Then she’d fly to England, and ask the Iron Duke to hold the sketch safe at his London fortress until she found a buyer. She couldn’t risk carrying it with her any longer. Lady Corsair had become a moving target.
“And will you also have a conversation with Mills?”
A frown had furrowed the other woman’s brow. Did she think Yasmeen would leave without taking care of Mills, or did some other matter concern her?
“Yes,” Yasmeen said. “Why?”
“Perhaps I should contact the town’s magistrate, instead.”
And let word spread that Yasmeen had run to the authorities after Miracle Mills had tried to cheat her, rather than taking care of him on her own? Not a chance.
“You can,” she told Zenobia. “But I won’t wait for you to arrive at the inn with him.”
Indecision warred on the woman’s face.
“Come with me,” Yasmeen offered. “Call it research. I think you’ll find that the magistrate will arrive sooner or later.”
“To arrest you?”
That startled a laugh from her. “For what?”
“For whatever you do to Mills.”
Ah. Zenobia assumed that Yasmeen would burst into the inn, guns firing. She wrote stories where characters did exactly that—but like most people, she balked when faced with the reality of that scenario.
Yasmeen tended to avoid such scenes herself. “I only intend to talk with him, and make certain that he knows—that everyone knows—you don’t have the sketch, and that you’ll never have access to it.”
The woman visibly relaxed. “I see. Thank you.”
“It’s not personal. I simply want my twenty-five percent, and more stories.” When Zenobia smiled in response, she gestured to the door. “Shall we go?”
She waited outside while the other woman retrieved her coat. The frigid air shivered through her. Lighting a cigarillo, she let the smoke warm her lungs and ease the tiny shakes.
A few neighbors had ventured outside, all of them watching Yasmeen without looking directly at her, or tilting their heads back to gape at Lady Corsair. Zenobia waved to them and called a good morning when she finally emerged, and Yasmeen couldn’t decide whether surprise or relief added such volume to the Good morning!s they called to her in return. Feeling the cold down to her toes, she started for the rope ladder.
“Captain Corsair?” When Yasmeen turned, Zenobia avoided her gaze. She seemed to find the act of pulling on her gloves either fascinating, or extraordinarily difficult. “I thought we might walk rather than fly.”
“I thought you might want to have a look at my lady. For authenticity.” And because the steam engine kept the cabins heated and the deck beneath her feet warm.
“I’ve seen her.” She shot a glance upward. “When she was my father’s.”
Damn it. Yasmeen wouldn’t ask what had happened. She’d seen enough of Emmerich Gunther-Baptiste’s cruelties to guess.
“We walk, then.”
Zenobia’s boot soles clipped across the cobblestones as she matched Yasmeen’s long stride. So loud. Yasmeen’s soft leather wasn’t as warm, but at least it was quiet—and didn’t announce her approach from hundreds of yards away.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped you from boarding Lady Corsair.” Zenobia’s cheeks had already flushed with cold. “You only intend to talk, but who knows what Mills intends. You should have armed yourself first.”
Funny. Yasmeen pulled open her coat, exposing the knives sheathed at her thighs. “I’m always armed.”
“You’re only taking daggers?”
No need to mention the pistols in her coat pockets. Yasmeen didn’t intend to use them. “The only weapon I bring to a conversation is a knife. A gun means that the talking is over.”
“Oh, I must make Lady Lynx say that.” Without a break in her stride, she tore off her right glove with her teeth before digging out a paper and pencil from her pocket. She scribbled the line as she walked.
Inspiration was to be taken so directly? Yasmeen slowed to accommodate the other woman’s preoccupation, wondering if she’d often done the same when walking with Archimedes . . . who was charming and fun, much like the character she’d written. Yasmeen had assumed it also reflected the sister, but she seemed far more sober and practical than her brother had been.
“How much of Archimedes came from him, and how much was you?”
Zenobia tucked her notes away. “All Wolfram. It was easy, though, because I know him well. Lady Lynx will likely have more of me in her.”
Because she didn’t know Yasmeen as well. Fair enough.
“If there is anything that you think she shouldn’t be, Captain Corsair, I would appreciate your telling me now. I can’t promise that you’ll like what I write, but I prefer not to be . . . inaccurate.”
Or to offend her, Yasmeen guessed. She appreciated that. “Don’t let her be an idiot, always threatening someone with a gun. Only let her draw it if she intends to use it.”
Zenobia’s color deepened. “Unlike Archimedes Fox?”
In her stories. “Yes. He did it in every one, and I was always surprised that someone didn’t shoot him while he was waving his gun around. You have to assume that someone will try to kill you while you’re deciding whether or not to shoot them. And so by the time the gun comes out, that decision should have been made.”
“I see.” Her notes were in her hand again, but Zenobia didn’t add to them. “Is that what Wolfram did—wave his gun around?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes closed. “Idiot.”
So Yasmeen had often said, but his sister should know the rest of it. “Stupid, yes. But also exhausted. He returned three weeks late, and Venice wouldn’t have given him time to sleep or eat.” Too many zombies, too few hiding places. “When he climbed up to the ship, he ordered my crew to set a heading for the Ivory Market. I refused and told him to sleep it off before making demands. That’s when he drew his gun and—”
“You waited in Venice three weeks for him?”
Blissed on opium, and wondering why the hell she was still floating over a rotten city. But she’d known. She’d read through each damn story of his, each impossible escape, and she’d known he’d make it out of Venice, too. So she’d waited. And when he’d finally returned to her ship, she’d had to toss him back—believing he might still make it.
But after he’d tried to take her ship, she wouldn’t wait for him again.
“I waited,” she finally answered. “He still owed me half of his fee.”
Zenobia studied her face before slowly nodding. “I see.”
Yasmeen didn’t know what the woman thought she saw—and didn’t much care, either. Three weeks on an airship was nothing. Three weeks in Venice was a nightmare.
“He couldn’t have known I’d wait, but he was late anyway. The sketch wouldn’t be worth anything to him if he died there.”
Zenobia’s chin tilted up at an unmistakable angle, a combination of defiance and pride—as if she felt the need to defend her brother. “Perhaps he was late for the same reason you stayed: money.”