“I see.”
“I reckon you do. Now, if you don’t mind.”
“Hold now, captain,” Tibs said. “I am sorry to press, but there appears to be something you’re not sharing.”
“What? You want me to tell you what color pants they were all wearing? Pits below, you’ve got the thrust of it already.”
“Yes, quite, but forgive me if I’m not convinced that all that was enough to send an upstanding servant of the populace on a breaking and entering spree.”
Skies above, but Tibs was good at digging to the heart of matters. Detan watched as Ripka shifted her weight, adjusted a weapon’s strap, pressed her lips together, and then finally let loose with a puff of a sigh.
“I’m just not certain on the other thing, all right?”
“Let us examine it then, captain.”
She pursed her lips together, as if deep in thought, then shrugged. “Fine, fine. There were footprints in the blood that didn’t belong to anybody. Workman’s prints, big flopping boots with the weight all rolled down in the toes. Not to mention their eyes were all closed. You ever see four men dead all at once, and not a one left staring at nothing?”
With a grimace Detan shook his head. No, no he hadn’t. It was rare enough for one soul to keep their eyes shut crossing into the dark, most went in wide-eyed and were left wanting. Four dead with closed eyes was unheard of.
“Somebody closed ’em,” he said.
“Right. It must have been the doppel.”
“Sure.” Detan frowned down at her. “But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”
Her jaw clenched so hard he could see the sinew of her neck stand out, ready to snap. But she spoke anyway. “I gathered some… information.” There was a clot in her throat. She cleared it away. “There are weapons in the city, being handed out to Thratia’s supporters… smuggled in the bottom of crates.” Ripka’s words quickened as she warmed to the subject. “Valathean weapons, if what I saw is true of the bunch. And just how do you think she’s paying for them all? It’s not with grains. She wouldn’t dare be so obvious.”
“It’s… a trade?” Detan was unable to hide the rasp in his own throat as realization took hold.
“I have good reason to believe so. Yes. I came here looking for a paper trail, something tangible. If Thratia’s caught out selling humans, even if they’re doppels, the people won’t have her. Without them, she won’t be able to keep her hold no matter what Valathea does. And I don’t believe the empire will want to be publicly connected with her once that comes out – the slavery of doppels is illegal, even if they turn a blind eye to it when convenient. But I need evidence of her network, I need the names of everyone involved.”
She didn’t just need the doppel dead, then. Thratia was worried about a different kind of contract. He felt cold, hollow. To still the tremble in his fingers he locked eyes with Tibs, and his friend gave him a subtle nod. Trading a doppel, a live deviant sensitive of any variety, meant only one thing: whitecoats.
Valathea may not publicly hold with the live trade of sensitives, but a little slavery in the name of experimentation, of progress, wasn’t beneath them. Oh no, deviant sensitives weren’t to be suffered to live so long as they were free. But pinned to a board like a butterfly, sliced open and pieced back together again to see how they worked? How they could be used? That was all right by Valathea, just so long as it was their whitecoats doing the slicing.
And they were here. In Aransa. Had to be, if Thratia was dealing with them. He felt the shadow of that imperial cruiser he’d noticed on his way up the steps pressing down on his mind like a lead weight, pushing aside defenses he’d spent the past few years of his life building. Crumbling walls that held back darker memories, and darker urges.
Sweat sheened his skin, immediate and slick, and he spat bitter bile on the ground.
“Honding?” There was a soft edge to Ripka’s voice, a note of gentle worry. He pressed his eyes shut, squeezing so hard white lights spun behind his lids. Echoes of his own screams crowded his mind, pushed aside gates he’d built against raw instinct. He felt the tickle of his sensitivity returning, the promise of release if he just reached out and touched the selium buoyed in the belly of the Larkspur, vast and inviting.
“Sirra.” Tibs had his fingers hooked in Detan’s shoulders like claws and he shook him once, hard, snapping Detan’s head back and his eyes open. He stared at Tibs, focusing on his breathing, seeing nothing but the webs of wrinkles radiating out from his old friend’s calm, brown eyes. Tibs raised a brow in question, and he nodded, stepping back. He was under control. For now.
Detan knew too well what was at the end of the line for the doppel if Thratia got her claws in her. And here was sweet little Ripka, thinking Thratia meant mere jail or death for the doppel. He’d laugh, if he could feel anything through the ringing in his ears.
It wasn’t the purge that had Thratia nervous. That’d be bad for Aransa, sure, but the city would recover. But even General Throatslitter had mind enough to fear dealing with whitecoats. She’d had to have been desperate to make a deal with those monsters.
Execution for the doppel’s crimes was one thing, but nobody deserved that. Not even a madwoman. Understanding passed in a glance between him and Tibs, and he let out a defeated sigh.
Ripka’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
He shook his head to clear it and crossed to the edge of the deck, staring out at the city splayed below. Nothing seemed particularly out of place. He’d seen violent power upheavals before. They were bloody, drawn-out things. Fires in the streets and heads in the gutters. He didn’t see any evidence of something like that brewing here, and for that he was grateful. When a city went feral, who survived the changeover was often a matter of pure chance, and he hadn’t lucked through too much of late.
I should grab Tibs and go, he thought, eyeing the sleek shape of the Larkspur. Maybe the doppel wouldn’t make it through Thratia’s tightening net. Maybe they’d be safe out there after all.
But he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t leave her to what he’d lived through himself.
Ripka’s fingers coiled around his arm and pulled him around to face her. “Tell me.” There was no anger in her voice, it sounded almost pleading. But he couldn’t explain – not really. To admit knowledge of what happened in the whitecoats’ tower would be to admit his sel-sense remained, albeit in a twisted form. He closed his eyes for just a heartbeat, and decided on a path.
“You’re looking under the wrong roof,” he said.
She threw her hands into the air in frustration. “Then where do you suggest I look? I’ve got no lead on the doppel. All the information I do have points here.” There was a hitch in her throat that Detan chose to ignore, a subtle shifting of her eyes toward the floor. She was ashamed of something. The thought made him unreasonably angry.
“Sure you do.” He forced the biggest smile he could muster, piling his fear under false bravado. “You know just exactly where to look! You won’t find your evidence here, she’s too careful for that, but I bet ole Galtro kept real precise records of every ship in and out of his docks – even if the cargo was sparse on the leaving, eh? And you said yourself the records room had been tossed over. Either there’s incriminating evidence in there about her, or a way to identify the creature she doesn’t want you getting to first. If you catch the blasted thing, then she can’t trade it to Valathea.”
Ripka snorted. “Thratia’s got the Hub on lockdown while she completes her ‘investigation’.”
Tibs cleared his throat. “If you would agree to suffer the Lord Honding’s company, watch captain, I believe Thratia’s prohibitions will not prove a hindrance.”
“Oh no, I’m not going to be seen breaking into a place with that rat.”
“Psh, you’re one guard-check away from being seen that way right now. Look, Rippy–”
“Watch captain.”
“Right. I’m the man for this. It’s clear as a still sky you don’t know
about the greyer side of life, and I’ve spent my days learning how to turn soot into salt, eh? I can have us in and out in a snap. That is, if Tibs here is all right watching the Larkspur on his lonesome.”
“I believe I’ll manage. I don’t think the doppel will be doing much ’sides laying low tonight,” Tibs said.
Detan clapped. “Then it’s settled! Come on, Rip.” He scurried past her and opened the door to the servant’s entrance. “Out of the dark and into the shit with it then, eh?”
“You don’t make a lick of sense, Honding.”
He shrugged. “I hope that particular expression will not become clear to you in time.”
As they started down the short steps back out into the Aransan streets, Detan found himself praying to the sweet skies for the first time in a long, long while. Either Tibs would get the doppel out of the city – noisily, so there’d be no question of a purge to clean away the stain of a hidden doppel – or Ripka would arrest the thing and take its head.
Despite what she’d done to Faud, and maybe even Galtro, he found himself hoping she’d get to Tibs before Ripka got to her. But even if she didn’t, dead was still better than the whitecoats’ tower. He was sure of it.
Chapter 25
Worry dug its claws deep into Detan’s mind, distracting him with whispers of disaster. They scurried through the ferry district, one scant level down from Thratia’s compound, moving fast but not so quick as to draw attention to themselves. Every corner he turned, he half expected to run chest-first into one of Thratia’s grey coated sycophants.
Some little part of him wanted to. There was enough sel around the ferries for him to deal with any trouble if it came to it, but he couldn’t be sure he’d be able to contain himself once he’d started. It was the sliver of him that didn’t mind that fact that worried him.
They came to the end of a long row of shuttered and tarped foodstalls, their owners skedaddled off to safer locales for the time being. He didn’t blame them. Half the city had tucked themselves in for an early night – hoping against the gathering shadows that things would push on like normal come the dawn. They were probably right. Whoever held the reins of the city mattered little in the day-to-day lives of the common folk.
Detan slowed and reached a hand back to forestall Ripka. Her boots stopped scuffling over the dirt-packed road, and he edged up to the end of a large cart, poking his head around the side to get a look at the ferry station.
Wasn’t just grey coats minding the way. There was a small group of people, local stock every one, and they were all backed up at the docking gate for the ferry that went out to the Hub. Between the group and the dock tall, stern-faced Valatheans in uniforms as pale blue as the skies their homeland commanded stood at ease, pikes resting in the crooks of their arms. One yawned; another fanned his obsidian, reddening cheeks with a folded bit of milky paper.
“What is it?” Ripka whispered.
“Best see this for yourself,” he murmured.
Detan pressed himself back against the cart, giving her room to creep around without being seen. She practically floated forward, adjusting her gait so that her steps were so light the leather soles didn’t so much as whisper on the hard-packed dirt road.
“What is the empire doing here?” she whispered.
Detan grabbed her elbow and dragged her back around the curve of the alley. “You tell me, miss watch captain. I try not to have anything to do with folk in uniform.”
Her gaze darted side to side, a brief moment of real panic. “How in the pits should I know? Thratia’s cut me out of everything.”
He cursed and spat, wondering if those pretty blue uniforms were under Thratia’s command or a whitecoat’s. Didn’t much matter, he didn’t plan on making their acquaintance. “We’ll have to keep low and to the lee side of buildings. Use the shadows as best we can as we make the crossing.”
“Crossing? We’re not getting on that ferry, Honding.”
He grinned, saw the whites of her eyes grow wide and bright as knives in the dark. “Who said anything about a ferry?”
Get on the ferry, hah. Not with those flower sniffers hanging about. Why, the two of them would be tipped right over the edge of the ferry if they ever made it on to begin with. He had an idea what they needed to do. It was the only path left open to them if they wanted to see the Hub tonight, and by the way Ripka clammed up, she knew it, too. Without a word of conference, they adjusted their path toward the lowest level of the city. Toward that last wall between civilization and wide open, hungry desert.
They had to cross the Black.
The very idea made his skin itch with the urge to flee. It was safe enough at night, sure. At least, the sun wouldn’t bake you to a streetcart delicacy within a dozen paces of the city while the sky was dark. If you didn’t mind the heat trapped in the sand, making each step like dancing a jig in a bread oven. If your shoes were stable enough to hold up to the bite of the unweathered obsidian shards. If you knew your way, cut the path short. If you made it back before the sun came up.
If, if, if. His stomach rumbled a protest and he grimaced, wiping sweat from his brow on the back of his hand.
It didn’t help to ease his poor nerves that Ripka was looking around at her own city like she’d never seen it before. Sure, things were different. Not a lot, mind you, but Thratia’s people were out in force and it left a subdued hush over the whole of Aransa. People took to their homes and stayed put. It wasn’t natural, things being so quiet this time of night. The citizenry should be out, taking advantage of the cooler weather to bicker over the price of roots and meats. Instead, the local cricket population took up an unsteady song, as if they weren’t sure whether it was wise to fill the unnatural silence.
“They’re everywhere.” Ripka’s voice was so alien in this place empty of human babbling that he jumped and damned near hit his head on a low-hanging awning.
He glanced over his shoulder, ready to give her the rough side of his tongue, then stopped cold when he saw where she was looking. Not at the people and their homes, their markets and their washing. No, her keen eyes had plucked out other figures moving amongst the shadows and the leeways, keeping their presence felt but not seen. Shadows of hands held shadows of weapons, ready to become corporeal at any moment.
“Just stay steady, they won’t be harassing us any if we look like we’re in a hurry to get where we’re going. Chances are Thratia’s got ’em spread thin and communication won’t get ahead of us. Come on now, the gate’s a few levels down and then it’s just us and the sand to the Hub. Anyway, the way we’re moving they’ll probably assume we’re all on the same side. Buncha pals, us and them.”
She nodded a tight, formal jerk of the head. Detan was used to this – to sneaking and skulking and keeping your head down while your eyes were up – but she wasn’t, and he’d be ground-bound if she wasn’t behaving like an old pro at it. She kept her movements tight and clean, her eyes sharp and roving, searching, looking for the next spot to make a dash to or the next pair of eyes to slip away from. He was beginning to feel too big for his own body, clumsy and obvious.
“You all right?” she whispered.
He shook his head to clear it. “Right as rain in a monsoon. You’d make a damned fine footpad, you know.”
They dashed across a wide lane into another alley, serpentining their way down the slope of the city. They stood for a moment, stilling their hearts so that they could hear. No one was about. He felt silly being so paranoid. But then, it was usually when you felt in the clear that something rose out of the muck and bit you.
“Was one, once,” she murmured.
“You’re pulling my sail.”
“It’s true. I was born in the Brown Wash. There’s silver mining there, and a reedpalm paper factory, but that’s it. My parents weren’t lucky enough to be industry folk so I stole for food. Lots of the kids did it. It was bad, there.” She looked around at the mud-daub village that comprised the lowest level of Aransa. Half-made roofs lay open
to the empty sky, water pumps were hung with little painted symbols that meant they’d been pumped dry for now, try again later. Those few unfortunate souls that had further to go to make it to the safety of their homes moved with furtive steps that had nothing to do with tonight’s tension.
These were hard-bitten folk, wiry limbed and browned through to the bone by the sun. They had hunger’s cheekbones, sharp and cruel. He glanced Ripka’s way and caught her scowling at a poster on the wall of the alley calling for the downtrodden to vote for Thratia. They’d been seeing them everywhere the last five levels.
“What do they think she’ll do for them? Don’t they know she’s called Throatslitter for a reason?”
He shrugged. “That’s not how it works down here, Rip, you know that. They love her because they see her as having bucked the empire to come onto the Scorched and lead them to a better life. Better yet, she’s gone native in their eyes. You see any of the Valathean guard this far down? Nope, of course not, she doesn’t want her image mixed up with them down here. There’s too many of them for her to risk losing their support. And anyway, she could be called Commodore Babyspiker and as long as she had a plan to get food and water down here, they’d vote her in. Galtro have any plans like that?”
She set to chewing on her lip. “His idea of the downtrodden were the miners and their families.”
“Hah. The lucky and the pampered, in the eyes of these folk. Hush now, we’re getting closer.”
Down by the final wall between Aransa and the desert, the locals had made it home already. They reminded Detan of sand mice, tucked away in the shadow of their dens, hoping a preying eye wouldn’t look too close. Wouldn’t catch that glimmer of light between the crooked shutters.
They needn’t have worried, there wasn’t much call for a patrol this close to the Black Wash. It was night, sure, but few people were fool enough to risk a trek out there at any time of day. All it took was a rolled ankle or a bit of confusion, just enough to slow you down, and if the sun slunk up and caught you there wasn’t any coming back from it. You cooked, plain and simple. It was the central reason all of Aransa’s supplies came in via airships. No one wanted to risk a caravan out in that madness.
Steal the Sky Page 22