Her bugs had just healed the burn when she returned the next morning—and Teppers fulfilled his promise. She slid down the backstays from the top of the main mast to the poop deck, laughing wildly as she skimmed above Mad Machen’s head. His grin when he met her at the quarterdeck flipped her stomach over.
He showed her every part of the ship, and gave her leave to explore on her own. She met the Lusitanian cooks, a husband and wife team whose passionate screams in Portuguese during their fights and lovemaking were legendary among the sailors. She learned that Duckie’s name was Tom Cooper, and he’d gotten the nickname after shooting up six inches in as many months, and that the recurring red mark across his forehead came from his habit of running full tilt through the low-beamed decks. She discovered the ship’s blacksmith had remained in Wales when the bosun approached her for help fixing a broken pulley in the rigging. She spent half of an afternoon with Leveque, the engine master, and though she couldn’t understand a word of his French his love for the machine made perfect sense.
She didn’t know the languages half the crew spoke. French and Portuguese were the trade languages, and she understood a few words, but the men from the New World also spoke Dutch, Spanish, Arabic, and the Liberé that gave Barker his musical accent. On a ship only a hundred and fifty feet long, she saw more of the world than she’d known before—and realized how much she hadn’t yet seen.
And she’d never laughed so often. Had never felt as free. Yet she had to keep reminding herself that freedom was an illusion.
Every day, she came closer to building a monster. She dunked her arm into the tank and watched the squid attack her metal skin, imagining a mast or a person. The claws at the end of his tentacles couldn’t bite into her arm. Wood and flesh wouldn’t be so resilient. Yet Ivy used what she learned to improve the plans.
She wanted to believe that, despite what Mad Machen had said, the machine wouldn’t be used to terrorize and destroy ships. She wanted to believe that the Blacksmith’s involvement meant his intentions were good. But as brilliant as her mentor was, and despite the debt she’d always owe him for taking her into his guild, she knew the Blacksmith could be ruthless when someone crossed him—and there was much about him she didn’t know. If the price was right, he might have agreed to help.
And every night, she slept next to Mad Machen, her body aching . . . and one denier poorer.
Eben braced himself before entering the smithy. The past few days, she’d left this small cabin sporting a surly temper. He thought that meant she’d been making progress on the kraken. If her ideas failed, surely Ivy would be pleased.
Still, she wouldn’t be pleased to see him.
The previous night, when he’d come into his cabin, she’d been sitting at the window. She hadn’t been looking at the stars, but the two coins glinting in her palm. She’d quickly put one away, and given him the other—not quite hiding her fear.
After tonight, she’d have no more coins left, but he wasn’t certain if she was afraid that he’d force her . . . or because she wanted him. A few times, he’d caught her looking at him with heat in her eyes, and he didn’t think it was anger. When her nipples pebbled under her thin shirt, he didn’t always think it was the cold. He thought she might ache as much as he did—but he didn’t know.
Not knowing was tearing him apart.
He stepped inside. Though a gas lamp burned brightly on the worktable, she wasn’t sitting in front of it. Her expression clouded, she crouched in front of the squid tank, her hands braced against the glass and fingers drumming. Her silvery nails pinged with each beat.
Without glancing at him, she snapped, “Say what you’ve come to say. Then leave me be.”
Anger fired through his veins. In front of his crew or not, no one dismissed him on his ship. Closing the door, he stepped toward her—and forced himself to stop. She still hadn’t looked at him. Temper darkened her sharp features, her soft lips in a thin line, her green eyes stormy as she focused on something within the tank.
He glanced inside. The squid and several silvery fish darted about the water. At the bottom, a foot-long metal replica of a kraken lay on its side, its eight segmented arms waving about and tentacles limp, looking as pathetic as a beetle turned upside down.
Eben bit back his laugh, studying her face again. So that was it. She’d been angry at him often enough, but this time it had naught to do with him. He might as well not have even been here for all of the attention she turned his way. And given her dislike for the project, he’d have expected her to crow over her failure, but she was right pissed off that her prototype hadn’t worked.
His practical, careful Ivy apparently had an artist’s temperament.
“I had a friend at university who looked much the same when he couldn’t find a rhyme for his poetry.”
“Like a dying privy louse?”
Eben barked out a laugh. “I was speaking of your expression, not your kraken.”
She snarled. He’d never wanted to kiss her so badly. Deliberately, he added fuel to her fire.
“It couldn’t swim?”
“You’ve got eyes, don’t you? Do you see it swimming about?” Disgusted, she pushed to her feet and dunked her arm into the tank.
His amusement fled. His heart jumped into his throat. Grabbing her waist, he hauled her back.
“Damn it, woman, that squid will . . .” He trailed off, staring at her gray hand dripping water.
The squid would do absolutely nothing to her.
She whipped around and stared at him as if he were a lunatic. Her brows drew together. She opened her mouth, then shook her head, pushing past him. “I can’t reach the bleeding thing unless I stick my head in, anyway.”
Eben turned to watch her. Muttering, she rummaged through shelves, pushing around Kleistian jars, tossing aside small gears and cylinders, and emerging with a coil of copper wire and an influence machine, its glass disks sealed inside a vacuum bell. Setting the machine next to the tank, she pushed up her wet sleeve and began wrapping the wire around her forearm. When she glanced at him, he saw curiosity had replaced her temper.
“You attended a university?”
“Yes.”
A wistful expression softened her features. Oh, hell. Something in his chest tightened. He wanted to tell her that he’d hated every moment of society’s rigid confinement and the blasted rules, but compared to the Horde, Manhattan City had been a bastion of freedom. So he only told her, “My parents disapproved of my choice of profession—both surgery and the navy. The only tolerable ship was a passenger ship, and it was best if you owned it.”
“And now you are neither surgeon nor aboard a naval ship. Do they approve of you now?”
“They disowned me.” And he still wasn’t certain whether it had been because he’d remained on Trahaearn’s ship, or because he’d voluntarily infected his body with nanoagents. Belief that the bugs would spread from person to person and eventually change them all into zombies still held strong through much of the New World; his family had been no exception.
“Disowned?” Ivy’s brow had creased.
“They no longer claim me as their son.”
“Oh.” With pursed lips, she looked down at her arm, wrapped from her elbow to her wrist in copper wire. “I suppose I should not like it if my child became a pirate, either.”
He grinned. Their child wouldn’t be. “I consider myself a merchant.”
“Do you attack other ships and steal their cargo?”
Unfortunately often. “Yes.”