Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

Dooley asks many questions,” Frida said dryly.
    “And she doesn’t answer a one.”
    She smiled slightly. “Perhaps that will come.”
    “I think it should,” Annika said in Norse. “Sooner than later.”
    Her mother arched auburn brows, answered in the same language. “No more hiding, little rabbit?”
    “For a while. But not in the same way. These stories, these trolls—they worked to keep people afraid, but now that people are coming anyway, I worry that they’ll do us more harm than good. They almost put a rail cannon on you, Mother.”
    “I’m not all that pleased by the thought of it, either.”
    “And if we continue on like this—if people believe we are witches and ride in trolls—it’s easier to hurt us when the time comes when we can’t hide any longer. It’s easier to think of us as monsters who must be killed. But if they know the trolls are only machines, and there is no magic or secrets, then we are just women. Then we aren’t any different from the people in the New World. And you know we aren’t—you told me so before I left, and it was true. Not for everyone. But it’s true for most of us.”
    She nodded thoughtfully. “It won’t be easy, rabbit.”
    “No. It will take a long time, I think. But we can start small, here. And never back down.”
    Dooley puffed on his pipe, his gaze following the exchange between the two women. He glanced at David.
    David shook his head. Yes, he understood some of it. No, he wouldn’t translate.
    But he would stay and help them…whatever form that took.
    Annika had to admit relief that the airship wasn’t in Vik . She wasn’t feeling strong enough to fend off the looks and questions from the crew. For now, she just wanted to be alone with David.
    He was the strongest person she’d ever known—not because of nanoagents, but his sheer will. He’d carried her for a full day and most of the night through the snow. The fever must have started that day, as it hadn’t yet become a full-blown bug fever with pustules and a rash, which almost always ended in death. That morning, when she’d finally struggled up out of sleep, her mother had described how they’d found him, cradling her against his chest, burning with fever. She’d been devastated, imagining his terror—and then his naked vulnerability when they’d had to put him in the snow.
    But they’d arrived in time, and he was already recovering more quickly than she was.
    He was also apparently determined to be absolutely proper—though by whose standards, Annika couldn’t guess.
    Aside from a light peck, she shouldn’t kiss him in front of Frida or anyone older than she was—it was disrespectful to ignore them, and when David kissed her, Annika couldn’t think of anyone else. But although her mother might be concerned for Annika’s heart, there was nothing improper about taking someone to her bed or sleeping in the same bedchamber.
    As soon as they arrived in Vik, however, he moved into a small house with Dooley and Goltzius. Annika didn’t want to share Rutger Fatbottom’s hearth chamber with Hildegard and her mother, even though it would only be a temporary arrangement. It remained unspoken, but Annika knew that they were all waiting for her to regain her strength before they traveled to Smoke Cove. Though Källa asked her to stay in the house she shared with Olaf and Paolo, Annika felt too awkward to accept, knowing that Paolo still celebrated his son’s trip to the moon. In the end, she decided instead to join Lucia, who shared a house with Maria Madalena and her nurse, with the added benefit of pleasing her mother with the assurance that she was so near to a physician, and that David visited often.
    Courting, Lucia said. Annika didn’t know how that could be true when he never came alone, always with Goltzius or Dooley, and she never had a second of privacy with him.
    After two days, Annika was so frustrated that she felt always on the verge of a scream. She filled the hours with sewing. The next day, Källa, her mother, and Hildegard drove Rutger Fatbottom to the rail camp, where they would see if the trolls could be salvaged. David joined them, as did Dooley. Annika was forbidden. She stitched a seam and plotted about how to find a private moment and a bed. Or the floor. It didn’t matter.
    But though her heart lifted when she saw Austra Longears and a second troll follow Rutger Fatbottom back into Vik, by David’s expression she knew not all had gone well. No one