Angela Knight - Burning Up

“Captain!”

The shout came from the crow’s nest, where Teppers pointed over the port bow. Eben narrowed his eyes against the sun. The water’s calm surface had been disturbed by a small eruption, as if a pocket of air had broken underneath. A few moments later, there was another, almost one hundred yards closer to Vesuvius .

He glanced at Barker, holding the telescope to his eye. “Anything?”

Barker shook his head.

Another shout came from the bosun’s mate, at the starboard rail amidships. “Captain!”

Eben had only a second to glimpse the enormous dark form just below the surface, a rounded body plated with interlocking iron segments. Another pocket erupted fifty feet from Vesuvius ’s side, disturbing the water—when it faded to a ripple the creature beneath had gone.

Barker looked to him with wide eyes. “Would Ivy have had time enough to rebuild it?”

“No.” And thank God, because otherwise she might have been in the sea with the real thing. “Hold steady on course. Ready the axes.”

And pray that they could sail on past it. If the tentacles got hold of them, their only option was to chop away until the kraken let go.

A film of sweat popped out on the quartermaster’s brow. Barker nodded and shouted to the crew, “Man the axe stations, and look sharp! Keep your eyes out—”

Terrified shouts sounded from the poop deck. Eben pivoted to look aft. His blood froze.

Dark and glistening, as thick as his waist at the tip, the tentacle rose over the quarterdeck. Plate-sized suckers covered the pale gray underside, the pink flesh seeming to open and close like hungry mouths as the kraken sought prey . . . and it came straight for Eben.

He reached for his weapon—too late. Heavy muscle wrapped his upper body in an unbreakable coil, pinning his arms to his sides. Jesus Christ. The oily stink filled his desperate breaths as the tentacle lifted him off his feet. He felt the suckers pulling at his legs, his back. Barker shouted and came at the thick arm with an axe. The blade skidded off the oily skin in a shower of sparks.

Mechanical flesh.

Barker’s mouth dropped open. Eben met his gaze for a second, and saw his astonishment reflected in the other man’s eyes. Ivy had done it.

But what the hell was she doing now?

Eben didn’t have time to ask. The tentacle carried him over the side of the ship. He pulled in a final breath before it dragged him beneath the freezing water. The shouts and screams from Vesuvius vanished into a swirling, watery quiet. Overhead, Vesuvius ’s keel formed a long, dark shadow. He looked down into a nightmare.

Ivy’s giant machine churned the water below, its enormous staring eyes lit like a furnace. Steam boiled from the tips of the eight arms spread like rays beneath an enormous rounded body, as if the hell inside couldn’t be contained. Wrapped in the tentacle, he dove past the plated body, between two arms, toward the underside of the submersible—where a kraken’s beak would be. A rounded hatch opened instead, revealing a gaslit chamber. The tentacle shoved him toward it, until his head broke the surface and he hauled in a deep, ragged breath. The tentacle loosened.

Kneeling by the rim in a white shirt and trousers, Ivy laughed and dragged him from the icy water into a steam bath. Eben lay on the metal floor, coughing and sputtering, staring up at her. Red hair was plastered to her head with sweat, her face flushed. She was utterly beautiful.

“Can you breathe?” she asked.

Chest heaving, he nodded. He wasn’t sure about talking yet, but—

Ivy bent over, gripping his wet hair to hold him still, and ravished his mouth with a kiss. When she let go, he couldn’t speak, breathe—or think. He’d never been so astonished in his life.

She grinned down at him. “Do you think the machine is frightening enough?”

He barked out a laugh, which sent him into another fit of coughing. Patting his back, Ivy looked around.

“Circle beneath Vesuvius ,” she said, and climbed to her feet.

Still catching his breath, Eben rose, shoulders bent to avoid the low ceiling. Three men—one his former blacksmith, Lambert—and two women manned the submersible from seats surrounded by forests of levers, and every surface on the bulkheads and ceiling was packed with valves and controls. A low hiss and the clacking of the four pedaling automatons sounded strangely hollow, as did his voice.

“The heat in here—is it from a steam engine?”

He couldn’t hear one, but it might have been shut down. He hoped to God she never fired one, not while in the water.

Ivy shook her head. “Just a boiler and valves to circulate steam around the gas bladders in the arms—and to keep us from freezing.”

Eben struggled for some response. What she’d put together here . . . he’d told her to do it, but he hadn’t known if anyone could. And it was beyond words.

Ivy continued, “It needs a crew of five. Your blacksmith and Trahaearn’s steward helped me choose. They can all keep a secret, and know the area well enough to leave the local fishermen and traders alone. And they are each loyal to you or the Iron Duke.” She glanced toward a short, blond man looking through a periscope. “I’ve trained John Davies to take my place.”

Eben recognized him. Eight months ago, Davies had been chained in the hold of a slave ship, his arm drill smashed beyond repair.

Davies pushed the periscope up into the ceiling, and turned with his hand extended. “Good to see you again, Captain.”

Automatically, Eben shook his hand—then looked down in surprise. It was a prosthetic shaped exactly like a hand, but it wasn’t mechanical flesh. Instead, it had been created of interlocking machines, each operating individually to resemble lifelike movement. He could feel the difference in pressure and strength in each of the man’s fingers, just as he would if the hand were flesh. If not for the hardness of the metal, Eben wouldn’t have known he was gripping a prosthetic. He’d never seen anything like it before.

Davies grinned and lifted his chin toward one of the women. “My lady, Mary, and I have an ongoing debate. Between this and the kraken, I say this hand is the more amazing. She doesn’t agree. And Ivy won’t give her opinion, citing bias as the maker.”

Eben felt as if he’d been dunked underwater again. He looked to Ivy, who was standing beside one of the crew, checking a valve. “You did this?”

“It was a trade. He needed an arm more than he needed a hook, and I needed his two-seater balloon to get around the island.” She glanced over her shoulder and met his gaze. Her green eyes were bright with amusement. “You were gone more than three weeks. I had to do something .”

And she’d done something . . . incredible. He glanced down at the prosthetic, then around the chamber. Hell. Beyond incredible. Though the primary structure of the kraken had remained mostly the same, the modifications she’d made had turned it into this . Functioning. Frightening.

Yet she’d been hiding from him in Fool’s Cove. He didn’t think she would have, now. Her face shone with animation and joy—but also confidence. She’d always been secure in her work. But he thought that she, too, recognized just how amazing her talent was.

How amazing she was.

She moved to the hatch in the center of the floor. “Mary, will you bring in the tentacle?”

Eben joined her, looking down into the circle of water. “So I’m to go back?”

“Now you can add surviving a kraken’s belly to your reputation.” She smiled up at him. “As soon as we’ve docked, I’ll ask Mary to fly me out to Vesuvius .”