Thratia inclined her head to the older man. “This is Ossar, once a chieftain of the Saldive Isles and now functioning as a diplomat here in Aransa. Iessa,” she nodded to the girl, “is his daughter, and Rensair her husband. Rensair’s Valathean is the best of the bunch, though Iessa’s is much improved since their arrival.”
The young woman smiled, recognizing both her name and at the very least the tone of a compliment. Their names sounded strange to Detan – soft and hissy, like a wave breaking against a stone.
Before Thratia could make her presence more keenly felt, Detan plopped to the ground cross-legged at the empty edge of their tea mat and rested his hands on his knees, offering big smiles all around. Whatever reason Thratia had for dragging him here to meet these strange people, he was not about to let her take the reins. Purely on principle. He might be under Aella’s thumb, but he had his pride to think about.
“What brings your lovely family to sunny Aransa?” he asked, high-toned, as if this were just a friendly chat between tourists passing one another in a tavern.
Rensair leaned toward him, foam-grey eyes brightening with interest. Detan chose to focus on the young man and ignore the scowl Ossar threw him. “We come on Thratia’s invitation.” Rensair spoke slowly, constructing his sentence with care.
“Matters in the Saldive Isles–” Thratia began, but Detan held up a hand to cut her off.
“You want me to hear what they have to say, then let them say it.” He spoke quickly and without taking his gaze from Rensair, Detan’s cheery smile plastered firmly in place. But there was no hiding the fine tension in the lines around his eyes, forced to crinkle to make a casual observer think his smile spread naturally to them. And no matter how quickly Detan spoke, Rensair’s soft frown told him he’d picked up the gist of what Detan had said. Thratia gestured grandly, sarcastically handing control of the room over to him.
“And how did you get to be so chummy with ole Thratia?” he asked, but Rensair just frowned in response. “I mean – how did you make friends with Thratia?”
“Ah, friends, yes.” He smiled, back on familiar footing. “She has worked very hard to keep the Valathean menace from the Saldives.”
Detan coughed politely into his sleeve to cover a choked-off laugh. “I would have called her the Valathean menace, before she grew so boorish that Valathea couldn’t even stomach her.”
Ossar said something, fast and liquid, and though Detan couldn’t understand the words the tone was clear enough – and the blush of embarrassment on his daughter’s cheeks.
“What’s the old man have to say, then?”
Rensair grimaced. “He says you are impotent.”
Thratia roared with laughter while some colorful heat painted Detan’s own cheeks.
“You mean… impudent?”
“Yes, yes, that. What did I say?”
Detan grimaced. “Never mind that. Your dear ole father-in-law isn’t exactly wrong. On the impudent front, that is.” He shot Thratia a glare and she wiped tears from her cheeks, snickering softly.
“And for that, I apologize.” Detan shifted internal personas, moved from the glib con man that had shielded him for so long back into the skin of the lord, the child of privilege and politics. The man his aunt had always wanted him to be. He’d buried that old skin deeper than he’d thought, and it felt tight on him now. Constrictive in a way it never had before.
Just rusty, he told himself. Just need some time. He laced his fingers together and canted his head at an angle meant to signal solemnity, and watched the body language of the Saldivians shift around him to comfortable attention. All save Iessa, at any rate. She was looking at him hard, now. Like she’d seen his internal shift laid out bare at her feet, and didn’t much like the implications.
He cleared his throat and continued, “Please, tell me what happened when Thratia came to your country.”
“We are small,” Rensair began. “Little islands, you understand? Not big like here, the Scorched, or like the bigger islands of Valathea. Just little islands. We have no selium.” He pronounced it sa-lee-um, dragging the word out as if it were delightfully unique. “But we have great shoals of fish to feed us, and sugarcane and yams.” He flashed a little smile. “Your food here, it is so bitter. But, I ramble. When Thratia came on her airships, we knew not what to think. She introduced herself as a commodore of a great empire, spreading across all of the known world, and promised they came seeking only trade. A little speck of a country, so far across the sea, was not worth the effort to conquer.”
Detan had his doubts about Thratia’s intentions in that regard, but he nodded understanding all the same and motioned for Rensair to continue.
“She stayed a long time, brought people to help with the teaching of Valathean.” His smile grew with pride. “I was the first to gain mastery. To be con-ver-sant. Things were well, and we were trading our sweets for your liquor and your grains, but then these people – they wear white coats – came to visit us.”
Detan’s face went cold, bloodless, his stomach sinking to the bottom of his being.
“You are all right?” Rensair asked.
“Yes.” He cleared thickness from his throat and wiped clammy palms against his knees. Though he could feel Thratia watching him, he didn’t dare meet her eye. “Please, continue.”
“They had learned that we had none of your selium. Our mountains have been dead a long, long time. So they came to find out if we still had sensitives. We had none, and they found this very curious so they…” He leaned back, pressing a hand to his chest while he took a deep breath. The man was near tears. Detan bit his tongue to keep from interrupting.
“They told us they had a way of inducing sensitivity, and wouldn’t that be great? We could have pilots then, like your people. Take a greater role in worldwide trade. Maybe even find some selium deposits on our own land, if we were very lucky. Many people volunteered, and they took all of those who lived very close to the mountains.
“They had no such method.” Rensair caught Detan’s gaze and held it, testing to see if Detan realized the implications of what he meant. Detan nodded, slowly, not trusting his voice. Not even trusting himself to breathe without devolving into a stream of curses.
“But they had tests, experiments.” Rensair’s voice caught on the last word. He cleared his throat and soldiered on. “Many were hurt, many driven mad, and the people with the white coats were not happy. They couldn’t get anyone to become a sensitive. So they took more volunteers, and more, and when the volunteers dried up they began just taking. They kept it very quiet, for a long time, but families began to talk amongst themselves. People spoke up.
“My father-in-law, he went to Thratia, demanded she find out what was going on. She was honest with us, even though she knew the horrors she’d uncovered would mean an uprising. Our king is, and was, a very old man used to peace. He did not know how to go about throwing out the whitecoats, or even if he could. Thratia promised him she would get rid of them, if he let her stay, and she did so. Her people, those working directly under her, were disgusted by what they found their fellows doing, and so they kicked them out.
“Eventually, Thratia had to leave. She said she feared those white-coated people were doing the same things elsewhere, and she needed a stronger base from which to stage her fight. She left her army with us and came here, to Aransa, to start again. We were not a very militaristic people. We could not have supplied her with the manpower she needed. You are very lucky, Lord Honding, that she comes to save your city next.”
Detan stared at these friendly, well-meaning people. Their smiles, some cautious, some open, seemed very far away – phantom grins, all teeth and lips floating in the air, mocking him with their friendliness.
Sweat dripped across his brow, soaked through the knees of his trousers from the palms of his hands. He’d begun to shake, just slightly, a subtle all-over tremble that threatened to make his teeth clack. Every word of Rensair’s story fell like lead, like iron, into his
mind. Threatened to batter down old barriers he’d only recently begun to peek hesitantly behind.
Thratia had refused to relinquish control of the Saldive Isles.
Everyone in Valathea, in the Scorched, knew that story. A story of a commodore gone too thirsty for power, her greed and ruthlessness outmatched by anyone else her rank. The very thing, the very power-move, that had seen her exiled from the empire she’d been born and bred to serve.
Thratia had refused to relinquish control of the Saldive Isles to the whitecoats.
And there was nothing, nothing at all, in the tone or the faces of the Saldivians watching him now that led him to believe their story was anything else than the truth as they knew it.
“Excuse me,” Detan rasped. “I need air.”
Worried expressions dogged him. Expressions of concern from Rensair and Iessa blended with the slow, languorous words of Ossar as he pushed to his feet, swayed a moment, then set his gaze on the open doorway and locked it there. His ears buzzed. White encroached upon the corners of his vision.
He staggered to the hall, vaguely aware that he pushed past Thratia, and planted one hand hard against the stone, duck his head down, doubling over so that the blood would rush back into his head again.
However much time had passed, he had no idea, but when the storm of flies in his skull subsided and his vision cleared, Thratia was there, standing beside him, her face as carefully neutral as always.
He straightened, fancy new clothes sticking to him all over from sweat. She seemed smaller to him now, delicate yet fierce in a way he’d never noticed before. She was all persona, he realized with a sinking gut. Just as he put on his mask of bravado or seriousness, she was forever shrouded with how she wanted the world to see her: fearless, ruthless, a creature of power and strength.
And she was those things, was them so fully that he’d never been able to see where the rough edges lay. Where the mask ended and the real woman began.
Because she was all those things, and more. And that was the real terror of her.
“What do you want from me?” he demanded through the rasp in his throat. “Why am I here?”
“Come. It’s time we talked.”
She turned and walked up the hallway, not for a moment doubting he would follow. And skies help him, he did. Dogged her heels like a puppy in desperate search of a bone.
Chapter Seventeen
The skeleton of the Ashfall Lounge was a burnt out warehouse on the outskirts of the city; the flesh was something else all together. Its performers had swathed the building in garishly painted linens, hiding the worst of the damage with sheets of fabric painted with the names of the performers, and the cost for entry. They’d crowded the soot-stained eaves with paper lanterns, covered with squiggles and dots to throw patterns against the cloth and wood.
Patrons milled about the exterior, talking to be heard over the soft threads of music seeping through the ramshackle building. Laughter and song and the vapor of alcohol mingled on the breeze, tinged with something else. Something Ripka couldn’t quite place.
“They’re so happy,” Honey murmured.
The shock of that statement stopped her walking. That was it, that was all there was. These people were happy, out enjoying the night and the company of others despite everything. Despite knowing their city was doomed to fight for its freedom, despite knowing full well that the armies of Thratia were only days away – perhaps even here already, if rumors of a convoy spotted to the west could be believed.
Unlike Aransa, these people hadn’t suffered weeks brewing in tension. Hadn’t strained under the fear of a doppel in their streets, of their warden murdered and who knew how many officials lined up next on that shadowy boogeyman’s chopping block. The people of Hond Steading were used to coming up on top. Ripka wasn’t even sure that they knew what it was to fear for a nation, for a people.
It should have brought her joy, to see so many of them without care. Instead, her stomach clenched. A people easy with themselves, mollified and convinced of their invincibility, were difficult to mobilize. Thratia would arrive to find a city full of fat goats, ready for the slaughter.
“Come on.” Ripka urged herself forward. “Let’s go find Latia and get some seats.”
Progress through the crowd was slow, halting. People did not endeavor to block her path so much as be completely indifferent to the fact that anyone of their number might have a sense of direction, of urgency. Ripka’s training ticked away, marking certain groups as more likely to cause trouble than others, rankling at the sight of knots of people blocking exits. Worse yet, vendors clustered in triangles around every door, hawking beer and wine and portable foodstuffs. Didn’t they see that this place had already burned down once? Fire was a real hazard on the Scorched, if they kept the doorways clogged, then–
“Here.” Honey’s short fingers gripped Ripka’s shoulder, stopping her mid-prowl of the perimeter. She pressed a lopsided clay mug of something dark and grainy and frothing into Ripka’s hand. “You need to relax.”
Ripka took a long sniff. The sweet aroma of fermented grains startled her – this was no backwater swill – and the smooth warmth of it going down eased knots she hadn’t realized she’d been bunching in her shoulders.
“Thanks.” She took a longer pull as Honey bought a beer for herself.
Someone banged a spoon against a tin cup and the collective heads of those gathered lifted to the noise, everyone turning to mill into the husk of a lounge. Ripka followed, hesitant, and every time she wondered about the structural integrity of the building she took a deeper drink of her beer. By the time they were gathered in the lobby, her cup was half empty.
“There you are!”
Ripka turned just in time to see Latia swoop down upon them. She’d piled up her hair in a mass of a bun, shoved a paintbrush through it to keep it in place, and donned the biggest, sparkliest set of hammered-copper earrings Ripka’d ever seen. A brief impression of the woman was all Ripka could gather before she was having her cheeks kissed in a dizzying rush, then Latia grabbed her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length, nodding to herself.
“This shade of red does become you.”
Honey grinned a bit over Latia’s shoulder and Ripka shot her a sour look. “Honey decided I needed an update.”
“A woman of few words, and excellent taste. I love it!”
Latia gathered Ripka’s shoulders under one arm, Honey’s under the other, and steered them firmly through the crowd toward a scattering of wood pallet tables that filled the floor before a burlap-curtained stage. She claimed a table toward the middle of the room and ushered both Ripka and Honey into chairs. One look at their drinks, and Latia clucked her tongue.
“For you, Ripka darling, that brew is just fine, but Honey! My dear, that just won’t do for that poor throat of yours. You!” She flagged down a harried-looking serving boy and thrust a finger at Honey’s cup. “Get this poor dear a dark tea with whisky and honey, warmed up, now, and be quick. The dear girl is injured, for skies’ sake.”
Latia dropped copper grains into the boy’s outstretched hand and he raced off. “There!” She collapsed into her seat in a puff of stone-smoothed linens and dust.
“Where is Dranik?” Ripka asked when Latia paused to take a breath.
“Oh, him.” Her face screwed up as if she’d tasted something sour. “Off on one of his little missions of truth and right-thinking, no doubt. Probably haranguing some poor passers-by in the market about the glory of a representative government.” She sighed heavily. “He is such an earnest, yet tedious young soul.”
“Is he not your elder brother?”
“Pah. Age is in here, my darling.” She tapped her temple with one finger, a bit of mustard-yellow paint dried on its tip. “And as such he is decidedly my younger fool of a brother. Poor dear. Mama poured a bunch of nonsense into his head, he hardly stood a chance.”
Ripka pressed her lips shut to keep from inquiring, fearing that if she seemed too eage
r to learn about Dranik’s politics she might stir suspicion. Latia was Dranik’s gatekeeper. If Ripka could ingratiate herself with the woman, then maybe she’d let her get a closer look at what was really going on.
She was forming a tree of questions in her mind to peel away the truth when the waiter arrived and plunked Honey’s new drink down. Before Ripka could find a proper opening question, the candelabras lining the walls were snuffed and all conversation fell to a soft murmur. While each table had its own guttering candle, the stage glowed with oil lamps, a brighter light than any of the candles could give.
The stage glowed like a stoked ember. Sorrowful notes from a violin moaned from behind the curtain, their hollow tone carving out a matching emptiness in Ripka’s belly. She leaned forward, and noticed Honey doing likewise. Honey’s eyes were rapt, glowing in the unctuous light from the lamps, her golden curls all aflame on the top of her head. Her bee-sting full lips moved, slowly, mouthing the tones of the violin.
Honey had seemed focused but bored when she danced death among the rioting prisoners of the Remnant. Now she was enraptured. Ripka swallowed a long sip of her drink, trying to tell herself her fingers trembled because she was overtired.
A woman’s silhouette stepped behind the thin curtain. She stood in profile, one arm extended to the sky, the other crooked at her back. She’d curled and teased her hair so much it obscured the shape of her face, of her shoulders. Just the slim curve of lips and nose were visible beyond the ringlets. Ripka leaned forward, trying to discern some telling feature, and the lips moved. The woman sang.
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