Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] by Skies of Gold Read Free Book Online Page A

kept walking, hunching her shoulders against the creeping chill. She’d survived a city being destroyed all around her. She could manage something as minor as a stroll across a moor.
    The land rose up, a small hillock hiding the next expanse of moorland. Unused as she was to so much exercise, her breath rasped in her throat while she climbed the low hill. But when she reached the very top and looked down into the vale below, she lost her breath completely.
    An airship had crashed into the moor.

 

C HAPTER F OUR
----
    I t hadn’t been a recent crash. Gorse and grasses poked through cracks in the airship’s hull. The ship itself was mostly intact. Some time ago, it had plowed into the moor, stern first, digging a massive trench behind it. The front of the airship had broken off, its figurehead and bowsprit were only jagged shards of wood after gouging through the rocky soil.
    To see something as incongruous as an airship in the middle of a moor—she must be dreaming. But the cold air in her tight lungs and the growing wind scraping at her cheeks proved she was awake.
    It was a British airship, or had been, before it had crashed. Her experience in Liverpool had taught her that this vessel had the layout of a British ship, with its central support curved in an arc from stem to stern. The ether tanks that would be mounted to that support had broken off, and lay upon the deck. The turbines had partially cracked off, but were still attached to the stern of the ship. The ship wouldn’t be going anywhere.
    “The hell are you doing here?”
    She whirled and found Fletcher standing just behind her. He loomed out of the fog. It amazed her that such a big man could move so quietly—though her attention had been focused on the mysterious airship, and nothing else.
    “Pray God the Queen never visits you,” she snapped. “You’d run her off with your abysmal manners.”
    “She won’t come here,” he answered flatly.
    Kali glanced back and forth between the massive man and the crashed airship. “It’s yours.”
    He gave her a terse nod. His eyes were chips of cold blue quartz, his mouth a hard line. He had an ether rifle slung across his wide back and carried a canvas sack stained with blood. Supper.
    “I’ve never seen the inside of an airship before,” she said. She’d observed them from the outside, locked in fiery combat, the sight wonderful and terrible, but she knew nothing about the interior of one of these vessels. The navy let no one outside of their ranks learn the layout of the ships, or indeed, much of anything. All nations’ navies guarded their ships carefully. They were the key to winning this endless Mechanical War..
    Airships had torn her life apart. But airships had kept her and Liverpool from total annihilation. Terrible beasts they were, but fascinating.
    “It’d be rude not to offer me a tour,” she said.
    Fletcher said nothing, only glared at her. Yet she felt something, an almost palpable pulse of energy traveling between him and the airship.
    Gods and goddesses. He’s a Man O’ War.
    The captain of the airship, and its source of power and ether.
    She took an involuntary step backward. His mouth twisted, as if he expected her reaction.
    As extraordinary as the airship was, it was just a thing. Seafaring craft had existed in different forms for thousands of years.
    But Man O’ Wars—nothing like them had existed until less than a decade ago. They were combinations of man and machine. At some point in the past, Fletcher had undergone the procedure to turn him into this amazing hybrid. Telumium plates had been embedded in his skin, with filaments of the rare metal threaded around and into his heart. Not every man could become a Man O’ War. They needed to have an aurora vires rating of Gimmel or higher. It took an extraordinary individual to make this transformation. And Fletcher had done so.
    He muttered something now under his breath. A curse. Realizing the moment that she understood what