The Kraken King (50 page)

Read The Kraken King Online

Authors: Meljean Brook

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Adult

BOOK: The Kraken King
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It felt so wicked to suggest it, even though his visiting her in the bath would have been perfectly proper. She’d had no idea marriage could be so scandalous.
His smile was slow. “I wasn’t sure of my control.”
“And now?”
“I should have left the door open wider. But even that wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t care who saw us. I can still taste you. Even when I should be thinking of—”
Abruptly he walked to the windows, hands clasped tightly behind his back, his broad shoulders stiff. Never had she imagined that a man turning away could make her feel desired. Yet she felt more wanted now than she ever had.
“When I see you, I can only think of tasting you again,” he finished roughly.
It was all she could think of, too. “Tonight,” she whispered.
His chest expanded on a long breath before he nodded. “Yes.”
“So am I to come with you?”
“If you choose to.” His voice was as taut as his posture. “But you spoke of an obligation to stay here.”
With Helene. The ambassador didn’t yet know of her pregnancy, and her friend might need Zenobia when it was revealed. “Yes.”
“Every day, Auger will accompany me to these meetings. He said his wife might like to visit you in the quarantine at the same time.”
That would solve the problem quite neatly, yet it made no sense at all. “How is a quarantine to work if she is always going in and out?”
“We all wear masks outside of the quarantined sector, so it protects the citizens.”
She frowned.
Ariq glanced back at her. “I believe the thinking is that if some plague is carried into the quarantine, we’ll all die in there together.”
“But if she carries a plague in the day before we are released from the quarantine—”
“Then we won’t have to worry about stopping the fleet,” he interrupted dryly.
“It makes no sense.”
“No. But I doubt it’s about containing plagues. Not anymore.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Most of the military is on this side of the wall. Many of those who would conspire against the empress are on that side. But the masks and the quarantine make it more difficult for both sides to meet without attracting notice, and the empress sees all.”
The empress sees all.
He’d told her that before—that it was a common expression in Nippon.
“Does she really?”
Turning to face her again, Ariq met her gaze. “Do you want to find out?”
Another adventure. With him.
“I do,” she said.
XXII
This adventure began in an unmoving coach queued up at the gate. The redbrick wall loomed overhead in the full glare of the afternoon sun. A blue silk parasol shaded Zenobia’s head, but even with the canvas top down the carriage sweltered. Ahead of them waited a motorized litter with curtained sides and segmented legs, its boiler venting a steady cloud of steam. The faint breeze swept the humid warmth directly into Zenobia’s face. At least she didn’t have to wear the plague mask until they were through the gates. For now, she used the floppy rubber to fan her heated cheeks.
Beside her, Ariq sat reading a pamphlet. Even relaxed, his muscular thigh was a solid length against hers. He seemed utterly calm. Not the deadly calm of battle, but as if he were going for a Sunday drive through the countryside rather than heading into a quarantine and campaigning for the lives of everyone on the western coast.
Was he truly at ease, though? She couldn’t tell. Now and again a slight smile would cross his expression as he read, or he would look up and meet her gaze and ask whether she was still doing well. Zenobia would smile and nod, but she wasn’t all right, and he must have known it, because she hadn’t once taken out her notebook. Every time the notion had crossed her mind, she’d happened to glance at him, and every thought of sketches and notes fled, leaving only memories of her leg on his shoulder and anticipation of the night to come.
So she wasn’t all right. Ariq had her turned completely inside out.
A man she’d only known for two weeks.
But attempting to talk sense into herself did no good. She wanted him too much. She wanted
all
of this too much: the man, the adventure—even the terrible twist of her heart when she thought that it might all fall apart. This was so unlike her. Her brother often threw himself headlong into every danger, every emotion. Zenobia didn’t. But for the first time, she understood why embracing every emotion was so appealing. Even sitting and waiting was exhilarating.
It never had been before, and sometimes it seemed that she had spent her entire life waiting. Waiting for her father to leave on his airship again. Waiting to hear from Archimedes, to know that he hadn’t been killed by an assassin or eaten by zombies. Waiting for a ransom. It had never been something she’d enjoyed, just something she did.
But now she was waiting to see Nippon—and waiting for tonight.
Ariq drew her gaze by turning the page of his small pamphlet, which had been stitched at the spine like a chapbook. No matter how many times she reminded herself that the book was printed in the direction opposite to that which she was accustomed, the act of turning the page still struck her as odd. Backward.
She liked the look of his hands as they turned the pages, though. His fingertips were blunt, the tendons strong, and his skin roughened by calluses that had rasped lightly when he’d skimmed his palms up her thighs.
Oh, dear. Suddenly tight and hot all over, she shifted in her seat and searched for a distraction. Ariq wasn’t it. Looking at him only made her want him more.
“Too warm?” he asked without glancing up from his page, and she could only laugh, because he didn’t know the half of it.
Except maybe he did. When he looked up, the stark need in his eyes took her breath. But she couldn’t talk about it—that would only make it worse.
So she chose instead the most sensible topic she could imagine: their household arrangements.
She glanced back. Behind their steamcoach waited a wagon and another carriage, both filled with their belongings and the attendants who would join them in Nippon. A few came from the embassy, and would return as soon as Ariq and Zenobia were settled, but the others would stay with them. “It seems sensible to know whether your wife can prepare a meal before you chain yourself to her for life.”
His expression grave, he nodded. “I should have asked in the vault. Can you?”
“I can get along with a stove—but although we wouldn’t starve, I can’t promise your teeth or your stomach would survive past the first weeks. So I hope you have hired a cook.”
“I didn’t.” And when she groaned, he added, “But I was told that there are vendors who can provide meals. Not everyone who passes through the quarantine brings their wives or their servants with them.”
“Then we are saved,” she said. “And I’ll confess my surprise at how much we are taking with us. I have only one trunk, and I know you didn’t bring much. Neither did Mara and Cooper. Yet we have a full wagon.”
“I told Auger what we needed. Auger’s man arranged for it all.”
“But we paid for it?”
“I did.” The dark slashes of his eyebrows rose. “Did you think I stole it? Smuggled attendants from someone else’s home?”
“No,” she said airily. “It’s just sensible for a woman to know whether her husband is rich before she agrees to marry him.”
He grinned. “So it is.”
“But you didn’t bring many belongings with you from Krakentown.” She’d seen him with a coin now and again, but that was all. “Have you been carrying around a bag of gold?”
“My word is enough for now. Coins will come after Blanchett arrives in my town.”
So Ariq’s brother would send news and money. “If you need some in the interim, I have enough to cover our expenses.”
Not as much as she’d had before filling her bludgeon with gold and leaving the rest on the ironship, but still a significant amount.
Ariq smiled but said, “No.”
Ah, pride. He apparently had as much as Zenobia did. And he apparently didn’t consider that gold his . . . at least for now.
“What will become of my money?”
“When?” He glanced back at the wagon. “It’s not in your trunk?”
“Yes. But that’s not what I meant.” And until she’d spoken it, the question hadn’t occurred to her before—she rarely considered the consequences of marriage. But now that she was thinking of it, sick tension began to roil in her stomach. “Will everything I own be yours?”
He frowned. “In what way?”
“Will you take possession of my property?”
Her heart was pounding. She didn’t know what frightened her more—the thought that her security might be ripped away, or that Ariq might blithely take it as his right.
That he
could
take it as his right.
His dark eyes searched her face. “Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Then it will remain yours.”
Still hers. She nodded. The terror and nausea that accompanied the worry began to subside, though not as quickly as they’d risen. She felt Ariq’s gaze on her profile before his long fingers slipped through hers.
Softly, he said, “I will not take anything you don’t want to give, Zenobia Fox.”
“I
would
give it,” she said, her throat thick. “I’ll happily share it. I don’t care about the money itself. I care about whether I have some control over it.”
“You will. I swear it. And if you spend all of yours I’ll give you more to control.”
Her heart swelling, she squeezed his hand. “So you could afford a foolish wife rather than a sensible one? You
are
rich.”
His chuckle erased her lingering tension. “Or also a fool.”
“I didn’t know rebelling was so lucrative.”
“It isn’t. Usually. Some of what I have came from investments in the mining settlements. But most came from my mother—she saved for me the gifts my father gave to her.”
While she’d been a courtesan. “She was allowed to keep them after he was assassinated?”
“Yes. She had almost ten wagons full when we left the palace.”
“You remember it? Were you there during the coup?”
“We were there. We hid when the fighting started—in the rafters, because the banners she’d hung in our rooms concealed us. But we could still hear it. Distant, to begin. Then they came into the women’s apartments.” Jaw tightening, he fell silent for a long moment. “I don’t remember how long we hid. A few days, I think. And my mother made me continue hiding when she finally went to plead for our lives.”
Knowing that everyone else had been killed. “I can’t imagine the courage that must have taken.”
He nodded. “The Khagan had lined the road to the palace with pikes, and the heads of everyone who’d been killed were stuck on them. Her friends. Children I’d played with. We were ordered to look at them as we left; she wasn’t allowed to cover my eyes. I remember that better than I remember hiding.”
“Considering that you rebelled instead of cowered, it must not have made the impression that he’d hoped it would.”
Ariq smiled faintly. “No.”
The queue moved forward. Three vehicles ahead, uniformed guards collected papers from the masked occupant of the buggy at the gate. The motorized litter walked forward a few steps and settled on its legs with a huff of steam. Their coach rattled to life. It rolled to the next space, then the driver disengaged the engine and the rattling stopped.
Zenobia glanced at her feet, where the satchel containing her own identification waited. “Which name should I give them?”
“Whichever you want to use—Zenobia or Geraldine. It doesn’t matter.”
“Zenobia.” She’d already decided that. “But I don’t know your name.”
Which would also have been more sensible to learn before she married, too.
His brows drew together. “Ariq.”
“Your family name.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Oh. Well, what would your wife call herself?”
“Zenobia Fox.” He shook his head, and the confusion cleared from his expression. “It has never been the custom of my people for the women to take their husbands’ names.”
Repressing a smile, she glanced down at the mask and saw her reflection in the large glass eyes. That woman was still Zenobia Fox.
Ariq was watching her face. “That pleases you,” he said.
“A little.” A lot. “Zenobia Fox is the woman I made of myself. I rather like who that is.”
“So do I.” He grinned when she laughed. “In Nippon, sometimes the bride takes the husband’s name. My mother took Tatsukawa’s. And other times, the husband takes the bride’s name. I could take yours.”
“Ariq Fox,” she said and had to laugh again. “It doesn’t fit.
Kraken
is much better.”
“Why? What does
fox
mean?”
She blinked, then realized he meant the English word. She gave him the French. “It is
renard
.”
Comprehension came swiftly, followed by a deep chuckle. “And this is the name your brother chose?”
“Yes. It fit him.”
Still laughing, Ariq nodded. “It does.”
“And if I
had
been a spy, then it would have fit me even better than . . .” Zenobia stopped. He’d thought she was a spy. He’d read her letters. Except . . . he hadn’t known what
fox
was? “You told me you read my letters.”
His body stilled. “Are you angry for it again?”
“No, I—” She broke off. In English, she said,
“When we reach the gate, I intend to rub your penis while the guard is watching.”
Nothing.
She gasped. “You couldn’t read them!”
He was starting to smile again. “I could read the names.”
“Oh!” Mouth open, she sat staring at him. He’d still invaded her privacy, yet that anger and hurt were over and done with. But everything else suddenly made so much more sense—how he’d known her name, but hadn’t known who she was. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I was trying to break though your walls. I wouldn’t admit to a disadvantage that you might use against me.”
Ah. Another tactic. And she must have already been feeling more secure, because hearing this one didn’t create the same doubts that his last one had.
“Well, I can admit to ignorance.” She traced her forefinger down the stitched spine of his pamphlet. “I cannot read this at all.”
“I know,” he said, and there was something more than amusement in that reply. As if her ignorance offered him an advantage.
“What is it? Something to help you negotiate?”
“No. It is the first part of
Lady Lynx and the Floating City
.”
“It’s
what
?” In shock, she flipped the booklet to the front—oh, the back—and still couldn’t read a word. “I’ve never used that title. That’s a horrible title.”
Laughing, Ariq shook his head. “It must be the translation.”
“It must be.” She thumbed through the first pages. These were her words, her sentences. It seemed that she should recognize them. But she didn’t. “Helene asked me if I would continue writing now that we’re married.”
“Your friend needs to ask?”
Yet Ariq didn’t need to. She glanced up at him and found him watching her with dark eyes, his laughter gone. “Only because I’m sometimes too selfish and thoughtless to be a good friend. But she also wondered if you might ask me to stop.”

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