Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

anticipated the question he would have voiced. “There is a lady aboard who looks forward to seeing you, Mr. Kentewess.”
    A woman with whom he would easily spend more than three minutes in conversation—his aunt by marriage, and the only family he had left. Lucia Kentewess had been serving as ship’s physician aboard Phatéon for ten years now. “Thank you, Captain.”
    Her dignified nod could have rivaled a queen’s. “It is my pleasure. Monsieur Dubois will show you to her quarters. Dubois?”
    A young man with a scraggle of a mustache appeared at his side. “This way, please, monsieur.”
    David took his leave and followed Dubois to the companionway that led to the lower decks. The wide stairs were easy to maneuver, far easier than a ladder. Dubois all but skipped down them, as if he never gave such considerations a thought. At his age, David couldn’t have even descended to the second deck without assistance.
    Sick bay lay all the way at the front of the ship on the third deck; Lucia’s quarters were in the adjoining cabin. Dubois rapped at the door and announced his own name, then opened it with a flourish when she called for him to enter.
    Vashon had arranged a surprise, David realized. His aunt hadn’tbeen expecting him—at least, not at this moment. The remains of an afternoon tea still lay on her small table, a thick physician’s volume open beside them. Her overcoat was slung across her bed. Sitting at her desk, Lucia glanced up at Dubois with an expression of polite inquiry. When her gaze moved past the boy and into the passageway, she suddenly stilled, staring.
    David waited, his throat unexpectedly tight. Her face had softened a bit over the years, and a few new lines had formed, but everything else was so familiar. She still rolled her blond hair at her nape. She still kept a watch pinned to her breast. Her neckline was higher, but the flower-sprigged cotton of her dress was just as simply cut, just as pretty. The black streak at the top of her right ear might have been the same mark from ten years ago, when she’d absently tucked a loosened curl away with ink-stained fingers. No, her appearance hadn’t changed much at all.
    His had.
    “David?” Now her hand lifted to her mouth, eyes filling with tears. “Oh, David. Look at you.”
    He came into the cabin, and those small steps seemed to push her over, the tears spilling. She rose from her chair, hands extended. Behind them, Dubois quietly closed the door.
    She caught his face between her palms, greeted him with a kiss to both cheeks before stepping back, her hands clasped in front of her chest. Joy shone through the tears, lighting her face with a wide smile. “Oh, I cannot believe it. Captain Vashon told me that you were delayed—that you wouldn’t board until later this evening.”
    “No.” The lump in his throat had grown, making it difficult to manage even that. The warmth of any touch was so rare that David never noticed the absence until he felt it again—and his aunt touched him so freely, without reservation.
    “Well, you are here, and I am not about to let you escape quickly. Give me your hat and coat, and let me see you.”
    Obediently, he removed them both. She hung the coat in herwardrobe and turned to look at him again, her gaze openly curious as she studied his eyepiece.
    “It is not at all like you described in your letters,” she said. “I had imagined something more…bulbous, perhaps, similar to a magnifying goggle.”
    A giant eye, staring at her. “I probably exaggerated the details. It seemed enormous when they first grafted it on.”
    All of the prosthetics had seemed enormous, alien. Heavy legs that he couldn’t walk on for months, a cold hand that crushed anything he tried to grasp, and the strange views through lenses that the nanoagents altered at random, until he’d learned to control them with subtle motions of his jaw and cheek.
    “You did make it sound rather bulging and grotesque. But I must say, David, the effect is actually rather dashing.”
    He had to laugh. No doubt she was sincere, but her love for him obviously impaired her vision as much as an exploding window had damaged his. He had seen too many strangers recoil upon seeing his face to believe it.
    Truth or not, however, her opinion mattered more to him than any stranger’s ever could. “Thank you, Aunt. I will have to practice my heroic leer to complete the effect.”
    “Go on.” Laughing, she looked to his hand. “May