Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

head. Though he agreed with her inprinciple, he’d be the first to knock her off the pulpit if she intended to shout it from the deck. If she intended to risk herself, to stand for her people, he’d be there with her—but there had to be better ways of going about it.
    “And would your mother want you to die for someone else’s stupidity?”
    “No. But I don’t know that what she wants would matter, because she’d risk herself for me, too.” Her expression slowly deflated on a sigh. She looked exhausted and miserable again. “Excuse me. I’m going to hide in the engine room and cry.”
    She returned to the deck earlier than he anticipated. The sun still shone in the southwestern sky, casting golden light across the water. Behind her aviator goggles, her eyes were red.
    “The chief sent me up to eat until the engine needs stoking again. I can’t take a bite.”
    After the day she’d had on Heimaey, he wasn’t surprised. “You’re brave to defy his orders.”
    “Oh, you are good at that.” She laughed a little, shaking her head. “I’ll be stupid if I’m caught. But I realized that it’s less than an hour’s flight to Vik.”
    And she’d wanted to spend that time with him. Pleasure swelled in his chest—and was joined by tearing pain.
    They had less than an hour.
    Her gaze met his. “And I wanted to tell you how much I admire you.”
    Sudden dread weighed heavy in his gut. He’d heard that before. If she admired him for losing his legs, he wouldn’t be able to bear it. “Why?”
    “Because you intervened at the port gate in Navarra. No matter your reason, you risked yourself to help me. I’d just passed a line ofpeople waiting for food. I thought, I could give them the few coins I have . But I didn’t dare. I could have probably done it without being seen, but I didn’t take that risk.”
    So this still ate at her. “A few coins isn’t worth dying for, Annika,” he said. “They wouldn’t buy more food than the Church gave them. And if you had been caught, the people you tried to help would have been arrested, too.”
    “Perhaps.” Her forehead creased as she considered it. “I’m not even certain if it would be about helping a person, or just making a statement of how stupid it is that I wasn’t allowed to help them.”
    “So you’re a troublemaker at heart? Ah, well—I suppose I am, too. I want to walk through the gates simply because I’m not supposed to. The restrictions against the infected are idiotic.” The result of fear cultivated over centuries. Eventually, they’d all pull their heads out of their asses. “If you broke every stupid rule in the New World simply because it was stupid, you’d never have time for anything else.”
    “I should choose one or two that matter, then.” Though she wore a faint smile, her gaze remained serious. “If I had been caught, died for it—perhaps someone would realize how stupid it is to die for a few coins. If enough people recognized it, they could make a change. But I didn’t risk anything. And when I was stopped by the port officer, I thought, Who would come help me? I wouldn’t even risk giving money to the hungry. You risked it, though. You came to help me.”
    She gave him far too much credit. “Because I heard your voice.”
    “Would you have helped me anyway?”
    “Yes. But it wasn’t the risk you imagine. I knew the port officer’s attention would shift to me, and that he’d feel threatened by either my hand or the infection.”
    “He could have clubbed you.”
    “I heal quickly.”
    “But you can be hurt just as easily as I can, and I’d fear a clubeven if I was infected. Stop arguing, David. You risked your life to save me.” Her eyes narrowed behind the goggle lenses. “Would you have killed me to fulfill your promise?”
    “ What? No.” He’d die to protect her.
    “I’m glad.” For the first time since arriving at Heimaey, real humor lit her face. “You’d be a bad friend if you did.”
    “Yes. But I’d be a good son.”
    Her laugh lifted through him. He loved her mouth, her teeth, the flush of cold on her cheeks.
    A bell rang on the quarterdeck. Annika glanced over her shoulder, then south, out over the sea. “We’re hailing a ship.”
    A wooden ship, wide at the bottom and narrowing as it rose to the main deck, with a high stern. Under full sail, her white canvas bowed in the wind.
    “A fluyt, I think,” Annika said, squinting against the sun. “A cargo ship—usually Norwegian