With Thratia so close, he could imagine she thought him dangerous. Which was nonsense, of course. Aella had his sel-sense crushed good and proper, and any attempt at physical resistance would get him quite literally crushed by Thratia. Still, it was good to be given the courtesy of being assumed a threat.
Aella piloted the flier, but not through any sel-manipulation. She kept him cut off, and he assumed that meant she was cut off too. She piloted it in the usual way, with fan and rudder and sail, her young face stern with concentration. Not for the first time he wondered just what, exactly, all these deviant sensitives were being trained for. Whatever it was, he wanted no part of it.
New Chum was kept from him, clustered up toward the front of the dinghy where he could give directions to Aella. Which was a real frustration, because Detan would much rather be trading glances with that rascal than Thratia. Under New Chum’s guidance, it wasn’t long until it became clear to all aboard they were heading straight for the Smokestack. Detan grinned.
“My men have been all over the Hub and the baths,” Thratia said. “You’re telling me she hid the damned thing there anyway? How?”
New Chum turned to her, gave a stiff bow from the waist. “My apologies, warden, but there are other places on the Fireline beside the baths and Hub.”
Callia chuckled, tried to stop it and ended up snorting. “Damn clever for a doppel.”
“Damn clever in general,” Detan snapped before he could stop himself. “She’s not a creature, Callia. Unlike your lustrous self.”
Callia looked at him, slope-browed and bored. Like a rockcat who’d been insulted by a cockroach. Why would she care what he thought of her? Far as she was concerned, he was a creature, too. She turned away, dismissing him with her back. Detan sighed and tried to catch New Chum’s eye, but the dour little man wasn’t having any of it.
He’d never been so ignored in all his life.
Much to his relief, Aella brought the dinghy up at a sharp angle, making everyone scramble for a handhold, and crested the conical ring of the Smokestack’s mouth. They hovered there a moment while Aella listened to New Chum give her directions to land. Detan strained forward, eager to see whatever Tibs had waiting for them.
It wasn’t much. The flat bed of the firemount’s plug was dusted over with fine ash, a few black rocks poking their thumbs up here and there. The great pipe mouths that fed into the lines draped over the sides of the cone, boring deep into the grey plug. Most had been burned to a crisp, leaving little more than smoldering heaps of rubble to block the bore mouths, but one or two were still operational. Detan shivered.
That was one job sensitives were too valued to be assigned. Diviners would find the pockets, sure, but it would be plain old laborers who cut through the crust with pick-axes and diamond-edged shovels, hoping they’d find the pocket before they found the magma. Hoping that when they did find the pocket it didn’t blow itself out and fling them all from the top of the firemount.
Mine masters didn’t mind a blowout. It made it easier to anchor the mouth of the pipeline. And anyway, selium pockets never ran dry so long as the firemount had any kick to it.
Detan allowed himself a conciliatory smile. It looked like they had experienced some trouble getting the lines set up. While the pipelines were draped over the conical ridge at regular intervals, there was one glaringly bald spot. He could only hope no one had died to find out that pocket wouldn’t give.
The craft rocked as Aella brought it down. Apparently the firemount had its own ideas about air currents. Detan itched the palm of his good hand, wanting nothing more than to reach out and feel those strange eddies for himself. He’d never flown through a firemount’s mouth before. If he lived through this, he’d have to make time for it.
Even if he’d probably get harpoons launched at him from the line defenders, it’d be worth it.
“Move, Honding.” Thratia grabbed the back of his neck in one fist and shoved him forward, down the little gangplank Aella had extended for their egress. New pain seared down the fresh scabs of his back, and he hissed air through his teeth.
Detan looked at the girl, but she was busy making sure the burr-anchors bit snugly into the ground. He wondered if Callia ever did any of her own flying work. He glanced back at the imperial, with her singed and bloodied white coat, her nails lacquered the same blue as the sky, and decided that was very, very unlikely.
New Chum positioned himself at the spearhead of the group and motioned further down the wall, toward the bald patch of ground where there was no pipeline. “This way, if you please.”
Their morbid little party set out, traipsing across the belly of the firemount. Detan imagined he could feel it rumble in distaste beneath him, annoyed by the human presence using it as their own personal meeting place. He tried not to think about that too much.
As Thratia herded him across the sooty ground he tried to keep his head down while keeping his eyes up. He had a rather strong suspicion that unless he played scared senseless she wasn’t going to be any nicer than she already was.
That made him dizzy, so he gave up and looked around brazenly instead. What was she going to do, blind him?
He swallowed, and went back to keeping his head down.
As he stole glances around the broken land, he noticed one distinct thing missing from the cracked landscape: the Larkspur. There were heaps of magma rock and dunes of ash, glittering blades of shattered obsidian, whirls of breath-stealing heat. But no ship.
Except, to their right, a little disturbance in the soot. A small smudge of irregularity that he recognized as the footprint of his own bedraggled flier. But the Happy Birthday Virra! was nowhere to be found.
Thratia stopped their progress with a soft growl and shoved Detan forward. “To the pits with this,” she muttered, and Callia gave her a tight nod.
“Tibal!” she called above the gritty winds. “If you want this sorry sack of flesh back you show yourself!”
Detan stumbled, exaggerating his overbalance to get as far away from Thratia as possible, and rammed smack into Tibs as he stepped out from around a pillar of black stone. Detan froze, chest to chest with the man who might be his only friend in the world, heart hammering to wake the dead. He wanted nothing more than to grab Tibs by the arm and sprint for it.
But this wasn’t his game. Not anymore. And he had no idea what good ole Tibs had in mind.
That rangy sonuvabitch put one hand on Detan’s shoulder and shoved him back toward his captors. Detan staggered, this time doing his best to keep his balance in check, absolutely straining his core muscles to stay upright. To stay as close to freedom as possible. He glared as hard as he could at Tibs, knowing full well the freak show behind him couldn’t see.
Oh shit. Was Tibs trying to piss him off to blow something up? If that was his plan, he was going to be disappointed in a hurry. Detan cursed Callia, Aella, and any other vowel-smashed imperial name he could think of. He could only hope Tibs and New Chum had worked out some sort of hand signal to let one another know something was amiss.
If only he had thought of that idea before, he could let Tibs know his own cursed self.
“Evening, warden.” Tibs tipped down the brim of his singed hat. “Nice of you to come see me.”
“Cut the shit.” Thratia’s cutlass whipped over Detan’s shoulder and pressed right up tight against Tibal’s throat. Detan cringed, sweating himself slick in two thumps of his heart, but he held his ground.
“Where’s my ship?”
“More to the point,” Callia said, slipping forward to stand on Detan’s other side, making his skin crawl with mere proximity. “Where is my doppel? I know you could not possibly pilot the craft yourself, Tibal. Not even with your watch captain’s aid.”
Tibs held his hands out and patted the air like he was calming an angry mule, his smile chock full of that rustic charm Detan damned well knew was an act. Worked on most ladies. Too bad these two sandvipers were nothing at all like ladies.
“Easy now
.” Tibs placed a finger on the flat of Thratia’s blade and nudged it out to the side, then took a step back. Putting more distance between himself and Detan. The prick. “Ship’s coming round, though you’ll have to check with Pelkaia regarding just where she intends on going. Doesn’t have much love for your kind, understand.”
Tibs pointed behind them, and the ladies on the field turned as one to regard the tip of an all-too familiar mast creeping over the lip of the conical wall. Detan, however, kept his eyes squarely on Tibs’s sour face and tried to mouth out: N-O S-E-L.
Tibs blinked at him, big brows drawing together.
I C-A-N-T…er… B-O-O-M.
The idiot just shrugged. Detan clenched his fists, shuffled a step towards Tibs and gathered his breath to get his voice as low as possible.
The Larkspur crested the rise, big enough to cast a shadow over their little party. A surprisingly small shadow. Detan blinked, distracted, tried to work it through but–
“That’s not the Larkspur,” Aella said.
Detan spun around, let himself take a step back towards Tibs as he did it. Hovering above the firemount’s rim was the Larkspur as he’d known it, sails full and stabilizing wings spread wide in the afternoon light. Pelkaia stood on the deck alongside Ripka, both waving with big stupid grins. The exact same wave. The exact same grin.
He half-turned, saw Aella’s small face pinched with focus, sweat sluicing off her scrunched brow. Her fists were clenched at her sides, making her look even smaller for how tiny they were. Her jaw jutted forward with strain.
The Larkspur vanished. So did Pelkaia.
Aella staggered, all the color draining from her small cheeks. Detan reached for her but she swatted him back, forcing herself upright. Too damned proud to seek out help when she needed it.
She caught his eye and jerked her chin. He blinked, turned back toward the place where the Larkspur had been.
Selium rushed toward the blue vault of the sky, a reverse opalescent rain. Glimmering droplets raced away from their armature, his own sad little flier with a rather shocked Ripka standing alone on deck. The stitched-together contraption still had Happy Birthday Virra! Painted in purple along the side of one buoyancy sack. Detan thought he’d faint.
No time for that. Aella had dropped her hold.
He let the sel rise, higher and higher, straining himself until he feared it would escape his grasp. Once it had melded with the streaky white of wind-battered clouds he reached out for all he was worth and held. Binding, binding, smashing it all together until it was one massive globule.
He swayed, sick with the immensity of it, felt a familiar hand grip his arm and prop him upright. Tibs, that old bastard, grinning like an idiot. Probably because he was one. There was no way he could have seen Aella coming.
“Who the fuck is Virra, and where is my pits-damned ship?” Thratia spun on Detan and Tibal, cutlass lashing out. He was straining himself too hard to pay any real attention, but he thought he heard the telltale squeal of Callia drawing her own blade. Looked like the imperial was up to doing her own work after all.
“Over there,” Tibs said, voice relentlessly chipper as he stepped out of reach of Thratia’s blade, this time dragging Detan along with him. Thank the sweet skies. At least Tibs hadn’t gone completely mad.
Callia strode toward Aella, grabbed the girl by the front of her blouse and hauled her upright, vein throbbing in the center of her forehead. “Take down all illusions in this area. Now.”
The girl’s eyes went wide enough that Detan could see the gleam of the sun glancing off the whites of them. He wanted to scurry over there, to bravely shove Callia aside and tell her that was no way to treat a young lady, especially one in her charge. But he was weak and he was tired, and he didn’t have a thing in the world to answer for the length of steel in Callia’s hand.
Well, he had the sel. Too unwieldy to risk using. As always.
Callia let the girl go, shoving her forward. Aella turned in a slow circle, eyes narrowed.
“I told you–” Tibs began, but Thratia lunged and cracked the pommel of her cutlass against his temple hard enough to split skin and send the poor devil reeling. Detan forced himself forward, grabbed his friend by the shirt and held him up, tried to drag him back a step but was halted by Thratia placing the edge of her blade against his own scrawny neck. Detan froze, tangled up with Tibs, heart trying to escape through his throat.
“Everyone’s staying right here until I get my ship. Understand?”
Aella hissed through her teeth, drawing Thratia and Callia’s attention. She pointed straight behind their little group, eyes wide with wonder.
“It wasn’t there before!” she insisted to no one in particular as she held both hands out, so tired she needed the assistance of mirror-movement to make her powers work. Just like the weaker sods working the line, Detan thought.
The empty air just a few paces behind them rippled, shimmered, then fell away in tatters, ribbons of sel peeling off like rotten fruit. Testament to the girl’s exhaustion – she was only able to rip it at the seams, not shatter it whole. Detan let that sel go. There was no way he could hold so much.
When the illusion had passed, there the Larkspur hovered. Half its sails were tucked in, its stabilizing wings only half out. Pelkaia stood on the edge of the deck facing them. The rail had been taken down, and she had one booted foot on a roll of canvas as thick around as a corpse. She grinned down at their little gathering, cut Thratia a tight salute.
The ex-commodore strode forward, Callia falling in line at her side. But it was Aella that Pelkaia turned her attention to. The doppel inclined her head, a small smile of genuine respect on her time-worn features. Detan blinked, realizing he was seeing Pelkaia’s true face for the first time. He squinted, straining, but was too far away to make out any detail.
“You’re good, girl,” Pelkaia called loud enough for all to hear. “But you missed one.”
Aella spun around, overbalanced, and staggered sideways a step. She brought her hands up to cup either side of her head, pressing in as if she could stop the world spinning with the force of her hands.
“Enough of this.” Callia outstretched a hand, selium-filled bangles jangling together, and Detan felt a wrenching in his gut. Something about the sel he held above him felt pestilent, repulsive. He was overwhelmed with the desire to push it away from him before the gangrenous contagion could spread.
No. He shook his head. And held.
The Larkspur shuddered, Pelkaia’s smile fading as she fought her own battle against Callia’s perverse talents. Thratia approached the hull of her ship, Callia on her heels, and reached for the ladder.
Pelkaia kicked the bundle.
The canvas unfurled, dumping a motley collection of half-rotted vines atop the heads of both women. They sent up a chorus of swears, swatting at the tangled vegetable mass, molded flowers mashing into their hair.
Callia’s coat was smeared with rot. Detan could have sung at the sight.
“Stop fucking around!” Thratia’s cutlass made short work of her entanglement, but she was still smeared in the rich nectar of the sticky blooms. Detan recognized the flowers then: the ones Tibal had pointed out to him at the fete.
Shit.
“Told you,” Pelkaia called, “you missed one!”
The doppel waved her hand, and the missing pipeline popped into existence. No trouble digging there, after all. Only this one was defunct, its leather tube infested with selium-fed bees. Bees that, according to Tibal, were rather fond of thistle blossom.
A swarm rose, a cloud blacker than any he’d ever seen, the buzz in the air heady enough to set his teeth vibrating. They coalesced and turned, irritated by the absence of the sel that had been hiding them. The sel that they had no doubt been happily snacking upon until the moment of its dissolution.
Thratia leapt for the Larkspur’s ladder. Pelkaia must have been expecting the move, because the Larkspur danced out of her reach. Out of all of their reach, flitting fur
ther away from the mouth of the Smokestack than anyone could leap.
With one last explosive curse, Thratia threw her blade down and sprinted toward Callia’s dinghy.
“And just what the fuck are we supposed to do?” Detan screamed at Tibs above the buzzing roar, the shadow of the swarm preceding them across the ashen ground. Tibs grinned, pointed at the Happy Birthday Virra! looping around the mass and headed right for them, Ripka at the helm.
Problem was, Ripka had never flown a damned thing before in her life.
“She’s all over the blasted sky!” Detan screeched, trying to get a handle on his panic lest he lose control of his cloud.
Tibal scowled. “I showed her how it’s done, she’ll–”
The swarm slammed into them. Fist-sized bees, bodies gorged with sel, broke over them like a wave. He heard Thratia screech a war cry, saw dozens of the things drop dead around Callia as she extended her perversion of selium to the gas already in the bee’s bellies. Detan spun round, swatting wildly, feeling bloated and fragile bodies burst under each swipe.
There were too many to swat.
Chapter 41
Bright hot kisses of pain blossomed on Detan’s arms, his cheeks. Creatures angry that he wasn’t food took their rage out on his tender flesh. He screamed, heard Tibs yell something much more manly, and then Tibs yanked him down beside the rock he’d been hiding behind. He had a cloak stowed there, and dragged it over both of them. It was thick and coarse woven, enough to keep the stings at bay as long as they didn’t let any gaps show. Hard to do when you had two men crowded under one blanket.
“You stupid sonuva–”
Tibs elbowed him hard in the side. “If you’d just gotten your ass over to this side of the rock when I’d signaled!”
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