Burning Up

her be. Clutching the blanket to her sensitive breasts, she squeezed her legs together until she shook.
     
    I vy didn’t just enjoy the crow’s nest—she loved it. She remained on the small platform for as long as she could stomach the swaying, using Teppers’s biperspic lenses that brought the horizon to within an arm’s length. She watched pods of whales, searched for icebergs and Megs. She held the lenses for so long that her sunburn formed white goggles around her eyes, and only left after she extracted a promise from Teppers that he’d show her how to skylark.
    Her bugs had just healed the burn when she returned the next morning—and Teppers fulfilled his promise. She slid down the backstays from the top of the main mast to the poop deck, laughing wildly as she skimmed above Mad Machen’s head. His grin when he met her at the quarterdeck flipped her stomach over.
    He showed her every part of the ship, and gave her leave to explore on her own. She met the Lusitanian cooks, a husband and wife team whose passionate screams in Portuguese during their fights and lovemaking were legendary among the sailors. She learned that Duckie’s name was Tom Cooper, and he’d gotten the nickname after shooting up six inches in as many months, and that the recurring red mark across his forehead came from his habit of running full tilt through the low-beamed decks. She discovered the ship’s blacksmith had remained in Wales when the bosun approached her for help fixing a broken pulley in the rigging. She spent half of an afternoon with Leveque, the engine master, and though she couldn’t understand a word of his French his love for the machine made perfect sense.
    She didn’t know the languages half the crew spoke. French and Portuguese were the trade languages, and she understood a few words, but the men from the New World also spoke Dutch, Spanish, Arabic, and the Liberé that gave Barker his musical accent. On a ship only a hundred and fifty feet long, she saw more of the world than she’d known before—and realized how much she hadn’t yet seen.
    And she’d never laughed so often. Had never felt as free. Yet she had to keep reminding herself that freedom was an illusion.
    Every day, she came closer to building a monster. She dunked her arm into the tank and watched the squid attack her metal skin, imagining a mast or a person. The claws at the end of his tentacles couldn’t bite into her arm. Wood and flesh wouldn’t be so resilient. Yet Ivy used what she learned to improve the plans.
    She wanted to believe that, despite what Mad Machen had said, the machine wouldn’t be used to terrorize and destroy ships. She wanted to believe that the Blacksmith’s involvement meant his intentions were good. But as brilliant as her mentor was, and despite the debt she’d always owe him for taking her into his guild, she knew the Blacksmith could be ruthless when someone crossed him—and there was much about him she didn’t know. If the price was right, he might have agreed to help.
    And every night, she slept next to Mad Machen, her body aching . . . and one denier poorer.
     
    E ben braced himself before entering the smithy. The past few days, she’d left this small cabin sporting a surly temper. He thought that meant she’d been making progress on the kraken. If her ideas failed, surely Ivy would be pleased.
    Still, she wouldn’t be pleased to see him .
    The previous night, when he’d come into his cabin, she’d been sitting at the window. She hadn’t been looking at the stars, but the two coins glinting in her palm. She’d quickly put one away, and given him the other—not quite hiding her fear.
    After tonight, she’d have no more coins left, but he wasn’t certain if she was afraid that he’d force her . . . or because she wanted him. A few times, he’d caught her looking at him with heat in her eyes, and he didn’t think it was anger. When her nipples pebbled under her thin shirt, he didn’t always think it was the cold. He thought she might ache as much as he did—but he didn’t know.
    Not knowing was tearing him apart.
    He stepped inside. Though a gas lamp burned brightly on the worktable, she wasn’t sitting in front of it. Her expression clouded, she crouched in front of the squid tank, her hands braced against the glass and fingers drumming. Her silvery nails pinged with each beat.
    Without glancing at him, she snapped, “Say what you’ve come to say. Then leave me be.”
    Anger fired