Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

false.”
    “Paolo.” Källa came forward, her eyes wide. “Do you mean the capsule? He’s going in the capsule?”
    “Yes, yes. He’s set the charges.” He faced her, frowning, as David abruptly stood and started for Annika. “Is the airship ready, then?”
    Källa scooped up Olaf. “Are we supposed to be leaving?”
    “The guards will come to take us to the airship at six,” Paolo said. “He said the moon will rise on the di Fiore name.”
    Oh, blast. It was just after six now. Lorenzo had probably timed it so they’d have time to reach the ship…but not wait so long that they wouldn’t see the launch.
    “Källa,” Annika said. “We have to take the balloons.”
    “Yes. I’ll be right back for Paolo. We need our coats.”
    “We need our packs, too.” Face stark with tension, David stopped in front of her. “Ideas for boots?”
    She thought desperately. “I don’t know.”
    “I do.”
    He reached down, hauled off his right boot. His foot wasn’t what she expected—like a thick cotton stocking. She took the boot.
    “Don’t put it on yet.” He stripped off the padding, revealing skeletal steel similar to his hand. A metallic clank sounded when he set his foot down again. “This keeps it from sliding around inside. It’ll do the same for you.”
    And keep her feet warmer, too. Cozy. She pulled on the second one, her heart filled to bursting. “Thank you.”
    “I’d only expose my naked feet for you,” he said, smiling slightly. “Now, go for our packs. I’ll help Källa bring Paolo.”
    She nodded. The boots rose past her knees, but it wouldn’t matter, unless she wanted to crouch. Right now, she needed to run.
    Or stomp. Her feet felt heavy, huge. She took a lamp, made her way as quickly as possible back to their chamber. She stuffed everything she could find into their packs, ripped the blankets from the bed, clomped back out to the clearing.
    Källa and Paolo were outside, watching David climb up the laboratory’s snow-covered roof.
    “Do you see him?” her sister called.
    “Not Lorenzo!” David called back. “But the other troll is there!”
    He was looking toward the capsule tower, Annika realized. Shejoined Källa, who carried Olaf in a sling across her chest, and a pack across her back. She gave Annika two gas-filtering masks.
    “Paolo wants to get him,” she said softly.
    Annika looked at her in dismay. In two-seater balloons, with no idea when the explosive charges would blow? “I don’t think—”
    “He’s my son.” Paolo’s voice quavered. “And the final calculations weren’t made.”
    Beneath her feet, a deep rumble suddenly shook the ice. Annika staggered. On the roof, tiny balls of snow rolled down sloped sides. David started down.
    The entire laboratory dropped, ice cracking like a cannon shot. Stumbling forward, Annika screamed his name. David took a running leap. He cleared the sudden sheer edge with inches to spare, landing hard in the snow. His legs seemed to buckle, but then he was up again, catching her hand.
    “Go!”
    They raced across the clearing. Tunnels collapsed with heavy thumps of snow. The cracking of ice sounded like a battlefield. The ground beneath her feet dropped, and she clung to David, terror stopping her heart, but they didn’t fall away into a new crevasse—the entire clearing dropped with them. Ahead of her, Källa pulled Paolo up from his knees. Her sister reached the balloons, glanced back at Annika.
    Two balloons, only one with an engine. With an older man and a child with her, there was no question which one Källa should take. Annika pointed, heard the buzzing of the small engine from the other balloon as she climbed into her own seat. She began to pedal, waiting while David helped settle Olaf into Paolo’s arms. As soon as he was in, she released the tether—even if the ice dropped to the center of the Earth, they wouldn’t fall with it now. She saw Källa engage her propellers, pedaled harder, David joining her. Annika lifted the altitude flaps, and they rose slowly into the air. Källa met her eyes, then banked south. Toward the tower.
    Blast it. If Lorenzo wanted to escape, he had a troll.
    Annika shook her head, but pulled the rudder to the left and began turning south. More crevasses had opened all along the glacier, she saw. Steam poured through the fissures, and even over the propellers and the cracking ice, she heard the whistling of the pressurized steam escaping through tight cracks. The tower rose