The mercenaries ran. They sprinted to the companionway, shouting the fire alert as they disappeared down the ladder.
Georgiana hauled herself over the rail, stumbling into the coils of rope and crates near the bow. Moonlight spilled faintly over the port side of the deck, lighting her way as she hurried toward Thom. He caught her hand, and they raced to the stern, where the boats hung on pulleys.
Out of breath, she stopped at the tie, frantically unfastening the ropes. And Thom . . . didn’t have a left hand.
For the space of a second, she stared. He wasn’t holding a blade that had been stashed inside his arm, as she’d thought. His arm was a blade. And as she watched, he pushed back a small lever at his elbow, and his forearm unfolded as if being turned inside out. Gears clicked. The blade retracted and his fingers snapped into place, one by one.
Mouth open in shock, she met his eyes. “Thom!”
His grin flashed again. “I asked Ivy for it—in case I was ever eaten by a megalodon, I could cut myself out.”
Shaking with sudden laughter, she quickly finished unwinding the tie. Thom hauled on the line and lowered the boat to the deck, then grabbed it by the mooring rope tied to the bow.
“To the tether, Georgie. I don’t trust that they won’t cut the pulley line if we go down this way.”
Dragging the boat after him, Thom quickly started down the moonlit port side, toward the center of the ship. Georgiana followed close behind. But they weren’t going to be there alone. Ahead of them, footsteps pounded up the ladder. Mercenaries spilled out of the companionway, shadowy shapes peering through the dark toward them.
“I ripped the balloon open portside,” Thom called over the scrape of the boat against the deck. “If you shoot, we’re all dead.”
More mercenaries came up as he spoke. Winch’s voice sounded through the dark. “Put your guns away, you fools! Go pull down the other lifeboat. Billy, Leigh—go find Southampton. He’ll need help carrying up that gold.”
“I’m here, Mrs. Winch.”
Thom abruptly stopped and faced the center of the ship. Georgiana scrambled past the boat to his side. He pushed her back against the rail, behind him.
Southampton emerged from the shadows at the center of the deck, wearing a jacket over his nightshirt and a sword in his hand.
A sword. Fear roiled in Georgiana’s stomach. Southampton couldn’t shoot, but he could stab—and he held the weapon with the ease of someone long familiar with it.
He stopped, just over the length of his blade away from her husband. A thin smile curled his lips. “Well done, Big Thom.”
To her astonishment, instead of forming his own blade again, Thom pulled on his gloves. His voice was flat and hard. “If you have a brain at all, you’ll get into that lifeboat with your crew, and then you’ll leave us be. We won’t put any claim on your gold. We won’t say I was the one that brought it up. Those coins don’t matter to me.”
“You believe I’ll take that risk? Only three people know how many coins you found. I’ve already silenced your salvage dealer. Now you and your wife must be silenced.”
“And your mercenaries?” Georgiana said.
“Ah, yes. Well, they will be paid enough to keep silent.”
“Or maybe you’ll have them killed, too,” she said. In the shadows, the mercenaries had quieted. “Or perhaps they’ll blackmail you for more money. Or steal the gold and be done with it.”
She hoped Mrs. Winch would at least consider it.
“There will be no blackmail or stealing, Mrs. Thomas.” Southampton looked away from her and regarded Thom with amusement. “And my crew and I will be the only ones to survive this. You’re a fool for thinking this will save you. We’re forty leagues from the nearest shore. The two of you alone will have little chance of reaching it alive.”
Forty leagues? Oh, dear God. They would have to row a hundred and twenty miles.
But she wouldn’t let the dread overwhelm her. They still had a better chance in a small boat than they did on this ship.
Thom obviously thought so, too. “Little chance is better than none.”
“I prefer all or nothing. Now you’d do well to say good-bye to your lovely wife while you still can.”
“And you’d best get in your boat and go while you can,” Thom said, and she’d never heard his voice so hard and cold. “I was raised under the boot of men like you, who use people and toss them away. When that tower came down, I tore apart men like you. We called them the Horde, but they were the same. And if you don’t back away, I’ll tear you apart, too.”
“They put you down with a tower.” Southampton took a step, his blade rising. “I’ll do it with a sword.”
He lunged, jabbing the blade toward Thom’s heart—and stayed, as if his blade had embedded in flesh. Screaming, Georgiana flew forward. But it wasn’t what she’d thought. Southampton hadn’t impaled Thom’s chest.
Thom had caught the blade in his fist.
He stood, staring at Southampton as his fist slid farther down the sword toward the hilt—the glove preventing any spark from steel scraping against steel.
Jaw clenched so hard that his face seemed to shake, Southampton tried to pull back on his sword, then tried to shove it forward.
With a twist of his wrist, Thom snapped the blade and tossed it over the side. Stepping forward, he swung his right fist. A terrible wet crack split the air. Southampton flew back into the shadows at the center of the deck—but by the shape of his head, Georgiana could see that half of it was gone.
Stripping off his bloody glove, Thom threw it to the deck and looked into the dark. “Any of you want a go?”
“I don’t think we do,” Mrs. Winch answered quickly. “We’ll consider Southampton’s gold your ransom.”
“Fair enough.” Thom looked to Georgiana. “Now you hang on to me again.”
They’d done it. Heart pounding with sudden relief, she leapt up onto his back, winding her arms around his shoulders. He reached the airship tether—five hundred feet below, still connected to Oriana—and grabbed on with his gloved left hand. With his right hand, he hauled the boat over the side by its mooring line.
“Ready?”
She buried her face in his neck. “Yes.”
He went over, sliding down the cable toward the water. The tether bowed slightly under their weight—the airship was sinking, the cable taking on slack. With their feet just above the sea, Thom lowered the boat to the surface, then carefully slid the rest of the way down.
Standing in the boat, he hugged her fiercely. Georgiana clung to him, refusing to think of the forty leagues. They’d made it this far.
A splash suddenly sounded nearby, followed by a dismayed shout from Mrs. Winch. Thom stiffened against her.
“Those damned fools.” Letting her go, Thom dragged up the oars stowed lengthwise beneath the wooden thwarts and moved to the bow. “Sit, Georgie.”
Georgiana quickly took a seat on the center thwart, searching for another pair of oars on the bottom boards. “What happened?”
“They threw the body over.” He fitted the oars into the rowlocks. “Now hang on.”
“But let me—”
Thom surged backward with a mighty pull. The boat shot forward, almost tumbling Georgiana off her bench. A wild laugh broke from her.
“Oh, Thom! Perhaps forty leagues is not much at all!”
He grinned and pulled again, and they sped across the swells. Georgiana faced forward as long as she could, watching him, until the wind and salt spray blinded her. She turned to look behind them.
Lit by the moon, the airship had just settled onto the surface of the water, the balloon sinking in on itself. The mercenaries had begun filling the other boat—across the distance, she made out their dark silhouettes, the items being tossed from the airship to the mercenaries waiting below. Supplies or gold.