Riveted (49 page)

Annika quickly pulled away and scampered to the bunk, where she sat with her face in her hands. Heart thumping, David sat next to her. In a wooden seat across the hearth chamber, Dooley laughed himself into tears.

“In front of my
mother
,” she whispered, her cheeks blazing. “That was
so
improper.”

He grinned. “And I’m just an ignorant man from the New World.”

But he wouldn’t do it again. Only proper behavior, from this moment on—and until he had something more to offer her, a promise that he could keep.

Thankfully, Frida didn’t look upset, just amused—and was holding his aunt’s hand. Hildegard dropped a kiss to her mouth before climbing up the ladder. Such an ordinary, familiar gesture. David had done the same to Annika.

Familiar, but still surprising to see them. David supposed he’d become used to it soon enough.

He braced his back against the steel wall behind the bed, realizing that his short venture outside had left him out of breath. Annika was, too. She drew up her knees and rested her cheek on her folded arms, already looking worn again. Frida stoked the furnace, then sat on Annika’s opposite side. She removed her heavy coat, revealing a green tunic, and slipped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

Frida’s gaze moved from Annika’s face to his. A wistful sadness crossed her expression, followed by fierce pride. She tweaked one of Annika’s curls and said in Norse, “I didn’t think I would lose you so quickly again.”

“You won’t.” She squeezed her mother’s hand.

David fought the painful twist in his chest. He wouldn’t think the worst. Nothing about the future had been settled. He didn’t even know yet what they’d find in the town ahead. He looked to Dooley. “What happened at Vik, then?”

“Don’t rush into it now.” Leisurely, Dooley withdrew his pipe and a small bag of tobacco. “There’s only the first telling of it once.”

“And yet the second telling always takes longer.”

“That is the natural progression of it, as I recall details that I’d failed to mention before.”

“Details, or embellishments?”

“It’s a true thing that I’ve fattened up a story or two. But this one doesn’t need any,” Dooley said. He puffed up a small cloud of pungent smoke. “Well now, then. You and Miss Fridasdottor had
been gone two days when di Fiore’s ferry cruiser flies in over Vik, and leaves our cargo sitting pretty in the street. Of course we realize that this means you’ve likely been taken, because we don’t imagine di Fiore had a change of heart—though that’s what the ferry cruiser’s captain says happened. Now, we thought for certain that you were being held at the rail camp.”

“Because you didn’t know of the glacier camp,” David realized.

“We didn’t. Now, I’ve worked up some anger by then. All but steam coming out of my ears, I suppose, as everyone walking at me was suddenly taking another path. But that Captain Vashon, she’s got the same bee under her arse. So she comes to me with this flinty look in her eyes and she says, ‘Prepare your sled, Mr. Dooley. I’m taking it to the camp and I’m bringing our people back.’ And my reply is that she sure as bloody hell isn’t leaving without me.”

Dooley was working himself up a bit now. Red in the face, chest puffing up.

“Exactly like that?”

“It must have not been much worse as I wasn’t slapped for it. So we gather up all the weapons we have, and we’re ready to storm that camp looking for you. Vashon was some sort of big cannon in the Liberé war, did you know?”

“I didn’t.” But David wasn’t surprised. Many of the Vashons were.

“So we don’t come in straight to the camp, mind you, but looking over the cliffs to the cove below. Getting the lay, she says. That monster whale is floating in the water, and everyone else is sort of moving about. We’re watching, trying to figure out where you might be tied up—but we know for certain that they’ve got you because we can see the troll that you left with, that red ribbon under her nose, standing over two others that are lying on the ground. Then all of a sudden…”

Pausing, Dooley took another puff. Annika’s hand tightened on
David’s—she knew what was coming. She’d heard this before. Her gaze met his, her eyes shining, her lips pressed into a tight line as if holding herself from blurting it out.

Dooley drew it out, breathing a ring of smoke and nodding with satisfaction at its shape before continuing, “So there we were, up on that cliff, looking down at the camp, when a roar sounds above me as if the devil himself were being booted from Hell, riding a streak of burning brimstone across the sky. Vashon clobbers me from behind, throwing me to the ground like she’s decided to bash my face open”—he pointed to a cut on his bearded jaw—“but then she’s over the top of me, pinning me down, and I’m about to think that I’ll need to be telling her about my wife when the world explodes. It goes with a sound unlike any I’ve ever heard before, even more than when we saw
Pegasus
blow, you remember that?”

David could never forget it. The enormous cargo airship had caught fire over a French port six years before and ignited the balloon. The force had shattered windows on the shops below, set fire to the docks, and had created so much heat that every nearby airship had burst and burned. Altogether, almost two thousand aviators and dockworkers had been killed. They’d called it the worst disaster since Inoka Mountain.

“I remember,” he said.

“The rocks beneath us shook, harder than any earthquake I’ve ever stood through, but not near as long. And then I look down, and I see that there’s a crater where the camp was, centered right between the first bunkhouse and the cove. That whale’s turned over in the water and the bunkhouses are in ruins. I thought it was a firebomb, though Vashon tells me that it’s not, it’s not like anything she’s ever seen before. Then we see that the ash is coming up over the glacier, so we think the volcano blew a rock.”

David had been thinking the same, too, until he realized what it must have been. Astonished, he looked to Annika. “Di Fiore’s capsule?”

Brows arched, she nodded wildly, lips still pressed flat.

“We didn’t know anything of that, then. We raced down there, searching the remains of those bunkhouses for you, for anyone. But there wasn’t a single man who wasn’t killed, not a single thing still standing.”

All those men dead, and all of them murderers who’d slaughtered the sailors in the whale. He couldn’t be sorry, but David would have liked them to receive justice another way—one that made them face up to what they’d done.

And he’d have liked to believe that the capsule
had
reached the moon. But he couldn’t be sorry that Lorenzo hadn’t succeeded, either—and he was glad that Paolo hadn’t tried.

“I don’t think that was the destiny he had in mind,” David said.

Annika snorted. “But it might be the one he deserved.”

Smiling, he glanced at her. “You
are
bloodthirsty.”

“A bit.” She grinned. “And your Mr. Dooley isn’t done.”

“For a good hour, we were searching through that rubble, then the ash started falling. Now, we’ve got our scarves, but not much else, and I’ve been on enough expeditions with you to recognize the danger we’re in if we breathe that. That whale’s belly up in the cove, so we can’t get into her. So we start along the beach toward Vik as fast as we can, and there’re dogs coming from everywhere after us, and we’re keeping just barely ahead, when all of the sudden there’s a noise from above us. There’s di Fiore’s ferry cruiser, and men shouting over her sides in a panic, screaming for help.”

God. David had to laugh. “The laborers from the glacier camp?”

“The very same ones. Their engine’s stalled from the ash, because they never closed up the vents—”

Annika rolled her eyes, shaking her head.

“—and they’ve killed the crew, so not a one of them knows how to use their sails, and the wind is pushing them out to sea. And so Vashon, she yells up at them to lower their ladder, and they do, but it’s a good five feet above our heads and swinging by as fast
as they are. So I’m thinking that they’re lost, but then Vashon jumps off the sled right into the pack of dogs, and while they’re still trying to stop and get their tails turned around, she runs after that ladder like a deer, leaps up and catches hold of the bottom rung, and hauls herself up there. Five minutes later, the sails are out and she’s coming back round for me, and has already made a deal with the men.”

Awe still suffused Dooley’s voice, so David suspected that he hadn’t embellished any of it. “What sort of deal?”

“She’s got a crew that needs an airship. They’ve got an airship that needs a crew, and they tell her they’re ready to take on all of Castile. By then, Vashon knows we’ve got to go up to that glacier for you. So she says, you give us the airship to go find our people, we’ll fly you to Castile afterward and smuggle you in. At first they weren’t happy to do it, especially with that volcano erupting, but then they figure out that it’s your girl she’s looking to rescue.” He pointed the stem of his pipe at Annika. “It seems that she’s the one who started all of this. So the captain of the airship—the Castilian who was acting as captain, that is—he says that Miss Fridasdottor is the one who helped him, so he’ll help her in return.”

Pride swelled through David’s chest. He looked to Annika. The cut across her temple hadn’t completely healed yet. “And you thought you weren’t brave. That you’ve never done anything that matters.”

She shook her head, the color in her cheeks high.

“So we head back to Vik,” Dooley continued, “and there’s Källa, flying in, though her balloon has next to nothing left and ash in its engine, too. We figure out that you’re somewhere north on that glacier. Källa insists that you’ll hole up and wait, that you know we’d come. They’re cleaning out the engines as fast as they can, the old chief bellowing a full day and night, and that gray snow is falling. We’re all set to leave the next morning when a monster walks into town.”

“This troll?” David guessed, remembering his own reaction.

“The very same. It gave everyone a terrible scare. If not for Källa, Vashon would have likely put a rail cannon on it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Annika said softly.

“And that’s a feeling we all share. So we work it out that Vashon will take the airship up over the glacier, look for the spot you went down, search for where you holed up. Frida here says, ‘No, they’ve got it all wrong. Annika will hole up until she needs to go—and then she’ll go despite her fear.’ So we decided to run up through the pass, looking for you, as we all agreed that’s the route you’d take. And it took us two days, but, there we were.”

And thank God for it. “Is the airship still in Vik?”

Dooley shook his head. “Vashon ran into us the next morning, saw that we had you. She’d have flown us in to Vik, where your aunt Lucia still is, but we saw that there was nothing going to pry Annika away from Frida, and I didn’t want to fly you into Vik and be murdered when you woke and found I’d taken you away from her. So Vashon’s gone on to Smoke Cove, to spread the word about Heimaey and to see if there’re any men at the station who want to fly with them back to Castile—and at this moment, I wouldn’t want to be where Komlan is standing. I suppose they’ll be there a few days, to sort out who is going and who is staying. There’re more men at the station camp than that ferry cruiser can carry at once, so they’ll be making several trips. Vashon says she’ll look to see us in Smoke Cove on her second trip, if we’ll be taking a ride back to Johannesland.”

“And if I want a job again,” Annika said.

David’s heart gave a heavy thud. “Do you?”

“No.” Her fingers threaded through his. “I don’t know where I’ll be. I hope it’s close to you.”

His throat was tight. “I’ll find some way to make sure it is.”

“I’ll not be going far, either,” Dooley said. “After my heart stopped palpitating upon seeing this troll, I realized I might stay a while, record a few folk tales.”

“Mr. Dooley asks many questions,” Frida said dryly.

“And she doesn’t answer a one.”

She smiled slightly. “Perhaps that will come.”

“I think it should,” Annika said in Norse. “Sooner than later.”

Her mother arched auburn brows, answered in the same language. “No more hiding, little rabbit?”

“For a while. But not in the same way. These stories, these trolls—they worked to keep people afraid, but now that people are coming anyway, I worry that they’ll do us more harm than good. They almost put a
rail cannon
on you, Mother.”

“I’m not all that pleased by the thought of it, either.”

“And if we continue on like this—if people believe we are witches and ride in trolls—it’s easier to hurt us when the time comes when we can’t hide any longer. It’s easier to think of us as monsters who must be killed. But if they know the trolls are only machines, and there is no magic or secrets, then we are just women. Then we aren’t any different from the people in the New World. And you know we aren’t—you told me so before I left, and it was true. Not for everyone. But it’s true for most of us.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “It won’t be easy, rabbit.”

“No. It will take a long time, I think. But we can start small, here. And never back down.”

Dooley puffed on his pipe, his gaze following the exchange between the two women. He glanced at David.

David shook his head. Yes, he understood some of it. No, he wouldn’t translate.

But he would stay and help them…whatever form that took.

Annika had to admit relief that the airship wasn’t in Vik
. She wasn’t feeling strong enough to fend off the looks and questions from the crew. For now, she just wanted to be alone with David.

He was the strongest person she’d ever known—not because of nanoagents, but his sheer will. He’d carried her for a full day and most of the night through the snow. The fever must have started that day, as it hadn’t yet become a full-blown bug fever with pustules and a rash, which almost always ended in death. That morning, when she’d finally struggled up out of sleep, her mother had described how they’d found him, cradling her against his chest, burning with fever. She’d been devastated, imagining his terror—and then his naked vulnerability when they’d had to put him in the snow.