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asking questions. Why?
    He’d soon figure it out.
    She’d almost reached
Phatéon
’s deck. From his angle on the ground, her voluminous skirts swallowed her figure, aside from a flash of yellow now and again when the crimson material parted to show the trouser legs beneath. Odd, wasn’t that? David had been too focused on her lively features and her voice to take note of her dress, but now it was all he could see. He recalled the purple scarf warming her neck and covering her corkscrew hair, the number of ribbons adorning her sleeves and hem. He’d passed frippery shops with fewer bows displayed in the windows than the woman had worn, and though he knew nothing of women’s fashions, he couldn’t remember seeing such a combination of colors and shapes at any of the numerous ports he’d visited in the past ten years. A glance along the docks and a scan of the other ladies’ dresses confirmed it: Her clothing was odd.
    Good.
Odd
fit the sort of woman he was looking for.
    When his family had lived in the mountain-builders’ city at the confluence of the Inoka and the Great Muddy rivers, both the white settlers and his father’s people had said Inga Helgasdottor was odd, too—not because she’d worn silk and ribbons, but because she’d possessed an unusual manner and lacked any proper sensibilities. His mother had laughed loudly, and at strange moments. She’d made shocking observations, suggested things no polite woman would have. She’d swaggered, even when David’s aunt had coaxed her out of homespun trousers and into a skirt. And whenever someone had asked where she’d come from, his mother only replied with a smile.
    As a boy, David had never asked. She’d been with him, she’d been fierce in her love, and that was all that had mattered. Only later had he discovered that his father had asked often—terrified that she’d leave and he wouldn’t know where to find her.
    But his father had lost Inga Helgasdottor anyway. They both had.
    Now David had found a woman who didn’t swagger, who didn’t appear as strong or as wild, but who seemed similar in essentials, as full of life—and he wouldn’t lose this one.
    Despite that certainty, sudden fear squeezed his lungs when she reached
Phatéon
’s deck and disappeared over the side.
She was gone.
    David forced himself not to chase after her. His mechanical legs had been designed to provide stability over rough terrain, but balancing his feet on drooping rope rungs was another matter. Climbing the ladder would be a precarious and awkward pursuit—and unless she could fly, there was nowhere else for her to go until
Phatéon
docked in Iceland, anyway. Better to wait for the cargo lift.
    It wouldn’t be a long wait. A steamcoach rumbled up to the mooring station. Seated beside the driver, Dooley scowled down at David in a way that said he wasn’t truly upset. When Patrick Dooley was angry, his pale face became as hard and as red as a brazier.
    With the grating squeal of rusted brakes, the vehicle stopped. Dooley hopped to the ground, a little less spry than when David had met him eight years ago, just before their first expedition. Since then, most of the digger’s abundant brown hair had migrated from the top of his head to his jaw, with gray threading through it. A heavy mink hat protected his now bald pate, and the furred bulk offered the impression of a disproportionately large head sitting atop Dooley’s wiry body.
    His scowl deepened with every step he took toward David. “You’ve made a liar out of me, Kentewess!”
    Not likely. David had never met any man as proud of his own honesty as Dooley was—or who so often hid his amusement witha frown. His friend often attempted to appear hard and cynical, yet rarely succeeded.
    No surprise, then, that David liked him so well. “Did I?”
    “You did.” The digger glanced back at the coach, where Regnier Goltzius gave directions to the stevedores who would unload their equipment. “I just wagged on