The Kraken King Part VI Read online

  Her heart swelling, she squeezed his hand. “So you could afford a foolish wife rather than a sensible one? You are rich.”

  His chuckle erased her lingering tension. “Or also a fool.”

  “I didn’t know rebelling was so lucrative.”

  “It isn’t. Usually. Some of what I have came from investments in the mining settlements. But most came from my mother—she saved for me the gifts my father gave to her.”

  While she’d been a courtesan. “She was allowed to keep them after he was assassinated?”

  “Yes. She had almost ten wagons full when we left the palace.”

  “You remember it? Were you there during the coup?”

  “We were there. We hid when the fighting started—in the rafters, because the banners she’d hung in our rooms concealed us. But we could still hear it. Distant, to begin. Then they came into the women’s apartments.” Jaw tightening, he fell silent for a long moment. “I don’t remember how long we hid. A few days, I think. And my mother made me continue hiding when she finally went to plead for our lives.”

  Knowing that everyone else had been killed. “I can’t imagine the courage that must have taken.”

  He nodded. “The Khagan had lined the road to the palace with pikes, and the heads of everyone who’d been killed were stuck on them. Her friends. Children I’d played with. We were ordered to look at them as we left; she wasn’t allowed to cover my eyes. I remember that better than I remember hiding.”

  “Considering that you rebelled instead of cowered, it must not have made the impression that he’d hoped it would.”

  Ariq smiled faintly. “No.”

  The queue moved forward. Three vehicles ahead, uniformed guards collected papers from the masked occupant of the buggy at the gate. The motorized litter walked forward a few steps and settled on its legs with a huff of steam. Their coach rattled to life. It rolled to the next space, then the driver disengaged the engine and the rattling stopped.

  Zenobia glanced at her feet, where the satchel containing her own identification waited. “Which name should I give them?”

  “Whichever you want to use—Zenobia or Geraldine. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Zenobia.” She’d already decided that. “But I don’t know your name.”

  Which would also have been more sensible to learn before she married, too.

  His brows drew together. “Ariq.”

  “Your family name.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Oh. Well, what would your wife call herself?”

  “Zenobia Fox.” He shook his head, and the confusion cleared from his expression. “It has never been the custom of my people for the women to take their husbands’ names.”

  Repressing a smile, she glanced down at the mask and saw her reflection in the large glass eyes. That woman was still Zenobia Fox.

  Ariq was watching her face. “That pleases you,” he said.

  “A little.” A lot. “Zenobia Fox is the woman I made of myself. I rather like who that is.”

  “So do I.” He grinned when she laughed. “In Nippon, sometimes the bride takes the husband’s name. My mother took Tatsukawa’s. And other times, the husband takes the bride’s name. I could take yours.”

  “Ariq Fox,” she said and had to laugh again. “It doesn’t fit. Kraken is much better.”

  “Why? What does fox mean?”

  She blinked, then realized he meant the English word. She gave him the French. “It is renard.”

  Comprehension came swiftly, followed by a deep chuckle. “And this is the name your brother chose?”

  “Yes. It fit him.”

  Still laughing, Ariq nodded. “It does.”

  “And if I had been a spy, then it would have fit me even better than . . .” Zenobia stopped. He’d thought she was a spy. He’d read her letters. Except . . . he hadn’t known what fox was? “You told me you read my letters.”

  His body stilled. “Are you angry for it again?”

  “No, I—” She broke off. In English, she said, “When we reach the gate, I intend to rub your penis while the guard is watching.”

  Nothing.

  She gasped. “You couldn’t read them!”

  He was starting to smile again. “I could read the names.”

  “Oh!” Mouth open, she sat staring at him. He’d still invaded her privacy, yet that anger and hurt were over and done with. But everything else suddenly made so much more sense—how he’d known her name, but hadn’t known who she was. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Because I was trying to break though your walls. I wouldn’t admit to a disadvantage that you might use against me.”

  Ah. Another tactic. And she must have already been feeling more secure, because hearing this one didn’t create the same doubts that his last one had.

  “Well, I can admit to ignorance.” She traced her forefinger down the stitched spine of his pamphlet. “I cannot read this at all.”

  “I know,” he said, and there was something more than amusement in that reply. As if her ignorance offered him an advantage.

  “What is it? Something to help you negotiate?”

  “No. It is the first part of Lady Lynx and the Floating City.”

  “It’s what?” In shock, she flipped the booklet to the front—oh, the back—and still couldn’t read a word. “I’ve never used that title. That’s a horrible title.”

  Laughing, Ariq shook his head. “It must be the translation.”

  “It must be.” She thumbed through the first pages. These were her words, her sentences. It seemed that she should recognize them. But she didn’t. “Helene asked me if I would continue writing now that we’re married.”

  “Your friend needs to ask?”

  Yet Ariq didn’t need to. She glanced up at him and found him watching her with dark eyes, his laughter gone. “Only because I’m sometimes too selfish and thoughtless to be a good friend. But she also wondered if you might ask me to stop.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “I know.” She hadn’t doubted that. “And I’m glad of it. I love it too much. I wouldn’t want to decide between you.”

  He nodded slowly. “Why do you love it?”

  The intensity of his gaze made her turn her face away. She couldn’t think when he looked at her like that. Her fingers traced the characters on the page. Why was this so difficult to explain? She’d written dozens of stories, millions of words. Yet putting these words together seemed more difficult than writing all of those adventures.

  “They just . . . make me happy. Make me feel as if I’ve done something worth doing. Something that matters. Even if it’s only to me and the people who read them. Because they make other people happy, too.”

  “That is good reason.”

  Yes, but it wasn’t her only reason. And she could have stopped there, but this mattered, too. Helene had said she’d closed herself off. Ariq always spoke of her walls. She had reasons for those, too—but he couldn’t come to know her if she was always hiding and keeping him at a distance.

  “And because I’m always afraid—but not when I’m writing. First my father. Then the assassins. Now the ransoms. I always feel so . . . small. As if at any moment I’ll be back in his closet again. Or maybe I never got out.” The words weren’t so difficult now, but coming quickly, each one stronger than the one before. “Even though I went to Fladstrand—even though I’m here, halfway around the world—sometimes I still feel like I’m in that little space. Except when I’m writing. Because I always escape. He used to hit me when he found my stories, did I tell you? He tried to beat it out of me. But now I write stories inspired by my brother, who is everything my father didn’t want him to be. I write stories inspired by the woman who shot my father in the head. So with every single blasted word, I beat him. I win. And I love that.”

  “Then I love it, too.” Ariq’s voice was rough, but he cupped her cheek with a gentle hand. “If ever you need it, I will level mountains to give you a desk. Even if
an army is at our door, I’ll hold them off until your ink runs dry.”

  She was never letting this man go. But her throat was tight, and her words were spent, and she could only nod into his palm.

  He glanced down at her story. “And I will love that tale, too. Even if it’s terrible.”

  A laugh burst through the block in her throat. “Are you enjoying it? You smiled once or twice.”

  Which could be very good or very bad. Oh, her heart was pounding again.

  “I’m enjoying it,” he said and put her poor heart at ease. “I can hear your voice in it.”

  That was awful. “You should be hearing Lady Lynx.”

  “Only when she’s speaking. The rest sounds like you.”

  She scowled. “Obviously it is not just the title that translated poorly, then. The tone was lost, too.”

  “As it often is. I love you,” Ariq said, and even as her overwrought heart bolted against her ribs again, he shook his head. “It is only words when I say it in this language. Je t’aime. I don’t feel it in the same way here.”

  Fingers laced through hers, he carried her hand to his chest. His heartbeat thudded against her palm.

  Breathless, she lifted her gaze to his. “What do you feel?”

  “Nearer to meaning is, ‘You are everything to me.’ But even those words seem weak.”

  Weak. Yet powerful enough that they quaked through her every time he spoke them. “Then tell me in your language.”

  His fingers tightened on hers. “Bi chamd hairtai,” he began gruffly—and continued, the words as unfamiliar to her as the characters written on his pamphlet. Yet she understood each one. Each gravelly syllable resonated with every vow he’d made, every promise he’d kept, every kiss he’d given.

  Her chest ached unbearably when he finished, the sweetest pain. “Ariq,” she whispered.

  His gaze fell to her lips. The steamcoach rattled to life and rolled forward. They swayed on the abrupt stop, her fingers entwined with his, his heart pounding against her hand.

  Slowly his head dipped closer to hers. The shadow of her parasol darkened his face, and he spoke in Mongolian again, his voice like a hot rasping lick that teased her nipples to aching points, then slipped lower to burrow between her thighs. Her breath shuddering, she shifted on the bench, trying to ease the pulsing need.

  God. This line was so long. She would die before they reached the gate.

  When he finished speaking, her head was light and her body on fire. “What did you say?”

  “I don’t know half the words in French.” His fervid gaze lingered on her lips. Then he closed his eyes and sat back into the sun. “But I’ll do it all to you tonight.”

  Tonight. Fanning her flushed cheeks, she looked ahead. The guards collected papers from the pair of women in the litter.

  Hurry, she silently urged.

  She had a language lesson to learn.

  ***

  The mask was stifling, and terrible to breathe through until Ariq showed her how to dampen the filter in the tube. The air inside was cooler after that, but sweat still gathered at the edges of the mask, and the straps pinched her hair. Ariq was a stranger beside her with round glass eyes and an expressionless face, and her world—which had always felt so small—suddenly felt even smaller, contained within her body and a few inches of rubber.

  Ariq took her hand as they boarded the balloon that would ferry their coaches and wagons to the quarantine tower at the southern end of the imperial city. Flying through the canyons of towers, proximity scraped away some of the shine that distance had offered. The coral still glowed peach and orange in the sun, stains streaked the sides—from smoke or sewage, she couldn’t tell. Lush gardens grew on many of the terraced levels, but others appeared abandoned, and several of the terraces at the tower bases seemed to be growing mountains of rusted machinery. Clothes and bedding aired from many of the balconies and open windows, and the breeze seemed to flutter them all at once, as if the towers were game birds with ruffled feathers instead of the majestic swans they’d seemed at a distance.

  Yet they were all just as astonishing. Rather than smooth, the tower faces seemed carved into different residences and distinct levels. Columns supported each tier, and narrow stairwells connected them. Latticed balustrades surrounded balconies and lined walkways. Intricately designed entrances and roofs stood as if fashioned separately from the tower, yet it was all seamlessly constructed, as if chiseled from a single, enormous piece of coral.

  She couldn’t sketch fast enough. Soon Ariq pointed out their destination. Unlike the other towers, the quarantine wasn’t connected to the other buildings by suspended bridges. It stood alone, seawater foaming around the wide coral base.

  Their residence was the tier that lay three levels below the top. The balloon docked on a wide terrace overlooking the ocean to the east, the endless expanse of turquoise water.

  Was there anything beyond that? She didn’t know. Islands, perhaps, but nothing else until the western edge of the American continents.

  But if there wasn’t anything, then every day this tower would be the first in the world to know the touch of the sun. And every sunrise, she would come out to the terrace, Zenobia decided. Every single one.

  As soon as his boots touched the terrace floor, Ariq pushed back his mask. Gratefully, Zenobia did, too, breathing in the warm, salty air. A bee droned around a nearby potted palm. She searched for Mara and Cooper, and spotted the mercenaries still on the balloon’s decks, overseeing the unloading of the coaches and wagon.

  She looked to Ariq. “What now?”

  Regret darkened his expression. “I leave as soon as the vehicles are off. Auger expects me to meet with several clan heads. I will be late returning.”

  “Then I will wait up,” she said simply.

  Which would have been no hardship at any time, and easier with so much to fill the hours. The terrace led to a columned courtyard than ran through the heart of the tower, with birds nesting in the high ceilings. The living quarters lay on the northern and southern sides of the courtyard, each room large and with wide shuttered windows. Zenobia chose a chamber with a south-facing balcony, but didn’t wait for the attendants to bring her things before exploring the rest.

  This wasn’t what she’d expected of a quarantine. Zenobia didn’t know if she could have possibly been more pleased.

  Mara was not. The mercenary wore a grim expression when she found Zenobia on the western terrace. “I must show you this.”

  She led Zenobia to the edge of the terrace, where a mechanical rooster stood upon a small shelf. Similar clockwork devices had been mounted throughout the courtyard and their quarters. Zenobia had assumed the previous occupants had left them, but looking at Mara’s troubled face, she wasn’t so certain.

  “What is it?” The rooster seemed like any other windup, shaped from gears and metal. It might crow, but she couldn’t imagine such toys would disturb Mara so.

  “The Empress’s Eyes,” Mara said. “One of the maids lived on this side of the wall before. I saw her winding the rat on the east terrace.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the law. They must be kept wound. They must not be moved or turned in the wrong direction. And everyone has them.” Mara picked up the device. Gears clacked when she began winding the key. “I didn’t see it before—but do you remember, on the balloon, by the wheelhouse?”

  “The dragon on the rail,” Zenobia realized aloud. “It was one of these, too?”

  The mercenary nodded and set the rooster in place again. Uneasy, Zenobia stared at the spindly steel legs, the sharp-edged cockscomb.

  “What does it do? Did the maid know?”

  Even as Mara shook her head, a muffled click sounded from inside the device. They both froze, waiting.

  Nothing.

  Zenobia didn’t like it. “What happens if we toss it over?”

  “We’ll be arrested.” Though Mara looked as if she might risk it. “If it breaks, we’re supposed to immediat
ely report it and have it replaced. Apparently, problems are infrequent. Everyone keeps theirs wound. But now and again the empress’s guards might come to check on them, or to replace them. If the devices aren’t wound and aren’t where they’re supposed to be, the household is taken into custody.”

  “Then wind them all,” Zenobia said. “Now is not the time to disregard the rules. Not with Ariq’s town at stake.”

  Though she obviously didn’t like it any better than Zenobia did, Mara agreed to see it done—then gave her the side-eye. “Did you really marry him?”

  “I think so.” Zenobia lifted her hands. “He asked me. I thought we were pretending so that I’d have the extra protection. I had no idea we could be married without an official. Can we?”

  “In the Golden Empire? Yes. Cooper and I did the same—we simply agreed. Since you told the governor yes, that’s all he needed.” Mara pursed her lips. “Though someone like him, a khagan’s son, he could take you as a bride without your consent if he wished to.”

  “I did say yes. Even if I didn’t know what I was agreeing to.”

  “And now that you do?”

  Her heart tightened. “I want to give it a try.”

  Mara studied her face for a long second before nodding. “You could do worse.”

  Yes, she could. Every man was worse when compared to Ariq.

  With a few exceptions. She entered the long courtyard with Mara, and saw Cooper at the far end, directing two men carrying a trunk between them. “Are you and Cooper . . . all right?”

  A frown creased Mara’s brow. “Why do I suspect that question has nothing to do with his legs?”

  “When I last saw you in the smugglers’ dens, you were fighting. About the boilerworm.” And Zenobia was going to slap herself if mentioning it re-created the rift between them.

  “Ah.” The other woman suddenly grinned. “Yes, we fought. Then it was done.”

  Good. Zenobia let out a relieved sigh.

  Mara gave her an odd look. “Do you really think we were in danger?”

  “I didn’t know.” But simply remembering how they’d fought made her stomach tighten again. “You could leave, if you wanted to. And you were so angry with him. And hurt.”