Tethered Read online

  “The dead were more interesting than anything you were up to.” Archimedes turned to Yasmeen. “It was all bluster. They’d formed a brotherhood—”

  “La Confrérie de la Vérité,” Bilson supplied, saluting Yasmeen with his wineglass and a wink.

  “And it was even more ridiculous than it sounds. They hoped to impress everyone in Johannesland with their anonymous ramblings printed on handbills, but they only impressed themselves.”

  “We were quite the radicals.”

  “You were all balloons filled with hot air, with no course in mind and no rudder. You weren’t even half the radical that Yasmeen is, and she doesn’t put any effort into it.” At her narrowed look, he lifted her hand, kissed her fingers. “You’re a complete anarchist, my captain. Admit it.”

  “I won’t, because it’s not true.”

  “Ah, yes—that one exception.” He widened his eyes a bit, laughing at her. “Anarchy has no place aboard your lady.”

  “Or any airship,” she agreed. “On the ground, however, it seems a better option than the governments and corruption that most people suffer under now.”

  “So you are not a complete anarchist.”

  She gave him the sharp edge of her smile. The answering curve of his mouth kindled an immediate need to move closer, to slip into his arms and taste the heat of his lips. God, but she couldn’t think properly when he looked at her like that.

  Sipping wine to soothe that familiar burn, she turned to Bilson. Perhaps he hadn’t been radical, but why had Archimedes dismissed those ramblings so quickly? “Now I’m curious as to what you wrote in those handbills.”

  “Only the truth,” he replied solemnly, before the humor returned to his voice. “No, Archimedes had it pegged. We didn’t lack for topics, not with the Liberé war and the native disputes in full force, but we only said what everyone else was thinking—though written in a manner that we thought profound and rebellious.”

  Archimedes looked heavenward. “Show me a boy in first-year university who doesn’t think he’s both profound and rebellious.”

  Bilson ignored him, rocking forward slightly, gaze fixed on Yasmeen. “But one was different. The high magistrate had been exposed for keeping a mistress—which was nothing, except that she was bound to him under an indentured contract. There had been a general outcry, but nothing came of it. The magistrate made apologetic speeches and yet managed to justify his behavior, and soon enough, no one was speaking of it…except some of those justifications began to spread, repeated by other officials, all but overturning the protections in the Laws of Indenture.”

  “And somehow, it was all for the indentured’s moral good,” Archimedes said dryly.

  Bilson shook his head. “It was an insult to our people. The principalities of Johannesland had been built on the backs of the indentured, and then united under the laws protecting them. So we—La Confrérie de la Vérité—met in the great room, wondering how to expose the hypocrisy, to strip it so bare that no justifications could cling to it. We debated for hours, but had nothing.’”

  “God, the noise.” Archimedes closed his eyes, as if remembering. “I couldn’t have borne another hour of the brotherhood’s bellowing that night.”

  Bilson snorted. “So we discovered. This one pulls his head up out of his book and says, ‘Good God, you imbeciles! Two hundred years ago in Lusitania, Father Jacobus excoriated the Archbishop of Alagoas for the same hypocrisies. Read his journals, and you’ll find that he’s done all of the thinking for you.’ So we did—and our handbill spurred the reforms later that year. And I discovered that Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste wasn’t just some dull inknose, so I brought him into our brotherhood.”

  Ah, of course he had. “And you led that brotherhood, I imagine?”

  “We didn’t have a leader, but—”

  “You were,” Archimedes said.

  Bilson conceded with a nod. “If leadership was determining a direction, I suppose I was.”

  So he was. Yasmeen thought she was beginning to see Bilson better now. Archimedes said he always had a game in play, but she’d assumed that his schemes led to some other end: money, excitement, power. Now she suspected that the game itself was his reason. Smuggling would have put him in the thick of power struggles and negotiations…until Archimedes had destroyed Temür Agha’s war machines.

  Perhaps that was why Bilson hadn’t enjoyed salvaging itself, despite the money and excitement—while partnered with Archimedes, he hadn’t been the one making all of the decisions and determining a direction. Archimedes wasn’t the sort to take orders; he did as he damn well pleased, and the salvaging runs they’d made had depended upon his research.

  Yet Bilson had remained in the salvaging business for years—and Yasmeen would have wagered that Bilson stayed because there was one part of salvaging that he did enjoy: the negotiations with dealers afterward.

  And it had all begun with a pamphlet. Knowing Archimedes, however, Yasmeen thought that Bilson hadn’t perfectly understood what had happened. He might have invited Archimedes into their group, but Archimedes had likely joined for reasons of his own—probably because they’d finally begun talking about something that mattered to him.

  Hell, he and Bilson had probably been partnered for so long simply because Bilson had been engaged in something that Archimedes also wanted to do.

  Bilson sipped his wine, gaze unfocused as if lost to memory. “The brotherhood was stronger for having him. We never had quite the same success at home again—perhaps because the Liberé war was such a distraction.”

  “But you were all quite the rebels,” Yasmeen said, sending a teasing look to Archimedes. He answered it with a flutter of his lashes.

  “No. Not truly. We wrote the handbills anonymously, and we all walked the straight and narrow in public.” Bilson’s gaze sharpened on Archimedes. “Except he didn’t. Not after our second year.”

  Oh, she truly did enjoy having this man here. Yasmeen leaned forward. “What happened?”

  “He came back to university after the summer recess wearing a god-awful green waistcoat.”

  “It was emerald.” Archimedes smoothed his hand down the green silk of his current waistcoat, as if protecting it from similar abuse. “It matched my eyes.”

  “And it got him tossed out of the first lecture.”

  “The bright color was disruptive to learning,” Archimedes said when Yasmeen looked to him for an explanation. “But I wasn’t tossed out until I asked whether I should remove my eyes for being disruptive, too.”

  “And he became worse after that,” Bilson said. “The waistcoats, the trousers—the flirting. God.”

  Worse? To Yasmeen, that sounded like he got better. “How long before you were expelled?”

  “Three weeks,” Archimedes said. “But I stayed on. There was still studying to be done.”

  “He’d won favor with some of the lecturers, in truth. They kept him on to perform their research.”

  “And because they thought my eyes were distracting, too.”

  Bilson shook his head. “That’s what many of the other lads thought—that all the dandy clothing meant he was visiting the market around the corner.”

  “With other men?” Yasmeen hadn’t heard it phrased that way before, but it wasn’t difficult to guess the meaning. Frowning, she looked to Archimedes. “How did you survive that?”

  She only realized how much anger and worry had sharpened her voice when his fingers covered hers in a reassuring touch. “By learning to fight,” he said. “I took a few beatings, but eventually made certain they didn’t bother me anymore.”

  That probably wouldn’t have stopped them—perhaps something else had. “And there were women?”

  “A few.”

  “A few more than that,” Bilson countered. “All of the sudden he’s this charming bastard, always laughing and singing like a fool—nothing like the buckled-up inknose I’d known. At first I thought it was an act, some ruse to ease his way into their beds. But it wasn’t
. The laughing fool had been under those buckles all that time, I think, and he’d finally let it out.”

  “That’s a bit what it felt like,” Archimedes said.

  Bilson nodded, his gaze speculative. “I always wondered what happened to you that summer. Was it a girl?”

  “No.” His smile held little humor. “A man.”

  And probably not in the way he suggested, though Yasmeen would have preferred that to the likely truth. Archimedes had reasons for wanting to kill his father. No doubt one of those reasons had been created that summer.

  Bilson accepted that without further question. As Yasmeen refilled his wine, he continued, “At any rate, not long after that I heard about a smuggling job through one of my political acquaintances. I asked the others in the brotherhood if they wanted to join me—though Archimedes was the last one I expected to go. He took to smuggling, though.”

  He’d taken to the danger of it, Yasmeen knew. “Did you?”

  Bilson shrugged. “It was a job.”

  “A job we did well,” Archimedes said. “Until I was infected in Morocco.”

  “We did well even after that, when we began salvaging. It wasn’t exactly the same, but we muddled through together.”

  “Barely.” Archimedes looked to Yasmeen. “He accused me of running after death.”

  “Deliberately running up against zombies is the same thing,” Bilson said.

  No, it wasn’t. Not to Archimedes.

  After being shot during a smuggling run, one of Temür Agha’s men had saved Archimedes’ life by infecting him with nanoagents—and the influence of the Moroccan tower had all but stifled his emotions. Archimedes had always loved danger and excitement, but after the tower, he’d needed it.

  For Archimedes, running from zombies wasn’t seeking death at all; it was just a way of making certain that he was alive.

  “I understood why you did it, after a fashion,” Bilson said. “Seeing you affected by that signal…it was like someone blew out a lamp. I hope never to see it again.”

  “Me, too,” Archimedes said softly.

  Yasmeen slipped her hand into his. It wouldn’t happen again; the tower was gone. Unfortunately, that didn’t erase the memory for him.

  Bilson’s gaze flicked to their linked hands. With a deep breath, he abruptly set his wineglass on the table. “You must be wondering about the help I mentioned in my earlier note.”

  “I assumed you’d come to it in your own time.”

  “Time I shouldn’t be wasting.” He sighed. “Do you remember my brother?”

  “Joseph? Or the younger one?”

  “Joseph.” Bilson added to Yasmeen, “He was part of our brotherhood, too.”

  Archimedes said, “And only there because we always had liquor.”

  “True enough.” Bilson’s smile was short-lived. “He began trading weapons not long after we left the business. I gave him some of my contacts, and now he makes regular runs round the bottom.”

  To the smuggling dens in southern Australia. Yasmeen nodded. It was a well-sailed route for both legitimate traders and those carrying illegal Horde technologies, though not one that she often made herself. If Bilson planned to ask for their help smuggling an item, however, she wouldn’t mind flying that course again.

  “He’d been doing well enough until a few months ago,” Bilson said. “I didn’t hear from him for a bit. Then I got word that his airship had been taken by New Eden.”

  Oh, damn. She met Archimedes’ eyes and saw the dismay that matched hers.

  Led by the idealist William Bushke, New Eden was a floating garden city made of airships tethered together—and almost all of them had been taken by force. After capture, no one was allowed to leave the city. Yasmeen had heard rumors of a few escapes, but only knew for certain of one made by her friend, Scarsdale, and the pirate captain Rhys Trahaearn.

  And now she saw where Bilson was headed. Archimedes apparently did, too, though he tried to stop his friend before getting there.

  “So he’ll be given hard work and religion,” Archimedes said. “Both are likely doing him some good.”

  “Maybe.” Bilson’s gaze held steady on Archimedes’ face. “I want to hire you and this crew; I want you to help me get him back.”

  Yasmeen’s mouth tightened. So he hadn’t come asking for Archimedes’ help, not truly. He wanted hers, and had just used Archimedes as a connection—all the while reminding Archimedes of their old friendship in order to deepen the obligation her husband might feel.

  “No,” Archimedes said. “Not this ship, not this crew.”

  Bilson didn’t react, except to look at Yasmeen.

  Was he waiting for her to contradict Archimedes? Amusement mixed with sharp anger. Did he think that just because Archimedes had made a decision on her lady, she’d counter it to assert her authority? She didn’t need to prove anything to him.

  He apparently tired of waiting for her response. “You let him give the orders on this ship, Captain?”

  Humor lightened his voice, as if he were making a joke, but Yasmeen assumed that she was supposed to feel its bite.

  She merely lifted her brows. “If he doesn’t think your brother is worth the risk to my crew, why would I?”

  And it would be a risk. Aside from the enormous, rigid dreadnoughts that accompanied naval fleets, airships weren’t built for battle; it was too easy to incinerate the balloon. The etiquette of the seas demanded that enemies didn’t target an airship’s envelope, though the wooden cruiser beneath was a fair target. Only the dirtiest pirates and mercenaries fired on a balloon.

  William Bushke was dirtier than any of them. As soon as he spotted an airship in the distance, he sent out steam-powered flyers to pursue it. Every captain prayed for cloudy skies if they were unlucky enough to come close to the floating city—and once those flyers came, prayer was all they had left. Bushke gave them a choice: surrender or die. There were no further negotiations, and the flyers would fire on the balloon.

  It would have been a terrible risk…yet if Archimedes had wanted to go, she’d have gone with him. She’d have helped him if her husband felt he owed his friend that much.

  Thank the blue heavens, he didn’t seem to feel that obligation.

  Still, that didn’t mean her husband wasn’t willing to help. He offered, “If you need money to buy mercenaries and an airship willing to go, I’ll give it to you.”

  “I have money. And I’ve found someone who would go—but they wouldn’t be good enough to get away. No, I need someone who can get in and out, and get the job done. Someone with expertise.” He looked to Yasmeen. “You. After you killed his father, Archimedes followed your career, sought every mention of you. I heard all about how you scouted for the Liberé and French, how you brought in infiltration soldiers to garrisons fortified with more weapons and men than Bushke has. I know what you can do.”

  “And most of it over jungle canopy,” Yasmeen said. Infiltration was far more difficult over the wide-open sea. “I know people who can do it for you, and they might be persuaded by money more readily than we are.”

  Bilson’s jaw clenched, and his frustrated gaze shot to Archimedes. “Do the years we spent as partners mean nothing to you? Every time I saved your reckless ass, every time I stood behind you. You won’t even consider honoring that debt of friendship?”

  Archimedes met that accusing stare without flinching. “They mean quite a bit, and are the only reason I did consider it. But I won’t risk Yasmeen and this ship.”

  Bilson closed his eyes. A long silence followed. Finally, with a tired smile, he shook his head. “You understand I had to try.”

  By questioning Archimedes’ honor? If not for that, Yasmeen could have felt sympathy for his dilemma. She left it to her husband to express any, instead.

  She was surprised when he remained quiet, watching his friend. He held his wine lightly, but she could see the tension in his forearms, felt it in the tautness of his thigh against hers. Archimedes was on his guard, though his
expression gave away none of his wariness. He regarded Bilson with solemn regret—not regretting his refusal, Yasmeen thought, but sorry that his refusal had pushed his friend to insult. Her husband forgave personal transgressions quite readily, but after such words had been said, Yasmeen couldn’t see how they could be completely easy with each other again.

  Already, awkwardness had set in. Bilson cleared his throat and attempted to rescue the conversation. “Well. Where are you off to next?”

  “England, to kidnap an earl,” Archimedes said, his manner affable. “Then on to Cordoba to look for a statue.”

  He didn’t mention their planned visit to Zenobia. Of course, Bilson hadn’t mentioned his visit to Fladstrand the week before, either, which had prompted Zenobia’s express. That hadn’t struck Yasmeen as strange until this moment, but Archimedes must have noticed and wondered why Bilson hadn’t spoken about the meeting with his sister.

  Now Yasmeen wondered, too.

  “An earl? I hope you receive a hearty ransom for him.” Bilson chuckled, all ease and comfort again when he settled against the cushions. “If you are flying to England, may I ask a different favor? I have a contact in London who might be able to assist me. I would have arranged for passage tomorrow, but if you are—”

  “We’ll take you,” Archimedes said, then glanced at Yasmeen. “Captain?”

  “Of course,” she confirmed. Archimedes apparently wanted to see his friend off in the direction opposite from his sister’s—and though she didn’t quite understand the source of his worry, she’d do anything to help him. “It’s the least we can do.”

  * * *

  In no time, they’d hired a porter to retrieve Bilson’s belongings from his lodgings and bring them to Lady Nergüi. While Archimedes showed Bilson to the stateroom on the third deck, Yasmeen informed the steward of their new passenger and returned to their cabin.