Never had she imagined wanting to insist that she was afraid. To admit to such a thing. But Helene’s claim seemed so misrepresentative of her character.
Yet what could she say? That she hadn’t expected to use the glider all along? Because she had. She’d purchased the device specifically for that purpose, because she might need to jump out of a pirate’s airship. Should she insist that she’d trusted Mara and Cooper to protect them? Because she had. But she’d still been afraid. She’d hired them because she’d been afraid.
She’d always been afraid. If not actively fearing for her life, then wary and expecting that she soon would. Only when writing was she somewhere else, somewhere without fear. Somewhere no one waited to hurt her, or to use her to hurt her brother, or to extract money. First afraid of her father. Then Archimedes had destroyed Temür Agha’s war machines, so Zenobia had changed her name and crossed an ocean to find a new home, wondering if every person who came to her door was an assassin sent after her brother, unwilling to trust anyone she’d met. Then, after his debt to Temür Agha had been paid off, the kidnappings and ransoms had begun.
The pirates and mercenaries had been careful not to harm her, but she’d had more guns pointed at her head than she ever wanted to remember. And she knew that one day, they wouldn’t wait for the ransom to be delivered. They’d panic, realizing the utter stupidity of kidnapping her. Because her brother wasn’t just a rich man; Archimedes was a man of action and his wife was a mercenary with a heart of steel. Yasmeen had once calmly shot a man who had been holding Zenobia with yet another gun to her head, and his brains had splattered over her face. One day, the pirates would think Archimedes and Yasmeen were coming for them and kill Zenobia to get rid of the evidence.
Even now she was afraid—of the way the Kraken King looked at her, as if he saw too much, and if he looked long enough she wouldn’t need to tell him her secrets because they’d all spill out. And she was terrified that they would.
But she’d functioned while afraid for so long. To outsiders, a little more terror must not register much at all.
Still, it hurt that her friend couldn’t see that. Helene, who’d been with her when Zenobia’s mother had been dying, when she’d been more terrified than she’d ever been in her life. But Zenobia wouldn’t show the hurt now, not with the governor watching, too.
With a little shrug, she said, “I’m more concerned about boilerworms than marauders.”
She knew that would distract Helene. Her friend had spoken of the creatures several times on their journey here, recounting the many stories around their creation: that three centuries past, the boilerworms had been released as mining tools, to dig and leach minerals from the soil. That they’d been a weapon developed by the Horde. That the Nipponese had created them in their war with the Australians. That the tribes had accidentally unleashed them during their rushed technological advancement.
Whatever had happened, Zenobia doubted that the boilerworms’ inventor had intended for them to escape their control, or to breed and grow.
Eyes wide, Helene looked to the governor. “
Do
we have to worry? I thought the boilerworms only inhabited the interior.”
“Most do.” He never took his gaze from Zenobia as he spoke. “There aren’t many this close to the sea.”
“But there are some?”
“Yes.”
“How do you keep them out of your town?”
“We drive steel retaining posts into the ground around the perimeter. The worms could dig deeper and come up from beneath, but most stay in shallow soils.”
Zenobia frowned. She hadn’t seen any steel posts standing around the town, which meant they must be entirely underground. “They don’t go over them?”
“No. They could, but they don’t think or reason. If they run into the steel, they begin digging in another direction rather than going over.” He looked to Helene. “They’re not a danger during the day, usually. They’re attracted to heat, and there isn’t much difference in temperature between our bodies and the air on a day like this. As long as we keep our engines and our fires off the ground, they won’t seek us out.”
Zenobia hadn’t known that. She’d always assumed they were attracted to electrical charges and vibrations as the sea monsters were. She itched to add the information to her notebook, but would just have to remember that detail. A boilerworm wouldn’t fit in the current adventure, anyway. Perhaps in the future.
“Have you seen one?” Helene asked.
“Several. All small ones. I’ve heard tales of larger.”
“
Tales
of larger?” From fish to success, it never changed. “Or perhaps the others were of the same small size. Men have a habit of exaggerating dimensions, especially when there is no one to corroborate the reality,” Zenobia said dryly.
His grin hit her in the chest. She’d never known that her weaknesses were sharp cheekbones and white teeth. In the future, guarding herself against them would be wise. And she liked the dark slant of his brows too well, and the creases at the corners of his eyes, as if he grinned often and enjoyed it. A man who knew the value of humor.
Or just knew how handsome he was.
Helene averted her face, cheeks blazing red. Why? Zenobia hadn’t said anything even remotely—
Oh.
Blast it all. She hadn’t meant to refer to men who exaggerated the size of anything else. But apparently the governor’s grin had sent Helene’s imagination running straight into his pants.
That was enough of that. She lifted her chin. “So your worm was the smallest.”
His grin became a deep laugh. “Yes.”
Oh, he had no shame. She’d thought he would take offense and be done with her. But despite what he’d said back in town, she was quite sure that he was taking this as encouragement.
Well, she had no intention of providing any sort of corroboration about
his
size.
A few choking noises came from Helene before she pointedly changed the subject. “What brought you to live here, Governor? In such a place, with boilerworms and kraken on your shores.”
His laughter died. Even though it had been at her expense, Zenobia was sorry to see it go.
And she was surprised that he answered, though she shouldn’t have been. He’d been blunt from the first and his reply wasn’t any different. “A war brought me here. I built the town to give my brother a home after our mother was executed.”
“Your mother was
executed
?” Aghast, Helene shook her head. “I should never have asked such a thing. I am
so
sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He glanced at her. “You’ve placed your life in my keeping on this journey. It’s your right to ask the sort of man I am.”
“Then we’d have been smarter to find out before we left,” Zenobia said.
“You would have been.” Unsmiling, he caught her gaze again. “You only had to ask. But if there is anything you want to know about my character now, I will tell you.”
Perhaps to gain her trust, now that he knew she wouldn’t offer it in bed. Perhaps he’d mentioned his mother to stir her sympathies.
He’d mentioned his dead mother . . . because he wanted to know her secrets.
And this was what fear had turned her into. He’d spoken of his mother’s execution and her first thought was:
He hopes to manipulate me and I cannot trust him.
Her throat burning, Zenobia turned to stare blindly over the walker’s side.
Helene took the invitation that Zenobia wouldn’t. Hesitantly, she said, “Your brother . . . I’m sorry if this is untoward, but I wondered. He is Nipponese, isn’t he? But you sound—and look—much different.”
“He resembles his father. I resemble mine.”
“I see.” The confusion in her voice said that she didn’t. “Which war were you fighting?”
“Against the Great Khagan.”
“Against the Horde? So you
are
Nipponese.”
“No. I’m also from the Golden Empire.” He paused. “The Horde Empire.”
“A rebel?” A sharp note of excitement rose through each word. “You’re a Horde rebel? So the Nipponese and the rebels are allied against the Khagan?”
“No.”
“But you have a common enemy.”
“That doesn’t make us friends.”
Confusion filled her voice again. “But your mother was Nipponese?”
“No, though she came from the islands they originally inhabited. She retrieved information about the Nipponese battles with the Khagan so the rebellion could be more effective. So that we could strike when the Khagan’s forces were occupied elsewhere.”
“Oh.” It was a heavy sound, as if the realization that his mother had been a spy had dropped right into it. But of course Helene would never say that word, fearing that the governor might take it as an insult. She changed the subject again. “How long did you fight, then?”
“Since I was a boy.”
“But you aren’t still fighting? The empire hasn’t yet fallen.”
His answer didn’t come as quickly this time. Zenobia glanced over. The governor stared straight ahead, his jaw locked. Why? Because he’d abandoned the war?
He didn’t say. Only, “It
will
fall. The foundation is too cracked to repair.”
That was similar to everything Zenobia had heard, too—that the Khagan only held power by the thinnest thread. “But why didn’t you stay to finish it off?”
His gaze captured hers again. “Because too many in the rebellion became what we are battling against. The only thing they fight now is each other, over who will take the Khagan’s place. Everything that I was fighting for, I could create here.”
Oh. “Like Rabat,” she realized.
Helene frowned. “Like what?”
“Morocco,” Zenobia told her. “The governor there did the same.”
Because even though Morocco was part of the occupied territories, it was so far from the heart of the Horde Empire that it was essentially out of the Khagan’s reach. Krakentown wasn’t as far away from the empire physically, and it was much smaller, but she could see the similarities.
She glanced at the governor again and froze. His expression had changed. Still looking at her, but his face like iron, and his gaze a razor.
“Temür Agha wasn’t a rebel,” he said quietly.
Her heart stuttered. He was. She knew very well he was, because Temür Agha was the man who’d given Archimedes the war machines to sell. He’d been the man who’d sent assassins after her brother, and why she and Archimedes had both changed their names.
It was common knowledge that he was a rebel. Wasn’t it?
Or just common knowledge to her.
But she made herself appear uncertain. “Oh? I thought he was. I’m sure I read it somewhere.”
“Morocco?” The light dawned on Helene’s face. “Oh! You are confused, Geraldine. That was where they had the uprising against the Horde a few years past. The governor there was killed. He wasn’t rebelling. Is that right?”
“Yes,” the Kraken King answered Helene, but was still watching her. “Temür Agha died in the uprising.”
He wasn’t dead. Archimedes and Yasmeen had flown him out of the city in her airship. Now he was marching east across Europe, gathering an army of exiles in his wake.
But Zenobia only nodded. “I was mistaken, then—Krakentown isn’t the same as Rabat. And that’s probably for the best, since that city rose up against their governor.”
“Yes,” he agreed softly. “Probably for the best.”
A short silence fell, broken when Mara abruptly sat up and turned to scan the sky. “What is that?”
Zenobia listened. Nothing but the birds and the walker.
They all jolted forward when the governor stopped the engine. Now there were only the birds and the faint noise from the other walker.
The governor looked at Mara. “What alarmed you?”
“I thought I heard something,” Mara said, and Zenobia knew that there was no “thought I heard” about it. Mara
had
heard it. “Like . . . a giant dragonfly.”
He nodded and started the engine again. “The river serpent’s voice. Meeng and your husband have reached the edge of our host territory.”
VII
An hour passed before Zenobia heard the low whirring roar. It stopped after ten minutes, then started again twenty minutes later. She didn’t see a serpent or a river. Instead she was suffocating under the humidity, and it seemed that she sweated out every drop of water she drank from the canteen. The heated air wavered around them. As the miles passed, they veered west, until the sea shimmered on the right. Both crawlers walked to the left now. In the east, green hills lay against the horizon like an exhausted woman.
After another two hours, the source of the noise appeared ahead: A tall machine shaped like a man was whipping a wooden slat in a circle. A bull-roarer, the governor told them. The balloon flyers waited at the base of the machine. As the crawlers approached, Meeng and Cooper started in their direction.