Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles (3 page)

Finally, he exhaled.

“My ship is anchored off of Capo Zafferano,” he said. “We leave at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll be there.” Relief and trepidation fought for dominance inside her chest. “I wouldn’t be averse to departing tonight.”

“But my crew would. We’ve been on the move for weeks, and I promised them leave.”

Considerate, despite the fact that it meant his crew were drinking and whoring all over Palermo. Doubtless the captain was intent on doing the same when she approached him in the tavern. Well, the night was hardly over.
So long as he’s at his ship tomorrow morning, I don’t care what he does between now and then.

He moved to take the strongbox. She quickly shut the lid, the brass bolts inside sliding back into place. He flicked a glance toward her, one full of amused forbearance. Right. Doubtless he could smash the strongbox into fragments, regardless of its state-of-the-art security system.

Still, she said, “I’ll bring it with me tomorrow. To ensure that you wait for me.”

“Most women aren’t worth waiting for.”

“Neither are most men,” she answered. “But, we’re both rather exceptional.”

He laughed, the sound as rich and deep as a summer night. Then he strode to the door and opened it. Daphne was relieved to note that the couple across the hall had concluded their endeavors.

Pausing at the doorway, Denisov said, “This is going to be a very interesting job,
professorsha
.”

“I don’t want it to be interesting, Captain Denisov. I only want it to be successful. My parents’ lives depend on it.”

At the mention of her parents, the Man O’ War snorted, then turned and paced down the hall. He rattled the floorboards with each step. As soon as his footfalls faded, she hurried over and shut the door. Locked it, for good measure. Leaning against the door, she let out a long, shaking breath.

I’ve just made a deal with the telumium-enhanced Devil.

M
IKHAIL STOOD UPON
the rocky shoreline, his face to the sun. Aquamarine water lapped at the beach, and a dog trotted along the edge of the sea, pausing to nose at bits of debris that had washed ashore. Pretty little villas dotted the hills overlooking the bay. The air was warm and mild. A perfect day for lying in the sunshine and drinking grappa, with a few lush, golden-skinned Sicilian women to keep him company.

Instead, he was about to fly off into risky skies for one freckled, narrow-hipped Englishwoman.

“She’s late,” muttered Levkov, standing beside him.

“Your timepiece is fast,” Mikhail said. “Or broken.” He glanced up at the sky. “It will be nine o’clock in ten minutes.”

Levkov ran a kerchief over the shining dome of his bald head. “The time doesn’t matter. What matters is that this job is a mistake.”

“Good thing we’re old friends, Piotr Romanovich,” Mikhail murmured, “or else I’d throw you into the sea for contradicting your captain.”

Levkov grumbled something under his breath that Mikhail decided to consider an apology.

“Besides,” Mikhail continued, “it’s not a mistake when the woman in question will pay us a tsar’s ransom in gold.” Perhaps it wasn’t a tsar’s ransom. More like a tsarevitch’s ransom, but it was still more than Mikhail’s crew had been paid in a long while. Smuggling those contraband tetrol processors into Oceania hadn’t been as profitable as Mikhail had wanted, because the client turned out to have bigger promises than pockets.

“All the gold in the sodding world won’t matter if we’ve got the navy up our bungholes.”

“Then we’ll just have to keep our bungholes clean.” His acute hearing caught the sounds of a distant wagon approaching. “She’ll be here in five minutes.”

Sure enough, five minutes later, a smoke-spewing wagon appeared at the top of the road running past the beach. A boy sat at the wheel, and another young man sat beside him.

Mikhail frowned. He could’ve sworn that Miss Daphne Carlisle was nearing, as if a strange, other sense had told him that she was nearby. The same sense that had made him aware of her the moment she’d entered the tavern last night. Apparently, that perception had deserted him this morning. But as the wagon bounced nearer, he saw that the young man in the vehicle was Daphne Carlisle. She’d traded her stiff traveling clothes for a short leather jacket and pair of trousers tucked into tall, laced boots. The wagon came to a stop a few yards away, and Miss Carlisle jumped down, revealing just how snug her trousers were, and what an unexpectedly pretty round arse she had.

“Fuck your sister,” Levkov muttered as she struggled to get her trunk down from the back of the wagon. The boy at the wheel offered no assistance. “The Englishwoman didn’t look like that last night.”

“I do like surprises,” Mikhail said.

“No, you don’t.”

“I like
this
surprise.” He strode to the wagon and plucked the trunk from the bed of the vehicle, then hoisted it onto his shoulder.

Miss Carlisle’s moss green eyes widened, and he realized that she didn’t have much experience with Man O’ Wars, to find his strength so surprising. It had taken him nearly a year to get used to it himself.

Taking the opportunity to see her by daylight, he noted the sharp point of her chin, the fullness of her bottom lip, rose-colored in the morning sun, and the scattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose that were suggestive instead of girlish.

“I didn’t know captains also offered luggage service,” she said. Last night, she’d worn her light brown hair in a tight bun, but today she’d braided it, and the plait hung down between her shoulder blades.
What might it look like if the braid was undone? Would her hair be curly or straight? Coarse or soft?

He suspected it would be soft, like satin against his fingers.

“We don’t,” he said. “But I don’t want to watch you fight your baggage for half the day.”

Saying nothing, she climbed into the bed of the wagon to retrieve her strongbox. It afforded him another fine opportunity to look at her figure. Her curves weren’t generous, but they were definitely there, and she moved with an unexpected energy. But then, he had seen her neatly trip the drunkard accosting her at the tavern, so she possessed some skill. Perhaps she didn’t spend all of her time in dusty university libraries.

Hefting the strongbox, she caught him staring. He only smiled at her glare.

Awkward beneath the weight of the metal box, she struggled to alight from the wagon.

“Happy to alleviate your burden,” he said.

“Of that, I’ve no doubt.” She grunted with effort as she clambered down. The moment her feet touched the ground, the wagon trundled away, coughing black smoke into the pure Mediterranean sky.

Levkov lumbered toward them.

“This ugly bastard is Levkov, my first mate,” Mikhail said to her. “You need anything during the voyage, you go to him.”

She eyed Levkov, who returned the look balefully. “I’m sure I’ll be self-sufficient.” She glanced around the bay. “You said your airship was anchored here.”

He started walking down the rocky beach. “It’s inland, near Ficuzza. Less visible.”

“So, you weren’t telling me the truth.” She hurried after him as fast as she could, which wasn’t fast at all, given that she carried a strongbox containing four bars of gold. Levkov followed, muttering.

“Wanted to make sure you weren’t laying a trap for me.”

“I’d never … do … such a thing.” Her words were breathless with strain.

“Sure you don’t want me to carry that for you?”

She threw him a look that answered his question. Then, “How are we supposed to get to your ship? Ficuzza is miles from here, and the wagon’s gone.”

“The journey hasn’t even begun and you’re already questioning me.” He made a
tsk
ing sound, then nodded toward a jolly boat beached on the rocks. “There’s our transportation.”

“Ficuzza is inland.”

“So it is.” He set her trunk down in the jolly boat.

“This is a boat.”

“Right again.” Both he and Levkov climbed in and sat down on the planks that formed the seats, Mikhail by the tiller. “Get in.”

He saw the moment she realized that the jolly boat was, in fact, hovering several inches off the ground. Her gaze moved to the brass-cased ether tank mounted on the aft of the vessel and the small turbine affixed to the stern.

“I’ve seen ether-borne patrol gliders,” she said, climbing in with effort then setting the strongbox at her feet, “but never a boat like this.”

“Strap yourself in.” He fastened a harness across his lap. “I like to go fast.”

“That comes as no surprise.” She did as he instructed, then pulled a pair of goggles from her jacket’s inside pocket and set them in place on her face.

“You were confident I’d agree to take you to Medinat al-Kadib.” He tugged on the goggles that hung around his neck, and Levkov did the same.

Though the goggles partially hid her face, he could see the sharp determination in her gaze. “My only option is success.”

Resolve—he had to credit her with that. As slight as she was, she had a will as hard as forged steel.

“Buckled in?” he asked. When she nodded, he said, “Good. Hang on.”

He flipped a few switches, and the jolly boat rose up into the sky. Her gasp of surprise was caught upon the wind, but he heard it, just as he heard her murmurs of wonderment as he steered the boat high above the blue waters of the bay, and then inland. They flew over the white and green rocky hills, the little villages that at that height looked like illustrations from a child’s picture book, the narrow ribbons of road.

For years, he’d known the sky. He knew what the world looked like from so high up. The first time he’d flown, he’d thought himself in the middle of his best boyhood dream. The intervening years had dulled that sense of wonder.

Yet seeing the naked awe on Miss Carlisle’s face stirred something awake within him. The cobwebs of routine shook off. He saw the passing landscape with her eyes, and how flight was, in its way, miraculous. Only twenty years earlier, theories of taking to the skies were just that—theories. No one believed it possible. And now ... Now he was like that boy in the ancient story. Icarus. No, Icarus had been a fool and had flown too high. His reckless stupidity had cost him his life. But his father, Daedalus, he was the one who knew just how far up he could go without being burned.

Lessons learned, by all of them.

For now, he could enjoy what it was to fly, and watch the amazement of pretty Daphne Carlisle as the wind tugged loose strands of her hair and the hillside towns sped beneath them.

They crested a rugged hill, and she gave another gasp. There, half a mile above the ground, was his airship.
Bielyi Voron
. His stolen prize.

Like other airships, she had a wooden hull, with two large turbines mounted in the stern. Russian airships had their ether tanks in the aft, unlike their British and Italian foes. All naval insignias had long ago been scraped or torn off the
Bielyi Voron
, though Mikhail left the scars there as a badge of … honor. Or defiance. Both.

He’d kept the figurehead of the white raven that gave the ship her name, but gouged out the imperial eagle on its chest. That, he’d done himself, a blade in each hand digging at the painted wood. At the time, he’d wished he’d been burying the blades in one particular man’s chest, but the eagle had sufficed.

The entire top deck was open, save for the pilot house at the middle of the ship, and crewmen hurried back and forth as they went about their duties. Some of them moved slower than others—a consequence of one wild night in Palermo.

Mikhail hadn’t had a wild night. After leaving Daphne Carlisle’s shabby
pensione
, he’d been restless, too restless to find another tavern or the arms of a willing woman, and he’d spent the hours before dawn pacing up and down the esplanade in Palermo, watching the ships enter and leave the harbor. Now he inwardly grimaced. A fine rogue Man O’ War he made, brooding when he should have been carousing. As soon as this mission was over, he’d remedy that.

Bringing the jolly boat closer, he let his gaze stray from his airship to Miss Carlisle. She studied the ship, craning her neck to better see its different parts, completely absorbed with scrutinizing the
Bielyi Voron
. An academic, through and through. Although she didn’t quite move like an academic.

Perhaps he could get more out of this job than her gold.

As the jolly boat approached, doors opened in the keel. He steered the boat up into the waiting cargo bay. The loading doors shut beneath it. Herrera, his quartermaster, came forward as soon as Mikhail brought the jolly boat down. Levkov immediately jumped out and stomped away.

Like the rest of the crew, Herrera had been told about their next job and Daphne Carlisle’s presence on the ship. He simply nodded at her as she gaped at the interior of the cargo bay.

“Have Polzin and O’Keefe take Miss Carlisle’s trunk to her cabin.” Mikhail unbuckled his harness and leapt out of the jolly boat, then pulled his goggles down so they hung around his neck.

“What about that, Captain?” Herrera eyed the strongbox at Daphne Carlisle’s feet.

“Take it to the strong room.”

“I didn’t agree to that,” she said. Tugging off her goggles, she glared at Herrera and then Mikhail.

“It was yours until I took you aboard.” He leaned over the edge of the boat and unfastened the harness around her lap. The backs of his hands brushed against her thighs. She tensed beneath him. “Now you’re on the ship, and the gold is mine.”

She ignored his offered assistance out of the jolly boat, climbing down on her own. “If you take the gold now, what’s to keep you from pitching me overboard? We’re, what, fifteen hundred feet above the ground? A bit difficult to survive that kind of trip over the side.”

“Twenty-six hundred feet up,” he said, “and nothing’s stopping me.”

“Except your honor.”

He laughed at that.

She was less amused. “It stays in my cabin. At the very least, until we reach Medinat al-Kadib.”

A token gesture. They both knew he could take it whenever he so desired. But he’d indulge her. Because it amused him.