“I’m Aoife Grayson,” I whispered, wondering what on earth Rasputina had seen through the periscope to make her react in such a way. Nothing good, clearly. “I haven’t told you one lie since you brought me on board.” That in itself was a lie, but I’d told the truth where it counted, hadn’t I?
Rasputina pointed behind her, at a young girl, younger even than me, sitting at a radar station. “Explain that,” she said to me. She snapped at the girl in Russian, and she took off her earphones and spoke to us in English.
“Ping bearing one mile off port side, visual range in fifteen seconds. Border Guard destroyer. Seems to be holding its position, ma’am.”
The Border Guard—the Proctors who patrolled coastal waters to keep out Crimson Guard spies and heretics of all stripes—were notorious for their black ships, their silent gliders and their brutal interrogations of anyone who crossed their path. We’d watched a few reels on them at the Academy.
“We are six miles off the coast of Maine,” Rasputina told me. “They have us dead to rights, and they aren’t moving. No torpedoes. Not even a screw turning. Now, were I a Proctor, I wouldn’t hesitate to blow us right out of the water and into the sky like the pirates we are.” She pressed the pistol against my forehead until it bit into my flesh. “The only thing that’s different on this trip is you. The only reason those bastards haven’t opened fire on us is you. Who are you?”
“I’m Aoife Grayson,” I repeated. My shivering now had nothing to do with being frozen.
“All right, Aoife Grayson,” Rasputina snarled. “If that’s who you are, what’s so special about Aoife Grayson? Why is she so precious and dear to those squawking blackbirds?”
“Captain,” said the old man. “We’re on a full charge. We can outrun them.”
“And drain our batteries halfway to land and drift around like a piece of garbage until we sink, suffocate, or run aground,” Rasputina told him. “No. We’re getting to the bottom of this now.”
“I destroyed the Engine,” I blurted. Rasputina snapped her gaze back to me, and the pistol wavered away from my head. The barrel was as black and endless as the space outside the dome in my dreams, and when it dropped to her side I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding.
“Good lord,” Rasputina said. “I knew you looked familiar.”
“The Proctors are keeping Dean hostage until I get to the Bone Sepulchre. I have to …” I kept my eyes on the gun. My heart was thumping so loudly I could barely hear my own words. “I have to do what I did to the Engine. I have to destroy the heretics who live up there, where the Proctors can’t reach, or they’re going to kill the person I care about most.”
That sounded plausible to me, and left out both the nightmare clock and Draven’s compass, ticking away like a tiny evil bomb in my satchel.
Rasputina holstered her pistol. She looked at the blinking blob on the radar screen and back at me. “So you’re not a spy. You’re an assassin.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m doing what I have to, for Dean. I’m not happy about it, but if either of us wants to survive long enough to try to find a way out of this, you better get the hell away from the coast while they’re holding their fire.”
Rasputina’s mouth set in a hard, long line, like the blade of a knife. “You better be telling me the truth.”
“I am,” I said quietly.
“Dive,” Rasputina said to the old man. “Ten degrees down. Make your depth one-zero meters.”
The dive officer grumbled his assent in Russian, and a bell rang three times, short and sharp. The sub dove, the rivets of the hull creaking and groaning all along its length. Rasputina straightened her cap and jacket after she removed the rain gear, then touched me on the arm. “Come with me, Aoife.”
She took me to the captain’s quarters this time, a small, curved room like the one I’d tried to sleep in, but paneled with real wood instead of rust-bubbled steel. The insignia of the Crimson Guard was inlaid in the wall above the bed. Someone had hacked a thick slash mark through it.
Rasputina got a bottle of clear liquid out of her foot-locker, along with two glasses. She poured an inch into each and pushed one at me. “I suppose I should apologize,” she said. “For holding a gun to your head.”
“You had a good reason,” I said. I would have done exactly the same in her position, and I knew it. I wasn’t angry that she’d threatened me, just terrified that she’d realize that the story I’d come up with about destroying the Brotherhood was bunk. If she found out Draven was tracking me, using her ship as a pilot fish, I’d be out a hatch faster than I could blink.
“We’re going to be dead in the water after that dive, unless we put in at Newfoundland,” Rasputina said. She let the words hang between us, regarding me as she swirled her drink in her glass.
I sniffed at mine. It smelled faintly like the incendiaries rioters tossed at Proctors during the every-other-day upheavals in Lovecraft. “I’m going to the Bone Sepulchre one way or the other,” I told Rasputina. “I won’t let the Proctors hurt Dean.”
“And to protect your love, you will destroy another’s life? All of the Brotherhood?” Rasputina asked.
“It’s not …,” I started, my face heating. Was love the right word to describe what Dean and I had?
“A woman after my own heart,” Rasputina said. She tossed her drink back. “Na Zdorov’ye.”
I drank mine. It burned my throat and made me cough. Rasputina chuckled. “You can walk around the boat, but don’t get in the way. We’ll be a few hours yet up the coast.”
“So you’ll take me to the Arctic Circle?” I said, refusing to budge. Rasputina waved me away with an annoyed gesture.
“I can’t very well leave Dean Harrison to rot, can I? Damn that boy.” She stood and opened her door, the signal for me to leave. I started to obey, then stopped. “Why do you trust me? Just like that?”
“Because,” Rasputina said. I didn’t know if the drink had made her more expansive, or outrunning the Proctors, but her iron-hard face softened. “Once, I was a girl who believed in the Crimson Guard above all else. I signed on to the navy at fourteen. And I served, until the day our engine batteries ruptured and the commander abandoned ship. The batteries were leaking toxins, and we were left to die. Expendable to the cause.” She cleared her throat. “A few of us made a lifeboat, but it sank in the freezing waters, and I washed ashore near Lovecraft. A heretic boy took me in, fed me, got me clothes. And when I found the commander who’d left us all to die for his own ends, I took his new ship and I never looked back, at his cause or any other.”
She moved aside to let me out then, her stony expression falling back into place. “Dean Harrison is a good boy, Aoife. And if he’d risk his neck for you, I’ll help you risk yours for him. I just hope you have a plan of your own and not just the Proctors’.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, though I was sure it wasn’t the kind of plan Rasputina was thinking of. My secrets were still my own. That was Dean’s only real chance. “It’s a good plan,” I assured her. She looked like she doubted me, but before she could say anything, there was a great clanking groan, and the entire sub vibrated beneath us.
“What now?” Rasputina snarled, shoving past me. The old man with the beard met her halfway down the corridor.
“Captain, the main rotors on the starboard propeller are jammed,” he said. “The jam is tearing the entire screw assembly apart. We’re bleeding power.”
“Then have someone fix it, chief,” she snarled. “What do I have Jakob and Piotr for if they’re not going to fix the damn ship when it breaks down?”
“They’re trying,” the chief said. “But it’s a complicated problem.”
I could fix their problem. At what cost, I didn’t know. Being inside iron was already starting to make me feel woozy, see flickers of light and shadow at the corners of my eyes. But if we didn’t get moving, Dean would be doomed for sure and I’d never reach the Brotherhood. I went to Rasputina and lifted my hand. “I can fix it.”