Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles (11 page)

Denisov slipped his arms through the straps of a pack. Levkov was placing brass cylinders the size of loaves of bread into it. A band of leather wrapped around the middle of each cylinder, and they were topped by plates of what appeared to be telumium.

“Spare batteries,” Herrera explained.

“For the jolly boat?” she asked.

“For me,” Denisov said, jumping lightly into the vessel. He positioned himself at the tiller. “If a Man O’ War’s away from his ship for more than a few days, the energy within him builds up. A lot.”

“Too much,” Herrera added. “Could trigger an uncontrollable rage. Battle madness.”

“Getting damned mouthy, Herrera,” Denisov growled. The crewman looked away, chastised.

“God,” she said. “I had no idea.” Being so utterly out of control … it sounded terrifying.

He shrugged. “You become a Man O’ War, you take some risks.”

“And the spare batteries in your pack draw off your energy when you’re apart from your ship,” she deduced.

“Gives me a week away rather than just a few days.” He made adjustments to the jolly boat’s control panel, readying it for flight.

As indifferent as he sounded to the prospect, it distressed her. “In essence, you’re tethered to your ship. It’s part of you, and you’re part of it. Does that … trouble you?”

“No.” He scowled at her. “Think I’m going to overload on purpose and punish you for your deception?”

She swallowed hard. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“I’m not going to put myself through that just for you.”

Well, that was a relief. “I just mean …” She struggled to find the right words. “It’d be like I had an airship-sized millstone around my neck. Shackled. I can’t think you’d find that to be a pleasant feeling.” She eyed his crest of hair, the rings in his ears, everything that proclaimed him to be a maverick. “Freedom’s very valuable to you.”

He started, as if she’d jabbed a knife between his ribs. “You don’t know a damned thing about me.” Busying himself with preparing the jolly boat, he muttered, “Long as I have these”—he glanced at the pack containing the batteries—“I can have as much life on land as I want. But the skies are a hell of a lot more free. Better to have wings than be trapped on the dull ground like a commonplace man.”

“You most certainly aren’t commonplace.” She smiled.

He didn’t return the smile. “Flattering me is a useless pastime.”

“I wasn’t trying to. Merely stating a truth.”

The look he gave her showed just how much faith he had in her definition of
truth
. She deserved his mistrust. Yet she couldn’t dwell on it. At last, she’d reached Medinat al-Kadib, which meant she was one step closer to freeing her parents. As perilous as the past few days had been—on many levels—the real danger was about to begin.

Levkov pulled the lever opening the cargo doors, and the jolly boat plunged downward.

She clung to the sides of the vessel as it plummeted. A terrifying sensation. Yet oddly familiar. Ever since she’d received word that her parents had been kidnapped, her life had been in perpetual free fall. It would be a long, long time before she felt solid ground beneath her feet.

M
IKHAIL HAD BEEN
to Medinat al-Kadib only once, but it was a city that left an indelible impression, like a burn. Its outer walls ran right up against the coast of the Red Sea, thick fortifications built to repel the water pirates that had long plagued the city. Ether cannons atop the battlements stood poised to repel any seagoing threat, and steam-powered dhows patrolled the harbor, Gatling guns mounted on their prows.

Safer for him and Daphne Carlisle to approach from the landward side. Dusk fell rapidly as they neared the eastern gate. The walls enclosing the city had been built hundreds of years ago, but now the huge, elaborately carved wooden door at the gate had a complex mechanical lock that could bolt into place at the first sign of trouble.

A stream of traffic led both into and out of the city. Shepherds and farmers poured out, having concluded their business for the day. Many drove steam wagons, no longer reliant on donkeys or horses to draw their vehicles. They seemed eager to leave the city, eyeing warily the men and women who deliberately came to Medinat al-Kadib at night in order to sample its sensual pleasures.

Mikhail wouldn’t be enjoying those pleasures. Not tonight. Right now, his task was to escort Miss Carlisle to the nearest telegraph office, and then see what the rest of the night brought.

They joined the line of people making their way through the eastern gate. Fortunately, he didn’t have to tell Miss Carlisle to stay close. She did so on her own. She had a strong sense of self-preservation—he’d had ample evidence of that already. He kept one eye on her, one on their surroundings. He had no doubt he could handle any trouble that came his way, but she was far more vulnerable in a place known for its wildness.

No one would hurt or harass her, not so long as he was around.

Protecting my investment
.

But as they crossed through the gate and entered the winding, jeweled labyrinth of the city’s streets, he thought back to how distressed she’d seemed at the idea that he and the
Bielyi Voron
were forever tied to each other. As if she actually cared about him.

Don’t be a sentimental ass
.
She’s a mercenary, like you are, except she disguises it behind a fancy vocabulary and a pair of wide green eyes
.

He was grateful, at least, that she didn’t gawk at their surroundings like a guileless innocent—or a keen-eyed academic eagerly researching new subject matter. She kept her gaze level and dispassionate. Yet if ever there was a place that might deserve dumbfounded stares, it was Medinat al-Kadib. Mosaics covered almost every surface, glittering in the spherical gas lamps that hovered above the streets. Small rotor blades atop the lamps kept them aloft. Clockwork scarabs also filled the air, the city’s messenger system, and the metallic whir of their wings droned beneath the constant beat of the
doumbek
drum and strum of the
oud
.

Some people walked down the twisting streets, a few rode donkeys, and there were others who drove steam-powered palanquins. Some of the vehicles were ornately gilded and shaped, their interior compartments curtained with bright silk. Yet other palanquins looked as though they’d been driven across the desert and back and encountered herds of angry camels along the way.

Steam power, not tetrol, was the fuel of choice here. The East hadn’t made the necessary alliances to secure the American fuel and didn’t have the land and climate to grow their own soya.

Men sat outside cafés, smoking hookahs that were periodically refilled by wheeled automatons. The mechanical servers also carried trays of tea and plates of honey-soaked pastries. There was laughter and song, and the continuous chatter of voices poured out from screened windows.

“The city’s different from the last time I was here,” Miss Carlisle said quietly. “It’s become … downtrodden.”

“Don’t see a lot of suffering here,” he answered, also pitching his voice low.

“Look closer.” She subtly nodded toward the narrower lanes leading off the main thoroughfares. A woman and her three children wrapped in tattered blankets were crouched beside a brazier, their hollow gazes fixed on the flames. “There never used to be people living on the streets. I see hunger in many faces.”

As she pointed this out, he did see signs that the once-prosperous city was in decline. More beggars, and buildings in need of repair. Of course she would notice these things, for she was the kind of woman uniquely attuned to the lives of others.

“A kind of desperation, too, in the merriment.” The laughter seemed forced, the music strained.

She nodded. “The effects of the war. People here are caught between two major powers, and they’re suffering for it.” Her expression turned even more grim. “Just as my parents were caught up in the conflict, and now they could be killed.”

What would he do to save the lives of his family? They’d rejected him, and yet, would he travel to the ends of the earth to keep them alive? Would he use any attack or trick to ensure their safety?

I would. I’d deceive anyone if it meant their survival.

The thought shook him, that he could possibly understand why Daphne Carlisle had deliberately misled him.

Whatever her motivations, he had to consider his own benefit and prosperity. Sympathy didn’t pay his crew, or put gold and jewels in his coffers.

“Telegraph office is ahead on the right,” he said gruffly.

They entered the office, where a woman sat behind a desk, idly leafing through a frayed book. Telegraphs must not be in high demand in Medinat al-Kadib, for the clerk jumped up in surprise when Mikhail and Miss Carlisle approached the counter. The clerk eyed him guardedly, but he was used to such a response.

“I need to send a telegram to this address,” Miss Carlisle said in Arabic.

Fortunately, there were a few members of Mikhail’s crew who hailed from this part of the world, so he knew the language passably well.

The clerk read the address. “But that’s the telegraph office on the other side of the city. You’d be better off using the scarab couriers.”

“Not a good practice,” he said, “telling your customers to take their business elsewhere.”

The clerk blushed and stammered. “Of course,
sayyid
.” After Daphne Carlisle wrote out her message, the clerk hurried off to tap it into her telegraph machine.

“It makes sense that I’d send a telegram rather than a courier,” Miss Carlisle said as the clerk worked. “The scarab would go directly to al-Rahim’s emissary, making it easier to track his whereabouts.”

“But if he has someone posted at the other telegraph office,” Mikhail noted, “they’d get the message and take it to the emissary, without revealing where he’d be found.”

She exhaled through her nose. “This subterfuge makes me uneasy.” Catching his eye, she said pointedly, “
All
of this duplicity.”

It wasn’t an apology, and he didn’t mistake it for one.

Silently, they waited for the clerk to finish sending the telegraph.

“It may take some time before we receive a response,” the clerk explained when she was done. “Hours, or days.”

But no sooner had she spoken than the telegraph receiver beeped to life. The clerk transcribed the message as it came through, and handed it to Miss Carlisle.

“We’re to meet at the Café Ifrit in an hour.”

“Oh, that is not a good place,
sayidati
,” the clerk exclaimed. “Bad people go to the Café Ifrit. Dangerous men.”

“She’ll be safe,” Mikhail said.

The clerk looked him up and down. “So she will,
insha’Allah
.”

“Not God’s will,” Mikhail answered, “but mine.”

F
ULL NIGHT HAD
descended by the time Daphne and Denisov left the telegraph office. Between the hovering gas lamps and a few strands of garish electric lights, the streets held an unnatural brightness. Not all the streets, though, for the alleys and side paths were shadowed and punctuated by furtive movement—human or other animal.

The desperation in the merriment that Denisov had noted earlier had increased, too. Harsher notes in the laughter, more discordant tones in the music. As if the city itself realized that it balanced precariously over a chasm, with the British and Italian allies on one side, the Hapsburgs and Russians on the other, both willing to shove the local populace to their doom if it would serve the greater cause.

She stayed close beside him as they navigated the streets. He’d thrown barbs at her at the telegraph office, barbs she deserved yet they still stung. For all her deception with him, she liked to consider herself an honest person.

She hadn’t time to consider moral conundrums. Every step she took beside Denisov brought her that much closer to freeing her parents. Yet those steps were like treading on dynamite. Danger lay in all directions. Including the man striding next to her. But he’d said that he would protect his investment, and his investment was her.

Walking beside him was like strolling beside a massive shark, with all the smaller fishes giving him ample space. His size, his appearance, the air of power just on the verge of slipping its tether—no one wanted to cross Denisov. It wasn’t merely that he was a Man O’ War, but that he had a means of moving, lethal and direct, with a sinister grace, that both drew everyone’s attention and caused them to shrink away.

She wondered why the men who looked at her would suddenly blanch and hurry off, until she saw the threatening glares Denisov sent their way. His crystalline eyes seemed to glow with warning.
One word, one touch, and I’ll tear you into shreds.

Ever since the Mechanical Transformation that had happened fifty years earlier, providing the leveling ground of technology, women had finally gained more equality. They were no longer limited to roles as wives, seamstresses, and shopgirls, but could take their place in the world as the equal of men. Men gradually—sometimes reluctantly—realized that the female gender possessed the same faculties, the same intelligence and fortitude as men. There were female politicians, scientists, ship captains. Professors, such as herself.

For all that egalitarianism, she was damned grateful to have a massive Man O’ War providing protection as she wove her way through the streets of Medinat al-Kadib.

A commotion up ahead made her slow in her steps. Distinctly English music and voices poured out an open door, and European men in British uniforms loitered around the door, shouting rowdily at the passersby.

“That’s a British officers’ club,” she murmured to Denisov. “Unofficial, of course. No one nation has claim over the city.”

“British officers making asses of themselves,” he muttered back.

The soldiers in question all had faces reddened with drink and belligerence as they spilled out into the street. Amusing themselves, they yelled epithets and slurs at the people walking by. One lieutenant shoved the shoulder of a local man, causing him to stumble back into the arms of other citizens.