voice when his fingers covered hers in a reassuring touch. “By learning to fight,” he said. “I took a few beatings, but eventually made certain they didn’t bother me anymore.”
That probably wouldn’t have stopped them—perhaps something else had. “And there were women?”
“A few.”
“A few more than that,” Bilson countered. “All of the sudden he’s this charming bastard, always laughing and singing like a fool—nothing like the buckled-up inknose I’d known. At first I thought it was an act, some ruse to ease his way into their beds. But it wasn’t. The laughing fool had been under those buckles all that time, I think, and he’d finally let it out.”
“That’s a bit what it felt like,” Archimedes said.
Bilson nodded, his gaze speculative. “I always wondered what happened to you that summer. Was it a girl?”
“No.” His smile held little humor. “A man.”
And probably not in the way he suggested, though Yasmeen would have preferred that to the likely truth. Archimedes had reasons for wanting to kill his father. No doubt one of those reasons had been created that summer.
Bilson accepted that without further question. As Yasmeen refilled his wine, he continued, “At any rate, not long after that I heard about a smuggling job through one of my political acquaintances. I asked the others in the brotherhood if they wanted to join me—though Archimedes was the last one I expected to go. He took to smuggling, though.”
He’d taken to the danger of it, Yasmeen knew. “Did you?”
Bilson shrugged. “It was a job.”
“A job we did well,” Archimedes said. “Until I was infected in Morocco.”
“We did well even after that, when we began salvaging. It wasn’t exactly the same, but we muddled through together.”
“Barely.” Archimedes looked to Yasmeen. “He accused me of running after death.”
“Deliberately running up against zombies is the same thing,” Bilson said.
No, it wasn’t. Not to Archimedes.
After being shot during a smuggling run, one of Temür Agha’s men had saved Archimedes’ life by infecting him with nanoagents—and the influence of the Moroccan tower had all but stifled his emotions. Archimedes had always loved danger and excitement, but after the tower, he’d needed it.
For Archimedes, running from zombies wasn’t seeking death at all; it was just a way of making certain that he was alive.
“I understood why you did it, after a fashion,” Bilson said. “Seeing you affected by that signal…it was like someone blew out a lamp. I hope never to see it again.”
“Me, too,” Archimedes said softly.
Yasmeen slipped her hand into his. It wouldn’t happen again; the tower was gone. Unfortunately, that didn’t erase the memory for him.
Bilson’s gaze flicked to their linked hands. With a deep breath, he abruptly set his wineglass on the table. “You must be wondering about the help I mentioned in my earlier note.”
“I assumed you’d come to it in your own time.”
“Time I shouldn’t be wasting.” He sighed. “Do you remember my brother?”
“Joseph? Or the younger one?”
“Joseph.” Bilson added to Yasmeen, “He was part of our brotherhood, too.”
Archimedes said, “And only there because we always had liquor.”
“True enough.” Bilson’s smile was short-lived. “He began trading weapons not long after we left the business. I gave him some of my contacts, and now he makes regular runs round the bottom.”
To the smuggling dens in southern Australia. Yasmeen nodded. It was a well-sailed route for both legitimate traders and those carrying illegal Horde technologies, though not one that she often made herself. If Bilson planned to ask for their help smuggling an item, however, she wouldn’t mind flying that course again.
“He’d been doing well enough until a few months ago,” Bilson said. “I didn’t hear from him for a bit. Then I got word that his airship had been taken by New Eden.”
Oh, damn. She met Archimedes’ eyes and saw the dismay that matched hers.
Led by the idealist William Bushke, New Eden was a floating garden city made of airships tethered together—and almost all of them had been taken by force. After capture, no one was allowed to leave the city. Yasmeen had heard rumors of a few escapes, but only knew for certain of one made by her friend, Scarsdale, and the pirate captain Rhys Trahaearn.
And now she saw where Bilson was headed. Archimedes apparently did, too, though he tried to stop his friend before getting there.
“So he’ll be given hard work and religion,” Archimedes said. “Both are likely doing him some good.”
“Maybe.” Bilson’s gaze held steady on Archimedes’ face. “I want to hire you and this crew; I want you to help