Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [102]
“Tell me what?”
He took a deep breath. “I love you.”
Oh. Her lips parted. He slipped the cigarillo from between her teeth, bent his head. His mouth brushed hers, so sweet. When she lifted to deepen the kiss, he drew back.
That was it? Yet, in its perfect way, enough.
Smiling, she lay her head on the pillow again. Despite everything, she felt almost settled now. She would be patient. She would avenge her crew.
And she would hold the heart of Archimedes Fox very, very close.
“Not the wrong time at all,” she said.
Why had he never been to Brindisi before? Aside from the zombies, it was a near-perfect city, full of churches and forts and castles whose thick walls stood for hundreds of years without crumbling to ruins. Clear turquoise waters filled the harbor, and on one of the islands—free of zombies—sat an enormous red structure that had been called only “Sea Fort” in Ollivier’s notes.
It was far more than that—it was a hoard of relics worth salvaging. Archimedes only picked a few to take back to Ceres; finding nothing at all would raise suspicions, and too many would be a treasure and a signal for Bigor to kill him. So he found small painted icons in the chapel, and would return later for the altarpiece. He found a faded tapestry, and left a sundial in the shape of a lute.
But although Hassan might have been satisfied by the few things he’d brought back to the ship, Archimedes knew not to stop there. They had discussed Brindisi with Bigor before they’d learned of his connection to Mattson, so the marine was aware that several locations in the port city were to be explored. He and Yasmeen dutifully crept through a church, and he found a diptych of an archangel and the Virgin, and a lead bowl plated with gold.
If it had been solid gold, he’d have left it.
He could have easily spent weeks here, but he settled on two days. They remained out until after midnight the first day, and almost immediately dropped into sleep on return to Ceres. He woke to the cracking of Yasmeen’s knees. As soon as she loosened up, they scouted a new building from the airship and went down again, lowering the rope ladder to the roof. After a cursory search, they climbed back up, scouted another building, then a castle overlooking the harbor. A number of zombies milled around in the courtyard, so many that it took Archimedes a few moments to recognize what they were milling around. His heart thumped against his chest, and his head swam.
Yasmeen caught his arm. “Archimedes?”
He forced the excitement from his expression, though he wanted to shout and laugh. In a low voice, he said, “It is his crane.”
“What?”
“The pile of rotted wood below. Do you see the shape of the iron that used to bind it, the giant wheel, the long arm? It’s a machine for lifting. I saw a replica of da Vinci’s sketch once. This is his crane, almost exactly.”
“Ah.” She studied the shattered remains. “So what was he lifting?”
Archimedes almost didn’t care. He wanted to slide down into the courtyard, simply touch the iron. But the number of zombies made that impossible, at least until he returned. He judged the length of the crane arm, followed the arc of it in his mind.
“There.” He pointed to the curtain wall nearest to the harbor. “Something could be lifted to the top of the wall and taken into that tower.”
“All right.” She met his eyes. “There’s a lot of stairs.”
She was right. The castle didn’t possess a regular, symmetrical structure, but sprawled across different levels of walls, towers, halls, and courtyards. Stairs running up the side of the curtain walls gave zombies easy access to the tower—there were already several stumbling along the stone walkway atop the wall.
“We kill those, then we make certain we’re quiet,” he said.
They did, and even better, the tower had a door—partially rotted, but intact, so that if any more zombies climbed up to the wall, they wouldn’t see Archimedes and Yasmeen moving around inside. So long as they were quiet, they shouldn’t capture the zombies’ attention.
They waved the airship away and went inside. The