Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

not caring what others thought of him, here he was worrying about it again. “She said I had an aunt. Hildegard.”
    “Yes. She is Källa’s mother.”
    “Your sister, Källa?” He searched her face, couldn’t find the slightest resemblance to his mother. “We are cousins?”
    “No.” Annika studied him in return, her expression suddenly guarded. “Källa and I have different mothers.”
    “And fathers?”
    She shrugged, as if to say it hardly mattered. He couldn’t imagine. David’s father had meant everything to him.
    But if Annika and Källa had different mothers and fathers, he must have misunderstood what she’d meant by the term “sister.” Very likely, she used it as some religions did, referring to all other women as sisters. Källa must have been close to Annika, however, if she’d spent four years looking for her.
    She was still watching him in that careful way. Still unsure. Or just so accustomed to concealing her origin that sharing made her wary.
    “You’re searching for my cousin.” At her nod, that sense of wonder came over him again. He had another aunt. He had a cousin. “Let me help.”
    Her eyebrows arched. “How will you?”
    “I’ll do what you do. I’ll buy advertisements—but with a wider range. I’m not limited to an airship route. I correspond with scientists around the world; I know they will help.”
    “Why? You don’t know her.”
    “I’d like to.”
    She narrowed her eyes. Not certain of him yet.
    “Think on that, too,” he said. “Give me your answer tomorrow.”
    “All right.”
    The airship’s bell rang four times as she spoke. The middle of a watch, he realized.
    “You aren’t on duty?”
    “I am, but we’re in port, and there’s little to do that I haven’t already done.” She turned toward the bay again, her face flushed with heat. “I only have to stoke the furnace and check the warmers. They were running a bit hot.”
    “Only a bit?”
    Suddenly laughing at him, she said, “Yes.”
    “How long before you have to go?”
    “About half an hour before I need to stoke again—and I’m waiting to see that the warmers cool.”
    “So you have a little time.”
    “Time to talk about something else.” Her eyes still alight with humor, she asked, “Shall we finally talk about you?”
    They’d never gotten to him the first night. This was long overdue. “All right.”
    “Do you chase volcanoes because of the promise to your mother? Have you been hoping to find the mountain?”
    “That’s how it began. I read as much as I could, searching for any mention of a burial site. I became fascinated along the way.” That search had led him to her, too—and he’d become just as fascinated again. “Even after I bury her runes, I’ll continue to study them.”
    She looked at him as if he were mad. “Why?”
    He grinned. “We have to live with them, don’t we? It’s better to understand them than to just fear them.”
    “There’s good reason to fear them.”
    “Yes,” he agreed.
    She studied him, brows lowering, her lips pursing again. He only had to lean over and press his mouth to hers. Would she softenagainst him? A gasp of surprise against his lips, then a deeper taste…or she’d push him away.
    God, he was a fool. She was still debating whether they could even be friends , and yet he was dreaming of kissing her? He was aroused at the thought of her melting against him? He’d obviously lost his mind. David turned again, made himself focus on her eyes.
    That didn’t help much, either.
    She looked out over the bay again, her gaze lost in the distance, her expression pensive. “I suppose you want to make certain that what happened to your mother doesn’t happen again.”
    “It will happen again,” he said. Not the same sort of disaster, but a disaster all the same. “And again and again.”
    “Then why?”
    “Because we might make a difference. If we predict an eruption, we can move a population to safety.”
    She glanced back at him. “You can predict one?”
    “Not yet.” He grinned when she laughed. “But there’s more than that. A century ago, the year after the fissure eruptions, temperatures dropped—not just in winter, and not just in the northern regions. It was among the worst famine years worldwide, even among the Horde. Many of us think that it was caused by the ash in the air, blocking the sun.”
    “Truly?”
    He nodded. “It also happened after the eruption at Krakatoa. So if we study the volcanoes, if