin soon. If today's salvage expedition went well, she'd have reason to celebrate. There were worse ways to go about it than riding the sheets on a handsome man with a lean body and a silver tongue.

Not
many
worse ways, but still tempting enough to try it out once or twice.

Because the thought of that silver tongue made her feel generous, she said, “After I have my strongbox, I'll buy you a drink
and
a pound of Guajaca coffee.”

Barker's eyelids became heavy, as if his latest ladylove had just whispered into his ear. A weak version of the brew was a sailor's staple, but as Barker often rapturously described it, the difference between the strong Guajaca blend and the drink aboard
Vesuvius
was akin to the difference between cream and whey.

Yasmeen rarely drank either, though the beans had once lined her strongbox with gold. To her mind, coffee was simply proof that civilization still existed in the New World after the Europeans and Africans had fled the Horde, whose khans and generals had believed that everyone beyond the Ural Mountains was a soulless barbarian. Yasmeen wasn't inclined to agree with that belief, except for when she drank the barbaric piss that New Worlders called tea. But coffee was
supposed
to taste like barbaric piss, and the French and Liberé had fought a war over the ownership and taxing of it.

War and taxes. The Horde and the New World were separated by oceans, but in Yasmeen's experience, all civilizations were the same in essentials.

But because she was feeling generous, she wouldn't disrupt their quiet breakfast by saying so.

Dawn had filled the clouded sky with a faint light when
Yasmeen emerged onto the weather deck. The chill wind slapped her face. She folded her heavy collar up, tugged her woolen scarf in place over her nose and mouth.
Vesuvius
had anchored near the north dock. Her gaze searched the busy boardwalk, the dinghies cutting across the water, the rowboats-for-hire.

A flash of bright color near a tinker's cart caught her attention—a tall man wearing lime-green breeches. Though he faced away from her and a hat concealed his hair, that couldn't be anyone but Archimedes.

So he'd come.

She reached for her silver cigarillo case. Tucked into her belt, it had been one of the few things that had survived the explosion and her fall into the harbor. Her gloves made her fingers thick, and she fumbled the catch before sliding it open. Only a few cigarillos remained inside. No matter. When Ivy Blacksmith retrieved the strongbox from beneath the water, she'd buy more.

The cigarillo calmed her jumping nerves. On the docks, Archimedes weaved through the carts and coaches, passing the boats-for-hire. Was he light on coins? If the sketch had been stolen, maybe his purse had been, too.

But, no. He stopped by a messenger in an autogyro, and a coin passed between them. Perhaps sending the message that he couldn't join her?

Footsteps approached across the boards. Yasmeen recognized Ivy's quick stride and turned to greet the blacksmith. Her copper hair tucked beneath a wool cap and her freckled cheeks red from the cold, the woman usually wore a smile that was sweet to behold.

But now she was grinning, all but vibrating with excitement. “It's ready as soon as you are. We only need to sail closer to the south dock before we launch.”

Yasmeen glanced around the decks. Though she had no doubt that Ivy's submersible had been brilliantly designed and perfectly constructed, the diving machine hadn't been tested before. If the blacksmith went into the water and anything were to happen to her, Mad Machen would likely go truly mad, and strangle Yasmeen for not stopping her. But if he were here from the outset, he'd only blame himself.

“Where's Captain Machen?”

Ivy's grin became a laugh. “There.” With a hand made of mechanical flesh, she pointed to an old herring buss floating nearby, its sails furled. “It's Big Thom's salvage ship. Eben's borrowing his diving suit so that he can keep an eye on me while I'm down there.”

Madness. The whole point of the submersible was that it would be safer than a suit, but Eben had a reputation to uphold. A feared pirate couldn't also be a softhearted sap who desperately loved a sweet blacksmith, so he'd worry about her below the water, where there wouldn't be any witnesses to it—and probably claim that he only wanted to prevent Ivy from using the submersible to escape him.

Still, those dive suits were a death trap. Love made idiots of everyone. “A gold sous says that you end up rescuing him,” she said.

“I'd be a fool to bet against that.” Ivy's gray, ungloved fingers curled over the edge of the gunwale as she leaned forward, eyes widening. “Is that man attacking the messenger?”

Yasmeen looked to the docks, where the autogyro was hovering above the boards, the young messenger's legs spinning full tilt, the long blades a blur overhead. Beneath it, Archimedes had hold of the horizontal steel bar that served as the bottom of the boy's seat frame. He began to run, pushing the autogyro to the edge of the dock, the unbuckled sides of his overcoat flapping open like wings and revealing an orange waistcoat.

“Oh, blue heavens!” Ivy cried out as man and autogyro dropped from the dock, wobbling wildly. His boots splashed in the water before the machine leveled out and began to gain altitude. Archimedes whooped, and his familiar deep laughter carried across the harbor.

Yasmeen had to laugh, too. He just couldn't take the easy route, could he?

The worried furrows in the blacksmith's brow smoothed, and she watched them approach
Vesuvius
with an expression that seemed at once distracted and intensely focused. “With this much wind, I wouldn't ever climb on one of those. But do you see how his weight stabilizes it? It's because he's so low. I'd have to figure out a way to land despite some heavy object hanging below—or design them not to land at all. For an airship, perhaps. And with that much weight, two to spin. That boy is sweating already. And by the blessed stars, those breeches are something else.”

“So is Archimedes Fox,” Yasmeen said.

“The adventurer?” Ivy glanced at Yasmeen for confirmation. After a moment of disbelief, her eyes softened and she looked to the man hanging beneath the autogyro again. “In London, the girls in our house who knew their letters would read his stories aloud to the rest of us. We'd pool our pennies when a new copy of the
Gazette
was printed, though sometimes it meant going without a supper. It was worth it, though. No matter how terrible the danger, he always escaped.
Always.
Even when it seemed impossible.” She smiled with the memory. “We listened to them so often, I knew chapters by heart.”

So did Yasmeen. Perhaps that was why she'd found it so difficult to hold on to her anger—not because of his lean body or charming grin, but because in a sense, Archimedes Fox had been one of her closest companions for almost a decade.

And now, he made her laugh when she had little reason to.

“I heard he was someone else,” Ivy said quietly.

Of course she had. Mad Machen wouldn't have known any better, not immediately. “It's funny, the things you hear on these seas. About ten years ago, I heard a story about a weapons smuggler who was betrayed by the Lusitanian mercenary he'd hired to carry his cargo from Reval to Copenhagen. Santos Silva was the mercenary's name—have you ever heard of him?”

“No.”

“That's because Silva and his men put a gun on the smuggler, and promised to leave him alive if he handed over the crate of weapons. Of course they wouldn't have, so the smuggler dove behind the crate for cover and shot all of Silva's men except for two seamen and the cook—he's the one I heard the story from. But a smuggler who can kill eight men and then sail their bodies across the Baltic Sea so that his remaining associates will know better than to betray him doesn't sound like the sort of man who'd laugh his way across a harbor beneath an autogyro, does he?”

“No, he doesn't,” Ivy agreed, smiling. “That sort of man sounds like Archimedes Fox.”

Clever girl. “So he does.”

Flying near enough now that Yasmeen could see the buckles of his waistcoat and the diamond pattern in the orange brocade, Archimedes called out, “Permission to board, Captain?”

“It's not my ship!” she called back. “You'll have to wait for your welcome!”

“Wait? Well, that's a fine way to ruin my entrance!”

Grinning, he tilted his head back and said something to the messenger above him. Their direction veered slightly, carrying Archimedes to
Vesuvius
's tall poop deck, where the autogyro's blades were less likely to catch on the rigging.

“I have to talk to him for a bit,” she told the blacksmith. “Then I'll bring him over to meet you. He'll probably try to persuade you to take him under.”

“Not today, not until I've tested her. But give me ten minutes to polish her guts, and I'll let him crawl around inside.”

“He's charming,” Yasmeen warned her.

“Yes, but I can't try to escape Mad Machen with a passenger in my boat, can I?”

“If you escape with my strongbox, I'll quarter you.”

Ivy heaved a great, theatrical sigh. “And now fear for my life forces me to come back.”

Yasmeen shook her head. She'd once paid the girl a fortune to leave Eben alone; Ivy had used the money to set up a blacksmith's shop on
Vesuvius
instead. But Yasmeen supposed that it had worked out in the end: Ivy had also used a portion of that fortune to build the submersible for her, and it hadn't cost Yasmeen a bit.

The autogyro flew up over the stern, blades whirring. Lines of sand provided traction on the icy boards as Yasmeen made her way aft, where Archimedes landed lightly on the deck, his face flushed with exertion and laughter. Around them,
Vesuvius
's crew gave him a hearty cheer, and he bowed, sweeping lower when he caught sight of Yasmeen.

“Not their captain, but
my
captain,” he said.

“I wouldn't have you. Within a day, you'd be strapped to a whipping post for disregarding my orders.”

“That's true enough,” he said, straightening. Heat flared in his emerald eyes as he looked her over, and Yasmeen stiffened. Oh, he'd ruin everything. From his silver tongue would come a suggestion of
where
she could whip him and order him about, the crew would hear it, and then she'd have to string him up naked from the side of Mad Machen's ship.

His gaze caught on her face. Relief slipped through her when he said, “I have followed one of your orders, however.”

So he had. He'd bathed—and shaved, though he hadn't needed to exert himself to that degree. She liked a rough jaw.

“And here I am, at your disposal,” he continued. “What do you require?”