Riveted (30 page)

“Leave it. Go before they get their rail cannon up.”

God. Had they fired their engines? Annika yanked the head pulley, rocked back to look. The vents were still open. They’d need at least ten minutes before the engines were ready, and several more before an electrical generator could power the cannon.

“That’s di Fiore at the rail,” David said, and she saw the man looking over, silhouetted by the lamps on deck. “Observing it all.”

They wouldn’t give him any more to see. Annika hauled the troll around, pumped her legs. Men leapt out of her way. The troll moved easily, working up to a smooth gallop by the time she turned her toward the shoreline.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

No idea. “To the ocean, and along the beach as far as we can. We can go faster on the sand, and if the snow keeps up, they won’t be able to see us or follow us as well.”

“Can
you
see?”

Through the dark and snow?

“I’ll need…a bit…of help.” She huffed as hard as the engine, arms and legs pulling and pushing in time with the troll’s. Oh, she felt those four years now. She’d become soft. Stoking an engine was nothing compared to this. “Look…for boulders.”

“Like watching for icebergs?”

“Yes.” A stitch formed in her side. The flatbread she’d wolfed down felt like a rock in her stomach. She just had to push past it.

Down to the beach, to the edge of the waves, where the tide erased the snow as quickly as it fell—and would erase their tracks, too. Chunks of ice littered the black sand. Which way to go? They needed to head toward Vik, but she didn’t know whether the camp lay east or west of that town. They were headed east now; every step might be taking them in the opposite direction they wanted to go.

She slowed to catch her breath, turned the troll to face the water.

“Can you see Heimaey?”

David scanned the horizon. “Yes.” He pointed southwest. “There.”

So they were going the right direction, but how far away were they? Closing her eyes, she forced every other thought out of her mind.
Phatéon
had flown this way several times, and when she’d been younger, Annika had ridden along this route as a driver’s apprentice. Had she seen the cove?

She
had
. During the summer. Ducks had been nesting along the banks of the cove, and had flown up when the troll disturbed them. They’d taken one for supper, but hadn’t eaten it until they’d stopped for the evening, after they’d turned north, heading for the pass between two glaciers.

She opened her eyes. “We’re thirty miles west of Vik.”

Even on foot, not an impossible distance. A full day’s journey in the summer, and only three hours of walking by troll—but she had to assume the airship was behind them. Annika turned the troll east again, slowly gaining speed.

“Can we make it to Vik tonight?”

“Yes. But we need to stop and hide. We’re too easy to spot.” And they should stay hidden during the day, too. “We can start again tomorrow night, when they likely aren’t looking for us.”

“You know of a place to hide
this
?”

“I know one.” Ten miles away. Given the time it would take for the ferry cruiser to start after them, she could stay ahead of any pursuers if she moved at a quick trot.

Forty-five minutes at a fast clip. She’d done this before; she could do this again.

Forty-five minutes of endless pushing, pulling. Beyond a burn in her thighs, her arms. Tortured breaths squeezed her lungs, but after ten minutes, it was all the same pain.

Relief took the edge off when she finally saw a small river that fed into the ocean. She turned north. The troll followed the winding bank, forced to go slower now, Annika carefully picking her way across the moonlit snow. Her arms and legs trembled. Finally, cliffs rose ahead, with a wide bowl carved out of their face. A tall waterfall cascaded down, thundering as they drew closer. Mist drifted through the eye louvers, welcome on her heated, sweaty face.

Annika drove the troll into the shadows on the inward curve of the bowl. During the day, the depth of the cliffs and the mist would prevent anyone spotting them from above. She backed as far as she could against the rocks and settled the troll down, wincing as she unclenched her hands from the pulley grips. Blisters had already formed and broke.

So soft and weak. She was ashamed of it. She’d never let herself become like this at home.

David sucked in a breath. “Annika.”

He reached for her hand. She shook her head, pulled it away. Her arms didn’t feel like her own. “Will you stop the engine?”

When the huffing slowed, she realized he’d done it. Legs shaking, she pushed out of the seat, and David was there again, holding her waist as she trembled her way down the ladder. Humiliating. She should have been able to just jump down.

Her face was hot, throat parched. The engine puffed its last,
surrounding them with sudden quiet—only the hissing of the boiler, the muffled roar of water. David’s hands steadied her. In the soft glow of the lamp, the angles of his face seemed sharper, the shadows deeper.

She wet her lips. “Is there a cup in the pack?”

“Yes. Stay put.” He dug through the canvas, moved to the hatch.

“Take the furnace poker,” she said, and added when he glanced back at her, “for the dogs.”

He smiled slightly, lifted his steel hand. “They’re welcome to take a bite of this.”

She had to smile, too. He returned a few seconds later, mist clinging to his clothes like diamond chips. Her fingers trembled violently, sloshing the water. He folded his hand over hers, watched as she drank. “Sit. Rest.”

“I can’t.” She stretched her arms over her head. “I need to get out and walk.”

She wouldn’t go anywhere fast, but she couldn’t sit yet. She’d ache worse afterward if she did.

He reached for their coats. She groaned, pushing her arms into the sleeves.

Face dark, he slung the rifle over his shoulder. “You’ll show me how to drive this tomorrow.”

“No.” She appreciated the offer, but it was impossible. “If she tips over on a wrong step, we won’t get her back up—and everyone tips theirs the first few times.”

She followed him through the chest hatch, waited as he closed her up. The mist on her face was freezing, not quite as pleasant now. She tugged her hat down over sweaty curls.

Snow crunched under their feet. No dog tracks marked the fresh fall, but a few hare trails told her they wouldn’t be far away. The bottom of the bowl carved by the waterfall spread south into a rolling plain. The troll’s tracks along the riverbanks had almost filled. She glanced up into the cloudy sky.

Annika couldn’t see anything through the dark and the heavy flakes. “Do you see the airship?”

He pointed to the southeast. If they’d still been on the beach, they’d have been overtaken at any minute. “You were right to stop.”

“It’s just habit—it’s what you do when driving a troll. They’re useful, but as soon as you’re seen by an outsider, you run away and hide as quickly as possible.”

“Like a rabbit.”

“A big, powerful one.” She smiled with him. “We should name her after one.”

He nodded. “Rabbits are supposed to bring good fortune.”

“Truly?” She liked that.

“Yes. According to my father’s people, at least.”

Perhaps they were right. This one had been lucky so far. “Austra Longears.”

His brows rose. “Longears?”

“Do you think ‘Tastylegs’ is better? She’s a rabbit.”

He grinned. “Longears, it is. What did you call the troll you drove before?”

“Rutger Fatbottom.” She laughed at his expression. “I didn’t name him! He was passed down to me. But he
does
have a hefty engine back there.”

Unlike David, who faced away from her to study the slope of the cliffs. “Tomorrow, I’ll climb up and make certain there’s nothing else we need to avoid ahead of us.”

Annika nodded, looked back at the waterfall. Inside the bowl, ice from the mist covered the bottom half of the cliffs. “When I was here last, it was a cloudless night and the moon was full. There was a rainbow.”

“At night?”

“Yes. During the day, too, with the sun shining down on the mosses against the rocks, catching all of those drops like sequins.
Beautiful. But the rainbow at night was so unexpected, so incredible. Do they know what does it?”

“No. We know water acts like a prism, but we don’t know why the light is made of different colors—though there are several theories.”

He knew so much. Annika felt as if she’d been constantly learning since leaving Hannasvik, whether she put any effort into it or not, and there was still so much more to know. So many things it never occurred to her to ask about. She tilted her head back.

“Sometimes on clear nights, lights dance across the sky. Have you seen them?”

“In Norway, and in Far Maghreb.”

Far north and south. “When I was a girl, I used to stay up on clear nights, waiting. They always came on the nights I didn’t wait, so I was never ready, rushing out in my nightclothes—and then shivering while watching.” Perhaps they were up there tonight, above the clouds. “Do they know what makes them?”

“No. A few think that the world moving in orbit forces the æther to compress near the poles, and that the greater density creates a prism. Others think that the æther is already denser in some spots than others, and the lights come and go as we move through the different densities.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Not just me—many others don’t. The pattern isn’t regular enough. If we’re orbiting at the same speed, through the same space every year, we should be able to predict the lights. But we can’t. So the rest of us just admit we don’t know.”

She was surprised. “I’ve noticed that’s difficult for New Worlders: admitting you don’t know.”

His laugh burst out on a frozen puff of air. “Perhaps. But for my mother, too, I remember.”

Ah, well. She grinned. “My mother, too.”

“So it is not just a New World affliction?”

“I suppose not. But at least we don’t always try to take the brown out of bread. Why do you do that?”

Still laughing, David shook his head. “God knows.”

“It’s like eating raw dough.”

“I wouldn’t know—but at least I’ve never eaten raw dough.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, then sighed. “I stole it. My mother wouldn’t let me try a piece. I should have listened to her.”

“That bad?” His laughter quieted as she nodded. “Do you miss home?”

“Yes. My mother more than anything. I’d have gone back long ago, if not for Källa.” Now she was desperate to know how and why di Fiore’s men had trolls. “I want to go back now.”

David looked away from her, toward the roaring falls. “There are no males at all?”

“No.”

“What about the boy children?”

“There are fewer than you might believe. Many of us are abandoned children from the New World or England. The old stories of seducing men were true. The first women thought they’d been blessed by the gods to bear only girls.
That
wasn’t true. Bearing a girl was a blessing—not because of the girl, but because the mother didn’t have to make such a terrible choice. Many of the women who bore male children stayed away rather than abandon him. So in the more recent generations, it’s understood that if a woman chooses to lie with a man, to make certain he is a good man who will raise the boy well…but not many of those women ever return, anyway.”

She paused. That was part of the reason why her mother had been so angry when Hildegard left. Not just because she’d been unfaithful, though that had hurt; the terror that she wouldn’t come back was even greater. And when Hildegard
had
come back, her mother clung to the reason of infidelity to keep her anger alive…and the fear of being hurt so deeply again.

Annika loved Hildegard, and understood what had driven her. Her twin sister, Inga, had left; no one knew what had become of her. Their mother had recently died. She’d been desperate for a child, and in Hanna’s family line they’d always borne children of their blood. But Annika also understood her mother’s anger. Hildegard had put her through hell then refused to apologize for causing that pain, believing that any apology would suggest she’d also been sorry for having Källa.

It wasn’t the same.

Annika was sorry, so sorry that she’d put her village in danger. She wasn’t sorry that stupidity had led her here, to be with David now.

She glanced up at his profile. “Your mother must have thought your father was a good man.”

“He was. And she wouldn’t have left him—but later he told me that she’d missed her home, too…and that he’d always been afraid that she would leave us.” He looked away from the waterfall, offered a bleak smile. “Perhaps he should have let her go. She wouldn’t have been there when the mountain came down.”

But she wouldn’t have been there to save David, either. “If Inga stayed, it’s because she wanted to.”

He closed his eye, nodded. “It was difficult for him, knowing she might leave.
Not
knowing where to find her if she did.”

“But if she left, she wouldn’t want to be found.” When he looked at her, the pain in his gaze made her rush to reassure him, “Obviously that wasn’t the choice she made. He ought to have trusted in that instead of fearing it.”

That bleak smile again. “That’s not easy.”

“I suppose not.”

She couldn’t imagine never seeing David again, and she’d only known him a week. But she was more aware of her own vulnerability now, too—how easily those fears could hurt, the desperate need to avoid any pain.

A distant bark. She glanced in that direction, her hand falling to the spanner at her belt. “Should we go back inside?”

Because she didn’t want to see him hurt, either.

David seemed to have drawn into himself. Annika quietly
watched him as she put potatoes on the furnace to roast, as he pulled a leather-bound notebook and a bottle of ink from Goltzius’s pack. He rolled blankets out into a pallet on the floor, sat with his back against the hull and his legs extended. Like her, he was in his shirtsleeves and trousers; it was too warm inside the troll for anything else. He still wore his boots, however, while she’d removed her stockings and hung them up to dry. She busied herself for a while, laying out the rest of their wet clothes, checking the gauges, poking at the potatoes. Finally she joined him on the pallet, sinking down beside him with her legs crossed.