The Kraken King Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t show it. He only glanced into the cabin again. “Is this acceptable to you?”
    Zenobia was already rushing forward. “Yes.”
    He nodded to Cooper. “Take them through the aft cargo hold. The main deck has caught fire.”
    Then she was racing down the corridor, her hand linked with Helene’s, Cooper ahead and Mara behind. The battleship had astonished her with its size when she’d first boarded—at least six times longer than the skyrunner her sister-in-law captained—but now the length of the deck seemed terrifyingly endless. Amidships, smoke boiled from the companionway and rolled across the ceiling. She held her breath passing through the acrid cloud, trying not to hear the screams from above.
    Fire. That was almost always the end of an airship. A naval battleship’s balloons were hardier than most, but with a single leak in the envelope, an explosion became inevitable.
    She shouted back to Mara as they ran. “Who’s attacking us?”
    “Men on flyers!”
    From another airship? Or from a boat?
    Ahead, Cooper dropped into the companionway to the deck below. Zenobia climbed down the ladder as quickly as she could.
    “Pirates?” she asked breathlessly.
    Shaking his head, Cooper reached up to help Helene down the last few steps.
    Mara joined them. “The flyers are of Nipponese design, but the pilots don’t wear a crest.”
    So possibly smugglers, pirates, or mercenaries. But Zenobia couldn’t ask anything more. They rushed down the next ladder to the cargo deck.
    Wooden doors barred their way into the hold. With his blunderbuss, Cooper blasted through the wood surrounding the locks before shattering the bolt housing with two kicks from his mechanical legs. Zenobia’s ears were still ringing as they entered the dim, humid bay, quickly making their way past stacks of crates and barrels. Muffled gunfire from outside sounded through the thick hull. No cannon fire. But that had to be the purpose of the smaller flyers: They were more difficult to shoot down than another airship would be. It would be like a bear swatting at bees—except the bees had stingers that could set the bear on fire.
    They reached the loading doors built into ship’s hull. Mara urged Zenobia and Helene to the side before hauling down the lever. With a rattle of chains, the heavy steel doors slid apart.
    Sunlight spilled in. Zenobia blinked, her eyes watering. Her shoulders ached, the gold in her pack a deadweight on the glider’s wide leather straps. A hot breeze caught her dress, the cotton saturated with sweat and clinging to her skin. Helene’s palm was slick against her own. Her friend’s breath pumped in short, sobbing gasps.
    Outside, gunfire cracked over the rattling huff of the airship’s engines. Fewer shots rang out now. Were the marauders being driven off or had the aviators been forced to retreat from the burning deck? Zenobia couldn’t tell.
    Gripping the edge of the door in one hand, Cooper leaned out and glanced up before pulling himself back into the hold. “The flyers are concentrating on the upper decks, but a few others are circling.”
    A high-pitched engine whined closer, louder. Mara pushed Zenobia and Helene up against the door—out of sight and behind thick steel. A flyer buzzed past, then another.
    Zenobia had expected they would look like the machines from New Eden, resembling dragonflies, but these had light, slender frames suspended beneath sleek, silvery envelopes. She’d never seen anything with a balloon move so quickly.
    “There,” Mara said, pointing out over the water. Cooper looked through the loading doors and nodded.
    Zenobia sidled closer to the opening, the hot wind from outside blowing into her face. Her gaze searched the sky before she spotted a dark shape floating on the horizon. A ship.
    “You think that’s where the flyers came from?”
    “No. That’s a Nipponese ironship—and that’s where we need to go.”
    To an unknown ship? But she wouldn’t question it. She’d hired