Read Online The Kraken King by Meljean Brook - Free Book Online Page B

beach. Zenobia stared after him. His bluntness was rather refreshing. Most men she knew would have insisted that no obligation existed, until they needed to call that debt in.
    But it meant that she had an obligation to the Kraken King, too. It just hadn’t been so openly acknowledged.
    He looked back. “Walk with me, Lady Inkslinger.”
    “Oh, but I—” Would love to. Even if it was absurd. She glanced at Helene, who regarded her with mild incredulity. Zenobia didn’t take time to wonder if her friend was amazed by the governor’s interest, or that Zenobia returned it. “Why don’t you go on ahead for a fitting at the dressmaker’s? Take Mara with you now, and I’ll be along shortly. We’ll all need new clothes if we are to travel soon.”
    Reminding Helene of her need to reach the Red City did the trick. Determination replaced the disbelief. She probably wouldn’t think of Zenobia and the governor again until she was at the dressmaker’s being stuck with pins.
    The governor waited for her in the sand—and he had called her Lady Inkslinger, in the same way that her sister-in-law used the term to describe airships: a woman of dignity and nobility. That wouldn’t do.
    She caught up to him. “I fear you have mistaken my importance, sir. I’m only a companion, and—”
    “I haven’t.”
    Well. She couldn’t say anything to that. He continued toward the kraken, his hands clasped behind his back. Zenobia tucked her notebook at her waist and walked beside him.
    She looked up at the creature’s enormous mass. “What will you do with it? Surely you don’t let it rot so close to town?”
    “No. We skin the tentacles and take as much meat as the town and the local tribes will use. Then we tow the arms out to sea.”
    “Only the arms?”
    “The shell is too heavy.” He tapped the kraken’s armored hull with the toe of his boot. The iron answered with a dull thud. “At least while it’s full. We build a fire around the base and cook everything inside down to charcoal.”
    Turning the shell into a too-hot oven. “How long does that take?”
    “A few weeks.”
    So she would not be here to witness the entire process. “I’m told that the kraken are drawn here by the pumping machinery underground. That they walk right up into the town on their tentacles.”
    “Yes. We try to kill them before they destroy too many buildings.”
    “With a harpoon spear through the eye?”
    “By any means necessary. But the spear or a cannon is usually the only means possible.”
    She glanced toward the leaking eye. “Is that your spear?”
    The governor smiled faintly. “No. We have whalers in town who are more familiar with harpoons. If they had failed, I was waiting with the cannon.”
    They apparently hadn’t failed. “What is the pumping machinery for?”
    He took a long look at her face before answering. “The pumps collect water during the rainy season to store through the summer.”
    “But you have a river.”
    “And a week ago, it was dry.”
    Zenobia could hardly imagine it. If there was one thing Fladstrand never lacked, it was rain. But a town that relied on a store of water might be vulnerable to a villain’s mad plans.
    She penciled a reminder into her notebook, and saw a question she’d written while examining the corpse. The governor might have an answer.
    When she glanced up, his attention had narrowed on her notes. “What is that?”
    “I write many letters to friends,” she said, which was true enough—even if, as a reason for keeping her notebook, it was a lie. But Zenobia had told this one so many times, it almost felt like truth. “This reminds me of sights that I’ve seen, so that I don’t always struggle for topics. Why don’t the kraken attack the ironship?”
    His gaze met hers again. “It’s too big.”
    “That only explains why they can’t capsize it,” she said. “But the engines must draw the kraken—and the megalodons, too. That’s why no ships in the west use engines