Free Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles by Zoe Archer

affect him.
    From the bookshelf, he plucked out one volume. A Statistical Inquiry Into the Irrigated Horticultural Practices of the Eastern Iberian Peninsula. He handed her the book.
    She read the title, frowning slightly. Then opened it, and her frown cleared.
    The inside of the book had been hollowed out.
    She pulled the small photograph from the compartment within the book. Walked it over to the quartz lamp and stared at the image in her hand.
    He didn’t need to see it. Every one of the people in the photograph, all of their faces, the way they posed formally in front of the photography studio’s provided backdrop of a forest scene—all of it had been branded into the soft flesh of his brain, his eyes, his heart.
    “You have a large family,” she murmured.
    “ Had ,” he corrected. Four brothers, three sisters. For a time, his grandmother lived with them, but she wasn’t in the photograph. His parents were, however. His father sat on a velvet-covered chair, impressive in his full beard and fierce eyebrows. Surrounding him were his children and wife, like planets around the sun, Mikhail amongst them, skinny and smug in his naval cadet uniform. He hadn’t become a man yet, let alone a Man O’ War. “ Had a large family.”
    Her wide eyes met his. “They’re dead? All of them?”
    “I’m the one who died.”
    Photographs were strange things, turning living people into wax mannequins, or stopped automatons. One could never guess by looking at the picture that his mother loved practical jokes, or that his youngest brother Yuri drove them all mad by insisting on singing rather than speaking. Or that his sister Irina had to be bodily dragged from her study to eat. Even then, she’d take a book with her to the supper table. She’d looked up, though, when Mikhail had brought home a friend from the naval academy. Had Mikhail known what the result of that would be, he’d have locked Irina in the study. He’d also have plunged the carving knife into his friend’s chest. But no one had known what betrayal lay ahead, least of all Mikhail.
    One would never know from the photograph, either, that his father had bragged to the neighbors for months when Mikhail had been selected to become a Man O’ War. A proud day that had been, when Mikhail had come home with the news.
    Not just a Gimmel or a Bet , his father had kept repeating to whoever would listen. An Aleph. The highest aurora vires ranking there is.
    None of them knew what lay ahead. If they had known, there would have been far less boasting, and more worry.
    “See,” he said, forcing his voice into a tone of lightness. “Nothing to hide. You wondered if I had any pictures of my family. There they are. As ordinary as bread.”
    “You don’t look much like your father.”
    “I take after my mother’s side. Some Tartar blood in there.”
    She glanced up at him. “I can see that. Here, in your cheekbones, and here, in the shape of your eyes.” As she said this, she lightly skimmed her fingertip across the features in question.
    Silver heat spread through him. He wanted to lean into her touch—he wanted to shy away from it. Instead, he held himself still, as if unaffected.
    “How old were you when this was taken?” she asked, looking back at the picture.
    “Seventeen, eighteen. After that, I wasn’t home long enough for us to get everyone to the photographer’s studio.”
    Why did he continue to talk of this? When every word spoken felt like spikes of ice driven into his chest. But no; he kept speaking, as if to prove to not just her but himself that he was every bit as impervious as he claimed.
    “You’re the first Man O’ War I’ve ever met,” she murmured, “yet it seems odd to think that you have a father and mother, and a whole passel of siblings.”
    “Only part of me was made in a surgical theater.” He nodded down at the implants. “I’ve got parents, just like anyone else.”
    She studied him for a moment, her gaze as uncomfortably