Steal the Sky

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  He poked his head around a corner to get a good look at the gate and saw no one there, as expected. There wasn’t even a lock on it. The latch was a thick bit of timber, rough and splintered from lack of use or care. A fan of black dust spread out from underneath it, the desert seeping in. The gate rattled in its catch, keeping the stiff desert wind out. There was no point in locking it – no sane soul wanted out there.

  “Here we are then.” He strode out into the empty street, confident as a cockerel, and dragged up the battered beam. It creaked a protest from rusted hinges, but still it lifted free. He laid his palm against the door and pushed. Ripka’s eyes went wide, a little gasp escaping her.

  “You ever been down on the Wash?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “There’s no reason for it. We make the violent criminals walk it, of course, but that’s further down the wall, where the guardhouse is. I never dreamed it was so… reflective, up close.”

  Detan squinted out at the black sands. A few of the cleaved faces gave off a fey shimmer, catching what little moonlight there was while they waited for the bright of the stars to find them. Detan gave a soft whistle and adjusted the brim of his hat down over his eyes.

  “Looks dangerous, out there. But we’ll be fine just so long as we return before the sun rises, eh? And walk soft now, some of those grains are sharp enough to cut straight into your boots.”

  Detan stepped out into the Black Wash and paused, allowing his eyes to adjust to the lack of lantern light. Outside of the city’s great wall, the sands of Aransa were gathered in silence. Beauty, he had always felt, was best observed in an aura of quietude, and the Black Wash was no exception. A killing field come every dawn, it was lustrous and silk-soft under the gentler stroke of red moonlight.

  Beneath the worn soles of his shoes, he could feel the radiant heat, permeating soft leather and easing his tired joints. Though the sun had slipped past its cruelest angle and given them up to the dark, the sands remembered the brightness of day. Each bituminous grain held on to the memory of the sun, and the threat of the coming dawn. If he stood in one place too long, the heat began to grow uncomfortable.

  “It’s so quiet out here,” she said.

  Detan glanced back at the city lights sloped up into the night. “Aransa isn’t exactly bustling at the present, captain.”

  Whatever awe she felt as she gazed about the place, saucer-eyed and open-lipped, retreated as she followed his glance back toward the city. He knew what she’d be seeing. After all, hers were eyes that cared for that which they regarded. While he saw the light, she’d see the shutters. Where he listened to the quietude of the gently sleeping, she’d hear the vacuous silence of the frightened; the cowering.

  Her spine stiffened like steel was shot through it, her jaw came up and straightened. She tucked hair behind her ear and strode sure-footed across the sands toward the Smokestack. He let her lead.

  Ripka walked on the sands like she owned them, like she was born to them. Brown Wash girl like her, he supposed she was. Wasn’t much rock in the Brown bigger than a thumbnail, so she had to be used to unsteady footing. Good quality in a thief. Bad quality in a watcher – those had to be rigid, immovable.

  “How’d you come by it?” he asked.

  They were getting close now, their bodies swallowed up in the shadow of the Smokestack, so that when she turned her head to look at him all he could make out were white eyes and teeth.

  “Come by what?”

  “Your blues, captain. What’s a Brown Wash girl doing in uniform?”

  She turned back to the path, and he figured she was set on ignoring him, which was fair enough. Detan shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to think too hard about just what he was doing out here, helping a woman of the law break it. Didn’t seem right, working with a blue out of the goodness of his heart.

  He grunted at the dark. Too many open ends. For once, he was getting sick of options.

  They trudged on, with each step the gentle radiant heat of the sands growing until he caught himself shifting his weight to his toes to give his heels a break, then switching when he felt blisters begin there, the pain tangy and sharp. His already sore toes cracked against something hard and unyielding and he stumbled. Ripka grabbed his shoulder, keeping him upright, and they tangled as he struggled to regain his balance.

  “What in the pits was that?” He glared at the sand as if it owed him answers, and nearly lost his lunch as he got a response.

  A desiccated corpse lay sprawled across the glittering sands, leathered lips curled away to reveal a grimace of half-rotted teeth in the skull Detan’d stubbed his toe on. The shrunken skin around its gaping eye sockets gleamed in the faint moonlight, and for just a breath Detan thought the corpse had died weeping. But, no, he realized. By the time this body laid down to die there wasn’t any moisture left in it. The glaze frozen on its cheekbones now was the dribble of its eye fluid, boiled over in mimicry of tears.

  The corpse’s arms were outstretched, delicate finger bones scattered like fallen petals, gleaming white against the black sand. Whoever they’d been, they’d been reaching toward the Ridge when they’d fallen – perhaps crawling over the bright shards, each desperate lurch digging the bite of a thousand tiny knives deeper and deeper.

  “Black skies,” he whispered.

  “The walk’s meant to kill you,” Ripka snapped, a wiry defensiveness ratcheting up her voice. “Nothing pretty about it.”

  A whip of wind tore past them, rattling the exposed bones, and he shivered, shoving his hands in his pockets as he hurried on, quick to leave the nightmarish scene behind. The sooner he could escape Aransa, the better.

  Something long and hard skittered across his foot. Detan jumped back with an undignified yelp, kicking a hand-shaped silhouette high into the air. The insectile creature hissed at the night, the sound raking thorns over Detan’s skin.

  Ripka laughed, the sound a little manic. “It’s just a spider.”

  “Blasted thing is bigger than any spider has a right to be,” he growled, skirting the approximate area the abomination might have landed in. Still laughing, Ripka turned and swung down with her cudgel – once, twice, a meaty crack-thump following an enraged hiss. Detan took a hesitant step forward, peering into the dark.

  “It’s dead,” she announced as she slipped the cudgel back into her belt and pinned him with a sideways glance. “Though I am suddenly concerned that you volunteered to help me.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, breathed too deep and starting coughing on dusty air. She thumped him on the back until he regained himself. For a few hesitant breaths he stood, hunched over, palms on his kneecaps to steady himself. Ripka watched him, real concern stitching her pale brows together.

  Concern. For him. Detan forced a rueful little smile, and relief flooded her features. She punched him on the shoulder, light and playful, and he went ahead and pretended it hurt.

  Maybe some options weren’t so bad after all.

  Chapter 26

  After they’d walked long enough for the russet light of the moon to drift near its apex, the sands gave way to grey gravel pock-marked with reddened boulders. Bad climbing ground, but the moon was bright and the way was clear.

  Detan picked a likely path and then watched Ripka take it in. It was funny, he’d never noticed the way she looked at things before. He’d only ever given mind to the way she looked at him. Usually with exasperation and a hint of disgust.

  When the doppel had been parading her face about, it’d usually wrinkle with amusement at a joke he just wasn’t privy to. Now her lips pressed together and her nostrils flared. She reached out to touch the problem at hand, picked her own likely path and found her handhold. Tested it. Climbed.

  Detan followed.

  Three heights of a man up the side of the Smokestack Ripka disappeared over a ledge. He dragged himself onward, and nearly lost his hold when her arm reached over the side, hand open wide to grab his. He took it, hoping she couldn’t feel the tr
emble in his limbs, and allowed himself to be hauled up onto the narrow ledge.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “Didn’t expect the help.” He brushed filth from his hands. “Startled me, was all.”

  “We’re partners in this.” Even as she spoke she turned her back to him, examining the next leg of their climb. Partners, indeed.

  “Used to doing things my own self,” he muttered.

  Ripka glanced over her shoulder at him, brows raised. “Don’t you usually work with Tibal?”

  “Sure, but Tibs has usually got his own end to handle, you understand.”

  In the dark the whites of her eyes flashed as she rolled them and he smirked, pleased with himself. It was one thing getting the goat of Tibs, quite another to rustle the calm of an honest-to-sky woman of the law.

  The doppel parading as Ripka had given him a false sense of familiarity with her. He found himself wanting to make remarks she wouldn’t get. Point out things that probably didn’t matter a whit to her. Make cracks about ropes and chairs and rather nice bags. It was difficult, come to think of it, to separate out what was the original article from the interpretation.

  As they rested, easing out the soreness in their fingers from the climb, he decided to bridge this gap of knowledge. “You never did tell me why you donned the blues.”

  She hesitated, glancing back to judge his expression, and said, “Don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

  “Thratia finds me rollicking about with you and I’m a dead man, so I think I at least got a right to know a bit about you. At the very least you owe me just why in the pits Galtro’s death matters so much to you.”

  “What makes you think his death is rankling me any more than any other good man’s death would? I got a job to do in this city, Honding, something I’m aware you’re not particularly familiar with but, try to understand, it’s my duty.”

  “Easy, captain. You don’t know spit from salt when it comes to me and my own sense of duty, but I’m sure I’ve got my eye in when it comes to yours. Big city like this one has gotta have men of all sort, good and bad, getting murdered on the regular and I don’t see you getting yourself all dressed up like a damned shadow to steal evidence over those. May not have been you in the flesh telling me Galtro was your man for warden, but I know your actress played it true, eh? He mattered to you, whether you care to admit it or not. Wouldn’t be out here risking your sun-slapped ass with me if you didn’t. Your better half said he’d been a mentor, that true?”

  She stood with her arms folded, though her hands ended in gnarled fists. “True enough. He got me hired as a watcher. Satisfied?”

  “Seems I never am, but that will do for an answer.”

  “Oh wonderful. Now maybe we can move on? Sun’s only been down two marks but I’d like to make quick work of this if at all possible. Unless you fancy getting stuck out on the Black Wash come the day?”

  “After you, captain.”

  By the time they dragged themselves onto the comfortably flattened plateau which housed the Hub, Detan was breathing through his mouth and nose all at once to hide his panting. Ripka crept ahead of him, her chest heaving at an annoyingly calm rate and not but a few strands of hair flown loose from her braid. He was beginning to hate her.

  They eased out onto a ledge of rock just behind the squat structure, and side by side they scorpion-crawled to the edge to see over. Below, the Hub was shrouded in night. The feeder pipelines connecting to the central containment chamber lay limp and dormant, lacking the familiar hum of an active selium mine. A few shadowed figures moved in clockwork circles around the building, and though their features were obscured by the dark there was no need to guess at their purpose.

  “Not much of a guard,” he said.

  Ripka shrugged. “What’d you expect? She’s confident, and she’s got the ferry shut down. Who would bother crossing the sands out here for nothing, anyway? There’s no work to be done. Look at the lines, they’re flat as man’s chest.”

  “Never seen a man gifted in the bosom?”

  She cast him a sideways smile. “I’ve endeavored not to make that particular moment part of my daily vernacular.”

  “Wise.” He gave her the sagest nod he could muster.

  “Indeed. You see a way in?”

  “There are only two guards.”

  He heard her inhale, harsh and through the teeth. “I’d rather not harm anyone, even Thratia’s brutes.”

  “Well good, because my proposed means of ingress is entirely peaceable. I can’t imagine what you were thinking my intentions were, but I assure you that in pointing out the paucity of guards I only meant to illustrate that it would be simpler for us to gain entry unnoticed.”

  “Will you get on with it?”

  “Fine.” He sighed. “Follow me.”

  The way down the small ridge was treacherous, but they made it without any misstep too loud or too injurious. Twice Ripka needled him for information regarding his knowledge of the working of a standard Hub layout, and twice he brushed it aside as knowledge most ex-sel workers were slow in forgetting. He was beginning to grow weary of having to lie to her, which was a first.

  Alongside the limp arm of one of the feeder pipelines, he halted her with an extended hand and crouched to indicate she should follow suit. Hunkered down beside the deflated sheath of leather, he watched the second guardsman wander by little more than one flying leap away.

  Detan grinned like an idiot at his own good luck and solid memory. When the guard moved out of sight, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her after him as he dashed for a portal so well shrouded in the curve of the building that he couldn’t even see it until he was upon it, though he knew what to look for.

  He shoved his hand in the handle cubby and felt for the four depressions in which his fingers would fit. Saying a little prayer to the skies and the pits, he pressed down the clockworked buttons in the pattern that would have gained him admittance to the same door at a different Hub back home. The cubby shivered as the mechanism released, and with a gentle nudge the door swung inward. They rushed after it and closed it tight behind. Detan lay for a moment with his back against the door, blessing the Valathean Empire for exchanging security for ease of production.

  “How’d you know the code?” she demanded.

  “Easy, that. The empire makes all Hubs everywhere the same. Cheapens production, and they don’t worry about security too much because the kind of person who would have the tapcode for one Hub shouldn’t have any reason to be denied the tapcode for another. Simple.”

  She pressed her lips together and placed her hands on her hips. “How’d you come to know it?”

  “You already forgetting I worked the line once?”

  Even in the faint light of stars filtering into the hallway, he could make out the flush on her cheeks. “I heard you went to the line when your skills as a diviner failed, and then again you shirked the line when your sel-sense dried up altogether.”

  “I didn’t shirk a damned thing.”

  He turned from her before he could see her face and stared straight down the hall, into the heart of the Hub. The cloth of her shirt rustled as she shifted, and her long hair hissed over the smooth material. The sound made him grind his teeth and revise his earlier opinion of her competence as a footpad. Didn’t she know smooth material had a sheen that stood out? Didn’t she know leather creaked and hair got in your eyes right when you didn’t want it to?

  Didn’t she know he didn’t shirk anything at all?

  “Which way?” she whispered and he blinked, wondering just how long he’d been standing there glaring down the empty dark.

  “You want the records room, lady, it’s straight on down this hall and should be the second door on the left.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “I’m coming. I’m just making sure this is still what you want. You get caught in there, you’re caught with your hands in it. Understand?”

  She nodded, and he noted t
he lines about her eyes and the sharp bow of her lips. Not so soft after all, was she? He breathed out so hard his shoulders slumped and took the lead. He’d gotten his hands in this mess up to the elbows, and whether she pissed him off or not he had to see it through. Ripka might be inexperienced in shadow dealings, but she was no stranger to determination, or hard work.

  So far as he could tell, there wasn’t a soul alive save the two of them in the whole of the Hub. It was so damnably quiet his own heartbeat deafened him and Ripka’s steps clodded his concentration into mush. She might be light as a feather over sand, but the girl just wasn’t used to walking on steel.

  Funny that, how when there’s nothing worth hearing you hear every cursed little thing. If there were a dozen guards rushing down on him he wouldn’t hear them above his own arterial flutter.

  The records room door was ajar, Thratia’s hubris showing through bright and clear. Clever commodore she was, but sometimes the head couldn’t see the feet for how fat its middle had gotten. Or something like that. He’d have to ask Tibs how that phrase went to get it straight again.

  He nudged the door open just a bit more and peeked inside. The reek of the dead assaulted his nostrils, pungent and cloying. The battlefield stench of spilt bowel and coppery blood congealed with the altogether too mundane scent of moldering paper and wet wood. Lucky for them both, someone had had the decency to haul the bodies off, so the scent was fading. Still, the records room was tucked in the heart of the Hub and there wasn’t a window in sight. It would be a good long while before the scent worked its way clean. Sometimes it never did.

  He took a pathetic, guttering candle from the hallway sconce and went in. The bodies may have been cleared out, but the stains they left told the tale clear enough. One black puddle up toward the door, another further down by the shelving, and a deeper smear between the floor and the wall where a man had sat down to become a corpse. Whatever weapons had been scattered about had been taken with the bodies. By laying Ripka’s description of the scene over what he saw, he could work out well enough what had gone on. And there were the miner’s boot prints, looking like a ghost had traipsed right through the whole mess and out into the hall beyond.