Steal the Sky

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  “For you. I damn near lost half my hand. Ladies will weep to hear of this tragedy.”

  “Weep because you didn’t lose the whole thing?”

  Despite his pain and his fear and his anger, Detan choked on a startled laugh and chocked Tibs in the arm – lighter than he usually would, but a good shove all the same.

  Tibs’s voice dropped low, sobered. “Better get a salve on that and wrap it up, though.”

  “And what apothik do you think will do me that favor?” Detan snapped, Bel’s wide, empty eyes eclipsing his thoughts like a spreading stain.

  “Don’t be a damned fool.”

  “I’ve been a damned fool. If I hadn’t–”

  “That’s not what we do.”

  “But–”

  Tibs stopped, half-turned real slow, and slapped Detan so hard across the face his eyes became reacquainted with those lovely little sparkly motes.

  “Pull yourself together, sirra. Now.”

  Detan staggered a step, shook his head to chase away the brightness. He looked down at his hand – not too bad, but it’d need attention soon if he wanted to keep infection clear. He looked up to the sky, saw little more than a bleak smudge of black against deeper navy where he thought the Larkspur should be. Could have just been a cloud, or a flock of birds.

  “Right,” he said, rubbing his jaw with his good hand. “Right. We need to–”

  “You there!”

  Detan spun around, nearly tangling his feet in the mess of the stall Tibs’s unheralded arrival had made. A ring of a half dozen or so men and women crowded around them, ruddy candles sheltered by dust-coated lantern glass held high. They carried a mishmash of weaponry – cooking pans, heavy bats meant for playing stickball. Despite the inelegance of their threat, Detan had no intention of taking them any less seriously.

  “Hullo!” he called out, stalling, stepping backward through the treacherous footing of the destroyed stall to put some distance between them. “Lovely night, isn’t it?”

  “Not from where I’m standing.” The taller of the women stepped forward, her shoulders broad as Detan’s arm was long, her eyes set in a permanent squint by the wrinkles spackled in tight around them. More worrisome than her squint, Detan noticed with mounting alarm, was the thickness of her fingers, the stubbed length of her nails. The subtle curve of hard muscle beneath her sleeve. “You two prepared to pay for the damage you’ve done?”

  “Uh, well…” From the way she twisted the grip of her frying pan, Detan held no illusions that she’d be sure he paid – one way or another. He patted his body down, fishing through pockets, seeking the grains of silver not-Ripka had given him. Nothing. He swallowed, fumbled some more, shot a frantic glance at Tibs. The withered bastard just shrugged.

  “You see,” Detan began, taking another step back, Tibs following him toward the thin wall which hemmed in the level’s edge. “It was quite the accident, and I’m afraid all our grains have, ah, fallen out of our pockets. I’m sure if you rooted around in the wreckage for a while you’ll find sufficient funds. Look!”

  He grabbed a half-snapped awning post and jimmied it upright. “A little sap glue will fix this right up – I-I have just the thing!”

  Frantic, he fumbled in his coat for the little pot of glue he’d used to construct the kite and felt nothing but a sticky puddle on the inside of his pocket, bits of broken clay floating within it. Tibs grabbed him by the upper arm and squeezed. “Sirra…”

  “What?” he hissed.

  “Enough!” the woman barked, and the mob rushed them.

  Detan let out a yelp of surprise as the market-dwellers vaulted over the wreckage, knocking aside anything that was in their way with their makeshift weapons.

  “There’s no need–” he said, but they were yelling some local charge and Tibs yanked back on his arm so hard he stumbled, fell backward against the low wall.

  It was lower than he remembered. The top of it smacked him square in the back of the thighs and he reeled, arms windmilling, top half leaning too far over the edge for him to regain his feet.

  Fear of falling surged through him, his recent perilous descent cutting-bright in his mind, memory of having the breath whipped from his lips and his limbs twisted by treacherous currents all too fresh. Pits below, but he’d rather face that frying pan than another fall through the empty dark.

  Tibs shoved his chest, and over he went.

  He landed flat on his back in a moldering heap, all the air whooshing out of him even though he was panting with panic. Tibs landed beside him, light as a cat, though his feet disappeared into the ground as if swallowed. Detan opened his mouth to swear or scream or just generally curse the world bloody, caught a whiff of the fetid pile all around them, and fell into a coughing fit.

  There was yelling above, angry and sharp but far away. Something thunked near his head – the frying pan? He rolled to get a closer look, morbid curiosity directing him now, but Tibs had his hands under his arms and yanked him to his feet, then dragged him off away from the compost pile that had been their soft landing.

  “I hate pits-cursed mushrooms,” Detan croaked when he could breathe without spasming again, when Tibs had herded him safely into some dense maze of alleys he hadn’t bothered mapping.

  “Yeah, well, they like you.” Tibs flicked something grey and slimy and cone-shaped off his shoulder. Detan shivered and flapped his coat like it were a pair of wings to shake the debris clean.

  “Probably picked up some freakish infection from that mess,” he grumbled, trying to peer at his skinned-opened palm in the low light but seeing little more than a dark, muddled mess.

  “Wasn’t nothing more noxious than you in that heap.”

  Detan laughed, the sound a little high, a little frantic.

  “What next?” Tibs asked, his voice soft but gravelly, grounding Detan’s mounting mania in an instant.

  What next, indeed. He scowled at his hand, thinking. He needed medical aid, the kind you pay for, and the grains that didn’t tumble out of their pockets in the fall were back in their rooms – no doubt watched by Thratia’s people. The flier was safely stashed with New Chum, but they couldn’t make that crossing until he was bandaged up.

  And the only apothik he’d known inclined to offer him any flavor of charity was, well… And Ripka sure as shit wasn’t able to offer him any assistance. She was getting ready to walk for a crime he’d done.

  He swallowed. Something the doppel had said, about her people’s remedies… He closed his eyes, pressing them tight enough to summon the motes. Remedies for a long-lived people, and the spicy-sweet aroma of her perfume, worn close but still detectable. A scent he’d encountered once before.

  Detan snapped his eyes open, grinned at Tibs. “It’s time to pay the doppel a house call, old chum.”

  Tibs gave the black-grey sky a surly eye. “Don’t much think the lady will be in residence at this particular juncture.”

  “Lucky for us it’s not her company we’re after. That woman’s Catari, I’m sure of it, and those folk keep their remedies close.”

  “More likely to poison yourself than heal that hand.”

  Detan bit his lips, muting himself for just a breath, then said slowly, “It’s not just the medicines. I’ll need a weapon, soon. Doppels like to keep the medium of their art close to hand, and I doubt she’ll be popping by home to collect her stash.”

  Tibs bristled all over like a rockcat sighting a coyote. “Bad idea.”

  “And would you rather have me running around with a sword or one of those ridiculous crossbows the Watch is so fond of? I’d be more likely to put your eye out than Thratia’s. And anyway, we’re going to need a way to get the doppel’s attention.”

  “Destroying half the city would do that, I grant you.”

  “Then we’re in agreement!” Detan raised his hands to clap and caught himself just in time with a grimace.

  “Small problem with your brilliant plan, sirra. I reckon you just happen to know where she lives now
, hm?”

  “We did get acquainted. Being complicit in arson together will do that to a pair.” He strode off, barreling ahead as if he knew where he was going through the nest of side streets, knowing only that he couldn’t stand still.

  “And just where might that be?” Tibs said, a shadow at his side, not bothering to correct his course. Knowing, just as Detan did, that he had to work it out for himself.

  “Fourth level – amongst the retirees and their lot. Can’t miss the place.”

  “Really.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Fourth level.”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “Gotta go up to get there. Back through the market.”

  Detan groaned. The sooner he could show Aransa his retreating backside, the better.

  Chapter 31

  At night, the miners’ quarter was quiet. These were hard working men and women, tired souls who spent their days laboring for the right of Aransa to exist, and when they went to bed at night little stirred them. Which was too bad, because Detan was mighty willing to do some stirring up.

  “Where to?” Tibs asked.

  “To the door of spice and vanilla.” He tipped his head toward a block of apartments which had a slight downcrust lean.

  The building was a smashed together collection of miniscule apartments meant to make it look like the city cared, like the empire looked after the well-being of the sel-sensitives who served it. They weren’t bad, Detan had to admit that much, but they weren’t near enough compensation for what the sensitives were put through. Not near enough at all.

  Lights were snuffed in all the windows, shutters left open to let in the cool of the desert night. Just one set of windows was sealed tight, the ones he was looking for. With a clenched jaw he stepped right up to the sun-bleached door and pounded on it. Once, twice, three times. Nothing but silence.

  “We’re in luck, the lady isn’t home,” Detan said.

  “But her neighbors are.” Tibal gestured with his chin to small faces peering down at them from the curtained windows. Little white eyes that flashed away like minnows in a pool from his sharp regard.

  “There won’t be trouble,” Detan said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Not really. But it sounds nice.”

  He’d seen floor plans like these before. They used them often enough in Hond Steading. Drawing from memory, he followed the wall down to where there should have been a split between this building and the next. The builders always said the narrow alley was for safety in case of fire, but really it was a repository for nightsoil and garbage. He froze, realizing he’d walked right past it to the next building.

  “Oh, that rockviper…”

  He spun around and walked back real slow this time, letting his fingertips brush over the face of the building until they tasted empty air.

  “Well, that’s unusual,” Tibs said.

  He stared down at his hand, buried up to the knuckles in what looked to be a rotted section of rock. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could feel the fingernail-thin veneer of selium laid over the alley’s entrance, could sense it extend all the way up to about twice his own height. It was starting to fade, now. Little tattered ribbons of it coming undone at the anchor points, revealing slivers of the garden behind the facade. He wondered if the neighbors had ever noticed. He doubted they’d have said anything if they did.

  “Lot of time and power went into this,” Detan said, unable to keep the warm tinge of admiration from his voice.

  He looked back at Tibs’s bruised face and his stomach clenched. He wanted to respect this woman, this creature who had strung them all along so fine and easy. But there was Tibs, his face a mess, and who knew what Ripka’s looked like now? Good people, both of them. The doppel should have thrown him to the vultures instead. Then at least they could have been pals one day. Not now. Not ever. Not after she’d flown off and left Ripka to rot.

  Gritting his teeth, he stepped through the sel membrane. It moved against him, sensing in him some sort of kinship neither man nor substance understood. Its touch was familiar, wanting. The caress of a lover too far gone to ever hold again.

  But then he was through, and all sense of intimacy vanished, as ephemeral as any real lover Detan’d ever held. Tibs followed, stifling a yawn, and Detan wondered if the doppel felt the same thing he did every time she made use of her creation. He shook the memory of her smile from his mind. Set his shoulders. Clenched his jaw.

  While Tibs set about picking the lock to the lady’s back door, Detan examined the alley. The doppel was clever, and that was beginning to itch at his sense of danger something fierce. She’d had the forethought to put up a real wall just two long steps in from the sel membrane, separating the place where her back door emptied into the alley from all the others.

  Through breaks in the crumbling mudbrick he could see that her neighbors had made good use of their alley, keeping it clean and neat. On the doppel’s side flowering succulents were planted up the dividing wall. They must have thought her a gentle old lady who just wanted this bit of land for her garden. He picked one of the plant’s carnelian blooms and tucked it into his buttonhole.

  Tibs opened the lock and stepped aside to let Detan pass first. Neither of them were proper fighting men, but Detan liked to imagine he could be handy with his fists and his knife if the need arose. Things seemed mighty needful now, so he freed the knife from his belt and stepped into the apartment.

  It was pitch black inside, and he strained his senses so hard he wondered if he could trust them. There was sel here, somewhere, tucked away and not moving. Detan cursed himself for not knowing nearly enough.

  He crept forward, hearing nothing but his boots whispering against the rug and his breath pumping in and out at an embarrassing rate. With the little bit of moonlight slipping in through the opened back door he could make out the usual trappings of a sparse living room. A wide table to step around, a hearth and kettle stand, a few chairs covered in quilts like his grandma had once made. A curtain in a doorway, separating this room from the sleeping room.

  Knowing he didn’t have the time to let his eyes adjust properly, he waved Tibs in and pointed at a brass lantern sitting in the middle of the table. He kept his gaze stuck on that curtained door, waiting for any movement, any sound, any sign at all of life lurking beyond. Straining his sel-sense to the edge, he could feel the sel in there, still and calm.

  Tibs got the lamp lit and Detan braced himself, knife held at the ready, for an angry doppel to come at them. After a while, Tibs chuckled into the tense silence. “I think the lady has other business to see to tonight. I doubt we’ll be seeing her again, now she has what she wants.” Tibs paused, glancing pointedly at the blade in Detan’s hand. “Best put that away, my eye’s getting anxious.”

  Detan let his shoulders slump. “I really hate this life-and-death nonsense, Tibs ole soul.”

  “I know it.”

  Still tense as a rockcat in a puddle, Detan motioned for Tibs to follow and crept toward the curtain. He swept it aside and thrust his arm through, knife first, fearing the screech of an angry woman. All he got was silence.

  “Welp, that was a whole lot of sneaking about for nothing,” he muttered.

  “Indeed.”

  The bedroom was empty of living things. Sparse as it was, he couldn’t see a single place big enough for a woman of any build to hide. A solid bed took up the center of the room, its linens finer than anything Detan’d seen in a long while. On the wall opposite the foot of the bed was a little table with a mirror and chair, cluttered over with all the strange accoutrements of womanhood. A drying line was hung across the back wall, the doppel’s clothes slung over it. No sign of medicines of any sort.

  He flipped open the lid of the trunk at the foot of the bed and grunted. Inside, folded with extreme care, were the clothes of a mining man. They’d been scrubbed, but blood was a hard thing to wash away.

  “Looks like we found the lass’s nest,” Tibs
said over his shoulder.

  “Let’s tear the place apart, see what we can find.”

  For the next full mark Detan and Tibs put their backs to the task. Truth was, there just wasn’t that much to search through. He found a slim folder in the bottom of the trunk, tied up with a ribbon, and sat down on the vanity stool to pore through it. There were mostly letters of a family nature, and he caught the name of one of the dead boys many times. Her son, Kel.

  In the back of it all, he discovered sketches of a man’s face done in an unpracticed hand. As he flipped through them, they grew in competency, until he could see all the lines of the man’s face clear as his own; lifelike enough that Detan half expected him to turn his head and tell him to sod off and mind his own business. The man looked older than the seventeen monsoons stated in the file he had pulled. Detan frowned, remembering the feel of that report – strange dents in the paper. Had it been altered, too? Why bother?

  “Anything of import?” Tibs asked, breaking a silence that had snuck up on them both.

  Detan jumped a little and shook his head. “Just what we expected. This doppel of ours is out for revenge. This has gotta be her son, one of the boys that died in that line accident.” He held the picture up for him to see. Tibs took it, his worn face wrinkling as he examined it.

  “She’s very good.”

  “She practiced. A lot. I think she’s been planning this a long time.”

  “Seems that way. That trick with the alley wall alone must have taken her a good full pass of the seasons to plan.”

  “She’s gotten so much stronger through practice, all on her own. Look at these.” Detan fanned the progression of faces out on the vanity. “Even just drawing with charcoal, not sel.”

  “It’s too bad she’s done it to become a murderer.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  “No, not really.”

  Detan bowed his head and ran his fingers through his hair. All that talent. All that raw determination, and if Thratia had her way she was going to be gobbled right up by the empire. Oh, she’d make her go through the motions of walking the Black all right, just to show the people that she could, but there’d be someone out on the ridge waiting for her. Waiting to take her to Valathea.