Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(16)

The robot beeped, hovering over Ana’s shoulder, but she pushed it away absently. “Not now, E0S.”

It buzzed around them anyway.

“We should’ve dropped him at a medic ward instead,” Jax said, tugging at his gloves.

“Then the Messiers would’ve caught up to us,” Ana replied, closing the skysailer windshield after them, and followed Di into the infirmary, “and you know Di’s the best medic.”

“We have a bloody Ironblood on this ship, Ana. What if he’s a Carnelian? Or—or a Valerio?”

E0S blipped.

“See, the bot agrees.”

“The bot cannot think for itself,” Di replied, rolling the Ironblood onto a gurney.

The boy groaned. He was alive, at least.

Di went on, “The bot is merely an instrument—”

“At least it obeys,” came a cool, stern voice from the front of the cargo bay, where a set of stairs led up to the first level of the ship.

Ana grimaced at the voice and slowly turned to her captain. “I can explain. . . .”

The middle-aged woman did not look amused. Dressed in a loose blouse and dark trousers, she looked like she might’ve been relaxing—and Ana hated that she had interrupted that. The captain’s black hair framed her brown face in wild, electrifiying curls, glowing with interwoven fiber optics, simmering orange like a stoaked fire—

Oh, Ana could tell by the color that she was mad.

The kingdom feared Captain Siege. She was ruthless and she was smart. She never surrendered a ship, never shied away from conflict. No, she didn’t eat her enemies’ hearts for breakfast—but seeing her rage, Ana realized the captain might start with hers.

“Were you followed?” asked the captain, her voice surprisingly calm despite her wildfire hair.

“There is a ten-point-seven percent chance that we were,” said Di before Ana could respond.

Jax scowled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, metalhea—”

“Jax,” the captain interrupted, making him wince, “get us off this Goddess-blasted space station before the entire Messier military arrive. The rest of the crew has already returned from shore leave.”

The Solani ducked his head. “Yes, Captain.” He gave Ana his practiced I told you so look before hurrying up the stairs, past Siege, and toward the cockpit.

When he was gone, Captain Siege turned her green eyes to Ana. “My cabin—now.”

“But—Di needs help with the Ironblood—”

“Now!” she snapped, then disappeared into the corridor, too.

Ana hesitated for a moment, not wanting to face it—any of it. The events were finally settling into her bones, and they were heavy. Mokuba, the info broker, had been arrested—might be dead. The garden, Erik Valerio’s knuckle rings . . .

The boy groaned on the gurney again, his face creased in pain. He tried to grab at his wound, but Di gently pried his hand away. She could almost pity the Ironblood. Almost. Until she remembered that he was an Ironblood.

“You should go,” Di said as she hovered in the doorway to the infirmary. He took a medical kit from one of the cabinets. “E0S can help me with the Ironblood.”

E0S agreed with another blip, using one of its spindly arms to fetch a suture pen from a rack on the counter, and handed it to Di.

“But—” she began.

“Lord Rasovant knows about the coordinates to find the ship,” Di interrupted, peeling open the plastic around the suture pen, as the bot disinfected the boy’s wound. “I overheard him talking with a royal assistant. He is now looking for it as well.”

“We’ll beat him to it, then.”

“Ana, I am not worth—”

“I need to go see the captain,” she excused herself, and hurried up the flight of stairs to the main level.

Ana, I am not worth the trouble, he was going to say.

What did she have to do to prove to him that he was worth any price?

The sound of the parking clamps knocked back, and the Dossier left the docks. Ana steadied herself against the wall, the vibration of the backward thrusters humming through the ship. It would take a while to leave the clearance of the harbor, when Jax could deploy the solar sails and send them on their way.

Hopefully before the Messiers or the Royal Guard regrouped.

At the end of the hallway, the door to the captain’s quarters slid open with a blip. The cabin smelled old and musty, decorated with knockoff tapestries of the rolling landscapes of Eros and star charts of the kingdom dating back five hundred years. There was a small nook where a tiny bed sat hidden beneath mounds of dusty books, a coatrack where Siege’s famous bloodred frock coat hung from a peg, and an old mahogany desk too big for the room. On the corner of the desk floated a hologram of the solar system. Three planets—Eros, Iliad, and Cerces, and all their moons—spun around the sun, trapped inside an asteroid belt. The Iron Kingdom.

The coordinates to Rasovant’s lost ship could lead to anywhere. Any shadow. Any place the kingdom had forgotten.

Di’s fix had never felt so close before, and yet so far at the same time.

Captain Siege, already sitting behind her desk, pointed to the seat opposite her. Ana found her butt in the chair quickly.

“There is an Ironblood in my infirmary,” said the captain.