Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
    10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1
    ALWAYS LEARNING
    PEARSON

Acknowledgments
    To Jill Myles and Ilona Andrews: thank you so much for being there, holding my hand, and kicking my butt. I owe you guys so much tea. Special thanks to Telma Teixeira and Olguín Venustiano, who both assisted with foreign languages in the novel (and a belated thanks to Rosario, who helped many times before.)
    To Monica Jackson, who fought to turn the world around: You flipped some of us. I truly believe that everyone else will follow, someday. I just wish that you were here to see it.

Chapter One
    Before Annika had begun her journey, her mother had assured her that the people in the New World weren’t all that different from the women in their village of Hannasvik. Annika’s mother reminded her of how the peoples of Africa and Europe had sailed across the Atlantic four hundred years ago, fleeing from the Mongol Horde that had ridden from the east on the backs of their conquering war machines—just as Hanna and the Englishwomen had escaped the New World slavers and had made their home in Iceland a century before. She’d spoken of the enormous mechanical warriors that the New Worlders had built on their coastlines, sentinels that served a warning to the Horde, should that great empire ever develop a navy and follow them across the sea—just as Hannasvik’s trolls protected their village and intimidated any enemies who might attempt to drive them from their home.
    The Horde never followed the New Worlders, however. The sentinels stood for centuries, staring out over the open sea while wars over territory and trade routes were fought behind their backs, and they were slowly stripped of their armaments and engines.
    And they were slowly falling apart. Annika glanced up through the drizzling rain and eyed the immense Castilian warrior guarding the gates to the port city of Navarra. In the four years since she’d left Hannasvik and joined Phatéon ’s crew, Annika had come to accept the truth of her mother’s words: Individually, the people of the New World weren’t that different from those in her village.
    The governments and rulers, however, must have been.
    No elder in Hannasvik would have allowed Annika or any of the other engineers to neglect their trolls, not when lives depended upon their maintenance. The same obviously wasn’t true in the New World, and Castile’s sentinel was the worst. Aboard Phatéon , Annika had seen every machine still standing along the Atlantic coastline—from Johannesland’s colossus in the north to the Far Maghreb’s twin warriors, three thousand miles south of the equator—and the warrior in Navarra was by far the most decrepit. Rust ate away at its plate armor and crested helmet; corrosion pitted the iron around every bolt and rivet. Sand had drifted into the crevices, forming a solid mass at every joint, topped by grassy nests. Gray seagull dung crusted the spiked shoulders and gauntlets.
    Once a marvelous and deadly machine, now it was simply dangerous. Even if the sentinel had still possessed the engines to walk, the great hinged knees would have buckled after a single step. Struts buttressed its lower half now, a framework of steel supporting the towering legs that served as Navarra’s port gates.
    What a horrible waste. If the Horde had come to the New World, they likely wouldn’t have been intimidated by such useless machines…unless the New Worlders’ defensive strategy was to crush any invaders beneath a rusted ruin. More likely, however, visitors to the city would be killed by falling pieces.
    Visitors like Annika. Only an hour earlier, she had walked the north port road through the gate and into the Castilian city without being crushed—but while she’d been at the printer’s office purchasing another season of personal advertisements, an icy breezehad begun to blow in from the ocean, stinging her cheeks with rain and sand. A strong gust might rip away the sentinel’s giant hand or armored shoulder and throw it to the ground, squashing Annika in the street.
    If a steamcoach didn’t squash her first.
    A horn blasted near her right ear. Two tons of rolling iron sped by, the front wheel whipping her skirts forward. With a yelp, Annika yanked the red silk tight to her leg before the rear wheel could catch the fabric and rip it away—or drag her along the sandy road behind it. That damned idiot driver. Only a blind