Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [2]
BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / November 2011
ISBN : 978-1-101-54567-6
An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.
ISBN : 978-1-101-54567-6
http://us.penguingroup.com
Archimedes Fox and the Last Adventure
London, England
May 23
O! brilliant Zenobia,
It is time to brush up on your knowledge of Venice, for I have determined that it will be the site of my next adventure. As a practical man of good sense and judgment, I am well aware that it might be my last adventure (as all of them might have been) so please forgo the warnings, lamentations over daft brothers, insults to my intellect, and etc. in your reply. The moment after I post this letter I will be en route to Bath, where I am boarding the first available passenger flight to the New World and the University in Wien, where I will waltz through their lovely map archives. Please pray that the airship does not combust over the Atlantic, that I do not have to share a cabin with a minister or one of those absurdists who believes he can discern a man’s character by studying the shape of his skull, and that we are not beset upon by pirates or mercenaries—unless that mercenary is she who freed us from patriarchal tyranny, because I would like to finally express our gratitude. I should do it while wearing my yellow waistcoat. Do you think she would fall immediately in love with me, or would I need to charm her for a full hour?
I have delivered your manuscript to The Lamplighter Gazette and enclosed their bank check. You ought to begin asking them to pay in livre; English money is worth nothing, and will not be until they are better recovered from the Horde occupation.
I am off! Yours,
Archimedes
P.S. You should title it Archimedes Fox and the Ravenous Cadavers of Venice.
Fladstrand, Upper Peninsula, Denmark
June 7
My dearest brother,
When you meet our favorite mercenary, I recommend wearing only your yellow waistcoat—her hysterical laughter will afford you another thirty seconds of life before she recovers her wits and runs you through.
I will not stab you, but my hysterical laughter began at the word rational and continued on for a good hour after finishing your letter. Do you not remember that you considered Venice before? Not long after poor Bilson ran off, and you still feverish and vomiting from an assassin’s poison. Venice! you cried. Marco Polo was imprisoned there after he returned from the Mongol territories along the Silk Road, and in prison he penned his mad writings about the machines of war the Horde were creating! And then, Leonardo! While the Horde’s war machines were held back at the Hapsburg Wall, the great men of Europe convened in Venice, and da Vinci was among them, inventing weapons to hold back the Horde! Surely there must be something left in the city!
How is it that you are as stupid now, in your full senses, as you were half out of your mind with sickness? Must I remind you that when the zombie infection came across the Hapsburg Wall and it was discovered that the creatures would not cross water, almost everyone in that region fled to Venice? Must I also remind you that blowing the bridges did not save them—and that once the infection reached the city, only the few who made it to a boat escaped? There is not a building or a foot of dry land in Venice that a zombie does not stand upon, and they are more numerous there than anywhere else in Europe. Only a few years ago, even you in all of your dim-witted, thick-skulled rationality deemed it too dangerous.
No, I cannot believe that you’ve forgotten. So although you do not mention it, your Awful Dilemma must have