“Liberation should never be achieved through bloodshed,” he said to the night sky.
She swallowed. Clenched her hands tighter. She had to find his limits. Had to make him believe she was sympathetic to his so-called mistake. “What if that’s the only way?”
Dranik slammed his fist to the arm of the chair and exploded to his feet, eyes bright with fervor. “It must not be! We are not so oppressed as that. No, I understand why the Desert Wind is decided on the matter, I understand the history better than many others. But we are better than that, we are beyond the petty politics of Valathea. Just because… Because those poor people, the Catari, were unable to establish their freedom from tyranny peacefully does not mean we cannot succeed where they failed. They were few, and unprepared. We are many, some of the greatest minds on the Scorched – if not all Valathea – and we have had warning. There is no reason – none! – that we should reduce ourselves to violence.”
Desert Wind. The importance he lent those words made them glow like a brand in her mind, a key fact to dig into later. If she pushed now, though, when he had whipped himself up so far, he would clam up, embarrassed that he’d let the name slip. She’d seen it dozens of times before. Now, when he was at his most vulnerable – wrought with emotion – was the time to be gentle. To lure him where she wanted him to go.
She thought, a little ruefully, that Detan would be proud of her. Had he been a watcher and received their manipulation training, then that man would have been unstoppable.
“What do you want to happen here, Dranik? What do you want to see Hond Steading become?”
He paced, heels hitting the ground hard enough to leave half-moon divots in the dirt. Under the gleam of the stars, he twisted his hands through his hair, glared at the clear sky, the calm night, as if its peacefulness affronted him. She let him do all this, let him stomp out his anger and wring free his fear. The cup Latia had given her was warm in her palms now, the brew stinging as it slid down her throat. He paced, and paced, and when even the fine edge of her patience began to strain, he stopped.
“I want Hond Steading free.”
“And what does free mean to you?”
He half-turned, glanced down the line of his body at her with fresh awareness in his expression. Maybe she’d revealed too much. Maybe he was beginning to suspect that she was more than she presented herself as. Whatever his thoughts on her, he nodded to himself, and his hands fell slack at his sides.
“A governance chosen by the people. Representative of them.”
“And do you believe that Thratia is likely to allow you that? The woman exiled from Valathea for seizing control of the Saldive Isles – an independent island chain – just because she could?”
The sigh that left him seemed to take all his strength with it. He folded himself back into the chair, hands dangling between bent knees. “No. She won’t. But the Hondings aren’t any better.”
Ripka shook her head, and made her play. “I think you know better than that, Dranik. Think it through, now. Dame Honding is hale, but aging, and her heir is–” Her voice caught, and she covered this by taking a sip from her cup. “– is unpredictable. If you strengthen your forum, make a strong case for your representative government to take control once Dame Honding passes to the endless night, she might just agree. I don’t know much about your city, Dranik, not personally. But I’ve heard of it, all across the Scorched. The Hondings have ruled you all with a fair and even hand, and I don’t believe the Dame would leave you to scramble for the throne, or at the will of the empire, upon her death. This city is precious to her–” She caught herself expressing too much familiarity with the family, saw Dranik’s eyebrows rising, and corrected. “The history of her family is here. She must care deeply for it. She won’t leave you to drift, if you show her a viable alternative.
“But Thratia… I’m from Aransa, you know. Once Thratia has her claws around something she desires, she never lets go. It’s not the people of this city she cares about, anyway.” Ripka dropped her gaze, turned to stare pointedly at the humped silhouettes of the firemounts that lined up back to back along the city’s southern edge.
Dranik pressed his lips together until the blood fled them, staring at those shadows. She needn’t say the truth of the matter out loud. Hond Steading was valuable for its selium. Full stop. The people who lived there were incidental, perhaps worthless, if their lives were not conducive to selium mining.
“Thratia will destroy us.”
Ripka held her tongue, lest he hear the eagerness she felt to encourage this train of thought.
“… I thought. Truly, I thought that she might wake the Dame up. Make her understand that the city is only as valuable as its people, and their input on civic matters is a right. But the Dame has always listened, if not always complied. Thratia will roll over us. Take what she needs. She won’t ever let us be free, and she’s too much the egoist to appoint a plan for after her death. Hond Steading will fall into chaos.”
He was talking himself into it, now. She need only extend a small risk. “When we met, you were all for Thratia’s arrival. What changed your mind?”
He flinched and brushed his fingertips over his bruised cheek. “I was with the Desert Wind, when…” He sighed, shoulders rounding forward as the information he’d feared sharing all night left his lips. “When I realized they were smuggling more than information into and out of the city.”
Fucking got you, Ripka thought. But she kept her expression mostly neutral, allowed a fine line of concern to mark her brow. “What are they smuggling?”
“Into the city? Weapons. Weapons like you wouldn’t believe.”
“And out?”
He jerked backward as if someone had yanked on his hair, stuck his gaze on the sky above so that he would not have to look Ripka in the eye, and said, “People.”
Deviants. They must be. Ripka’s world lurched sideways. She sucked a breath, not needing to fake her shock and disgust, and gripped the cup in her hands hard to hide the shaking in her fingers.
“Will you let me help you undo this, Dranik? Will you let me help you take them down?”
He lowered his head to look at her, tears like stars sparkling in his thick lashes. “Please, gods, yes. Help me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Detan woke howling. Fiery pain lanced outward from his shin, shook him out of his dreams and crested his vision with white stars. He curled in upon himself, grabbing his shin, sucking air between his teeth.
He caught the faint scent of musk in each breath and, as the pain faded, grew aware of the silk-smooth sheets tangled around him. Thratia’s bed. Thratia’s scent. The pain fled from him in an instant, and he stumbled, flailing, to his feet. He was alone in the bed. He would have found that a relief, if he couldn’t clearly make out the place where Thratia had curled in the night, her back pressed against him, her sleep-breath slow and even. Should have killed her in her sleep.
But he hadn’t had the heart for that. No, that wasn’t it. He just hadn’t been brave enough to try.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
He spun. Misol stood at the foot of the bed, her spear propped against the crook of her arm, a small smirk flattening her lips. He scowled at her, but that just made her smile. His sleep-slow brain took a few moments to connect the ache on his shin with the shape of her spear shaft, and then his scowl deepened to something more than a mask meant to irritate her.
“Sweet skies, woman, was that necessary?”
“You didn’t wake when I called your name, and I’m not about to touch you while you’re naked.”
“I am not–” But of course he was. Detan swore while Misol laughed, and scrabbled to drag a still sweat-damp sheet around his waist. “Are you here for a reason, or did you just decide there weren’t enough opportunities to be a demon-whipped ass outside of this room?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t flatter yourself. Thratia’s given you over to Aella for the day. Something about not falling behin
d on your testing.”
“Oh, that’s just fucking lovely.”
Her smirk was back, slow and coy. “Thought you’d be in a better mood this morning.”
“I don’t know what–” but he did. There was no sense playing dumb, or coy, or any other cursed thing. He’d spent the night in Thratia’s room. In her bed. Woke naked as the day he was born and, well, the windows were open but the scent of them pervaded still. His stomach twisted with the memory of what he’d done. For a moment, all he could see was Bel Grandon’s throat lying open at Thratia’s feet.
Long con. Keep it together, Honding. He only had himself to rely on here, after all. Without Tibs to keep him stable, keep him sane, he felt like he was breaking at the seams. Maybe that really had been the wrong move. Maybe he should have spit at Thratia’s feet and refused her advances.
Maybe he was just disgusted with how eagerly his body had reacted, despite his ulterior motives.
Strength fled his limbs. Trembling so that his knees knocked, he staggered, lurched. Heat and bitter bile filled his mouth bare moments before he was at the window, hunched over and retching stomach waters to dribble down the side of Thratia’s precious compound.
“Get yourself together,” Misol said, and there was an even gentleness to her tone that startled him. It was almost a cousin to sympathy.
“Why are you doing this?” he blurted, then bit his tongue until he tasted iron. Just because he was desperate for an ally didn’t mean Misol would be one. Wiping vomit onto the back of his wrist he turned to face her. Had to see the truth in whatever her expression betrayed.
She eyed him. Not to observe his nakedness, he knew that. She was taking in something deeper, using her doppel’s instinct to peel away the layers of masks he wrapped around himself like a shield. Like a cage. He’d never felt so truly naked in all his life.
She sighed then, low and slow, and shook her head. That simple negation wrenched at his gut, made him ache with a renewed sense of loneliness. “My reasons are my own. Now get dressed. I’ll be waiting.”
As the door slammed shut behind her he stood a moment, gripping the sheet to himself like it could hide what he’d done, heart pounding hard enough to echo in his ears. Bile threatened to rise again, tears threatened to smear his vision.
Fuck that. He came here with a goal. With something like a plan. He wasn’t about to crumble just because he’d boned Thratia Ganal. Just because Misol, with her bald head and big stick, wouldn’t be his friend.
Skies above, he was Detan-pitsdamned-Honding. Lord, at that. And this was his game. He’d stumbled across the board mid-play, certainly. Had wandered unwittingly into Thratia’s web. But he was pulling the strings now. Or something like that. Tibs would have a better analogy – probably involving rocks or gears or shit like that – but none of that mattered.
What mattered was this: he had the upper hand. They just didn’t know it yet. And that was exactly what he wanted.
Detan flung the sheet to the bed and strode over to the water bucket some well-trained but underpaid servant had left him and scrubbed up, each brush with the sponge cleansing away his lingering sense of regret.
By the time he was dressed, in the crisp clothes of a lord that had been left for him folded neatly on a chair, he was almost feeling human again. Though he hadn’t failed to notice that, although the clothes were well-cut and of high quality cotton, they were dyed a smudgey, ashy grey. Like the sky after he’d set it alight.
Probably just a coincidence. Probably Thratia had picked those colors knowing they’d hide dirt more easily.
The worried glance Misol gave him as he stepped into the hall stopped him hard in his tracks.
“What? I know I look sexy in a suit, Misol dear, but–” She snorted and waved him to silence.
“Don’t worry about it.” She hefted her spear and took off down the hall.
“You know, of course, that the moment people start saying things like ‘don’t worry about it’ the intended target of their otherwise benevolent advice can do nothing but worry about it.”
“You talk too damned much.”
“You’re such a stunningly engaging conversationalist, I can’t help myself.”
She rewarded him with dead silence, which was probably fair. The halls of Thratia’s compound – he’d never think of it as her home, it was another species entirely – wound on for ages. Detan fidgeted. Plucked at the fine seams inside his pockets, twitched at the lay of his shirt’s stiff collar. A collar that had been cut just so to reveal the brand at the back of his neck to any who happened to glance his way. He grimaced and pulled his hand back. These clothes had definitely been chosen by Thratia. Only she would turn him into a show-dog like this.
“Where are Forge and Clink?” he asked, and flinched when his voice echoed back at him off the hard stone walls.
“Safe.”
“Could mean a lot of things.”
“Means they’re fine, and the rest is none of your business.”
Well then. If they didn’t want him fraternizing with the other prisoners, then making them his business was exactly what he was going to do. He hadn’t a clue why they’d want them separated, or why they’d draw a hard line about it, but he could spin a lot of guesses – and every last one of them pointed to an advantage he could use.
Except for one reason: that they were already dead. Aella might do that, if she saw no further use for them, and he doubted Thratia would step in to stop her. Doubted Thratia would ever even know. The commodore – and why did she still call herself a commodore, when she held the warden’s seat? – ruled her domain with an iron fist, but he suspected not even Commodore Throatslitter had the wherewithal to micromanage all of her bastard helpers.
The things Thratia counted on to keep her people in line; fear, loyalty, informants. These things didn’t apply to Aella, unless Misol was an informant, which didn’t seem likely. He doubted Aella could ever be properly scared. Pissed off, sure, but the day Aella Ward grew frightened was the day the world came to an end.
Misol thumped once on a heavy, iron-banded door with the butt of her spear, and Detan realized he really should’ve been paying attention to the path they’d taken to walk here. Big, heavy doors like that were hardly ever in his favor.
The door opened to light brighter than the gleam off a bleached bone. He stumbled back a half-step, brought his arm up to shade his eyes while they adjusted. Some fool-headed engineer had wrangled a circular shaft straight through this wing of Thratia’s compound, spearing up all three levels to the daylight above.
No balconies marred the place where those levels should be, not even a window nor a faint discoloration of the stone. It was like being in a well, and judging by the thickness of the door jamb, a well meant to hold a whole pits-lot more than a couple of gallons of fresh water. Someone had gone and brought the desert inside, dusting the ground with mottled beige-and-brown sands, raked into a curling labyrinth. Aella waited from him in the heart of it all, a table propped up to her side with all sorts of nasty equipment he’d come to expect from these sessions. And Callia, of course. Couldn’t forget Aella’s sadistic shadow. The withered woman hunched under the table, drawing in the sand with one finger.
Thratia’d clearly gone a little soft in the head when she’d ordered this place built. It was no sort of arena, no testing ground for her warriors. Anyone standing on the sandy floor was just as likely to get tangled up in events as those being tested. A few good balconies wouldn’t have gone amiss. Maybe a nice little dais from which she could lounge and observe her loyal sycophants fight for her favor.
But no one, not even Thratia, put walls this thick around a practice arena. Nor bothered to band the room’s singular door with hard iron. This room wasn’t built for fighting, it was built for containing. For dying.
For him.
His throat went dry as the sand under his boots. He stopped mid-stride, caught the smug look on Aella’s face as she watched his realization take hold, and decided not
to give the little witch the satisfaction.
Decided, most assuredly, not to think about the fact that Thratia had to order this thing built the day he left Aransa – the day she discovered what he was capable of – in order to have it prepared for him now. Busy, busy bee.
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?!” He threw his arms out in welcome and strode forward, owning every step he took with a mud-eating grin. He certainly ignored the derisive snort from Misol as she shut and bolted the door behind him.
Aella was wearing a civilian-styled tunic over a long skirt this time, both in refreshing shades of rare gemstones. Callia still wore her white coat, grubby at the hem, but he ignored her. Focused on Aella’s even stare. Callia had been neutralized – by Aella’s own hand. Whatever fear that woman once inspired in him, whatever tortures she’d visited upon his scarred flesh, she was no risk to him now, broken as she was. He could only hope that one day his own fears would be as beaten down as her body was now.
“You have come unprepared for our session,” Aella said, cool as ever, one blonde little brow perked in probably-faked annoyance.
“My spirit is always ready for the pleasure of your company.” Feigning clumsiness, he stumbled a step from the table and kicked a plume of fine sand at Callia. The broken woman shrieked and tumbled backward, clawing at her eyes with both hands. Aella swore and dropped to her knees to aid her. Detan took the moment to get a look at the instruments on the table while being unobserved. Well, mostly unobserved. He felt Misol’s stare on his back, but the doppel said nothing to alert Aella to his intentions.
Aella’d brought the usual tools of her trade. Scalpel, flint stone, pliers, bags of selium and empty sacks as well. Rope and leather and other gleaming things that looked threatening but he couldn’t name. In the name of research, that girl carried a kit that’d make a professional torturer wet themselves with glee. Skies above, she probably had some potion in there designed to make a man wet himself against his will.
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