And maybe she could walk alone down a street again.
“I hope you’re right,” she said softly.
***
Does it show?
Zenobia’s question wouldn’t stop ringing in his head. That wasn’t disbelief that she’d been struck. That was the reaction of a woman who’d been hit before. A woman who was so accustomed to it, her first thought had been whether the bruises would upset someone else.
A woman who’d hidden evidence from a beating before.
She was up in her rooms now, hiding it again. Concealing the damage.
Fists clenched, Ariq stalked a path in front of the Coopers’ quarters, waiting for Mara. He couldn’t stop moving, not yet. If he did he might tear them all apart.
But he wouldn’t. Zenobia had feared the couple would blame themselves. They probably would. Ariq blamed himself for leaving her here.
She would have called them all fools. The first night he’d met her, she’d told him she wasn’t in the habit of letting other people make her decisions. If she’d made up her mind to go after that typesetter, there was nothing the Coopers could have done to stop her. And if she’d been determined to go alone, she’d have made certain they didn’t even know she was leaving.
And if she’d known that someone would recognize her, Ariq knew she wouldn’t have stepped outside the inn.
Does it show?
A door opened on the upper levels. Mara emerged from Zenobia’s chambers. The mercenary had been waiting for her when they’d returned to the inn, her stern expression failing to conceal her concern. Zenobia had sighed and said, “I will tell you about it upstairs.”
Now Mara would tell Ariq what he needed to know.
If she told him anything at all. Her face was a tight mask as she opened the door to her rooms. Cooper sat inside, and his reaction on seeing his wife’s expression was a mixture of relief and worry. “She’s all right? What happened?”
“
He
told everyone who she is.” She indicated Ariq with a backward jerk of her thumb.
“She’s been exposed?” Dismay tightened Cooper’s features. “You’ll have to go with her to the Red City.”
Cooper had spoken to Mara, but Ariq answered, “I am.”
With an angry hiss, Mara pivoted toward him. “So I’ve heard. And she won’t let me go until Cooper is ready, so you’d better hope that your name is enough to protect her.”
“If my name isn’t, then
I
will be.” And now the rebellion would come to him instead of going after her. “But I need to know more.”
“We won’t tell you her secrets—”
“Not that.” Ariq would wait until Zenobia trusted him enough to tell them herself. “If I’m watching over her, what will I not expect?”
Jaw clenched, Mara stared at him for a long, hard moment. Then she sighed and pulled her hand through her hair. “She’s wary. So you might think she’s always on guard. But she’s distracted when she’s working—when she’s writing her letters and notes. It’s like she’s somewhere else. You can walk up behind her and she won’t notice.”
Ariq nodded. He’d seen that.
“She’s up early and late to bed,” Cooper added. “And she doesn’t sleep well. She’ll get up in the night and won’t be where you expect her to be.”
That wouldn’t be a problem if she was in Ariq’s bed. Everything would be better if she was there.
“Who am I watching for? Who hurt her?”
“Who hasn’t?” In a sharp burst, Mara laughed at him. “Everyone who learns who she is wants to use her for something. She knows it. She’s careful with strangers. She doesn’t trust anyone to be who they’ve said they are, or to truly want what they say they want. So you watch out for strangers—but it’s the people she’s let in who you have to pay close attention to, because her shields are gone with them.”
Mara’s words twisted in Ariq’s chest. With him, Zenobia’s shields were still strong. She’d kissed him. That didn’t mean she would ever let him in. “She’s vulnerable to anyone she cares for?”
“Anyone who cares for
her
,” Mara said. “So few do. She doesn’t have defense against it.”
No defense. Neither did he. She’d destroyed Ariq’s walls.
Now he knew how to get through hers.
As if realizing what she’d just given away, Mara dropped her hand to her pistol. He’d seen that look in her eyes before—just before she’d shot a marauder in the face. “Understand this, Ariq Noyan: We’ll kill you if she’s hurt.”
He wouldn’t have expected anything less. But they wouldn’t have to kill him.
If anything happened to Zenobia, it would be only because there wasn’t anything of Ariq left.
XIII
The flight to the Red City was already better than Zenobia’s previous voyage aboard an airship—and not just because they hadn’t been attacked by marauders.
At least not yet. After all that had befallen them on this journey, Zenobia wouldn’t make any bets.
But if any pirates or marauders had nefarious plans for
Blackwing
and her passengers, little time remained to carry them out. Though the city wasn’t clearly visible over the ridge of green hills ahead, the smudge of blue sea on the far northeast horizon told Zenobia that they would be upon it soon.
Too soon. She’d been so eager for her last airship journey to end. Not this one.
The polished boards of the observation deck vibrated softly beneath her feet. She’d spent most of her time here, standing at the large portholes, watching a narrow thread of the continent unspool ahead. Grasslands had given way to endless desert scrub, then abruptly to green again. She’d risen in the morning to see a cloud of dust swirling in the distance like a storm, and as they’d passed she’d realized it had been stirred beneath the feet of a thousand walking machines, all marching together. To the south, a city had stood like a monolith, and around it delicate winged airships had fluttered on the air currents like butterflies. The night had been hot, almost too hot to breathe, but noon had brought the sweet scent of rain through the open portholes at the sides of the ship. She’d been fed melons that had somehow been chilled, and dishes that were spicy and sour, with meats so rich they’d all but dissolved on her tongue. Almost everything she’d encountered seemed designed to clutch at her heart and overwhelm her senses.
Especially the man who stood beside her.
Ariq had hardly left her side. He’d been the last person she’d said good night to the previous evening, and the first she’d seen upon emerging from her cabin that morning. That should have annoyed her. There were few people whose company she could tolerate for more than a couple of hours at a stretch.
But she hadn’t tired of him. Not even for a second.
He’d told her about his visits with the den lords, of how he’d traded a kraken’s penis for information, and how Lord Jochi had remembered a much younger Ariq wrestling in a tournament against a butcher.
He’d asked about Fladstrand, and she’d told him of the cold sea and how the wind had a knife’s edge, of the neighbors who were always peeking through their windows, and how the ferries always left with more young people than returned.
He didn’t ask why Polley had attacked her. When others were around to hear, he still called her Lady Inkslinger instead of Zenobia. And when she needed to scrawl a reminder in her notebook, or took more time to write out an idea, he occupied himself until she was done.
She hadn’t kissed him again. Lord knew she’d wanted to. But it was his turn to take the initiative. There had been too many stops and starts already. She’d rejected him, and he’d encouraged her. Then the moment she’d given a thought to pursuing more, he’d put distance between them. So she would not be the one who kept going to him, and going to him, while he waited for her to come. They needed to meet halfway.
So now, she waited for him to take that step. She’d waited all through the night, wondering if he would tap on her cabin door—or simply come in, slide into her bed, and . . .
She didn’t know.
Well, she
knew
. She’d read enough. She’d seen scientific woodcuts and bawdy cartoons depicting all of the positions. Most of her acquaintances believed her to be a widow, so they weren’t as discreet when speaking about their husbands. And a woman couldn’t walk along the docks in any town without overhearing some lewd suggestion or happening across a sailor with his trousers around his knees. It was all very simple. A man would push his penis inside her and press passionate kisses to her face and breasts, then grunt and heave over her until he spent his seed. And if she were lucky—very lucky, according to some of the wives she’d heard talk about it—she would feel the same rush of pleasure that she got from rubbing between her legs.
But Zenobia had thought she’d known what kissing was, too.
So until last night, when she’d been waiting in her sweltering cabin and listening for a tread outside her door, she’d never imagined those passionate kisses might include the slick thrust of his tongue. She’d never given a thought to what her hands might do, but now she longed to clutch at his broad shoulders, to slide her palms down his strong back, to hold him close. She knew his taste and his scent and his soft growling moan. She knew the hard beauty of his face and the darkness of his eyes, and when he covered his body with hers, she thought she might drown in them.
He would be heavy. A solid weight between her thighs. Until last night, she’d never imagined it.
Now she couldn’t stop.
“What is it?” His voice low, Ariq interrupted her thoughts.
Because she had been staring at him again. Not that she had been seeing him. No, his tunic concealed too much. It revealed the breadth of his shoulders, but not the solid form beneath. And that was what she’d been remembering. How he’d stood without a shirt atop a kraken, and how his muscles had rippled with every push and pull of the saw. How he’d walked out of the sea and teased her in the moonlight with only a towel circling his hips. So she’d been staring, thinking of her legs circling his hips and trying to calculate the weight of him there.
She glanced around them. Farther along the deck, Helene reclined on the lounging chair, in conversation with Lieutenant Blanchett. A few other passengers walked from porthole to porthole, looking out. No one was near, so Zenobia could say whatever she wished.
She met Ariq’s gaze again. “I was thinking that you are very big.”
His expression barely altered. Just a sleepy droop of his eyelids, as if they were heavy, and the airship seemed to shift beneath her feet. Oh, dear God. Whatever she’d been imagining
now
. . . she suspected it would be no more like the reality than her first imaginings had been.
“I am,” he said.
Big.
She’d almost forgotten what he was responding to. Looking blindly through the porthole, she pressed her hand against the cool glass, trying not to feel her heart pounding through her skin. “I won’t kiss you again.”
Ariq pushed closer, and though he didn’t touch her, suddenly she could feel every inch of him.
Like coarse wool scraping over steel, he softly said, “You won’t?”
“It’s your turn to kiss
me
.”
Best to tell him, or he might wait forever for some silly reason. Who knew what twisted logic lay in men’s minds? She still didn’t know why he’d tried for distance before. They had been moving in opposite directions all this time, and she didn’t know why they were coming together now.
Except that they just couldn’t seem to stay apart.
He hadn’t answered yet. She glanced over. His gaze had fallen to her bruised jaw, her swollen lip.
Oh. Not such a silly reason to wait, after all. And the warmth moving through her now had little to do with her body, and much to do with her heart.
She should be more careful. He’d hurt her before with words, with indifference. But he could hurt her much worse if she believed that he cared more than he did.
But this voyage was already better than before—and she’d intended this trip to be an adventure. Surely she should take a risk.
If she did, she had to do it soon. Because the Red City was just over the next rise, and Ariq wasn’t only waiting to kiss her. He was waiting for her to tell him who she really was. He knew her name, but didn’t know all that name meant. And he’d given her until tonight to tell him.
That decision was almost upon her—and she didn’t only risk her heart. She risked her brother, too.
Maybe she could just tell Ariq half the truth. She could say who Zenobia Fox was without revealing that she was also related to the man who’d once destroyed some of the rebellion’s war machines. She didn’t have to say she was a Gunther-Baptiste.
If she had been looking toward forever with Ariq, of course that would have to be revealed. But she wasn’t. Whatever happened between them in the Red City would end when she returned home.
So how long would she stay? That depended almost entirely on Helene, and whether her friend needed her after revealing her condition to her husband.
How long would Ariq stay?
She didn’t know. It couldn’t be long.
The realization settled like a heavy sickness in her chest. Then it vanished, along with every single thought as the airship crested the forested ridge. She stared ahead, disbelieving her eyes. Before her lay the Red City and, behind it, the enormous wall that marked the boundary of the Nipponese territory—
oh, but who cared?
She gripped the edge of the porthole, trying to see everything beyond the wall all at once.
So many towers. Rising high, so high, and glowing a soft pink as if made from marble and washed by a sunset. They stood close together, canyons of soaring towers with airships floating between. Clear turquoise water flowed like a river between the structures nearest to the sea, and the reflection danced up over the walls.
“What is it?” she breathed.
“The imperial city.” Ariq braced his forearm against the top of the porthole and bent his head to peer through. “They call it The Living City. That’s coral, strengthened by steel—and much of it still growing.”
Coral. How? “Is it natural?”
“As natural as a kraken.”
No, then. And yes. Something natural that had been altered, and had taken a new life of its own.
And so incredible it made her heart hurt. Twice in one day, it had ached like this. The first was when she’d seen the thousand walking machines. Now a city that looked like heaven.
“People are amazing,” she whispered. “And terrible. But also amazing.”
“Yes,” he agreed softly—and his smile was, too. Amazing. Terrible.
Oh, there was so much hurt he could do. But this wouldn’t be much of an adventure without a little danger. And she wouldn’t have much time.
Still staring out the porthole, she said, “How big?”
Ariq leaned closer and waited until she looked up at him. That amazing, terrible smile had widened to a grin. “My grip isn’t the only reason I’m called the Kraken.”
Of course. Any man would say that. She raised both hands, palm to palm, and wiggled her fingers like tentacles.
“So it’s like this?”
A shout of laughter shot from him. Swiftly catching her fingers, he clasped them to his chest to stop their waving, and she felt the shudder that ran through him as he contained his laugh.
Still, a few more seconds passed before he said, “Exactly like that.”
***
From above, the reason for the city’s name couldn’t have been plainer. Almost every roof had been painted crimson. Just over the rise, homes were scattered over the terraced slopes like rubies against green velvet. Nearer to the sea, rows of buildings crowded together in long gashes. Though Zenobia hoped they would dock at the harbor so that she could see more of the city from the ground,
Blackwing
flew straight to the embassy.
Situated on a tree-studded hill near the wall, the sprawling residence had the same red roof, but the wide balconies, paired columns, and tall windows could have been lifted from a manor on the French islands in the Caribbean. A wrought-iron crest on the roof formed a heavy crown for the airy facade—which, Zenobia thought, typified almost everything French.
Basile Auger waited for them at the embassy gate. Though Helene had described her husband often, and in the sweetest of terms, Zenobia hadn’t known what to expect.
Upon first glance, he appeared a stern-looking man, with an exactness to his dress and grooming that worried her. How would such a man respond to Helene’s condition? Turning to another lover out of loneliness might be pitied, but it also might be considered a weakness—and the ambassador did not seem like a man who tolerated weakness.
But beneath the thin, meticulous mustache curved a friendly smile, and his blue eyes were warm when he turned away from an ecstatic and tearful Helene to welcome Zenobia. “My wife has spoken of you so many times. I received with sincerest pleasure the news that you would be accompanying her.”
He
did
seem sincere. And he was all cordiality beneath that stern exterior. No wonder Helene was besotted.
Zenobia returned his smile. “I was grateful for the opportunity.”
He looked to Lieutenant Blanchett, who stood behind them, and seemed on the verge of greeting the officer when Helene took his hand and directed his attention to Ariq. “And this is Governor Jagungar of Krakentown. He helped to rescue us when the airship was attacked, and was kind enough to act as our escort the remainder of our journey.”
The ambassador’s face went utterly blank. Zenobia had seen him glance at Ariq when they’d first descended on the cargo lift—it was impossible not to notice a man of his size. But Ariq had insisted on carrying her heavy satchel of gold and letters, and Zenobia had let him, so she suspected that Auger had dismissed him as a porter. Now Auger had the expression of a man who had opened up a larder in search of a cake and found a growling tiger, instead.