Burning Up

go.
    Mad Machen moved to the stairs, held out his hand. “Come up here.”
    Ivy searched for a reason to refuse, but aside from her reluctance to be so near to him, she couldn’t find one. But she did not take his hand. She climbed the stairs and pushed her empty mug into his outstretched palm. Though uncertain of his reaction, the small defiance felt good.
    “Thank you, Captain,” she said.
    The corners of his mouth deepened. Without a word, he turned and handed the cup off to a chuckling Barker.
    Ivy bit her lip to repress her own smile, looking away from him. Though the quarterdeck was all but empty of crew, a hive of activity centered on the high poop deck at the stern of the ship. As she watched, two men cast a wide net over the side. Other men stood around barrels, holding machetes and shovels. The scent of fish was strong.
    “They’re replenishing the chum,” Mad Machen said. “Distracting Meg yesterday cleaned out our supply.”
    Barrels of it, apparently. “And if she hadn’t given up? Do you use your meat stores?”
    “No. The crew draws straws, and we toss the loser over the side.”
    She glanced sharply around and saw his grin. She fought not to laugh, and nodded toward Vesuvius ’s bow. “Why not use the rail cannon? Is the steam engine too unstable?”
    If so, perhaps she could fix it. But Mad Machen was shaking his head.
    “I haven’t had one blow up yet. It’s the vibrations. As soon as the engine starts up, Meg will ram us trying to get to it, and the engine noise would draw in others. So the cannon might kill her, but we’d be sitting in the center of a feeding frenzy around a bleeding shark.” He gestured to the poop deck, at the white-haired man overseeing the fishing crew. “My engine master, Mr. Leveque.”
    “I see,” Ivy said, and she did. The engine master’s duty was making certain the engine would fire if the captain needed it . . . and to make certain he never needed to fire it.
    And she saw that the responsibility for both ultimately lay on Mad Machen’s shoulders.
    The breeze picked up, cold and brisk. Pulling the edges of her coat together, she moved to the side of the ship to look over at the nets. She heard Mad Machen follow, and the snap of metal as he unbuckled his coat.
    Heavy wool swept around her shoulders. Ivy stiffened before letting herself sink into the warmth of his big coat. Spite wouldn’t keep her from shivering, and if Mad Machen’s gesture meant he’d feel the bite of the morning air, all the better.
    But he didn’t look cold. The sun warmed his face, narrowing his eyes against the glare. The wind created by the ship’s speed caught his collar, billowing through his shirt, and he stood solid as if the icy breath didn’t touch him.
    Her gaze fell to his throat, and the rough scar exposed by the wind. She’d heard several different stories about how he’d gotten it—and the “mad” in front of his name—but they varied wildly. Only one element remained the same: while serving as ship’s surgeon, he’d crossed Rhys Trahaearn.
    “Did the Iron Duke truly hang you aboard the Terror ?”
    He grinned. “So that’s what you’ve heard?”
    “Yes.”
    But she had her doubts—not that Trahaearn had been ruthless enough to hang him, but that he’d let Mad Machen live afterward.
    “You’ve heard the wrong story, then. He didn’t hang me on the ship. He hung me over the side, low enough that my feet dragged through the water.”
    Ivy gaped. She’d have thought he was joking, just as he had about the crew drawing straws, but the evidence circled his neck.
    “Like bait?” When he nodded, she gasped, “Why?”
    His grin faded, and he studied her face. Moving closer, he turned with his back to the sea and his elbows on the rail, watching the men. His voice lowered. “This doesn’t go further than you and me. Alright?”
    Her eyes widened. He’d done something so terrible? “Yes.”
    “Twelve years ago, we were on a run from Australia to the Ivory Market when we hit rough weather. What should have been a six-week trip had already stretched into three months, and we’d only just rounded the Cape of Good Hope and begun sailing up the west coast of Africa.”
    All Horde territory. And just as they had in Europe, the Horde had polluted the unoccupied territories with diseased nanoagents that took over the victim’s will without use of a controlling tower. Mindless, the diseased humans only hungered and hunted.
    “The crew had been