Heart of Steel (36 page)

With a clipped, “Mr. Vashon, the helm is yours,” she asked Archimedes to accompany her to the cabin, and had barely closed the door when she was on him, tearing off his clothes, desperate to kiss him
enough
so that the next few days wouldn't matter, wouldn't hurt so much, wouldn't look so bleak. She leapt up around his waist, loved his hunger and ferocity as he pounded her back against the wall.

“Hard,” she told him. “So hard we feel it until next week.”

Pain, if nothing else. And that would have to be enough.

That would have to be enough.

 

 

Hassan appeared in a cheerful mood at dinner. Perhaps he
enjoyed having his emotions castrated. Archimedes hated his own glower, his dim mood—but that would be cured soon, ha!

The older man's gaze rested on his face for a moment, then moved to Yasmeen's. She gingerly ate her beans one at a time, but she was moving everything gingerly. Archimedes hadn't been getting around so easily himself. He'd never have imagined it, but it was possible that they'd actually fucked
too
hard.

God, what a woman she was.

He glanced at the clock. A few more hours. They'd move into range just before midnight. Christ, he felt so maudlin, as if he were waiting to die. He should be sensible, instead.

“When the tower comes down,” he said, “don't you worry that the people will have the same reaction they did in England?—the panic, the chaos?”

Hassan shook his head. “No, it is only the symbol.”

“But when the signal suddenly stops, and they are flooded with emotion . . .” He trailed off as Hassan's brow furrowed. “What?”

“The signal is gone. It has been these past five years.”

Next to him, Yasmeen dropped her fork. She put her elbows on the table, her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.

Was this a joke? Archimedes stared at him. “Five years?”

“Yes. Temür reduced the signal gradually so that we wouldn't have the same panic. A period of several years at reduced strength, then gone altogether for the past five.” Hassan gave him a strange look, as if suddenly wondering if he was talking to an idiot. Archimedes began to wonder, too. “Those towers are part of the reason the rebellion gathered such support. Why would Temür keep it on after he secured the governorship?”

“Why is the tower still
up
?”

“It is built on part of an old minaret, a site that many consider a tie to their past and the old religion—something from before the Horde. He did not want to antagonize the recent converts.”

“But you will?”

“It needs to fall,” Hassan said. “It is an old and valuable minaret, but Rabat would be stronger if we built something new in its place, together.”

Not a joke, then. Yasmeen lifted her face from her hands, wiping her eyes. “Oh, damn. I can barely even
sit
,” she cried, and then burst into laughter again, not bothering to quiet it, this time.

The older man's eyes were bright with laughter, darting from Yasmeen to Archimedes as if he was enjoying the hilarity without fully comprehending what had happened. Then his head tilted back, as if lifted by realization. “Ah, I see. He thought the tower would affect him.”

Christ. “You talked of blowing it up, just like the Iron Duke had in England.”

“And I see that you ran full bore with the assumptions you made from that, as per usual,” Hassan said, and his laugh echoed in his air tank, reverberating through the cabin. “You fear more, you dare more—and now you love more. It will not be taken away from you in Rabat. Do you know, it was seeing what happened to you that prompted Temür to turn off the signal earlier than he intended?”

Yasmeen's brows rose. “Truly?”

“Yes. He'd always intended to power it down, but very gradually—over a generation, perhaps. We had heard of England and did not want a repeat of that. But when Wolfram was shot, when we saw the change in him after the infection . . .” He shook his head. “We have seen many who have lived beneath the tower, and then were released from it. The reaction of most warned us to go slowly. There was too much fear, too much wildness. But Wolfram was one of the first we knew who had been free, and then yoked by the tower. It was devastating. Even I felt the horror of it, and I was still under the tower's suppression. When Temür saw that bravery itself was squashed, he could not bear the thought that there was a city of brave souls, all squashed in the same manner.”

“Temür Agha,” Yasmeen repeated. “The same man who literally squashed a city of brave souls?”

Hassan frowned at her. “You break a man's neck with no regret before he carried out his intended rape, and yet you let the man who slaughtered your crew choose his own method of death. I love a man like a brother, yet I also know that the best thing for the city I love is to remove that man from power. We are none of us so easy to peg.”

“I am,” Archimedes said.

“You are the worst of us,” Yasmeen said. “Everything you seek, every fear, every thrill, is something that is also gone like”—she lifted her fingers,
snap!snap!snap!
—“Done so quickly, and you run off to find the next. But you seek love, intend to run to heartbreak, and then you stick with love. You do not regret losing war machines that would lead to too many deaths, and then kill two marines following orders on their ship with barely a blink.”

Mortally wounded, he flattened his hand over his chest. “I had to rescue my beautiful wife.”

“So you did.” She gave him a laughing look from beneath her lashes. “Perhaps next time I'll wait and let you break a neck.”

He looked to Hassan. “Do you see? She makes offers like that. It would be impossible to fall out of love.”

Chapter Fifteen

Two Horde outposts guarded each side of the mouth of
the Mediterranean, overlooking the narrow entrance to the sea. Unlike a sailing ship, Yasmeen could detour around the outposts, taking a southern route directly over land to Rabat. A jewel of a city with a river running through its heart and nestled between the wall and the ocean, there was only one port that all airships and sailing vessels used—and it was under siege.

A fleet of French ships patrolled the waters, supported by two airships overhead. No airships were tethered at the port. They must have let all of the merchants leave, but no one through the blockade.

But unlike most of the airships, Yasmeen wasn't coming in from the west. She could approach the city from the eastern walled side before they could intercept her . . . though that offered its own dangers, and not only from the French fleet.

At the port, four of Temür's war machines stood at the edge of the sea, great hulking colossusi guarding the city. Two vaguely resembled elephants, with enormous bodies supported by sturdy legs, and at the front, a bank of long cannons that could be manipulated, elongated to defend at a distance or contracted to fire a barrage up close. The other two were equally bulky and enormous, like an octopus brought out of the water—each tentacle working like a giant grapnel, pulling down airships within range. All four machines had firebomb launching stations, a battery of self-reloading cannons, rapid-fire guns that could be manned from inside or from one of the stations connected by ladders and lifts surrounding the outside. Though at rest, with steam drifting lazily from the vents, they would be ready to stoke at a moment's notice, pushing them into lumbering mobility and engaging the electrical rail guns—and even with boilers cold, could still use all of its weapons.

Manned by a crew of thirty men, protected by the thick steel hide, a single one of the machines could devastate a city—or a fleet of ships that came into range of its firebombs.

But Temür had not posted them only on the seaside. Two more machines stood at the wall, overlooking the desert. Slightly shorter than the machines at the port, but no less dangerous, they were shaped almost like a Buddha sitting atop a giant mobile chamber that rolled on plated tracks. A body squat and wide housed the bulk of the weaponry, and it was so large that if it had hands instead of two grapnel arms that could easily pull them down into the zombie-infested desert,
Ceres
would have settled comfortably into its palm.

On the quarterdeck, Yasmeen lowered her spyglass and told the aviator at the helm, “Take her in directly between those machines, at the height of its shoulder. Follow the path of the river into the city.”

“Ma'am? Between the machines?”

“Yes.”

Archimedes said, too softly for anyone to hear, “Are we out of the tentacles' range?”

“No.” She glanced at him. “No one has begun shooting yet. They likely won't start for a sugar sloop.”

“Even one with a Huguenot cross emblazoned on her balloon?”

A French symbol. That was unfortunate. “Do you think your luck is still holding up?”

“Well enough.”

Hassan came onto the quarterdeck, peering across the city to the water in the distance. “So they have begun a siege.”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “Let me go to the bow so that they will see that I am aboard.”

After sharing a glance with Yasmeen, Archimedes went with him. Yasmeen ordered the engines cut, and slowly, they sailed toward the city.

The great machines rose on each side. Though far enough away that Yasmeen couldn't have hit them with a thrown rock, their sheer size made it seem they passed at an arm's length.

And it was, she supposed. The machine's arm's length.

A shout rose from the starboard bow. And there she was. On a path from the city wall to the machine, zombies began to fall in the wake of a small figure robed in black. Moving with astonishing speed, Nasrin cleared the half mile between the wall and the machine's squat base in the space of ten breaths. Leaping up, she caught the edge of a ladder with gray fingers, flipped up onto the rolling tracks. She climbed to the torso, the shoulders, simply pushing with a foot, a hand, and launching herself higher with each push, so swiftly that she all but flew to the machine's shoulder.

The crew looked to Yasmeen, wild-eyed, as if waiting for her order. A few had started toward the gun stations.

“Attention!” she shouted. “A lady boards us. You will treat her as such. If you cannot stand as gentlemen, leave this deck.”

Or die.

On the machine's shoulder, Nasrin flicked her wrist. Several of the men cried out as her hand detached and streaked toward them, trailing thin chains of mechanical flesh. Disembodied gray fingers gripped the gunwale. Nasrin leapt, the chain winding swiftly back into her arm. Within moments, the seam of her wrist sealed, and she climbed over the side of the ship with infinite grace. Her gaze touched Yasmeen, held for a long second, before moving to the men at the bow.

“Hassan, my friend,” she said in Arabic, her voice like honey in spiced tea. “Have you been treated well? You appear sickly, as I have never seen you before.”

Yasmeen curled her fingers to hide the trembling of her hands. The fate of this entire crew likely rested on his answers.

“Very well, Nasrin. The food and cold climes have not agreed with me.”

“And are these friends?”

“Yes. Very good friends to me.”

“And are you still friend to us?”

“Always. To Temür and to Rabat.”

“I am pleased to hear that, Hassan.” Her gaze moved to Archimedes. “Mr. Gunther-Baptiste. It is also good to see you in full, rather than peering at me through a peephole in a crate.”

“You must forgive me,” he said, grinning. “In the New World, men are taught that peepholes are the only proper way to catch a glimpse of a beautiful woman.”

“Then you must have spent every moment aboard looking through a peephole.” She looked to Yasmeen. “Is he yours, sister?”

“Every man aboard is, Lady Nasrin.”

“Then I will call every man aboard a friend. You may enter our city without fear.” On silent feet, she came up to the quarterdeck. “I will show you where to tether your ship. Will you tolerate the company of an old woman while we fly?”

Yasmeen would, gladly—but even if she wouldn't, it wasn't as if she had a choice.

Rabat was unlike any city she'd seen before. Though many
things were the same—the smoke pouring from the factories along the walls and beside the sea, streets crowded with steam-powered vehicles and pedal-carts, people walking between them, it was also lusher than she expected, even with the presence of the river. As they flew over, there was hardly a building that did not have a garden on its flat roof. Goats and chickens were plentiful.