SEVEN
Mad Machen’s crew had done this before. Those who weren’t still manning the starboard cannons rushed about the lower deck, clearing space for more than fifty newcomers. Pallets went down for those too weak or with too many prosthetics for a hammock. Boys distributed clear broth, holding the cup for those who needed it. Ivy commandeered linens and hot water, and started in cleaning wounds and repairing damaged prosthetics—broken so that they couldn’t use the tools to escape the chains—and listening to their stories.
Most had come from London slums: areas of Southwark, usually, but Ivy wasn’t surprised to hear a few name Limehouse, which included the Blacksmith’s territory. From London, they’d been smuggled west and held until the ship had come, then loaded aboard at night.
But they hadn’t all been taken from London. And although the others spoke in accents too heavy for Ivy to decipher, their pulverizing hammers, drills, and shovels told her just as well—they were all coal miners, likely taken from the colliers in Wales. The Horde had gone, but the men still needed to work, and they’d kept the equipment grafted to their bodies. That same equipment made them more valuable to the New World slavers.
But not all of them would have been laborers; some had been headed for the skin-trade. And looking at the emaciated women and boys, Ivy understood that she hadn’t been too skinny for them to take, as she’d always thought: her guild tattoo had kept her safe. Even the Black Guard, whoever they were, knew better than to cross the Blacksmith.
But the Black Guard must have angered him . . . because the Blacksmith was helping Eben build a monster designed to frighten and destroy them.
And bless the bright stars—so was Ivy.
Midnight had long passed before Eben finally left sick bay. For the first time, he hoped that Ivy had already fallen asleep. Everything inside him was scraped raw. He couldn’t bear it if she looked at him in fear and horror again.
The sliver of yellow light beneath his cabin door dashed his hope. He girded his heart before entering.
He expected to find her by the gallery windows, but she sat in her nightgown at the dining table, frowning down at the pieces of the Black Guard’s freezing device. She’d wound her hair around her head like a crown, each braid a coppery red in the soft glow of the lamp. Shadows formed half circles below her eyes.
She glanced up at him, her solemn gaze lingering on the blood staining his shirt. Stiffly, he turned toward the bureau to change and wash. He heard her sigh.
“This device isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,” she said. “The power source—it’s a battery, but I’d need a thousand Kleistian jars to equal a few seconds of activation. And the circuitry, and these . . . these . . . I don’t know what they are. It’s like looking at a nanoagent. Somehow, commands are being processed, and I don’t know how.”
The last word came out muffled. Eben turned, saw that she’d put her hands over her face. She drew deep, steadying breaths. “The Blacksmith might know,” she added quietly.
“We’ll send it to him.”
Opening her hands, she looked at him through the brackets of her palms. “It’s Horde technology. But that man wasn’t Horde.”
“No,” Eben said. “None of the Black Guard have been.”
Ivy studied him for an endless moment. Then she nodded and stood, gathering the pieces into a small bin. “You were in the surgery a long time.”
“We lost two,” he said gruffly.
“I heard. I’m sorry.” Her searching gaze swept over him again. “Did you eat?”
“Yes.”
With her nightgown skimming the floor, she walked to the bed and lay down. When she awoke tomorrow, Vesuvius would be anchored near Trahaearn’s estate, and she’d be heading ashore to build the kraken. And although Eben had intended to stay with her, now he’d be sailing into the port at Holyhead, returning those who the slavers had abducted from Wales, and then on to London. He’d be away from her for almost a month.
Christ. For two weeks, he’d done everything possible to show Ivy he wasn’t a monster. One day had ruined all of that—and as soon as she left his ship, he’d have no way to prevent her from running.
Again.
His heart heavy, he finished cleaning off the sweat and blood. He looked toward the bed, then snuffed the lamp so that if she turned away from him, at least he wouldn’t see it.
But as soon as his head hit the pillow, she curled against his side and laid her cheek over his heart. His throat tightened. Eben stared up into the dark, trying to remember any moment in his life when a single action had affected him more. He couldn’t.
By God, he loved her.
And he’d kiss her now, if she would just give him the denier that they’d passed back and forth the past week. He waited, wondering if she held it in her hand—but he could feel her left palm flat against his arm, her fingers gently stroking his biceps, and her right was tucked loosely beneath her chin.
“You forgot the coin.”
“No.” Her warm breath whispered over his chest. “I know you’d never force me.”
He couldn’t respond for almost a full minute. Then he said, “I wish you’d figured that out after you’d earned your denier back.” Her laugh left him as full and light as an airship. “Tell me, Ivy: do I have to pay for a kiss?”
“I should charge you five hundred gold sous. I’m furious with you.”
She had an odd way of showing it. “I know what shooting that bastard looked like. But—”
“Not him. Good riddance to him, the murdering bumchute.” She lifted her head. His eyes had adjusted to the reflected moonlight coming in through the windows; there was no mistaking her fierce expression as she looked down at him. “I’m speaking of how you let me think you were stealing cargo and killing men. You didn’t mention that the cargo you stole was people, and the men were slave handlers.”
And that painted a fine picture of him. But as much as he’d have liked to leave her with that impression, he couldn’t. “I’ve still killed plenty of men, Ivy. The seas aren’t kind to anyone, and the jobs I take on for Trahaearn are usually the ones nobody else wants, because it puts a target on my ship. There’s been many a time that I’ve had to shoot first—and I can’t regret any of them. It just happens that in the past two years, I’ve been shooting at the Black Guard.”
She was silent, taking that in. Finally she asked, “What do they want?”
“I don’t know. They’ve always got a man on the ships they hire, but every time I’ve run into one, I’ve either had to kill him, or he kills himself after reciting the same speech that slave handler started up today. But I can tell you how they’re financed.”
Ivy beat him to it. “Selling slaves.”
“Yes. To the Ivory Market, or the Lusitanian mines in Appalachia.”
“Blue.” Her forehead dropped to his chest. “That night in London, they came into my room. I thought they were the Horde.”
Good Christ. And Eben wouldn’t have known that she was gone. The thought of it opened a hollow pit in his chest.
“Duckie said they tricked you,” she added.
Damn that boy. “He shouldn’t have. It doesn’t do me any good for people to know that I was taken in.”
She lifted her head. Humor lightened her expression. “It damages your reputation?”
“Yes.” Eben didn’t mind Ivy knowing the truth. He trusted her. But it still put a dent in his pride. “That reputation keeps my ship safe—but Duckie probably thought you already knew.”
“How would I?”
“Because it happened when I was looking for you.” When she frowned, he said, “I returned to the Star Rose that morning, and I assumed you ran to another ship. Searching from port to port would have been impossible. But Trahaearn owns those docks, and keeps a record of every ship docking and leaving—and a destination for most. I got that list, and tracked them all down.”
Her mouth had fallen open.
“So when I came up on that foundered ship . . . hell, I’d planned to board her anyway. Except it wasn’t you in the hold, and I stayed down there for a good bit of time with the others they’d taken from London. Duckie was one of them. Chained up right next to me.”
“Truly?” At his nod, she asked, “How did you get out?”
“They’d told Barker not to follow or they’d kill me—but if I don’t pay Barker, then he can’t pay the Blacksmith. He took the risk of following.”
“What’d they do?”
“Try to kill me. When Barker sailed in close, they counted on him slowing down to collect my body. So they took me topside, shot me in the chest, and I went over. I was just at Vesuvius’s hull when the shark took my leg.”
Her hand flattened over his heart. “My elbow really did save you.”
In more ways than one. He’d held on to her small flange in that stinking hold, his only thought of escaping and continuing to search for her. But he hadn’t. He’d gone after the slavers instead.
“I caught up with them—and that’s when I first heard of the Black Guard. The slave handler on that ship had been one, too.”
“Before you killed him?”
“Yes. And stranded most of the crew.”
Her gaze was troubled—but not by the fate of the slavers’ crew. “Have there been so many taken?”
“Probably more. I only found them because I went looking. Most of them don’t come through London—Trahaearn watches his docks too closely, and most of the mercenaries the Black Guard hires are too afraid of him to risk it. So the majority of the people taken have been smuggled out of Wales and Cornwall.”
“But Trahaearn’s the Duke of Anglesey. He has holdings in Wales. They aren’t scared of him there?”
“It’s easier to smuggle along the coast than the Thames.” But he agreed, “It damages his name that they’re doing it under his nose—even if he’s in London.”
Realization slowly spread across her features. “I see.”
He smiled a little. “Do you?”
“Yes. Scaring sailors and tearing ships apart—but above all, keeping the mercenaries too afraid to approach the coast. Whose idea was the kraken?”
“It was mine.” He didn’t mention that he’d been drunk at the time. Trahaearn had liked the idea well enough.
“And who is paying for it?”
His grin broadened. “The Iron Duke.”
“So this is all about you and the Iron Duke destroying the Black Guard?”
“Just taking one source of their money. They’ll no doubt find another.”
“And then?”
He pictured the people in the hold of that first ship—and all of them that had come after. “Then I’ll find them again.”
“But with the Horde gone, Britain has a navy again. Why can’t they—”
“Because after two hundred years, the navy is nothing but muscle for the Manhattan City merchants.” Pirates in fancy uniforms. “And the people being taken are too poor to matter to them—and they’ve no interest in patrolling this coast.”
“So you’re going to do their job with a monster.”
“Yes.” But he needed to tell her, “The crew doesn’t know about the kraken, Ivy. Barker does—but the others, they assume we’re being paid by Trahaearn to recover his people, and I’m in it for the money. And I can’t afford them or anyone else thinking I’ve gone soft.”
“And so that’s the reason behind the stories.” She studied his face. “Have you gone soft?”
“The crews of the Black Guard’s mercenary ships wouldn’t think so.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” she said quietly, and he knew she was thinking of the slave handler he’d shot, of the barrage of cannon fire that had destroyed the ship. Looking into his eyes, she lifted her hand to his jaw. His heart sledgehammered against his ribs.
“One denier,” she said. “And I’ll kiss you.”
Anticipation became tearing pain—and anger. He still had to pay?
By God, he wouldn’t. He’d take the kiss and every god-damn thing he wanted from her, and she’d beg for more.
He let himself imagine it, only for a second. Then the red haze cleared from his vision and he saw her pale face, her rounded eyes. Fear? Christ, no. But he didn’t know what his expression had shown her—and he didn’t know what she thought when she looked at him. He only knew he had to put some distance between them.
“Eben,” she said.
He tried to shrug her off as he sat up, but she clung to him, her strong fingers clamped over his shoulders. “Move away, Ivy.”
“Eben.”
His name. For the first time, his name. He stopped, met her searching gaze.
“I don’t mean to—” She cut herself off, and started again. “I need a limit. Something tangible. Something that prevents us from taking this beyond a kiss . . . or very far beyond it.”
He struggled to take in her meaning. “You want to set terms—and back them up with the denier?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if we make an agreement, you’ll honor it. And I can’t afford . . . I can’t risk more.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and a wistful note softened her voice. “No matter how tempted I am.”
Risk? What did she risk by—
Oh, hell. Eben closed his eyes. God, what a fool he was. Under Horde rule, only one result came from a coupling between a man and a woman, and most didn’t remain together afterward. Then the child would be taken and raised in a crèche.
But Ivy would have kept her child. And when she’d come to Vesuvius, she’d only had eight deniers . . . all of which he’d taken.
Quietly, he told her, “I wouldn’t risk it either, Ivy. A ship is no place to raise a child, and I’m not a man who’d be content visiting the family I’ve made four or five times a year. When I return to land permanently, maybe then. Not while I’m out to sea.”
“Oh.” Confusion furrowed her brow. “You never meant to shag me?”
Eben had to laugh. Of course he had. Even now, hearing that word from her lips left him as hard as a cannon.
“I mean to, Ivy. Every night, and twice in the day. And each time, using a lambskin sheath that will catch my seed.”
Disbelief widened her eyes. “You have such a thing?”
“Yes.”
When she gave a delighted laugh, he determined to buy a crate more the next time Vesuvius put into port.
“And it does not fail?”
He almost lied. Then he admitted, “Yes. But only rarely, Ivy. Very rarely.”
Her face fell. She looked away from him, biting her bottom lip.
Her disappointment was simultaneously the most heartening and the most torturous response he’d ever witnessed. She wanted him—but she wouldn’t risk having him.
Unless Eben convinced her it wasn’t a risk at all.
Yasmeen had warned him that Ivy wouldn’t know what courting was, and he hadn’t forgotten that—but he hadn’t truly understood it, either. He’d hoped that she would accept him as a partner. But it would probably never occur to her to imagine him—or anyone—in that position, even if she began to care for him.
He touched her chin, made her meet his eyes. “If it failed, I wouldn’t leave you alone, Ivy. I’d come with you to shore. I’d see that you and the baby had everything you needed. And I’d stay with you, always.”
Surprise, hope, and doubt warred across her features. “Eben, I think . . .” She trailed off, staring at him, as if searching for an answer within. Whatever she found drooped her shoulders and softened her mouth into a sad curve. “I just don’t know.”
Though he recognized that her response indicated uncertainty rather than rejection, he had to fight the hollow ache in his chest. Determination soon filled it. She’d already come to believe he was man enough not to force her; she would come to believe he was man enough to care for her, too. Until then, he could pleasure them both without risking a child.
“Let me up, Ivy.”
She let him go—reluctantly, he was gratified to see. After lighting the gas lamp, Eben retrieved a heavy gold coin.
Her eyes widened when he placed the coin in her palm. “A sous?”
“I’ll only kiss you,” he promised, then guided her hand to the juncture of her thighs. With his fingers over hers, he tucked their hands between her legs. He watched her lips part, heard her soft gasp. “But only if I kiss you here.”