The Kraken King Read Free

machines were quick and maneuverable, with a dried-jellyfish balloon shaped like a bullet. They weren’t as fast or as silent as living jellyfish, but those balloons were difficult to keep unless they were always piloted over the water. These smaller flyers could travel over land as well as the sea.
    But they didn’t have a long range. “Did you see where they came from?”
    “From the south. But over land or ocean, I don’t know,” Taka said. “They arrived under the cover of dark.”
    Concealing their movements by traveling at night. Ariq had often done the same when he’d led rebel warriors against the Golden Empire’s forces. He glanced at Meeng, who was peering over the cliff. “How best to climb down and surprise them?”
    “There will be no surprise unless you are a boilerworm or a kraken.”
    Attacking the marauders from beneath the sand or dragging them into the ocean. Neither was an option.
    Without the advantage of surprise, attempting to take one of the men alive posed too great a risk. He and Taka would have to go in shooting, and keep firing until the two men couldn’t shoot back.
    And there were twelve other men on flyers who might have answers. Ariq just needed to follow them west—and stop them from destroying another airship.
    If it wasn’t already too late.
    ***
    So far, the journey had been as eventful as Zenobia had predicted—and not nearly as eventful as she had hoped. After years of writing about her brother’s adventures, she’d been looking forward to a little adventure of her own. She’d wanted to fly over the zombie-infested lands of Europe and Africa, which she’d described in dozens of stories but had never seen for herself. She’d wanted to glimpse the terrors of the deep and the sky, which Archimedes had fought and escaped so many times.
    It seemed he never stepped out the door without encountering some danger. Whereas Archimedes flung himself at every peril, however, Zenobia intended to observe it from a safe distance.
    But the airship’s route had taken them along the west coast of Africa and around the southern tip of the continent before heading into the Western Ocean, and she’d only observed water, instead. Beautiful waters, dull waters, rough and calm, in every possible shade of blue and green and gray. She’d spent hours leaning over the rail, searching for a megalodon’s razor-sharp fin slicing through the ocean’s surface or a kraken’s massive armored body and endless tentacles. Her eyes had watered from staring into the bright sky, hoping for a glimpse of New Eden’s balloon city. But aside from a bit of excitement when a pod of sperm whales passed below the airship, there was little that she’d done on this trip that she couldn’t have done more comfortably at home.
    And at home, she wouldn’t have had to share a cabin with her friend.
    She’d accepted Helene’s invitation too quickly. She’d never imagined that she’d like the other woman much better when the Atlantic Ocean was between them, or that she would have preferred the letters they regularly exchanged to conversations in person.
    How could she have expected it? As girls, they’d been as close as sisters. With similar brown hair and easily tanned skin, they’d even been mistaken for sisters from time to time, and Zenobia had used any excuse to visit Helene’s home. Now sharing quarters with her old friend was like being wrapped in wet wool. Though not a small cabin—with a sitting area, a bed for two, and space enough in the wardrobe to hang a week’s worth of dresses for each—when Zenobia sat at the writing desk and Helene settled down to read, the room felt very tiny, indeed.
    “Oh, my. Listen to this, Geraldine!”
    “One moment,” Zenobia responded without lifting her head. A villain had let loose a pair of zombies aboard her heroine’s airship; in the water below, monstrous sharks circled a lifeboat filled with her crew. Zenobia had just thought of a brilliant quip to