Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles Read online

  Yet seeing the naked awe on Miss Carlisle’s face stirred something awake within him. The cobwebs of routine shook off. He saw the passing landscape with her eyes, and how flight was, in its way, miraculous. Only twenty years earlier, theories of taking to the skies were just that—theories. No one believed it possible. And now ... Now he was like that boy in the ancient story. Icarus. No, Icarus had been a fool and had flown too high. His reckless stupidity had cost him his life. But his father, Daedalus, he was the one who knew just how far up he could go without being burned.

  Lessons learned, by all of them.

  For now, he could enjoy what it was to fly, and watch the amazement of pretty Daphne Carlisle as the wind tugged loose strands of her hair and the hillside towns sped beneath them.

  They crested a rugged hill, and she gave another gasp. There, half a mile above the ground, was his airship. Bielyi Voron. His stolen prize.

  Like other airships, she had a wooden hull, with two large turbines mounted in the stern. Russian airships had their ether tanks in the aft, unlike their British and Italian foes. All naval insignias had long ago been scraped or torn off the Bielyi Voron, though Mikhail left the scars there as a badge of … honor. Or defiance. Both.

  He’d kept the figurehead of the white raven that gave the ship her name, but gouged out the imperial eagle on its chest. That, he’d done himself, a blade in each hand digging at the painted wood. At the time, he’d wished he’d been burying the blades in one particular man’s chest, but the eagle had sufficed.

  The entire top deck was open, save for the pilot house at the middle of the ship, and crewmen hurried back and forth as they went about their duties. Some of them moved slower than others—a consequence of one wild night in Palermo.

  Mikhail hadn’t had a wild night. After leaving Daphne Carlisle’s shabby pensione, he’d been restless, too restless to find another tavern or the arms of a willing woman, and he’d spent the hours before dawn pacing up and down the esplanade in Palermo, watching the ships enter and leave the harbor. Now he inwardly grimaced. A fine rogue Man O’ War he made, brooding when he should have been carousing. As soon as this mission was over, he’d remedy that.

  Bringing the jolly boat closer, he let his gaze stray from his airship to Miss Carlisle. She studied the ship, craning her neck to better see its different parts, completely absorbed with scrutinizing the Bielyi Voron. An academic, through and through. Although she didn’t quite move like an academic.

  Perhaps he could get more out of this job than her gold.

  As the jolly boat approached, doors opened in the keel. He steered the boat up into the waiting cargo bay. The loading doors shut beneath it. Herrera, his quartermaster, came forward as soon as Mikhail brought the jolly boat down. Levkov immediately jumped out and stomped away.

  Like the rest of the crew, Herrera had been told about their next job and Daphne Carlisle’s presence on the ship. He simply nodded at her as she gaped at the interior of the cargo bay.

  “Have Polzin and O’Keefe take Miss Carlisle’s trunk to her cabin.” Mikhail unbuckled his harness and leapt out of the jolly boat, then pulled his goggles down so they hung around his neck.

  “What about that, Captain?” Herrera eyed the strongbox at Daphne Carlisle’s feet.

  “Take it to the strong room.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” she said. Tugging off her goggles, she glared at Herrera and then Mikhail.

  “It was yours until I took you aboard.” He leaned over the edge of the boat and unfastened the harness around her lap. The backs of his hands brushed against her thighs. She tensed beneath him. “Now you’re on the ship, and the gold is mine.”

  She ignored his offered assistance out of the jolly boat, climbing down on her own. “If you take the gold now, what’s to keep you from pitching me overboard? We’re, what, fifteen hundred feet above the ground? A bit difficult to survive that kind of trip over the side.”

  “Twenty-six hundred feet up,” he said, “and nothing’s stopping me.”

  “Except your honor.”

  He laughed at that.

  She was less amused. “It stays in my cabin. At the very least, until we reach Medinat al-Kadib.”

  A token gesture. They both knew he could take it whenever he so desired. But he’d indulge her. Because it amused him.

  “Carry it there yourself,” he said.

  After shooting him a look, she grabbed the handles of the strongbox and, with a groan, hefted it up. “Where is … my … cabin?”

  He waved a hand at the quartermaster. “Herrera will take you there.”

  “I will?” Herrera asked. At Mikhail’s stony stare, the quartermaster said, “I will.”

  “Wonderful,” she said through gritted teeth, straining beneath the weight of the strongbox.

  His hands itched. He fought his impulse to take the box from her—not for the gold, but to alleviate her burden. The results of a lifetime of instruction from his father in good manners, and the discipline drummed into him by the navy. But he wasn’t his father’s son anymore, nor was he a naval officer. He’d made himself into something, someone different.

  No remorse. No looking back.

  “Welcome to the Bielyi Voron, Miss Carlisle.” With an ironic smile, he clicked his heels together and bowed. He strode toward the steps leading up to the next deck, then threw over his shoulder, “Don’t get into trouble. I make enough of it on my own.”

  DAPHNE WATCHED HIS retreating back, torn between admiring the wide span of his shoulders and wanting to throw a gold ingot at his head. She did neither.

  Turning to Herrera—who stared at her with wary curiosity—she said, “I’ll go … to my cabin … now.” Carrying a box full of gold made speaking in full sentences rather difficult.

  The man shrugged and ambled away, taking the same set of steps that Denisov had used. It took her a good deal longer to climb them, huffing and panting the entire way, the muscles of her arms shouting with the effort. But she wouldn’t relent. The only other option was to simply hand over the strongbox to Denisov, and that she couldn’t do.

  Herrera waited for her on the next deck. She followed him as he made his way through the airship, traveling down passageways and up stairs. Though the effort of carrying the strongbox taxed her, she couldn’t help but stare in fascination at the ship. It was one thing to read about these modern wonders, quite another to finally see them, to be inside one.

  Metal plates were mounted to the bulkheads. Batteries, if her research was correct. They actually drew their power from Denisov, a process made possible by his telumium implants. Copper tubes also traced along the bulkheads, conveying ether from the batteries to storage tanks like those she saw positioned at the rear of the airship. Presumably, the batteries generated enough ether to fill additional tanks, such as the one that had been on the small boat. Weapons, too, would take some of the surplus ether.

  Almost all the crew that she passed wore ether pistols. She’d never been around so many firearms in her life, especially those given extra power from the potent gas.

  Nor had she seen a ship’s crew of such diversity. Mostly, they were men, but a small number of women were part of their ranks. They spoke a babel of languages. Primarily Russian, but she also heard Spanish, English, German, Chinese, and several others she couldn’t place. Their clothing was equally collaged: pieces from naval uniforms, regular European civilian garments, Asian tunics, feathers and adornments from Central America. Goggles around their necks were standard. All the men wore their hair closely cropped, while the women kept theirs tucked beneath brightly printed kerchiefs. With their faces so exposed, an assortment of scars were revealed, evidence that they’d been in a fair number of fights and possibly battles.

  What sort of people became mercenaries on an airship? What choices did they make in their lives? What sort of ethos did they possess, if any?

  Though Daphne wanted to find these things out about the crew, if she were to be honest with herself, it was the
captain of this airship that fascinated her the most.

  A treatise suddenly popped into her mind: The Habits and Customs of Airship Mercenaries, with Particular Examination of the Captain of Said Mercenaries, by Doctor Daphne Sheridan Carlisle, PhD, AAC.

  She burned to document everything she saw. Or perhaps it was her muscles that burned from hefting this bloody strongbox.

  The crew seemed unsettled by her appearance on the ship. They simply stopped and watched her as she passed. Some were curious, others hostile. Despite the unease sitting like an oily snake in her belly, she tipped up her chin and met each man’s gaze. In most cultures, when an outsider stepped into a closed society, the first engagements set the tone for the outsider’s interactions and their position within the society. She couldn’t show these mercenaries that she was intimidated. Especially not by the captain.

  Herrera stopped in front of one door and opened it. With a halfhearted gesture, he waved her inside.

  She stood in the doorway, peering in. Light seeped into the cabin from the small porthole, illuminating a narrow cot shoved against the bulkhead. An upended crate served as a table, one old-fashioned oil lamp sitting atop it. Coils of chain and half-assembled mechanical equipment covered most of the floor. The cabin smelled of tetrol fuel, metal, and a small amount of smoked paprika.

  There was no dresser. A lumpy pillow and coarse wool blanket were thrown onto the cot.

  Clearly, the Bielyi Voron was not outfitted as a passenger ship, nor did Denisov think she necessitated any special treatment. She supposed she ought to consider herself lucky that she had a cabin at all. Though it was more of a storage compartment than a berth.

  She stepped inside and set the strongbox down. Resisting the need to massage her aching arms, she said, “I don’t see a water closet or anywhere to bathe.”

  Herrera jerked a thumb toward the corridor. “Down the passageway.”

  Delightful. She could just picture herself in her nightgown and robe, walking past hard-bitten mercenaries so she could relieve herself or wash her face. Although, she did have a knife conveniently stashed in her boot. Best to make that her constant companion from now on.

  The blade would probably bounce right off of Denisov.

  Two crewmen appeared at the door, bearing her trunk between them. They eyed the limited floor space. It took her several moments of shoving more junk against the bulkheads and even under her cot to make enough room, but finally the men deposited her luggage in the cabin. Did one give a gratuity to mercenaries?

  Apparently not, for as soon as her trunk was set down, the crewmen disappeared.

  “Got things to do,” Herrera muttered, then he, too, vanished.

  Daphne shut her cabin door. Rattling the handle, she discovered that it didn’t actually lock.

  This just gets better and better.

  But she couldn’t complain about the lack of comforts. At that very moment, her parents were the prisoners of a vicious warlord. A little lack of privacy and the smell of tetrol were nothing in comparison.

  The floor began to vibrate. The turbines must be coming to life in preparation for departure. It felt not unlike being on a steamship, though there was a different sense of buoyancy. There was no water beneath the ship. Only air.

  Her stomach leapt at the thought. But all her research had revealed no recorded airship crashes—unless they were shot out of the sky. Given Denisov’s status as a rogue Man O’ War, she couldn’t discount that possibility. They were headed straight into a war zone, after all.

  She shook her head, banishing the fear. Strength. She needed strength.

  Besides, how many civilians get the opportunity to fly?

  Picking her way through the jumble on the floor, she peered through the porthole. Small as the window was, and set high in the hull, she couldn’t see much through it. Standing up on her tiptoes didn’t help.

  Curiosity gnawed at her.

  Leaving her cabin, she made her way through the corridors and searched for the stairs that would lead her to the top deck. She tried to make herself inconspicuous, yet not appear meek—not an easy feat. While she had no idea of the layout of the ship, she attempted to move as though she knew exactly where she was going. Asking directions from the crew was out of the question.

  She wound up in the magazine twice and a mess hall three times before she at last found herself climbing a set of stairs, and winding up on deck.

  Sky. All around her. It felt endless, as though the airship was suspended in an azure sphere.

  When she managed to tear her gaze from the sky, she watched the crew going back and forth across the deck, shouting at one another in their strange patois. Though they weren’t part of a formal navy, they went about their duties with a confidence that bespoke years of experience. Some must have been seafaring men and women, for Man O’ Wars and airships had come into existence only within the past decade.

  Many of them sent her inquisitive looks, but they were too involved in preparing the ship for flight to give her much notice. She danced out of the way as a crewman hurried past her, and muttered an apology when she found herself in another man’s path. The crew made adjustments to instrument panels set along the railings, pulled levers, turned dials.

  Damn, why didn’t I bring my writing tablet up here with me? There was so much to see, so much to document. She could watch the activity all day and never grow weary of it.

  The nerves across the back of her neck and along her arms tightened. She had a sense of heat and energy like a dynamo. Without turning around, she knew exactly what—or rather, who—caused the sensation.

  Yet she did turn around, and everything surrounding her dimmed. The sky, the ship … faded. She only saw him.

  Denisov stood in front of the pilot house, directing his crew as they made the ship ready. His unconventional hair and long, embellished coat only served to emphasize his natural authority rather than undermine it, as she might have thought. As he pointed at some piece of equipment, his waistcoat gapped slightly, revealing an edge of his telumium implants. The metal glittered in the sunlight.

  A corona of heat shimmered around him—though that had to be her imagination. Yet her body warmed as it recalled the tremendous warmth he gave off, how it had seemed to fill her room at the pensione long after he’d gone.

  It’s only a side effect of the implant. A scientific process, nothing more.

  But it made her feel hot and breathless just the same.

  Their gazes met across the length of the deck. And there went her pulse again.

  As he’d done at the tavern, he motioned her toward him with a crook of his finger.

  Daphne bristled. She was a tenured professor at a respected institute of higher learning. She was not summoned like a lackey. Certainly not in such an arrogant fashion.

  But this was Denisov’s ship. Overt defiance against the leader of a society—especially when one had no hope or even desire to supplant them from their position—led to conflict, if not outright ostracism. Or worse. Better to let her pride sting and play by Denisov’s rules.

  She walked to him with a deliberately measured pace.

  “You’re getting in the crew’s way,” he said without preamble. “Stay by me or go to your cabin.”

  “I can’t see anything from that tiny aperture of a porthole.”

  “Then stay here.” He pointed to the space beside him.

  She moved to stand next to him, catching the scent of heated metal. For several moments, she was silent, observing him as he continued to direct the crew. He spoke to his men primarily in Russian, and the sound of that language on his tongue was an intoxicant.

  They’re only words.

  The turbines’ speed increased, the planks beneath her feet almost alive as they vibrated.

  He moved to take the wheel from a crewman, and she had no choice but to follow him.

  “Am I to stand next to you every time I’m above deck?” she asked.

  “Only when we’re preparing to leave.”
He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “If you were next to me the whole voyage, it would be too …”

  “Annoying,” she filled in.

  “Distracting.”

  After calling a command over his shoulder, he pulled a lever beside him. The ship began to move. A gradual slide forward, and then it picked up speed. The gentle breeze against her face grew in strength, from a soft breath into a scouring wind. She slid her goggles into place, as Denisov and the rest of the crew had also done.

  From her position beside the captain, she could see edges of the landscape passing, the serrated tips of rocky peaks and the green fringe of trees.

  Flight.

  This was far different from being in a train, or even when she had been riding in the ether-borne boat. This was …

  “Miraculous,” she murmured.

  She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Denisov said with a wry smile, “Not a miracle. Science.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less astonishing. There are some cultures that consider flight to be a god’s power.”

  He shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the feeling of wind upon her face. Fear for her parents continued to scrape at her heart, but she could only face each moment as it was presented to her. “I won’t.”

  When she opened her eyes again, she found him watching her and not the sky. He wasn’t wearing his habitual half smile. Instead, he seemed … intent. Slightly puzzled, but determined to solve the riddle.

  And she was the riddle.

  Oh, but he couldn’t learn everything. That would be a disaster.

  “I should unpack,” she said abruptly. There was nothing for her to unpack into, but she needed a reason to get away from him. If she stayed beside him any longer, she might reveal things she shouldn’t. Dangerous things.

  Before he could speak, she hurried away, putting the vast sky and the intensity of his gaze behind her.

  Chapter Three