“Warden Ganal reminded me that I was no longer a whitecoat. And while she allows Callia to wear the garment – she does moan if you take it away – the Warden wants her people to bear as little resemblance to that particular institution as possible.”
“But you are a whitecoat.”
She shook her head, hand slipping across the ledger she held to obscure the words written there. “I gave them up when I entered Thratia’s employ. They would not welcome my return now, and I am pleased with my current position. The Warden treats me well.”
“Does she? Or does she just treat you less poorly than Callia did?”
“I see no point in the distinction.”
A flare of anger, just a brief simmer, that she would embrace the role she’d been crafted for so thoroughly while he fled from his own mold. “You are perpetuating what she did to you, what she crafted you to be. Callia’s mind is gone, Aella. You don’t have to please her, to follow in her shadow. There are places in this world Thratia and Valathea cannot reach, and you of all people have the strength to reach them if you so chose.”
She lifted both brows at him, tucking the ledger beneath her arm. “I am no more a prisoner here than you are. Or will you tell me now you are being held against your will? That you desire to flee and cannot?”
“Why do you stay?” His breath rasped, his fists clung to the air at his sides, color rashed his collarbone and cheeks.
“I think…” She pursed her lips at him, tilted her head to the side. “I think you’re asking yourself that question.”
With a condescending pat on the arm and a faux-sympathetic smile, Aella turned and made her way up the steps to some upper room, some inner sanctum to which he was not privy. Detan watched her go, breathing slowly, trying to calm his twitching nerves. The functions of the compound moved on around him. Servants tended to household needs while Thratia’s people worked on all the little plans that made her interests move forward.
Not a one of them paid him any mind. He was certain that if he stopped one, asked direction or assistance, they would provide it to him. Perfunctorily, as a matter of their duty to their mistress. Surely he had a room, somewhere. Surely he could take a meal if he so chose – demand fresh clothes, a bath, any of the little everyday facets of a life.
But he did not belong here. They had no need of him, no care for him. Not even Aella seemed interested in him any more, now that she had other tasks to attend to. He stood rudderless in a sea of someone else’s making and felt himself come adrift.
Detan could bear a lot of indignity, but being ignored was simply galling.
He strode across the wide hall that’d once hosted a gala he’d crashed and angled toward the steps up to the airship dock. If he were going to be forgotten about, he’d use the time to prepare something for them to remember him by.
He swooped out onto the dock, pushing the doors wide, prepared to charm his way past guards and caretakers to make his way onto Aella’s transport vessel. He hadn’t expected to see Thratia herself, leaning against the soft curve of the u-dock’s rail, the dock clear of every other soul.
If she’d heard him enter, she made no sign of it. She rested her forearms against the smooth rail, fingers interlaced, stooping to lean against the railing. He’d never seen her slouched before, had never seen her in any posture save ramrod straight.
Desert wind pushed her short hair against her scarred cheek, the ebony flesh tinged pink even in the warm glow of the oil lamps. Night crept in, reaching to meet her from across the horizon, bruised-purple and blue fingers of darkness lying in sheets against her skin. There was something intimate in the way she merged with the encroaching night.
“Did you enjoy your walk?” she asked.
He flinched, glad she wasn’t looking at him, his bravado evaporating. Here was the woman he meant to undermine. To keep from his home as if she were a viper and he the charmer, tangled together in a dance that could leave either one of them killed. And in that moment, watching the colors of the sun bleed out across her pucker-scarred cheek, he knew he did not understand her. Knew nothing about her, truly.
She was strong and brave and fierce and cruel, and rumors about her spun themselves into sand-devils all across the Scorched. They called her General Throatslitter. She’d been too hungry for power for Valathea to keep her. Exiled, kicked from the isles that’d been her home, to this dusty stretch of endless sand and sel she’d come, and rebuilt herself. And he did not know why, save that she wanted it. But want alone wasn’t enough to move most people.
Something had moved Thratia Ganal. Something besides the stories people told about her, something she kept close.
Something he could use.
“City’s gotten quiet,” he said. She didn’t move, didn’t so much as cock her head his way, so he sauntered over, adopting all the lazy affectations he’d refined over the years, to stand beside her.
Aransa really was beautiful from up here. Purple shadows draped the brown and yellow stones of the city’s deep-cut layers, smearing into hints of red and black spotted through with the warm glow of hearth fires and the sharper punch of candles and lamps, scattered like stars. Last time he’d seen this view, he hadn’t been properly positioned to appreciate it. It was hard to admire a landscape when you were pretty certain you’d just jumped to your death.
“They’re frightened,” she said.
“Because of you.”
She snorted. A warm burst of air, shoulders jerking forward. Her breath smelled of bright berry tea, and he was brought back to that terrible moment when she’d leaned into him on this dock all that time ago and whispered, hot, against his ear: I’m going to forge you an enemy.
“I won’t deny that. But this is better than the alternative.”
“Living without fear?”
“Blissful ignorance. Blind vulnerability. They’re safer now, whether they realize it or not.”
“Because General Throatslitter has claimed them as her chattel? Better to be slaves, than enemies?”
She shook her head, slow and sad, like a parent disappointed in a particularly thick-headed child. When the sun had given itself up to the night she half-turned, leaning her hip against the rail, and regarded him with slow care. He bit back a wisecrack and turned to face her instead.
“It’s funny. You almost look like a lord.”
“Almost like I was born to it.”
“Raised to it, maybe. You know better than most it doesn’t matter what womb you pop out of, so long as you act the part.”
“And what part have you been acting?”
Her smile slipped like a faultline. “Why don’t I show you?”
He swallowed. “What do you mean?”
Thratia pushed away from the rail, stood straight once more and turned her knife-sharp gaze down upon him. “It’s time you met the Saldivians.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ripka opened the door to her room to find Honey sitting at the foot of her bed. She clutched a linen-wrapped bundle to her lap like it was a life raft, fingers tangled in the twine holding it together.
“Honey?”
She jerked to attention and skittered to her feet, holding the bundle tight with one arm. It was just the right size to have wrapped up a head, or a couple of hands. Ripka pushed the thought away and forced herself to step into her room.
“I couldn’t find you,” Honey murmured. It wasn’t an accusation, just a simple statement of fact – I couldn’t find you, so I waited here. Ripka shrugged and adjusted the weight of the messenger’s orders in her pocket, trying to keep a sudden surge of guilt off her face.
“Sorry, I was up on the flier with Tibal. Did you need me?”
“Here.” Honey thrust the bundle toward her. She bit back an urge to recoil from the package and took it gingerly. It was lighter than she’d expected from the size, and squished pleasantly in her hands like an overstuffed pillow.
“What’s this?”
“For you.”
Ripka raise
d both her brows at Honey in question, but she just watched expectantly, her lips pursed as if she were humming an internal tune. The last gift Honey had given Ripka had been a shiv carved from a wooden spoon. At least this bundle didn’t have any suspiciously hard edges.
She placed it on the bed and wiggled the knotted strings free, peeling back the shopkeeper’s muslin. Fabric spilled out, in deep tones of crimson and sienna, and it took Ripka a moment to register what she was looking at. Clothes, civilian clothes, cut to modern style in long body-hugging tunics over complementary slim-legged trousers. There was one tunic in bloodstone red, leggings in mustard ochre, and another tunic in rich burnt sienna with crimson leggings. Not the most expensive of dyes, but the depth of their color spoke to their cost.
“These are for me?” she asked dumbly, running the rock-polished material between her fingers. They were thick, sturdy, and smooth.
“You dress like a watcher,” was all Honey said.
Ripka looked down at her undyed trousers and loose tunic, both of which were common off-duty wear for watchers in all cities across the Scorched, and burst into a fit of laughter. Even without her blue coat, the messenger had been able to recognize her for what she was. It seemed Ripka was the only one who felt she’d lost her authority with her jacket.
“I… Thank you, Honey. Where in the pits did you find these?” She held up the red tunic and pressed it against her torso. No surprise, it fit perfectly.
Honey’s lips twisted into a skewed smile. “I know how to find a market, Captain.”
She flushed. “I didn’t mean–”
“It’s all right. I know you wonder about me. But I’m fine, Captain. Honest.”
Whatever ‘fine’ meant to Honey, Ripka couldn’t even begin to guess. The woman’s motives were as opaque to Ripka as an afternoon sandstorm. With care, she took one of the crimson head scarves from the package and wrapped her hair. Honey watched with avid eyes, though her fingers never stopped drumming against her thigh.
Sunlight slanted through Ripka’s half-pulled window, setting the room alight in golden rays that emphasized the amber tones of Honey’s fluffy hair. She’d chopped it to chin length on the trip north to Hond Steading, so that the curls grew tighter without the weight of length and sprang and bobbed about her cheeks as if they had a mind of their own. In her civilian clothes, without the stigma of a Remnant jumpsuit, Ripka mused that they almost looked like sisters. Two daughters of the Scorched, with light-toned hair and darker skin, though Honey ran to a fuller figure than Ripka ever had. In the domestic intimacy of her room, the sweet scent of beeswax candles on the air, Ripka found a question she’d avoided bubbling to her lips.
“Honey, why did you help me, when the riot broke out? You must have known I had been a watcher, just like the warden said, but you told that man that I wasn’t.”
Honey stopped drumming and tipped her head to the side, round eyes glinting as she shifted her gaze to the window. Sere air gusted in, ruffling her hair. She pursed her lips and shrugged. “I liked you. I didn’t like them.”
Ripka bit back an urge to point out that them in this case meant the entire population of the Remnant. “Maybe you shouldn’t have. It put you in a lot of danger. I’m still worried about Forge and Clink. We should never have left them behind.” Her voice caught, and she swallowed a surge of pain.
“They’ll be fine.”
“How can you know?”
“Clink likes to start trouble. Has lots of practice.”
Ripka grinned a little. “Is that why she brought me into her fold?”
“No. Because I asked her to.”
Ripka bit her tongue. What she wanted to know, the question that gnawed deep inside her, she couldn’t dive straight toward. She’d tried that once, on the trip up to Hond Steading. In a quiet moment, when no one was near enough to overhear, she’d asked how Honey had come to be in the Remnant, and why the other inmates had been so frightened of her. Honey’d just smiled and hummed to herself until Ripka changed the subject.
“How did you meet Clink?”
“I ate by myself. Then Clink came, and I sat next to her. She didn’t mind.”
“Did she say why?”
Honey shook her head.
“And Forge?”
“She came later. Clink picked her.”
“Why’d you pick me?”
Honey’s head swiveled until she was staring straight into Ripka’s eyes, a little smile twitching up the corners of her lips. “You’re interviewing me, Captain.”
Ripka flushed. “I’m sorry, Honey. Old habits – it’s just, there’s so much about you I don’t know.”
“Likewise.”
The point stuck. Here Ripka was, drilling Honey for her past, while staying tight-lipped about her own. It was her watcher training. She’d identified Honey as potentially dangerous – and reasonably so – and immediately shifted her into the category of suspect, skipping over the possibility of a friend. Honey was dangerous, she had no doubt of that, but if Ripka looked hard enough at herself, she had to acknowledge she wasn’t much different. Maybe her flavor of violence was worse, too – she justified it, used the common good as an excuse to condone all her actions.
She shook herself. Her watcher coat was gone, there were no more legal justifications for her to ease her conscience with. Any heads she cracked would be done so illegally, any infiltration without government approval. She’d been cut loose, mind stuffed full of tools she no longer had the legal right to use, no matter Watch-captain Falston’s implicit endorsement of her actions.
And yet she was using them. In the defense of Hond Steading, yes, but using them without allowance all the same. She was playing this game from Detan’s level, now, outside the law and also free of its constraints.
She eyed Honey. Whatever that woman had done to end up in the Remnant, Ripka was desperate to know. But in the end it wasn’t really any of her business. So long as Honey kept her knives to herself, or pointed at throats that meant her real harm, Ripka had no right to police Honey’s past. She was here, now. Had thrown her lot in with Ripka and her cause. And Ripka was rapidly running out of allies.
Not to mention friends.
Ripka unrolled the bundle of clothes onto the bed. “Help pick an outfit for tonight. We’d better hurry or we’re going to be late to meet Latia and Dranik.”
Her eyes brightened. “We’re going?”
“Said we would, didn’t we? And anyway, I think Dranik is into something. I’d bet my blues – ah, I mean pride – that Thratia is using the cafes to smuggle weapons to her supporters, same as she did with the honey liqueur in Aransa. If we can catch her at it, feel out the extent of her network, we might be able to stop an uprising happening the moment Thratia arrives at the city’s gates.”
“Is she really that bad?”
Of course. Honey must have been imprisoned long before Thratia’s rise to power. Ripka nodded, sorting through the clothes with Honey at her side. “She’s an efficient ruler, I’ll give her that, but she takes choices away from people, uses them like commodities, and that’s something I just can’t stomach.”
Honey nodded, firmly. “We’ll stop her.”
In that moment, with the sun gleaming down upon a selection of new clothes gifted to her by a friend – quite possibly the first real friend Ripka’d had since the watch, since Detan and Tibal – she found herself smiling as a warm curl of hope unfolded within her. “Yeah. I think we might just pull it off.”
Chapter Sixteen
Detan was disappointed to discover that the Saldivians looked rather a lot like the rest of the peoples of Valathea and the Scorched. He’d been hoping for something a little more extreme: perhaps a squat people, or maybe a wild skin color like red or blue. But the people sitting before him now looked positively normal by Valathean body standards, if a little strange in the clothing department.
Thratia’s guests enjoyed a suite of rooms on the top level of her compound, large arched doorways leading out to thin
patios so that they could survey the city. The curtains on those doors were drawn now, fluttering in the night breeze. The pale linen looked as if clouds had blown into the room. The Saldivians sat cross-legged on cushions on the floor, a mat containing a bright berry tea set and plates of baked goods between them.
They were, he supposed, a little shorter than Valathean standard, but they still had the thin limbs and narrow features common to the region. Two men and a woman looked up at him, blinking with curiosity, teacups cradled with ease in the palms of their hands. The woman put her cup down and stuffed a pastry into her mouth, chewing noisily.
Their clothes were not in the slim-cut style Valathea and the Scorched favored – a style evolved for easy work, and safety around the many whirling gears and machinery of airships and their correspondent technologies. The Saldivians had gone wild with bolts of fabric, swathing themselves in great voluminous wraps. Detan rather thought they looked as if they’d tangled themselves in the curtains and just decided to live with it.
“Hullo,” he chirruped at them, and gave them a wiggle of his fingers. He’d be damned if Thratia made him go through the dance of politic introductions. He only bowed his head over his hands for those he felt deserved the respect that gesture signified, no matter their station in life. Or those he wanted to believe he respected, at any rate.
“This,” Thratia interjected smoothly, “is Lord Detan Honding.”
There she went, calling him a lord again. She’d been trotting out that title at every opportunity, as if it really meant something any more, and the realization was beginning to make his skin crawl. What leverage did she think she could wrangle from having a disgraced lord press-ganged into her entourage?
“Seas bless our meeting,” the youngest of the men said. His accent startled Detan, who was used to hearing only the rolling syllables of Valathea and the clipped speech of the Scorched. The Saldivian had a muddied way of speaking, as if each syllable was a heavy thing and left a coating in his mouth. He was maybe in his thirties, though Detan’d be hard pressed to bet on the fact, with the other man old enough to have some deep wrinkles and his hair all wave-crest white. The woman was about the young man’s age, maybe younger, though it was hard for Detan to pin anything down on them for sure.
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