Steal the Sky

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  Trembling shook his voice. “Two. You said two.” Please let her death be worth more than that.

  “Ah, yes. The second, is so that you will understand that I am quite serious.”

  She waved a hand and her militia spread out, making way for poor Tibs to be brought forward. His eyes were tired, bloodshot, and he was sporting a rather fresh bruise on his right temple, but otherwise he was looking all right.

  All right for a man with his wrists and ankles bound up in rope. No nice, soft leather for Tibs. Detan grimaced. Of course, Thratia wouldn’t want rope to have left a mark on the lady’s skin.

  Tibs glanced at Bel, pressed his lips together, and nodded to himself. When he looked at Detan, his expression was smooth as obsidian, and revealed just as much.

  “Hullo, sirra.”

  “Hey, Tibs.” He forced his tone light, forced his eyes away from the spreading pool. “What’s with the jewelry?”

  “I need to make something clear.” Thratia pushed past Detan, smearing Bel’s blood against his side. He turned to watch her, caught a subtle shift in her posture, a press of the side of her hand against her thigh. Against her pocket. He flicked his gaze away before she could catch him watching. He concentrated on that movement, on the position of her hand. Reached instinctively as she strode past him once more, pacing.

  She was wound up so tight she failed to notice his fingers dipping into her pocket. A piece of metal. A slip of paper. Nothing obvious, nothing of use to him now. He shoved his pilfered gains into his own pocket. Tibs caught his eye. He was clearly unamused.

  Thratia walked right up to not-Ripka and grabbed her throat in one hand. Detan’s stomach threatened to give up the fight. The doppel’s spine must have been made of stronger stone than his, because her scowl only got deeper. She didn’t even flinch.

  “Now, a woman was seen lurking about the Hub, and my men have attested that a woman looking remarkably like the watch captain of this fine city gave them a bit of a scuffle right before the flames took light.”

  “Hold on now, warden.” Detan shoved his hand in the air to get everyone’s attention, his mind working double-time to concoct a likely story. “I mean no disrespect to your fine deductive reasoning. In fact, I am most impressed by your method of investigation. But it must be said that this Ripka, that is to say, the Ripka, was with me the whole time all these goings-on were going on. And we were… ah… at the watch-station.” He bit his tongue, cursing himself for rambling like a buffoon while Bel Grandon lay cooling.

  “Here’s the deal, Honding.” Thratia rounded on him, fast enough to make him flinch back in anticipation of another scorpion-quick strike. She just smirked. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe you and the good watch captain were having a quaint little tea while the doppel and another accomplice were traipsing about the Hub spreading fire in their wake. But that’s not how this works. You know that. Rumors are spreading, and someone’s going to have walk the Black for this.”

  Detan’s fists clenched at his sides. “Then it should be the doppel.”

  “Could be, but it doesn’t rightly matter, does it? The people just need to see someone punished, doesn’t matter who it is. Regardless, our watch captain here has had a few unsavory rumors pop up about her. Isn’t that right, captain?”

  The doppel’s eyes widened in real surprise. Whatever rumors had been spreading about the real deal, she’d missed them. Detan clenched his jaw, hoping she wasn’t so rattled her acting would suffer.

  She lifted her chin. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Thratia dropped her hand, fingers coming dangerously close to brushing not-Ripka’s selium-constructed freckles. “Don’t you know, my dear? Your aptitude has been noticed. And whispered about. Some seem to think you’re hiding a selium sensitivity.”

  “To the pits with you, Thratia, you know I’m no sensitive.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me, lass. Matters to them.” Thratia gestured toward the light-speckled expanse of the city below.

  “I won’t let you take her.” Detan hadn’t the slightest idea how he was going to manage that, and from the smile Thratia gave him she knew it, too. But, pits below, he couldn’t let her walk the Black. Or worse, have it discovered what she really was. Where was Ripka? If the real deal made an appearance before Thratia could trot the doppel out across the sands, then it’d be off to the whitecoats with her. He suppressed a shiver.

  Thratia crossed to him, stood close enough he could reach out and jab her straight in those hateful little eyes if his hands weren’t restrained. “Thought you might say that,” she said. “I don’t want any direct trouble with you. I don’t want Honding blood on my hands – so I’m going to give you a choice. You either give me Ripka, or Tibal.”

  “Tibs?” He choked on the name, cleared his throat with a rough hack. “Why?”

  “Wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to convince people it was Tibal running around with the watch captain in your place. Whichever one you give me, you’ll have until morning. Bring me the doppel, and I can be lenient. If not, someone’s dying, and you choose who.”

  Detan dared to lean forward, to whisper against her ear. “You’re a monster, commodore.”

  She patted him on the cheek, the dismissive affection of a master to its mongrel. “You already knew that, and you toyed with me anyway.”

  “It’s all right,” not-Ripka said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Detan rasped.

  The door to the dock burst inward. The genuine watch captain came striding through, dressed head to toe in mourning black, her cheek puckered with a mighty bruise and a determined scowl set to her feldspar lips.

  And at her side strolled a native Valathean, tall and dark as night, her lean silhouette cut by the shape of her long, pure, white coat.

  Chapter 29

  Detan’s heart leapt straight into his throat and stayed there, pounding away so hard he feared he’d vomit. Sweat slicked his back, his arms, his brow – reaching straight through his threadworn clothes and making him slippery in the grip of the men who held him. He opened his mouth to breathe, to suck down air to slow the dizzy swirl of his mind, but he just gasped like a fish out of water.

  A whitecoat. Here. Right-in-fucking-front-of-him.

  She hadn’t seen him yet, her annoyed face was pointed straight at Thratia.

  “This woman,” the whitecoat said, flicking her wrist toward Ripka, “claims that she has proof of your involvement in a smuggling operation.”

  Ripka’s shoulders shot back, straightening as she squared her body for a verbal fight. He could guess what she was thinking – guess she was gearing herself up to throw Thratia beneath the heel of her Valathean masters. Couldn’t she hear the vague amusement tingeing the whitecoat’s voice?

  Detan heard. He’d grown used to judging the moods of those monsters. His life had depended upon it, once.

  Thratia pursed her lips, gave Ripka a dragging look-over, nodded to herself, then turned back to the doppel and laid one firm, callused hand against her cheek. The doppel’s skin shimmered. A finger poke she could handle – but a whole palm? Even with her control, Detan knew she hadn’t stood a chance keeping it all smooth.

  “Ah. So there you are.”

  Rage eclipsed the real Ripka’s face, but it wasn’t nearly as terrible as the sudden delight that fell like a spring rain across the whitecoat’s smooth features. The watch captain’s accusations all but forgotten, the whitecoat darted forward and grasped the doppel’s chin between her fingers, twisting it this way and that as she clucked her tongue and nodded approvingly.

  “Hmm, yes, such a fine specimen. Marvelous work, Thratia. Wherever did you find the thing?”

  “Would you believe she came striding through my front door?”

  The whitecoat barked a laugh. “Delightful. Of course she would. Her disguise is nearly perfect. If I looked the part of the watch captain so clearly I daresay I’d go anywhere I pleased.” She flashed a smile. “But, of course, I have my own flavor o
f authority.”

  “Indeed,” Thratia drawled, already bored with the whitecoat’s delight.

  Detan forced himself to look away from the nightmare apparition chatting amiably just a few meager strides from him. He caught Tibs’s eye, saw the hard press of his lips and the jutting out of the tendons around his jaw. Couldn’t read a thing in that – angry or just plain scared were a mite hard to tell apart when a man’s features were already made of rock.

  “I was just about to condemn her to walking the Black,” Thratia said while Detan tore his gaze away from Tibs and searched the docks, angling for any way out.

  “What in the blue beyond would make you want to do that?” the whitecoat asked.

  “Seems she set fire to the Hub.”

  “The line?” her voice rasped, hinting at panic.

  “Fine. My men had orders to secure it straight away should anything go wrong. Lost a whole lot of contained selium, though. Don’t have the details yet but it’ll push production back months.”

  “A fire, in the Hub?” Ripka said and took a step forward, toward the doppel. Thratia’s guards found reason to get real cozy on her heels.

  “Contained,” Thratia said. “None of your concern.”

  Her fists clenched, but her head stayed high. “Lady Callia,” she said, and the whitecoat’s head turned just a fraction in her direction. “I understand that discovering the doppel is exciting. However, I have witness testimony that–”

  “Oh hush, girl.” Callia flicked her fingers in Ripka’s direction and wiggled them. “No point in continuing this little dance any longer. Although I would just love to hear who your witness is.”

  “I don’t understand–”

  “Thratia,” Callia interrupted, “was the doppel wearing the watch captain’s face during this little arson?”

  “She was.”

  “Then throw the real deal to the Black, and no one will have to know we ever found the creature.”

  “Wait just a–” Ripka strode forward, reaching for her cudgel, and was surrounded. Constraining hands closed on her from all sides. Detan grimaced, turning his gaze away in shame as she was pulled back, wrists pinioned, divested of all her weapons even as a rag was tied round her mouth.

  “Very well,” Thratia said, but the words sounded hollow to Detan, as if coming from a great depth. The hands around his own arms loosened, a few of his guards shuffled away to deal with the greater threat – the real watch captain. Detan held no illusions on where he stood, his fighting ability was as threatening as a one-winged pigeon. The urge to run swelled within him, crested and broke against the hard shield of his shame.

  He couldn’t bolt. Couldn’t just leave the doppel to the fate that made his own guts roil. Couldn’t leave Ripka to walk the Black for a crime in his ragged hands.

  “But what,” Thratia just kept on talking, as if this were all a mild amusement, a fun little puzzle for her and her white-coated friend to figure out, “are we going to do about the Honding lad?”

  He watched in slow-motion horror as the whitecoat’s back went rigid, her head snapping back as if someone had dealt her a mighty slap. Slowly, as if afraid he would spook and vanish if she moved too hastily, Callia turned.

  There was such hunger in her eyes.

  Detan froze. Rooted. Worthless.

  At first he did not understand what he was seeing. Callia lurched forward, staggering, bending at the waist, her mouth parting wide as she let out an oomph of surprise. People called out, the words meaningless beneath the buzzing inferno of his pulse in his ears, but he understood.

  The doppel had wrenched her hands free, had punched Callia in the kidney, and was dancing, twisting, threading her way through. Toward the edge of the dock. Toward the Larkspur.

  Thratia barked orders, reached for her knife but the doppel was too quick, moving like liquid, throwing up gleaming flares of sel to blind and distract. Little sparklers. Party favors. The guards’ hesitation betrayed them, torn between chasing the escaping creature and holding on to what they had.

  Wood began to groan. Not-Ripka had decided for them.

  The Larkspur jerked against its bonds, rocking, the sturdy ropes that tied it down hissing as some tore, creaking as they strained. The guards swarmed to the ropes, Thratia demanding her ship secure, demanding no one escape.

  Detan felt the mass of selium in the ship’s belly. Felt the doppel grab and shove it, heave it back and forth, working strain and pressure deep into the wooded ties that held it.

  He shut his senses down, too afraid of what he’d do given the right impetus, and elbowed his single captor square in the ribs. One tie gave away. Two, three, the ship gaining freedom in rapid succession. He didn’t see it happen, but he knew the doppel must have jumped because he saw her land, hard and sprawling, barely folding herself into a roll just in time on the gleaming waxed deck of the ship.

  She sat on the middle of the deck, legs splayed before her, hands holding her upright, face so set and focused he half expected her to will the whole thing into disappearing.

  The Larkspur lurched, its final ties snapping. Detan twisted free of a hand grabbing at his elbow, caught sight of Tibs, caught sight of a familiar length of braided silk. An option.

  Saw, from the corner of his eye, rising like a leviathan, the slender whitecoat.

  Ripka’s shout raked at him, and he caught her eye, frantic, her whole body straining against the multitude of hands that held her. Couldn’t hear what she said – couldn’t hear what anyone was saying – but he knew, somehow, she was calling for help.

  The sight of that rope, dangling, pulled at him.

  “I won’t let you walk!” he screamed, not knowing if she heard.

  Roaring with effort, he pumped his legs harder than he ever had in his life, barreled straight into Tibs, clutched him tight enough to bruise bone, and leapt.

  The Larkspur broke free, sliding out into the night, splinters raining down all around it. Detan strained for the deck, willed himself and Tibs to fly straight as arrows.

  And missed.

  Chapter 30

  Detan snapped a hand out, grabbed the rope and screeched to wake the dead as he slid down it, skin burning and tearing and his grip growing slick with the lubrication of his own blood. Tibs snatched at it, their combined weight jarred him so hard he felt his shoulder pop, but not give. Not yet, anyway.

  The doppel’s head appeared above the rail, wearing Ripka’s face still but the eyes so wide she was near unrecognizable.

  “Up! Pull us the fuck up!” he screamed above the wind whipping in his ears, stealing his breath, not knowing if he could throw his fear-choked voice far enough to reach her.

  Her mouth moved, yelling something back he couldn’t hear, and the Larkspur began to descend. Ribbons of pearlescent sel spun out from the side of the ship, released through jettison tubes under the doppel’s command. They streaked the sky, but huddled close to the Larkspur, still under not-Ripka’s sphere of control.

  Tibs squawked something unintelligible as the ship dropped, the rope swinging in crazy, twisting arcs as its backside slewed around. Detan’s grip strained, burned. His hand felt bathed in fire but there was little he could do save keep holding on. To switch hands was to drop Tibs.

  If he dropped Tibs, Detan wouldn’t be but a heartbeat behind him in the plunge.

  He looked down, stomach threatening an untimely revolt as they swung and swung and swung, saw she was dropping the ship down low over the market. Saw a neat little row of faded brown awnings nearly a man’s length below.

  His fingers began to spasm, and he thought of his hand only as an extension of his will, a collection of muscle and tendon and bone beholden to his desires. He gritted his teeth, clenched every last measly muscle in his body, and fell anyway.

  Tibs held on for a scant breath longer, the jerk of his stationary body against Detan’s descending soon-to-be-corpse knocking them apart. Detan went cartwheeling, screaming out because there didn’t seem much else he could do,
and crashed side-first into a thick, stinking stretch of canvas.

  Something snapped. Bone or wood, he couldn’t tell, but he heard the crack of breaking and the canvas twisted beneath him, dumped him in a tangled heap of moldy linen and shattered pottery.

  He lay still a moment, gathering his breath, mentally going through a checklist of his hurts. Bruises and scratches, mostly, he decided as he eased himself upright. Revised his opinion as he pressed his hands to the rubble-strewn ground to heave himself up.

  And his hand skinned raw, of course.

  Clenching his jaw tight so that he wouldn’t scream, he cradled his rope-mangled palm against his stomach and staggered forward, huffing for breath as bright motes danced at the corners of his eyes.

  “Tibs!” he called out, forcing his bruised legs to carry him down the row of shop stalls, further along the direction the Larkspur had been traveling. He had to be nearby. Had to be.

  A soft groan drew him like a lure to a caved-in heap of canvas. Tibs’s awning had bowed inward, cradling him like a sling, the tent poles holding it upright half-cracked and showing their pale innards to the world.

  “Tibs!” Detan scrambled over, untangled the heap and found Tibs flat on his back, blinking up at him with wide, bleary eyes.

  “Just winded,” he rasped as Detan gave him his good hand to help him gain his feet. Shouts echoed somewhere in the market, drawing closer.

  “Best be on our way,” Detan said, brushing dust off Tibs’s coat with one hand while he glanced over his shoulder toward the shouting. “Unless you’ve got the grain to pay for a whole potter’s shed worth of rubble.”

  “’Fraid not.” Tibs rubbed the back of his head with a hand and pulled it away, staring at both of his palms side by side. One was just a touch red, the other perfectly hale. “Lucky, that,” he muttered.