Heart of Steel (18 page)

Archimedes' heart gave a heavy thump. “Where did you hear of the sketch?”

“It is known that Temür possesses it.” A frown creased the counselor's brow. “Did you not pay your debt to him?”

Did he?
Christ. Did the man have the forgery or the original—or both?

He realized Hassan waited for an answer, and though it felt as if he were speaking after a blow to his stomach, he managed, “I did.”

The counselor nodded. “Then you see how such treasures might help us, though you are not Kareem's first choice because of your former association with Temür. We've secured the services of another man, Vincent Ollivier, from the university in Martinique. Are you acquainted?”

He'd never heard of him. Archimedes shook his head.

“He has many maps, diaries. He has studied da Vinci's movements during the Fifty-Years' Siege of the Hapsburg Wall. He believes he can find the location of the clockwork army.”

For God's sake. “He's a fraud. I can't tell you how many times I've—”

“Fraud or not, we
are
funding the expedition. I am certain that even if such a rare find eludes us, God willing, we might collect enough smaller items to pay our supplier. But Ollivier lacks practical experience, so I've persuaded Kareem that your participation is necessary . . . and that your loyalty isn't misplaced.”

It wasn't. His loyalty lay with Yasmeen, but this expedition might solve several of their problems. “Will you be aboard?”

“Yes, if God wills it. Kareem leaves tomorrow for the New World, hoping to win support and allies there. I will oversee the expedition.”

“Do you return to Rabat afterward?”

“That is my intention.”

“Will I be able to return with you?”

“Ah, now I see.” A chuckle resonated in the counselor's chest. “Your debt is paid, but you wonder if you'll be shackled the moment you step off the airship. I can promise you safe entry if God wishes you the same.”

Perfect. “I'll want the same for my partner—and I'll be going as Archimedes Fox. Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste is dead.”

“Of course. Are you still partnered with Bilson? I heard a rumor he was also dead, but I hoped it was not true.”

“It is. Zombies took him in Paris. The woman I'm partnered with now has ten years' experience flying over Europe, however. There's no question of her skill or trustworthiness.”

“If you say that, I believe you.” But doubt or worry entered the man's eyes. “A woman?”

A step near the door prevented Archimedes from replying. Kareem al-Amazigh entered. Archimedes stood and took the measure of the future hero of Rabat. Tall and wiry, he gave the impression of strength without the added bulk of overindulgence. Soft brown eyes, a firm mouth, and a full beard suggested compassion and maturity—and a handsome face didn't hurt his cause.

“Mr. Gunther-Baptiste.” Kareem smiled with warmth, but Archimedes could see the sharp scrutiny the man gave him, pausing briefly on his bruised jaw and rumpled clothing. “Did you win?”

“I was on my feet when I left.” No need to mention that Yasmeen had supported him. “In some fights, that's as close to a win as a man can hope for.”

“True words, Mr. Gunther-Baptiste. I trust Hassan has relayed our needs to you?”

“He has. I need to confirm with my partner, but I'm confident we'll be joining the expedition.”

“Excellent. We've secured the airship
Ceres
. If God wills it, she leaves tomorrow at noon.”

A pit formed in Archimedes' stomach. With effort, he maintained his pleasant expression. “
Ceres
? Under Captain Guillouet?”

“You know the captain? That is good. It is always best not to begin important endeavors with surprises.” With a sweep of his hand, Kareem gestured for Archimedes to precede him to the parlor. “We searched for some time before finding an airship that didn't include females on the crew. I believe that is one of the great tragedies the Horde has forced upon us all: our unmarried women pressed into labor, rather than protected and supported by their fathers and brothers.”

“A great tragedy,” Archimedes echoed gravely.

The resounding noise behind him might have been a groan.

 

 

Yasmeen woke, aware that she wasn't alone in the room.
Hopefully it was only Archimedes. Her knees hurt too much to relish a fight with anyone else.

Her eyes immediately adjusted to the dark. Archimedes sat slumped in the chair opposite the bed, wearing a linen shirt with tails pulled free of his lime breeches, legs extended and crossed at the ankles. Even relaxed, the muscles of his calves were strongly defined. A dusting of hair covered his skin, and his feet were heavily callused. When they'd met, the sun had burnished the hair on his head with streaks of gold, but winter had darkened it. The same shade roughened his jaw.

She wanted to rub her cheek against that dark stubble. To climb into his lap and feel his body hard against hers. He'd burned like a furnace. He'd probably keep her warmer than the bed, and as long as he was that, she wouldn't care if he didn't touch her again.

For a while, anyway. She liked to be touched, loved the slow curl of sensation over her skin that followed a hand smoothing over her stomach, the flex of fingers down her spine. She trusted very few men to do it, however—and now one of them was holding back while he fell in love with her.

Foolish man. No good could come of it. Sense told her to stop him. But she suspected that if she tried, Archimedes would only be encouraged. He wasn't a man who took the easy path. No, he
sought
the more difficult ones.

Which meant there was nothing to be done. The only way to discourage him would be to make herself easy—and a woman didn't come any easier than she'd been last night.

Perhaps he heard her stifled laugh, or saw the gleam of her grin in the dark. His head lifted. “Are you awake?” he asked softly.

She came up onto her elbow. “Awake, and wondering why you aren't in Iceland, trying to pry apart the frozen thighs of the virgin cults. They pose much more of a challenge than I do.”

“If all I wanted was to fuck, yes. But I've lusted before, and that's not what I desire now.” He reached for the lamp, filled the room with a soft yellow glow. She watched as his gaze slid over her. She'd slept in one of his long shirts, and the untied neckline had slipped down her arm. Unbound for the night, her hair curled over her bare shoulder. He paused only briefly on her ears before meeting her eyes again. “I also want to be certain that I'm not confusing lust with love.”

Yasmeen had done that before. “Perhaps there's no difference. Or perhaps you can only know if you've satisfied one, and the other remains.”

“Then I will soon be a very frustrated man.” He drew a deep breath. “Also, we are married.”

Yasmeen grinned. She hadn't been
that
drunk last night. “Caught by the boardinghouse matron, were you?”

“I know where a sketch is.”

Her humor vanished. She jolted up to sitting. “What? Where?”

“With Temür Agha in Rabat. There is also a rumor that my debt is settled.”

Oh . . . oh, fuck. She did not care for money
that
much. Vengeance was another matter. “Is it the forgery?”

“I don't know. I hope it is not. If Temür discovered that the debt was settled by a fake . . .” He drifted into a laugh, shaking his head.

Temür would be enraged. But it wouldn't matter, because if he had the forgery Yasmeen would kill him. “We have to see it.”

Archimedes nodded. “To that end, we are to join an airship expedition that will eventually take us to Rabat, and my friend Hassan will help us past the trading gates.”

Ah, good. That would have been the most difficult part. Though the Horde-occupied territories traded with the New World, few merchants and officials were invited past the port gates and into the cities—and Rabat wasn't easily approached from another direction like England, which was shielded from zombies by the surrounding water and often cloudy enough to fly an airship over, unseen. Yasmeen and Archimedes could have sneaked past Rabat's heavily guarded gates, but it was far simpler to walk through.

“Hassan,” she said. “Who is he?”

“One of Temür Agha's advisors. His prime counselor, though he has retired from the position, and gives quiet support to Temür's opposition. He enjoys more freedom than most in Rabat, and that retirement is how he traveled here without question—he has been taking small tours, so that his absence would be unremarkable.”

Yasmeen doubted that. Any man who did not note the comings and goings of a close advisor was a fool, and Temür Agha was not. But she cared little about politics; if Hassan could grant them entry to the city, she would take it. “Who is he to you?”

“When I was smuggling, he was Temür's right hand. I often negotiated and secured weapons from him when Temür wasn't available, sent messages through him. He's a good man.”

Now he made no sense. “Weapons
from
Temür Agha? I thought he was buying them from you—that you got the weapons from the rebels.”

“He
is
a rebel.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he insisted quietly.

“He burned Constantinople to the ground to destroy a rebellion. Do not tell me I am wrong; I was there. I heard the screaming as the firebombs dropped and the war machines rolled over homes. I smelled the bodies roasting and left to rot.” She would
never
forget that smell. “Do not say he is a rebel.”

His face dark and eyes haunted, Archimedes nodded. “You aren't wrong. But I have heard another story—though probably only bits of it. Hassan can tell you.”

Perhaps he could, but it didn't matter. Rebel or not, the only thing to know was that Temür Agha was a ruthless man, not to be crossed lightly.

“So tell me about this expedition—and why we are married.”

Archimedes closed his eyes. “It's aboard
Ceres
.”

“Ceres?”
Her laugh started, and she couldn't hold it back. “Guillouet will never let me aboard.”

“He will, because you won't be crew, but part of the expedition.”

Would money outweigh Guillouet's self-righteous loathing toward her? Oh, but that would be fascinating to see. “Then why are we married?”

“Because Kareem al-Amazigh, who is paying for the expedition, doesn't believe that unmarried women should be flying around without the protection of their brothers and fathers. So we'll be married and sharing a cabin.”

She laughed again, loving the absurdity of it. Though the protection of a loved one was a noble sentiment, most of the women in Rabat didn't even know who their fathers and brothers were. In the occupied territories, the Horde's practice of taking laborers' children from their parents and raising them in a crèche erased all familial ties.

Finally able to breathe, she wiped her eyes. “So he has found religion, then? He sounds much like your father.”

“Even my father hired you.”

“Yes, but I wasn't a woman. I was foreign.” She grinned when he tilted his head back, groaning as if in memory of his father's speeches. “But don't worry—I won't shoot Kareem al-Amazigh. Hopefully.”

“He won't be aboard.” He met her eyes again, and the sudden seriousness of his expression stopped her response. “I have to warn you now. Perhaps I should have spoken up when we made our agreement, but before I spoke to Hassan, I'd still hoped that the woman we saw wouldn't be Temür Agha's guard and we wouldn't have to travel to Rabat to find the sketch. It's a long story, but I was shot, and Hassan gave me a transfusion of his blood—infecting me with his nanoagents so that they could heal me.”

“I see.” Each occupied territory had a different tower, operating on a slightly different frequency. An infected Englishman could travel to Morocco without being affected by the signal. But a man infected by someone susceptible to the tower would be, too—even if the infection were passed on far away from the occupied territories. As soon as he traveled within the tower's range, it would affect him. “Will you be useless to me in the city?”

His skin had drawn tight, paling over his cheekbones and jaw. “I can follow orders, carry out instructions. I can act of my free will, but there's no driving emotion, no need, no fear. I wouldn't react to danger or respond to a threat in the same way.”

“So you'd lose your balls of iron and silver tongue.”

“Yes.”

And that terrified him, she realized. Yet he wasn't backing out of this arrangement. He still planned to help her . . . if he could.

“We will see what happens,” she said. “Perhaps it will not matter at all. And as long as we are discussing possible shortcomings—”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed. The crack of her knees sounded like muffled gunshots.

“Mornings are difficult,” she said. “They loosen up, but I don't know how quickly I can move before they do. If we're ever attacked, I'll probably just stay in bed and shoot whoever comes through the door.”

Gaze locked on her knees, Archimedes slipped out of his chair, knelt in front of her. Fingers hovering an inch above her skin, he traced the path of the still-fading scars.

“The ones on the right leg are cleaner,” she said. “Those were Jannsen's—the surgeon on Mad Machen's ship. Ivy tells me that Eben's hands were shaking a bit on the left leg, because he'd just spent most of the night in the harbor looking for me, but he wouldn't let her take over. There are about thirty screws still in the bones. Sometimes I think I should have just let Eben cut them off, but they are fine legs, aren't they?”