The Kraken King (16 page)

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Authors: Meljean Brook

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Adult

BOOK: The Kraken King
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She didn’t want to look at the governor, but movement drew her gaze to his chest. He withdrew two small bottles from the fold of his tunic and offered them to her.
“Kraken ink,” he said.
She would
not
think well of him. Her heart only leapt as her fingers brushed his because the ink was marvelous. “Thank you.”
“As I promised.”
Before she’d rejected him. She hoped he wouldn’t misunderstand her accepting the gift. “My friend is determined for me to sit with you. I trust you will not take it as encouragement.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
“But you may take everything I say as encouragement.”
Her gaze shot to his profile. “What?”
“Every word I say. Everything I do. You may take it as encouragement,” he said as easily as if he were only remarking on the color of the sky. He wasn’t even looking at her, but surveying the other machines as their engines started. “If you change your mind again, know that my desires remain the same.”
Like a lash of a whip, anger cracked through her surprise. He didn’t desire her. “For me to visit your bed?”
If he
did
want her in bed, it wasn’t for herself. Only to gain her trust, to seduce away her secrets.
“Yes.” Now he looked at her, his gaze burning. “And I desire to know why you need to leave my town so quickly. Why you travel with guards. Why your airship was attacked.”
He not only wanted her secrets, but Helene’s, too. And answers that she simply didn’t know. What could the marauders have to do with her?
“Geraldine!” Helene’s voice came from above. “We are settled!”
And waiting on her. She glanced at Taka, but the governor moved behind her before his brother could assist. Big hands spanned her waist and he lifted her onto the ladder. For a moment, his broad chest was hard against her back.
“I also want to know why you refuse me, then look at my mouth as if you wonder how I’ll taste.” Carried on a warm breath, his voice was deep and soft against her ear. “And I want to know why your friend calls you Geraldine, but your maid called you Zenobia.”
Her fingers slipped from the rung. Tension steeled her body. She didn’t fall. He still had hold of her.
Though her heart pounded, she said evenly, “You misheard.”
“I didn’t.” The hands at her waist tightened when she reached for the rung again, keeping her securely against him. “Whatever you are running from or running toward, I will help you.”
“Sir.” She put iron into her voice and gripped the ladder. “Right now, I am trying to get away from
you
.”
He let her go.
VI
She shouldn’t have worried that Helene would spill secrets. Within twenty minutes of starting off, the slight rocking motion of the walker had her spilling her breakfast over the side instead. Her friend sat with her eyes closed and a wet cloth over her forehead through the remainder of the morning, and didn’t talk much at all.
None of them were talking. Mara sat quietly, watchful as always. The governor seemed occupied by his own thoughts—and he was occupying hers.
He’d heard Mara call her Zenobia. When? She couldn’t remember—and the mercenary was usually so careful. Was he testing her reaction? Did he already suspect that she was Zenobia Fox or had he only heard the first name? Had the notebook given her away?
Whatever he suspected, she didn’t think he was after money. He knew she was hiding something and he’d offered to help. But perhaps that was test, too, and he was searching for confirmation of his suspicions.
Well, she would not confirm anything. Revealing her identity might put her in danger—or her brother. Archimedes could take care of himself. And if he couldn’t, then his wife would tear apart anyone who threatened him. But Zenobia didn’t want to be caught in the middle.
Again.
At least the governor wasn’t like the other men who had pretended interest in her but whose eyes had been on her money. He’d told her what he wanted. Mara had overheard him saying that he wanted to know her secrets, and he’d seemed deceptive. But only two days later, he had come out and said it himself.
Zenobia had no intention of exposing herself, but his bluntness was refreshing.
By midday, the heat wrapped around them like a heavy wet blanket. The shade from the canvas canopy provided little relief. The landscape had settled into a flat brushland dotted with stiff shrubs and leafy trees. Birds chattered constantly over the hiss of the hydraulics. Feeling hot and sticky, Zenobia watched it all pass beside the walker’s swiftly undulating legs, wishing for her notebook. Surely a sketch wouldn’t be suspicious? A deer poked its head up from behind a bush, dark limpid eyes watching them approach. Then its full body came into view, and Zenobia sat forward, her mouth dropping open in astonishment. The deer here could sit on their haunches and feed themselves with their hands!
“A kangaroo,” the governor said, as if he’d noted the direction of her astonished gaze.
A kangaroo.
Not a deer. It stared at the walker for a moment longer, chewing a mouthful of leaves, then suddenly bounded away.
Averting her face, she silently laughed at herself to tears, stiffly trying to conceal the shaking of her body. She didn’t do very well. Though he wasn’t looking at her, the Kraken King wore a slight smile when she finally got hold of herself and dared a glance his way.
She had been trying not to look in his direction. He would know she was—just as she could see when he was watching her. He had often. Not always. His gaze frequently scanned the landscape. But the walker was simple to drive; he’d only had to set the direction and engage the engine. Aside from guiding it around trees, the navigation didn’t require close attention. From the corner of her eye, she could see when he glanced her way.
Now he stared straight ahead. He must be aware that she was studying his profile, but probably also knew that she would look away if he turned his head to meet her gaze.
And she
would
. Instead of boldly staring at him, she would slide her gaze away. She hated herself for that.
She hated herself for not turning away now. But she liked the look of him. She liked the way his trousers pulled tight over his thighs, and remembering how hard his muscles had been. She liked the easy grip of his big hands on the steering levers. As the temperature had climbed, he’d unfastened the buckle at his shoulder and folded the collar of his tunic down, and she liked the triangle of smooth brown skin exposed at his throat. In this heat, she’d have loved to let the flap of her tunic fall open, too. She liked his jaw, the angular lines of his face and the high set of his cheekbones. She liked the heavy-lidded darkness of his eyes and the low, brooding cast to his brows, suggesting that weighty thoughts were never far from his mind. She liked the blunt knot of hair high on the back of his head, as if he’d gathered it all together and cut straight across.
He glanced at her face and Zenobia dropped her gaze to his mouth, because he already knew she liked looking at it and if she was going to hate herself, then she would at least please herself at the same time.
Except it apparently pleased him, too. His mouth widened into another smile while she was watching, and she tore her gaze away and looked over her shoulder. Lieutenant Blanchett’s walker trailed behind far enough to avoid the dust kicked up from their passing.
On the rear bench, Helene was reading one of the books she’d purchased before they’d left town. Mara appeared asleep, but Zenobia knew the mercenary had only closed her eyes and activated her listening device—not just to detect nearby threats, but those from afar. Cooper and Meeng’s flyers were tiny spots in the distance. The two men were scouting ahead, but also had to secure permission to enter the next territory, which the governor had said might take the better part of the day; they would stop at the boundary and wait for the tribe to grant them all passage. The two smaller crawlers walked a half mile ahead, one far to the right and the other to the left, staying just within sight.
Zenobia pointed to the crawler on the right. “Are they scouting, too? Or are we hunting our food along the way?”
He shook his head. “We don’t hunt outside the town. Only Meeng does, and even he won’t after we cross the boundary. We can take food from the sea, but hunting territories are closely guarded.”
“And you wouldn’t want to upset your host tribe.”
“No.”
Helene turned in her seat, closing the book in her lap. She rested her arm on the back of the front bench. Her early sickness had passed but she looked as flushed and as sweaty as Zenobia felt. “Were the wars between the Nipponese and the Australians so terrible?”
“Those occurred centuries before we settled here.” A slight smile softened his mouth before turning into something harder. “But I imagine they were. All wars are terrible.”
Because of men like him, Zenobia thought. But wars were probably horrible even for the men who made them so.
“Weren’t the wars farther north and west—closer to where Nippon is now?” Helene asked.
“The battles were. But no one escaped the plagues. Not the Nipponese or any of the clans.”
“After the plagues, I wonder that they allow any contact at all,” Zenobia said.
Many of the nations in the Americas didn’t allow anyone with a nanoagent infection across their borders. Some feared that the Horde would conquer them as England had been conquered; others were terrified of the zombie infection, and didn’t see any difference between it and the nanoagents which allowed Cooper and Mara to graft the devices to their bodies.
“A few don’t. The Wajarri do—our host clan. They believe the trade and alliance strengthens us both, and the damage from the plagues has already been done.” The governor glanced into the sky ahead, where the two flyers were specks against the blue. “Still, we’re rarely welcomed outside of the towns. Even in our host territory. So every settlement has a liaison from the host tribe who negotiates for us. Meeng is ours.”
So Meeng might hunt and talk to the other native Australians, but no one else did. Yet the governor had two crawlers covering as much territory as they could without leaving his sight. “Are you searching for the marauders? You said the flyers don’t have a long range. They couldn’t have staged their attack from a great distance.”
And the governor needed to find them. Mara had overheard that, too. Zenobia couldn’t imagine the Nipponese empress would destroy every town along the coast just to exterminate a small band of marauders. But Zenobia didn’t know the politics of the region. Maybe the empress would. The governor must have believed she would, because the threat had been enough to send him to the smugglers’ dens.
Now he gave her a long, speculative look. “Yes.”
“And if we encounter them?”
“Then I’ll discover what I need to know from them.”
A shiver raced over her skin. Icy and calm, his response was like a strong cold grip on the back of her neck, as if she’d just heard a little of what had given the Kraken King such a terrifying reputation.
He frowned, watching her. “Do you fear another attack?”
Did she? Zenobia had not even considered it. Though only two days past, the attack on the airship seemed long ago. She’d been more concerned about sunburn.
But Helene answered for her. “Geraldine doesn’t fear anything.”
Where had that come from? Her friend’s tone was light and teasing, but with a note of conviction behind it—the tone of someone about to impart mildly embarrassing information about a mutual friend to a new confidant.
“Of course I do,” Zenobia said.
“No.” Helene twisted around farther, as if to gain a better angle to speak with the governor. “When we were attacked, the airship was burning around us and it was as if Geraldine was having a picnic.”
“That’s not so.”
“It is. I was in near hysterics and you were gathering your papers.” She looked to the governor again. “Lieutenant Blanchett came to take us to the lifeboats, and she tells him—very calmly, even though he was bleeding and we’d already felt two explosions—that we will wait for her maid and valet.”
Because Zenobia had known Mara and Cooper would protect her. They had before. And she might have
appeared
calm, but only because she hadn’t wanted Lieutenant Blanchett to disregard her as hysterical the moment she showed fear or anger, as so many men faced with an emotional woman did. She’d been firm, not calm.
But she could only shake her head because Helene was already continuing. “Then we were on the flyers, those men were shooting at us, and her balloon implodes, but she doesn’t even scream. She just opens up her glider, as if she expected to all along.”
“I saw,” the governor said quietly, his gaze on her.
He
had
seen, she remembered. He’d been flying behind the marauder who’d shot her balloon. “And you’d also say that I wasn’t afraid?”
“Yes.”
And odd little hurt started in her chest. She felt the urge to defend herself, to explain how terrified she’d been, how her heart had pounded and she’d almost been sick with fear.

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