Heart of Iron

  Astoria hovered at its zenith—over five hundred feet in the air, closer to the skyline than the city streets below. A terrifying height, people so small that they blended into the streets, neon signs like twinkling stars.

  Her Metal overrode the marina keypad, locking the doors to buy them time. His skysailer was two docks over—but it was trackable. Everything he owned was trackable. He was trackable.

  But the girl seemed to have her own plan as she fled down the longest dock into the middle of the marina, the cityscape hundreds of feet below.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, following. “It’s a dead end—”

  She grabbed him by his coat collar and whipped him around, forcing him to the dock ledge. His heels teetered off precariously.

  Oh.

  Oh, so this was her plan.

  He felt light-headed remembering the window at the Academy. Remembering the moment the Umbal boy let go.

  If he fell—if she dropped him—he would die before he hit the ground, wouldn’t he?

  Had Aran Umbal?

  “Why do you want the coordinates?” she snapped, and when he didn’t answer, she shook him.

  “M-my father w-went missing,” he said, holding on to her wrists, so if he fell he’d be damned sure to bring her with him. “I think—I think he was on Rasovant’s ship.”

  “You think?”

  “Why do you want the ship?” he asked.

  Messiers were at the door now, trying to override the lock. Any moment they’d break through, and whatever hole he dug himself into would quickly bury him.

  “Ana,” her Metal said when he caught up to them, “we can ask later.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  The door buckled and collapsed, and the Messiers stepped through in perfect unison. Their eyes blazed with the glory of victory. Royal Captain Viera elbowed through the line, the ammunition in her Metroid glowing like starlight.

  Goddess, this day was spacetrash.

  “Release the young lord safely,” the Royal Captain said, “and we will not harm you.”

  Well, that was a lie.

  But the girl took the bait. She swung Robb off the edge and let go of him, turning to face the Royal Captain with her hands up in surrender. Her Metal followed suit.

  Robb fixed his coat collar. Seriously? They believed that?

  Viera crept closer, her face as stoic as those of the Messiers who followed her. “Now lower yourself onto the ground. . . .”

  Ana glanced over at Robb. “You might want to hang on to something.”

  “Why?” he asked, confused, as a hum began to vibrate up into the marina. “What’s that?”

  A gust of wind rushed up from the city below, sending his coattails fluttering. The docks gave a heave, skysailers bumping together with sharp thwacks. He pinwheeled his arms to keep his balance, jerking his head around to find the source of the wind.

  A skysailer rose up above the docks, windshield flipped open. The pilot, his long starlight-silver ponytail whipping like a ribbon in the wind, pulled up his goggles and gave him a wink.

  Robb stared.

  Goddess’s spark, was he already dead?

  “Down!” cried the girl, grabbing him by the arm, and jerked him to the ground as the pilot tilted the skysailer forward.

  The wind howled. Roared. Scraped over them. It tossed the skysailers out of their parking spaces like toy boats and sent the Messiers and the Royal Captain flying backward.

  The next Robb knew, the Metal had him up by his coat and was tossing him into the sky. To his death. One moment there was the dock—then the cityscape far below. This was how he was going to die.

  He knew it.

  Metals could never be trusted.

  Until the skysailer came into view.

  He covered his face with his arms a split second before he slammed into the backseat of the sailer with the wind knocked out of him. He scrambled to his knees, trying to catch his breath. His body shook.

  The pilot glanced back at him with eyes the color of lilac flowers. Silver hair, violet eyes—a Solani. “Buckle up, little lord. Don’t want your pretty ass falling out.”

  Robb pulled himself to sit up as the girl and her Metal jumped next. They quickly sat, fishing for their seat belts as if his request wasn’t an exaggeration at all. Seriously? Robb had never buckled himself into a skysailer in his entire l—

  A bullet pinged off the dash.

  He glanced back to the source and found Viera struggling to her feet, smoking Metroid in her grip. A thin line of blood ran down her forehead. There was a gleam in her eyes—dark, feral, resolute—that made him shiver.

  She shot again.

  This time the bullet struck through the grates to the engine. Red warnings flared up across the dashboard as the engine gave a whine, sputtered—

  And died two thousand feet above the city of Nevaeh.

  The skysailer fell straight through the marina, between the lines and lines of traffic, spiraling. Wings fluttering, wobbling, useless. A scream tore out of the girl’s throat as her Metal planted a hand over her lap to keep her secure.

  The ground came at them fast.

  Too fast.

  And above them Astoria shrank and shrank, until it was a disk above them, shining like a silver sun.

  Robb had the distinct feeling that he should’ve stayed in the garden. He shouldn’t have saved the girl. He should’ve stopped looking for his father years ago. He should’ve listened to his mother.

  You will put an end to these heedless fantasies, she had said. He should have listened. And now he was going to die.

  The pilot grabbed tightly onto the steering wheel and pulled up, trying to jump-start the engine again. If a bullet hit a spark plug, they were dead. Or an exhaust pipe. Or—literally anything else—they were dead.

  Goddess bright, please don’t let us die—

  The engine gave a start and hummed to life again. Wings fanned up, tried to catch the wind, to slow them down. They were falling too fast—no matter how hard the Solani pulled on the controls, it wouldn’t make a difference. He couldn’t force the helm back far enough for the wings to right themselves.

  Numbers flashed across the dashboard.

  Three hundred feet. Two fifty. Two hundred.

  They were dropping like deadweight. They’d land smack in the middle of Nevaeh, a lump of splattered guts and rogue Metal.

  And Robb was vain enough to want a better eulogy than My son killed himself the way his late father did—with a Metal and a misguided sense of duty.

  Like hell he’d let his mother write that eulogy.

  As the wind screamed up around them, he dove over to help the pilot—buckling up be damned if he was dead. He reached his arms around the Solani, who was a lot taller than he realized, to grab ahold of the steering wheel. Pressed his back against him, feeling the bumps of his spine. He smelled vaguely of lavender.

  “Pull!” Robb shouted over the roar of the wind.

  He and the Solani pulled back together. More. More. Until—

  A loud crack burst across the skysailer. The wings rippled, bulging with air, as the aircraft finally caught itself. Slowed. Robb gripped the driver’s midsection as he reached forward and overrode the propulsion controls.

  The ship shuddered, slowing to skim over punctured and rusted rooftops, leaving the floating garden far, far behind. After a moment, Robb let go. He stumbled back. Dizzy. He couldn’t get a deep enough breath, for some reason.

  “Next time, we should at least trade names first,” joked the Solani. He had a charming face, long silver eyelashes, and sharp cheekbones. A nice face, he thought a moment before the smirk dropped from the Solani’s pretty lips. “Goddess, you’re bleeding!”

  He became distinctly aware of the pain in his side. Why did it hurt to breathe? He looked down. Blood stained the right side of his favorite evening coat. Was—was that his blood?

  “Oh . . . ,” he laughed, but it sounded more like a wheeze. “I’m shot.”


  The pilot looked alarmed. “Someone catch him before he—”

  Darkness ate his vision, and the last thing he knew, he was tipping over the side of the skysailer.

  II

  Iron Ships

  Ana

  The Dossier was a ship of beauty.

  The Cercian-7 transportation vessel was from an era before Metals and Rebellions. Close to a century old, the black-and-chrome girl was retrofitted, so it looked like a patchwork of old parts and new spares. Too many firefights had run its three black solar sails ragged, and still it kept sailing like a dead man in the night. The ship wasn’t as fast as newer models, but it was quiet and durable and its solar engine purred sweet as nectar. It was finicky to fly, so most pilots couldn’t handle it properly, but Jax flew it like a dream.

  The cargo bay could fit a skysailer and crates for goods and their latest haul, connecting to an infirmary and an engine room. Up a rickety set of rusted stairs was the crew’s quarters, the galley, the captain’s room, and the cockpit where Jax spent most of his time. The ship constantly hummed from the golden solar energy core at its heart, a sweet and low song that Ana couldn’t sleep without, and the ship always smelled like recycled air, rust, and gunpowder.

  There was never enough privacy, the showers were always colder than the darkest recesses of space, and you could hear someone whisper from anywhere on the ship. But her bunk was warm, and her mattress lumpy to fit her curves, and the crew was like her—forgotten, exiled, orphaned, refugeed. Her family.

  Home.

  Her jittery nerves leveled off the moment the Dossier came into view in Nevaeh’s harbor. After Jax caught the Ironblood from falling out of the sailer, Di had tried to stop the bleeding on the way back to the ship—and avoid ruining Jax’s newly upholstered backseat. Ana sincerely hoped the rich boy wasn’t dead. Or dying.

  She didn’t want anyone dying on her watch.

  The cargo doors of the Dossier closed them inside, sucking space out with a sharp whistle, before Jax pushed up the windshield of the skysailer. Di scooped the Ironblood into his arms like a rag doll and hurried him into the infirmary.

  A small cube-shaped robot met them, hovering at eye level. The bot was the newest addition to the ship. It kept the guns calibrated, the programs updated, the solar engine humming—and its nose in everyone else’s business.

  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.

  “I can explain!”

  “I’m sure you can, darling.” The captain took a cigar out from her desk drawer and lit it, the smoldering orange end matching the fiber optics in her hair.

  “I know how to fix Di’s memory core, Captain. Here—the coordinates.” She fished out the small square chip from her borrowed Valerio uniform pocket. “To Lor
d Rasovant’s lost fleetship, the Tsarina.”

  “Mokuba’s coordinates,” the captain said flatly. “Ana, I told you not to go after them. We have no business—”

  “No business? Rasovant’s ship could save Di and that’s not our business?”

  “That ship is dangerous.”

  “But we do danger every day!” Ana argued. “Why is this any different? If there’s a chance we can save D09? I’ll risk—I’ll risk everything.”

  “I know,” Siege replied, massaging the bridge of her nose. “But what would you have done if you were arrested? If D09 were arrested? Jax?”

  “They wanted to come—”

  “I’m sure they’d follow you to the ends of the stars,” the woman replied wryly, “but that doesn’t mean you take them there.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek. “I know, Captain, but I had to try. If anything can tell us how to fix Di’s memory core, or point us in the right direction, it’s that ship. I know it.”

  The captain sat forward in her chair, cigar wedged into the corner of her lips. “There’s lots of rumors about that ship, darling—unsanctioned Metal projects, missing tech, long-lost kingdom secrets—but in my experience, rumors aren’t true and that ship’s nothing more than a death trap.”

  “But what if you’re wrong? Wouldn’t you do anything to save me?”

  She puffed on her cigar, chewing on the end. “How did you even get the money Mokuba was asking for it? No—don’t tell me. The Ironblood bought it and you improvised.”

  Ana gave a half shrug, not quite disagreeing, and held out the small green chip to the captain. “Can we at least see where these coordinates point? Please. I’ve never asked for anything before.”

  She’d never needed to—and she’d been so thankful for that.

  But now she was asking.

  The captain’s hair shimmered a deep orange—the color Ana knew well as “no.” But then Siege leaned forward and took the chip out of Ana’s outstretched hand. “On one condition,” the captain said. “You do what I say whenever I say it—no matter what. Do we have a deal?”

  “That’s a terrible deal—is this because I didn’t tell you I was going to meet Mokuba?”