Documents did.
Perhaps whatever this woman possessed was important enough that the French had offered to escort her. Or perhaps the aviators had no idea who and what they’d carried on their airship.
Ariq didn’t care about what she carried. He only wondered about the woman herself.
She faced forward again. Her small breasts pressed into his back. Her hands tightened at his sides.
They were only breasts. They were only hands.
But she was bare. She was pale. And she was under Ariq’s protection for now.
Her skirt fluttered and snapped in the wind. Almost dry already. Careful not to touch her skin, he tugged her hem down over her knee and anchored the material between their legs.
She sucked in a breath, her breasts hitching against his back.
“You’ll burn,” he said in French.
A silence followed. Then she tucked the opposite side of her skirt over her left knee and said, “Fortunately your giant shoulders and head block the sun, or I would have to pull my dress up over my face, instead.”
Humor. More seductive than bare skin. With a short laugh, Ariq nodded his—apparently—gigantic head. Now he wished that
Fujimaru
didn’t approach so quickly and that the flyers weren’t as swift. In fifteen minutes, they would be aboard the ironship. Not long enough.
“I must thank you again,” she continued. “And apologize for assuming you were Nipponese.”
It was a sensible assumption. They were on a Nipponese flyer, heading toward a Nipponese ironship. So why think differently now?
“How do you know I’m not?”
A brief hesitation preceded her answer. “Your speech. My maid was raised in a Horde enclave in the Ivory Market. You sound much like her.”
A plausible explanation, yet also a lie. The Golden Empire stretched across three continents. There was little possibility that Ariq’s accent was so similar to a woman’s from the Ivory Market. But although Ariq wanted to know what had revealed his origin, she obviously wanted to conceal that knowledge.
And he wanted her renewed stiffness to ease. “English, French, and Lusitanian men look the same to me. I never know where they’re from until they speak.”
Some of her rigidity faded. Curiosity filled her voice. “Can you tell where I’m from?”
“Johannesland.” He wasn’t familiar enough with the individual principalities to be more specific. “Your speech is similar to others I’ve met from that part of the Americas.”
She stiffened again, very slightly, and Ariq wondered who he’d met that she also knew. But she didn’t say.
“Do you know who attacked us? Or why?”
“No,” he said. “But I will.”
“It shouldn’t be difficult. Any group of men stupid enough to attack a French naval airship in broad daylight surely don’t have brains enough to cover their tracks.”
Sheer stupidity, he agreed. Four of the flyers had been shot down before Ariq and Taka arrived. Two more had been taken by mercenaries dressed in servants’ clothing. The rest had been dispatched with a few guns. A small contingent of warriors could effectively attack a target with proper preparation—Ariq had led several against the Golden Horde’s war machines. It only required a solid plan and careful execution. He saw nothing of planning or execution here. Every pilot had been killed and all of their flyers destroyed or captured.
Stupid. And unlike the marauders. “They’ve covered their tracks for months,” he said. “Yours isn’t the first airship they’ve destroyed.”
“Oh.” The reply seemed uncertain—as if she wondered whether to apologize for suggesting that he should have easily found them before now. He preferred the question she asked, instead. “What did they take from the others?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? I don’t understand. Were the ships all French, then, and the marauders at odds with them?”
“No.”
“Westerners? Naval ships?”
He shook his head. “Smugglers, merchants, miners, and travelers.”
“
Passenger ships?
” Sharp astonishment softened to confusion. “What did they have in common?”
“They were all airships.”
“And men on flyers destroyed them?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What purpose could the destruction serve? Crippling an enemy, perhaps. But it doesn’t sound as if there is one enemy.” Her voice had dropped, as if she were speaking to herself rather than to Ariq now—until she asked another question. “What could the motivation be?”
Ariq grinned into the wind. He hadn’t expected an interrogation. But although her questions were the same that others had asked over the months, he liked that they came so quickly.
And though his gratitude made little sense, now his attraction did. It was not just his boiling blood; she was not just hands and legs and breasts. She also possessed humor and an agile mind. Those both made the sensation of her body against his more enjoyable—and he no longer forced himself to ignore how she felt. He allowed himself to wonder whether she was bare between her legs.
Then she said, “Perhaps it’s a diversion to make everyone turn their attention here, while their true target lies elsewhere,” and Ariq realized what a careless fool he’d been.
Her first questions had taken an expected route—straightforward. Most people thought in the same way, in a direct line between cause and effect. When they learned of an attack, they assumed the motivation was money or enmity. A simple explanation. Even when their motivations were hidden, their schemes took direct steps: If a man wanted to make a woman jealous, he paid attention to another woman. Most people never stepped sideways. But the woman behind him did. Easily, too, as if it had been no effort for her to imagine an indirect cause for the attacks.
Not
just
an indirect cause, but a logical one.
A woman who plotted. She might not pose a threat to Ariq or his town. But he would take more care until he was certain she didn’t.
“Nobody’s eyes would turn in this direction,” he said.
There were smugglers’ dens festering to the south and a few mining towns to the north, all built with the approval of local aboriginal tribes.
Fujimaru
had been searching for the marauders, but only because the ironship’s commander was a friend of Ariq’s. No one else gave a damn about the settlements here.
Except for the rebellion. They’d funded their war against the Golden Empire by smuggling technology and selling it to the west. Destroying the smugglers’ dens would strike a great blow to the rebels.
But the Khagan’s armies would never attack so indirectly—or use flyers of Nipponese design. And they would have no reason to attack a French ship.
“
Your
attention turned this way,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My people have been among those killed.”
She nodded. “So if these attacks won’t draw defensive forces away from another location, the diversion might be in the number of airships attacked. The marauders could conceal their true target by destroying many.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve thought of that already.”
Yes. But until this woman, no one else he’d spoken with had. “Each airship could have been targeted for any number of reasons. So far, not one seems more important than any other.”
“And our airship?”
“You would know better.” Ariq couldn’t trust her not to lie again, but he wanted to hear her answer.
“To my knowledge, no one and nothing of significance was aboard. My friend is the wife of an ambassador, but he is already in the Red City.” She paused, and he hoped she would speak of herself, but she only continued, “I think the target must have already been destroyed.”
“Why?”
“Because you said they hadn’t been so stupid before this. And sending a dozen flyers against a French battleship would be an efficient way to get rid of any pilots who might expose whoever was pulling the strings.”
Ariq shook his head. She’d taken another sideways leap, but although it was logical, even brutally clever, it exposed her inexperience. Such diabolical schemes suited villains in costume plays, not real men.
“No?” she asked. “Why?”
“Because no one who commands other men would toss them away so easily. There are better ways to persuade them to silence. And if they must be killed, there are more efficient ways to do it.”
A shiver raced through her body. Had he frightened her?
If he had, he hoped it wouldn’t stop her questions. They’d been coming more rapidly as their flyer neared the ironship, as if she wanted to fit them all in before they landed.
Ariq had more questions, too. He wouldn’t have time for them.
Quietly, she asked, “How would you do it?”
“I wouldn’t kill my own men.” But he’d kill others by whatever means necessary.
“Would you
sacrifice
your men?”
Inexperienced. But still clever. She would reach the same conclusion that Ariq was heading toward.
“I would,” he said.
“Easily?”
“No.”
Her breath shuddered against his neck. “If they sacrificed so many men, it must have been
very
important to destroy this airship.”
Gaze fixed on
Fujimaru
’s iron deck, Ariq nodded.
“Why, though? What could they possibly gain?”
Ariq didn’t know. But he could imagine one possibility: a clever woman with secrets and documents. If she’d been the target, they’d come for her again.
Ariq intended to stand in the way.
Directly ahead, the ironship pumped smoke into the sky from three tall stacks. Uniformed sailors waited on the deck. Ariq slowed his approach, and the flyer’s drone whined above the deep thrum of the ironship’s engines.
Ariq pulled back on the levers, angling the flaps to begin their descent. The bullet wound in his arm burned. He gritted his teeth—then forgot about his arm when Zenobia’s hands slid from his sides to wrap more securely around his waist.
This flight hadn’t been long enough. He wanted more of her touch—he wanted more of
her
.
Ariq hoped she could be persuaded to have him.
And he’d made himself remember her expression when she’d jumped from her flyer, but he hadn’t really looked at her. The sailors rushed forward to fasten the tether lines to the flyer’s nose and to hold the runners steady. Ariq leapt down to the deck and reached for her hand before any other man could assist her.
She bent her head as she dismounted from the seat, carefully watching her step on the narrow runner. Her hair had come undone in the water. The wind had dried and twisted the strands into thick curls down her back. An unremarkable brown, in an unruly tangle around an unremarkable face. Her features were long and angular, her bottom lip pressed between her teeth. He wanted to see her laugh. She would often, Ariq thought—and he suspected that her smiles would be sharp.
Her fingers folded over his. Her grip tightened as she hopped to the deck. She stood taller than he’d realized. The top of her head reached his chin.
Then she glanced up, her eyes like jade stones lit by an inner flame, and Ariq sensed that another battle was coming. There was nothing unremarkable behind those green eyes—and this woman might have the power to lay waste to him.
But if she did, he didn’t want to fight it.
She quickly steadied under the weight of her pack, but he kept hold of her fingers. Her gaze briefly met his again, then she looked up as the other flyers began to descend, using her free hand to shield her eyes against the sun. Pink tinged her cheeks.
“My head must not be as big as you thought,” he said. “You should have ridden with your skirt up.”
She laughed and her gaze flew back to his. The pink deepened. Not a sunburn. A blush.
Good. Ariq wanted to lay waste to her, too. Fire in her blood was a promising start.
But not one he could pursue any further now. Commander Saito spoke behind him.
“Good afternoon, Governor Jagungar.” The formality of his greeting didn’t conceal his amusement.
Reluctantly, Ariq released Zenobia’s hand. She glanced at the commander, then up at Ariq again. A slight frown formed between her brows. Her halting ‘thank you’ earlier had probably been all of the Nipponese that she knew. Now she must be uncertain whom Saito had been talking to.
“I’ll speak with him. See that your friends are well,” he told her.
Saito waited at the ship’s side, looking to the west. A dense column of smoke rose from the burning airship. “Did any others survive?”
“In the lifeboats.” Ariq watched the sailors tether Taka’s flyer. “I’ll quarter the passengers and aviators in my town until the French can come for them.”