Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [6]
A familiar grunt came from Yasmeen’s left. Lady Corsair’s quartermaster stood at the port rail, consulting a hand-drawn map before casting a derisive look over the town.
Yasmeen tucked her scarf beneath her chin so the heavy wool wouldn’t muffle her voice. “Is there a problem, Monsieur Rousseau?”
Rousseau pushed his striped scarf away from his mouth, exposing a short black beard. With gloved hands, he gestured to the rows of houses, each one identical to the next in all but color. “Only that they are exactly the same, Captain. But it is not a problem. It is simply an irritant.”
Yasmeen nodded. She didn’t doubt Rousseau could find the house. Though hopeless with a sword or gun, her quartermaster could interpret the most rudimentary of maps as if they’d been drawn by skilled cartographers. That ability, combined with his expressive grunts and eyebrows that could wordlessly discipline or praise the aviators—and a booming voice for when nothing but words would do—made him the most valuable member of Yasmeen’s crew. A significant number of jobs that Yasmeen took in Europe required Lady Corsair to navigate through half-remembered terrain and landmarks. Historical maps of the continent were easy to come by, but matching their details to the overgrown ruins that existed now demanded another skill entirely—that of reading the story of the Horde’s centuries-long occupation.
Though not ruins, Fladstrand’s identical rows of houses told another tale, one that Yasmeen had seen repeated along the Scandinavian coastlines.
In one of her adventures, Zenobia Fox had written that the worth of any society could be judged by measuring the length of time it took for dissenters to go from the street to the noose. Zenobia might have based that statement on the history of her adopted Danish home; a few centuries ago, that time hadn’t been long at all. Soon after the Horde’s war machines had broken through the Hapsburg Wall, they’d deliberately created a zombie infection that had outpaced their armies, and the steady trickle of refugees from eastern Europe had opened into a flood. Those who had the means bought passage aboard a ship to the New World, but those without money or connections migrated north, pushing farther and farther up the Jutland Peninsula until they crowded the northern tip. Some fled across the sea to Norway and Sweden, while others bargained for passage to the Danish islands. Those refugees who were left built rows of shacks, and waited for the Horde and the zombies to come.
Neither had. The Horde hadn’t pressed farther north than the Limfjord, a shallow sound that cut across the tip of Jutland, separating it from the rest of the peninsula and creating an island of the area. The same stretch of water stopped most of the zombies; walls built near the sound stopped the rest. Poverty and unrest had plagued the crowded refugees, and the noose had seen frequent use, but the region slowly recovered. Rows of shacks became rows of houses. Now quiet and stable, many of the settlements attracted families from England, recently freed from Horde occupation, and from the New World. Zenobia Fox and her brother had made up one of those families.
“We are coming over her home now, Captain.” Rousseau’s announcement emerged in frozen puffs. “How long do you intend to visit with her?”
How long would it take to say that Archimedes had discovered a valuable artifact before Yasmeen had killed him, and then pay the woman off? With luck, Zenobia Fox would send Yasmeen on her way in a fit of self-righteous fury—though it might be more entertaining if she tried to send Yasmeen off with a gun. In both scenarios, Yasmeen would hold on to all of the money, which suited her perfectly.
“Not long,” she predicted. “Lower the ladder.”
Rousseau relayed the order and within moments, the crew unrolled the rope ladder over Lady Corsair’s side. Yasmeen glanced down. Zenobia’s orange, three-level home sat between two identical houses painted a pale yellow. Unlike many of the houses in Fladstrand, the levels hadn’t been split into three separate flats.