She paused once, frozen as a small tremor shook the ground. A muffled cracking sounded from deep below. Annika was accustomed to quakes, but not while walking through tunnels of snow. She hurried outside.
In the clearing, she was relieved to see that none of the tunnels had collapsed. The sky was clear overhead; the airship had already gone. She hoped that Lorenzo kept his promise and sent
Phatéon
’s cargo to Vik, but didn’t trust that he would. Why give them food then threaten to kill them all? He could just as easily lie, say the
cargo had been delivered, and she and David would have no way to know.
Escape was still their best option. Of course, now she had to wonder whether Källa would go, too. Annika couldn’t imagine leaving her. But if her sister was determined to stay, she might have to.
She circled the clearing, aware of the watchful eyes of the guards. The balloons were tethered, she saw, but not locked. Good. She paused at the entrance to the laborer’s quarters, then moved on when a guard approached her, frowning.
Källa soon joined her with a fussy Olaf in tow, tugging at her hand and trying to get away. She let the boy go and they watched him run for the nearest mound of snow. Within seconds, his coat was on the ground.
Her sister sighed. “I don’t know how he opens the buckles so quickly.”
Especially while wearing mittens. Annika could only shake her head. Of all the roles she’d imagined Källa in when she’d found her—adventurer, shieldmaiden, perhaps even a mercenary or pirate—Annika had never imagined that her sister might also be a mother.
And she was still a shieldmaiden. Annika glanced to one of the guards standing at the edge of the clearing. “Why do you protect Paolo when Lorenzo has all of these men to do it?”
“Because he doesn’t trust them to do it properly.” A wry smile twisted her sister’s lips. “He doesn’t trust me, either. But at least he knows I will protect Paolo and wait to kill him.”
“Then who are the guards for?”
“The workers.” They both paused as Olaf tumbled down the snow mound. Laughing, Källa called encouragement to him. When the boy regained his feet, she continued, “Lorenzo pushes the laborers as far as he can. He hires the guards to have protection near in the event he pushes them too far.”
Annika hadn’t seen any of the laborers since she’d come back out to the clearing. Why weren’t they outside? Surely they didn’t like to be cooped inside throughout the day. “Are they not allowed to come out?”
“They are.” Källa gave her a sideways glance. “But they are like boilerworms.”
The giant mechanical worms that bored their way beneath the Australian deserts. Valdís had brought back tales of the dangerous creatures, and the hunters who’d died trying to capture the worms as trophies.
The laborers were like
those
? “How so?”
“They lie in wait. They play dead. Lorenzo thinks that the men are beaten, their spirits broken, but…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I don’t believe the same. I think they merely bide their time.”
“Until what?”
“Until they are done waiting.” Källa met her eyes, suddenly serious. “If that happens, Annika, do what you do best: hide. Find me if you can, but if not, find a hole and wait for the fighting to end.”
Annika stared at her. “Do you think it will be so dangerous?”
“I don’t know. I have seen how they look at the guards, Annika, when they think no one sees. Just a glance now and then, as if they forget to hold it in…or can’t any longer.”
But di Fiore was an observationist. “Lorenzo doesn’t see?”
“He does. But he has made up his mind that they will never act upon it.”
That couldn’t be true. “Then why the guards?”
Källa laughed a little. “Because he isn’t a fool, Annika. Even he knows that he might be wrong—Oh, Olaf! You silly flounder.”
She strode forward to pick up the boy, who’d landed on his face in the snow. He opened his small mouth and a horrid wail split the quiet in the clearing. Källa cooed and brushed away tears while Annika watched, trying not to laugh too loudly. The sobs didn’t
stop. With a sigh, Källa gave Annika a long-suffering look and headed back toward the living quarters.
Not long afterward, a troll ambled into the clearing. A new driver, she thought, watching each stiff step. It stopped, settled with a huff of steam. The chest hatch opened, and men emerged one at a time, their eyes downcast and walking in a line. Each one carried a mask of leather and glass, with two circular protrusions on each side of the mouth. If they were on the verge of rebelling against di Fiore, Annika couldn’t see a sign of it. Without speaking or looking up, they trudged across the clearing and into their quarters. A few minutes later, a new line of men—twenty-five in all, Annika counted—climbed into the troll. It rose and ambled off to the south.
Disturbed, she returned to Källa’s hearth chamber. Her sister sat at the table, looking harried and with her braid in disarray, rocking a sleeping Olaf against her chest. She held her finger to her lips when Annika entered.
Annika stifled her laugh. Källa responded with a deathly glare and a wrinkle of her nose, then pointed to the snow tunnel.
“I’ve had them put your packs in the last chamber,” she whispered. “You’ll have more privacy there.”
The individual chamber was smaller, the roof lower. A bed stood in the center of the floor, a trunk at its foot. An oil lamp with its sconce embedded in the ice wall provided a dim light.
Annika searched through their packs. Her spanner and his pistol had been taken. She pressed her lips together in frustration, then smoothed her expression when she heard the crunch of approaching footsteps.
A moment later, David ducked through the low entrance. Her heart gave a wild leap, and her body followed. She threw herself into his arms, loving the strength and the warmth as he caught her against him, surrounded her.
“All right?” His voice was gruff.
“Yes.” Everything had been awful. But not now. “You?”
She felt his nod against her hair. His arms tightened, and he held her, held her. Finally, he stepped back, cupped her face in his hands.
“We need to leave here,” he said.
“I know how. We just have to find the right time. We can wait until then.”
“Yes.” He glanced at the bed. “We’re sharing?”
“I told Källa that you will be the father of my children. I didn’t want to be separated.”
“Good. To both, if you’ll have me. I’d like to make babies with you.”
She grinned. “You’re thinking of that now?”
“It’s a better thought than any other I’ve had today.” He dropped a quick kiss to her mouth, stepped back to unbuckle his coat. “So that was my cousin?”
His question held a note of wonder. He only had a little family left, she remembered. What did it feel like to suddenly gain more?
“Yes,” she said.
“And the boy, too.”
Judging by the flatness of his voice, Annika guessed that he’d assumed the same about Olaf that she initially had. “Yes. He is Paolo’s son.”
His brows rose. “Paolo’s?”
“Yes.” She watched him shake his head, as if he were trying to reconcile that information—or perhaps trying not to imagine the act that had led to it. “What is Paolo like?”
“Confused,” he said. “Not childlike, though he possesses an innocent sense of wonder at times. I remember him differently—as forthright, focused, and thoughtful. Gentle and kind. Now, he only focuses for short times.”
“Is he still kind?”
“Yes.” He withdrew his journal from the pack, then slanted her an unreadable glance. “Did Källa tell you what he intends to do?”
“Send a capsule to the moon—along with plants and soil—so that he can build a farm.” And she’d laughed wildly until she’d realized Källa had been serious. “I didn’t believe it.”
“It’s all true.” He looked around again. “No desk?”
Nowhere to sit at all, except for the trunk and bed. “Only at the table. We’ll sit there soon for supper.”
“All right.” He tossed the journal onto his pack. “Will you lie with me until then? I need to gather my thoughts before I write, anyway.”
She’d gladly lie with him. For the first time since she’d seen the airship’s shadow on the snow, the thin, sour coating of dread and panic receded from the back of her throat. She pillowed her head on his shoulder, flattened her hand over his heart.
Perhaps this was love, too. Not just the tearing desire. Just the contentment of being with him, at a time when she shouldn’t have been able to find any ease.
“What thoughts are you gathering?” she asked after a moment.
His chest lifted beneath her hand as he drew a long breath, released it slowly. “I’m worried about the glacier’s stability.”
“The quakes?”
“Not just the quakes. Paolo’s plan. They’re digging through the rock and ice over the volcano’s caldera, placing explosive charges designed to collapse part of the glacier into the magma chamber below.”
While they were on it? “Will that work?”
“Honest to God, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anyone trying to force an eruption—but if that magma chamber collapses, it will sure as hell do something. And I’m not sure the steam pressure will be redirected through the boreholes as they hope it will be.” He shook his head. “They’ve drilled other boreholes that will force the steam into the hole below the tower. The plan is to drop the capsule into that primary borehole, letting it plug. The steam builds up and forces it out—like a cork from a bottle.”
“Launching it to the moon.” She felt silly even saying it.
“Yes.”
“Will
that
work?”
His laugh rumbled against her hand. “I have no idea. He’s calculated the necessary pressure needed to produce the proper acceleration, but whether the volcano can produce that sort of pressure…It’s impossible to know.”
“But you can’t express any doubt.”
His laughter stopped. “No.”
“At least he’s not hurting anyone.” Unlike his last big experiment.
“That he knows of.” With another deep breath, he pulled her closer. She felt his inhalation against her hair. His hand stroked the length of her back, before beginning a leisurely massage down her spine. “And Källa is here. Are you glad you’ve finally found her?”
“Yes.” She bit her lip. “And no.”
His fingers paused. “No?”
“When she left, it was because she’d taken the blame after I almost exposed Hannasvik to outsiders. She was protecting me.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I did. But I always thought that the names she called me were a joke. The sort of thing you say when you tease someone that you love. Annika the Woolgatherer, Annika the Rabbit. I didn’t know until today that she truly believed them. That she believes I’m too weak to survive the New World.”
“And you’ve spent four years proving her wrong.”
Perhaps. But she wasn’t wrong about all of it. “She said that I’m only brave when I’m in a troll. That’s true, I guess.” She sighed. “What do you think of Lorenzo?”
He didn’t immediately answer. Annika turned to lie against his side, pushing up on her elbow to look down at him. He wore a troubled expression, his brows drawn.
“That bad?” she wondered.
David nodded. “He’s determined to help his father, no matter the cost. I knew that. But I don’t know whether he understands right from wrong and does the wrong anyway…or if he truly believes that there’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing, and that the greatness of his father’s quest justifies the steps he takes.”
To knowingly commit evil, or to commit evil without recognizing that it was. “Which is worse?”
“The second.”
Annika didn’t completely agree. She supposed it depended on the circumstances. “Which do you think Lorenzo is?”
“The second.” He lifted his hand, smoothed back the curls from her forehead. “Everyone makes choices that they know aren’t right. And we recognize that they aren’t right, so we feel regret or remorse, even if we’d make the same choice again. It’s a part of being human, part of what separates us from beasts. But I can’t see any regret in him. He killed everyone on Heimaey simply to test his father’s æther suit—not even as a necessary evil, but because he could. That giant balloon out there is filled with the gases released during their drilling. They deflated it over the town while he walked through the streets wearing that suit.”
Horror settled deep, splinters of ice in her stomach and heart. “He walked through himself?”
She would have guessed that he’d forced one of his men to do it.
“Yes. So he’s not just willing to do anything to help his father—he has no remorse, and no fear.”
“That’s terrifying,” she whispered.
“Yes,” David said, and held her tighter against him.
Lorenzo was the observationist, but Annika found it almost
impossible not to watch him during dinner. She couldn’t make herself stop—and she simply couldn’t understand him. How could he laugh and play with Olaf, and be so gentle with his father? How
could he ask after their comfort, and promise to see that a desk was brought to their chamber the next day? How could he look and act so human when only a few days ago he’d strolled through a town while the women died around him? When he’d been the one to cause their deaths?
The father could not have been any more different from the son. She saw him looking at her several times, shy and hesitant, and offering her a sweet smile when she met his eyes. She didn’t know what to think of the posts stuck to his head, but when Källa gave her a warning glance, she understood that it was better not to ask—at least for now.
Paolo seemed genuinely adoring of Källa—who liked him as well, even if not in the same way she’d been with Lisbet. Some of his shyness dropped away when he realized Annika was her sister.
He pushed his stew away, eagerly leaning forward on his forearms. “You are Annika the Rabbit?”
Oh, that had never bothered her before. It stung now. She frowned at Källa. “You told him?”
“There was not much else that I could say about home.”
And they couldn’t now, either. Aware of Lorenzo watching, she let her irritation go. She didn’t want to give him anything, didn’t want him to know her in any way.