Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [74]
“That is duty, loyalty. Not a foolish reaction based on unsupported fears.” She studied him. “Did I tell you of Constantinople? I was raised within walls, and only allowed out into the city on rare occasions.”
“A crèche.”
Many cities within the empire had them. Not to the extent that the outlying territories did, where almost all of the children were raised in them until they were sent into labor. Within the empire, the crèches functioned more like orphanages, the children educated and given assistance in finding a suitable position afterward.
“No, not a crèche. More like a palace, where I was given the best food and education—and trained to fight. I fought every day of my life until I was fifteen, beginning in the morning and then again at night. When Temür destroyed the city and I escaped, I could count on my fingers the number of full days I’d been outside those walls. Yet I journeyed on foot alone across Greece, armed only with two knives and my wits. I am not like a crèche baby, born, fed, and then changed into a laborer. I was bred to be fast and strong. I was bred to be quiet. And I was bred to kill. You want to protect me, but in truth, I’ll protect you. It was what I was made for. So let me do it.”
That was incredible. She was incredible. And yet . . . His jaw clenched, despair tugging at his heart.
How was he to do anything for her?
“Ah,” she said, watching his face. Her sneer mocked him. “It is easy to fall in love with a woman who is always making you feel more of a big, powerful man. You ought not have picked me, after all.”
“That isn’t it.” He didn’t question his abilities. “It is simply difficult to know that I offer nothing at all to the woman I’m falling in love with.”
Her expression lightened. “You offer me nothing? Stupid man. You already give me what few men could. It is rare the man who has the confidence to let me be what I am, whether it is captaining an airship, climbing atop you in a steamcoach, or brawling in a tavern.”
She thought she wouldn’t make him feel a bigger man? Hearing this from her, it was all he could do not to swagger around with a puffed chest.
But it was a chest that deserved deflating. “I haven’t always let you be,” he reminded her. “I tried to take your ship in Venice.”
“With a gun that didn’t work.” She surprised him by knowing. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Still, I admired your balls.”
“You knew the gunpowder was wet?”
“I didn’t know if it was wet or if you were out of bullets. But we found you on a raft in the middle of the canal, safe from zombies, and yet you were shouting across a pile of ruins to our ship in the middle of the night. If you could have, you’d have signaled with a gun—either then or earlier.”
He would have. For a week, he’d been praying for the airship to notice him, but by that time, dirty and starving, he’d resembled the zombies more than a man. He’d have given anything simply for a bright waistcoat to wave on a stick.
“Would you have still forgiven me if it was properly loaded?”
“No, Mr. Fox. If you’d aimed a properly loaded gun at me, I’d have shot you dead. I threw you over the side for being an idiot, pulling it on me in front of my crew and then ordering me about.”
Had there ever been such a woman? “The idiots are all of the men who want you to be something else.”
“Ah, well. Quite a few of them are dead now.” She grinned at him. “I’ll help you not to join their number.”
Until Bigor and his marines met them at the rope ladder, Archimedes hadn’t known that Guillouet had told the men to accompany them on the ground—but as long as they could be quiet, Archimedes didn’t care. He shook his head when the man drew a gun, as if in preparation to go down.
“Try to be silent. If one or two come at us, kill them with your machetes or crossbows. One shot will bring the others, and they’ll be a little slower in the cold and snow—but against a mob, that won’t matter.”
The man gave a short nod. While the other marines holstered their guns and readied their weapons, Bigor pointed