Chapter Seven
Mina returned to the bow as the airship passed the Dover cliffs and flew out over a breathtaking expanse of dark blue water. The clouds weren’t wisps now, but small puffs crowding the sky like sheep huddled together. Dozens of ships sailed the lanes, their white canvases full, the rigging standing tall and proud against the water. Her heart hurt, it was all so beautiful. Andrew would have loved this.
By the starry sky, she hoped he was well.
In the distance, the shores of France waited, a flat band of dark green that separated the sapphire water and the azure sky.
The crew’s activity near the rail caught her attention, and a moment later she was forced to abandon her wooden chest when a red-faced aviator told Mina that she was sitting on his gun. Unlike a sailing ship, the airship didn’t carry heavy artillery, but rail cannons—electric-powered weapons that fired smaller ammunitions at greater velocity than a traditional cannon. Though more destructive and accurate, only the most desperate of sea captains ever fired up a rail cannon on the water; the electricity required demanded the use of steam engines, whose vibrations drew the monstrous sea creatures the Horde had altered and bred for their own unimaginable purposes. Fortunately, no megalodons or kraken inhabited the Channel, but there swam sharks big enough to damage rudders, and giant eels who generated electrical discharges strong enough to kill a swimmer or burn holes in a wooden hull. But an airship had nothing similar to fear, and could fire its engines for both propulsion and defense.
She watched in trepidation as they readied the gunports and mounted the rapid-fire rifles, whose multiple spinning barrels could shoot almost two hundred rounds per minute. When Trahaearn came up beside her, he swept an exacting gaze over each weapons station, but must have found little to criticize. With a nod, he looked down at her.
His lips quirked, and he bent to her ear. “Even a fast airship isn’t worth twenty-five livre,” he said. “But no navy in the world could boast of a ship this tight, or a crew as loyal. And so Lady Corsair is worth every denier.”
Mina had to take his word for it. She’d never stepped foot on another airship, let alone a sailing ship. She gestured to the guns. “Do you believe we’ll need those?”
“I believe we’ll need to be ready to use them.”
Said by a man who only carried a dagger. Uncertainty trembled in her stomach. Despite hearing of zombies and insane inventions, Mina realized that his presence had prevented fear from rattling her as hard as it should have. Almost a decade of reading his praise in the newssheets must have seeped into her, down to her bones—and she’d felt safe all the while she’d been with him, knowing that no one in England would dare touch the Iron Duke.
But it was different, here. They’d passed out of England . . . and were on course to confront enemies who would dare.
His gaze sharpened. “What is it? What’s frightened you?”
She shook her head. His expression darkened and he caught her chin, forcing her to look up at him.
“Tell me now, inspector, or—”
A bell chimed, followed by Yasmeen’s shout from the quarterdeck. Trahaearn looked round. He took Mina’s hand, and though she tugged, he didn’t release her until they’d reached the windbreak.
Yasmeen passed him a telescoping spyglass. “Somebody’s father yanked on the navy’s leash. Idiots.”
The duke looked. His face settled into grim lines as he passed the spyglass to Mina. He pointed to the right of the bow. “There, do you see? Five ships under full sail, including two ships of the line.”
The navy’s largest and most heavily gunned warships. Mina found them more easily than she’d expected. Most of the ships passed through the Channel, heading for the mouth of the Thames or having just come from the river. Only one flotilla of five ships was headed south, straight crossing the Channel—and was already halfway there.
Mina lowered the spyglass. “Will we reach the fort ahead of them?”
“Yes. Yasmeen will put the engines at full bore, and with this wind, she’ll run at sixty knots to their fifteen.”
Even as Trahaearn spoke, Yasmeen gave orders that an aviator relayed by shouting into metal tubes running through the deck floor. Bells rang up and down the rails.
“And we’ll fly directly over the fort,” he said. “They’ll have to anchor offshore and row their boats in. Altogether, we should have an hour on them after we’ve arrived.”
Mina nodded. “Why did she call them idiots?”
Keeping his mouth still near to her left ear, Trahaearn moved around behind her until he shared her line of sight. His right palm flattened against her side, and she felt the huge size of his hand through her jacket and armor. “Raise that glass up again, and look to the first ship of the line.”
Swallowing, Mina did. She searched, and finally found the ship’s squared-off stern and tall rigging through the lens, the image shaking from the vibrations in the airship and the unsteadiness of her hands.
“There’s smoke coming from the main deck. Do you see it?”
Barely. If he hadn’t told her to look for it, she wouldn’t have detected the dark smudge. “Yes.”
“Those are the steelcoats. They’re firing up the suits’ mobility engines, and waiting in formation on the decks.”
Oh, smoking hells. That couldn’t bode well for the boys. As harrowing as the kidnapping was, as long as the ransom was paid, very few men or women held hostage came to harm. The practice had become so common among pirates that being taken for ransom was almost to be expected by the upper classes and the wealthy traveling on the high seas—and treated as an everyday business transaction.
But when relations refused to pay the ransom and instead attacked the pirates, everyone usually ended up dead.
“Are they readying the steelcoats as a threat? Or do they intend to storm the fort?”
“Does it matter? Either way, the Dame will know that a ransom won’t be part of any deal they make. So if she sees them coming, she’ll cut and run—and we’ll have no information on the Terror, no arrest for you, no boys left alive.” He took the spyglass. “Some idiot merchant threw his weight around, demanded his boy be rescued, and now the navy’s charging in. Two hundred years with no nation to protect, just the trade routes, and the navy got used to bending over for them—but it’s everyone else who’s fucked.”
The bitterness in his voice startled her. He’d been angry about this once, she thought. But now there was more resignation than fury.
And he probably had it exactly right. While the Horde had occupied England, the navy had become the merchants’ muscle in Manhattan City. But it didn’t have to stay that way.
“That should change now that the Crown is funding naval operations again.” At least she hoped so. The taxes squeezed out of her had to be doing some good—and right or wrong, loyalty very often followed money. Even if she felt the pinch of it, Mina preferred that the navy took money from the Crown’s purse than from the merchants. “And England’s interests will be put ahead of the merchants’ again—and already must be. Not every commander is the merchants’ tool.”
“No, not all of them. But there’s one fewer now.”
Baxter, Mina realized. “There will soon be more like him.”
“That won’t help us today.” Trahaearn lowered the spyglass. His fingers curled around the side of her waist. “You’ve got armor. And your constable?”
She remembered to breathe. “He does, too.”
“All right.” His voice lowered against her ear, though no one could possibly have heard him before. “I’ll keep you safe, inspector.”
How? He was a danger to her, just by being who he was. Moving away from his hand, she said, “I’ll do that myself, sir.”
The captain cut Lady Corsair’s engines a mile from the shore and let the sails take them in. In the sudden quiet, Mina stared out over bow, entranced by the thin ribbon of yellow sand, and the tangled marsh surrounding Calais’s ruins, now little more than stone rubble. Beyond it, a forest stretched to the horizon. Never had she seen so many trees, gnarled and twisted near the sand, becoming fuller and greener farther away from the beach.
Zombies could hide between those trees. But how could an airship?
She looked to Trahaearn, standing beside her. “Where is Bontemps?”
He pointed to the west of Calais’s ruins, near the edge of the marsh, where the growth of trees didn’t seem so dense. “The old fort is there. They maintain the walls to keep out the zombies.”
Using the spyglass, she could just make out the stone remains—worn and weathered, but not rubble. Gray stone walls surrounded the ruins of long structures supported by crumbling arches. Aqueducts, maybe. As they drew closer, she spotted a few sheep grazing in the yards, and small wooden shacks that probably housed chickens, but nothing inhabitable by humans.
“Where do they live?”
“Underground,” Trahaearn said. “Evans settled here because he wanted to dig a tunnel under the Channel from the fort to Dover—”
A laugh burst from her. She couldn’t have heard that correctly. “A what?”
He grinned. “A tunnel under the Channel.”
“Did he actually try?”
“Yes. But it filled with water even before he reached the shore. He blamed the marshes.”
No. Shoulders shaking, Mina steepled her hands in front of her mouth, laughing silently. When her stomach hurt and she couldn’t take another breath, she pushed up her goggles and wiped her eyes. “Oh, he is insane.”
“But brilliant,” Trahaearn said. “When his tunnel failed, he kept digging. This area is a maze of underground chambers now. His generators power electric lights and continually pump the water seepage into the steam engines, so that all he has to do is keep the furnace stoked.”
Mina looked out over the fort again, eyes wide. “Are you certain that’s not just a drunk’s tale?”
“Three years ago, one of the Dame’s aviators went in to the Blacksmith’s for a new leg. Scarsdale found out, and chatted him up at the Hammer & Chain.”
More drunken stories then, but from a different source. “But where would Evans find enough fuel? That much coal would—Oh,” she realized. “The trees. But how does he avoid the zombies?”
“Evans built a harvester—an armored tank that saws down the trees and drags them back to the fort.”
Just like the Horde was rumored to do in other parts of Europe. Giant machines harvested their crops, and stored the food within walled settlements until it was shipped east.
“Inspector.” Trahaearn’s eyes were narrowed as he looked toward the fort. “The spyglass.”
She passed it to him, and watched his face as he peered through the telescope. Whatever he saw didn’t please him. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure.” He shook his head. “No one is manning the walls. There should be at least two lookouts—one for the forest, one for the sea.”
Uneasy, Mina watched the fort for any signs of humans—or zombies—but not a single one appeared as they flew closer.
They were passing over the fort walls when Newberry came up on the main deck, carrying two machetes, a gun belt with holsters, and a fat-barreled blunderbuss. He offered them to Trahaearn.
“Captain Corsair said that these were for you.”
Trahaearn nodded and shrugged out of his long overcoat—and then his short one, followed by his waistcoat. A white lawn shirt stretched over his broad back, doing little to hide the heavy muscles beneath . . . yet she would have liked to see them, anyway. Mina turned away, gripping the rail. Newberry joined her, his face red as a plum.
He cleared his throat. “I don’t see the airship, sir.”
Buckling the holsters around his hips, Trahaearn glanced over the side and nodded. “It’s there. The main yard.”
Puzzled, Mina stared at the ground before realizing that a fence surrounded a long, rectangular section of the yard, preventing the sheep from straying into that area. The oddly mottled ground surface in that section was sunken . . . as if a painted canvas had been stretched across a large hole.
Unbelievable. If the airship was anchored beneath that, she could hardly imagine the size of the underground chamber.
“Yasmeen will wait for us near the fort’s south wall,” Trahaearn said, pushing the machetes through leather loops on each side of the gun belt. “We’ll ride Lady Corsair’s cargo platform down into the compound rather than taking the ladder one at a time. The walls should keep out the zombies, but if one comes over, shoot it on sight. Aim for the head. We run straight for the cover over Bontemps, and drop in on the Dame from there.”
He hefted a coil of rope over his shoulder. Mina looked back toward the sea. The fort only sat five hundred yards from the beach, and the navy ships were drawing quickly nearer. “How long?”
“The wind picked up,” Trahaearn said. “They’ll be ready to anchor in twenty minutes, but it’ll take them longer to row into shore and to cross the marsh. So we need to be done in forty. Ready, then?”
With a nod, Mina followed him amidships, where two aviators waited at the platform’s control lever. With a rattle of chains, the cargo platform rose even with the decks. Bracing his hand on the gunwale, Trahaearn vaulted over the side onto the platform, and turned to help Mina while Newberry clambered over.
She looked back at the airship and blinked. All along the wooden sides, small gunports had opened. At each one, an aviator stood with a rifle, watching the ground below.
Trahaearn must have noted her surprise. “Worth every denier,” he said.
Apparently. Mina braced her feet as the platform began lowering. Trahaearn held the blunderbuss loosely in his left hand, barrel pointed toward the ground. Behind her, she heard Newberry draw in a deep, steadying breath.
The platform touched the ground, and she felt the vibration under her feet. She glanced at Trahaearn. “The generators?”
“Yes.”
“Then someone must be here.” A furnace didn’t stoke itself.
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
A sheep bleated as they raced across the yard. Mina’s heart pounded, but there were no shouts, no gunshots. Trahaearn reached the fence and lifted Mina over before she could protest. Three feet away from the fence, the painted canvas cover had been fastened to a metal frame with hook-and-eye loops. Mina quickly freed one corner, folding back a triangle of heavy canvas. She peered down into the chamber.
Bontemps’s white balloon almost reached the chamber’s canvas roof, and obscured most everything below. Squinting, Mina made out a few large crates stacked on the floor near the corner. No movement, no lights.
Trahaearn crouched beside her, the coil of rope in hand, and Mina saw that he’d tied the other end around the thick fence post. He tossed the rope into the chamber. “I’m down first. I’ll wave you in when it’s secure.”
Her heart leapt into her throat as he backed up and jumped in—not using the rope to climb down, but to slow his fall. On her knees, she braced her hands at the edge, looked over, and saw him land near the crates. The tension on the rope slackened. She tracked him by his white shirt as he walked along the wall of the chamber, until he disappeared from view beneath the sides of the balloon.
Glancing back, she checked on Newberry. The constable had apparently shed his nervousness. Weapons ready, he stood near the fence, quietly scanning the yard. Good man.
She looked into the chamber again as Trahaearn walked into view again. Mina took hold of the rope when he waved her down.
“Follow as soon as I’m at the bottom, Newberry.”
He nodded, and Mina eased herself over the side. Though her bugs made her strong enough to support her weight, they couldn’t guard against a friction burn. She clamped the rope between the sole of her boot and her leather-covered ankle, and eased down slowly. Dim light spilled into the chamber at the opposite end, and once Mina could see past Bontemps’s balloon, she saw that it came from a corridor leading east. Trahaearn stood near an unlit corridor at the near end.
As she reached bottom, he told her quietly, “I don’t hear any noises from this direction.”
They’d go the opposite way, then. She looked around the chamber while Newberry descended. Though damp, its stone walls faintly wet, the air didn’t smell of must or mildew. The chamber was warm, as if heated—but if so, the heat had to have been coming from the opposite corridor.
Newberry dropped the last few feet to the stone floor. Mina looked to Trahaearn, and gestured toward the lighted corridor. He nodded and led the way.
Unlike the straight rectangular walls in the chamber, the passageways were rounded at the top and sides, as if an enormous drill had passed through the stone, and the floor squared off later. A wire ran along the ceiling, connecting small bulbs that glowed with yellow light that flickered and buzzed. Incredible. She’d seen electric lamps before, but always used as novelties, and never put to practical use—that was, if burning a few trees every day in order to light an underground compound could be considered practical.
Halfway down the corridor, she noticed the smell. Sweet, pungent—and as familiar as an opium den. Someone had stopped here to smoke.
“Is Evans a pipelayer?” she whispered.
Trahaearn shook his head. “The Dame isn’t, either—and she’d be damned before allowing her crew to smoke. They can’t work if they’re blissed.”
The scent dissipated as they emerged into another large chamber—this one with a ceiling. Either a workspace or for storing Evans’s inventions, the chamber had been packed full of machinery. Steelcoats stood among piles of scrap metal. Flying autogyros lay against the wall, their bladed rotors propped beside them like steel daisies. A two-seater balloon with a flat envelope had been parked atop a hulking cylindrical vehicle that might have been a submersible. Two more lighted passageways led from the chamber: one directly across, and the other to the right. Mina followed Trahaearn across the chamber, picking her way through the machines. Accustomed to her mother’s meticulously organized attic, the place seemed a disastrous—and dangerous—mess.
A faint yell sounded from the passageway in front of them. Trahaearn paused. Mina did the same, listening as the yelling continued. Male, young, but not angry or panicked—the shouts had an unmistakably bored and insolent tone.
“That’s the yell of someone looking to make his jailer’s life hell, sir,” Newberry said behind her. “But he doesn’t truly think he’s getting out.”
Her pulse racing, Mina nodded. Andrew hadn’t been named among the boys held for ransom . . . but maybe he’d been left off the list.
She had to hope.
Trahaearn slowed at the mouth of the passageway. Turning, he tossed the blunderbuss to Newberry and drew a machete. “Walk backward, constable,” he said softly. “Watch this end of the corridor, and blow the head off anything that enters.”
The muscles in the back of Mina’s neck tightened. Another scent greeted her as she entered the passageway, more familiar than an opium den—and becoming stronger as they approached the next chamber.
There were dead here.
Trahaearn paused at the end of the corridor. “Inspector.”
She joined him, breathing through her mouth as the odor became overwhelming, and looked into the chamber. Oh . . . blue heavens. What had once been a chapel had become a morgue. Four wooden pews had been pushed to the walls, and on the floor lay three rows of sheet-wrapped bodies—fifteen in all.
“Cover me,” she said softly. She crouched next to the first body. Her fingers found the edge of the sheet beneath stiff hair and pulled the linen back from his face. He hadn’t been dead for more than a few days. She pushed aside his collar. Round pustules ringed with crimson had formed a rash beneath his jaw. His swollen tongue was dark red, the vessels in his eyes shot like scarlet starbursts. Unusual, but she’d seen it before.
She covered him and looked to Trahaearn. “Bug fever.”
“And the others?”
Probably not the fever. It wasn’t contagious—and usually only occurred when a severe injury forced the nanoagents to overextend their healing capabilities and to replicate too quickly, burning the body up from the inside.
She pulled the sheet back from the next. Ice slid down her spine. “This one, too.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were all caught in an explosion, or all injured at the same time.”
Ripping the rest of the sheet away, she looked for blood, bruising, anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing to account for the fever—and nothing on the next body.
“I couldn’t find any evidence of injury on Haynes’s body, either,” she realized.
“Haynes died of bug fever?”
“No. Absolutely no.” She shook her head, looked up at him. “Even frozen, the fever would have left its mark on him.”
Mouth set in a grim line, Trahaearn nodded. Pulling back sheets from faces, he checked each body. A few looked as if they’d only been dead for hours.
“Evans and the Dame aren’t here,” he said. “Fifteen men and women . . . this must be her entire crew.”
And there was nothing to be done for them now. Mina stood. “Let’s keep going.”
Through another chamber that had served as a dining room and parlor, Trahaearn found a short corridor that terminated at a wooden door inset with a barred window. A face peered between the bars. A moment later, cheers and whoops sounded. Mina gestured for them to quiet, to no avail.
Damn and blast. With Newberry guarding the head of the corridor, Mina approached the cell door and glanced through the bars. Though they appeared tired and hungry, the boys were yanking on boots and shirts, hugging each other—and still yelling. None looked injured. None were young enough to be Andrew.
Three boys crowded the window, fingers wrapped around the bars as they peered through. She tried the door. Locked.
“Who has the key?”
“The Dame,” one said. “Around her neck.”
Lovely. Mina gripped the bars and pulled. The door creaked but didn’t give, and earned her a disbelieving snort from one of the boys.
“Do you imagine we didn’t try that?”
Ungrateful toe-rag. She resisted the urge to bare her teeth at him and to point out that as bounders, they probably weren’t infected—which meant that her strength doubled theirs.
“Inspector.” She felt Trahaearn’s hand against her waist, gently guiding her to the side. He spared a glance for boys. “You’d best stand back.”
Mina waited, heart pounding. Bracing his feet, Trahaearn lowered his shoulder and shoved his weight into the door. Wood cracked like a shot, splintering the jamb. Trahaearn drew back. His great booted foot slammed beneath the lock. The door crashed open to more cheers. Eight boys boiled out, grabbing the duke’s hand to shake, whooping.
She hissed for them to quiet. Half did. She gritted her teeth and looked to Trahaearn.
“Pipe down!” His quiet command snapped like a whip. Silence immediately fell. Some looked to him wide-eyed, and others with dawning realization. Mina stepped forward before they could begin fawning at the Iron Duke—or sneering at His Bastard Grace. With bounders, one never knew.
“Are the Dame and Jasper Evans still alive?”
Nods all around. All right. Then she and Trahaearn weren’t leaving yet, but these young men were.
She gestured to Newberry and spoke loud enough for him to hear. “The constable will lead you to our airship. You will not make noise. You will follow his directions without hesitation. Your way out is via a rope. I’m ordering him to climb up first, so that he can haul you up—he’s not leaving you down here. Understood?”
More nods. Good enough.
She led them to the end of the corridor. Still holding the blunderbuss at ready, Newberry looked down at her. She read his reluctance—not to lead the boys out, but to leave her. She reassured him with a glance.
“All set, constable?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll see you on Lady Corsair, then. I recommend that you move at a trot.”
She watched his back until the last boy disappeared into the chapel chamber, then looked round. The long dining table at this end of the chamber could have served the Dame’s entire crew. At the opposite end, two striped sofas sat at right angles to each other, facing a playing table surrounded by chairs. The scent of opium was faint here, but had been smoked recently—probably as a restive for those struck by the fever.
Trahaearn listened at one of the adjacent corridors, his head cocked. The smell of opium and sickness thickened as she joined him. Like the cell corridor, this one didn’t open into another chamber, but ended at a door, with several others set off on the sides.
He said softly, “Bedchambers this way.”
They’d hardly taken a step when a side door creaked open. Trahaearn shoved Mina behind him. She barely breathed as they waited, weapons aimed down the corridor.
A woman staggered out, a pistol loosely gripped in her limp hand. Mina’s eyes widened. Wearing only a nightgown, brown hair tangled over her face, she had to be Dame Sawtooth. Serrated blades filled the grin she aimed toward them.
“Trahaearn, finally.” His name emerged as a triumphant whisper from between the blades. “This must be Heaven.”
She tried to lift her gun—and wavered. Stumbling against the opposite wall, she braced herself. A rash of pustules had spread beneath her jaw and underarms. A hoarse laugh burst from her. With bloodshot eyes, she stared at Mina.
“Heaven. So why is a jade here?”
She collapsed in a heap.
“Christ,” Trahaearn said. Striding forward, he kicked the Dame’s gun away from her hand, knelt. He glanced back up at Mina. “Take her feet. And watch her teeth.”
The opium scent surrounded the woman like a cloud. Her skin burned with fever against Mina’s palms. They headed to the sofa, the Dame’s heavy bulk sagging between them.
“Marguerite?”
Mina dropped the Dame’s ankles, whipping around and taking aim. A tall, wiry man stared back at her, a bucket of ice in his hand, his face lined with exhaustion. His shiny bald scalp and the black tufts of hair over his ears made his head seem enormous in comparison to his thin neck.
“Jasper Evans?” she guessed.
“Yes.” His eyes were bright blue, and quick as a bird’s. They darted to Trahaearn, to the corridor where the boys had been held, and back to Mina. “You’ve come to arrest her, then?”
“We have to keep her alive for that. Bring the ice.” Mina turned to the sofa, where Trahaearn laid the Dame lengthwise over the striped pillows. “We have an airship. If we keep her temperature down, she’ll make it across the Channel. We’ll find a physician—or the Blacksmith.”
With a shallow breath, the Dame opened her eyes. Each word was an effort. “That bastard . . . will kill . . . me.”
Trahaearn or the Blacksmith? Mina didn’t ask. Evans knelt next to the sofa, gently stroking the Dame’s face. She smiled weakly up at him.
Mina reached for the ice. “What happened to you and your men?”
“Big performance,” the Dame whispered. Her eyes rolled back. “Last call.”
Evans put his forehead to hers. “A brilliant performance, Marguerite.”
And they were playing out a scene that had Mina’s throat aching. She wrapped ice in a handkerchief, leaned forward to place it against the Dame’s neck.
The Dame jerked her head, snapping her bladed teeth an inch from Mina’s fingers. Yanking her hand back, Mina stared. The Dame laughed hoarsely. Her eyes closed and she rested her head against the pillows again.
Mina gave the handkerchief to Evans to use, instead.
“What happened to your men, then?” Trahaearn repeated Mina’s question. “What happened to the Terror?”
When the Dame didn’t—or couldn’t—answer, Evans glanced up at him, eyes shimmering with tears. Mina couldn’t read any malice in that look. Either he didn’t hate the duke as the Dame did, or her condition had rendered him unable to care about anything else.
“Colbert told her that if the ship remained at a distance, the explosion wouldn’t affect them.”
Trahaearn’s expression turned dangerously cold. “An explosion on my ship?”
“No. We were on the Terror, watching the explosion.” Evans wiped his cheeks, leaving streaks of grease and oil. “It was a demonstration. Showing the buyers. Colbert had a little one, and it just needed a generator. The trigger requires an electric current.”
A little what? “A little weapon?”
“Nothing like I’ve seen before. Nothing like I’ve dreamed of.” Evans’s hands shook. “They rowed Haynes out in a launch, all of the oarsmen without bugs. And they took that little one with them. A mile, they said, was that safe distance, so the men rowed a mile and a half. They started up that generator, the sharks came at them, and then they put the little one into the water and—” He flung his hands up and out, mimicking an explosion. “On the Terror, we felt it—thump!—against our chests. It didn’t blow up big. Only like a cannon, shot into the water. But everything around that launch was dead. They had those giant sharks floating around that little boat. And the oarsmen rowed back—but the captain, he was dead. Without a mark on him.”
Trahaearn lowered to his heels next to Mina. “So you boarded the Terror and took her over. You sent Haynes out on a boat with a bomb. And it killed him, but everyone on the Terror who felt that thump got bug fever. Except you.”
Those quick blue eyes stared steadily back at him. “I’m not infected, captain. I run machines. They don’t run me.”
Mina began wetting the Dame’s nightgown with ice water, trying to swallow down the sick lump in her throat. Andrew was infected with nanoagents, and he’d been on the Terror. But if he came down with the fever, he knew to stay cold . . . if there was anywhere cold to go on the west coast of Africa. He’d find something. She closed her eyes. Wishing couldn’t make it true, but she’d try.
Trahaearn flattened his palm against the small of her back, as if to reassure her. Mina gathered herself. She looked up again as he asked, “The weapon kills any bugs within one mile?”
“The little one did. The one they’re selling at the auction, they say it’ll kill all the zombies and all the Horde in a two-hundred-mile radius.”
Mina’s mouth dropped open. Sweet blue heavens. Who wouldn’t want that? It could be a devastating attack against the Horde, and a strong first step toward taking back Europe or Africa.
“Someone smuggled this out of Horde territory?” Trahaearn asked.
“Yes, from what I know. Whoever did, the risk will pay off. Starting bid is twenty-five thousand livre.”
Twenty-five thousand? Astonished, she stared at Evans. Who could possibly pay that much? Certainly no individual person. Perhaps the Lusitanians. The French—though they’d nearly gone bankrupt in their war with the Liberé. The Arabian tribes, if they pooled their resources.
Even the duke appeared taken aback. His mouth opened, but he remained speechless.
Mina finally found her voice. “Why the Terror?”
“Colbert owed Marguerite. When he heard Marco’s Terror was sailing to the Gold Coast, he made her an offer: He’d give her Marco’s Terror, and she’d give him a man for the demonstration.”
Haynes. “How did he know the Terror was coming?”
Evans shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“When you took the ship, how many besides Haynes were killed?”
“Three of our men. All of their steelcoats and lieutenants.”
All of the marines and officers executed. “Any young boys, fourteen years of age?”
“No.” Evans gave an emphatic shake of his head. “No. A couple of the crew were injured in the fight. But none of those we threw over were that young. Marguerite won’t hold for that.”
Mina looked to Trahaearn for confirmation. He nodded.
The knot around her chest eased. Knowing about the bug fever, she couldn’t be truly relieved. But knowing that they hadn’t killed any boys helped.
“So who has the Terror now?”
As if Trahaearn’s voice stirred her, the Dame smiled. “Hunt,” she said dreamily. “Hunt has her.”
Whoever Hunt was, the Dame apparently couldn’t have hit Trahaearn harder. The duke’s face whitened with cold fury. His fingers found the machete’s handle.
Oh, no. Grabbing his wrist, Mina tried to head him off, to distract him. “Who dropped Haynes in London?”
“I did, for her. She was already sick and wanted it done.” Evans’s face seemed to crumple. “We used almost all of our ice on him.”
“We’ll get more,” she promised. “We’ll take her back—”
A deafening boom cut Mina off, knocked her sprawling to the stone floor. Pain shot up her elbows. She couldn’t draw breath, as if someone had punched her in the chest. The lights flickered.
Smoke billowed through the room, hot and acrid. She felt Trahaearn’s hand, and turned her head, searching.
He kneeled next to her, and through the ringing in her ears, she realized he was shouting Inspector! again. Faintly, she recognized his other words: a firebomb.
Shot from one of the navy ships? She struggled to understand. Why would the navy bomb them?
She saw Evans looking wildly around, his body covering the Dame’s. Mina got her boots under her, but apparently not quick enough. The duke hauled her up. Her hearing cleared, the ringing fading to a buzz.
“. . . all right?” he was saying.
Dizzy, but not hurt. She nodded. Then her heart stilled. “Newberry!”
She sprinted for the corridor. The duke caught her in the chapel, amid the smell of rot and smoke and death. She fought him off.
Grabbing hold of her overcoat, he whipped her around, pushing her back up against the wall. “You can’t!” he shouted. “If a firebomb hits Bontemps, the hydrogen envelope will blow! And you can’t make him haul those boys up any faster!”
No. But she could order him to leave the boys and run.
As if he’d read her face, Trahaearn gave her a shake. “He wouldn’t run. Because that means he’d leave you down here. His only chance is if he’s already up in Lady Corsair. We have to go back. Evans will tell us another way out that won’t take us past a hydrogen—”
Another boom shook the chamber. Trahaearn flattened his body against hers as rubble rained around them. That one hadn’t been as bad, Mina thought, but then her ears popped and the air thinned, as if sucked through the corridor by a giant lifting bellows.
Trahaearn’s face stilled. “Fuck me,” he whispered hoarsely.
In a powerful surge, he dived with her to the corner of the chamber, tearing her overcoat down her arms. Shoving her bottom to the floor, he crouched over Mina’s form and flung the wool over their heads like a tent.
The fireball exploded from the corridor, visible around the loose edge of the overcoat. Gasping, Mina flattened it against the wall, sealing them in. Orange light and heat radiated through the thick wool, charring with a rancid stink. Flames roiled and flicked between their legs, hot against her boots. Over the roar, she heard the hiss of Trahaearn’s indrawn breath, knew the overcoat was burning against his back, and so didn’t scream that her feet felt boiled in leather.
Then it passed, and Trahaearn whipped the overcoat away. Mina had expected cool air to hit her face but it was hot, thin. She blinked, adjusting to the dim light. The electric bulbs had blown out, but fires burned in patches on the wooden benches and the sheets covering the bodies.
His gaze searched her face. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “You?”
“I’ll live. Come with me.”
He pulled her up. They ran back to the parlor, her feet shrieking with every step. Though the fireball had burned itself out before reaching the chamber, the lights were off. The sound of the generators had vanished.
Mina called out, didn’t receive an answer. Still holding on to Trahaearn, she felt her way to the sofa. Evans and the Dame had gone.
Stunned, she stared into the dark. The duke gave a short bark of laughter, gruff and amused, and she almost liked him for it, but then another explosion rocked the chamber and she was on her knees, coughing, with Trahaearn coughing beside her. Crashing sounds came from the chapel, wood splintering against stone, the shriek of metal. Not the bomb. The underground chambers were being shaken apart.
“All right,” he said a moment later. “Evans isn’t a bugger. He’s carrying a woman twice his size. He’s not gone too far.”
“He’s carrying a woman who needs more ice,” Mina added. “He brought some from the passageway nearest the table.”
“We’ll go that way, then.”
He helped her up. Within a minute, they found the passage entrance and hurried along its length, using the curving sides as a guide.
At the end of it, Trahaearn paused before tugging her to the left. “There’s faint light there, do you see?”
Faint light and the familiar sound of a steam engine. They ran toward it. The quick pace beat tears of pain from her eyes, but by the time they emerged into a new chamber lit by a single gas lamp, the agony in her feet had reached excruciating, and so she didn’t need to feel it anymore, wouldn’t feel it anymore.
And then she stopped running anyway, her jaw dropping at the sight of the rattling, hissing machine in front of her. The enormous armored vehicle had to be the tree harvester. Twice Mina’s height and half as long as a locomotive car, it resembled a giant black scorpion with two sawing pincers, and a long chute lined with shredding blades at the tail.
Trahaearn shouted, “Evans!”
She spotted the horizontal slits at the vehicle’s front and back, the flickering light that shone through. Evans looked at them and shook his head. The machine lurched into motion, rolling on a track of segmented steel plates.
“Goddammit!” Trahaearn roared and started for him, then staggered as another explosion came from deep within the compound. A long spar of shale shaved off from the ceiling. Mina screamed a warning. Trahaearn covered his head and the stone crashed to the floor less than two yards from where he stood, shattering into thousands of razor-edged pieces.
Mina’s hands flew to her mouth. He stared at it, shocked, before looking toward her.
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
He nodded. “We’ll follow him out on foot.”
Mina snatched up the gas lamp. The harvester was already far ahead of them, rolling at speed down a long passageway dug out to the machine’s dimensions.
Trahaearn took the lamp and pulled her into a jog. “The generator’s off, but the furnace is probably still burning. If that boiler blows, it’ll be worse than any bomb.”
Oh, blue heavens. Mina ran faster. Her thighs began to burn as the passageway sloped uphill. Ahead, she could see daylight, and that was . . . terrible.
“That harvester doesn’t break through the fort’s walls every time they use it!” she shouted over their pounding feet. “This passageway will probably take us outside the fort!”
Trahaearn laughed again, shaking his head. She realized it wasn’t a denial, but a What next? But he knew what to do. He dropped the lamp, let go of her hand, and drew his machetes.
They slowed as they neared the exit—a steel door that probably remained closed except for when the harvester came and went. Now it stood wide open, facing the forest. Birds chirped and twittered merrily among the branches, as if zombies didn’t prowl the earth below them.
Ridiculous little animals.
Mina checked her weapons. “Please tell me that fire and explosions will frighten the zombies away.”
He cast her a look that she couldn’t interpret—almost as if he was deciding whether to lie. Finally, he shook his head. “No. The noise draws them.”
“Lovely,” she said, and sighed. “We’re past the south wall of the fort. Do you think Lady Corsair will still be waiting for us there?”
“No. Not within range of the firebombs.”
Mina frowned. “They seem to have stopped.”
“Because they’ve sent in the steelcoats. Listen.”
She strained to hear, beyond the birds and the distant rumble of the collapsing compound. There was a regular rhythm, like heavy footsteps all moving in sync. The sound sent unease trembling through her belly.
Trahaearn rolled his shoulders, as if loosening stiff muscles. “I’m going to see where Yasmeen’s gone. Stay put.”
Moving quietly for such a big man, he vanished around the steel door. He returned a moment later, his jaw tight.
“She’s over the forest. Not far. A two-hundred-yard run.”
Through the forest. She swallowed hard before nodding.
“And inspector . . .” He strode forward and stared down at her, his gaze fierce. “You run. Because I am not taking a zombie into my bed.”
Mina’s mouth dropped open, and he bent his head as if to kiss her. She jammed her gun barrel under his chin. He grinned.
And stepped back. “I’ll be behind you. Don’t stop for anything.”
No stopping. She drew a deep breath. Another. With her hand, she verified the direction, saw his nod. And she took off.
She immediately spotted the balloon, so bright and white through the leaves. Racing toward it, she dodged trees that blended together, imagining every one a zombie with clawing hands until their shapes resolved into trunks and branches. Everything was loud, her heartbeat, the airship engines, the crash of her feet though the grass and the brambles, and the Iron Duke behind her. Would the zombies hiss and growl? Would she even hear them before their teeth were tearing pieces from her? Lungs burning, she sprinted through a small treeless glade, where the knee-high dried grass wanted to wrap around her ankles, and though her feet burned she was glad of her boots, because after the Horde had turned so many creatures of the sea into monsters, the stars alone knew what they might have done to the animals on land. Unless the zombies had eaten them all. With no people left to kill, they must be consuming something.
Hopefully they’d started eating each other.
Another cluster of trees, and then she burst through into another glade, and there was the cargo platform, waiting ten feet above the grass. She heard a shout from above and the platform fell to the ground with a clank. She leapt aboard, heart racing, chest heaving.
The airship’s engines huffed and hissed. The platform lifted from the ground. Her scream Not yet! was lost in the noise. She spun to look for Trahaearn.
Terror gripped her in an icy claw. He was crossing the glen at a dead run, two zombies racing in from the sides, streaked with gore and their hungry visages too terrible to believe. Trahaearn met her eyes—and dropped his machetes.
Through her shock and horror, she understood. He couldn’t jump and catch on to the platform with weapons in his hands. And if he stopped to kill the zombies, to wait for the platform to lower again, more would come. She could see them through the trees now, running, so fast.
Mina braced her feet. He couldn’t stop them.
So she would.
Rhys saw the inspector’s weapon come up, and hoped she had decent aim, or she’d soon be putting a bullet into his brain, too. Her gun cracked once, twice. The cargo lift had almost raised her over his head.
Leaping up, he snagged the chain. His stomach slammed into the edge of the platform, half his body still dangling over the side. Fighting the hot pain that threatened to swamp his vision, he swung his leg up and hauled himself aboard. He looked down. The zombies were twitching on the ground.
He collapsed onto his back and laughed, which pulled like hell at his gut—but at least he wasn’t going to end up in a zombie’s.
The inspector stared down at him. “You’ve gone mad!”
Maybe he had. He’d never tossed away his weapons before, and rarely put his life in someone else’s hands. “I weighed chances that you’d miss against the odds that Yasmeen would leave me here. I chose the right one . . . and I’m glad you didn’t miss.”
She smiled a little, and he liked watching that sweet curve form on her lips. If he wasn’t tasting her mouth, then looking at it was the next best thing.
“But if she left you, you couldn’t pay her,” the inspector said.
He got to his feet. “She doesn’t need me now. She has eight boys aboard that she could hold for ransom.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. Rhys’s gut twisted again, but with possession and need and a deep emotion that had formed in the dark chambers of the fort. Admiration made up some of it. She had balls of steel, this woman. But there was more, too—and he wanted all of it. Needed all of it, all of her. But what he had now was looking, and so he took in his fill.
The black roll of hair at her nape had lost its pins somewhere between the first explosion and the third, and fell in a tangle to her waist. Without her long wool overcoat, he could see the modest layers of lace sewn to the back of her trousers, as if the ruffles could conceal the perfect shape of her ass. Her short coat fastened to her throat and nipped in at her narrow waist, and suggested that she had no tits to speak of under those buckles and her armor, but a little mouthful would be enough, her nipples against his tongue—as soon as he got those buckles open.
The first opportunity he got, Rhys was going to shag her blind.
That wouldn’t be now. The platform rose into place beside the weather deck. Rhys helped the inspector over the rail—she was still shaking a little. Christ Jesus, he was amazed she didn’t scream and cry. He could only see a few bruises and cuts, but Rhys felt like he’d been beaten all over; she probably felt just as ragged.
Yasmeen had already picked up speed, flying west—keeping out of range of the navy ships. They’d gone far enough that the forest obscured the fort from view, though the smoke rising above it marked the location.
He held on to the inspector’s hand and pulled her along to the quarterdeck. Unwilling to let her go just yet, he ignored her tugging—but he couldn’t ignore how she was looking around, her gaze panicked and searching.
He needed to take that fear away for her, then.
Yasmeen turned to him. Before she could vent the fury he saw in her eyes, he had to know, “Did her constable make it aboard?”
His inspector stilled, waiting, and closed her eyes with relief when Yasmeen snapped, “What? Yes—they’re all below decks. And those bluecoat bilgewater trouts fired on me without a single fucking flag!”
Rhys frowned and looked toward the ships. Ten years ago, they wouldn’t have given Rhys on the Terror any warning, either—but even though Yasmeen was well-known as a mercenary and had a deadly reputation, she wasn’t a pirate. She hadn’t broken English law. Unless she’d fired on them or posed an immediate threat, Lady Corsair should have been treated the same as a civilian or merchant vessel: signaled and given an opportunity to surrender.
Brow furrowed, the inspector shook her head. “Why would they fire on the airship or the fort? They had to have known about the ransom demand and the possibility that the boys were here.”
Rhys could only imagine one reason for such a response. “Unless they knew about the auctioned weapon, too,” he said. “If they had enough information to link the Terror to the auction, and the Dame to the Terror, they might have come up with a weapon that can kill every bugger within two hundred miles sitting just thirty miles from English shores.”
“Even if the Dame didn’t have it?”
“They wouldn’t have taken the risk of finding out. But now they’ll be wishing they had.”
Against such a threat, the lives of eight young men would have been an acceptable cost. To placate the merchant families, their deaths would be painted as a noble sacrifice, the blame laid at the Dame’s feet—and no one would have known that the weapon hadn’t actually been at the fort.
But the boys’ rescue had changed that. And both the merchants and the public wouldn’t just see their rescue as an escape from the Dame, but a narrow escape from an overreaction by the Royal Navy.
The inspector seemed to be coming to the same realization. “Whatever their intentions, this will not reflect kindly on them. They fired on that fort knowing the boys might be there—and that you were there. There are few people in England who will accept that they intended to sacrifice the Iron Duke, no matter the size of the threat.”
Yasmeen’s brows arched. She looked to him for an explanation, and he returned the look with a gesture that said he’d catch her up to speed soon—particularly as he’d be needing her services again.
She nodded and asked the inspector, “How could they have known he was on my ship?”
“Newberry sent an update to Hale from Chatham. She’d have passed that on to the Admiralty.”
“They might have launched the ships from Dover before receiving it.”
Yasmeen was right: The timing would have been close. But with such a cock-up, the navy might be looking to cover it up—and he didn’t want to be thrown under when they did. Especially as his inspector and Lady Corsair would be thrown under with him.
He said to Yasmeen, “Keep a wide berth around the ships, then fly north into London.”
“And let them shoot me down over town? We can’t know that they’ve received the message that you’re on board . . . and now they might believe I’m carrying some kind of weapon from the fort into London.”
Even if they didn’t believe it, that would be the perfect method of concealing their blunder. “Stop over Ashford’s wiregram station. We’ll send grams to the parents, police headquarters, and the newssheets that Lady Corsair has their children aboard.”
“And you,” the inspector added.
He nodded. “You’ll tether the ship over the Embankment near Westminster Palace, and we’ll tell them to meet with us there.”
A bell from the stern chimed. Even as he and Yasmeen looked around, the airship shuddered, and a deep rumble sounded over the roar of the engines.
He looked to the inspector, whose lips had parted as she stared at the enormous black cloud rising over the fort, tall enough that it would be seen from Dover.
She swallowed and appeared slightly faint. “The boiler?”
“Yes.” He sure as hell wouldn’t have made her run through a forest full of zombies for any other reason. “So will you tell me what to call you now?”
She blinked in confusion, but her gaze quickly sharpened and her lips curved. “How does ‘grateful’ sound, sir?”
Her smile took a good hold of him, wrapped Rhys right up into her fingers. It wasn’t comfortable, but tight and constricting. He’d accept that—but only if he got a hold on her in return.
“Not good enough,” he said.
“Then you will have to keep making do with ‘inspector.’ ”
He wouldn’t, but he pushed aside his frustration. He’d know more of her soon. He’d know all of her soon. With a sharp nod, he turned to the ladders leading below decks. “Let us go find your constable, then.”
Newberry waited outside the door to the wardroom, as if standing guard over the boys taking their meal inside—which meant that he didn’t think much of them. If he’d liked their company, he’d have been standing inside the cabin, instead.
His composure slipped when he spotted Mina. Last night a dress, today her hair down and stripped of her overcoat. His whole world must seem to be falling apart.
She stopped in front of him. A faint bruise darkened his cheek-bone and his bottom lip was swollen. Those weren’t from any explosion. Those were from fists . . . and the reason he didn’t wait inside the wardroom?
If so, she’d toss those boys to the zombies herself. But she’d find out what had caused those bruises before she gave her temper free rein.
“You made it all right, then?”
“Yes, sir.” With a nod, Newberry regained his stiff upper lip. “The aviators must have been watching from the airship. After I pulled the first boy up, Lady Corsair sent down a man with a rope ladder. It speeded the process, and we were aboard before the navy fired the first bomb.”
“Then why is your mouth swollen, constable?”
He stared straight ahead—which was well over Mina’s head. “After I had the boys aboard, I tried to return to the compound, sir. Lady Corsair prevented me.”
After the firebombing started? He’d have been blown to pieces. Though it was difficult to get into the face of a man who stood a foot taller than Mina, she did it. When his stoic gaze lowered to meet hers, she snapped, “You tried to return against my orders, constable? I said to await me here.”
“Yes, sir. You did. I apologize for my insubordination, sir.”
That apology was bunk. She narrowed her eyes, but backed down. “Your apology is noted and will be taken under consideration.”
“Yes, sir.” He paused. “It took six of her men to stop me, sir.”
Pride filled her chest. Good man. She turned away to conceal her reaction, and found herself meeting Trahaearn’s steady dark eyes. Damn him. Why did he always seem to be trying to see into her, down to her bones?
She would not let him see how that unsettled her. She knew his intentions. He wanted to bed her. But if she valued her family, if she valued herself, then his bed could never be an option.
Mina looked to the wardroom door. “And how do the young gentlemen fare, constable?”
“Mostly hungry, sir. Evans apparently neglected them in favor of the sick crew and the Dame.”
“And your impressions of them, Newberry?” When his gaze flickered to the Iron Duke, she said, “Speak freely, please. I doubt that His Grace will run to tell their fathers.”
“They don’t seem long out of the schoolyard, sir. Not just their age, but that they look to Mr. Wright as their leader. They take their cues from him.” He paused, as if giving it another thought. “Three of them aren’t so bad.”
So over half of them were brats. At least that solved the mystery of why Newberry stood outside—and unless they had something worth telling her about Andrew or the Terror, she would not be long, either. All that she wanted was something to drink, and a place to remove her boots while she let the burns and blisters heal.
“Thank you, constable. You may go above decks, if you wish. We’re returning to London. The two hours between here and there are your own.”
She opened the door and immediately saw the group formation Newberry had noted. When she entered, each boy at the table looked up at her—and then four glanced to the face of the handsome, dark-haired boy sitting nearest to her. Mr. Wright, she presumed. The three at the opposite end of the table shifted their focus behind her, instead—which told her that Trahaearn must have stepped through the door. He came to her side, and she felt him there, big and imposing, but she didn’t look over at him.
“Gentlemen,” she said. “I am Detective Inspector Wentworth of the Metropolitan Police Force. I see that you’ve been given something to eat. Is there anything else that you need? Have any of you injuries that need to be seen to?”
“We’re fine,” Wright spoke for them all, and looked to Trahaearn. “Are those bastards dead?”
“Most of them succumbed to bug fever,” Mina answered. No need to mention now that Evans had escaped with the Dame in his harvester. “We believe Dame Sawtooth will, too.”
Wright’s jaw clenched. That answer wasn’t good enough for him—and Mina supposed she couldn’t blame him. In his place, she’d have probably wished to hear that her kidnappers had been shot or killed in the bombing, rather than succumbing to an illness.
Maybe he’d be satisfied if she told him that bug fever was a far worse way to die.
A boy from the end of the table spoke up. “Was the Royal Navy firing on us?”
“We believe they had misinformation regarding the events surrounding your kidnapping. Will you tell me what you remember of the incident?”
They told her—but there was little she hadn’t already heard. The pirates from Bontemps had boarded Marco’s Terror before dawn six days ago, and most of the boys had slept through the ensuing fight. Afterward, the pirates had taken them up to Bontemps, and they’d been locked in a cabin during the demonstration. Haynes hadn’t met with the English fleet, they didn’t know the exact location of the Terror when she’d been taken, and they didn’t know where she was headed.
Mina held back her sigh, and shared a look of frustration with Trahaearn. This wasn’t the boys’ fault, but she’d hoped for more.
“Evans said that he felt a thump against his chest during the explosion,” she said. “Did any of you feel it?”
They all nodded.
She couldn’t quite contain her surprise. “Are any of you infected?”
A few looked mildly horrified by her question. They all shook their heads. She tried not to feel disappointed. She hadn’t expected otherwise.
“Were there any other sailors or officers from the Terror with you? Perhaps someone who developed bug fever on the way?”
Again, the answer was no. Damn it. But perhaps one of them knew something.
“There was a boy on the Terror—the Earl of Rockingham’s son, Andrew Wentworth. Did any of you know him?”
They looked to each other, their surprise obvious.
“No,” Wright said.
“Fourteen years of age, blond hair.” She pointed to the boy across from Wright. “As tall as you. He was a midshipman.”
There was a shocked silence—then hoots of laughter from all around.
Wright shook his head. “An earl’s son, a midshipman? You’re codding us.”
“No, no! You!” Another boy slapped the table, then pointed to Mina, wide-eyed. “She’s the one I told you all about. Her mother’s the blind countess who bent Oedipal when—”
“She saw her Horde bastard! So this midshipman is the son of the cuckold earl?” Wright crowed, laughing and shaking his head. With his fingers at the corners of his eyes, he stretched them into slits. “We didn’t know anyone who looked like—”
He broke off suddenly, his face paling. The other boys weren’t looking to Mina anymore, laughing, but to the man beside her.
“Leave the cabin, inspector.”
Trahaearn’s soft command sent crackles of ice down her spine. Sudden bursts of noise ricocheted through the room. Pleas of “No!” and “Wait!” Chairs scraped the floor as half the boys jumped to their feet, their hands out—in apology or surrender.
“I’m not finished here, Your Grace.” Still, she didn’t look at him. Her face was hot. Her heart beat with sickening thuds. “Did any of you see my brother? Fourteen. Blond.” She focused on the closest boy. “You?”
His skin flushed a dull red. “No. Or if I did, I didn’t notice.”
“Anyone else?”
Petrified with their eyes on the duke, only half responded with a shake of their head.
Trahaearn barked, “Anyone?”
This time there was a chorus of Nos and heads whipping back and forth like monkey drums.
Mina nodded. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
She tried to escape quickly, but he caught her in the corridor, slamming his hand against the bulkhead in front of her and blocking her way. She stared over the gate of his left arm. Her feet hurt. She wanted to sit. She didn’t want to do this.
But there was one thing she needed to say.
“Thank you for defending my family’s honor, Your Grace.”
With light fingers, he brushed hair away from her face. She heard his deep sigh. “What do you need, inspector?”
Would he care for a list? But she couldn’t even drum that up. A better question: What could she have now?
“A cabin where I can be alone,” she said. “A washbasin, cold water, and hairpins.”
“I’ll see that you get them.” But he didn’t yet leave her. “Why wasn’t your brother taken to Bontemps? He had to know that if he told the Dame who he was, she would take him to ransom.”
Yes, he’d known. And her father had ordered Andrew to take that option if the need ever arose—but it wasn’t supposed to have arisen. Marco’s Terror should have been the safest ship in the Royal Navy, always surrounded by a fleet, never straying into uncertain waters. Mina didn’t know how many letters her father had written or favors he’d asked to make certain that Andrew was assigned to that ship. But they’d all been for naught, and that stupid, stupid boy hadn’t spoken up and said who he was.
“He knew we couldn’t pay the ransom. And he knew what we’d do to raise the money.”
“And what is that?”
“Whatever it took. And the most expedient way would be for my mother to break her contract with the Blacksmith, and sell her automata directly instead of through his shops. Andrew knew that—and he knew that the Blacksmith would take her eyes back if we did.”
He didn’t respond for a long second. “Wouldn’t it occur to your family to ask the Blacksmith for a reprieve?”
Was he joking? She looked up at him. He was frowning, his dark gaze serious. She couldn’t believe it.
“And warn the Blacksmith of what we planned to do? Why not tear out her eyes ourselves and hand them over?”
His eyes narrowed. “You lived beneath Horde rule for too long.”
Her laugh broke from her. Perhaps in another world, it was easy to trust that someone wouldn’t hurt them, given the opportunity. Perhaps it was easy to owe someone, despite knowing that the balance of your life rested on that debt.
“You have a talent for understatement, sir.”
Smiling, he lowered his arm. “I’ll find your cabin and pins, inspector.”
He turned to go. She stopped him with, “Who is Hunt?”
His shoulders stiffened. In all of this time, though they’d spoken of almost nothing but the Terror and the circumstances in which she’d been taken, he hadn’t mentioned Hunt to her, as if avoiding the topic. She was almost afraid to know why, but had to ask.
“Who is he, and what does it mean for the Terror’s crew?”
“He was Adams’s first lieutenant before the mutiny.” His hand curled into a fist at his thigh. “After I killed Adams, I deserted him with the other officers—but I should have killed Hunt, too.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer. He said instead, “The ship needs a crew. Hunt will keep those who are useful to him.”
But that would be good for Andrew. So why wouldn’t he look at her? “Isn’t a midshipman useful?”
“Yes. In one way or another.”
Dread climbed up her throat. “What does that mean?”
“It means that at the Ivory Market, a fourteen-year-old boy always has a use.” He looked over his shoulder, and she saw his anger, his hatred—then all were masked by cold detachment. “It only depends on which use Hunt thought would be worth more.”