Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

her stomach rumbled a hungry complaint half an hour before supper, Annika wished that she’d taken the stranger up on his offer. She lay facedown in her bunk instead, with a hollow belly and a pillow over her head, trying to sneak in a few minutes of sleep.
    Sleep wouldn’t come. Her mind spun out waking dreams, refusing to rest.
    What sort of supper would they have eaten? For a week, she’d been craving roasted mutton; surely the inn would have served that. And a thick, salty gravy that she could sop up with crusty bread. She could have devoured an entire haunch and still had room to lick her fingers after.
    Oh, and she had to stop imagining this before she drooled into her mattress. It still faintly smelled of the sweet straw beneath the cotton cover, and nothing soured a bed as quickly as moisture seeping into the stuffing. She would dream of the stranger, instead, and of what his answers to all of her queries might have been.
    Though she still couldn’t imagine a good reason to chase aftervolcanoes. To study them, he’d said. What was there to study that couldn’t be viewed from afar? They shook the earth and terrified the sheep and ponies. They spewed ash that turned the daytime sky to gray and the nights to red. They poured lava down their snowy sides, sending up billowing steam that could be seen for miles, melting ice into rivers of mud that destroyed everything in its path. Everyone in Hannasvik knew to keep their distance from an eruption.
    So there must be another purpose. Annika had once imagined herself descending into the mouth of a volcano—but she had also been five years of age and her ears still ringing with tales of dragons who hoarded their gold in mountain caves.
    Perhaps that was what the man sought. Not dragons, because no sensible person believed in them, but glory. That seemed almost as foolish as searching for a dragon’s hoard, but perhaps the stranger was like Sigurd, who’d been manipulated by Reginn to carry out that dwarf’s revenge upon his dragon brother. Perhaps he’d been led to believe glory could be found in such pursuits.
    She didn’t like to think that her rescuer could be so easily manipulated, however. She didn’t like to think of him resembling Sigurd the Deceiver at all. She preferred her heroes to resemble Brunhild, who took her bloody revenge upon the Deceiver after he’d misled and taken advantage of her.
    Annika should have been as bold as Brunhild, too.
    With a sigh, she turned over and stared up at the bottom of the shadowed bunk overhead. Now she doubly regretted refusing his invitation to supper. She’d never know why he ran after volcanoes. She’d never know whether her instincts had been correct and if he had wanted something from her other than company. Maybe he’d only wanted to know more about her, as he’d said—or had wanted to share her bed. That would have been easy enough to refuse.
    Unless she hadn’t refused.
    That was difficult to imagine, too, though she tried. She hadthe memory of kisses to draw from, a caress of her breasts. Her own explorations had taught her the brief ecstasy of release. But to lie with someone, to fully give herself over to that person…she would need to feel more than those things. She would need to know the rending need and longing that her mother had told her came hand in hand with passionate love, as if her guts had been riveted together and the only way to ease the pain was being with that person. Annika had no memory of such emotions to rely upon as she dreamed.
    The rest was just physical pleasure, and she could do that for herself.
    Not here, though. Few places on an airship offered enough privacy to attempt it, so it did her no good to imagine bedding the stranger. She’d only end up frustrated.
    With effort, she pushed those thoughts away. Daydreaming did her no good, either. It never had. In Hannasvik, she’d never been responsible for tending the sheep, but she’d still earned the name Annika the Shepherdess—because she was always gathering wool.
    Sleep would have served her better, but there was no hope for it now. The cabin door squeaked open, followed by the tread of boots across the boards and the scratch of a spark lighter at the washstand. The brass lamp’s flickering flame danced across the second mate’s fair cheeks and glinted gold in her chestnut hair. Elena wound the oil pump and the wavering glow from the burner softened, steadied.
    Elena’s index finger marked her spot between