Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

who roamed much of Europe and Africa, leaving it uninhabitable. Others were revolted by the idea of tiny machines crawling around inside their bodies like bugs.
    Annika knew too many of the infected to share the same fears, but the port officer obviously did not—or he knew many infected people, and still feared that the nanoagents might spread.
    Brandishing his club, the officer gestured toward the nearest inn. Annika didn’t need to understand his sharp commands to know that he was ordering the stranger to turn back, away from the gates.
    The stranger didn’t retreat. He looked to Annika, and the turn of his head offered a better impression of the features between his hat brim and gray wool scarf. He possessed a clean-shaven jaw, perhaps in the native style—or simply because a beard would never grow in evenly. Pale scars raked the left side of his face, with several wide, ragged stripes running diagonally from forehead to cheek. Oh! And that was not a monocle at all, but some sort of optical contraption that had been embedded into his temple, which shielded his left eye with a dark, reflective lens.
    Utterly marvelous. What could he see through that?
    “A noble was poisoned last week.” He spoke clearly, the tones deep. She couldn’t place his accent but had no trouble understandinghim. “Rumor is that the assassin was a Liberé woman who carried Lusitanian papers.”
    So she had been marked—not just by the colors of her dress, but also by the darkness of her skin. Truly, if Annika were the assassin, she wouldn’t have announced it so boldly. With a sigh, she unfolded her documents and presented them to the guard.
    “Norway,” she said, and because the officer seemed reluctant to look away from the stranger long enough to verify her origin, Annika helpfully pointed to the proper line. “Born in Bergen.”
    His gaze darted to the papers. Apparently not the least bit concerned about an assassin now, he waved her on. For a moment, she stared at him in disbelief. He could have so easily disrupted—no, destroyed —her life, as if she were nothing. Now he set her free in the same dispassionate manner. It did not engender grateful thoughts, yet she still managed a “Gracias, señor.”
    It did not come out as genuinely as she intended, but he didn’t seem to note the bitter anger lacing her reply—and Annika was not a fool to wait around long enough for him to recognize it. She turned and set a brisk pace, her heart still hammering. The stranger waited, as if making certain that she wouldn’t be further disturbed, before falling into step beside her, his hands clasped behind his back.
    Since coming to the New World, she’d often been told that her manners were coarse, but Annika thought that the application of genuine gratitude could never be found lacking.
    “Thank you, sir. I can’t express how much I appreciate your interference.”
    He nodded. She thought that would be the end of it, that now he would return to the two men waiting in front of a nearby inn, and who were obviously his companions. Dressed in the same style of wool overcoat that buckled asymmetrically across the chest, long trousers, and sturdy boots, the men watched them pass. The young one sporting a pointed red beard and curling mustache seemed to make a remark; the elder shook his head and laughed, his breathpuffing in the cold air. Beside them, porters loaded crates onto a lorry.
    They all must have been standing there when the port officer had shouted for her to stop, she realized. Her rescuer had heard her desperation and come to her aid.
    She glanced up at the stranger again. He walked to the left of her, his eye contraption only visible as a glint of metal beyond the bridge of his aquiline nose. His hair was as black as hers, though without a hint of curl. The straight ends touched his shoulders, the forward strands drawn away from his face and contained by four steel beads tucked behind his ears.
    Did he intend to accompany her all the way to Phatéon ? Surely that wasn’t necessary. “I’m out of danger now, if you wish to return to your people.”
    “My people?” His brow rose, and he glanced toward the men. “Ah. They’ll manage without me.”
    And she wouldn’t? She ought not to say that, however, not after he’d rendered such an incredible service to her.
    She ought not say it, and so of course she did. “But I can’t manage without you?”
    His sudden grin was nothing like his earlier smile, which had