The Kraken King Part III: The Kraken King and the Fox's Den (A Novel of the Iron Seas) by Brook Meljean

Author:Brook, Meljean [Brook, Meljean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-28T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Now this was an adventure.

A street. Alone.

Zenobia’s heart pounded harder now than when she’d escaped from the burning airship.

Oh, this was wonderful. She could hardly take it in. A blur of color and sound surrounded her, yet everything seemed so sharp and clear: the lorry that had almost run her over. The old woman crossing one of the rope bridges above—oh! Zenobia simply had to run across one of those before she returned to the inn. Another woman passed her on the walk, her lips painted a brilliant red and her black hair up in the fluffiest, loveliest bun that Zenobia had ever seen.

She hadn’t been able to fix her own hair that way. She’d settled for a twist and a few pins. After studying the women out the window, Zenobia was certain she didn’t stand out. They were of all races, all attitudes. Some kept their eyes on the ground; others strode boldly. They all seemed to wear more color than the women at home, so Zenobia had chosen a tunic in bright, bright green, a brighter color than she’d ever worn—and yet she was as unremarkable as the smoke stains on the building walls. She was no one here. There was no reason for anyone to look twice, or to kidnap her and hold her for ransom. And her heart raced, but it wasn’t from fear—just the thrill, the freedom of it all.

It was incredible.

She stopped at the tinker’s shop window and looked through the iron bars. On the way here, she’d realized that the typesetting machine might not even place letters on the page. Most of the signs she’d seen were written in kanji or the Mongolian script. But there they were, a, b, c, and God bless whoever had brought the machine to these dens.

Maybe it had been a secretary who’d killed his employer and fled, then sold the typesetter when he’d run out of stolen funds. Or a pirate with no tongue and no fingers, who could only make his outrageous demands by typeset letters, and who had retired with a fortune and no need to write again.

It didn’t matter how the typesetter got here. It was hers now.

She went in. The humid shop smelled of oil and sounded like a pit of hell. The grinding screech of metal stopped when the tinker looked up from her lathe. Young, not more than sixteen or seventeen, she had straight black hair and goggles protecting her eyes. An older woman snored while sitting upright on a mat against the far wall.

“Do you speak French?” Zenobia asked.

The girl lifted her gloved hands and replied.

Zenobia didn’t understand a word. That might have been Mongolian or Nipponese, or any of the myriad other languages spoken in this part of the world.

But one language was always the same.

Zenobia withdrew a gold coin and held it up, then pointed to the typesetter.

The girl pushed her goggles back, revealing dark eyes widened in surprise. As if in a trance, she set aside her tools and walked to Zenobia’s side, her gaze locked on the coin.

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