Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [115]
Rabat was unlike any city she’d seen before. Though many things were the same—the smoke pouring from the factories along the walls and beside the sea, streets crowded with steam-powered vehicles and pedal-carts, people walking between them, it was also lusher than she expected, even with the presence of the river. As they flew over, there was hardly a building that did not have a garden on its flat roof. Goats and chickens were plentiful.
“If they plan to starve you out,” Yasmeen said, “it will take awhile.”
“Yes,” Nasrin said. “Supplies from the east are not as plentiful, and Temür did not know if we could make friends with the west. So we prepared to have no friends at all. We have repurposed two of the salt factories into water factories to ease the burden on the river, and have spent years laying the pipes that bring fresh water to every part of the city.”
“It is incredible.”
“It has been much work, but well worth it.”
But Nasrin did not smile in full, and her eyes softened as her gaze swept over the city—almost with longing, Yasmeen thought. A city that wasn’t fully hers.
She pointed to a sandstone fortress near the sea. Tall walls surrounded a palace and the great tower, made of red stone and rising tall over the city, impossible to miss. One only had to glance that way, and their vision would be filled with that tower. It looked indestructible, immovable, imposing.
Perhaps Hassan was right. Perhaps such a thing would serve as a constant reminder . . . and even powered down, the fear that it might be turned back on.
“Come in over there,” Nasrin said. “Near the kasbah wall, you may tether your ship.”
Near a large section of the city under tents and stalls. “Is that a marketplace?” Yasmeen asked.
“Yes. But please understand—I know that some of the ports to the north are rough, Captain, especially as regards to the treatment of women. I see that there are no women on your crew, and so your men cannot have much practice with them. I ask that, unless necessary, they remain aboard the ship.”
Yasmeen flushed. Because there were no women aboard, Nasrin thought that Yasmeen could not control her crew or depend on them to behave. But she had never been one to offer excuses. “Our supplies have spoiled along the way. If I may send my steward and one other man to restock them, it would be greatly appreciated. I will remind them to be gentlemen.”
“That would be allowed. If they do not speak the language, I will be happy to send a guide to them, so that they might find everything more easily.”
And keep an eye on them. Though Yasmeen bristled, in truth, she knew little of the crew’s behavior at port except for what she’d seen in the Charging Bull.
To avoid any trouble at all, an escort might be a very fine idea. “Thank you, Lady Nasrin.”
“Very good. Perhaps you would like to speak with your steward now, while I go and properly greet Hassan. As soon as you have tethered, perhaps you and Mr. Gunther-Baptiste would accompany me to the kasbah.”
Such polite orders from a woman who had decided that Yasmeen was a complete barbarian. “We will.”
The heat was welcome after so much cold. Though not sweltering, as he’d experienced it before in Rabat, warm enough to soak into skin and bones. He expected Yasmeen to lift her face to the sun after they came down the cargo lift and climbed up into the crawler’s box, but the expression that he had seen aboard Ceres as she’d spoken to Nasrin—a tight combination of embarrassment, frustration—had given way to the cool amusement that tried to express everything was going her way.
On the padded seat bench behind Hassan and Nasrin, he gave her a searching glance. She met his eyes, gave a tiny shake of her head.
Well, they were not on her decks. He slid his hand into hers, offered the little support he could, and her amusement softened and warmed.
The crawler rumbled lightly and lifted its body from the ground on segmented legs. On its back, their small box of cushioned benches rose too, high enough that the steamcarts and wagons they passed would