Just after noon, they stopped near a stream and set up camp in a small clearing. Gone was the easy chatter of the previous day while the vehicles were unloaded. As soon as the tents went up, large coil guns were mounted on the walkers. Lieutenant Blanchett and his aviators stood tensely by, clearly wanting to help, yet knowing they’d be in the way. Zenobia tried to write. She set a stool beneath a tree and scribbled a sentence before giving up. With Mara beside her and providing translations from Mongolian now and again, Zenobia sat with the page on her lap, watching the governor prepare his small band of soldiers.
So few soldiers. They didn’t know how many marauders they might face.
Yet it didn’t seem to worry him. Presently he approached her tree, and Zenobia rose from her seat, thinking that he was taking his leave. Instead he eased onto the ground beside her, his back against the trunk and his elbows resting on his upraised knees. So calm, even though he might be going into battle.
Zenobia put her page away in the satchel between her stool and Mara’s. Cooper was out walking the perimeter; she would give the pack back into his keeping when he returned.
The governor’s gaze touched Mara, who sat working over her guns with an oiled cloth. Zenobia waited for him to ask why a maid would be doing such a thing. She had her answer prepared, knowing it would make him laugh—that Mara was cleaning her weapons, so it was a perfectly sensible task for a maid—but he met her eyes again without comment.
Disappointed, she glanced at the walkers. Everything appeared ready. “You aren’t leaving?”
“We’re waiting for Meeng to return from the Nyungar camp.” He gestured farther up the stream, where the balloon head of the walking man was visible above the trees. “I’m taking all of my people, unless you prefer I leave Tsetseg. She’s capable of protecting the camp, and you’re familiar with her.”
Mara and Cooper were staying behind, as were Lieutenant Blanchett and his aviators. “We ought to be all right.”
Her answer seemed to amuse him. He stared at her for a long second before shaking his head, and his mouth compressed as if he fought a laugh.
Zenobia frowned. She liked it better when she
meant
for him to laugh at something she said. “What?”
As if her irritation amused him further, he grinned openly. “Do you believe I’d go if you wouldn’t be all right?”
Why wouldn’t he? “You have a town full of people to worry about. The safety of two women you hardly know can’t compare in importance to locating the marauders.” Saying so irritated Zenobia all the more, because his grin faded as she spoke, and she liked it so well—but mostly because even if she
had
been more important, she wouldn’t have needed him to stay, anyway. She pointed out, “And I have gotten along perfectly well without you for many years, sir. After we arrive in the smugglers’ dens tomorrow, I will get along perfectly well without you for decades more. So I’m certain I can manage a few hours without you today.”
“So you have.” His dark brows drew together as he glanced at Mara, who was thrusting a steel-bristled rod down the barrel of her gun. The sound scraped over Zenobia’s nerves. “So you will.”
As long as he understood. “Do you think you might find the marauders there?”
His gaze returned to hers. “No. Four days have passed. They’ll have moved on.”
“Then why go look?”
“To see if they left anything behind that can lead us to them. We haven’t found one of their camps before. And a mining town lies a short distance farther. I’ll speak to the people there, as well.”
In the hopes that they might have seen something that no one else had in months. The marauders had obviously been covering their tracks, and Zenobia didn’t envy the governor his task. Whether in the smugglers’ dens or out in the wild lands, finding them must be like searching for a specific twig in a forest.
“I wish you good luck, then,” she said.
He glanced at Mara, then gestured Zenobia closer. She couldn’t help herself. Heart thumping, she leaned in. He sat forward, almost closing the intimate space between them.
His voice lowered. “You wish me good luck? How can I not take that as encouragement?”
“It is, but only encouragement to return to our camp. Helene and I need to continue on to the Red City, and you’re rather useful to that purpose.”
“Not
only
to that purpose, Lady Inkslinger.”
“The only purpose I want, governor.”
Her response would have been more effective if she hadn’t been staring at his mouth again. A lazy smile had touched his lips, and now he sat back, as if to better see her watching him.
Damn it all. Damn
him
for this, because he made her feel a part of something special again. Something wonderful. Her stomach fluttered and her pulse raced, and she desperately wanted to be alone with him, to have a few more moments to remember. What harm could there be? After tomorrow, she’d never see him again.
And . . . after tomorrow, she’d never see him again. This chance wouldn’t return.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Mara. Will you go and check on Helene?”
The mercenary seemed distracted, her head tilted and her gaze unfocused. Perhaps trying
not
to listen to the conversation taking place beside her. A moment passed, then she shook herself and lifted her weapon to peer along the sights. “She’s napping in the tent.”
“Check anyway.”
“Ah.” Her gaze jumped from Zenobia to the governor and back again. Her teeth flashed in a laugh before she stood. “Of course.”
Blast her, too. She’d probably listen now, knowing that Zenobia would attempt to flirt.
This was so foolish. Zenobia was far more adept at keeping men away. She would probably regret this.
If she didn’t take advantage of this short time, she’d regret that even more.
But when Zenobia turned back to him, she’d already lost his attention. He sat forward, tension hardening his face as he watched Mara walk across the clearing toward the tents.
“Does she have a listening device?”
Oh, blast blast
blast
! Zenobia lifted her hands, as if in confusion. “A listening device? No.”
“She
does
. Dregs and hell!” His fists slammed into the ground beside his thighs, and he shoved to his feet in one powerful motion. “She heard the bull-roarer yesterday. How did I not see?”
Heart pounding, Zenobia jumped up. “There’s nothing
to
see—”
“Because I’ve only been looking at you—and
you
knew things you shouldn’t have. She told you that I was traveling to the smugglers’ dens. She heard me talking to Saito at the soup house . . .” His eyes locked on hers. His eyebrows shot together in a dark frown. “What else did she hear there that you hardened yourself against me? Was it something someone said about me—or of my intentions toward you? Or was something said about you?”
Zenobia hadn’t prepared for this. He’d come to the answer too quickly, and she had no intention of ever saying what she’d heard. That she was ugly. That he would earn her trust. That he’d use her heart and her body as tools to access her secrets.
Just remembering made her burn with humiliation and anger again. Eyes stinging, she stooped for her pack and dragged it up over her shoulder.
He caught her hand as she turned to go. She flinched, expecting roughness and anger, but despite the firmness of his grip he didn’t hurt her. His voice softened. “Was it something
I
said?”
She closed her eyes, her throat an aching knot. She shook her head.
“Let me correct it.” Gently, he drew her back against his hard frame. “Please.”
A shudder wracked her stiff form as hope collided with fear.
Could
he correct it? What if Mara had been mistaken?
And what if Mara hadn’t been, and he twisted truth into a lie?
“Ariq Noyan!” Mara’s sharp warning rang across the clearing.
Suddenly alarmed, Zenobia spun in that direction. But the mercenary wasn’t about to shoot the governor for touching her. Mara wasn’t even looking toward them. She stood outside Helene’s tent, her head cocked and looking north.
“Something big comes,” she said.
His fingers tightened on Zenobia’s. “What do you hear?”
“Like an engine. But . . . deeper.” She dropped to her knees and pressed her ear to the dirt. “It’s coming from underground.”
Underground.
Zenobia’s heart stopped. A boilerworm.
“Wake her friend. Get her up into the trees or a walker.” The governor’s hands clamped around Zenobia’s waist. “I’m going to lift you. Grab the first branch and climb.”
Zenobia dropped her satchel. It thudded to the ground and toppled over, the gold clinking dully inside. The governor lifted her as if she weighed nothing. With papery bark under her fingers and her boots digging into the trunk, she dragged herself up to the branch and threw her leg over.
“Climb higher!” he ordered, then shouted the warning to the others.
Panting with effort, she hauled herself up to the next branch, then reached for the next, thankful for the tunic and trousers that made this slightly easier than climbing in a skirt would have been. Through the curtain of narrow leaves, she could see the rest of the camp scrambling out of the clearing, searching for suitable trees. Tsetseg and Lieutenant Blanchett had found safety in a walker—Helene and Mara were joining them. The lieutenant reached down the ladder for Helene’s hand. With worry darkening her face, Mara turned to scan the clearing.
Zenobia did, too. There seemed a sudden hush beneath the chattering of the birds and the ring of Helene’s boots on the ladder, the grunt of an aviator climbing a nearby tree. On the ground below, the governor faced north. A few of the leaves she’d disturbed had fallen onto his shoulders like green confetti.
Come up here,
she wanted to say, but fear lodged the words in her throat, as if speaking them would bring the monster up from under his feet. He would look up and be gone.
A loud clacking broke the quiet. Zenobia’s foot slipped before she grabbed the branch again and held on tight, her heart racing. That was the perimeter warning. The boilerworm had knocked it over.
Oh, dear God. Cooper was walking the perimeter. Which side of the camp was he on? Had he heard the governor’s warning to get into a tree?
“Cooper’s out there,” she told the governor, and when he nodded she understood why he was still on the ground. He was waiting to make certain that everyone else was up first.
She looked to Mara. The mercenary still hadn’t boarded the walker. Blanchett was urging her up, but she stood with her head cocked and slowly turning in a circle. Listening for her husband.
With a sudden cry, she pivoted and broke into a run.
“Mara!” Zenobia cried, then the governor was off, too, sprinting north across the clearing after Mara and shouting to Tsetseg, who started up the walker.
Oh, that had to be a bad idea. The engine would heat up and attract the boilerworm.
“Cooper,
run
!”
Mara’s scream pierced Zenobia’s stunned immobility. Her friends were in trouble and she was sitting in a tree.
No no no.
Scraping over branches, sliding, she thudded to the ground, just missing her stool and landing on the dubious cushion of her pack. The impact slammed through her backside and rattled her teeth but she pushed up and raced across the clearing. The governor and Mara had already passed the tents and the canvas blocked her view, but Mara was shouting again and others were on the ground and running to help, too.
Zenobia ran past the tent and skidded to a stop. There was Cooper ahead, running toward them through the low scrub, leaping over the brush in his way. The governor and Mara had almost reached him. It would be all right, then. They would all just end up racing back to the trees—
Cooper fell knee-deep into a hole and plunged forward to the ground.
Or so it seemed. Zenobia stared in confusion. Cooper, the man of few words, didn’t say anything or cry out in pain, though something must have twisted or broken. He had steel legs, but they were grafted onto flesh, and wrenching them like that must have hurt. And although he pushed against the ground he wasn’t getting up. The ground beneath him was rising, instead, like a mountain of dirt slowly erupting. His eyes locked with Mara’s, who was screaming his name as she fell to her knees in front of him.
She reached for his hand and the governor reached for the other. They hauled back and pulled Cooper out of the ground.
The boilerworm came with him.
Sheer horror shoved Zenobia back a step, her hands flying to her mouth to stop her terrified cry. She’d expected something small. But the thing that burst out of the ground was as big around as a locomotive car—and at least as long, maybe longer. The tail was still anchored underground. Its head ended in a flat, eyeless circle, like the segment of a worm that had been cut apart and healed over. Encrusted by a thick layer of red dirt, the massive cylindrical body rose like a striking snake, jerking the governor and Mara up with it.