Covered by plated iron, the massive body lay in the sand. The bulging mass of its head tapered to a thick cone that flattened at the very tip, forming a shovel-like protrusion wide enough for twenty men to stand upon. Barnacles crusted the armor. A spear still protruded from its giant eye, the radius larger than her two arms held open wide. The fluid dripping from the eye cavity stank of ammonia.
Her own eyes stinging from the smell, Zenobia covered her nose and moved past the head, where the tentacles formed a mountain of tangled coils, as if the creature had writhed out its last seconds in agony on the sand. The nearest arm was thicker than she was tall.
And this was a
small
kraken.
Huge chunks had been cut from several arms, cavities of flesh big enough to walk into—the townspeople had harvested some of the meat before it spoiled. Dark gray skin stretched over the upper sides of the tentacles. The smooth gleam gave the appearance of wetness, but she discovered the sun had already dried this one when she skimmed her fingertips over the taut flesh. The underside of the tentacle was a paler gray, the suckers rimmed with pink, and the folded skin around the dimples was still moist.
Though revolted, Zenobia couldn’t help herself. She prodded at the lip of the pink sucker, feeling for the teeth. When flexed, the suckers had razor sharp edges, like the mouth of a lamprey. It was too easy to imagine these tentacles coiling around a man while the suckers tore away his flesh, shoving his ravaged body toward its mouth, where the kraken’s beak would crush bones and finish ripping him apart.
“Geraldine!”
Zenobia jerked her hand away from the sucker, heart pounding. Dear God. Helene’s shout had nearly scared the life from her.
She glanced back. Her friend stood near the town’s open gate, her hand over her mouth and half-turned away from the sight of the kraken—trying not to be sick again, Zenobia realized. Aside from its gaping eye, the kraken hadn’t begun to truly smell, though it couldn’t be long before rot set in. The heat and humidity were oppressive. If not for her dunking in the ocean, Zenobia feared that she would have begun to smell by now, too.
Helene obviously wouldn’t be coming any closer to speak with her. Zenobia trudged through the soft white sand, her notebook clutched in her hand. Farther along the beach, a boy chased through a flock of gulls gathering to pick at the butchered end of a tentacle.
Always collecting information, Mara chatted with the young townswoman watching the boy—and Cooper stood in the shade provided by the kraken’s enormous body, watching over them all.
Lieutenant Blanchett waited with Helene, offering a handkerchief and a steadying arm. The officer had reached the lifeboats after leaving Zenobia and Helene in their cabin; Zenobia had been relieved to see him among the others when the ironship had rescued the aviators. Not everyone had made it, including the airship’s captain.
“Oh, Geraldine,” Helene told her. “I was coming to tell you that I’d found a seamstress’s shop, and she has ready-made items that she’s willing to alter for us. But the lieutenant has just told me the most dreadful news.”
Zenobia looked to the lieutenant, whose grave expression had not lightened since the first aviator’s body had been pulled from the water. This day had been horrible enough. What could be worse?
“How dreadful?”
“It will be a month before we’ll reach the Red City!”
Not so very terrible, then. Just odd. “We flew all the way from Denmark in a few weeks,” Zenobia said. “A small continent cannot be crossed in less time?”
“If we had transportation,” Blanchett said. “But no airships are available. They’ve all been destroyed by the same marauders who fired on us. Commander Saito has orders to remain in these waters for the next few months, so he can’t carry us to the Red City. If I write a letter, he’s offered to post it when they rendezvous with another ironship to the south. But it’s likely that several weeks will pass before the message reaches the embassy and they can arrange for a ship to retrieve us.”
“It won’t take so long,” Helene said. “My husband is waiting for me. He’ll begin searching for us soon.”
“But he couldn’t know to look for us here. Our airship might have gone down anywhere in the Western Ocean.” Blanchett shook his head. “I am sorry, madame. I know this is a disappointment.”
Judging by Helene’s pinched, worried face, far worse than a disappointment. Zenobia asked, “And what of traveling by land?”
“It shouldn’t be attempted. We have no supplies, few weapons, and little more than the clothes on our backs. I’ve also been advised that traveling through aboriginal territories without permission or a guide would strain the relationships between these settlers and the tribes—and I can’t know what they would make of a regiment of marines marching through their lands. Far better to stay where we are welcomed and won’t cause any unrest.”
A sensible answer, yet a distressing one. Helene’s eyes filled with tears and she turned her face away.
Zenobia took her hand. “I’m sure there will be another way, Helene.”
With determination firming her lips, Helene nodded.
Zenobia gave her fingers another reassuring squeeze. They
would
find a way. Though in truth, she wouldn’t have minded staying in Krakentown. A full month to sketch and take notes, and to talk with the people. Several of the townspeople she’d already met had spoken French, the trader’s language, so she would get along perfectly well. The town itself seemed pleasant, and even though most of the people had apparently been smugglers or pirates at one time, it was nothing like a smugglers’ den.
Though no one had said as much, it was possible that the town was so orderly because the Kraken King governed it with an iron fist. But even if that was true, Zenobia had known many sorts of fists. Some only looked to hurt, some only defended. Others gripped tight and held on.
She’d have liked to see which it was. But she owed her friend, so they would not be staying long.
Even if one reason to stay longer was walking through the town gates toward them. Though both Lieutenant Blanchett and Helene outranked her in importance, the governor’s dark gaze fixed on Zenobia and held steady, as if there was no one else worth his notice.
She suppressed the urge to smooth a hand over her tangled hair and to blot the sweat from her brow.
This was so absurd. Knowing who he was, she simply couldn’t account for her reaction to him. He’d rescued her, but so had Mara and Cooper—several times over—and her stomach didn’t flutter and tighten with nerves when she looked at them.
If anything, that awareness should have served as a deterrent. The last person for whom she’d felt a stirring of attraction had been her brother’s business partner and friend. She’d known Bilson for years; she’d thought he would be the perfect companion. A charming man with engaging manners, he’d always provided entertaining company.
He’d also been behind Zenobia’s first kidnapping—an attempt to blackmail her brother and his wife.
And so what if the governor had shown interest? Surely she wasn’t so desperate for attention. If she had been, her heart would have fallen prey to one of the many men who’d arrived in Fladstrand after her identity as Archimedes Fox’s sister had been revealed. Some of them had been quite adept at pretending their attention had nothing to do with her brother’s fortune or her own writing fame. Many had been as handsome as the governor, too, with strong stubborn jaws and wide shoulders. Others had possessed dark brooding eyes beneath brows that hovered like thunderclouds.
And none of those men had reputations as dangerous as the Kraken King’s. She should have been frightened. It was a failing of practicality on her part that, instead of fearing him, she was only a little wary.
So it was absurd. But she would continue to enjoy his attention for now, and the way her heart beat a little faster when he was near.
Quite a bit faster. And she couldn’t seem to focus on anyone else, either. When he joined them, standing almost directly to her right, she was aware that the governor nodded in response to Blanchett’s greeting, yet she didn’t have a clue what the lieutenant had actually said.
But she knew the governor’s gaze had never left hers.
He didn’t begin with niceties. “You’ve found your residence?”
“Yes, thank you. Cooper showed us. It’s lovely.” Not a single house as she was accustomed to, but a collection of structures with graceful, tiered roofs, all sharing a private garden. “I hope your arm is feeling better?”
The bullet wound no longer bled, at least—or it had been bandaged. He’d changed into a clean tunic, and no red stained the white sleeve.
“It feels as if I was shot,” he said.
“I supposed hauling me out of the water didn’t help it.”
“No.” His gaze swept her length. “You were much heavier than you look.”
Helene gasped softly, her eyes widening, but Zenobia had to laugh. While smuggling Horde technology and weapons, he must have concealed many valuables inside other items. He could probably guess with fair accuracy how much gold made up the difference between her apparent weight and the weight that he’d lifted.
“It was the seawater saturating my clothes,” she said.
“Of course.” His brief smile made her want to laugh all over again before he looked to the lieutenant. “You’ve found the accommodations for your men, as well?”
Blanchett inclined his head. “We are in your debt.”
“So you are.”
With a nod, the governor continued on toward the beach. Zenobia stared after him. His bluntness was rather refreshing. Most men she knew would have insisted that no obligation existed, until they needed to call that debt in.
But it meant that she had an obligation to the Kraken King, too. It just hadn’t been so openly acknowledged.
He looked back. “Walk with me, Lady Inkslinger.”
“Oh, but I—”
Would love to.
Even if it was absurd. She glanced at Helene, who regarded her with mild incredulity. Zenobia didn’t take time to wonder if her friend was amazed by the governor’s interest, or that Zenobia returned it. “Why don’t you go on ahead for a fitting at the dressmaker’s? Take Mara with you now, and I’ll be along shortly. We’ll all need new clothes if we are to travel soon.”
Reminding Helene of her need to reach the Red City did the trick. Determination replaced the disbelief. She probably wouldn’t think of Zenobia and the governor again until she was at the dressmaker’s being stuck with pins.
The governor waited for her in the sand—and he had called her
Lady
Inkslinger, in the same way that her sister-in-law used the term to describe airships: a woman of dignity and nobility. That wouldn’t do.
She caught up to him. “I fear you have mistaken my importance, sir. I’m only a companion, and—”
“I haven’t.”
Well. She couldn’t say anything to that. He continued toward the kraken, his hands clasped behind his back. Zenobia tucked her notebook at her waist and walked beside him.
She looked up at the creature’s enormous mass. “What will you do with it? Surely you don’t let it rot so close to town?”
“No. We skin the tentacles and take as much meat as the town and the local tribes will use. Then we tow the arms out to sea.”
“Only the arms?”
“The shell is too heavy.” He tapped the kraken’s armored hull with the toe of his boot. The iron answered with a dull thud. “At least while it’s full. We build a fire around the base and cook everything inside down to charcoal.”
Turning the shell into a too-hot oven. “How long does that take?”
“A few weeks.”
So she would not be here to witness the entire process. “I’m told that the kraken are drawn here by the pumping machinery underground. That they walk right up into the town on their tentacles.”
“Yes. We try to kill them before they destroy too many buildings.”
“With a harpoon spear through the eye?”
“By any means necessary. But the spear or a cannon is usually the only means possible.”
She glanced toward the leaking eye. “Is that your spear?”
The governor smiled faintly. “No. We have whalers in town who are more familiar with harpoons. If they had failed, I was waiting with the cannon.”
They apparently hadn’t failed. “What is the pumping machinery for?”
He took a long look at her face before answering. “The pumps collect water during the rainy season to store through the summer.”
“But you have a river.”
“And a week ago, it was dry.”
Zenobia could hardly imagine it. If there was one thing Fladstrand never lacked, it was rain. But a town that relied on a store of water might be vulnerable to a villain’s mad plans.
She penciled a reminder into her notebook, and saw a question she’d written while examining the corpse. The governor might have an answer.
When she glanced up, his attention had narrowed on her notes. “What is that?”