Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

told him about the project, and their conversation over dinner the previous night. What had Paolo said toAnnika about using the pipes to heat the living quarters? “He believed that every bit helps.”
    The other man nodded. “So it does.”
    For the first time in her life, Annika didn’t feel comfortable while driving a troll. It was impossible with Lorenzo standing on the ladder behind her, breathing down her neck, and twenty-five laborers crammed into the hearth chamber.
    Barely a word passed between them—not at all like the laborers who’d come from Castile to Smoke Cove in Phatéon ’s hold. Though Annika hadn’t seen much of them, she’d often heard them, the songs they’d sung that she couldn’t understand, full of hope and the promise of work. Perhaps Lorenzo’s presence stifled any chatter now.
    The sun hadn’t yet risen when they left the camp. Annika followed a worn path, lit by the lanterns at the troll’s nose and shoulders. The route had been well used, but she still stepped carefully. Sharp cracks from the ice had sounded throughout the night. It was impossible to guess when a crevasse might open, creating a gaping death drop where there’d only been ice the day before. They traveled north, away from the tower and capsule. After five miles, she reached the mouth of a rounded tunnel.
    “It stretches ten miles south again,” Lorenzo said. “The men work around the clock.”
    Then he’d have done better to build crawlers instead of trolls. The walls of the tunnel were smooth and high enough for the troll to pass through on all fours. The flat, rough floor would provide adequate traction. But it was still better to have tracks or sled runners on ice rather than feet.
    She slowly approached the entrance. “Did you drill this tunnel?”
    “No. The drill is for the vertical shafts and boreholes. We triedmelting through, but the water refroze too quickly, and extraction became a problem. So we’ve resorted to old-fashioned labor. The men are digging through.”
    “Through the ice ?”
    “And rock. I’ve brought in foremen from the Lusitanian mines to oversee the work. Theirs is the nearest in expertise. They’ve done a fine job so far, don’t you agree?”
    Expertise? The Lusitanian mines had a terrible reputation—using infected laborers smuggled in from Horde territories because they could work longer and be fed less. If digging these tunnels was anything like laboring in the mines, it was no wonder these men looked downtrodden.
    Annika only shook her head, unease lifting the small hairs on her skin as they entered the tunnel shaft. The lanterns threw golden light across the rounded blue walls, and ahead for almost twenty yards. Beyond that, all was darkness.
    “There are a few turns where we decided to dig around the rock rather than blast through, but you’ll see them before you have to avoid them.”
    Unnerved by the enclosing ice, the dark ahead, Annika didn’t answer.
    Lorenzo didn’t seem to care. “I must say, though we’ve had men in that seat for months, they don’t drive with half the confidence and skill that you do. Even Källa, when teaching them, didn’t drive as well.”
    Of course not. Källa saw the trolls as a tool or a weapon, something she used. When Annika drove, she saw the engines as a heart and the machinery as muscle and sinew, extensions of her own—and when Annika was in the seat, the troll had more of a brain.
    She would not tell Lorenzo that, however.
    “I was surprised when I realized that you are the rabbit sister she told us about. I didn’t know when I read about Annika Fridasdottor in Kentewess’s journal that you were the same woman.It’s fascinating to know now. It makes me even more curious about you.”
    Annika didn’t intend to satisfy that curiosity.
    “I had wondered what sort of woman would be with Kentewess. Either she thought so little of herself that she settled for less than a man, or she was grateful for it—the sort of woman who likes to crush weak men beneath her heel. But when I realized who you were, I wondered if you were like Källa, using him for your own purposes. But you’re not any of those things.”
    The troll’s right foreleg slipped. Annika steadied it, said through gritted teeth, “David’s not less of a man.”
    “It also interests me that you know anything about what makes a man, never having seen one. Oh, yes. It was quite simple to figure out what Källa never said. About why she led us away