XXV
When Zenobia had begun sketching out her new story in the jellyfish balloon, the outline of a plot had almost written itself: a tinker would topple a tyrant.
So simple. And no wonder. She’d written it so many times before.
Sometimes the antagonist had been less of a tyrant and more of a villain, yet still Archimedes Fox had been there, fearless and charming, defeating the oppressor with his charm and his sword. He’d been followed by Lady Lynx, with her fearless swagger and perfect aim. Now Zenobia was writing about a tinker girl who would build a machine that could toss a despot from his throne. It was the same. Exactly the same. The girl was smaller and weaker than Archimedes Fox and Lady Lynx, but she was just as fearless, with a sharp tongue and brilliant mind—and with no real doubts about whether she would win.
Zenobia had gotten it all wrong. Every step her tinker took needed to be an act of courage—not just the final step, surrounded and protected by a mechanical suit. Her tinker needed to fear defeat. If she didn’t, the victory would be too easy. Perhaps even meaningless.
Blast it all to hell. Every word she’d written, pure rubbish. Nothing to do but start over.
“Did you still intend to join us— Oh.” At the chamber door, Mara took a step back and spread her hands, as if in surrender. A bathing basket hung from her elbow. “I’ll come back when you aren’t as murderous.”
Murderous? Probably. But Zenobia had reason.
Pure rubbish.
She ripped the paper from beneath the typesetter and slapped the machine closed. “I’ll come.” A bath had to be better than soaking in the foul dregs steaming from the pages in front of her. “Let me gather my things.”
As she stalked toward the screen shielding her dressing area, Mara came into the room and reached for the shredded page that had fluttered to the floor. “The work isn’t going well?”
“I ought to burn it all.”
Like Ghazan Bator had burned Zenobia’s last manuscript. Oh, he’d done her a favor. He’d done the
world
a favor, sparing them the offal dripping from her pen.
“I’m glad that you’ve been giving Helene duplicates to take with her, then.”
“I learned my lesson.” Zenobia belted the long, wide-sleeved robe that she’d purchased the previous day specifically for this purpose. There wasn’t a single tub on their tier of the tower, and a bowl of warm water simply wouldn’t do any longer, so she would traipse two levels down and frolic in a public bath. “There’s always some rebel general waiting to throw my work on a fire.”
Though maybe it hadn’t been such a favor.
“You didn’t have Helene post this?” Mara asked, and Zenobia peeked around the screen. The mercenary had found Zenobia’s letter to her brother, sealed and still sitting beside her typesetter.
“I wrote it after we returned from the temple walk this morning.” Though if Zenobia had written the letter earlier, she still wouldn’t have given it to Helene to send. “And I didn’t know where to have it posted. Archimedes must be on his way, don’t you think?”
“Probably.”
“Then I’ll wait to give it in person. Or have you do it. That would be best.”
“Why best?”
Because although Zenobia had the courage to give it to her brother now, she wasn’t certain if she would when he arrived. Exposing so much of her heart—even to Archimedes—was difficult. Terrifying.
One step at a time.
She emerged from behind the screen. “It’s best because I would probably burn it first.”
“Why would you— Oh. No. Don’t tie that sash in the front. You might as well hike the hem up around your waist and hang a vendor’s sign around your neck.”
Blast it all. Zenobia tugged the wide belt free. On their walks and in the Fox Den, she’d noted that most women wore it with the knot at the back, but there had been some who didn’t. “I assumed it was just to make their stomachs look flat. And that those who tied it the other way were pregnant.”
Mara’s brows shot up. “Are you?”
A prospect both wonderful and terrifying—but unlikely. The timing wasn’t right. It had been almost a month since her menses and they were due again soon.
But it was possible. “If I am, I suppose I will know it before long. But I only knotted the sash in front because I couldn’t figure out how to tie it behind my back.”
“You could have tied it in front and twisted it around to the back.”
And of course she told Zenobia that
after
she’d untied her knot. Snarling a little, she started over. “Why are these so impossibly wide? It is like tying a ship’s sail around my waist.”
Grinning, Mara watched her struggle with the sash for another minute. “You’re making a mess of that. Let me help.”
With a sigh, Zenobia let the mercenary do what she could. Her gaze landed on her typesetter, but she couldn’t dredge up any irritation again. Instead her chest tightened with the same heavy and breathless anxiety that had filled her as she’d written Archimedes’ letter.
These past few days had been so wonderful. Every moment with Ariq. These explorations through the city with her friends. Even the rubbish she’d written seemed better than anything she’d created before.
Dare she hope that it might endure?
Behind her, Mara said softly, “Helene didn’t look very well when she left.”
“No.” Pale and ill, her friend had returned across the Red Wall shortly after they’d completed their trip to the temple. “I don’t think the mask agrees with her.”
Or rather, the fear of what would happen if they were outside the quarantine and she was forced to choose between removing it or being sick in it.
Zenobia didn’t know if Mara had guessed the truth of Helene’s condition. Most likely, the mercenary had. But Zenobia wouldn’t mention her friend’s pregnancy; better to blame it wholly on the masks.
“I don’t think they agree with anyone,” Mara said.
No. Not the people who wore them or the unmasked people who tried not to stare. “Perhaps we will stay in this tower on her next visit. As we can tolerate the masks better, you and I can go out alone.”
“You never ventured out so often in Fladstrand.”
“No.” Zenobia had liked that town well enough. There hadn’t been as much to see, that was true. Yet that wasn’t why she went out so often now. “I didn’t care to go out. But even if we were back home, I couldn’t be content staying in my parlor now.”
Even though she had just as much to write. Because the world had always been so small, and that had been her escape. But now . . . she wouldn’t be content until the world around her felt as big as the one in her head.
“Well, I won’t argue,” Mara said. The sash pulled tighter before loosening again. The mercenary huffed out a little breath and started over. “I can never tie the complicated ones. I’ll have to use the same knot the men do. You’re a foreigner, so no one will care.”
Zenobia didn’t either. She would be untying it as soon as they reached the baths. “Why won’t you argue? Did you and Cooper suffer such severe boredom in Fladstrand?”
“No. At first, perhaps, we wondered if we’d made a mistake. It was a drastic change for us. So quiet. We wondered if we should take on smaller jobs in addition to yours. Then the kidnapping attempts started. So it got better.”
“How fortunate for you, then, that so many blaggards were trying to abduct me.”
Mara laughed. “It was. It still is.”
“But . . . you wanted a quiet situation. To start a family.”
“Yes. But we don’t want to sit and rust, either.”
And Zenobia had been worried they wouldn’t renew their contract because of the danger she’d put them in? No wonder she liked writing stories so well. She would
never
understand real people. “Do you prefer being here? Aside from the masks—and the Empress’s Eyes.”
Which were unavoidable. The clockwork devices watched them on every street, on every level of every tower. Only their personal chambers boasted any real privacy.
“Those are impossible to put aside,” Mara said before sighing. “I don’t know whether I enjoy being here, or if I just enjoy the things that remind me of when I was a girl. Such as hearing the clack of the women’s sandals. I’d forgotten that. But I used to hear it whenever my mother and I would walk through the Nipponese enclave in the Ivory Market. I don’t have many memories of her. Mostly just of how she would lift the lid from a cooking pot and waft the steam to her face, and how beautiful her smile was when it smelled as she hoped it would. So it’s . . . pleasant to be reminded of more.”
By the thickness in Mara’s voice, Zenobia thought that
pleasant
couldn’t convey the emotions the memories truly evoked. “It’s good that you’re here, then.”
“Yes.”
“Would you enjoy living in Krakentown?”
Oh, Zenobia hadn’t meant to blurt out the question like that. Anxiety bound her chest again, pulling tighter and tighter when a brief silence fell, as if she’d surprised the other woman.
Finally Mara said, “Cooper and I would like it very much,” but the mercenary’s response didn’t make it easier for Zenobia to breathe.
“I love him,” she whispered, and now she’d exposed her heart to two people—her brother and her guard.
This time there was no hesitation before Mara replied, “I know.” She finished with the sash, and concern creased her brow when she came around to study Zenobia’s face. “Are you well?”
Not trusting her voice, Zenobia nodded. She was perfectly well. She just had lungs that wouldn’t breathe. A heart that wouldn’t stop racing. And feet that didn’t trust the ground beneath them.
But perhaps she should have expected this uncertainty. Her world had turned completely upside down in the past two months—quite literally. She stood in a different hemisphere on the opposite side of the earth from where she’d been. And she’d changed, too. When she’d left home, Zenobia hadn’t been in love; now she was in so deep with Ariq that she could drown in it. She’d been a virgin; now she was so thoroughly ravished and eager to ravish him that every night had become an unending pleasure. She’d been a woman who hid and waited for ransom; now she would make a bludgeon and fashion her own escape.
In many ways, she was the same woman who’d boarded an airship in Fladstrand. But there had been shifts within her, some like shivers and some like earthquakes, and so it was no surprise that she wasn’t yet steady.
And she’d worried that Ariq had fallen in love with the spy rather than the woman she was? It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d known the truth. She would still be a different person now than the one he’d first met. She just had to trust that he would move with her when she shifted and quaked.
Not so easy, trust. Not so easy, hope. But the realization helped her settle a little.
Mara must have thought so, too. The concern smoothed away from her expression and she retrieved her bathing basket. “Are you worried because you haven’t yet received news from Krakentown?”
Not a word from Ariq’s brother or from Lieutenant Blanchett, though he’d expected to hear from them the previous day. Ariq had been quiet that morning while readying to leave, his tension bordering on that terrifying calm. “Some. I’m trying not to think the worst. Ariq might have received a message today.”
“And if he hasn’t?”
“Then we will do what we must.”
Though Zenobia had no idea what that might be—only that whatever Ariq decided, she would stand with him.
Mara nodded. “And you know Cooper’s and my services are at your . . .”
Tilting her head, she trailed off before setting her basket down. Zenobia stilled, listening.
Only the ocean, the birds, and the expected noises of airship traffic and life in the tower.
“Wait here.” Mara left the chamber.
Zenobia rushed to the door. She’d wait as told. But she’d look.
An airship hovered off the western terrace. Painted a bright red and with white sails like fins, the sleek cruiser resembled a flying fish—though she had not seen many fish with gilded fins and ornate gold scrollwork decorating their snouts. Too opulent for a hired ship, it could only be a private vessel. Someone who hoped to speak with Ariq?
Though the engines hummed quietly as it rose on level with the docking platform, the low rumble echoed and amplified through the long coral courtyard that ran through the heart of their residence like a tunnel. She wasn’t surprised to see Cooper already waiting at the edge of the terrace, with the sides of his jacket tucked behind his holsters. They hadn’t expected visitors. But when Mara joined Cooper, whatever she said had him covering up his weapons.
Did she know whose airship it was?
Zenobia glanced at the vessel again. Narrow flags fluttered on long posts near the bow, but the writing on them meant nothing to her. An emblem of leaves and a blossom marked both the flags and the balloon.
Across the courtyard, one of the new attendants they’d hired in the Red City emerged from a chamber carrying a basket. She looked toward the western terrace. Her eyes widened and her entire body seemed to stutter to a stop before she dropped into a crouch, her head bowed.