Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

shouldn’t. I’ve taken advantage of your gratitude, after all.”
    “You haven’t forced me to eat supper with you.”
    “My goal wasn’t to eat, but to remain in your company.”
    Oh, yes. So that he could know her better. “Well, you are inluck. You see the two things that compose almost all of my life now.” She gestured to her dress, then to the generator manual. “Making whatever sort of clothing takes my fancy, and those schematics.”
    “You sewed that one?”
    “Yes.” She touched the high neck and the stiff, pleated lace ruff. “I’m told that such finery is only for nobility and royalty. But I like the look of it so well, I can’t resist making my own. Do you mistake me for a queen?”
    He hesitated, as if deciding whether to answer diplomatically. When he chose honesty, she liked him all the better for it.
    “No,” he said.
    “Then no harm is done. If someone ever did mistake an engine stoker for a noble, then his idiocy will cause him more problems than my ruff ever could. Why do you wear gloves now? No one else in your party did.”
    Though his expression didn’t change, the fingers of his left hand curled slightly. “I never know how people will react to the prosthetic. Tonight, at least, I didn’t want to ruin my host’s dinner.”
    “People fear it?”
    “Some do.”
    “Do you take off your eyepiece, too?”
    But of course he couldn’t. She could see now that it was also grafted to him, a seamless meld of flesh and steel.
    That brief, one-sided smile flashed again. “No.”
    “So they must realize that a metal hand might be there, despite the glove. In fact, they might think that both of your hands are metal.”
    “Yes.”
    Ah. So he was saving idiots from themselves. “I’m usually more afraid of what I can’t see, because that threat is the unexpected one. Do you like being feared? It seems a powerful ability to make someone quake in your presence without any action on your part.”
    “It’s better than pity.”
    “What isn’t?” Pity only served the person who felt it; generosity better served the person who needed it. “I’d prefer everyone to fear me. Though that must be alienating.”
    The port officer hadn’t been able to send him away fast enough. She assumed that others did, too. They likely used varying degrees of politeness to do it, but the effect would be the same.
    “It can be, yes.” His admission held no self-pity, however; he sounded baffled. “You don’t fear them, though. Have you seen many like this in Norway?”
    “Oh, yes.” No, not truly. Prosthetics were common enough in the Scandinavian port cities, and the kingdoms allowed people infected with nanoagents to settle there, but her familiarity came from home.
    With one exception, all of the women who’d founded Hannasvik had been infected, and their bodies had undergone the Horde’s modifications. Though the same augmentation was rare among the women now, many were infected—and still others needed their own prosthetics after accidents or wild dog attacks.
    None were as brilliantly made as Kentewess’s, however. His devices would have inspired envy in her village.
    Realizing that he was watching her, waiting for more, she added, “And Phatéon has been to England several times, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    A probing look accompanied that easy reply. Annika paused. The sense of unease that had come over her on the docks had returned—the certainty that he wanted something from her.
    Perhaps she was mistaken. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to direct the conversation away from her fabricated past. “I’m sorry to say that those two things are truly all there is to know about me. Our supper would have been a short one.”
    “No.” He leaned toward her slightly, bracing his elbow on the arm of the chair—finally settling in. “I’d still want to know more.”
    “It would have been a boring supper, then. I’m already intimately familiar with the topic.”
    “Then I’d have asked you to talk about yourself until I was bored, too—though I doubt I would have ever been.”
    Oh, but she liked his smile. And as unsettling as that intense focus was, Annika enjoyed how direct he was and how his gaze never wavered. She couldn’t fathom why he was intent on discovering more—perhaps it was just politeness and a desire to please his aunt—but his attention flattered her. Usually the passengers who visited the wardroom took one glance at Annika’s clothes and decided she was