Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

at a loss. “I didn’t want to intrude on your privacy,” she finally said.
    “Yes, you did. You just didn’t want to be caught at it. I thought we’d built a friendship. But when created through an agenda,friendship and trust is nothing. It does you no credit.” Annika’s mouth trembled before she shook her head, firmed her lips. “And it does me even less, that I could not see what you wanted. I’ve learned well, though. I won’t be so eager for company and conversation, next time.”
    She walked away, out of David’s sight. As if in a daze, Lucia closed the door and returned to the table, pouring herself a drink.
    “I cannot even refute it,” she said softly. “With every conversation, I attempted to discover more about her—but I remembered your mother’s secrecy, and didn’t want to make her wary. So I tried to be clever about it, instead. But I like her so well; that was never a lie.” She sipped the clear liquor, looked up at him with watering eyes. “What did I say about having time?”
    Only a week. And David didn’t see a way to have more. He would be leaving Phatéon to begin his survey. Annika wouldn’t be here when his expedition was finished, and she refused to receive any letters from his aunt—and likely from him, too.
    “I’ll talk with her,” he said. Though he didn’t know what good it would do.
    If nothing else, he would apologize. At least then his threat wouldn’t weigh on him, in addition to the knowledge that he’d lost the chance to fulfill his promise.
    But David felt as if he’d lost more than that.

Chapter Five
    Bound by the confines of the airship, there were few places to escape someone determined to find her. With assistance from her cabin mates, however, Annika managed to avoid David for the remainder of the journey. When he waited in the passageway on the engine deck, Mary warned her to leave through the boiler room. Elena turned him away at their cabin door and sat beside Annika at the wardroom table; when their watch rotations didn’t match, Marguerite brought Annika’s meals to their cabin.
    Annika knew they all thought that a budding romance had turned sour, and she didn’t correct the misperception. She was simply grateful for her friends’ help.
    Despite what she’d told Lucia Kentewess, Annika didn’t intend to lose touch with everyone aboard Phatéon when she left the airship—Elena in particular. The second mate had already offered to check on her advertisements, but Annika would have corresponded with her regardless. And despite her angry response to David’s threat, she didn’t want him to be killed. As soon as they reached Smoke Bay, Annika planned to send word to Hannasvik,letting them know Inga’s fate—and that her son sought to bury her beads on the nearby volcano.
    As soon as Hildegard heard about Inga, the woman would probably seek out David herself. Annika couldn’t guess what resolution they might reach, but one way or another, Inga’s runes would find their way back to Hannasvik.
    They’d probably reach home before Annika did. Flying another route on a different airship, years might pass before she saw Iceland again.
    The realization drove her up to the main deck soon after the lookout spotted the island. Though early in the afternoon, the sun was already low in the sky, piercing the clouds with thin gray light. Bitter-cold wind sneaked around the edges of her woolen scarf, carefully wrapped to protect the skin below her aviation goggles. Heart in her throat, Annika stood at Phatéon ’s bow, watching the western shoreline and snow-blanketed mountains come ever closer, seeming to increase in height and breadth as they flew in.
    The fishing town of Smoke Cove lay on the inland edge of a bay that stretched a hundred miles north; on the peninsula to the south, steam rose like smoke from numerous heated springs. Hannasvik lay hidden among the hills of the peninsula that formed the bay’s upper boundary, and on a clear day, the mountain that David Kentewess sought was visible from Smoke Cove.
    Today, though Annika stared north, hoping for a glimpse of land closer to home, clouds obscured both the peninsula and the volcano. Only the smaller mountains closer to Smoke Cove were visible across the water, a long ridge of gently rounded peaks, like a handful of children huddled beneath a blanket of snow.
    As they neared the settlement, Vashon ordered the engines stopped and the sails unfurled. With engines silenced, the noise