Heart of Steam & Rust (Empires of Steam and Rust) (6 page)

Once the door closed behind her, she took a deep, relieved breath. Though the sun was only now setting, she’d had another very long and trying day. Stripping to her underwear, she went into the lavatory and freshened up. Splashing cold water on her face felt good, and she let a stream of moisture dribble down between her breasts before toweling herself off.

The face that stared back at her from the mirror was still not hers, but she was growing more used to it. Was this what it felt like to have a sister? Raised for much of her life in an orphanage, Lina had never known what it was like to have siblings—or even true family. She found herself longing for that closeness, that unspoken genetic bond, a feeling she had not felt since her teenage years.

Then she scolded herself.

It must be this world making her feel this way, this place where she was cut off from everyone and everything she had ever known. Certainly, this was homesickness—nothing more.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry!”

Lina jumped as Pyotr entered the washroom. She’d been so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she’d neither heard nor sensed him coming. He stood in the doorway joining the bathroom to the salon, mouth agape.

“I thought … I mean, I assumed that the door would be locked if you were using the...” His face reddened, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from drinking in her scantily clad figure.

She felt the flush run from his face through the rest of his body. He turned away.

“I brought dinner,” he offered apologetically, pointing toward a pair of trays set on the lounge table. “You seemed tired, and I thought you might be hungry.”

“Dinner can wait,” she said, gently resting her hand in the middle of his back.

He turned, passion on fire, head swirling with conflicting emotions. “Lina—” he began.

She twined her arms around his neck and silenced him with a kiss.

He encircled her in his strong arms and crushed her body to his.

Then they were stumbling backward together, through the far door of the wash chamber and into her bedroom.

She practically ripped his clothes off.

He treated her far more gently, lingering on her undressing, enjoying every inch of her body that he exposed. He paused briefly, staring at her chest, before lightly kissing each of her breasts, exploring their soft skin with his tongue.

His ardor burned like a bright flame in her mind, stoking her own passion.

She pulled him down on the bed on top of her, inside her, and for long, fiery moments, they became one.

Only when she had erupted three times did he finally allow himself release.

He collapsed into her arms, sweating, smelling both manly and sweet.

“Lina ...” he breathed in her ear.

“No words,” she whispered back. “Not now.” And kissed him again.

SIX

She woke shortly after midnight, judging by the clock affixed to the cabin wall.

Pyotr lay awake, holding her in his strong arms, gazing at her. She sensed that he felt sated, happy—his fondest wish fulfilled—and yet, at the same time, confused.

“Lina...”

“Yes,” she replied, feeling many of the same, swirling emotions he did. Were they her own … or his?

He kissed her, and for a moment all the doubts washed away.

She kissed back.

They lingered for a moment, then separated.

“I…” he began “…Thank you.”

“You think I did you a favor?”

“No. I just … Thank you.”

She laughed softly, fondly, and felt surprised to find that she meant it. He was endearing, this man, even if the woman he had just bedded was
not
whom he thought—not the woman he truly loved.

The notion made her feel chilly inside. She ignored it and focused on his hands, his warm hands, caressing her bare skin as they lay side by side.

His fingertips traced up her belly, hesitated, and then skipped over her sternum and moved to her breasts.

“What?” she asked, not quite able to read what was troubling him. Did he suspect? How could he?

He seemed about to speak, opened his mouth … Stopped.

“Tell me,” she said, again asking, not urging. She didn’t want to compel him if she didn’t need to.

His hand traced down between her breasts to the center of her chest.

“Is this … Is it from where you were shot?”

“Is
what
from where I was shot?”

“This scar.”

A shiver shot through her.
Scar?
“I … I can’t see in this light,” she lied; the lights were low, but she could see both him and her own body clearly. She didn’t see any scar. “Trace it for me.”

Ever so gently, he ran the tip of his index finger over her skin from a spot just above her sternum to a spot just below her left breast in a lazy “C.”

Could she see it now, or were her eyes merely filling in a faint line where his finger had traced?

“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, I suppose it is. I try not to think about it.”

“I understand,” he said, brimming with both love and compassion. He kissed her where his finger had touched; she ran her hand through his short-cropped hair as his lips caressed her flesh.

“I’m hungry,” she announced when he had finished.

He turned to get out of bed, but she put her hand on his back, stopping him.

“No, I can get it myself. You should rest.”

“But I’m not tired.”

“Of course you are. It’s been a long day.” She caressed his hair, his forehead.

“But...”

“Sleep.” A little nudge, nothing more, and he dropped off into peaceful slumber.

Lina rose from the bed and padded naked into the suite’s adjoining lounge.

She ignored the covered dish set for her on the low table in the center of the room. She wasn’t hungry, not really. That had been a lie, another lie. It seemed her life here was nothing but lies.

She entered the washroom from the lounge. She could have done it through the bedroom, but she wanted a cover story in case he woke up, in case her suggestion didn’t take—though how often did
that
happen?

Truth be told, she felt nervous, her skin cold and clammy. She entered the bathroom and then closed both doors and locked them. She peed, both because she needed to and to try to tamp down her nerves. Had she always needed to pee more when she felt nervous, or was this something new?

Certainly, in
her
world, she had not felt nervous within recent memory.

There, she had been in control.

Here, everything was out of control: someone was trying to kill her; she was in the employ of a religious fanatic; if her concentration waned for even a moment, her grand deception might be uncovered. Yes, this whole world was spinning madly, despite all her training, despite her psychic gifts. She controlled nothing.

Save perhaps for Pyotr—and even that was based on a lie.

After cleaning herself, she stood and turned on every light in the room.

She stared at her reflection—her doppelganger image—in the mirror.

Was there a scar?

Of course there would be,
should
be. She’d been
shot
. Even on her world—her technologically superior world—you didn’t escape being shot scar free.

Peering at her chest as hard as she could, she managed to see it: a pale “C” shape from sternum to below her left breast—just as Pyotr’s fingers had described it.

How had she not noticed it before?

Why was she having trouble seeing it even now?

Tracing with her fingers, she felt the line of the dead scar tissue, the tingle of sensation that changed from one side of the raised flesh to the other.

Yet, looking, even now, it seemed no more than a scratch.

Why?

Why was she not seeing clearly?

Was she projecting the self-image from her previous body onto this new, foreign one?

Why couldn’t she see the scar from her death clearly?

What was wrong with her mind?

SEVEN

They arrived in Vilnius late the next morning, landing on the airship pad atop the local government building under tight security. Lina had radioed ahead, and the Vilnian officials did what they could to conceal the true nature of the flight.

Accordingly, the local Section officials—headed by a rotund, bushy-bearded man named Petrenko—put on a charade that five people were actually
leaving
Vilnius aboard the
Suvalov 2
. When the ship touched down, that group, actually low-ranking Section staff, made a great show of boarding the zeppelin, while Lina and Pyotr sneaked off the ship disguised as airmen, and their luggage debarked amid crates of caviar.

As the
Suvalov
lifted off again with its fake cargo and passengers, Lina and Pyotr exited the government building in the guise of a newly married couple. This deception was easy for Pyotr; he remained sky high over his previous night’s liaison with Lina. He babbled endlessly at her, just like a true newlywed.

Lina smiled and made polite small talk with him, but inwardly she roiled. Sleeping with Pyotr had seemed the right thing to do at the time, and it had certainly strengthened her hold over him without resorting to psychic means.

Yet, the closer he got, the more he knew, and the more tenuous her cover became, the more chance that he might find out she was an imposter. But could he even
understand
that she was an imposter? Certainly, he had made love to the
body
of the woman he loved, just not her mind.

Lina did not know, could not know, whether her counterpart would ever have consummated this relationship. She knew so little about the other Lina, really—only that she was both respected and feared, that she had enough knowledge of the black arts to make a name for herself, and that she had been killed while rooting out traitors. That plus the fact that many lusted after her—and Pyotr actually seemed to love her. But all that was little to go on.

And even less help in catching a traitor and assassin.

Every problem facing her flashed through Lina’s mind as she and Pyotr took a cab to a false destination, walked through several buildings, hailed yet another cab, and then repeated the process once more before arriving at their final objective: the Hotel Karnsburg.

The Karnsburg was a slightly seedy establishment located near the western loop of the Neris River. The four-story building peered out over the decaying neighborhood leading down to the riverside—the neighborhood, in fact, where Lina had been killed.

Wounded
, she reminded herself, always
wounded
when talking to Pyotr.

Her counterpart had not been staying in the area at the time, merely passing through, but Lina had bleached her hair to blonde before she and Pyotr began their charade, to help avoid being recognized by old enemies—especially whoever had killed her.

Would that person still be lurking in this area? It certainly seemed possible, given the roughshod nature of this section of the city. The real question, or one of them anyway, was whether the traitor had actually done the killing, or whether he or she had hired a riverside thug to do the actual deed.

Something in the back of Lina’s mind tingled at the notion.

Pyotr had to argue with the hotelier, a balding Prussian sympathizer, to obtain the room they wanted: one with a view of the tavern where Lina had, presumably, been shot. Her body had not been discovered at the bar, of course, but rather a few blocks away, in a riverfront alley. How her duplicate had managed to drag herself that far with such a terrible wound in her chest, no one could be certain.

Lina’s right hand subconsciously strayed to hover over the nearly invisible scar on her chest. Clearly, supernaturally gifted or not, her counterpart possessed the iron will of the Ivanovas.

The argument between Pyotr and the proprietor continued.

A psychic nudge from Lina set the hotelier right.

“Why didn’t you
say
you were newlyweds?” he asked, beaming. “Of course you can have a room overlooking the river. I’m only sorry we don’t have our
best
room available.”

Pyotr looked puzzled a moment—he’d mentioned the newlyweds cover story at the start of the argument—then he shrugged and took the room key.

They went upstairs to the third floor, a bellboy hauling their baggage and the hotelier following behind toting a bottle of champagne that he’d discovered somewhere.

The boy set down the luggage when they reached their room—a small suite, actually, with bedroom, parlor, and bathroom—and they tipped him generously but not conspicuously. The hotelier, still beaming, presented them with the champagne, “To celebrate your first night together.” He winked at Pyotr.

Pyotr took the wine, still puzzled at the man’s sudden change of heart, but thanked the hotelier and sent him on his way. Once the door had closed, the lieutenant said to Lina, “If he knew who you were, he’d have given us this room a lot faster.”

“If he knew who I was, soon this whole slum would know.”

The room was well appointed, with contemporary couch and table in the anteroom and a four-poster bed with clean sheets in the bedroom. The bathroom was just large enough for a tub, a sink, and a commode. The whole proved just a bit smaller than their cabins had been aboard the
Suvalov
, which made it a very suitable size for a honeymooning working-class couple.

“Shall we open the champagne?” Pyotr offered.

“Keep it on ice,” she replied. “We should use the daylight to scout the neighborhood, discover the layout of the place. The people we want to interrogate won’t be out now, but we may discover something useful for later.”

“We can pretend we’re shopping,” Pyotr suggested.

“As if this dismal place could have anything worth buying.”

Nevertheless, they wiled the afternoon away shopping—mostly window shopping. Lina nearly enjoyed it, despite herself. She still hadn’t gotten over her shock from the night before, though: the invisible scar on her chest ... and what
other
problems it might portend. She wished she had someone to talk to about it, but even back home, she’d never had a surfeit of confidants. Here, she had none.