Rasputina holstered her pistol. She looked at the blinking blob on the radar screen and back at me. “So you’re not a spy. You’re an assassin.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m doing what I have to, for Dean. I’m not happy about it, but if either of us wants to survive long enough to try to find a way out of this, you better get the hell away from the coast while they’re holding their fire.”
Rasputina’s mouth set in a hard, long line, like the blade of a knife. “You better be telling me the truth.”
“I am,” I said quietly.
“Dive,” Rasputina said to the old man. “Ten degrees down. Make your depth one-zero meters.”
The dive officer grumbled his assent in Russian, and a bell rang three times, short and sharp. The sub dove, the rivets of the hull creaking and groaning all along its length. Rasputina straightened her cap and jacket after she removed the rain gear, then touched me on the arm. “Come with me, Aoife.”
She took me to the captain’s quarters this time, a small, curved room like the one I’d tried to sleep in, but paneled with real wood instead of rust-bubbled steel. The insignia of the Crimson Guard was inlaid in the wall above the bed. Someone had hacked a thick slash mark through it.
Rasputina got a bottle of clear liquid out of her foot-locker, along with two glasses. She poured an inch into each and pushed one at me. “I suppose I should apologize,” she said. “For holding a gun to your head.”
“You had a good reason,” I said. I would have done exactly the same in her position, and I knew it. I wasn’t angry that she’d threatened me, just terrified that she’d realize that the story I’d come up with about destroying the Brotherhood was bunk. If she found out Draven was tracking me, using her ship as a pilot fish, I’d be out a hatch faster than I could blink.
“We’re going to be dead in the water after that dive, unless we put in at Newfoundland,” Rasputina said. She let the words hang between us, regarding me as she swirled her drink in her glass.
I sniffed at mine. It smelled faintly like the incendiaries rioters tossed at Proctors during the every-other-day upheavals in Lovecraft. “I’m going to the Bone Sepulchre one way or the other,” I told Rasputina. “I won’t let the Proctors hurt Dean.”
“And to protect your love, you will destroy another’s life? All of the Brotherhood?” Rasputina asked.
“It’s not …,” I started, my face heating. Was
“A woman after my own heart,” Rasputina said. She tossed her drink back.
I drank mine. It burned my throat and made me cough. Rasputina chuckled. “You can walk around the boat, but don’t get in the way. We’ll be a few hours yet up the coast.”
“So you’ll take me to the Arctic Circle?” I said, refusing to budge. Rasputina waved me away with an annoyed gesture.
“I can’t very well leave Dean Harrison to rot, can I? Damn that boy.” She stood and opened her door, the signal for me to leave. I started to obey, then stopped. “Why do you trust me? Just like that?”
“Because,” Rasputina said. I didn’t know if the drink had made her more expansive, or outrunning the Proctors, but her iron-hard face softened. “Once, I was a girl who believed in the Crimson Guard above all else. I signed on to the navy at fourteen. And I served, until the day our engine batteries ruptured and the commander abandoned ship. The batteries were leaking toxins, and we were left to die. Expendable to the cause.” She cleared her throat. “A few of us made a lifeboat, but it sank in the freezing waters, and I washed ashore near Lovecraft. A heretic boy took me in, fed me, got me clothes. And when I found the commander who’d left us all to die for his own ends, I took his new ship and I never looked back, at his cause or any other.”
She moved aside to let me out then, her stony expression falling back into place. “Dean Harrison is a good boy, Aoife. And if he’d risk his neck for you, I’ll help you risk yours for him. I just hope you have a plan of your own and not just the Proctors’.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, though I was sure it wasn’t the kind of plan Rasputina was thinking of. My secrets were still my own. That was Dean’s only real chance. “It’s a good plan,” I assured her. She looked like she doubted me, but before she could say anything, there was a great clanking groan, and the entire sub vibrated beneath us.
“What
“Captain, the main rotors on the starboard propeller are jammed,” he said. “The jam is tearing the entire screw assembly apart. We’re bleeding power.”
“Then have someone fix it, chief,” she snarled. “What do I have Jakob and Piotr for if they’re not going to fix the damn ship when it breaks down?”
“They’re trying,” the chief said. “But it’s a complicated problem.”
I could fix their problem. At what cost, I didn’t know. Being inside iron was already starting to make me feel woozy, see flickers of light and shadow at the corners of my eyes. But if we didn’t get moving, Dean would be doomed for sure and I’d never reach the Brotherhood. I went to Rasputina and lifted my hand. “I can fix it.”
Rasputina and the chief both scoffed at me. “You?” Rasputina said. “You can’t even fix that bird’s nest you call hair.”
“I’m good with machines,” I insisted, ignoring her jab. “If your engineers can’t fix it, then what do you have to lose by letting me try? I was an engineering student in Lovecraft. I can’t make things any worse.”
“You could blow up the boat, and all of us with it,” the chief snapped. “Get back to your bunk, little girl.”
“Look,” I said, glaring at him. “I’m not an idiot. I can fix your propeller without blowing up your submersible. So you can accept that the
“She’s right,” Rasputina said, heading off what was sure to be a shouting match between the chief and me. “We’re dead. Never mind that the Proctors, the Canadian Coast Guard, or another rogue sub could pick us up at any moment.”
“Fine,” the chief snapped. Rasputina cocked her head.
“Yes, it is fine. I’m the captain, and I give the orders, and you nod.”
The chief muttered a slew of Russian, and I watched Rasputina’s brows draw together. “If my father were here, he’d give the same order. But he’s not here. This is my boat now, so take the girl to the engine room, get her a suit and a set of tools and get her working.” She pointed a leather-gloved finger at me. “Fix my ship, Aoife Grayson.”
I felt the urge to salute but quashed it. “Yes, ma’am.” I just hoped fixing the propeller would actually be a feat of engineering, rather than a feat of magic that caused my brain to short-circuit from the pressure of my Weird.
The chief grabbed me by the arm and dragged me toward the rear of the boat, despite my protests that I could walk on my own. “Aoife, eh,” he grunted. “What kind of name is Aoife?”
“It means ‘radiant,’ ” I said. “At least, that’s what my mother always told me.”
The chief snorted his obvious derision. “Why?” I demanded. “What’s
“Alexei Sorkin,” he grunted. “Dive chief of this boat. And medical officer, since we have no real one. I am the one who restarted your heart when the cold water stopped it.”
“And what’s the boat’s name?” I asked. I was chattering a bit, trying to keep my mind focused outside of myself so that I couldn’t think about the slowly blossoming flower of a headache just behind my eyes.
Not a headache, I knew.
“Her name is the
“You were one of them?” I asked. “Like Captain Ivanova?”
“You ask a lot of questions for such a little girl,” Sorkin said curtly, and ducked through a hatch into a steamy space that smelled of oil and metal shrieking against metal. When I hesitated, he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me along with him. “I thought you said you knew your way around engines.”
“I do,” I said curtly. I didn’t know why I expected a bunch of grouchy Russian sailors to treat me like a lady, but it was starting to irritate me that they didn’t at least treat me like I had a brain. “I like engines better than people, most of the time. I definitely do right now,” I added, and Sorkin surprised me by barking a laugh.
“Ah, so you are little but you have sharp teeth! I like it.” We delved farther into the engine room, and steam
