Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [48]
“You never thought of doing the same?”
“Staying in one place? I’d be better off dead.”
She nodded. “And so it is with me, too. I also feared that without an airship, I’d have more trouble. But you get around well enough without one.”
“I’m an outstanding example,” he said.
“Oh, yes. Only two months after the Iron Duke threw you off the Terror near England, you were making an enemy of Temür Agha in Morocco. Getting around quite well, and making an outstanding example, indeed.”
Her eyes shone with laughter, another invitation to join in, and he did easily. A crash near the bar silenced them both, their hands dropping to their weapons. Only the twins, wrestling over who’d be the first to have a go. He turned again to Yasmeen, who was watching the fight, her fingers tapping against her glass.
“I would bet on one, but there is not even a scar for difference.”
If she bet on one, Archimedes would put a coin on the other. “We could call them the red shirt and the blue.”
“If they end this fight without the both of them losing their shirts, it’s not worth the wager.” She looked to him. “And what did you think of Ivy’s submersible?”
“Astonishingly brilliant.” He’d seen submersibles before, but none so nimble. “Did she build it for you?”
With her drink to her lips, she nodded.
And that was perhaps even more astonishing. “How is it that you are friends with Mad Machen, Scarsdale, and the Iron Duke?” The Terror’s surgeon, navigator, and captain. “As you said, you’d barely made a name for yourself here by the time Trahaearn blew up the Horde’s tower in London. Yet you seem to know a good number of men who were aboard his ship.”
“You’ve heard that story, too.”
“No.” He was certain.
“Yes. You just haven’t heard all of it.” She angled toward him in her chair, hooking her arm over the back. “It was Bart. So dangerous and handsome. Older, with silver at his temples and scars in all the right places, and tales of when he’d sailed his own mercenary ship. I was twenty years old, and couldn’t have fallen faster if I’d jumped from my lady.”
“In love with him.” Not so innocent, but still young.
“Oh, yes. That wasn’t all, of course. He knew Europe, knew the locations of the Horde outposts. He taught me well and took only a reasonable percentage. Soon enough, I let him move into my cabin. I got pregnant.” Her eyes glittered. “I told him.”
She reached for her sash again. Archimedes pulled out his cigarillo case first, flipping it open. She selected one, holding it to her lips while he lit the end.
“Thank you.” Her exhalation of smoke sounded like a grateful sigh. “I hadn’t planned on a baby, but I liked the thought well enough. I’d raise her on my lady, free to go wherever we wished. Bart, however, decided that he’d rather just have my ship. We went to bed the night I told him, celebrating. As soon as I was asleep he stabbed me through the belly.”
Christ. “So you gutted him.”
“And then some. I don’t often lose control, but . . .” She shrugged. “I had reason. I didn’t have a surgeon aboard my lady, though. I wasn’t healing well and fever was setting in. After two days, I took a risk and hailed the nearest ship.”
“The Terror?” A hell of a risk.
“Yes. Mad Machen cut me open, sewed me up, and kept me aboard for two weeks. Afterward, when the Iron Duke asked me to scout the coast ahead for them, I did. It’s still the only job I’ve ever done for free.”
“And so your heart of steel was born.”
She snorted. “No. I was still young. More wary, but not wary enough yet—and Bloody Bartholomew wasn’t the only man who has wanted my ship.”
And damn them all. “The comte, too?”
“No. By that time, I’d learned. But he didn’t want my ship, he wanted adventure. He paid for passage to Egypt, the Hapsburg Wall, the ruins of Greece. And he was charming, handsome, rich.”
“Nothing at all like me, thank God.” Archimedes couldn’t claim to be rich.
Her laugh was warm and low. “Not as entertaining, at