Steal the Sky

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  “It seems Thratia was aware of this fortuitous proximity, old chum.”

  “It does indeed.”

  “No matter. Allow me to concentrate.”

  He closed his eyes, ignoring the reek wafting up from the alley and the jeering of the revelers. He expanded his senses just to the selium in the immediate area, and found his floating dining station with ease. He nudged it, just a touch, to see if anyone had already come aboard, and found it delightfully without passengers.

  “Uh, sirra…”

  “Let me concentrate.”

  Emboldened, he tipped the platform so that anything not anchored would slide off, and was rewarded with the platform’s sudden but invigorating lift. He subdued it, listening for a cry of alarm, but heard none.

  Tibs tugged on his sleeve, and he swore as he nearly lost control of the platform. He shook the old lizard off and scowled into the dark, “Keep your pants on, old fool.”

  Guessing the area to be empty for the time being, he allowed the platform to drift upward until it rested just beneath the treetops and then leveled it with care. He opened his eyes and squinted into the brush.

  There, he could see it. A bit of yellow-painted wood peeking between the branches.

  He could also feel something rather sharp pressed against the small of his back.

  “Seems to us.” Beer-laden breath wafted over Detan’s shoulder. “That men in such fancy clothes would have more than one silver grain. Eh lads?”

  A grumble of consent was raised behind him, a few hoots thrown in for good measure. With his hands up to show they were empty, Detan turned around very, very slowly. It was no less unsettling to have a knife pointed at your front than to have it sneak up behind you. He tried an affable grin. The young man appeared rather unimpressed.

  “Hand it over.”

  Detan edged back a step, sweat dampening his back while he strained to hold the platform and keep his guts in his belly. “Now, now, we’re all reasonable gentlemen here, and I’ve got it ready, Tibs.”

  “Don’t you fucking talk to him! Hand it over!”

  “’Bout time,” Tibs said.

  He grabbed the front of Detan’s shirt and shoved.

  For a moment, he thought this was the best idea Tibs’d ever had. He arced backward, huffing in fresh air while his body floated free in the endless sky. To be without tether, even without a selium craft, was beyond his imagination.

  He was quickly reminded why he didn’t do this kind of thing very often.

  The treetops rushed up to meet him, slapping his cheeks and twisting his limbs. He wanted to cry out, but all the air whooshed from his lungs as he thunked into the selium-floated platform. In the moment of impact he almost released his hold on the craft, but pain kept him sharp and he held on.

  Tibs landed beside him with a grunt, looking quite a bit better for having suffered the same experience. Detan rolled to his back with a groan and glared up at him.

  “How’d you avoid the branches, Tibs?”

  “I let you go first.”

  Tibs gave him a hand up, and Detan grinned as he gave him a playful slug in the shoulder. Crafty bastard.

  Refocusing his sel-sense, he forced the platform down, drifting lazily toward ground. As they drew closer, he could make out patterns in the rocks below, different colors of stones raked with care. Well, except for the spot where he’d dumped the platform’s table and other accoutrements. Broken wood marred the design, twisting what he thought might have been a fish into some sort of nightmare creature.

  When he heard guards start to raise the alarm nearby, he let his control drop and nearly let his stomach slip his lips as the whole thing clattered to the ground faster than he’d expected. Must have damaged one of the buoyancy sacks in the process, he thought, as very angry men with very long swords came rushing up.

  Still better than being knifed in the gut by a petty thief.

  “I say!” He leapt to his feet and shook leaves from his hair, hiding a grimace as pain lanced through his growing collection of bruises. “What sort of deathtrap is this? Can’t a man have a drink with his friend without fearing mutilation? By the pits!” He swung around and hauled Tibs to his feet. “Get these blasted things fixed, you swine, or I’ll report this!”

  The guards exchanged uneasy glances. Detan finished brushing off his stolen suit and strode right through their line as if they bothered him not a whit in all the world. In truth, his skin was crawling with the proximity of so much fine, sharp steel, but they responded to his confidence with rushed apology.

  Once safely away from the guards and the wrecked platform they paused, breathed deep, then shook themselves and stood up a little straighter.

  “That was a might close, sirra.”

  “I felt the press myself. Shall we?”

  He gestured toward the wide open doors to Thratia’s compound, and they sauntered inside.

  Chapter 10

  Detan found himself stuck in a herd of uppercrust, all clumped up toward the entrance and goggling at the decorations. He didn’t mind a bit. Thratia had really put her back into it, and he wondered just how much this was about raising support and how much it was about flaunting her wealth and connections. Probably the two motives were so finely intertwined the distinction was irrelevant.

  The lanterns inside were covered with thick paper, cut-outs in the shapes of those family crests which supported her throwing shadows over the partygoers. The hard stone floor thrummed with the pounding of hundreds of dancing feet and deep-throated drums. His skin prickled with the nearness of so much human energy. Somehow, she’d managed to import great ropes of green vines with crisp white blossoms and had strung them all around the railing of the second-story balcony which looked over the dance floor below.

  Tibs whistled low. “Thistle blossom, those are.” He gestured to the vines. “Damn brave of her to trot those out, tastiest treat in the world to selium-addicted insects. Heard a rumor there was a hive of sel bees round here, dangerous to tempt ’em.”

  “Thank you for your entomological insight, but I’m rather more interested in the disposition of the crowd than the native vermin.”

  “There’s a difference?” Tibs said as the band struck up a song Detan’d never heard of. He rose to his toes and glanced about, looking for the musicians. He found them on a sel-supported stage, drifting over the dancers’ heads. Every time they passed above, the partygoers threw their arms into the air and cheered. Detan’s mouth hung open.

  He hadn’t even realized there were this many noblebones in Aransa. He swept his gaze over the crowd, estimating, and decided he was right. There was no way every last body here tonight was from the privileged lot. That meant a good chunk of them were the top dogs of the downcrust. Thratia was not messing about here. She wanted every soul she could get on her side.

  “Where to?” Tibs called over the thump of drums.

  “Er.” He tried to get a better look at the crowd, but the band was frenzied enough to keep them moving in constant flux. Who was he looking for, anyway? He wanted to get eyes on Thratia’s flagship, not her bosom companions. What he needed now was a solid lay of the land, something he could get his teeth into.

  “Let’s go up,” he yelled.

  They hurried up the steps, squeezing past people who were pressed together in the dark, near-privacy of the stairwell. By the time they reached the balcony, the band had transitioned into a slower tune and the dancers swirled at a less nauseating pace. They crowded up against the balcony rail and Detan scanned the press, looking for the lady of the hour, but couldn’t spot her amongst the revelry.

  “Has it occurred to you, Tibs, that this is all a bit overkill for the wooing of one city?”

  “Seems the ex-commodore wants to prove she can take a city through legal channels.”

  Detan frowned at that, something about it not quite sitting right in his mind. “Think she’s courting the empire? Angling to get back into their good graces?”

  “Can’t imagine a
woman like her would be satisfied with exile.” Tibs waved a hand through the air as he spoke as if outlining a celebratory banner. “Commodore Ganal’s Triumphant Return.”

  “Charming,” Detan drawled and turned back toward the interior of the balcony, and nearly jumped out of his skin at a tap on his shoulder.

  “Detan Honding.”

  He spun around at the familiar voice, laced with honey-venom, and beamed into the watch captain’s scowling face.

  “Hullo, Ripka.”

  “Captain,” she corrected. “Where’s your better half?”

  “Tibs is right–” The little devil had slunk off somewhere, leaving him alone with the law. “That rat.”

  “I only see one rat here.” She snorted her derision, and Detan drew his head back at the sharp bite of wine that laced her breath. He waved the cloud away and scowled, scarcely resisting the urge to chastise her for getting drunk while they were working together.

  “I thought you said I was a snake,” he muttered.

  Her brows creased in mild annoyance, or confusion, he couldn’t really tell the difference when it came to her. “What? Don’t be stupid, Honding, if you can at all help it.”

  He leaned forward and dropped his voice down to a sand-whisper. “Is it wise for us to be seen chatting in public like this?”

  “I’d rather not chat with you at all. Just what are you doing back in Aransa?”

  That was… odd. Detan frowned, squinting at Ripka’s face. With timid care he extended his senses, feeling for the presence of selium about her. It was there, but faint, hardly worth remarking on, and his abilities were so unreliable that he could just as easily be picking up on the phantom of Thratia’s ship – or any other source of selium nearby. Pinpointing tiny caches of the stuff had never been his specialty.

  He tried to conjure up the memory of the way he’d seen her in the morning. Sandy hair pulled back? Yep. Grey eyes looking mighty pissed? Still got ’em. Forehead good for headbutting? Flat and affirmative. Had she had those freckles this morning?

  Nope.

  He poked her in the face. Nothing changed, save her expression getting darker.

  “Have you lost your mind, Honding?”

  Detan choked on a laugh. “No more than usual. Fancy a drink?”

  “Just stay out of trouble. I have enough worries without you getting tangled up in things.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She stepped close enough for him to scent the cactus-flower extract she wore, mingled with the greasy tinge of her blade oil, and narrowed her eyes. “What have you heard?”

  “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.” He gave her his winning smile, and even this Ripka seemed to hate it, which was something of a relief. “Just old nanny-gossip, you know the type. Oh, look, there’s Tibal! Tibs! Tibs old chum!”

  He waved at him, but Tibs was busy chatting with a rather lovely woman in a low-backed dress. She had her back to Detan’s view, and Tibs shot him a glower over her shoulder. He didn’t seem too pleased with the lady’s company, but Detan figured anything would be a sight more pleasant than getting pinned down by Ripka Leshe. The real one, at any rate.

  “Pleasure to see you again, watch captain. Have a good evening! Enjoy the party!”

  He wiggled away from under her stern eye, feeling it bore a hole through him as he sauntered with affected nonchalance toward Tibs. He felt those eyes peel away and slumped with relief. He needed more time to work out an angle before he could let the real Ripka know that they were plotting to steal Thratia’s ship together. Doppels really knew how to throw a spanner in the works.

  A few steps away from Tibs, and that’s when it hit him. The tall woman who was wagging in Tibs’s ear was the Lady Halva Erst. Detan recalled, with mounting horror, the iron straight edge of her back and worse, the cutting barbs that often left her lips. No wonder poor Tibs looked so sour-faced.

  Three years. He couldn’t believe it’d already been three years since he last saw the stern side of her jaw, lifted in hatred as he skimped out at their engagement party. It had been regretful that matters were forced to progress to that point, but Detan had needed a foot-in at the Erst estate to pinch old Daddy Erst’s atlas. A singular work, that atlas.

  Finest he’d ever used, and his aunt couldn’t have been cheerier when he gave it to her for her birthday. She did, after all, loathe the Ersts and all they stood for. Which he found odd, considering they were just a family of sel diviners, but he wasn’t fool enough to ever question his auntie’s taste.

  Tibs seemed to be doing a good job of extricating himself from the lady. He had made it damned near to the drink table, and Detan well knew the fair lady couldn’t stomach being in the presence of a drunk. Realizing he was not at this party to socialize, he tipped his hat in apology to Tibs and slunk off toward the back of the balcony in search of the airship’s moorings. He was, after all, a professional. And there was work to be done.

  Chapter 11

  Ripka went in search of another drink. She was not technically on duty tonight, this was a personal appearance, and yet she still felt strange pouring herself out a deep red draught while wearing her blues. Oh, to the pits with it.

  She let the mulled almond flavor wash down her throat until the glass was empty. Maybe, if she were drunk enough, then she could do as Banch suggested and force some answers out of the woman they’d captured at the warehouse. That damned smuggler had proven taciturn at best, not even giving up her name.

  Without the information rattling around in that woman’s walled-off mind, there was no way to say for certain who those weapons were for, or where they were coming from. The papers had been empty of house seals, signatures carefully obscured, and the honey liqueur could only be traced back to the stone wall of the Mercer’s Collective. None of them were willing to throw their fellows to the Watch, lest it start a chain reaction, and Ripka couldn’t even be sure that the owner of those bottles knew of the deadly cargo hidden beneath them.

  Ripka snorted to herself. She’d done her fair share of damage in a fighting ring, but if she ever got drunk enough to be party to torture, she’d more likely fall flat on her face the moment she stepped in the woman’s cell. At least they still had the sensitive man. He was holding out, but he sweated so much every time Ripka interrogated him they had to supply him with a change of clothes after each encounter. It was, she hoped, only a matter of time.

  At least she’d managed to scour that honey-crap out of her hair.

  With a sigh, she reached for the bottle again, and found Tibal handing it to her. “Looks like you be needin’ this, captain.”

  She set her glass down a touch too fast and had to grab at it to keep it from tipping over. “I’m quite finished Tibal, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Her nose wrinkled with distaste as he took a draw straight from the bottle. At least he looked cleaner than the last time she had seen him, though whatever ablutions he’d attempted for the party had failed to pry the axle grease from his fingernails. “Neither of you should be here, you know.”

  “Got nowhere else to be at the present. What about yourself? You don’t strike me as the fete-going type, and Thratia’s got enough muscle here that she doesn’t need the Watch. Surely you’ve got your own business to be about.”

  Her jaw clenched, clamping down words too sharp and raw to let loose. Phantoms of her own little apartment rose in her mind, the too-clean living room and the spotless hearth, its cookstone as fresh as the day she’d bought it. The only foodstuff she owned was a bottle of wine, as dark as the one Tibal drew from now.

  “Just why do you hang around with that lout, anyway?” she said, forcing her voice to aloofness, though that proved difficult when her lips felt thick and numb. Damn Thratia and her unwatered wine. Or just damn Thratia all together. “He’s a liar and a thief, a bad man any way you look at him. You have talent, Tibal, you’re a damn fine mechanic and a dutiful soul. I remember offering you a job, once–”

  “Answer�
�s no, captain. I got a job.”

  “What you do is not a job, it’s survival.”

  “All jobs are about surviving, just on different levels. Like the city here.” He shrugged and drank deep. “Look now, I owe a great deal to that man and I won’t have you poison my mind against him. You’re better than that.”

  She crossed her arms and tried to look stern, but the flush of wine was in her cheeks and she knew she just looked surly. “And just what is it that you owe him? Did he lock you into some sort of commitment?”

  Tibal took another draw and then set the bottle down with care. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and his hand on his trouser leg, his eyes narrowed and sharp as flint. She was too tired to deal with any of this tonight. The doppel was out there still. Or worse, in here. She didn’t need Detan and his partner… manservant… mechanic? What was he? No matter, she didn’t need them demanding her attention.

  “You fight in the war, captain? I did.”

  She stiffened, not liking the direction this was headed. “No. Too young. I didn’t know you served,” she said, affecting politeness. She itched to abandon Thratia’s showboating and get back to the streets. Even digging through mounds of files in search of a clue about the warehouse, or the doppel, would be more relaxing than this farce.

  “I’m a grown man of Valathea, captain, ’course I served. Damned continent didn’t stay Valathean property by the grace of the blue skies, now did it? I didn’t have the favor of youth at the time. Joined with Valathea, as I was descended from them. Strange, don’t you think? My family hasn’t used Valathean names for the last three generations and still I think myself a part of them. I’m light as a Catari.” He held out an arm to the shadow-splintered light, and Ripka bit her tongue. He looked dark as wet sand to her, dark as most Valatheans. Dark as her. “Got a name like a Catari. But I don’t think of myself as such.

  “Anyway. We cleaned them out, pushed ’em back into the sel-barren reaches of the Scorched. I worked on the ships, then, didn’t see any real fighting myself. Wouldn’t know what to do with the sharp end of a saber, but I could keep the killing machines going. Keep ’em raining fire from above, turning good sand to glass.” He cleared his throat, glanced around and lowered his voice.