It was almost time, then—and best not to delay too long. A seaport’s beacon flickered in the distance. He’d told the admiral the Skybreaker lay hidden near the Karakorum Pass, sending the airship northwest toward the mainland and past the heavily inhabited islands in the southern sea. Ariq would find transportation in one of those ports. But first he had to reach one.
Leaning over the rail, he looked to the dark water below. It was a long drop. A damned long drop.
But that didn’t matter. His wife was waiting for him.
Voices rose over the rumble of the airship’s engine. Whenever Ariq stepped out of his cabin, two guards shadowed his every movement.
Only
two guards. There might as well have been none. They should have locked him in the vault again.
The reason Ariq hadn’t been locked away was speaking with his guards now. Tatsukawa Hideyasu—the lynchpin in Ghazan Bator’s plan to threaten Ariq into giving up the Skybreaker. No doubt the admiral had the empress’s ear. Tatsukawa could prod her to action if her response to the marauders’ attacks wasn’t what Ghazan Bator expected. And if Ariq submitted to their demands, the admiral could reassure her that the marauders had been destroyed and action against the settlements on the western coast was unnecessary. Without Tatsukawa, Ghazan Bator couldn’t be certain that the threat against Ariq’s town would be strong enough to force his hand.
Without Tatsukawa, the general’s plan might fail. But Ariq couldn’t kill the admiral and destroy the lynchpin without bringing the empress’s forces to his shore. Ghazan Bator couldn’t have found a more useful ally, one who could tie Ariq’s hands while forcing him to his knees.
Taking Zenobia had done the same thing—and was more expedient.
And unexpected. He’d only known her just short of two weeks and he hadn’t intended to visit the Red City when he’d left his town for the dens. Their abduction from Zenobia’s bedchamber must have been hastily planned, unless the admiral and general had originally planned this course of action using someone else. Ariq’s brother, maybe.
But Ghazan Bator might not have trusted that Tatsukawa could abduct and torture his own son. It would have to be torture. Simply hiding his brother away wouldn’t have created the same urgency as taking Zenobia did. Ariq would have freed his brother, eventually. But he needed to do more than free Zenobia. He needed to erase the fear in her eyes—the terror of being taken, yet again. Of being locked away. It didn’t matter that she was in a cabin on an ironship instead of in her father’s closet. Ariq couldn’t leave her there.
He looked over the rail again. The water waited.
Escape wouldn’t have been so easy if the admiral had left him in the vault. There was no sensible reason to let Ariq out or to return his clothes. But he suspected Tatsukawa wanted more from him than the location of the machine, and that he hoped to gain Ariq’s forgiveness on the journey.
Ariq wouldn’t offer it. He wasn’t a forgiving man.
Light steps warned him of the admiral’s approach. Tatsukawa’s gaze searched Ariq’s face—probably looking for Ariq’s mother in his features. Ariq had never been so glad to resemble his father.
With a sigh, the admiral turned his gaze toward the islands in the distance. “You are always watching the horizon. Do you think of your wife?”
Who else would Ariq think of? But he remained silent.
“She was not your bride when we took you from her bedchamber. And she didn’t sound as if she wanted to be.”
Lynchpin or not, Taka’s father or not, Ariq would have liked to kill the admiral simply for listening to them. Ariq had hurt Zenobia in that bedchamber by revealing that he’d read her letters. Then, he’d understood her anger, but not her pain.
He understood it now.
He’d thought she hadn’t trusted him with the truth, spinning a tale about writing the Archimedes Fox adventures and of her kidnappings. He’d believed there was nothing to lose by admitting that he’d invaded her privacy. But she
had
trusted him. He’d betrayed that trust.
Never again. “She’s my wife now.”
The admiral nodded and his gaze rose to Ariq’s face again before falling to his shoulder. “The kraken on your back—that is your mother’s work?”
“Yes.”
Tattooed when he was ten years of age. She hadn’t told him what it meant until later—until she knew the sort of man he would become.
“She had such a beautiful hand.” Emotion thickened the admiral’s voice. “Her paintings captured such light and life.”
So they had. “Did you destroy them, too?”
Tatsukawa’s silence answered for him. After a moment, he asked, “May I see it again?”
Ariq’s tattoo? “No.”
The other man’s face tightened. Denying the admiral that small connection to his mother was a cruelty, and Ariq enjoyed twisting that knife. But he wouldn’t have shown Tatsukawa, regardless. His mother had used her paintings to deliver messages hidden in the artwork. Ariq didn’t know if the Nipponese had ever determined how she’d sent so much information to the rebel forces. But if they had, the admiral might realize that the image on his back was more than a kraken—and would know the Skybreaker wasn’t in the direction they were traveling now.
He glanced south. Choppy waves broke the surface of the water. Wind buffeted Ariq’s face from the east. That wasn’t just from the airship’s flight. The wind shouldn’t make a difference during the drop, but the swim would be more difficult.
If he waited too much longer, the distance to the port might become too far to swim. Though willing to risk everything for Zenobia, he couldn’t be reckless. Dead, Ariq would be no use to her.
“Your anger toward me is misplaced and does your mother no credit.” The admiral’s shoulders had stiffened. He seemed to be fighting his own anger now—or frustration. “She was a soldier. She would have suffered in the prison. I gave her the most honorable death I could.”
Yes, she’d been a soldier. She’d risked her life, just as Ariq had on the battlefield. She’d known that she might die in the effort.
Ariq had never been angry because she’d given her life to the rebellion. He’d been angry because so many excuses surrounded her death. From Ghazan Bator, who hadn’t even
tried
to secure her release because she was no longer useful—so she hadn’t been worth the effort of even attempting a trade. And from her own husband, who’d put the blade to her neck. It might have been the most honorable death. But it was still death, and Tatsukawa could have prevented it. He could have helped her escape. He just would have had to risk his own honor. But his wife apparently hadn’t been worth that, either.
Nothing under the heavens could have compelled Ariq to put a sword to Zenobia’s neck. Nothing. He would have sacrificed his honor and his life just to keep her safe.
So the admiral’s words meant nothing to him. “You let your son suffer in that prison.”
Moisture gathered in Tatsukawa’s eyes and glittered in the lantern light. His gaze was distant, far beyond the night’s horizon. “I have no son,” he said. “He was lost.”
No, Ariq couldn’t be sorry for his cruelty toward this man. He twisted the knife again.
“And I gained a brother who has no father worthy of the name. Only a man without loyalty, who intends to manipulate and lie to his empress.” Which personally meant nothing to Ariq, either. He’d rebelled against his own emperor. But it must have meant something to Tatsukawa, because he’d killed his wife and disowned his son to prove his loyalty. “Yet now you assist the same man who sent my mother to spy on you.”
“I seek to defeat the threat that still lingers over my home—and to complete what your mother fought for, as well. I do this out of loyalty to them both.”
By defeating the Khagan. “Your empress withdrew her soldiers.”
“Her mother never would have. She would have finished the war. Her dying wish was to finish it. But her daughter is young—and I will sacrifice everything to protect her, even from dangers she doesn’t have the wisdom to acknowledge.”
“And if you fail? The Khagan’s armies will attack her again.”
“We won’t fail. We will defeat him.” His gaze searched Ariq’s face again. “Your mother wanted the same.”
“Not with the Skybreaker. She believed the machine should only be used to defend.”
The admiral hadn’t known that. He blinked and his eyebrows twitched higher. But he didn’t call Ariq a liar. And he could never claim to know better—he’d never known Ariq’s mother as the soldier, only as the woman who’d pretended that love was the only reason she’d married him. But like any strategist, Tatsukawa attempted to turn a setback into an advantage.
“And what is using the machine but a defense? To defend all of those the Khagan has oppressed or attacked, we will strike before he can strike again.”
More excuses. Ariq had to laugh.
The sound must not have held much humor. As if uncertain whether they needed to protect the admiral, the waiting guards edged closer.
Tatsukawa stopped them with a lift of his hand. His gaze remained fixed on Ariq. “Is that not defense? What would you call it if your wife was threatened? If you knew that she would be attacked? Would you wait for someone to appear with a weapon before defending her by destroying the source of the threat?”
“No.”
The admiral nodded. “You would protect her. You would defend her. Even if she hated your method, even if she hated you for it. Better to have her hate than to see her hurt.”
Ariq agreed. But he didn’t know why the admiral thought that argument would persuade him. “That isn’t the same as using the machine. If I had to kill thousands of innocents to reach my enemy, I would find another way to defeat him—or I would create another way.”
“And if there is no other way?”
Irritation began to build. Within the half hour, Ariq needed to be in the water, or be forced to wait until they flew nearer to another port. Did the admiral intend to keep him here, insistently comparing scenarios that weren’t equal?
“There
is
another way.” Even if Ghazan Bator and Tatsukawa refused to see it. “It marches from the west, led by my mother’s brother—and she would prefer that plan to destroy the Khagan’s power over yours, because instead of crushing people along the way, it would inspire them to stand and fight.”
The admiral shook his head. “As many people would die.”
Another unequal comparison. Did Tatsukawa truly not see the difference between the deaths of those people who chose to fight and those people who were killed simply for being in the way? An admiral, who commanded men of his own? Who protected his own people? He didn’t
want
to see it.
So there was nothing further to say. Frustration joined Ariq’s irritation. The admiral was a willfully blind and stubborn—
And this was exactly how Ariq often felt when speaking to his brother.
Another laugh broke from him. Perhaps it all made sense using that comparison. Taka felt he had no worth and honor, and would never hear any argument to the contrary. A son, tortured for a betrayal that he didn’t commit; the father, lauded for a victory he didn’t earn. Tatsukawa must always hear of his honor and worth. Perhaps the admiral felt that he could finally deserve that praise after destroying the Khagan.
It didn’t matter. The admiral could speak of finishing the work of Ariq’s mother and protecting the empress all that he liked. But he clearly only wanted that machine for himself.
So Ariq said nothing. For a long minute, Tatsukawa watched him with a combination of sorrow and frustration etching his features—probably thinking Ariq was also willfully blind and stubborn—before finally taking his leave.
Then Ariq’s anger returned, burning through his gut and tightening every sinew, though he couldn’t immediately place the reason for it. He walked to the rear of the airship, guards trailing behind.
As they had every time Ariq had made this short trek along the decks.
That was reason enough for his anger. He knew his guards’ names: Tajimi no Yatarou and Ohoshika Akihira. Young men who fulfilled their duties well; Ohoshika had already earned honors. They deserved better than an admiral who let his sentimentality endanger his aviators by allowing someone like Ariq to freely roam the decks. They deserved better than a commander who assigned only two guards to watch over the Kraken.
Ariq had spoken true: If innocents stood between him and his wife, he wouldn’t kill them. He’d find another way to save her. But the admiral and Ghazan Bator had declared war on him the moment they’d taken Zenobia from her bedchamber and held her in exchange for the Skybreaker—and Tajimi and Ohoshika fought at his enemies’ sides. Ariq wouldn’t show mercy, except in a quick death.
It should have been Admiral Tatsukawa, instead.
My heart is iron.
The airship’s design resembled a black marlin—a sleek, narrow cruiser with a long, sharp prow was suspended beneath a pair of cylindrical balloons that ran the length of the ship. A propeller shaft emerged from the machine house on the upper decks and blocked a narrow view of the airship’s stern. The flickering lanterns cast shadows, transforming that stretch of the stern into a well of darkness. The lookouts in the pilot’s tower would see almost nothing.