Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] (21 page)

He took a bite of pheasant. Sailors were seldom fussy about what they ate, happy to have any edible food at all, and that hadn’t changed for him when he became a Man O’ War. The pheasant might be cold, and a little tough, but it tasted like manna. “The ferryman should be coming back soon with new provisions.”

The frown returned between her brows. “Two weeks, I think. Time’s gone all muddled since I’ve come to the
Persephone
.” Her frown eased slightly. “I suppose I’ve been . . . occupied.”

“There’s a calendar in the navigator’s room. We’ll give that a study.” He handed her a pheasant leg. “He’ll be worried if you don’t show. Might even have a look around the island.” Which couldn’t happen. “We should get back to fixing up your cottage.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “So that’s the way of it. Bed me then send me packing.”

“If the ferryman sees your ruined cottage,” Fletcher said through his teeth, “he’ll know you don’t live there. Then he’ll wonder where you
do
live.”

“And we can’t have that,” she murmured.

His unwavering gaze told her exactly what he thought of that idea. But then he glanced around his quarters. “
This
is where I want you. Not in your cottage.”

“It’s certainly more spacious here.” Yet despite her words, she reached across the plank holding their food and took his hand. Though they’d spent the whole of the day making love, this simple touch made his heart pound. “The company’s awfully pleasant, too,” she added with a smile.

He snorted. “First time anyone’s called me
pleasant
.”

“Maddening, then,” she corrected herself. Her mouth curved. “And marvelous.”

They both leaned across the plank to meet for a kiss. She tasted of berries—both sweet and tart. Apt.

Silence fell as they continued eating. Both of them were too hungry to pause for caresses, or any of those things he imagined lovers did when sharing a meal in bed, like feeding each other. Did he miss it? He’d never known that kind of after-sex play. But this quiet and matter-of-fact sating of their hunger seemed right to him. They weren’t typical, he and Kali. And he’d only feel clumsy and awkward if he’d tried to play the part of expert seducer. She didn’t seem to expect it, either. She knew him.

A strange feeling crept over him. For half a moment, he’d wondered if the berries he’d picked had fermented, because his mind and body felt muted, quiet. He felt at ease in himself. Comfortable. He could taste all the flavors of the food. He saw the lamplight gleam on Kali’s skin, in her hair and eyes.

Each breath in and out felt revelatory, as if he only just realized that he was alive.

Was this contentment? Happiness? He’d little experience with either to know. But he’d never felt as
right
as he did at that moment. Everything in alignment.

It was her. Kali the engineer.

They finished their meal too quickly. He set aside the plank. It wasn’t enough food, and his stomach still complained when the last of the berries had been eaten. No one had ever tested if a Man O’ War could starve to death, consumed from the inside out by his body’s demands for fuel. Would he find out? And did it matter?

He glanced at Kali as she licked her fingers, trying to savor the smallest bit of their meal.

It does matter
.

Kali watched his face, the shifting play of emotions that he no longer hid from her.

“You must miss it,” she said. “Flying.”

“Didn’t think I would.”

“But our jaunt changed your mind.”

“It’s . . . nothing feels like it. Not the fastest train or riding high in the main course yard as a ship cuts through the water.” He shook his head. “Can’t describe it. That’s for poets, not Man O’ Wars.”

S
he didn’t need his words. Longing shone in his eyes, the kind of yearning one felt for a lost lover. Perhaps Fletcher had forgotten how much he loved her still—the skies—but their dawn outing was like catching a glimpse of that lover years later and finding her as beautiful as ever.

“I could make the
Persephone
airworthy again,” she murmured.

He stared at her. “There’s ether, but the turbines are cracked off so we couldn’t move once we’re airborne. She’s wrecked.”

“Not entirely. I’ve been studying the ship these past weeks. The things she needs to fly weren’t completely ruined in the crash. Including the turbines. We’d lose the bottom decks, but it wouldn’t take much—a few days at most—to get her operational.”

“I’m staying,” he said. “The moment I’m back in the sky, the navy will know. And I’ll be back to destroying lives again.”

“Fletcher,” she said firmly, “I saw it. I was there in Liverpool. You don’t bring destruction. You bring
safety.
”

“I . . .” He scowled, looking away.

Her heart beat thickly in her chest. Here she was offering him a way off the island, and though the possibility had existed before, now he could leave on
his
terms—not as a means of death, but a protector of life.

He glanced back at her. For a moment, yearning gleamed brightly in his gaze, then dimmed. “No. This is where I’ll stay.”

Strangely, relief unknotted between her ribs. She could live on Eilean Comhachag without him—that had been the plan from the beginning—but even if they finished the repairs on her cottage, made it more efficient and modern than ever, the thought of not having him nearby, not hearing his voice and his bone-dry humor, not seeing him each day . . . The thought made her insides wither.

She only wished there was some way that he could learn to see himself as he truly was.

“I’ll hunt rabbit tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve been hunting mostly pheasants since you’ve been aboard, but I need to keep their population steady, so rabbits it is.”

“I’ll join you.”

F
letcher’s heart kicked. She’d never offered to accompany him before, always busy with her inventions and projects. “You wouldn’t like it.”

“A little blood doesn’t scare me. I butchered those rabbits you brought me.”

“Notice anything about the carcasses?”

She frowned. “They seemed like normal rabbits to me. I’ve never studied animal anatomy, but they appeared to have had the regular compliment of muscles, organs and bones. Although,” she added thoughtfully, “the bones that comprised their necks seemed odd. They faced a different direction than the spine.”

He held up his hands. “These are my weapons when I kill them. Even with the ether deactivated on the rifles, the bullets are too powerful. They’d shred the poor beast and leave us with nothing edible. I had to find another way to hunt them.”

A little color drained from her face. “You break their necks.”

“It’s fast,” he said quickly. “They don’t suffer. But it’s the only way. Don’t think you want to watch me snapping rabbits’ necks.”

“Maybe I’ll stay on the ship,” she continued, “or we could fish.”

“Fish don’t stay fresh as long as rabbit or pheasant.”

“I’ve been working on plans for a refrigeration unit,” she said, “powered by the ship’s batteries. Mind, it won’t be small. Probably take up a third of the gunnery deck. But we’d have fresh food for a sight longer than we do now.”

The mechanics that made him extraordinary had been someone else’s invention, same with the construction of his ship. Yet Kali’s intellect continued to astound him.

He liked her use of the word
we
, as well.

Unaware of his thoughts, she continued, “It’ll take some doing to get the refrigeration apparatus functioning before Campbell returns to resupply me. And there’s the cottage to fix up.” Her gaze turned distant as she thought of all the tasks that lay before her.

A thought had been eating at him like a slow-acting acid. “Your arrangement with Campbell—it has a finite date.”

Her gaze snapped back to his. “I never settled on one.”

He exhaled.

“But, Fletcher,” she reached across the distance between them, and interlaced their fingers, and her eyes were dark and too damned sad, “this isn’t permanent. There will come a day when I go back with Campbell.”

“Go back.” He felt the gears of his own mind grind to a stop. The words she spoke sounded like another language. He tried to translate them into words that made sense, but even when they did make sense, they made no sense at all. “You’re leaving.”

“No,” she said. But before he could feel any sense of relief, she added, “Not yet.”

“But you will.” Was that his voice, the noise that sounded like rusted machinery?

Quietly, she said, “At some point—yes.”

“When?” He pulled his hand free from hers, even though he missed her touch, and stood. His skin felt tight, and his chest burned. The rat, Four, had come to investigate whether or not there were any bits of food after their meal, but the little animal scurried back into the walls to avoid Fletcher’s pacing.

“When I’m ready,” she answered.

“Got a date for that?” he demanded, turning to face her. She’d slipped on her chemise, a barrier between them, when she’d been so free and open only minutes earlier. “November? December? Back to civilization just in time for Christmas?”

She didn’t flinch at the edge in his voice, even as he hated it, himself. He hated everything about it: that he could be so cruel to her, that she’d become so important to him that the thought of being without her on the island made the future months and years look like a world leached of color. But the words came, whether he wanted them to or not.

“I don’t know when,” she said, calm as the Atlantic doldrums.

“But you
will
go,” he repeated, as much for himself as for her.

“One can’t make a life here.”

“I have.”

Her eyes were full of shadows and understanding. “Have you?”

He felted riveted to the floor, breath pounding in and out of him. That goddamn engineer’s mind of hers. She cut right to the heart of him, as if he’d been drawn up like some bloody blueprint and she could study all his parts, all his needs and hungers and fears.

Somehow, he managed to tear himself from the floor. Without another word, he slammed from the cabin.

K
ali debated going after him. She’d hurt him, and perhaps that had been a surprise, perhaps it hadn’t. Never had she planned on hurting Fletcher, yet as she sat up in bed and stared out the window, seeing mostly her own ghostly reflection, it seemed there’d been a terrible inevitability to it. They were both walking wounded. Something was bound to open the wounds again.

But what could she tell him? What would take his pain away? She wasn’t Emily, rejecting him because he was a Man O’ War. But he might not see it that way.

The glow of her pleasure—from the aftermath of their lovemaking, from the knowledge that he cared for her enough to want her with him—had cooled.

She’d never felt real emotion for any man until she met him. And that meant she’d hurt him, and herself. Was that the nature of caring? Did it mean inevitable suffering?

Sitting there in bed debating the nature of the human heart would solve nothing. She strapped on her prosthetic leg, then stood and threw on a robe. Taking a lantern with her, she moved down the passageway until she reached the closed door to his quarters. She tapped lightly on the door.

“Fletcher, please,” she said, when there was no answer. She pressed her hand to the door. “It’s got nothing to do with you. Or the fact that you’re a Man O’ War. I always knew I’d leave this island and rejoin the world. This place is . . . a temporary haven. Our time together has been some of the best of my life.” She’d never spoken truer words. “Yet we both know that this place . . . it’s not real. It’s an in-between. Somewhere to learn how to live again. I
want
to live again. Don’t you?”

More silence from the other side of the door. Frustration welled. She wasn’t the sort of person who blathered on about things like
feelings
, not unless it truly mattered. The quiet between them had been just as valuable as the words. Yet here she was, trying to give him what she could, and he remained locked in stubborn, childish silence.

If he thought to hide from her, and that she wouldn’t pursue him, he didn’t know her very well.

“Damn it, Fletcher. Let me in.” She tried the handle of the door. It turned easily in her hand, and the door swung open.

Holding up the lantern, she stepped inside. His cabin was empty.

A quiet, bitter laugh escaped her. She’d been pouring herself out to an unoccupied room.

Instead of returning to her quarters, she searched the ship. All the cabins, all the chambers. The gunnery. The magazine. The topside deck, where the ether-powered barrel they’d taken up into the sky still stood, tied to the airship. Aside from encountering a surprised Four in the galley, she was the only person aboard the
Persephone
.

He’d gone.

She stood topside, scanning the moor. Without his enhanced sight, she couldn’t see much. Only the black sea of heath, and the dark shapes of the hills.

An engineering periodical had run an article about a scientist in Suriname making progress on goggles that would allow the wearer to see in utter darkness. If only Kali had those goggles, she could find Fletcher. But the goggles hadn’t yet been perfected, and even if she had a pair, she wasn’t certain she wanted to chase after him, when he’d run from her like a wounded animal.

He would return. Maybe not for her, but at least because he had to be back on his ship. Though she wondered if he was angry enough to stay away and let the energy and power build up within him, until it broke and caused a berserker rage.

Chill night air cut through her thin robe and chemise. She shivered, but waited a little longer, hoping he’d return. When her fingers and toes numbed, she headed down the companionway, into the ship that had only been her home when he’d been there. Without him, it was just an empty carcass on the moors.

I
n the morning, she dressed and entered the galley to scrounge for breakfast. She stopped abruptly in the doorway. Fletcher stood at the tall food preparation table, cleaning fish. He looked windblown but focused on his task, keeping his head bent as she slowly came into the galley. It felt like those first few times they’d encountered each other, that same uncertainty and caution she’d show around a feral creature.