He set the lantern down with exaggerated care and stepped away, his body angled so that he could come between Ripka and Radu if the need arose. It rankled to be protected so, but she reminded herself that, to Enard, this was his duty. His life’s calling. He’d agreed to help her find Nouli, and he couldn’t do that if she were dead.
“Now that the cockfighting’s out of the way.” Radu closed his hand around the bell to keep it silenced. “We can move on. Why are you here? A woman like you doesn’t stumble across the yellowhouse without forethought.”
She pressed her lips together, drawing them into a thin, hard line.
“Fine.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Keep your cursed secrets. I know you. You can’t be planning anything bad for my charges. But here’s the deal. A person with your skillset has value, value I can’t afford to let go unused. Not now, at any rate. You’re poking around my island, so I might as well get some use out of you. Lately, we’ve had a new source of extracurricular experience appear here. Understand?”
“Drugs?” she asked before she could stop herself, professional curiosity overriding her instinct to conceal any interest.
“Aye. Nasty stuff. Makes the inmates minds move faster, makes them restless for more. We’ve had three breakout attempts since it showed, and one nasty riot. They’re calling it clearsky, but no one knows where it’s coming from.”
Ripka scoffed. “Surely you have informants within the population.”
He grinned, as if he’d scored a point by drawing her into using the terminology of a watch-captain. “I do, I do. But they look after my addition to the population. Good stuff, keeps them sleepy-headed and amenable. This new junk, clearsky? Not one of my people can figure out its source.”
“Your addition? You’re leaking drugs to your own prison?”
Radu waved his hand through the air as if brushing away a mildly irritating insect. “I don’t force it on anyone, and it keeps them docile.”
Ripka stared, open-mouthed, recalling the elderly inmate she’d seen smoking along the path that morning. “You’re the mudleaf source? You’re encouraging a black market within your own walls. Once those channels open up, they’re impossible to close.”
“Bah. My people have tight rein on–”
“Then where’s the clearsky coming from?”
He clenched his fists so hard she wondered if he’d warp the shape of his emergency bell. “You’re going to find that out for me, captain.”
She swallowed around a dry throat. It didn’t take wild speculation for her to discern a possible source for the drug. If it were new, that meant someone was bringing it in from off-island – so that someone had to leave periodically and be able to return. Based on what she’d seen of the Remnant’s guards, imagining one or more of them slipping in a new poison wasn’t much of a stretch. Some of them might even be pretending incompetence and laziness to deflect suspicion.
But she wasn’t about to tell Radu that. The fact that he hadn’t come to the same conclusion himself meant he was either stupid, or blind arrogant in assuming his guards would never betray his trust. The way Misol had stiffened when he’d dismissed her... That told Ripka all she needed to know about the so-called warden’s relationship with his staff.
“And if I refuse to clean up this mess for you?”
“Why, captain, I might let it slip who you really are.”
She took a startled half-step back without meaning too, panic tightening her chest. It didn’t take firsthand knowledge to know what inmates did to a watcher sharing their incarceration. What they’d do to a full-blown captain, who’d already ruffled the feathers of a songbird? A crawling sensation stole over her skin, and she fought down a shiver.
“You would allow me to be torn apart by your charges, just because I won’t play your game?”
“One less mouth to feed.” He eyed Enard. “Two, probably.”
She tried to breathe deep, but only managed a shallow rasp. Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her chin. Time was slim. She needed all the advantage she could finagle. “If you want my help, warden, I need something in return.”
“The integrity of your own skin isn’t good enough?”
“Not for this.” She stepped forward, angling around Enard, and pressed both palms on the mess of his desk. He went perfectly still. “I want to look in the yellowhouse.”
He snorted. Foul breath gusted hair off her cheek. “Nothing in there you’ll find pleasant, captain. I suggest you give that little curiosity up.”
“Don’t care how pleasant it is. I want a look.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
She smiled, but said nothing.
“We’ll see. Find me the clearsky, and if I have further use of you, I might see the need of trade. Otherwise…” He flicked a dismissive hand. “Fetch me my dealer, or I start spreading nasty little rumors.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask around,” she said, hating herself for her acquiescence.
“I supposed it wouldn’t.” He smirked as he gestured toward the door. “Go on now, guards will see you to your cells. Sweet dreams, captain.”
She resisted an urge to tip over a lantern on her way out.
Chapter Fifteen
“Go!” Detan shouted, giving the wide-eyed captain Allat a shove between the shoulder blades. “I’ll look after the vault and the lady. Do your duty, man.”
The captain glanced to Detan, then to the wide, terrified gaze of his lady, and then to the half-opened door to the Fleet’s building. He couldn’t leave it standing open with no one to keep an eye on it, they all knew this, but no more did he want to run off after strange screams in the dark. He swallowed, twisting the keyring in his hand.
Detan snatched it from him and rattled them in his face. “Brownie and I will arm ourselves and meet you there. Quick, man!”
Allat nodded, relieved to have a clear plan of action, and sprinted off, his baton already in hand. A needle of worry slivered its way under Detan’s skin as he heard the heady twang of a crossbow bolt fill the air, followed by an unintelligible shout, but he steeled his nerves. Whatever was going on back there had given him one skies-blessed opportunity, and he was not about to squander it.
“This way, my lady,” he said, doffing the courtly mannerisms his aunt had drilled into him all those years ago. “I would not want you out in the open during a fight.”
Ruma narrowed her eyes and glanced over her shoulder in the direction her lover had run. “Shouldn’t you help him?”
“Brownie here has lost his baton, remember? And I do not carry mine about on midnight errands. Please, hurry inside so that we may arm ourselves and get to your captain’s side with all haste.”
The smooth reasonableness of his tone wore away the jagged edges of her suspicion. She gave him a tight nod before slipping inside the Fleet offices. Detan shared a look with Tibs, brows raised in question – do you think the fight is Pelkaia’s doing? – but Tibs just shrugged. They’d find out soon enough.
Inside the Fleet office, a single candle guttered in a candelabra by the wall, the yellowed light doing little to illuminate the building. Someone must have forgotten to douse it before leaving for the day. Detan thanked the skies for government workers. He pulled the door shut behind them, cutting off the moonlight, and Ruma let out a yelp of surprise.
“Peace,” he urged as he scurried over to the candle and took it from its post, then used it to light the other candles and passed one to Tibs. “I know it is a dreadful bore, miss, but please wait here in the lobby. The back rooms are for Fleet personnel only, and the heavy front door should keep out any unwanted intruders.”
She stood dead center in the middle of the foyer, hands clasped before her in a tight knot, expression hard and smooth, save for a few worry wrinkles around her eyes. She was so still, so bottled up with unshed emotion, that Detan half expected her to turn on him – to fling a candelabra his way, or force some other attack. The rigid bearing of her body communicated quit
e clearly that she felt something was amiss, but Detan suspected she couldn’t precisely put her finger on the source. She was too polite to make accusations without being certain.
Ah, manners. He could always count on courtly politeness to shield him from uncomfortable questions. After a too-long pause, she nodded.
He bowed to her. Overkill, no doubt, but he’d learned a long time ago that overdoing flattery made those he flattered less likely to question him. “Let’s go, Brownie.”
Tibs snorted and strode forward, taking the lead. Though Detan had done his time working for the empire, he’d never been a part of the Fleet. But Tibs had kept the Fleet’s propellers purring while they’d rained fire from the sky during the Catari war, and that was knowledge hard to forget. The wrinkled bastard may not like to think on it, or discuss it, or even acknowledge it’d happened, but he knew his way around a Fleet building.
One of the best things about Valathea, Detan had long ago decided, was that they liked to do things the same way no matter where they went. Buildings were laid out in identical patterns, protocols and procedures predictable. It made it easier for the empire to reach further, faster.
Made it easier for him to kick them in the teeth, too.
The foyer of the office was a cavernous, high-ceilinged room dotted with tables and chairs for Fleeties seeking private consultation with Fleet administration. Detan had seen similar layouts in the entrance halls of every watch station-house he’d had the misfortune of treading through. The empire may have had great imagination when it came to the expansion of its borders, but it was decidedly stolid when it came to municipal decor. An unmarked hall bore a hole through the center of the back wall, wide enough for two guards to stand across from each other. Tibs veered straight toward it. Detan trailed in his wake with his lips bitten shut to keep from making a comment. Last thing he needed was to accidentally annoy Tibs when they were so close to their prize.
The hallway widened. A huge set of wooden double doors banded at every handwidth with thick iron loomed to his left. It was his height plus half, the knob surrounded by an elaborate lock as big as his head. The hall was wide enough for a donkey cart to ride into, and it terminated in a smaller, simpler door that Detan recognized as the backdoor Pelkaia had expected him to blow.
Sounds of a scuffle filtered through from outside, startled shouts and harsh whistles filling the night. The watch had been called. Marvelous.
“What now?” Tibs asked.
“Working on it,” Detan sang, pacing irritably up and down the width of the hallway. Even if Pelkaia’s people were on the other side of the door, there was no making off with the weapons now – not with the watch pounding their way towards the ruckus.
He looked at the keys in his hand. There were only three. The one the captain had used to open the front door, another very much like it, and a third that sported an elaborate flourish on its crown. Good old Valathea. They never could keep from enjoying their own ostentation. It was just a good thing for him they’d cheaped out on the lighting and brought in candles instead of oil lamps.
“Give me your candle.”
Tibs handed it over without comment, keeping a wary eye on the door to the outside. Dropping to a crouch, Detan snuffed his candle and set it on the ground. He ran Tibs’s lit end along it until the wax was soft enough to shape between his fingers. Shutting out the sounds of battle outside the hallway, he split the softened candle into two parts and wadded each into a ball, discarding the wick. Brushing Tibs’s flame over each to keep them pliable, he smooshed the elaborate key into one glob, then counted down from ten, giving the wax time to harden around the metal. Once it was set, he peeled it carefully away and repeated the process with the other side of the key in the other ball of wax.
“Sirra...” Tibs said, a warning note in his voice as something clanged against the door to the outside. Detan grimaced, keeping his hands as still as possible while the wax set.
Three... Two...
He gently lifted the key out of the hardened wax and stuck the two halves of his new mold in his pocket. The pounding on the door grew louder, the wood shaking and the metal fixtures clattering. Detan gave the key one last check to make sure that no waxy residue had been left behind, then strode toward the door. He yanked it open, and stood face to face with a woman he’d never seen before.
And yet he knew her.
“Hullo,” he said, slapping on a disarming grin. Pelkaia wore black from head to toe, a rookie mistake, as far as Detan was concerned. Who went thieving looking like a thief? Though she’d rearranged her face – a wider nose, a rounder chin – her accusatory glare was all too familiar.
Before she could say anything, Allat called out, “Arrest that woman!”
Detan blinked, hesitating, but the shrill call of watcher whistles decided him. Blue-coated watchers streamed down the street, nearly a dozen of them, encircling the wagon Pelkaia and Coss had brought to haul off the goods.
If he got caught up in this, he’d never make it to the Remnant in time. He needed to wriggle his way free, and fast. Trouble was, Pelkaia had a cutlass already in hand, and he was all too familiar with her willingness to use it. Unless he could diffuse matters, he might arrive at the Remnant on a prisoner transport ship instead of the Larkspur.
“Drop your weapon!” he barked, shaking the key ring at her to distract her with the noise – and possibly to clue her into what he was up to.
She stepped back, startled. “What are you doing, you stupid–”
“Weapons down, all of you!” a watcher cried out, and his voice was, Detan noted grudgingly, much more convincing than his own.
Metal clattered against stone as Pelkaia dropped her cutlass and raised her hands to the air. Detan peered over her shoulder. Coss sat on the driver’s seat of the cart, a crossbow fallen to the ground beside him. They’d brought no one else that he could see, unless their other members had already fled into the city.
The guard who had been napping sat on the ground, holding his thigh and moaning. A black shaft stuck up from his leg, a pool of blood coalescing beneath him. Allat stood a few paces in front of him, his baton abandoned for a cutlass, his eyes wild and his hair a sweaty mess.
A brass whistle dangled from around Allat’s neck. Detan grimaced. Poor luck. If he’d noticed the lad had means of calling the watch, he’d have offered to go around back himself and sent the lad through to open the back door.
“On your knees!” the watcher yelled.
Pelkaia did not break eye contact with Detan as she knelt, folding her hands behind her head. Detan stared back, impassive. He’d been playacting too long to allow himself to be moved by scorn in such a delicate situation.
“Allat,” Tibs called, getting the Fleet guard’s attention as the watchers moved in to take command of Pelkaia and Coss. Detan forced himself to turn away from her, to follow Tibs to Allat’s side. He could not break character, not now, and a Fleetie’s first priority was to his fellows. He’d forgotten that – if not for Tibs’s redirection of his attention, he would have dived right in to help the watchers, and nothing looked more suspicious than a Fleetie lending a hand to the local municipality without complaint.
“He all right?” Tibs asked as he knelt alongside the bleeding guard. Detan lingered nearby, trying to keep an eye on the arrest process without being too conspicuous. Pelkaia and Coss had their hands tied and were herded toward the watchers’ waiting cart, a sad little donkey ready to pull them along.
“I’ll be fine,” the bleeding man hissed. “Missed the artery, thank the skies.”
Detan tried to pay attention to Tibs’s conversation with the guards, but he was stuck on the watchers. With Pelkaia and Coss secured, the watchers started work on Pelkaia’s cart, checking it for smuggled goods. As they worked, another watcher took up the donkey driver’s seat and flicked the reins – guiding it, and their fresh prisoners, away.
Away to pits knew where. Detan didn’t know a thing about this city aside from it was cold and
partial to a fish stew. He couldn’t trail them, he’d be too obvious, and by the time he managed to slip away from his “fellow” Fleeties they’d be long gone. He didn’t have a plan, but he could stall better than a sel-less ship in a storm.
“Wait!” he yelled, holding up a hand to forestall the donkey-driver. The man didn’t so much as glance his way, but one of the watchers going over Pelkaia’s cart did.
“What’s the problem?” he asked, hooking a finger in his belt loop. This watcher was a younger man, slim of frame with well-trimmed hair and a chin bald as a baby’s ass. Still paid attention to protocol, then. Not yet jaded by his authority.
Detan’s mind raced. What could he say? The injured guard groaned as Tibs and Allat tended to him, sparking an idea. “Those two injured a Fleet guard! They’re our prisoners!”
“Hah,” the watcher said. “This is our city. You’re going to have to take it up with the captain.”
“Fine,” he scowled. “Where are you taking them?”
“You must be new here.” The watcher jerked his thumb toward a slim, round building that towered above all the others of the city. It was crafted of the same boring, brown stone as the rest, unique from its neighbors only by nature of its height and its circular construction. A beacon shone from its top, a radiant glass globe fueled by gaslight. Figured the watchers would see to it they got the most phallic building in the city all to themselves. “They’ll go in the Tower, same as everyone else arrested in Petrastad. Make your appeals for control of them there.”
The watcher turned back to his work, dismissing Detan with his back. Of course. It had to be a tower. Only one he’d ever stepped foot in before was the whitecoats’ Bone Tower, and it hadn’t exactly been a welcoming experience. Forcing himself to calm, Detan reached down and clapped a hand on Tibs’s shoulder.
“Come along, brother. Let’s go see if we can find a late night apothik to tend to our comrade here, eh?”
Tibs tied a strip of cloth around the wounded man’s leg, slowing the flow but not cutting it off completely. Reluctantly, he nodded and stood, wiping his hands on the hem of his coat. One more stain to add to the collection.
Break the Chains Page 11