Steel Dominance (32 page)

The bank of the river bobbed closer, closer. Something buzzed near his ear, clawed at him, tugged. He drifted. Hands pulled him, pulled him over the top of something hard that scraped and reawakened wounds to glittering pain.

“God! Damn you!” he roared and raised his head as they dragged him sideways and rolled him onto his back. He tried to fend them off, but they batted aside his hands.

Male voices. He blinked up at them, fighting down a swell of vomit in his throat.

“Hold him!”

“Fuck. He’s dying. He’s damn well dying.”

“We need to stop that bleeding.” A light flashed in his eyes. Whoever spoke, continued, “Look, he’s white as hell. Put your hand there. Clamp on that one. I’ll get the machine and my bag. Maybe we can save him. And cover the rest of him with blankets!”

Feet scuffed. The boat rocked. He was on a boat. On the river still, then. One of the faces resolved. “Henry?” The word seemed so brittle in his throat, like it came out past crumbled stone. “Henry?”

“Yes. It’s me.” Henry peered, then ran a hand over his head. “Sit still and wait for the doc. We’re headed for the Ottoman side. Like you told us to. Evacuating.”

He grunted and dragged in a wheezing breath that never reached bottom. Air, he needed more air.

“You lucked out. Zigzag found you. That darn dog-thing has been pining for you and Miss White, and he was doing this whining just now. Then he jumped out and well, we spotted you.”

The doctor arrived and started fiddling.
Cold, so cold
. He hazed out, for a long, long time.

* * * *

The world came back, slow-like, until he recognized the white of a ceiling as it swam about up above. There were sheets on him, a comfortable mattress beneath. Safe now. He could relax, let himself ride in the arms of fate. Get better. Wait until he could move like he should, then think on what to do.
No. No, that might be too late.

The next time the doctor returned, Dankyo was ready.

“How am I?”

“You’re awake! Good. You’re improving.” The doctor scratched the stubble on his chin. “Two hundred and two stitches. Give you another few bouts with that galvanic healer, and we should have you right in a week and a half. The ribs will take longer. The hole going into your chest is deep. You shall have to be careful for maybe two weeks, or risk your lungs collapsing again.

“But don’t worry. We’ll have you on an airship in a week, and the Ottomans are being good hosts.”

No mention of Sofia. He must know.

“And Sofia White? What has been done?” He waited. The doctor looked aside. “Sir? Has the government vowed to intervene?”

At last the man met his gaze. He shook his head. “No. I was told they’ve threatened some embargoes. Personnel are being withdrawn. No further armaments will be shipped, but…the rumor is we won’t go to war over her return.”

Cold swept him. As he’d thought. Maybe Theodore Kevonis could help? Maybe, if the world would spin faster.

Dankyo struggled up until he rested with his elbows propped behind him. “Then I need to be well sooner. Three days, maybe.”

“Hah!” The doctor grinned, and then his expression faded. “You mean that?”

“Yes. How can I do it?”

“You can’t!”

“How? Or I’ll hobble out of here as I am. A woman needs me. I will not let her die because I was weak!”

The cough came out of nowhere, and he turned, clutching his side while he coughed sharp and shallow, with the lacerations clutching at him like spiders armed with needles. Dankyo wiped his lips. “How? Sir, I am serious.”

“Really? You’re more than weak, you’re half-dead.” The doctor pulled over a chair and sat. “You mean this? But, you’re healing. You will get better, you know?” Elbows on knees, he put his hands to his forehead, scrubbed his fingers into his short gray hair, and thought for a while. Then he raised his head.

“I could do something. It’s a lesser-known thing with the galvanic machine. You can use it at higher voltages. It may heal you faster. But it’s painful as it is, at the lower settings. Higher ones may drive you insane. Higher ones could even kill, and”—he wrinkled up his mouth—“to heal that chest wound and the ribs, I’d need to drive the needles into your chest much deeper than I usually have to.”

“Do it.” He stared. The man needed some pushing.

“It will hurt like hell. And, I’d guess it will still take three, four days to complete. Multiple treatments. You may die. Whatever you plan to do, you’ll need to get permission.”

“Do it. Start now. Every minute is a wasted bit of time. Do it.”

The first time, once the probing wires were wormed into his wounds, the galvanic electricity sizzled as if Neptune had speared him with his trident, injected lightning, then made it do a dance. He screamed inside, and screamed, and screamed. The world tilted and slid off into a blaze of jittering light.

* * * *

A day had passed.

A day. She’d been unable to believe he’d gone. The cries of the guards when he’d fallen at the bridge had told her what had happened. No one bothered to inform her of more than that. Guards delivered her to a small room, a doctor checked the clitoral ring, and they left her with food. Tasteless mash.

Her tears salted the food, dripped in an endless fall—spot, spot, spot—while she stared down, watching them erode the sauce on the plate. A waterfall, like the one he’d fallen into. They’d said he must be dead.

She’d heard nothing.

How dare they. How dare they! Why do people like this exist? Why the fuck
… She choked in a breath, sniffed, and watched more tears fall.

When they saw she wasn’t going to eat, they made her bathe, then kneel naked on the tiled floor at the foot of the emperor-bey’s bed, her hands manacled and outstretched above. Exhausted and shivering, she waited in the bedroom for a man who controlled her body, but not her mind. Never that.

Can he be alive? I told him to go. But…not that
. How could she have imagined what they did?

She’d thought he’d just walk out. How stupid. Could he be gone forever?

She wavered between wanting to burst into tears and wanting to grab the nearest sharp thing and plunge it into Xiang and the emperor-bey. Except she was useless, trapped here, and useless.

The rampaging, contrary thoughts left her head feeling like an army had marched through it.

She waited ten or twenty minutes before the fresh tramp of boots told her an audience had arrived. Her knees ached and throbbed, but not as much as her clit. Not as much as her head, or her heart.

“Ahh, Miss White. I like you like this—naked and awaiting my presence.” The emperor-bey. She recognized his voice.

God
. Her heart sank even lower, and she shut her eyes as his fingers touched her between the shoulders and traced along her spine to the crevice of her buttocks. Then he inhaled sharply and stood.

“She’s unclean. You should have checked. Bring her to me when she is done with this womanly business.”

“I’m sorry, Your Serenity. Of course.”

Boots stomped across the ten yards of floor. The doors shut.

“Come. The women will help you clean.” A robe was laid across her shoulders. Her hands were unchained. Sniffling, clutching the cloth about her body, she sat up. Unclean? Sofia swayed as the room spun a little. She was menstruating? The wetness down there had gone unnoticed. The blood, she’d thought it was from the wound. She had a respite from the emperor-bey’s attentions. Fate was being kind again.

Hah.

As she walked with the guard back to the harem, watching her bare feet take each step like some disconnected mannequin, she made herself think. She
made
herself clear away the mess, the sadness, the self-torturing maniacal doubts and regrets.
Think!
If he was alive, and she had to believe that, she had time to do something. But what? What could she do, here, trapped in a harem, alone?

And how could she survive the constant ache that twisted through her chest with each beat of her heart? Was he dead, or alive?

The bathing room the guard delivered her to had only one occupant—Tansu.

Memories engulfed her. It was too much. She hung her head and sank into the water as she was told to, barely wincing at the singe of pain from the clit ring. A smidgeon of blood swirled up and colored the bubbles.

There were sounds of whispering cloth as Tansu went to her knees at the edge of the tub. She tied Sofia’s hair back, then swept a washcloth over her shoulders. “Time will assuage your grief. Give it time.”

She put her hand in her mouth and bit. The pain sent the tears away. “I won’t mourn him, you know.” Though she choked on the thickness in her throat, Sofia forced the words out. “He’s not dead.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then…what will you do? Will you be one of us, here, forever?”

“Goddamn you, no! I will not!” She twisted about and glared. “I will not. Help me, Tansu. Will you?”

The woman sat back on her heels, and her eyes seemed to glimmer. “Yes. I will.” She reached and touched Sofia’s forehead and brushed away a strand of hair. “You are a beautiful woman, Sofia. Wasted here. And yes, go find your lover! Believe him alive! Escape.” Sofia felt Tansu’s fingers drift down her face, then tighten on her chin. “Perhaps the clockwork man has other secrets? Perhaps he can help us?”

The room brightened. Possibilities dawned. “Yes. Oh, yes. The book.” She blinked. A niggling thought bobbed to the surface. Poetry. Rhymes. Words swam into her head. Not certainty, not by any means, but there
were
combinations waiting at the fringes. “Can you get it for me?”

A smile spread slowly across Tansu’s face. Obviously this idea pleased her. “I can. Yes. I’m sure I can. I have influence. I will tell them you need to study it. We shall escape together.”

Sofia smiled shyly back. Nothing was ever certain. The future was still bleak, but now she knew a truth that had been concealed before. The Clockwork Warrior had more to show her.

If only she knew what had happened to Dankyo. She had a week, maybe, and then the emperor-bey would consummate his desires. A week. Would that be enough?

Chapter Thirty

True to her word, Tansu produced the little blue book before night fell—she sat on Sofia’s bed in the room they shared and handed it over.

“No one thinks anything of it. But I had to say you had ideas about what it might contain. So, we must be careful.” Tansu stared with her brown eyes, unblinking. “Do you truly think this has a secret?”

“A secret? Yes. Though I don’t know what it is.” Sofia clasped the book to her chest and said a silent prayer. “Thank you. This gives me hope.”

“Good.” She leaned in and kissed Sofia’s forehead. “May you find more than hope.”

Saying anything further was impossible just then, so she nodded. Did Tansu have hopes too, ones where she dreamed of them being more than merely friends? It seemed likely.

She couldn’t afford to lose the only ally she had. But she hated deceiving her. Treading the line between friend and lover could be fraught with peril too. Would Tansu betray her if she said no?

For the next two days, she buried herself in the puzzles of the poetry. Answers slowly tumbled forth. Again, there were codes within codes, but the last answer that tied it together and made it correlate with the Clockwork Warrior eluded her. Something great would happen if she found this, she knew it was so. It must be so. She wanted it to be.
What if I’m wrong?

Tansu had been attentive and helpful, but stayed distant, giving her space, as anyone who truly cared for her would—respecting her grief.
She cares for me, and I’m lying to her, in a way
. It seemed cruel, to risk hurting the one person who helped her.

The sorrow at what might have happened to Dankyo welled up now and then, at unexpected times.

A tear rolled down her nose and splotched onto the page of the poetry book. Angrily she brushed it away and blotted the paper with her mauve sleeve. Then she sat there at the small desk, just being sad. Useless. Grieving was all she could accomplish.

A breeze from the slit window two feet away fluttered her hair across her face. The scents of the port city sometimes came to her—lemons and spices, coal dust and smoke, oranges and roasting meats. Outside the world turned. Time passed.

“And I have no answer.” She sniffed. This was so stupid—expecting rescue to come from some ancient puzzle. She pushed aside the book, collapsed onto her folded arms, and breathed in the small dark cave made by her arms. If only she could hide forever.

Something scratched at the window glass. Metal on glass. Afraid, she lifted her head and peeked. Gold light haloed around something spindly that clambered in and rolled onto the desk, sending paper flying.

“Ah!” Sofia slapped her hand over her mouth.
Zigzag!
She kept her voice low. “Oh my God. How did you get here?” This room was hundreds of feet up a cliff face and on the fourth story of the building.

He rolled over onto his back and wriggled. The purple sparks in his glass eyes spun like a miniature wild storm.

“Oh my God.” Sofia giggled. “You crazy thing.” She laid her palm on his tummy and patted him, the spindles of gold sprang softly under her touch. As always the warmth of the metal dog surprised her. Then she spotted the casket on a collar about his neck. With a bit of jiggling, it unscrewed, and inside the casket was a scroll of paper.

Her hand trembled as she uncurled the paper. Writing—but not Dankyo’s. This was Henry’s precise, close calligraphy.
Read it, you ninny
. She sucked in a breath and focused on the words.

He is alive…

She put her hand to her chest where a glow seemed to have swooped in and made her giddy.

…but unwell. He says he will come to you in a few days and to be ready.

And on the reverse was written:

Remember your commands.

Sofia grinned and crumpled the note. Then she shot a look at Zigzag where he’d sat beside her inkwell. Would he return? Maybe. It was worth trying. Though… Her grin faded and a little of the sadness washed back in. She also desperately wanted the little creature to stay—it would soothe her heart. But no…