Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

companionway.
    What the hell was he doing? David needed Annika Fridasdottor, but not as a friend. She held answers, and he had no more hours to waste. A week wouldn’t be enough if she never told him what he needed to know. He’d already spent too much time trying to secure those answers—and going about it in the wrong way.
    He should have known. Should have realized. His mother had simply smiled whenever someone had asked where she’d come from and who her people were. For years, David had assumed that she’d hidden the truth in order to sever ties to that place—perhaps to forget some shame she’d endured, or to escape her past. He’d assumed that she concealed the truth to separate herself from her people…not because she’d wanted to conceal them .
    But his mother hadn’t even told his father, someone she’d loved and trusted, and who would’ve loved her no matter what secrets she might have revealed. And in all this time, it had never occurred to David that his mother’s smiles might have served another purpose.
    A smile allowed her to remain silent. A smile meant that she didn’t have to lie to his father. A smile suggested that the answer was a game or a puzzle to figure out; a smile allowed her to keep a secret without suggesting that his father couldn’t be trusted with it.
    But his mother had never needed to work aboard an airship, where a smile alone wouldn’t have secured a job. His mother had never had to maintain a lie that might be picked apart by a manwho’d lain awake with their conversation echoing in his head. His mother had never had someone tell her that they would soon be conducting a survey of Iceland.
    Would she have been able to smile then? Or would she have appeared just as worried as Annika did?
    David thought she would have.
    If Annika was protecting her people, as he’d begun to suspect, and if she had reason to lie, a week of flirting wouldn’t tell him where his mother had come from. He’d do better to tell Annika of his own reasons for wanting to know—and that she had no need to fear him—instead of trying to tease those answers from her.
    Resolved, he headed down the stairs. Though most of the crew below decks was abed, finding the engine room was simple: he followed the noise. By the time David reached the door, he couldn’t hear his own footsteps over the rattling and huffing. The boards vibrated beneath his boots, through his metal feet—a muffled, almost ticklish reverberation.
    Years ago, he’d sometimes caught himself trying to scratch an itch below a knee that wasn’t there. Now, nearly a decade after buying his mechanical legs, he still found himself surprised when something was there.
    Ticklish, of all things.
    A blast of humid air greeted him when he opened the door, the smell of hot iron and oil. Ahead, an array of six enormous pistons rapidly alternated in time to the huffing, the giant shafts cranking flywheels into a spinning blur. A woman in trousers stood in front of the engine, with her back to him. He recognized Mary Chandler’s red hair before she tied a scarf over her head, carefully tucking away the loose ends. Coming onto watch, apparently. Had he missed Annika, then?
    No. Arms akimbo, Mary braced her hands on her hips. She shifted her weight to one leg, revealing Annika, crouching sidewaysto her at the base of the engine…without a shirt. Just a thin chemise, almost transparent with sweat and steam.
    Shock and desire pummeled David like iron fists. His body clenched, senses reeling. He should look away.
    He couldn’t.
    Tiny sleeves capped her shoulders, leaving her arms bare. Spanner in hand, she tightened the bolt over a valve. Smooth biceps flexed beneath skin glistening with perspiration and darkened by a fine layer of coal dust. The same dust streaked her face, grayed her cotton chemise and buff trousers. A wide leather belt cinched her waist and held spanners of various sizes.
    David’s pulse pounded in his ears, seemed louder than the engine. With her profile to him, Annika glanced up at Mary Chandler. Like the other woman, she’d tied a scarf across her forehead and down around her ears, knotted at her nape; unlike the other woman’s, it was a brilliant orange, seemingly untouched by coal dust and sparkling with sequins. Annika gave an absent nod, watching the woman.
    Who was shouting, David realized when he heard his own name.
    He shouldn’t listen. Experience had taught David that he wouldn’t want to overhear