Riveted Read Free Page A

engine—but she didn’t understand much Spanish, anyway. Shoulders stiff in expectation of being run down, she glanced around. A cab driver gestured and shouted from two feet away, probably telling her to use the wooden walkway that ran along the front of the shops.
    She would have used it, if there’d been room. But a church must have been distributing food nearby—men, women, and children with sunken cheeks and tired eyes stood in lines on the weathered boards, shuffling forward now and again, everyone quiet and orderly.
    The fried sweetbread Annika had purchased near the printer’s office suddenly weighed like a rock in her stomach. In many ways, the New World was
nothing
like Hannasvik. There was hunger in her village—oh, she’d known it many times, when the winters had been long and the nets empty, when the flocks had been thinned by the wild dogs, when even the rabbits seemed scarce—but if one person lacked food, then everyone in the village did. Here, she darednot even give any of the people the few coins left in her purse. If seen, she’d be arrested for inciting disorder.
    And though she could imagine many ways to secretly pass the money to someone, she could also imagine the gaol too well if she were caught.
    What a strange land, where giving a small bit of help might put a noose around her neck.
    Oh, but she missed home. Longing gripped her chest—to see her mother, to feel the heat of a troll’s belly as she stoked its furnace, to smell the sea and the smoking fish and the sheep. But she couldn’t return, not yet. Not until she found her sister, Källa.
    Until then, she was fortunate that
Phatéon
had become something of a home, too—and it was not far away now. She was almost to the port gates. Prudently, she opened her canvas umbrella to shield herself from the seagulls’ rain that fell from the buttresses. Ahead, directly beneath the center of the sentinel, port officers watched the south road from a wooden guardhouse, making certain that no one attempted to avoid the inspections on the north road and enter Navarra via the southern gate. Beyond the guardhouse, the sand-strewn cobblestone road widened to accommodate the shops and pubhouses serving the aviators and passengers who weren’t allowed into the city. Steamcoaches idled in front of the inns, the liveried porters loading and unloading luggage.
    A strong gust blew more sand into her face. Around her, above her, the sentinel and the supporting framework seemed to shudder. With the sound of droppings splattering against the taut canvas, Annika didn’t dare look up—and she resisted the urge to break into a run. Sense reminded her that the sentinel had weathered the hurricanes that roared up the coast every summer; surely it could survive a bit more wind.
    On the other hand, how many times had she heard the story of the shepherdess who killed a giant with a single stone…?
    Annika quickened her step. Over the docks, the airships swayed and bobbed in the wind, pulling against their tethers like fat haddock fighting on fishing lines. A large cargo carrier,
Phatéon
didn’t appear to move as much as the smaller airships, but Annika knew the mooring anchors groaned under the strain and the cables vibrated with tension.
    Far ahead, dark clouds crowded the eastern horizon. If that storm moved in before
Phatéon
had been fully loaded, the night promised to be a rough one. They’d be jostled in their bunks and stumbling around the decks until the tether was unhooked.
    Not so terrible, except that the second mate—who slept in the bunk above Annika’s—tended to become portsick on such nights.
    Another shout, this one from her left. Annika paid it no mind. If the person wasn’t set to run her down, their business was none of hers, and the noise simply added to the cacophony on the road. Someone was always shouting near port gates; only the language changed. She thought it had been either Spanish or Portuguese, but was only certain the voice