Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [58]
Archimedes set the trunk by his feet. “Aside from his famous opinion that women shouldn’t be serving aboard airships, what have you heard of Captain Guillouet?”
“That opinion is not just his, but famously a navy opinion,” Yasmeen said.
No matter the New World nation, very few sailing ships allowed females to join their crews. Guillouet had simply carried on the tradition after he’d been decommissioned and purchased Ceres.
“So the makeup of his crew isn’t cause for concern, then.”
“Don’t mistake me, Mr. Fox: I don’t have much confidence in any ship that doesn’t include women. It means that either the captain doesn’t trust his crew to follow his rules, or he doesn’t trust his own ability to keep them in line.”
“Or he thinks women have no place aboard an airship.”
For Guillouet, it was probably a bit of both. “I think sailors have no place aboard an airship—and Guillouet is still a sailor. He has no business in the air.”
“Is captaining a boat so different from captaining an airship?”
“You truly ask? I’d hate to kill you on our first day of marriage.” When he grinned, Yasmeen looked up at Ceres with a sigh. “See how he’s dressed her up? Guillouet treats her like a whore, parading her around and pandering to patriotism simply to secure a few more rides and a few more coins.”
“Forgive me, but—you hired out your lady for men to ride.”
She turned narrowed eyes on him. “I didn’t say she wasn’t a whore. I said he treats her like one.”
His brows rose. “And that makes all the difference?”
“If ever you’d been treated like a whore, you’d know it does.” His lack of reply felt like a brief, angry silence. On her behalf? It was kind of him, but she was sorrier for the airship. “Guillouet was also a cousin to Rousseau.”
“Your Rousseau?”
“Yes. They both served the French in the war—Guillouet with the navy, Rousseau with the aeronauts. When the treasuries ran low, they were among the first to go. But Guillouet still claims that the continued Liberé Obligation was justified.”
“I see,” Archimedes said.
Probably better than Yasmeen did. She hadn’t arrived in the New World until a few years before the end of the decade-long war, which had been brewing for centuries. Every person gave a different reason for it, but almost everyone agreed that the root of the conflict lay in the sixteenth century, when the zombie infection began to spread west across Africa. The Huguenots, who’d already established settlements in the Caribbean and plantations in the southern American continent, had sent fleets of ships to the west coast of Africa on a mission of mercy. Full kingdoms were given passage across the Atlantic and resettled on Huguenot territory north of the Great Cinnamon River, their only obligation to pay for the use of the land with gold or labor.
Of the next hundred years or so, Yasmeen knew little—until the French, embroiled in a war for territory with the Catholic Lusitani-ans to the north, offered to release any Africans of their Obligation if they joined the French armies. Thousands went, but Castile and the native confederacies put their weight behind Lusitania, and the French gained little territory north of the Caribbean Sea. The war over, thousands of families who’d fought for the French—now calling themselves the Liberé—found few places to settle and work, and many were told they weren’t fit for anything better than pulling carts. Some returned south, but many more moved north, where trade and land agreements with the native confederacies made for more factories and fields offering pay equal to skill.
Archimedes’ sister had overstated when she’d claimed that every family in the New World had Liberé and native relations. Many did now, it was true. But if she’d said “neighbors,” it would not have been an exaggeration at all.
In the southern American territories, still owned by the king, the Liberé name slowly spread—even among the French nobles and officials who governed the territories. Resistance began with the refusal to acknowledge the