When her breath was settled, she straightened her back and knocked. Nothing.
“Tibal,” she called, “it’s Ripka and Enard. Open up.”
A soft scraping – boot leather against stone? – and a rustling of cloth. She held her breath, swallowing impatience. Every moment that ticked away she imagined that messenger flying away from Hond Steading, coming closer to completing his task and delivering the future of this once independent city-state into the hands of Valathea for good.
The door jerked open. Tibal was silhouetted in bright sunlight, his dusty hair gone ragged and twisted out in all directions. Pale dust limned the cracks in his dark hands, his cheeks, and the wrench hanging from his fingers seemed as if it had grown there, forever a part of him. A wildness whispered in the corners of his eyes, a glint of something feral – something that had rejected human company.
The light shifted under the stroke of a wooly cloud, and the harsh lines of him were smoothed away, that animalistic gleam faded to dust. He was just Tibal again. Tired, and grieving, but Tibal all the same.
“Captain,” he said real slow, dragging his gaze over the two winded friends that stood in his doorway.
“I hate to bother you, but I need use of the flier. Quickly.”
A sour twitch took up residence at the corner of his lips. He glanced down at the wrench in his hand, turned it over so the harsh sunlight falling into the room from behind painted sunsets in the tool’s oil.
“She’s not ready.”
In that moment, she knew he was talking about himself. Dancing around the gnawing pain in his chest, using the little flier as a shield between him and the world he’d shunned. She took a breath, knowing that what she had to do was unkind, but that she had to do it all the same.
“She’s right there, Tibal. I can see her, docked over your shoulder. She’s buoyant, and you wouldn’t stake her out there if she didn’t have navigation abilities, would you? I know you. You’d bring her in, deflate the sacks and lay out all her pieces to be put back together again.”
He glanced over his shoulder to the airdock that was the balcony of his room, and the little flier beyond, drifting lazily in the stale breeze. His bushy eyebrows raised, as if seeing it for the first time, and he nodded to himself.
“That’s the next step. Taking her apart to see what needs mending before I build her up again.”
“Tibal,” she said, “please.”
He blinked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. There was more between them than she could ever address in this moment – her questions about his heritage, her want to soothe his pain. But Tibal’d always been a practical man. She willed him to feel her desperation, to put aside the storm between them and help her now, when time was so crucial. He weighed the wrench in his hand, and nodded to himself.
“What do you need her for?”
She explained the Dame’s plans in brief – the fleet of Valatheans waiting on the northern coast, the messenger flying to them now with the terrible invitation to come, to set up their stakes in this city that had been so long independent of greater powers. Tibal pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Don’t see the point. And anyway, the Larkspur would get you there faster. Go talk to Pelkaia.”
“You know damned well Pelkaia’s moored to the north. She’s faster, but by the time I got to her the damage would already be done.” Ripka gave up on swallowing her anger and stepped closer, pushing Tibal back, letting her voice show her scorn. “Valathea comes in here, it won’t mean protection for the city. Reinforcements, sure, but Valatheans in the streets will just churn the waters for Thratia. I don’t know what happened to her to make her scorn them so, but she hates the empire – and seeing them set up in the city she desires won’t keep it safe. It’ll just encourage her to dig in deeper, to roll us all back into the sand.”
“Thratia’s rule, Valathea’s. Who says the Dame has a healthier grip on this city than either of those two forces? They all look the same from where I’m standing, don’t see much point in throwing in a chit with either faction.”
“You can’t mean that. You saw the terror Thratia infused in the streets. You heard Detan’s horror stories of his time in Valathea. Anyone – any institution – that would treat another human being like that, like tools, like puzzles meant to be broken out and pieced back together again, they’re not worthy of rule. The Hondings aren’t perfect but they’re willing to listen to their people – that’s the right path.”
“If they’re so keen on caring for their citizens, then why’s Detan running around willingly under Thratia’s power?”
“You know damned well he made that trade just to get us off the Remnant.”
“You weren’t there.” He flung the wrench to the side and it clanged against the hard stone floor. “You don’t know how his mind had changed leading up to that moment. If you’d seen him, if you’d heard him–” Tibal cut himself off, shook his head and scowled. “He left this city to rot, so why should we care what happens to it?”
“You mean he left you.”
They stared at one another hard, letting tension build between them until it was twisted up tight enough to snap. Enard cleared his throat delicately.
“The messenger?”
“Right. You got a choice, Tibal. You fly me after that messenger, now, or I take the flier on my own. No other option.”
His lip curled, and without another word he turned and stomped toward the dock. Ripka swallowed her guilt down. This was desperate, important, and she didn’t have time to argue about Detan’s motives.
Not so much as a rug softened Tibal’s room. Tools speckled the floor, and every available flat surface. His bed was smooth, the sheets pulled with military precision. She wondered if he’d made the bed, or if he simply hadn’t bothered sleeping in it.
The flier had been stripped down, every ding, every stain, every hint of the personality it had garnered over the years sanded away into so much dust. The sight of its wood, bare and gleaming as if new, in the harsh desert sun grew a knot in Ripka’s chest. Piece by piece, layer by layer. Tibal was excavating Detan from his life.
“Where is this damned messenger headed, exactly?” Tibal hauled ropes and manipulated the dozens of little wheels and levers attached to the nav podium Ripka still had only the fuzziest of ideas on how to use.
“Left the palace fleet docks and headed straight north, I’d guess. The Valathean delegates are anchored just off the coast.”
“Figures they’d stick to where the air’s cooler,” Tibal muttered to himself. “Yank the anchor rope, and let’s get this over with this. You got a plan?”
“Not yet,” she confessed.
Tibal snorted. “Bad habit.”
She ignored the jibe as she yanked the anchor rope free. The flier slid out into the hot sky, thready cloud cover doing little at all to shield them from the sun’s glare. Ripka wrapped her hair in a scarf, tugging the front of it out and down just enough to shade her eyes. Tibal had his hat, singed and grey, and Enard found a beaten old straw thing that looked ridiculous atop his perfectly coiffed black hair.
As the flier gained speed, wind cooled the sun’s bite. Knowing she risked a burn, Ripka tipped her head back to the sun, let the warmth of it seep through her skin straight to her bones. She liked to imagine the Scorched’s sun could erase the chill that’d taken root in her marrow during her time on the Remnant. Liked to imagine the warmth that had been a part of her life since her birth would welcome her home.
Months she’d been back on the mainland of the Scorched, and still she felt a chill ache in her fingers, a lingering stiffness in her knees.
“There’s our bird,” Enard said.
A sleek, thin-bellied flier painted brilliant russet smeared the blue of the sky like an old scab. From its buoyancy sacks flew brilliant banners boasting the seal of Hond Steading, and by extension its ruling family. A few other small craft dotted the sky, most dark and low and obviously behaving as ferries for goods or p
eople. There was no other official ship in sight, and the narrow flier was straining hard for the north.
“Can we catch her?” she asked Tibal.
He rolled those wiry shoulders and cranked hard on the wheels, letting the fine gear ratios add urgency to the propellers. The flier lurched forward eagerly. “Hope you got a plan,” he said, but there was a gleam in his eye like hunger. Like he’d scented his prey and was warming to the hunt.
Ripka turned away so he wouldn’t see her smile. She positioned herself toward the fore of the flier, the semaphore flags for boarding gripped tight in her fists. She felt a little silly up there, wearing little more than snug-fitting breeches and a plain tunic in shades of ochre. Her arms were bare to the sun and the breeze, only the wrap around her hair giving her any real defense against the Scorched’s weather.
Without the borrowed authority of her watcher coat ensconcing her, she wondered just how she’d bluff her way through this. No weapons. No badge. No right to make any orders at all. She didn’t even have a fruitknife on her.
At the thought of kitchenware, her thoughts turned to Honey and she winced. She should have brought that woman along, instead of leaving her to her own devices in the palace – or worse, the city. Loyal as Honey was, there was no telling what she’d get up to if she grew too bored.
“Fast as she’ll go,” Tibal called out.
And not fast enough at all. Ripka caught herself leaning forward as if the cant of her body could urge the little flier onward. The Honding messenger had grown closer as Tibal’s flier gained speed, close enough for Ripka to make out the lone man on its deck – a sel-sensitive, no doubt, one of the city’s elite pilots sent to deliver the message with all haste and care – but they could draw no closer. A gulf of empty sky hung between the two ships.
“No luck, Captain,” Tibal said.
“What if we were to wave an emergency flag?” Enard asked.
Ripka hmmed. The messenger was the closest craft in the sky, and as an official delegate of the city would be honor-bound to come to their aid. There was risk in explaining away the deception once the messenger grew close enough to board, but Ripka thought she might be able to wave the messenger’s suspicions away with explanations of urgency.
She found herself wishing for Detan’s easy charm, and pushed the thought away. Whatever he was up to, he was no immediate help to her now. And anyway, she’d spent weeks stewing on the Remnant, hiding who she was, masking her real purpose. Though her watcher training still chafed at the deceptions she’d woven, she’d come to accept that a few little lies were nothing in the face of a worthwhile cause. Especially if they were the only way to achieve her goal.
“Wave the flag,” she ordered.
Enard pushed to the fore rail and waved the emergency flag, a brilliant splash of crimson against the pristine sky. There was nothing subtle in this message, no effort at communicating detail. The empty stretch of red screamed one thing only: help. Ripka had only ever seen it waved once before in earnest, and even though she knew they were safe, the jarring stretch of it made her palms sweat with unease.
Squinting against the brightness, Ripka could just make out the hesitant tilt of the messenger’s head as he caught sight of their flag, then scanned the horizon to see if any ships were nearer. No luck for him. He came to their aid, or no one did. To add emphasis to their distress, she waved her arms above her head, feigning excitement that he had seen them.
The messenger visibly sighed, then began the process of swinging the ship around.
“Got him,” she said, and caught herself grinning. She really was developing a taste for deception.
The messenger’s ship closed the gap quickly, slipping up alongside Tibal’s heavier flier. The messenger himself was a stocky young man in the tight-cut uniform of the Honding household, the only item about his person less than pristine were the well-worn boots on his feet denoting his position as messenger. No messenger worth their salt would be caught dead in stiff, unbroken-in shoes.
“What trouble?” he boomed in a deep, clear voice.
Enard and Tibal both looked to Ripka, and for just a moment she froze, having no idea what to say next.
“Dame Honding sent me,” she blurted.
The messenger’s brows shot up and he took a wary step backward. “I don’t recognize you, and this is no official ship.”
Ripka summoned all the easy arrogance of authority she’d ever possessed, cocked her hips, and sauntered toward the rail. “Do you not know me?” She swept the wrap from her hair dramatically, as if revealing the whole of her face should spark some memory. “I am Ripka Leshe, watch-captain of fallen Aransa, advisor to your dame. Please tell me you are not that oblivious to palace matters.”
The messenger’s cheeks flushed deep and he twisted his sleeve between his fingers. “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t informed. Miss? Captain? I, uh–” He cleared his throat and glanced toward the navigation podium. “I have orders to attend. If your ship is in no danger, then–”
“I am delivering you new orders,” she snapped. The poor young man flinched and visibly repressed an urge to snap her a salute. She held out her hand across the space between the ships, fingers unfurled. “Hand me your parcel.”
He went white as his sails. “That is very much against protocol.”
She snapped her fingers impatiently. “War is coming to Hond Steading, young man. Do you think your precious protocol will remain unchanged? Quickly, now, this ship is slower but we may still catch the delegation before the sun sets.”
“You’re to deliver the message?” he asked, torn between relief and incredulity.
“Of course I am! Do you think for a sand-cursed moment it’s a good idea to send a green-chin like you to a delegation from the empress? Skies above, this city is such a mess – forgive my saying so – but this is no way to handle diplomacy.”
“I, ah – I didn’t think it was so important, you know, just following orders…”
“Less jawing, more handing me that parcel.”
She snapped her fingers again, and he scrambled like a sand flea dunked in a booze bath. The message was removed from a locked chest tucked behind the podium, its creamy paper tied off with a thick, silken ribbon stamped over with Dame Honding’s personal seal. The messenger passed it to her, hand trembling, and she hoped he was too nervous to notice she held her breath.
“Finally,” she said, and tucked the message under her arm. “Back to your barracks, now, and tell your master the message was delivered with care.”
“Yes ma’am!” He snapped her a sloppy salute and scrambled off, pointing his little craft toward the Honding palace docks.
Ripka let loose a breath so deep her shoulders slumped from the force of it leaving. Enard grinned at her, but her own smile was snuffed by Tibal’s sour stare.
“Almost saw the ghost of Honding, there.”
“Funny. I see a real flesh-and-blood Honding right here.”
He went very, very still. She swallowed, hard, regretting the words as soon as she’d said them. She was too jittery. Too anxious over what she’d done to keep her damned mouth shut. The parcel under her arm dragged at her, heavy as the treason she’d just committed. It was one thing to con her way into a prison; that was to free a good man. It was another entirely to undermine the direct orders of a lawfully ruling woman – one whom she respected, at that. She felt sick. Tibal’s hard stare made her feel sicker.
“Point us toward the north,” she said crisply, covering her anxiety with a veneer of professional calm. Seemed all she had left was a collection of veneers, nowadays. She wondered if this was what it was like to be Pelkaia, never quite sure of which face she was going to wear for the moment, let alone the day. “We don’t want the messenger thinking we’re doubling back so soon. Then we’ll bring the flier home, so you can tear her apart.”
“Don’t be coming to me for help with this nonsense again.”
“Hadn’t planned on it.”
Ripka faced the
sea-kissed northern winds, her back to Tibal so she wouldn’t have to see the hurt in him, and wondered where things had all begun to fall apart.
Chapter Fourteen
Given the opportunity to be elsewhere, not even Thratia’s lackeys were populating her compound. Detan’s boots echoed in the empty entryway, the angry brightness of the chandeliers not enough to penetrate the shadows that gathered in the high ceilings. A few staff dotted the place, seeing to the type of menial chores Detan had spent most of his life trying to pretend didn’t exist. If Tibs hadn’t made him dust the flier on occasion, he probably wouldn’t know which end of a broom was up.
Despite the meager audience, he sauntered past the single, half-asleep guard at the door and slapped a pompous grin on his face. Body language wasn’t just about fooling onlookers, after all. The demeanors he switched as often as he changed his longjohns – often enough, thank you kindly – were just as much about convincing him of his adopted role as they were about fooling others.
And he could really use some convincing now.
A glimpse of pale blue silk caught his eye, the silhouette under the long robe tickling his memory. The young woman’s head was turned down as she flipped through a heavy ledger, her body canted away, but he recognized her all the same.
“Aella.”
Her head lifted, and she scanned the room until she found him coming toward her. She placed a tight, practiced smile on her small face. “Did you enjoy your wander through the city?”
He wasn’t about to let her drag him around with smalltalk the same way he did everyone else. “I didn’t recognize you without your coat.”
“Ah. That.” She looked down at herself, as if seeing the pale dress for the first time. It fit her well, ending just above the ankle bone, the shoulder seams crisp at the top of her arms. He’d never seen her in anything like it before, though there was no way she could have had something made for herself so quickly since their arrival. Thratia’s work, then. Seemed Detan wasn’t the only one concerned with maintaining appearances. He just couldn’t figure out what angle Thratia was working.
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